The Boneless Mercies

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  The reed-girls screamed—screamed—and the sound stopped my heart and made my hair stand on end.

  It was fierce. Raw.

  Juniper jumped the garden fence in one leap and took off toward the open marsh.

  Ovie and Runa turned and followed her, the dark-haired Quick right on their heels.

  “Run,” I screamed to the blond Quick, who still stood frozen in place, eyes on the advancing Willows. “Run.”

  “The world is ending,” he yelled.

  I grabbed his arm and yanked him forward. “I won’t let you die. Run with me. Now.”

  His eyes cleared, and he nodded.

  We ran.

  THE BEAST

  SIXTEEN

  We left a trail of dead Willows all the way to the border of Blue Vee.

  The Quicks were named Vital and Leif. Vital was shorter and blond and solid, and Leif was taller and dark and lithe. They fought with us side by side through the Red Willow Marsh. They hid with us in cold, snake-infested salt water, and pulled Willows in by their feet as they passed. They jumped with us from Red Willow Trees onto the backs of screaming girls.

  The Quicks killed, and we killed, and the night stretched on in one long battle of blood.

  A Willow jumped from a tree and slid a knife into Ovie’s shoulder, but our Mercy still slew three girls with her ax before we’d gone a half mile. Runa drowned three more. Juniper stabbed two in the throat, and I knifed two in the back.

  I lost count after this.

  We fought quietly, and we fought well.

  Vital and Leif had lost their bows in the marsh when they were taken, but one of the Willows was also an archer. I drowned her in the marsh, arm locked around her neck, her feet kicking up sprays of salt water. Afterward, I gave her bow and quiver to Vital when Runa refused it. His aim saved our lives more than once over the next few hours.

  The last Willow attacked near dawn. She was brown haired and slender, and I held her arms behind her back as Juniper slit her pretty throat. We tossed her into the marsh and didn’t look back. I could see the pine trees of the Blue Vee Forest up ahead, and I cared about little else.

  When I finally dragged my numb legs from the cold marsh water and put my feet on the solid earth of Blue Vee, I was so grateful I said a prayer of thanks to Valkree.

  We’d survived.

  The six of us wearily picked leeches off one another as we walked toward the small village of Mista, flinching as our fingers closed on slick, plump bodies.

  A trail of dead Willows. A trail of black leeches.

  It felt as if we’d been wandering the marsh for years, not days.

  After a few dozen yards, I noticed Vital was limping and trying hard to hide it. Droplets of sweat had gathered at his temples, and his skin had gone moonlit pale.

  “Viper,” he said when I caught his eye.

  “Let me see.” I dropped to my knees and felt his right ankle—it was swollen and hot to the touch. “You can’t walk much farther on this.”

  “I know,” he said. “Leave me here. Come back when you can.”

  I shook my head. I had no intention of leaving the Quick behind.

  I motioned for Runa to look at Vital’s ankle. She knelt beside me and held her palm to his skin. We exchanged a glance.

  Runa rose to her feet and put her arm around Vital’s waist. He slid his arm around her shoulder and leaned against her. The pain faded from his face as he took the weight off his right leg.

  “I can walk now,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”

  Runa half carried the Quick the rest of the way to the village, though she was just as tired as the rest of us.

  When I finally caught sight of the little houses of Mista, just as dawn began to streak across the sky, I put my fist to my heart.

  Smoke rose from two dozen stone chimneys, and painted shields glinted in the early-morning light. The scene felt Vorse. It felt like home.

  We dragged ourselves through the town square, and then simply stood still, dazed with exhaustion, until Ovie spotted a squat, snug building with a sign hanging in front of the door.

  “The Cowardly Raven Inn,” she said.

  Trigve was inside, waiting for us, as promised. He stood near the stone fire pit in the center of the room.

  I went to him.

  “I worried about you,” he said softly, lips near my ear.

  I didn’t answer. I was too weary, too spent, to tell him everything that was in my heart. I nodded, then reached up and slid my fingers into his hair. I pulled his head down toward mine until his forehead touched my own.

  “Trigve,” I said. And it was enough.

  The innkeeper had a well-kept herb garden, and Trigve found Blood Onions for Vital’s wound. He made a poultice to draw out the snake poison, and then used a Cloud Yarrow compress to stave off infection in Ovie’s shoulder. It would have to work until we found the village Mender.

  The inn was full, and all the rooms taken, so after Trigve tended to Ovie and Vital, we threw ourselves in front of the fire and slept like the dead, not waking all through the day. Nothing stirred us, not the coming and going of travelers, or the noise of the noon meal, or the thunderstorm Trigve said hit midday and shook the roof with its fury.

  The sun was sitting low when I finally opened my eyes, its slanting autumnal rays shooting across the freshly scrubbed oak floorboards of the inn. Juniper and Ovie slept close on either side of me, and two gray, long-legged deerhounds were lying at my feet. I didn’t move for a few moments, but just lay still, watching the innkeeper’s children. They were playing Sword and Dragon in the long, rectangular room, jumping over benches and running across tables and giving stirring speeches about their brave deeds.

  I smiled at their game, then untangled myself from the girls and the dogs, careful of Ovie’s wound. I stretched, and every part of me was sore, from my scalp to my heart to my toes. I was bruised from our battle in the marsh, and I’d taken a handful of shallow knife cuts as well.

  Vital, Runa, and Leif were in a pile near two more dogs on the other side of the fire. They rose when I did, and we all stumbled over to one of the thick wooden tables. Trigve wandered in from outside a few moments later and called for the innkeeper.

  A thin man in his forties appeared from behind a set of double doors leading to a kitchen. He brought us a loaf of rye bread, a wedge of cheese, and steaming bowls of pork sausage stew. We all ate silently, deep in the pleasure of hot, well-made food.

  The innkeeper stood nearby and cheerfully chatted with us as we cleaned our plates, kindly ignoring our dirty, marsh-smelling clothing and our reticence. He told us he had seven young daughters and four dogs, which “ran wild all over the damned village.” His wife was a traveling mystic and had trained with the Orate Healers in Iber. She visited them only rarely.

  The innkeeper’s eyes flashed when he spoke of his nomadic wife. He was proud of her.

  I sat with my thigh next to Trigve’s, our shoulders touching. It was good to be near him again.

  I was reluctant to leave the inn when we’d finished eating. After the marsh, it seemed such a warm, happy place. I liked the chaos of the dogs and young daughters and the comfort of the blazing fire, but we hadn’t enough coin left to stay the night. Besides, I knew the Quicks longed to get back to the forest. Those roaming archers never liked to be indoors for long.

  I gave the innkeeper the last of our coin, minus two copper klines, and we went in search of the healer. We passed a group of milkmaids near the well—four pretty girls on their way to the cows in the nearby meadows, wooden pails swinging at their sides. I asked them how to find the village Mender. They smiled and pointed out a small, turf-roofed home tucked into a secluded corner near the blacksmith.

  The healer opened the door on our first knock, as if she were expecting us.

  She was young and slender, my age, with straight blond hair and an easy, laughing look to her gray eyes. She glanced at our Mercy-cloaks, shrugged, then told us her name was Fife and let us in.
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  Her one-room home was neat and smelled fresh and faintly floral, like a field of wildflowers in full summer. Herbs hung from every inch of the rafters, along with purple stems of lavender, mesh sacks of dried marigold blossoms, and long strings of garlic and onions.

  The seven of us took up most of the empty space in the room, and it was very crowded, but somehow this made the place feel more comfortable and welcoming.

  Fife motioned Vital over to the fire and had him take a seat on a small bench. She knelt, pushed up his dark Quick leggings, and peered at his ankle. Juniper, Trigve, and I hovered near her shoulder, watching her, and she didn’t seem to mind.

  The poultice had taken down Vital’s swelling, but Fife drained the remaining poison away with a strong-smelling sunshine-colored powder that she retrieved from a glass vial kept in a locked cabinet near her large bed in the corner.

  “What is it?” Trigve asked, eyes fixed on the yellow dust as she poured it into the palm of her hand.

  “A spice from Iber called True Ermic. It’s rare and costly, but I’ve had some luck growing my own. This was made from roots grown in my own garden.” Fife knelt again, pursed her lips, and blew the powder across Vital’s ankle.

  Green drops immediately began to ooze from the snakebite and drip onto the floor.

  Vital sighed as the poison left him, and the color began to come back to his cheeks. “Thank you,” he said, his blue eyes on the healer’s. “Truly.”

  Vital’s gratitude to Fife was written plainly across his face. His injury, if it had been allowed to fester, could have taken his foot or even his leg. He wouldn’t have been able to join his Quick brothers during their snowy hunts in the upcoming season, or, indeed, ever again.

  The healer stitched up Ovie’s wound next. She motioned for the Mercy to take off her tunic, which Ovie did with no ceremony or shame, dropping first her cloak, then her ax.

  Fife didn’t seem surprised at Ovie’s having such a weapon, which made me like her all the more. She unbound Trigve’s compress and clicked her tongue at the open wound—a three-inch gash of crusted blood. “You did good to use yarrow on this,” she said, looking at Trigve.

  He smiled, one of his quick, amiable grins.

  Ovie shook her head when Fife offered her a drop of poppy oil before she began to sew the cut, which made the healer laugh. She heated a needle over a candle flame and began. Ovie made no sound during the stitching, though it must have hurt like Hel.

  Whenever I tried to picture the Mercy goddess, Valkree, I imagined Ovie standing on a snow-covered mountaintop, holding a shield.

  When it was done, Fife applied a thick ointment that smelled of garlic and black walnut, and bound the wound with clean linen. Ovie stood, rolled her shoulder, and then gave the healer a rare smile. “This will serve. Thank you, Mender.”

  Trigve pulled our last copper coins from his pocket and tossed them to Fife. She caught them in one hand and tucked them away into a hidden pocket of her flowing yellow-gray tunic.

  “Will you all share a mug of cider with me?” Fife began to pour out honey-colored liquid from a nearby jug without waiting for our answer. “I make it myself from apples I pick in the hills.”

  The cider was delicious, both tart and sweet, with a fiery bite that landed at the back of the tongue. It lessened the ache of my bruises and warmed my marsh-frozen blood.

  It didn’t seem possible that I’d been in the Red Willow Marsh the day before, drowning a sweet Quick named Warrick, and then watching a girl-queen whipping magic into herself with a bone-white reed.

  The marsh was death, and this was life. Apple liquor on the tongue, drying herbs scenting the air, twilight turning the sky outside the windows a vivid midnight blue.

  “So are you going to tell me where you got those wounds?” Fife eyed Vital, then Ovie. “That shoulder laceration was given by someone who knew their way around a knife, and that was no ordinary snakebite—it came from a marsh viper.”

  We drank our cider in silence and didn’t answer.

  Fife just nodded. “You crossed through the Red Willow Marsh then. I’m surprised you’re still alive. We get very few travelers from that direction of late.”

  “You are right,” I said, finally. “We’ve come from the marsh.”

  “You are either very brave or very stupid.” Fife’s gaze traveled slowly around the room, taking in the seven of us. “Brave, I think.”

  “Perhaps we’re both,” I said, softly. “And the marsh is safe again because of it.” I ran my fingers over one of the feathers in my Mercy-cloak, eyes on the fire. “As safe as it ever was, at least. The Cut-Queen is gone, and we killed a fair number of the Willow girls as well. The rest should scatter shortly. Spread the word, if you will.”

  Fife cocked her head, and candlelight flickered off her heart-shaped face. “Sometimes I would hear drums in the night, coming from the reeds. It made my blood run cold. That’s one less monster lurking in the dark, crawling through my nightmares. Thank you for whatever it is you did. For however long it lasts.”

  We finished our drinks and set the mugs on the wooden table in the center of the room. The fire blazed up, and I noticed for the first time that Runa had dried blood on her tunic—the garment was stiff with it. Juniper had blood under her fingernails, as did Leif. Locks of Vital’s hair were stained red, and Ovie had dried droplets on her right temple and on the top of her ear.

  I wondered where the blood lurked on me.

  I thought again of the comment Ovie had made in the brambles, about how death was tracking us, unwilling to let us go.

  “I would not refuse another round of cider, if you’re offering.” Leif held out his mug to Fife and winked at her in a pleasant way.

  I looked at the Quick, fully noticing him for the first time since the Cut-Queen’s hamlet. There was a shine to his dark eyes that I quite liked. He seemed easygoing, like Trigve, whereas his fellow Quick, Vital, was perhaps deeper and more thoughtful.

  Fife smiled but shook her head. “You’ve had enough. It’s stronger than you think.”

  Leif laughed and ran a hand through his thick, dark hair before turning to his fellow Quick. “Ankle better?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ready to go back to the forest?”

  Vital put a strong archer’s hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Yes. A thousand times yes.”

  Fife walked across the room, tunic flowing, and grabbed a gray cloak from a hook near the door. “There is a sulfur spring nearby. You should visit it before you leave—it will help with the healing. And you all need a bath. You smell like a bunch of marsh rats. Come, I will show you the way.”

  I’d heard that hot springs were common enough in Blue Vee, though rare elsewhere in Vorseland. I’d never been to one. Warm baths were a luxury, and Boneless Mercies had little to do with such things, even when they were offered to us during the rare nights we spent at inns. Siggy had said they would make us soft and unfit for the death trade, and perhaps she was right.

  But we were no longer Mercies. We would take our pleasures where we could.

  The hot springs were about half a mile from the village, under a canopy of tall pine trees. Trigve asked Fife many questions as we walked, about her herbs and her training, and she answered them all willingly enough. More than willingly.

  The springs consisted of three small stone pools, each of which had been lined with smooth rocks. Mist rose off the milky water in great clouds, the steam hitting the cold night air and turning pale. It smelled faintly of sulfur, but a gentle night breeze swept most of the scent away. Besides, I’d take sulfur over the dank, evil smell of the Red Willow Marsh any day.

  Runa retrieved the flint box from her pack and lit the torches that stood on wooden poles near each of the pools. Light blossomed across the water. We gathered at the edge of the largest basin, and the warm mist caressed our skin.

  Fife pulled Trigve off to the side before she left and invited him to spend the night in her bed.

  I said nothing. T
rigve could do as he liked. I might even have stayed with the healer in his place.

  But in the end, he shook his head.

  To her credit, Fife merely smiled. “The offer stands. And if you ever desire to learn the healing ways, I will consider it a fair trade—share my bed and I will share my knowledge.” She reached forward and touched Trigve’s cheek with her fingertips. “I’ve always had a weakness for men who lead with their hearts. I liked you from the first moment you stepped through my door.”

  She kissed him, a gentle kiss. A healer’s kiss.

  She broke away, and then swept her hand in our direction. “I believe part of your company is on its way to Jarl Roth to fight the beast.”

  “We are,” Trigve replied quietly. “Will you wish us well?”

  “Yes.” She paused. “I will be here, if you change your mind.”

  And with that, she left.

  Trigve joined me beside the pool a moment later. “I take it you heard Fife’s offer?”

  “I did, indeed. You could have accepted.”

  “I know.” He paused. “Jarl Roth must be a tolerant man if a young healer in Blue Vee is allowed to live alone, to take men as she pleases and teach them her skills. He must be a fair ruler, not a follower of the old ways, like Jarl Keld.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe Roth knows nothing about it.”

  Trigve tilted his head, eyes on the rising steam. “It’s more than this, I think. Mista has an air of … ease. Friendliness. Even with the Red Willow Marsh on one side and the beast prowling the villages on the other side of this forest, the people of Mista weren’t suspicious or wary. Their eyes weren’t hollow from fear and grief. It could be a sign of a good ruler.”

  I shrugged again. “I guess we will find out.”

  “Are we going to stand here all night talking, or are we getting in the water?” Leif’s low laugh echoed across the pools.

  “Come on, then,” I shouted. “Let’s do this. The first one in gets to sing ‘Four Old Crones Go A-Bathing’ from Ergill’s Saga.”

  I unclasped my cloak and dropped it on the ground. I set my ax beside it, and then plopped down on a nearby rock and began to pull off my boots. Vital sat down beside me, tossed his blond hair, and began to unlace his boots as well. I looked over my shoulder at him and smiled. “I plan to enjoy this.”