by Jordan Reece
“It went poorly.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“A boy. A girl. There was nothing to be done for the boy; the girl was stronger.” That was often the way of it, as he had noticed from tending hard births. Baby girls were not quite as fragile. He had better luck in coaxing them to stay in the world than he did with baby boys. “Iben Dremenger took a dim view of the survivor, sad to say, and Nonna’s womenfolk took a dim view of him as a result. I wouldn’t be surprised if they bundle Nonna and the baby off to her father’s roof within the next few days. Iben is not a good husband to her, and his prospects as a father look no more promising.”
Light flooded the room, Yens stepping back from the lantern on the mantel to light the one upon Elario’s worktable in the corner. It was a room half-dedicated to relaxation and half to industry. A touch of anger crackling his voice, Elario said, “Iben helped himself to Jersey’s labor hauling crops today. I was unaware until he returned with her hitched to his wagon in the afternoon.”
Yens’s shoulders stiffened with affront as he opened the shutters of the second lamp. Sweet-tempered Jersey was Elario’s favorite horse, and she held a special place in Yens’s heart as well. “For the love of Elequa!” Yens exclaimed. He rarely swore, but this news piqued his temper. “She has too many years on her for that! Any fool can see from a glance that she is past twenty and has earned her retirement. Does he not have his own horses, this dervesh-hearted farmer?”
Dervesh. Elario shivered. “One of Iben’s horses is lame, so he took Jersey in its place.” To borrow the herbal knacker’s horse was not a solution that anyone would have considered but a man like Iben Dremenger.
His anger at Iben was outmatched by his anger at himself. “I didn’t want to stay the night in Briars, and I thought I had enough time to reach Alming before the sun died. I misjudged, so Jersey has paid twice over today for men’s mistakes.”
Yens took in Elario’s self-recrimination and did not deepen it with castigating words, though he had every right. Folding his arms over the back of the second chair, he said peaceably, “She lives, Elario. That is what matters. Lots of rest and she will be fine. You are not the first to misjudge the sun on the Hopcross, nor will you be the last.”
“I will not misjudge it again,” Elario said with conviction. Then he remembered. “I interrupted your dinner. You should eat.”
“I’ll fix a third plate and bring all of them in here, unless you would rather dine alone?”
The last thing Elario wanted was to be alone. “Bring them in and welcome.”
He told them of the beautiful dervesh over their meals of roast chicken and fried tubers, Nyca cross-legged on the floor between the chairs and his jaw hanging open at the story. “You saw one, sir? You aren’t having us on? You saw one, real and true?”
“Real and true,” Elario said. “I wish to never see one again.”
“Who would think any of the dervesh could be beautiful? In the stories, they are monsters.”
“Still a monster, for all her comely face,” Yens chided. “You would hardly be admiring her beauty when she sank her teeth into your flesh.”
“Her lures had little effect on me,” Elario said to the boy. “I saw into her mind, in part, and her aim was to have me in her belly. Curious that she doesn’t hide it better.”
“Well, you’re one of Dagen’s boys,” Yens said. “Her charms couldn’t have worked on you, would they? No, that’s why you saw through them. While I would have walked off in entrancement to death, you backed away from her and ran. It’s Dagen’s touch that saved you this evening. Praise be to Dagen!”
Yes, that made sense. If that beautiful woman had been instead a handsome man, then Elario would not be sitting in this chair tonight. In his antechamber upstairs was the altar to Elequa and the Repse family’s personal gods: Dokka’s pots full of spices, the cornucopia for Altash, and Elario had added bundles of herbs for Palesta once his knack surprised them. An herbal knack was a woman’s skill, just as a death knack was a man’s, but occasionally there was crossover. He had never thought to represent Dagen upon the altar, or that Dagen’s touch would have need of gratitude.
“Will the king send the Red Guard?” Nyca asked. “To hunt down that dervesh and kill her?”
“The Red Guard!” Yens scoffed. “When last did they travel south of Penborough? There’s no need of the Red Guard when the dervesh can’t cross that road.”
“A little more sense than I showed this evening and there is no one for those soldiers to protect,” Elario said. “The dervesh have their land. We have ours.”
“One day the Red Guard will kill them all!” Nyca said enthusiastically. “Stavie says all they have to do is dip low in their war aerials and shoot them from up high. Then we can go to the Great Cities and pick up gold from the streets-”
“That’s enough, boy,” Yens said, his voice gentle yet firm. His son flushed. “Those are children’s games in your head, and Stavie’s, and you two are old enough to put those aside. There isn’t a river of gold coins in those streets, but there are more dervesh than the Red Guard and the king’s Dragons of the Blood legions could ever kill. As for using aerials, they can’t fire blindly into the tree cover hoping to hit all the dervesh! Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Good. You might as well take it into your head to kill every ant in all of Phaleros. For five hundred years, they’ve been killing dervesh, and for five hundred years, it has made no difference. There are just too many of them from end to end of the Wickewoods. And what if they did kill the last? Those Red Guard thieves would scoop up every coin long before you got there, since it’s thieving that got them conscripted into the Red Guard in the first place, and the Crown would take the rest.” Yens speared the last piece of chicken on his plate and mumbled about taxes.
Elario had played those games once, banging sticks together on the Green, imagining himself to be the fiercest of Red Guard soldiers. But the Red Guard infantry, in truth, was a punishment for criminals. Precious few survived to complete their sentence. Officers fared better, but they had years of military training as Dragons of the Blood that their conscripted soldiers lacked.
“Are you expecting a package, Elario?” Yens asked suddenly.
Elario shook his head. “Why?”
“The post wagon broke down when it left Winchistie today. The sarge sent his girl ahead on foot to Alming with the small mail in her satchel. I ran into Conton on the street while I was picking up supplies, and he said there was a package for you among the letters. Damaged from the breakdown.”
“It must be from one of the herb dealers. Probably sealeaf.” An entire section of the Grand Market was dedicated to herbal remedies and their components. Elario had standing orders with three dealers to send along any sealeaf to come their way, and every time he visited Penborough, he searched for it in the stalls. The herb was a restorative, and a highly powerful one when combined with his knack. It was incredibly hard to find, only growing along certain stretches of shore in the farthest north of the country. Sealeaf was expensive, too, and he hoped the package had not been so damaged as to spill its contents.
Conton Evry was both the keeper of the Sixes Inn and the post holder for Alming. Tomorrow afternoon, Elario would stop at the inn and see what could be salvaged of his package. He needed that sealeaf; his stores always bordered on low, and lower still after saving the girl child.
Nyca took their plates to the kitchen. Looking into the fire, Elario stretched out his sore arms and legs. “A good thing my father took me so regularly to the Grand Market. Not for anyone does a dealer send his costliest wares with only a promise of payment.”
Yens nodded. “That was why he did it, to let them watch you grow from boy to man, and gain in trust that you and your kin deal fair. When Gretel was the herbal knacker, she told him how hard it was to go back and forth to Penborough five and six times a year to buy herbs.” Clapping his thighs, Yens stood. “I’ll check in on Jersey, and then
to bed. Like birth and the kingstax, harvest waits for no man. The crew is good this year; they’ll pull up the tubers tomorrow and be done. Nyca and I can handle what crop is left after that on our own.”
After another few minutes of rest, Elario retired upstairs to his rooms. The lanterns and fire were already lit, whether by Yens or Nyca, and a basin of lukewarm water awaited with a clean cloth folded at its side. Washing off the grime and sweat of his travels, Elario slipped on his nightshirt and took a knee at the altar.
Fitting that the altar in the corner of the Dremenger home was to Inoch. A grandson of Elequa, Inoch was the minor god of selfish fulfillment. Never had Elario seen an altar revering Inoch, and judging from the bounty of the family’s fields, Inoch was rewarding them tenfold for noticing him unheralded in the divine pantheon. It was just as odd on Elario’s single visit to Goat’s Peak to stumble over an altar to Lesha. Altars to Lesha were the fare of brothels, not a tailor with nine young daughters.
At least he had never encountered an altar to a dervesh god or goddess. The very idea made him grimace.
For Dagen, he lit a candle with a strike-stick. Strange to thank him for what Elario usually thought of as a nuisance. No men were like him in Alming; few men in Winchistie and Briars and outwards. Elario had to go all the way to Ballevue to spend time in like company, to an inn for Dagen’s boys and Kaliope’s girls. The Greenspry was its name, and months had passed since his last visit. One drank and ate and gamed in the common room, and spent the night on the second floor with a partner, if desired.
To bear Dagen’s touch was to live in isolation out in the foothills, but tonight, tonight he was thankful for the queerness to mark him. Tonight, he breathed for that queerness, and perhaps when harvest ended, he could travel to Ballevue and end the isolation for a brief time.
Going to bed, he closed his eyes and dreamed of Elequa throwing open the prison doors to release the worst of their progeny upon the world.
Chapter Two
Jersey was in good spirits by morning, and set to pasture to graze. On his way to the lake, Elario stopped at the fence to offer her a carrot in apology. She ate it, accepted a stroke along her neck, and then ambled away to the grass.
Her gait was off. Fleeing the dervesh had lamed her on a hind leg. Another sign that something unusual had happened was the snort of alarm she gave a pair of quail, who burst from a bush along the fence and vanished into another. Jersey wasn’t one to startle, unlike Orman, who took any opportunity to frisk and stamp and make a ninny of himself.
Deep in the fields was Yens driving the plow behind Orman, the work crew following along to gather the unearthed tubers. Nyca was carrying a full basket to the wagon. The crew was from Piper Hollow, most of them farmers who had lost their entire crop to spring flooding and spot rot. The difference between them and last year’s crew was apparent even at the distance. They stepped lightly and gathered quickly, intent on their work, determined to recoup the money to support their families through winter. Half-grown children to pregnant women to grayheads were among them, even a one-armed man. Once they were done with Elario’s crop, they would move on to Helm Joren’s a half-mile away.
Last year’s crew hailed from Ballevue, all of them new to farming, prone to lazing, and whining relentlessly about the work of harvest. City scrap, the whole lot, the superfluous sons and daughters of storeowners, sent away from home for various reasons. Yens had shaken his head in annoyance at their fecklessness, but they had to take what came down the Hopcross at harvest, be it unlucky farmers and their families from Piper Hollow or spoiled, soft-handed younglings who missed the street-music and excitement of Ballevue. The Repse farm was too large to work with only three of them; fortunately, it was not so large that they had to keep a crew full-time. Even in harvest, the majority of the work requiring the crew was done in less than a week.
Elario cut across his property and climbed over the fence to the family cemetery. Round stone markers stood upon the graves, generations of Repses and at’Mattes asleep in the earth. The oldest markers were weathered and furred with moss. The newest wore garlands of flowers. He had never imagined on that day he left for the Grand Market that he was bidding goodbye to his mother and father for the last time.
To be unable to get home when the contagion rampaged through was terrible beyond words. Penborough was the country’s southernmost port for aerials, so he could not get home by air, and no cutter’s captain would risk a trip down to Ballevue at any price, so he could not go by water either. The cutters and tuggers reaching Penborough from Ballevue were refused at the dock. Forced to anchor off-shore in quarantine, neither were they permitted to travel any farther north. Penborough Port guards stood sentinel upon pier and boat to ensure it. Flaming arrows brought to heel those who tried, and one little tugger sank beneath the blue when an arrow struck something flammable on deck and it ignited. Other vessels went quiet upon the water as the days passed, the contagion already on board sweeping through the crews and passengers until no movement was seen on deck through the scope.
Elario could not get home. He could not get home. It was a month before he departed for Ballevue, and to find utter devastation upon landing. The city was drained of merriment, the streets filled with uncollected trash and ashes still falling from the piles of burned dead. Alming was preternaturally quiet when he arrived, its populace dead, dying, or in self-quarantine within their townhomes or out on the farms.
There was little to nothing to be done for the dying, because his herbal knack was not strong. It was a woman’s knack, one that he shouldn’t have had as a man, so it wasn’t the strength of a woman’s. There was always a line present within him when he used his skill, a burning line that he must not cross, or else have his knack burned out of him entirely. Saving the Dremenger girl had pushed him close to that line, and trying to help the boy would have pushed him over it. Elario was a healer who could not always heal, and at times it maddened him. It had to madden others with weak knacks, too. There were several kinds of knacks to his understanding, but he did not know them. All to appear south of the Wickewoods were herbal knacks and death knacks, and neither of them appeared very often.
He knelt down to brush dead leaves from his mother’s stone. She had been proud of his knack, strength notwithstanding. Come winter, he would weave a wreath of white jacksnows and topknot to encircle her marker, and his father’s as well.
As a child, the family cemetery had been a place of peace. Stories told, labor finished, and time to rest. As a man, it was a place of regret. Of things left undone, words left unsaid. How close he had come to his own marker last night gave him a chill.
He walked away from their graves, remembering the quiet cadence of his father’s voice, and his mother’s quick hands. Elario took after his father’s side, dark Repse hair, dark Repse eyes, but his narrower frame, softer features, and paler skin were from his mother’s side, the Malmots. Repse men were short and swarthy, with faces like anvils. By eleven years old, he had surpassed his father’s height, and working in the sun burned Elario even as it tanned his father to a darker hue.
I asked for a son and you gave me a gentleman. It had been a joke in their family. Jazan Repse knew his son worked as hard as anyone else. But dress Elario in silks and press a goblet of wine into his hand, Jazan said, slip him into the palace grounds in Ruzan and call him Lord of Hold Alming, and no one would be any the wiser. Until he spoke, at least, of hand-picked harvests over droid-picked, of horse-drawn carriages rather than aerials and crawlers. It was said that Phaleros was three countries in one: northern wonderments, southern cow pokes, and an abandoned middle inhabited by Elequa’s banished kin and the crumbling remains of cities so large that they put Ballevue and Penborough to shame. How could anything be so big? Penborough was already more than Elario could fathom. A man might wander the Grand Market alone for a week and still not see all there was to see.
He slipped from the cemetery and skidded down the ravine to the lake. Its basins held the co
ld freshwater that flowed down the mountains with the melt of the snowpack, and it was a good place to search for argetonia. The creeper wound itself around hardier plants and leeched from them. As the weather cooled, it died, which was why he had two pouches hanging from his belt for leaf cuttings.
It was already growing too cool for argetonia. He took the brown leaves along with the green from necessity. The brown weakened the green’s potency for pain if mixed together, but the dead leaves could be crushed and powdered separately for smaller health complaints.
The first pouch slowly filled to the top, and after he knotted the ties, he began to work on the second. Argetonia was as difficult as it was effective. New growth had no healing properties. Leaves in their prime had very little. It was only now, at the end of the creeper’s life, that it was of any use, but that time was perilously short.
The second pouch was still half-empty by the time he reached the Graystone Bridge. Rather than scale the ravine to the road, he hauled himself up the rough-cut stone. His boots landing with a thud on the bridge, he remembered the package. He needed to pick that up from the inn. To have to pay for spilled sealeaf, if it had spilled, goaded him. But to not pay the dealer would sully their relationship. It was probably Noric who sent it along. His access to uncommon herbs all around Phaleros was the envy of his competitors.
Elario strolled along the Cuthill, stopping twice to collect the leaves of creepers twined around the base of oaks. The pastures and farmlands gradually turned to clusters of stout homes, shingled and thick-beamed, and the schoolhouse ringed with children at play. Only the smallest boys and girls were there; older children were at home, helping to bring in the crop. Hands waved from all to see him going by.
Alming’s downtown was modest. Two rows of shops and services framed the road, which split around the Sixes Inn and gathered back together behind it to continue past the Green to the crossroads. The inn was the largest of the buildings, half of it housing the expansive Evry family, and the other half holding a common room below and rooms for guests above.