Blood of Heirs

by Alicia Wanstall-Burke

  At the trees, Sasha paused, peering through them to the rear of the house. In the yard, a flimsy washing line stood empty between two leaning posts, while everything else lay hidden under mounds of snow. There might have been a bench or a wood block, but they were nothing more than lumps under a pure, white carpet.

  The windows of the house were shuttered—not unusual in foul weather—but he couldn’t see even the slightest flicker of movement between the timber slats. Ran pointed at the roof and Sasha followed his hand. The two chimneys poking up from the collected snow were clear of any smoke.

  ‘If someone is home, they’re very cold.’ He edged forwards, his hand folding over the hilt of his knife. The farm’s still silence sent a creeping sense of terror up his spine and around his neck, a chill born of more than just the snow shivering through his limbs. The last time he’d approached an abandoned farmhouse, he’d seen a ghost and been exposed to enough magic it drew his own to the surface, like fire drawing a blister out of burnt skin.

  He swallowed his fear and touched the rear door, rapping a knuckle on the wood. Sasha leaned forwards at his shoulder, watching and waiting. The door creaked and Ran realised it was open, swinging in at his touch and allowing snow to fall on the flagstone floor inside. He laid a hand on the panel and pushed, forcing the reluctant hinges to give way so the door could open fully.

  ‘Hello?’ he called, not for a minute expecting a reply.

  A strange odour coiled in his nose as they moved through the room at the rear of the house. The acidic scent of spoiled onions and potatoes wafted from the pantry to his left, and from a leg of ham hanging nearby. All were well beyond usefulness, despite the cold. The smell they gave off told him no one had been at the Parry farm for weeks.

  ‘I’d say no one’s here,’ he said, coughing and covering his nose with his sleeve. The rotten pantry wasn’t the only foul smell in the place. They moved from the pantry and buttery and into the house, following a corridor and passing room after room, all with their doors closed to the world. Ran reached for the handle of the nearest one, but Sasha laid her hand on his arm. She shook her head and slipped past, leading him up the corridor to the front of the house.

  The smell worsened until they emerged into a sitting room. The fireplace stood cold, the chairs empty and dusty. It was a tidy room with minimal, comfortable furniture and enough seats for a large family, decorated hereabouts with the ornaments and trinkets of a well-loved home.

  And a lot of blood.

  It was old blood, sprayed from floor to ceiling in great gouts and spurts, splattered across rugs and chairs, blankets and wall hangings. Even the cold couldn’t keep it from stinking. A gagging sound next to him signalled Sasha’s reaction. She held her hands to her mouth, her eyes filled to the brim with sparkling tears. Even as a healer, accustomed to blood and gore, she wasn’t immune to the room’s aura of soul-hollowing fear, or its stench.

  Ran had been very wrong to think he’d seen true horror in the cottage near Usmein, or at the front in the Disputed Territory. This place reeked of it, as if the terror of those who had died here had burned itself into the very timbers of the structure. He swallowed a lump and drew his knife from its sheath, ignoring the tremor in his hand and wondering what use the blade would be if he encountered the monster that did this. It had to be a beast of some kind—a bear or a wolf.

  The backs of the chairs bore the scars of claws, tears in the upholstery exposing padding and the ribs of the frames. Another near the doorway had been crushed completely, reduced to splinters and dust. Had the family tried to barricade the door, desperate to keep the thing out?

  When he reached the threshold, Ran expected to find the door hanging on its hinges. Instead, he found the hinges ripped from the wall along with the door, gaping holes left in the timber cladding over the clay wall filling.

  ‘What in the Underworld did this?’ he whispered and turned to Sasha. He expected her to blame it on the local wildlife, but she stared past him and didn’t breathe a word in reply. She was ashen, the usual bright spots of colour in her pale cheeks extinguished. Her eyes were wide and her mouth gaped, her chest rising and falling as if she fought to catch her breath. Ran tore his eyes away and followed her gaze, turning to look through the yawning doorway into the snowy garden beyond the porch.

  Dark smudges under the freshly fallen powder drew him from the house and out into the yard; seven of them, scattered across the space in grey mounds of various sizes.

  ‘Seven,’ Sasha whispered. ‘There were seven Parrys who lived here; the parents and five children… the youngest was a baby I helped deliver…’

  She choked on the final word and a sob escaped her throat. She bent double and crumpled onto the porch with her head in her hands. Ran hardly heard her anguish over the rushing sound of blood in his ears and the thud of his heart. His panic and terror set a fire under his magic, enough to send it shooting along his arms to pool in his fingers without so much as a word of permission.

  The dark shapes drew him into the garden. The largest was near the gate and the others were spread out haphazardly across the space between the garden wall and the porch. To his right, the smallest of them glared up at him, daring him to scoop back the snow to see what lay underneath. He didn’t give in to the taunt, knowing he didn’t have the stomach for whatever he would find.

  ‘What could have done this?’ he called and glanced back at the house.

  Sasha shook her head and swallowed her sadness. ‘I have no idea. Animals, maybe. They don’t normally attack houses, though…’

  She was right. Ran had heard of lone farmers in fields, or travellers in the road falling victim to predators in the woods. He’d heard of bodies found in trees, stashed for later by a frugal beast preserving its next meal. When camps were attacked, the creatures took the bodies for food. They didn’t leave them scattered and exposed in the snow and wind. They never went into homes, through barred doors and slaughtered the occupants to the last.

  In the distance, against the shadow of a stand of trees, hidden behind the trunks, his ghost girl watched. If she knew the answers, she kept them to herself. She slipped into the darkness and vanished, leaving Ran none the wiser, and all the more frustrated.

  He went back to Sasha and helped her stand, her legs and hands shaking.

  ‘They’re all dead…’ she whispered, her eyes searching the garden.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ It was all he could say for a family he’d never met, nor cared for. As the duke’s son, all Orthians were his people and he loved them as such. But that was nothing compared to midwifing a birth only to find the entire family massacred in their home a few short years later.

  He held Sasha to his chest and let her cry.

  *

  By midday he managed to convince Sasha to leave the site of the slaughter and return to the barn to rest. Improved though she was, the longer she spent out in the cold, the worse her knee would become. She settled in the hay of the stall and eased her leg up onto the hay bale, the fear in her eyes making her bright red hair seem all the wilder.

  ‘What if the beast comes back?’ she asked, her voice hoarse and raw.

  ‘I doubt it will. It killed everyone here, so why come back?’ Ran pulled a horse blanket up to her chin. ‘I’m going to see if there’s anything worth salvaging from the house. I won’t be long,’ he promised and slipped back out the door and into the snow.

  Some stores had survived abandonment—dried meat and a few small barrels of oats. Jars of preserves and some hardier cured meat hidden against the cold stone of the pantry wall, but everything fresh had turned. They could salvage some flour and make some coal bread, and porridge with the oats, and pack the rest for their journey. At least the bread and porridge would give them both the energy they needed to keep moving.

  With the last bundle of food and an armful of dry wood from the stack inside the house, Ran stepped into the deepening evening, content with his day’s work. It felt good to do something practical, and use
ful, while Sasha recovered. It seemed such a small thing, compared to all she had done to help him. The aches in his limbs were the reward of hard work, rather than the result of injury, and he could sense his body healing, despite the exhaustion of—

  A high-pitched howl echoed in the hills above the farm and froze him in his tracks. He stood halfway between the house and the barn, knee deep in snow with darkness rising from the east to bring the night. It wasn’t the call of any owl he’d ever heard, nor an eagle or mountain cat. It wasn’t a wolf or a bear. It was different, more guttural, and far more desperate.

  He swallowed his fear and hurried to close the space ahead, slamming the barn door shut and dumping his cargo on the floor. Sasha jerked up and stared wide-eyed from the stall, watching as he searched through a tool cabinet near the door.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, arriving at his side and scooping up the food. Her gaze followed him as he moved back to the door and started to nail a piece of timber above the lock. The lock wasn’t in the best condition and this was the best thing he could think of to barricade the door.

  ‘Nothing. I just thought we could use the extra security.’ He didn’t want to tell her about the scream in the woods. He took a length of thick wire and wound it through the door handles and then twisted the ends together, spiralling tighter and tighter until the wood and iron groaned with tension.

  Stepping back beside Sasha, Ran hoped his lock would not be tested. It looked pathetic and flimsy in the face of the destruction in the house, and if whatever ripped the door from the farmhouse came to the barn there was little chance his defences would hold.

  ‘Ran,’ she said slowly. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he repeated without looking at her, certain she would see straight through the lie if he did. He picked up the firewood and led her back to the stall, pretending not to see the questioning frown on her face.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The Parry Farm, Southern Orthia

  Their meal started and finished in silence, with neither of them offering to light a fire against the dark and cold. A couple of candles stolen from the farmhouse lit a small circle within the confines of the stall, a softly glowing orb with Ran and Sasha sitting at its edges. Ran’s magic shifted under his skin, hot and itchy, fuelled by anxiety, ready at a moment’s notice to burst forth and defend him.

  As useful as it was in an emergency, he hated the idea of his power moving as it pleased, without his control. What if he woke in the night and lashed out with it, only to find he’d attacked Sasha as she slept? What if he had a nightmare and it discharged without him realising it? He could burn the barn to the ground in a matter of minutes, incinerating them both in the process. Shuddering at the thought, he forced his power back into the recess it crawled from, working hard to hold it there.

  Across the circle of light, Sasha fidgeted with strands of hay, twisting and weaving them into bands of plaits. She might have been making a basket or a bag, or just passing the time as the silence stretched between them; Ran’s untrained eyes couldn’t tell.

  ‘Who is she?’ Sasha asked quietly, her voice cutting the stillness and making Ran jump.

  ‘Who?’ He stared at her with wide eyes. Sasha was the only woman he’d seen in months.

  ‘The girl you talk to in your dreams.’

  Their eyes met and there was nothing Ran could do to escape her scrutiny and nowhere to hide. She watched him for a lie, waiting for him to try and deceive her.

  ‘Ah…’ Ran cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly. There really was no way to explain it without sounding like a crazy person. Sasha probably thought he was mad already—a little more wasn’t going to make much difference. ‘She’s a ghost.’

  ‘Why does she haunt you?’ she asked, reaching for another strand of hay and continuing her weaving, her eyes on his face.

  ‘I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re implying,’ he countered sourly. He ran his hand through his hair and prepared the story, searching for words to describe a night he’d tried so hard to forget. ‘On my way back to Usmein from the Disputed Territory, I stumbled on a place full of magic, and she was there. The magic triggered my powers and she’s been following me ever since.’

  ‘And that’s why you fled Usmein?’

  ‘Because of the magic, yes.’ A sad laugh escaped him and he shook his head. ‘I didn’t get a chance to tell anyone about the ghost. Doubt it would have mattered.’

  Her hands paused for a moment while she watched him and not for the first time Ran wished he could tell what she was thinking.

  ‘Our people have a hard time with magic…’ Sasha’s eyes fell to her weaving as she spoke. ‘We don’t like it because we don’t understand it. Not so long ago, healers were treated with the same suspicion, our hands able to work wonders that normal folk can’t manage. Healing and magic are the same in a way—they both work with forces the eyes often can’t see. We treat coughs with leaves and broken bones with creams and in the minds of folk, it shouldn’t work like that.’

  Frustration roiled in Ran’s stomach. ‘Why mistreat someone trying to help you? That’s just stupid.’

  ‘People fear what they don’t understand and hate what they can’t control.’

  ‘So why help me?’ he asked, letting the question hang in the air like smoke. ‘Why risk yourself aiding a magic-user who escaped the Duke’s Justice?’

  Sasha put her weaving in her lap and let her hands fall still.

  ‘I’m not an only child. I had two younger brothers who I haven’t seen since they were toddlers. My father sent them away without a word of warning or a moment to say farewell. He said he caught them playing in the wood shed, flicking sparks of power between them like normal children might pass a ball…’ She bit her lip, her eyes wandering to the small candle flames. ‘That was ten years ago, maybe even longer. I’ve no idea where they went or if they survived the journey. My mother never forgave him for it; never speaks more than a few words to him. She’d probably like to see him dead if she thought she could get away with it.’

  The weeping face of Duchess Merideth flashed in Ran’s mind, her red, watery eyes heavy with disappointment and sorrow. How many mothers in the duchy had their children taken from them, never to be seen or heard from again? How many husbands and wives shared their beds with this sadness; blame wedged between them like an unwelcome visitor? Ran couldn’t imagine his mother publicly railing against his father—she knew her place and her role as his wife. But in private, when they spoke the truths in their hearts, he wondered if she, like Sasha’s mother, could ever forgive her husband.

  ‘I’m sorry for your brothers, Sasha.’

  She shrugged and returned to her weaving. ‘No point crying over things that can’t be helped. When I was young, I thought if I learned to heal, I could find a cure for magic and bring them home. I dreamed I could go into the wilds and find them, fix what must be broken in them and bring them back to my mother.’

  Ran waited for her to continue, but a small tear streaking down her cheek told him she didn’t have the words to go on. ‘There isn’t a cure, is there?’

  She shook her head and yanked hard on the weaving, pouring her anger into the strands, tying it into the braid with all the force her fingers could manage. He decided she wasn’t making anything useful, like a bag or basket; she was binding her pain and sorrow into a prison of straw and grass.

  ‘And that’s why you helped me?’

  ‘I told you when we left Graupen—magic doesn’t give you a choice. You have it, or you don’t. I wasn’t about to let my father do to you what he did to my brothers.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ he murmured, bowing as deeply as he could while sitting on the stall floor. ‘I’m sorry I’ve kept you awake with my mutterings.’

  With a wave of her hand, Sasha dismissed his worry. ‘She sounds like she keeps you busy. In any case, it’s not wise to ignore the shades who haunt us. They get annoyed.’

  That caught Ran’s attent
ion with two hands. ‘What do you know about ghosts?’

  At that, she gave him a sad smile. ‘We all have ghosts who walk in our shadows, Ran. Just happens some are louder than others.’

  *

  When Ran heard the shuffle of feet on snow outside the barn, his first thought turned to Sasha. Was it dawn, or she had gone to relieve herself in the night? Reality slapped the thought from his mind, recalling that he’d locked the barn so tightly that it was unlikely she could get out without his help. His eyes opened but the rest of him remained still as stone under the horse blankets and canvas.

  The candles were out, tucked away in their bags for another night, and the darkness of the barn was complete. Sasha slumbered beside him, rolled in her blankets and breathing the calm rhythm of sleep. She hadn’t heard the footsteps. He listened hard, straining against the sound of his beating heart to discern the source.

  To say he heard normal footfalls was inaccurate. It was more like a scraping noise than actual steps, like feet dragged through the snow, hardly lifted above it. Or perhaps more like crawling, as if the source crouched low and shifted itself with effort.

  It continued for a moment, moving around the perimeter of the barn. It travelled down the long wall towards the door at the far end, hovering there and moving back and forth. The doors did not move.

  The sound began to shift again, easing itself along the other wall, this time towards the end where Ran lay beside Sasha in their stall. His right ear rang with the noise, all other sound fading to nothing as he focused his energy on the thing outside. It seemed to pass within inches of his head, and the thickness of the barn wall did nothing to soothe the fear creeping into his chest, tightening a hand around his hammering heart.