The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  He cut her off. “Yes, and no. Time looms shorter than before. There are those that will move swiftly against him, and we must be all the swifter for it.”

  “Do you mean to…” He was watching her, with all the adoration of a riled cat. She teased over the word in her mouth, let it fall aside. “…him, as well?”

  “Do not be ridiculous, child. The roots are strong, but branches sick. Rogimer has been nothing but good to our family—forget it not. He is a good man, if unwell. The children…” His eyes widened slightly, darted away, looked over his shoulder, then back. He watched her, and she felt the urge to recoil, suddenly, like a child caught thieving. Revulsion. There was a flicker of it, then no more. “Sometimes the fruit falls further than we would like.”

  Shame mixed with anger, welled and flowed and beat against the barriers of her self, but there they crashed, and receded. Nodding mutely, Charlotte looked away, allowing none of it to seep into the torchlight. Jurti—control. Every noble was meant to have it. It set them above the raff. A deep breath, and a subtle tip of the head. She acknowledged him and his wisdom, and kept her silence to the contrary.

  “Do not fret, child.” The hand on her arm loosened, and her father’s tone with it. “I know your fears. The latest springs yet bear hope. There is much to be done, but much to be salvaged. You will be amongst the harvest. We all will. It just takes…a little sacrifice.”

  “…my lord?”

  She jumped, despite herself. Her father spun as the velvet tone abated, but betrayed no hint of shock. A spider crept from the shadows, as if on cue, wearing his devious little smirk as one might wear a glove. He inclined his head to them in the barest of bows, the length of his cloak spilling about his lean frame. There was a note in one of his claws, pressed respectfully against his breast. Charlotte glowered at him, but he maintained his quiet, until addressed.

  “My apologies for the interruption, but a letter arrived from the south while we were…detained. You may take interest in its contents.”

  At the offering, Walthere took the note, and never returned a word of thanks. His spider straightened and shrank back, putting himself a little deeper into shadow. He glanced at her, then away, watching the guardsmen fixing him with their dirty stares. Boyce reveled in it, she thought. Cherished the hatred, for whatever sick purpose. If it took a certain man to do the tasks required of him, she was certain she did not wish to know more of him than she already did.

  As he read the note, Walthere’s face lost some of its usual composure. First an eyebrow quirked. Then the edges of his lips quivered. A slight smile traced his cheeks—formed, and slithered away as quickly as it had come. There was a chuckle somewhere in there, more like the rasp of a dying man than a real laugh. He never laughed. Even the smile struck her as queer. He read the note quickly, crumpled it in his fist, and tossed it back to Boyce, who caught and pocketed it without comment.

  “How long?”

  Boyce shrugged. “A matter of hours, perhaps. The snow will have delayed the bird. I understand it scarcely survived, as is.”

  “He is there, then? You are certain of it?”

  Boyce nodded.

  “Unbelievable. Can things truly move so swift?” Her father turned aside, nodding to himself. There was a certain glow about him that had not been there before, his annoyance fading into ashes at his feet. Music, indeed. “Then we must match them. Your fastest bird. And a rider. Make no mistake. If the fool will make it yet so easy, I will not be made a fool again. To Rusthöffen, the both of them. The same message. The old buzzard will do his duty, little as he might think of us.

  “I want the whole family arrested. They flout the very convictions of the Emperor’s justice. And with that one, no less? How low we fall, how bitter low. Make sure my sympathy is plain. Dark times. Dark times indeed. Oh yes. Return it to me when you are done, so I may sign it. Oh Witold, you will not be so smug when all is said and done.”

  “Shall we send some of our men?” Boyce asked.

  “No need. I would not wish to overstep myself. This is the duke’s business. He’ll see it done. No one will be able to put the finger to me on this. This one was the boy’s doing, and far from mine own hands. Hurry, now.” He hesitated a moment, then hastily added, “And not a word of it to the girl.”

  The spider dipped once more, then slipped unceremoniously away, paper in hand. Her father turned, and Charlotte could still see the smile warring to free itself from beneath the practiced contours of his face. He leaned forward and kissed the top of her head, and ran a hand soothingly along her cheek. This, more than anything else, unnerved her terribly. Such affection did not become him.

  “What is it?” she asked guardedly.

  “Such news, my daughter, such wondrous news. This very night, it would so seem, your mistakes are about to be corrected. The rat slinks back into his hole.”

  A pang shuddered through her. There was only one rat he could mean, and the very mention put a nervous chill up her spine. She had long ago concluded to some act of rebellion, but that one merely offered the opportunity. A smile. A glance. Dances and rides and shadowed forest depths. A boy, taking her by the hand and leading her astray. Cost her a lot, he had. A week of pleasure for a lifetime of security. It cost him more.

  She had been engaged to the Emperor’s own nephew then. Great nephew, rather—one of the three dukes, ruler of Dexet. Older than her, coarse around the edges, but a good match. Wealthy, powerful, with a claim to the throne as well—distant, terribly distant, but a claim nonetheless. A night of pleasure, the blood of the irreclaimable, and it was all taken from her. A servant had seen them, and that was as good as her father seeing them. He knew, and then there was no saving either of them. A lord’s son atop a countess—where a duke might have been? Shame. Such shame.

  She felt her cheeks warming, tried to suppress it, but failed. There was a brightness there she knew, suffusing her own embarrassment. Eyes were on her, gauging her for a reaction. She could feel the disgust radiating from her father—it was torture to meet his gaze.

  “Are you not pleased?” There was ice in his voice.

  She managed to smooth her own to greet the question. “Very, father. I would have it no other way. For what he did—the sword is far too kind.” Rape. Her eyes wanted to shy away from him—she forced them to remain. He raped you. Her father’s words danced through her head. A lioness did not back down. “Is Lord Kasimir not your friend, though?”

  “Aye. But there are more important things in life, Charlotte. He is a friend. The man above him is not. His family offended, and in rectification of that offense, I can hurt the man above. All life moves in such ways. Strengthen yourself. Hurt them. Simple. Very simple. Remember it.”

  She nodded less than enthusiastically, and he turned away from her, summoning his guardsmen with a snap of his fingers. He started down the hall, and she stood there a moment longer, fidgeting with her hands. At last, she called to him, drawing his attention back, however briefly.

  “Father—the girl. I just—did you not support the Inquisition?”

  At that, he started off again. Over his shoulder he called, “Logic kills. Faith burns. Better to be the one with the torch than the one on the pyre.”

  Lessons even a Farren had to learn. They were not Orthodox. When the priests asked, she puffed her cheeks and smiled her sweetest smile, and told them they were humanists. Those reformers, at least, were more than welcome in the Church. All they wanted to do was to help their fellow man. Focus on the now, rather than the later. Suffering, suffering, look at all the suffering. It was their duty as good Visaji to ease the burdens of their fellow man.

  They were words, as hollow as any other. Words to protect and deflect whatever questions lurked. She was a Farren, and so was her father and their house in its entirety. It was the change the world had been awaiting, but a change best kept hushed. Some were far too boastful. That never did them any good. The world was moved by whispers, not by roars. The reformers of Farre had beco
me rooted in the masses of the Empire, but to speak out in their favor was still little better than a death sentence. The Emperor made certain of the Farrens’ protection, but in a realm where every possible heir hungered for their blood, and the Church lurked just beyond, its lapdog inquisition in tow, there were too many possibilities for disaster.

  For the time, the role of the devout was just another part to play, and she played it dutifully. As did her father. Publicly, he demurred to the Inquisition, while calling for the rights of any faith. He denounced heretics, while funding the flourishing publishing of their books and creeds. He played to the people, while feeding the egos of the Church. Funded artists, while howling at others for sponsoring such clearly vile and debaucherous works, and he did it all with a smile and a bow, as graceful as any noble should be.

  Yet when the time came to cast off the act, they would discard it as an old mask, and switch to another. So it went. Little of life, she had found, was spent in any semblance of truth. To one person or another, she was always lying, for reasons large or small.

  The nobles lie; the honest die.

  She twisted back toward Dartrek and nearly screamed. Inexplicably standing before her was the witch, watching her as a child staring at the clouds. She took a step back in her bewilderment, a hand flying to her mouth as she gasped a startled “Oh.” The woman smiled faintly—with her eyes, not her lips—tilting her head to one side and looking at her curiously. Dartrek must have heard the gasp. His head turned, his face warping into an accusatory scowl, and he descended on them like a maddened bull.

  All Charlotte could wonder was how he had missed her before.

  “She is what I thought she would be,” the witch murmured.

  No effort had been made to clean herself up. The woman stood before her just as she had laid—crusted with the remnants of her own vomit. Color had returned to her skin, though, and beneath the grime there hid the contours of a striking woman. She was from Narana. That much Charlotte could tell. Not from the accent—she had none—but from the bronzing of her skin. An exotic, alluring quality—all her people had it. Her short, boyish black hair hung in clumps about her head, greasy and dirt-encrusted. She had a body that was small, but powerful; lean but beautiful.

  It was the eyes that captivated, though. Like a pair of storm-wrought seas, reaching out to sweep her away. They were grey—a perfect sheen of smoke—and they watched her with a gaze as potent and terrifying as any Kuric’s.

  Still, Charlotte was not the kind to whither before an assault. Especially from one of lower standing than she.

  Drawing herself up, Charlotte made a point of looking down her nose at the woman. Whether the witch noticed or not was debatable, but it made her feel more confident regardless. She crossed her arms defensively over her chest, and stepped in toward the woman, to make plain the difference in their height, however slight. The woman simply stared at her, dumbly.

  “And what is it you thought I would be?”

  Dartrek reached them as she posed the question, and promptly shoved himself between them. Giving the witch a hearty heave, he knocked her back and laid a hand about his sheathed sword. “You do not speak less spoken to,” he snarled. Charlotte squeezed out from behind him, but his eyes never lifted from the witch. The witch, however, seemed unfazed. The corners of her lips quivered in what might have been amusement, or concern, then stilled again.

  She swayed, glancing away. “She does not hear the screams, because she does not seek to. Won’t think. Won’t believe. Too soon, she’ll have no choice.” Her eyes flitted back, a little sharper than before. “Everything burns. Burn everything or burn nothing—lest the flames turn to thee.”

  Dartrek’s muscles flexed as his blade began to slide, but Charlotte stilled him with a hand upon his elbow. The woman had overstepped herself. No amount of steel could correct that. Besides, it would do little to endear them to her father. This woman thought herself to be her equal. So be it. If she thought herself a lion, she had best bare her claws.

  Charlotte scoffed. “A murderess at best. A charlatan at the least. Tell me, lady, did you learn all your graces from your father?” She caught a twitch, just below the witch’s eye. Fidgeting hands, however, stilled. “I heard his wits carried him to the pyre at least. A pity yours did not fare so well.”

  The witch’s eyes were rigid on her. For an instant, Charlotte could feel the heartbeat in her chest. The rhythmic thump, thump, thump beneath the fury of that stare. She smiled, despite the quickening of her breath. Something stretched before the witch, like a cord between them. Nostrils flared and Usuri’s hand fidgeted. The witch wanted to strike her, she could see. To gather all her power into those wretched claws and dig at her until her eyes caved and bled.

  But she didn’t. The witch frowned out one side of her mouth, her eyes retreating a step into unsettling docility. She inclined her head, letting out a long, pitiful breath as she did.

  “You left him.”

  She’s lost her bloody mind. The woman spoke so softly Charlotte nearly had to lean forward just to hear it. “Left who?” Charlotte picked over the accusation. Surely the witch did not mean her burned father? She had nothing to do with that.

  Clouds met her, miserably. “Him. You had him and you did him in. Sizzle, sizzle. Some burn quickly, some burn slowly. You lit the fire beneath his feet and let him writhe. You,” Usuri jabbed a finger out at her like a sword. “You did him in.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He is too good for you,” the witch hissed. Charlotte could feel the muscles in Dartrek’s arm tighten. Flexing for a strike. “But that one never did think with the proper head. Open your eyes, little girl. The world’s not so simple. She sees herself above the flames, but everyone is burning. Her father seeks flames, and I give them. But take care. Nature is not so readily tamed.”

  Dartrek snapped a hand out quicker than Charlotte could blink. The witch did not cry out as he struck her, merely recoiled a step, where stronger men might have fallen. Charlotte’s bodyguard advanced on her, the threat plain across his grizzled face, but Charlotte shouted at him, and he wavered obediently. The witch rounded on them, hissed again through her teeth. Even as the blood ran down her split lip, Usuri did not look the least bit intimidated by the man.

  “Was that a threat?” Charlotte said.

  The witch’s head bobbed to either side, like an antsy child. Then she edged back, seeming to shrink into herself as she went.

  Charlotte stepped after her. Dartrek followed. This woman had no right to say such things and then simply slip away, sly as smoke. Charlotte called at her, but Usuri did not answer. She kept moving, as though Charlotte never existed.

  Charlotte caught her by the shoulder and spun her about. Even as her hand touched the bony thing, a pain flared through her, like a spear thrust from fingertip to heart. It felt as cold as ice, as though the world would never be whole again. Faces flashed by, and names with them, like rapid dagger strokes, in and out and gone again. As she winced away from the witch, the images all fluttered away into ash in Charlotte’s mouth, and the names became some sullen, forgotten text, lost to the annals of her mind. She blinked, as though it were sleep she countered.

  She stretched her hand before her in confusion, but there was nothing there. No blood. No burns. Just her hand, plain and unadorned. Usuri had stopped, staring scornfully back at her. For all the slouching and the slovenliness, she seemed to have grown larger than she truly was, and her hate with it.

  Flexing her hand away, Charlotte blurted out a question she had not intended. “How did you survive the tiris?” She paused, startled at her own tenacity. Then her finger flicked out, jabbing accusatorily at the woman. “What trick was that?” All confidence and power.

  “Trick?” Usuri seemed genuinely confused.

  “We watched you choke, and writhe. By all accounts, you died. What. Was. That?”

  A hand tugged at her shoulder. It was Dartrek, attempting to pull her back. She could hear
it in her mind. We should go, my lady. All distant courtesies. Urgency, but no emotion. She ignored him for the moment.

  “That was magic, sweetest.” The witch flexed her fingers, wriggled them in front of her. “Did she think it a wave of the hands? A slip of the tongue?” A kiss upon her skin. She could see the woman reaching out and taking her in hand, kissing each finger as though they were her possessions. Then it was gone. Charlotte blinked. The woman had not stirred. “Not all things are so simple. I was he and he was me and I took your poison into myself, and made it his. All things join beneath the earth. I burned, then so did he. More will burn. Come hair or wool, more will burn.” There was something rotating in her mind, there and away, constantly roving—it could not settle on a point. “Pushed it from myself, and so I stand. He…he was not so fortunate.”

  The witch closed her eyes, winced against some bitter memory. “There is pain before the dark.”

  Dartrek tugged at Charlotte and she finally gave. There was nothing left here, anyways.

  Chapter 8

  “Put up your sword. You embarrass yourself.”

  Blade in hand, Rurik stood riveted. His father remained mere feet away, hands folded calmly in his lap, voice measured despite the pain etched across the lines of his face.

  They were no longer alone. From the shadows of the bookcases three men had emerged, all armed, armored, and with eyes for no one but Rurik. He was certain he would know them if he looked to them, but he could not tear his eyes away from the man before him, not even for an instant. His hand shook, stilled, and shook again. One of the men took a step closer, and Rurik shifted another step away from him, careful neither to gain nor lose such distance from his father.

  Of course his father had known he would come. It had been a foolish notion, however briefly entertained, to think that he might happen upon his father unaccompanied. Not even here. Not ever.