Erik whirled, mixing the angles. Jak stepped back.
Erik swiped, then lunged, trying to catch Jak on the weak side. Jak twirled the shovel, deflecting the clever attack.
On they went, Jak measuring every move. Until finally, Jak faked a strike with the blade end of the shovel. Erik took the bait, moved to defend. Jak pivoted the shovel, and slammed the hand-burnished end against the man’s temple.
Stunned, Erik sank to his knees. Jak took the fellow’s sword from his limp fingers and slowly put it through his heart. He left it there, and walked back to Murar with his shovel.
They stared at one another for many moments.
Jak finally spoke. “Two men can’t irrigate a field together if there’s no trust between them.”
Murar laughed. “You’re handy with a shovel. They teach that to all Dannire?”
“We all have aptitudes, I guess,” Jak said, bridging to the last story he meant to tell his employer. “Trick is nurturing the right ones, don’t you think?”
“You’re not talking about farming,” Murar said.
“One time—”
I met a teenage kid in an alley gang. The kind of thing that for some kids became the classroom for crew work. Cutter work. Young ones who run in alley packs fell into different adulthoods. Some got the delinquency out of their blood and went on to respectable trades, had families. Some decided theft and larceny were the way. Some never made it out of the alleys. A fair portion died there. And some. Some chose killing. Or, as I suspected, killing was already in them.
I stood in the shadows of a tall building watching five teenage boys, a prowler gang, holding a court of their own. I’d learned their leader’s name was Aron.
“You squawked on Pete,” Aron was saying. “We can’t have that, Myer, even if it was your da’s place. Hells, we didn’t take much anyways.”
“Da knew,” Myer argued. “If I hadn’t given him a name, we’d all be done. One name and he can get it back through the courts. Pete’s family will have to make it good. But what’s that to us?”
“We’re family,” Aron said. “The five of us. You squawk on one, you hurt us all.”
“That’s crap. Pete won’t even do locks time. He’s fifteen. Mischief they’ll call it.” Myer made as if to leave.
“Hold him,” Aron ordered with a cold, even tone.
The two boys who hadn’t spoken yet stepped into Myer’s path. The nook where they all stood served as a receiving area at the back of a couple of warehouses at the edge of the working district. One narrow alley served the cobbled courtyard, and it ran a hundred strides to the street. They were alone.
“I want out,” Myer said.
“We’re not done talking,” Aron replied.
“No, I mean out of the gang. This is getting stupid. We run around in a little pack like dogs. We fight other little packs.” Myer looked at Pete. “And we steal from our families. Sooner or later the strong law is going to catch us, and we’re going to spend real time in the locks.” He paused. “Not me.”
“We all took an oath.” Aron turned to face the dissenter. “You don’t break an oath.”
Myer crossed slowly to the gang leader, staring him down. He was actually taller and broader than Aron.
“I’m leaving.” His voice held clear threat. “You going to stop me?”
Aron wasn’t a specimen of a youth. He had a bit of a gut, and while he had broad shoulders, they were slopes. Not working shoulders. He had the beginnings of jowls too. And by the look of it, he’d wind up bald.
“We,” Aron answered.
“We?” Myer squinted in confusion.
Aron gestured, and the three other boys closed on Myer, binding his hands behind his back. Aron sauntered to a crate at one side of the small courtyard and picked up a rope. He tossed it up over a narrow walkway that traversed the alley between rooftops. He motioned again, and the boys manhandled Myer to Aron’s side.
“If this is some kind of test . . .” Myer’s voice trembled with uncertainty.
“Pete might do some lock time,” Aron began to explain. “It won’t be long. And it’ll be meant to scare him. But he shouldn’t even have to worry about it. And you,” he shoved a finger in Myer’s face, “have proven you can’t be trusted. This time it was a few stolen goods. Skiller grift we turned for coin to buy a few nights with sheet-women and meals on Marcel Row. But what happens when it’s for real. When we put a turn on a ministry bank or a merchant off the hill?”
A long silence hung in the little courtyard.
Aron drew close to Myer, speaking softly. “You hang for that if you’re caught, Myer. You hang.”
Myer pled, “Don’t do this, Aron. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I swear it.”
“But you swore before, remember.” Aron tied a noose in the end of the rope. “You broke your oath. Now, I have just one question for you.”
Myer struggled, trying to break free. The boys knocked him to the ground.
Aron hunkered down, like a father wanting his son to fully understand his question. “Do you want to fall? Have your neck snap? Die fast? Or, we can ease you up, and you’ll gradually pass out. Go to sleep . . . For good.”
Myer shook his head. “My da will know who did it. He’ll send the strong law. You’ll all be sent to the locks.”
Aron clucked his tongue in a reproving manner. “You notice Gus isn’t here. He’s waiting on my signal to alert the city watch that the dockside gang has hung you. That he saw them do it. In retaliation for beating their drippy asses a few days ago.”
A look of horror stole over Myer’s face.
“Now. Again,” Aaron said, with a patient smile, “fall, or sleep?”
“Please,” Myer whispered. He began to sob.
Aron shook his head. “Sleep is for cowards. So, we’ll go that way.”
The gang leader fastened the noose around Myer’s neck, tightened it up, and walked to a stack of crates. He climbed up, pulled the rope tight, then gracefully stepped off. His far greater weight pulled Myer up. The boy dangled a boot’s length from the ground. Aron tied the rope off to a horse hitch and came around in front of the dying kid.
Myer kicked. Began to sway a little. His face darkened, even in the shades of night. He fought for breath. Minutes passed. The boy cried silent tears. And then he stopped moving, though his body still swung in slow arcs.
The alley gang said nothing, and began to move toward the street. I stepped out, culling Aron from the rest.
“You boys go home,” I said. For good measure, I nicked one with my knife.
The boys scattered down the alley. They’d think twice about bringing help, given what they’d just done. What Aron had done.
“What in all hells do you want,” Aron said, raising a defiant chin.
“First kill?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, which meant yes.
“How’s that feel? To kill someone?” I waited, but I could see it already on his face.
“Just something that had to be done,” Aron said with a smirk. “He put us at risk. Can’t have that.”
“Then killing is justified if the one you’re killing puts others at risk.” I smiled too.
The boy gave me a defiant look. “You threatening me?”
“No, son, I think I’m asking you a question.”
“Yeah, and what’s that?” The kid widened his stance, the way killers do when they sense conflict.
“Just this.” I leaned close, so that he could see me plain, and whispered. “Fall, or sleep?”
“You killed a kid, then,” Murar said matter-of-factly.
Jak looked out at the beet field they were preparing. “It’s like beets,” he said. “You have to thin them before they overgrow. Take out a few.”
“Even I don’t take contracts on the young.” Murar looked a bit sanctimonious.
“You’re a model of ethics,” Jak said. Then he added the simple fact of it. “I stopped a lifetime of wrong kills.”
“How do y
ou know?” Murar asked. “Maybe the kid would have changed.”
Jak considered the question. It wasn’t that he took delight in killing. Not a kid. Not anyone. But it didn’t torture him either. It had to do with how they taught him. The ones who put him on this path. The Dannire way. The things that were taken from him to be sure he wasn’t vulnerable. It all gave him a very clear sense of killing. Of killers. He’d learned their resonances. Which wasn’t something he could explain to even other cutters. Not because of its secrets. But just because they couldn’t understand.
Jak shook his head. “Shall we bury your crew?”
Murar look around at his dead assassins. “Are you here to kill me?”
Jak shared a long look with his employer. “I was sent to kill a man once. A farmer like you. He’d been a cutter. A good one. Successful is what I mean. He had a lot of blood on his hands. And by law should die. Even blackcoats would have cited ‘justifiable vengeance.’”
Jak paused, remembering his aim drawn down on the farmer, who’d been with his son, plowing in a field not too different from the one he stood next to now. He could have released his arrow, killed the killer. No one would have spoken ill of it. Not even if he’d dropped the man next to his boy.
Jak didn’t do it.
“Did he squeal for mercy?” Murar asked.
Jak turned to Murar, drawn from the past. “He’d left the killing behind. Started a family.”
Murar laughed. “A woman’s heart beats in your Dannire chest. You let him live.”
“I think you’re missing the point.” Jak decided it was time.
“Enlighten me,” Murar said with a foppish bow.
“Your men.” He pointed around at the crew he’d dispatched with his shovel. “Young. Like to wear hoods. Like to wear scolding expressions. They kill all right. But they don’t take life.”
“You’re a philosopher now.” Murar shook his head. “Let’s get back to our digging.”
Jak lifted his shovel high above his head. A signal. Then he put his back into it, and started to extend the irrigation ditch. Murar worked beside him.
As they removed more earth, Jak continued. “I should make my stories complete.”
Murar grunted.
“The blackcoat I told you I killed . . .”
“Yeah.”
“When I did it, the disguise I wore was you.” Jak felt Murar’s eyes on him. He kept on. “You should know I’m excellent with disguises. Everyone in that square. A few thousand at least. They saw you kill their prelate.”
Murar stopped digging. “What? Why?” He paused. “When?”
“A few months back,” Jak said, still working at the ditch. “You’re a day’s ride from the city. And as a practice, you don’t go there. You run your crews from here. But I wouldn’t give a thin plug for your reputation there. Or anywhere in all of Maerde, for that matter. Hells, anyplace you can find a Reconciliationist. Your face has been posted far and wide. You’re a wanted man.”
“You son of a whore,” Murar seethed. The man’s hands tightened on his shovel handle. “You said the blackcoat was corrupt.”
“Oh, he was. But the people who saw you kill him don’t know that.” Jak stood up, looking into Murar’s angry face. “He needed to die. I let him do it and earned you some disgrace in the offing.”
“I’ll kill you,” Murar promised darkly.
“You tried that once, didn’t you?” Jak said, nodding to the yard of bodies. “And the moneylender I mentioned killing. He was your banker. Smart of you to avoid the ministry banks with all your contract money. Those moneys have been redistributed to your lender’s debtors.”
Murar took a threatening step toward Jak. Clearly his money meant more to him than his reputation. Jak narrowed his gaze. “Careful, Murar.”
“I will have it back,” he declared in a low, serious voice.
“That’ll be a fine trick, as you’ve no idea to whom it’s gone.” Jak smiled with mock sympathy. “You, sir, are broke.”
Grief then rose in Murar’s face. His eyes softened a shade. “The boy. The alley kid.”
Jak nodded. “Your son. First kill I did when I came here. I changed his name in my story for obvious reasons.”
Several long moments passed. Murar’s eyes grew distant, remembering, mourning. Then those eyes hardened, and he looked up at Jak.
“You will suffer,” Murar assured him.
From behind Jak, not far down the road, the sound of footsteps. At the same time, the door to the house opened, and Murar’s wife and little girl came out, each carrying a small bag.
“You loved your son, didn’t you?” Jak asked. It was a serious question.
Murar looked from Jak to the man approaching from the road to his wife and daughter nearing from the house. “What is happening?”
“Love endures. The real kind, anyway. That’s the root of any real suffering.” Jak leaned over his shovel, watching Murar’s wife take slow but sure steps. “Sometimes a man makes a mistake. He sleeps with a woman he doesn’t mean to, and a child comes of it. And sometimes that man was in love with another woman when he made that mistake. And sometimes that man has honor. So, he marries the woman he gets pregnant. Raises the child. While the woman he truly loves goes on with her life, marries a killer, raises a family of her own. But all the while, she harbors a secret love for an honorable man.”
Murar’s stare returned to Jak. Understanding and dread bloomed in his face. “You killed the loose woman to free her husband of his marital vow.”
“She was spreading disease, besides,” Jak added.
“This one,” he pointed at the man now well inside the yard, “he loves my wife.”
“And she loves him,” Jak said. “Always has. She told me she didn’t know your trade when you started your family. She stayed. She’s her share of honor, too.”
Murar glanced at his little girl. Shook his head. “I won’t allow it.”
“You won’t stop it,” Jak said.
“By every deaf god, I will.” Murar fixed his gaze on the man approaching, and started toward him.
Jak whipped the shovel down and slammed Murar’s knee. He fell hard, but still managed to find his knives.
Jak gently placed the shovel blade against Murar’s throat. “You don’t have to say goodbye this way,” Jak said. “Maybe you should think about your little girl. What you’ll want her to remember.”
Murar’s anger burned hot in his eyes. Jak saw the killer he’d been. The killer he still was. But something else entered in. Something of the man who’d drank half a glass of cool plum punch. A man who didn’t want his little girl to watch him get killed. And the anger faded.
Becka paused near Murar. She showed him a sympathetic look, said a quiet goodbye, and walked on to where the man she loved waited at a discreet distance.
Then Cheyn came near, looking at her da, who knelt on the hard hot earth. “We’re going away,” she said, her voice thick with regret.
“I know, honey,” Murar said.
“Why, Da?”
Murar looked long at her questioning eyes, then over to her mother. Jak thought he saw a great many deaths in Murar’s eyes.
Then the man turned back to his daughter. “I love you so much,” he said. “Try to remember just the good things, will you? The fun things we did. And that your da loves you.”
She nodded, and gave him a tight hug. It lasted quite some time. Then he gently pried her away, and smiled for her to go to her mother and the man she stood next to.
The three of them turned and moved on down the road, away from the beet farm. Murar didn’t move, watching them go.
When he and Jak were alone again, Murar remarked, “You . . . All these years. All these kills. To take everything away.”
Jak said nothing. But yes. And the pain of it, mostly losing his family, had set deep in Murar’s face. This was grief. Suffering. Of the most painful kind.
“Is this what they teach you? Is this how the Dannire do it?” Murar fin
ally looked away from the road, at Jak.
“Not every time.”
“What will you do next?” Murar asked with an empty tone. “Redirect the river? Kill my beets?”
Jak didn’t reply.
“Or leave yourself? My last godsdamn friend.” Murar gave a weak, despairing laugh.
That laugh fell away, leaving them in silence. The broad yard had that heavy feeling again. Like the sunlight carried its own awful weight. Like gravity had multiplied.
“Just kill me,” Murar finally said.
Jak picked up his shovel. “What do you say we finish this ditch?”
Seanan McGuire
* * *
The idea of a monster is often one of perspective. A man is a monster to a chicken, which just wants to hang out and lay eggs and peck things; a chicken is a monster to a grasshopper, which is probably a monster to the grass. I wanted to play with the idea of “monster,” and show how sometimes it can be reciprocal.
I also wanted to play with the idea of cultural conflict, in a weird way. Titles are not always the same from one group to another, and so sometimes a thing that looks perfectly reasonable and logical to one person is absolutely bizarre to the next. When I put those two things together, they started making sense.
This story is for the dragons who aren’t there anymore, for the thylacines and the dodos and the passenger pigeons, who would probably have a few things to tell us about what it takes to be a monster, if they still existed to be asked.
Seanan McGuire
And Men Will Mine the Mountain for Our Souls
Seanan McGuire
I. Princess
Always had the sages known that they would come. The first princess, in her bed of jewels and smelted gold, had dreamt of them; dreamt their terrible faces, their terrible claws, their endless hunger that is greater than the mountain and deeper than the deepest-diving seam. She had wept in the night, to have such dreams, and some say that her death—as the deaths of all princesses since her—came hard and early, because she could not know the peace of slumber. No one questioned what she had said of the future, for all loved their princess, and all knew that what a princess dreamt, she must dream true. Always.
Unfettered II: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy Page 6