The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  Someone was screaming poison—Jesmere?

  Nothing mattered save the burn. He clawed at it. If only he could get in he could get it out.

  Children ran hand-in-hand with their mother, trailing through the halls. Darkness all around. Sweet smiles. Their hands were on him and they were of him and all was beautiful. Burning. Everything was burning. The children were smiling—his sweet little daughters were smiling—and there was a fire in their gleam, and he felt it consuming his mind.

  Nothing had ever felt like this, but he couldn’t get in. He clawed and he clawed and he felt the skin give way. Saw the blood and the skin and his own reddened nails, but nothing gave and the burn did not face. Only the world faded. He retched and he writhed, but it would not abate. Receding. The shawl about him wrapped tighter and colder even as his innards burned hotter. He was a fire in snow, and everything that made him who he was burned up from the inside.

  Jesmere? Where are you Jesmere? He could hear her screaming but he couldn’t reach her.

  Someone pounded at his chest. He stared at them and they were no one. Tears. Jes? Wetness all around. The bile had abated, and the fire dwindled. The voices were a sort of hum.

  He could picture their daughter, and she was hungry. He hadn’t fed her before they left. Would the cooks look after her? His brothers—he could see them smiling. For a moment, all he could see was the face of the Farren woman, squirming beneath his father. She was not looking at his father, but at him, and she was smiling viciously. Everything was fading. One question. It was the only thing remaining. He looked into the woman’s eyes, and all he could ask was why?

  The end was not at all quiet.

  * *

  Charlotte Cullick made no effort at hiding the contempt she felt for her father’s mad witch.

  Strips of drying vomit clung to the young woman’s cheeks and her body soaked in the pooled remnants, her chest faintly fluttering with the breaths and choked rasps no living creature still had any right to draw. Sallow skin was regaining some of its proper hue, however slowly, pushing her further from the land of the dead and back into the realm of the living.

  Just her luck.

  Charlotte looked around at the others assembled for the moment. In proper course, only a handful had accompanied her father and herself for the viewing, as there were precious few they could trust to such discretion. Her father’s bodyguards were among them, and her own—Dartrek. The ever-somber looking man stood off to her right, shoulders locked in a permanent tense, as though an assassin’s blade might spring from any shadow, at any moment. Good quality in a bodyguard, she supposed, poor quality in a companion.

  Further on was her uncle, Maynard. Of them all, he seemed the closest to sharing her revulsion. Still, she knew he would never raise cause against her father. Maynard was many things her father was not. A tactician to her father’s strategies. An admirable leader and family man. He had a bulk that belied years in the service of the court, and a gaping hole where his left eye should have been—a lasting testament to the threat of feuding young nobles. Yet as great a man as he was, he was also obedient. His brother was the eldest, and so he followed him unquestioningly. One could not ask for a better supporter.

  Closest to her father was his Master of Words, the aging Boyce. Boyce was a creature of silk and lies, as befit his role. Everything about him was smooth as baby’s skin, from his bald head to the pointed tips of his silken slippers. He surveyed the scene with passive disinterest, occasionally twisting back to the door, waiting for the moment when he could depart again. His foot rapped restlessly against the floor.

  Yet so much impatience was, she had long ago learned, a ruse on the spy’s part. He was merely everything everyone wanted him to be, at all times. The real person was an exceptionally calculating, exceedingly patient man—qualities that endeared him to her father. He was an extraordinary individual by all counts, but trust was something Charlotte would not have placed in him. He reminded her too much of a spider. She glanced away when he caught her staring, and met her with one of his half-hearted smiles.

  In contrast to his spider, her father watched in rapt fascination. One hand idly stroked the point of Walthere’s beard, his fingers slipping seamlessly through the oiled grey curls. He did not spare a glance for her, or anyone besides the witch. This was his plan, his work, and in the event of failure, his life that was on the line, and he gave it the respect it rightly deserved.

  Still, she thought the whole matter was lunacy, to vindicate a creature such as this. It was beyond her. It should have been beyond Walthere, as well. He was such a rational creature in so many other aspects of life. Why her father differed in this, she could not say. He honestly believed in her, though. The witch—Usuri. Her powers. Many did. Charlotte had heard their whispers. Yet whispers were a double-edged sword. They had burned as many as they had raised up.

  With a gasp, the witch sprang upright. Both Dartrek and her father’s men instinctively clutched their blades. Her uncle flinched, but said nothing. Neither the spider nor her father moved an inch.

  The witch began to pant heavily. She drew a hand over her face, rubbing at her eyes and her head. After a time, her hand lowered and she took a long, confused look about the room, as if she could not remember where she was. Then her glazed eyes settled on them, and she blinked, and all the confusion seemed to melt away. Grunting, she drew her knees under herself and tottered to her feet.

  Charlotte wrinkled her nose. The woman did not even seem to notice—or care—about the clinging vestiges of her actions. Usuri’s bare feet twitched amidst the muck, rather than stepping around it, and she made no effort to clean the bile from her clothes, even in such esteemed company. Gerome’s tunic, a leftover from a visit many moons past, was utterly ruined.

  Charlotte looked to the others for reaction. None of the guardsmen had eased, but her uncle seemed a blank slate once again. Boyce was transfixed, despite the handkerchief she had not noticed him produce, which was now pressed ever-so-delicately against his nose. Only her father looked amused, in that sardonic manner of his.

  Though they shared the eyes of the house, and much of the general airs about them, there was little to physically determine the shared blood of father and uncle. Her father, the eminent Walthere Cullick, was a portly sort—a small, squat man, with little in the way of muscle tone. He wore a sword at his side, but it was purely ornamental. His blade was his mind, and he wielded it with precision—a trait he had impressed upon her young. He kept himself well-groomed, and he would be fairer if he ever smiled.

  Yet one did not need a pretty face, or a strong body. People feared or fawned over such petty things, but the true measure of a man came from how people looked to you with none of it. Walthere did not regret his failings. He used them, and made himself all the stronger for them. What he did not have, he did not need. Walthere Cullick was a lion—you simply could not see his claws.

  “It is done,” the witch said hoarsely. “Durvalle lies dead.”

  “The first,” Charlotte’s father added softly. The witch nodded.

  “This is absurd,” her uncle cut in. “How do we know this isn’t some parlor trick?”

  Everyone looked to the spider, but Boyce merely shrugged his kerchief far enough aside to show the hinting of a smirk. “We will all know in a day or so, to be sure. So…grand a death, could not be kept quiet.” Gesturing one smooth finger toward the empty vial at the woman’s feet, he added, “But that was assuredly tiris, and those were assuredly the ways one would act on it. And, if I might, she looks rather well for the experience.” The twinkle in his eye said it all: he should know.

  The witch swayed slightly, but kept her silence. She looked lazily from one to the other, then seemed to drift off to something else entirely. Usuri was there, but the mind was not.

  Maynard grunted his dissent. “Supposing that’s true, what exactly do we hope to accomplish here? If the Inquisition learns we’ve consulted with one such as her, it will take more than an empty
vial and our own good graces to shield us from the flames, Walthere.”

  “I work only what needs be done,” Charlotte’s father countered. “Something is rotten here, and it must be excised before it can do more harm. Let Boyce and I worry about the Inquisition.”

  Given the scowl her uncle directed at the smiling spider, she doubted there would be much joy in that. It was no small thing, his hatred of her father’s creature. They simply stood at opposite ends of the spectrum and, incapable of mutual respect, they inclined instead toward competition and scorn. Each knew their place with their lord, but their standing with one another remained a struggle for higher ground.

  “And the Durvalles? If they find we’ve sheltered her—”

  “All will die,” the witch murmured detachedly. The faintest trace of a smile had worked itself upon her face. “Each and every one.”

  “There is no cause for alarm. There will be eyes in many places in the days to come, but they shall not stray here, if we play our parts well.” Her father addressed his brother, but still he had eyes only for the witch. With a dismissive wave of his hand, Walthere waved the rest off. “Leave us now. I would speak with her alone.”

  Her uncle looked ready to continue his debate, but he only hesitated a moment, then drew himself off with a respectful bow to his brother. The spider rolled his hand into a more elegant version of the same bow, and then he too was off, gliding back into the shadows he had crafted. Laying a hand on her guardian’s arm, Charlotte moved to depart with them.

  However, as the others went their separate ways, she lingered in the hall. “My lady?” Dartrek asked, but she was resolute. They would wait for her father. There were things she needed to say and that he needed to hear, regardless of his desire for them. About the witch. About the whole matter. Success or no, her uncle was right. There were ramifications they needed to take into account, least of which was the very thought of such a noble house as theirs consorting with such a base woman as she.

  To her surprise, her father’s guardsmen followed her out. The pair looked uncertain, but they closed the doors behind them and took up position alongside.

  “Is he alright?” He never left his guardsmen.

  One of them, Ustrit, nodded apprehensively. “Aye, lady. Wished a moment with the witch.”

  “And you let him?” Hands on her hips, she felt the fire burning in her. The lioness was, at times, the more frightening of beasts. “Are you mad?”

  “His orders, my lady. We do as we are told. No more.”

  “You do what is in his best interest.”

  The guardsman shook his head and forced himself from the fight. “We wait, my lady. Same as you.”

  In a huff, she slunk back against the wall and waited. She glanced at Dartrek, but the man offered her nothing, as ever. Silent as a statue. She looked away. Even her father’s guardsmen would not give her a proper argument. That was all she wanted. Not even a proper conversation—just someone to vent her frustration on.

  The whole matter was absurd. Where her father had gotten the woman she would never know, but Maynard had been right. If the Inquisition found out about her, it would be all of their heads. Or their bodies, rather, cooking long and slow over an open fire, whilst listening to the endless prattlings of decrepit virgins railing about the nature of heresy and godlessness. Not a fate for her. Certainly not for House Cullick.

  They were a proud house, as old as the Empire itself. As her father was fond of telling her, they had been emperors once, long ago. The Curderoys. The second family to reign in the Empire. The Cullicks were a minor branch of the house, but the titles held, especially when all the other branches had withered with age or force. The Durvalles had inherited the Empire from them.

  Or took it from them, more like. The Children’s War, they called it, so titled for the ones in whose names so many fought and died. The Curderoy emperor was but a boy, but he was a mad boy, by all accounts. He was particularly fond of public racking, from her understanding. There came a time, rather quick in coming, in which he found himself surrounded by the enemies he himself had made—a result of stepping on far too many toes. Or cutting far too many off.

  The culminating moment was the execution of his father’s once staunchest supporter—the duke of Dexet, Arle Durvalle. The Emperor’s men tied him to a team of horses and had his limbs plucked before a crowd of horrified onlookers, for contradicting him in a war meeting. People rallied behind the duke’s dejected son, who was but a boy himself. The war ended when the Curderoy boy decided to play a knight and took to the field at the Battle of Ferrise. A bolt to the shoulder unhorsed him and dropped him unceremoniously into the muck. He died drowning in a puddle no more than a few inches deep, unable to hoist himself up beneath the weight of his own armor, and deprived of any man loyal enough to do it for him.

  Not their finest moment, perhaps, but the Cullicks lived on. They sided with the young Durvalle in the fight, pitting family against family. Their reward was scorn, initially, and a county later. It was the new emperor’s grandson that would inevitably raise them to the title of palatine, in honor of their dedication.

  Ironic that her father now spent his days plotting the destruction of the very house that raised him up, but she would not object to his plans, merely his methods.

  Down the hall there came the sound of laughter—a squealing trill that echoed cheerfully off the walls to warm her wearied heart. Her brother was at play, though near or far she could not say. He always was, regardless of her father’s desires.

  Walthere Cullick wanted a son that was obedient from the womb, weaning off their mother’s teat only to cling to their father’s. What little Gerold was, however, was a five-year-old boy, and nothing more. Strategy and tactics were nothing but words to him. Honor was a dream of knights in a castle, fighting drakkons and saving princesses. He was a child. Something that Charlotte could not remember herself being.

  Gerold was still too young to see the world in the way that their father did, and Charlotte both cherished and loathed him for it. He had a freedom she had never known, and an innocence unfamiliar to her. Somewhat longingly, she often caught herself watching him from afar, though she could not show him the love he perhaps deserved.

  That was her mother’s duty, and she was good for little else. Cruel, perhaps, but so it was. Charlotte’s mother was not a strong woman, or a courageous one. Pretty as a flower, but hollow as a tree. At a time, more might have been expected of her. Karlene Cullick was once Karlene Jerantus, the cousin of the new empress, and of King Dorian, of Banur. When Noelia, the Emperor’s first wife, had died, Walthere had used Karlene to connect the future pair. She had, if unwittingly. It was perhaps the greatest gain the family could make, solidifying still further their position with the crown, yet Karlene could see none of that. She saw only how she had helped love bloom, and cherished the thought. The lady enjoyed being a mother, and a wife, and that was all she ever would be.

  Charlotte was like her, in some ways. She had her looks. The thick blond curls that cascaded down her neck. The firm, apple-round swell of her bosom. Hips that tempted the chastest of men to the darkest of thoughts. Delicate as a flower. Obedient, even, as culture demanded. Women were meant to be her mother, and as a noble proper, she did not press that place amongst them. She had grace, and tact, and she saw them love her for it.

  But these hinted at a deeper truth—the separation between mother and daughter. Mother’s body, but father’s mind. There was a role to play, and she knew it well, but inside she kept the lions’ wits. Her father knew it. Appreciated it, even. There were reasons she had been the only woman in that room. She was his secretary, of a sort, his co-conspirator in other things. He relied on her in many ways—a reality based perhaps on the simple fact that for thirteen years she had been his heir apparent, with no son to pass his whims.

  Gerold had come since then, five years past, with a half-dozen miscarriages between. In name he had taken all this from her, but in thought, she remained. Perh
aps when he grew and learned, things might be different. For now, she was every bit the son her father wished he’d had.

  Yet even she made mistakes, and people could spend their entire lives trying to make up for a single poor decision.

  When the doors finally swung wide, her father emerged from the room, alone. He snapped at his guardsmen and made to go, but he hesitated as his eyes crossed her path. With nary a word, he set to move again, but she stepped out to bar him.

  “What is it,” he barked. A certain annoyance lingered there, where before there had been none.

  Hands on her hips, she tried to draw herself up as much as possible. “Send her away, father. Uncle is right—nothing good can come of her presence here.”

  Her father half-grimaced. “I’ll hear no more of this.” With a wave of his hand, he attempted to brush her off and step past. She moved with him, barring him once again. Pushing her luck, if his look was any indication.

  “I would like to know your intentions here, father. If that is to your pleasure.”

  “Not here. Not now. Such things are meant for different halls.”

  An important lesson. The walls had ears. Every wall in every court. If one would but listen, there were all the secrets in the world to be known, and the downfall of many men alongside them. Boyce knew, without a doubt. The spider was always listening, always lurking. It was what made him good at his job.

  Her voice dropped to the barest of whispers. “Fine. Is it true our lord emperor has settled into the east?”

  “Settled is perhaps the wrong term,” her father responded, uncomfortably. Taking her roughly by the arm, he sent his guardsmen off and pulled her aside. “And what of it?”

  She tugged at her arm, but his grip was like iron. It tightened when she resisted, so she dared not try again. Walthere disdained striking his children, but that had not stopped him before. “Does this affect us? Is this why…?”