Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  “They found more,” Matthias said.

  The Rocaan shivered with chill. “Blood?” he asked.

  Matthias nodded. “And an entire skeleton. In pieces.”

  The Rocaan turned away, his gaze catching the fire. The flames crackled and spit on the wood, rising in strange shapes, as if they held the answers. “What do you think it is?” he asked. “Do you think they’re trying to enchant us?”

  “I don’t know,” Matthias said. “But it hasn’t worked on the palace, if that is the case. I’d like to see if anyone is missing, and I would like to send word to the King so that they know we have found the same phenomenon here.”

  The Rocaan sighed. Even when he didn’t want to, he was doing Matthias’s bidding. How strange that it should work out this way. Matthias should do his bidding instead.

  “Who brought the news?”

  “Porciluna.” To his credit Matthias said no more. But the Rocaan could tell that he wanted to push forward, to act.

  The Rocaan waved a hand. “Have your meeting. Send someone to the palace. Tell the King that I wish to see him. Tell him—” that the Rocaan was tired. That he wanted this war over. “—that he can pick the time and place.”

  Matthias stopped twisting his strand of hair. “As you wish,” he said, and backed out of the room. His fear had more power than his arguments.

  The Rocaan watched him go and somehow could not shake a feeling of doom.

  FORTY-NINE

  Scavenger tied the last full bag against his hip, put a hand on his back, and stood up. The air smelled of rotting flesh and bloating bodies, a smell he was beginning to detest. Sweat ran down the side of his face even though it was cool in the shade of the trees. A bird chirped overhead and quit when he looked up, as though his very expression silenced it.

  He had been working since dawn of the day before, with five other Red Caps who Rugar claimed could be spared. Spared from what, he didn’t know. It wasn’t as if they were fighting other battles somewhere and needed Red Caps to collect the blood and tissue. But he knew better than to ask. No one answered a Red Cap’s questions.

  Still, they were shorthanded. This kind of work required at least ten Red Caps, working as quickly as they could. He placed the most recent flesh strips in bags on his left side, so that he knew which ones weren’t as good as the first. Caseo would be angry at the waste. Scavenger would tell him to blame Rugar.

  As if that would do any good.

  His hands smelled as bad as the clearing. He wiped the sweat off his brow with his wrist. No one acknowledged the work he did. No one really knew how dangerous it was, except for other Red Caps. To do this kind of stripping in the heat of battle was deadly—not all Red Caps took the strips from Foot Soldiers—but not nearly as deadly as doing it here, in the silence of this clearing. Each time he touched a body, he was afraid he would brush some of the Islander poison, that his own body would melt and betray him and he would suffocate because he had no way to breathe anymore. He had dreams about that. He would wake up gasping for air. If he knew any way out of this godforsaken place, he would take it. But he knew none.

  It was his own fault that he was out there. He made the mistake of telling Tazy, the head of the Foot Soldiers, that he would go anywhere to get out of the grayness of Shadowlands. It too leached into his dreams. He used to dream in color on Nye. Now everything was gray, sometimes dark and sometimes light, but always gray.

  He needed to escape. He would go crazy there if they made him stay much longer.

  “Nearly done?” A voice sounded just behind his ear. He looked up to see Vulture standing beside him. Vulture was even shorter than he was and weighed twice as much. They had gone to school together, and Scavenger still remembered the day when they’d been the only postpubescent males in the class, the day the teacher pulled them aside and told them that they might as well quit because the magick would never come to them.

  Scavenger shook his head. His body ached. “There’s too much work for all of us.”

  “It’s almost wasted now,” Vulture said. “Can’t get much useful off decayed flesh.”

  “Maybe the Domestics can.”

  Vulture wrinkled his nose. “They won’t come near this kind of body. And the Shaman didn’t bring any Tenders.”

  “That’s right. I forgot.” The forgetting had been a means of self-defense. The Red Caps would have to dispose of the remains themselves now. He stretched. The blood bags hung heavy from his belt. “You know what bothers me?”

  Vulture tied a bag to his own belt. “What?”

  “No Islanders. Remember at the Second Battle for Jahn, when they were dragging the dead away from us? And at the Skirmish for Cardidas Port, how they tried to kill us when we bent over a body?”

  Vulture looked up, a frown on his round bloodstained face. “They’ve had two days.”

  “Exactly.”

  Vulture shuddered. “What if they had poison on these bodies? What if it is a different kind? We’ll die slow—”

  “Maybe,” Scavenger said. “But I don’t think it’s that. If they wanted us to die, they wouldn’t have wasted lives. Something else is happening.”

  “It makes no sense,” Vulture said.

  Scavenger glanced at the Circle, knowing where the lights would flicker but not seeing them. He took a deep breath. “Maybe they don’t want to come back here. We won here. We took some of their people, killed most of their people, and captured their weapon. Maybe they’re finally afraid of us.”

  “I think they’ve been afraid of us all along,” Vulture said.

  “Yes, but maybe they think we can get them now.”

  “I don’t think they ever doubted that,” Vulture said. “We knocked their cozy world into pieces a year ago—”

  “And they’ve managed to hold us off.” Scavenger sighed. He hated it here. He hadn’t liked Nye either. It was the work. Maybe he should have run away as he had planned after they’d captured Nye. He could have got a farm, or a small house, and lived there, unbothered. But he knew that wouldn’t work. No one wanted Red Caps around. Nyeians would have shunned him, and if the farm failed, he wouldn’t have been able to eat. At least being in the military kept him fed. More or less.

  He patted the pouches hanging from his belt. “I don’t think we can do much more here,” he said.

  Vulture nodded. “Why don’t you see if Tazy will come out here and make that judgment? I think we can all use a rest.”

  Scavenger didn’t have to be told twice. He crossed the clearing, stepped across the dirt line into the Ground Circle, said the chant, and then stepped through the Circle of Light. The lights burned his skin, and then he was inside, in the cool gray that was the Shadowlands.

  A group of Domestics were standing near the meeting square. They saw him and turned their backs, continuing the discussion as if he weren’t there. With a sigh he kicked away the cool grayness, revealing an opaque layer of nothingness at his feet. He didn’t even have his own place to wash up—and if he had, someone would want to know why he was cleaning himself instead of working.

  He walked carefully, head down, so that he wouldn’t see the others stare at him. When he reached the Spell Warders’ cabin, he knocked.

  There was no answer, and he was going to let himself in and stack the pouches in the back room as he had been told when the door flung open. Caseo stood there, looking as tired as Scavenger felt.

  “You’re a mess,” he said.

  Scavenger shrugged. He wouldn’t let Caseo anger him today. “I have pouches.”

  “Are you sure they’re any good? You stink of decay.”

  Scavenger looked down. He hated the Warders. They had refused to listen to him during the First Battle for Jahn. He had begged them to let him see the Sprites, to ask for rain. But the Warders wouldn’t listen to him. They almost hadn’t let him into Shadowlands.

  “The bodies have been out there for two days,” Scavenger said. “We can’t preserve them because you say it taints the magick. No on
e has told us to quit yet. So I bring you pouches.”

  “By the Mysteries, do I have to do the thinking for all of you?” Caseo snapped. He turned to someone in the cabin whom Scavenger didn’t see and said, “Get Tazy or one of the other soldiers to stop these imbeciles from tainting our supplies.”

  “We’re not imbeciles,” Scavenger said.

  Caseo turned, his face tilted, his eyes shining as if Scavenger had said something amusing. “What?”

  Scavenger jutted out his chin. “I said that we’re not imbeciles.”

  A smile played on Caseo’s lips. “What would you call it, then, when only one quarter of your brain works properly?”

  “We’re just as smart as you are,” Scavenger said. “We’re just not as lucky.”

  “Ah,” Caseo’s smile grew. “You call it luck. How strange. As if a gift from the Powers will come from the skies and rain luck on you, and then you will be as fortunate as I am. Such small, unworthy dreams, boy.”

  “I am not a boy. I am a man full grown.”

  “You are a boy,” Caseo said. “You have not yet come into your powers. Isn’t that what you believe?”

  “I have powers,” Scavenger said. “I am just as Fey as you are.”

  Caseo grinned. “And just what are your powers, boy?”

  “I am stronger than you. I have more stamina than you. I have physical abilities where your abilities are magickal. I am just as worthy as you are.”

  Caseo’s grin became a deep chuckle. “If you were strong or worthy, you would at least be a part of the Infantry. You are nothing, boy. Nothing at all. You are well named—a creature that steals from the dead. We have conquered a dozen societies, boy, and none of them value the people who work with the dead. Only the outcasts and worthless ones put their hands on bodies.”

  With shaking hands Scavenger untied pouches from his belt. They dropped to the ground with squishy thuds, but none of them broke. “I make your work possible,” he said. “Without me and the rest of the Red Caps, you wouldn’t be able to perform your vile spells. You would be nothing.”

  Caseo’s grin faded, and for a moment Scavenger thought he had got to him. Then Caseo nodded. He extended a hand. “How would you like to test the theory that you are as much Fey as I am?”

  Scavenger stared at Caseo’s palm, untouched by calluses, the nails polished and buffed. The man had never done physical labor in his life. Scavenger put his own hands behind his back. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Come with me,” Caseo said. “And bring the pouches with you.”

  “No,” Scavenger said. “Let someone else carry the pouches.”

  “You are a Red Cap,” Caseo said. “Whatever else happens, we all must do our jobs.”

  The remark made Scavenger flush. He leaned over and picked up the pouches by their tied ends, holding them together in his fists. The weight was hard on his arms—he was used to carrying them around his waist, which made them feel like part of him. But he said nothing as he followed Caseo up the stairs and into the Warders’ cabin.

  Scavenger had been inside many times, but he had never been allowed to linger. The other Warders sat around a table, and except for the closest, who wrinkled his nose as Scavenger passed, they did not seem to notice him. Caseo pointed to the back wall where other blood pouches had been stacked. Scavenger placed his pouches on top.

  The main room was stifflingly hot. A fire blazed in the fireplace—covered with too much wood—a waste and a crime when a number of Fey still had to sleep on the ground or in crowded buildings with no heat. The Warders were all balding, bony creatures—even the women—with eyes that saw beyond the simple, everyday pleasures. A shudder ran down Scavenger’s back. It was one thing to spar with a single Warder, quite another to face the entire troop.

  They sat with their hands under the table, and they all wore heavy robes despite the heat. Scavenger appeared to be the only one sweating. He licked his lips, longing for a glass of water, and knowing they wouldn’t offer it to him.

  A bowl of water sat in the very center of the table, and to one side, an open pouch of blood. A strand of skin lay in another bowl, in pinkish water. The skin had a freshness that the skin he pulled today did not have.

  “What are we doing?” Scavenger asked.

  The Warders all looked to Caseo at the same time. It was as if they had no volition of their own, even though Scavenger knew they had. He had met each of them individually on the ships, had dealt with them more than once when he’d brought in pouches or helped with the blood supply. They seemed shocked that he dare speak aloud in a room with people so much his betters.

  “This Red Cap,” Caseo said, putting his hand on Scavenger’s shoulder, “has said he is as much Fey as the rest of us. And I suddenly realized that he can help us all in determining that. We assume that it is our magickal powers that make us Fey. He has none and yet considers himself one of us. I think a bit of a test is in order, don’t you, Warders?”

  They did not respond. Scavenger shook Caseo’s hand off his shoulder. Even when the man was trying to be civil, he still patronized Scavenger. Even when they were trying to work together.

  “I’ve never heard anyone say that magick powers make a Fey,” Scavenger said.

  Caseo’s smile was back. “Of course not,” he said. “But what makes us different from, say, the Nye? Our powers.”

  “We look different,” Scavenger said.

  Caseo shook his head. “People from different parts of the world look different from each other. All the peoples around the Eccrasian Mountains share our dark coloring, just as the peoples on Blue Isle all have round features and pale hair.”

  “Our military might makes us different,” Scavenger said. “Our determination to be the strongest people in the world.”

  Caseo laughed. The other Warders watched, their faces expressionless. It was as if their bodies were in the room, but their minds weren’t. “How could we conquer so many people on strength alone? You are a naive child, Red Cap.”

  “I am not a child,” Scavenger said. “I am only ten years younger than you are. I remember you in school. I remember when you got your powers.”

  “We will have this discussion until you prove you are as worthy to be called a Fey as I am,” Caseo said.

  “So,” Scavenger said. “I’ll prove it.”

  Caseo’s smile was slow and reached his eyes for the first time since Scavenger had known him. “All I want you to do,” he said, “is to take a bit of skin you brought with you and place it in the bowl of water.”

  “What will that prove?” Scavenger said. “Is it a spell I’m supposed to know? I have no training there. And don’t lie to me. I know you all were trained once your powers appeared.”

  “It is a spell,” Caseo said, “but I’ll give you the words when you put the skin in the water.”

  Scavenger shook his head. “The test is unfair. I have no magick. That we all know. I have been tested by two Shamans. I have worked with some of the greatest Shamans of our time, and they have shown that I have no magick.” He glanced at the bowl, then at the other bowl with the skin already in it. He had seen no spell that required skin in water. But he did know that the Warders were testing the Islander poison. By placing Islander skin in Islander poison, they were seeing if its effect on Islanders was the same as its effect on the Fey.

  A shiver ran down his back. He went to the corner and picked the last pouch he had made off the stack. He opened it, and the stink of rotted flesh almost made him gag. The Warder closest to him turned green. He brought the pouch back to the table, letting the stink affect them all. He grabbed the edge of one skin and held it tightly between his finger and his thumb.

  “I am a Fey,” he said through clenched teeth, holding his anger back so that he didn’t grab the bowl and spray everyone in the room with its contents. “That poison will kill me.”

  Caseo shrugged. “That remains to be seen. No Red Cap has yet died from it.”

  “Such a test,” Scav
enger said. “If I die, I prove that Red Caps are worthy of your respect. And if I don’t, I prove that we are not true Fey.”

  “You said you are strong,” Caseo said. “Prove it. Touch the water. Help us solve this problem. If you live, then we will know that it affects only those of us who are magick.”

  “I may not have magick,” Scavenger said, “but I have brains, and what you are proposing is a kind of murder.”

  Caseo shook his head. “I am convinced that you will live. I am convinced that magick alone will cause the poison to work.”

  “Then why don’t you test it on one of the Infantry?” Scavenger said.