She wondered if Caddie would join her. At first, Marta begrudged the girl the invasion of her space, but Caddie’s choice to sit and watch Creature instead of sharing Marta’s bed bothered now. Observing Caddie’s obvious attachment to the crow, Conroy said they could take the bird with them for the night. He swore it was to save him from Creature’s constant noise, but Marta sensed he harbored some semblance of affection for the damaged girl. Creature, in turn, appeared utterly indifferent to Caddie once they closed the canvas flaps. Claiming his perch on the table, Creature fluffed up and shut his eyes, though Marta noted one opened occasionally to check on Caddie sitting on the ground beside him. And so the two silent creatures kept watch over each other as Marta fell asleep.
***
She was fully aware she walked in a dream, but the knowledge did not diminish Marta’s distress. She found herself in her old bedroom in Hillbrook Manor, a room Marta had not seen in over a decade, but still occasionally appeared unbidden in her dreams. The walls seemed far too tall, overhanging her like imposing trees in some dark forest. They made Marta want nothing more than to recede, to curl up and become tiny. Hiding was her only recourse, for she knew without a doubt something terrible hunted her.
The knowledge came fully formed, a sure and sound realization drowning out all doubt. The form of this monstrous apparition could not be ascertained, but Marta knew the truth in the pit of her stomach that her home held no safety. Hiding would buy her time, but the creature would inevitably throw open her door, leaving her trapped. Her only chance was escaping to open ground. Without noticing when exactly it happened, Marta found herself in the sprawling cornfields surrounding Hillbrook Manor. Yet no relief came with the open air, the rotten rows obscuring her vision of the panting madness loping through the crackling stalks, just a step behind her. Looking back, she could catch no sight of it, but knew deep in her bones it edged closer with each step. She was just not fast enough, not strong enough to gain ground on the inevitable.
The idea came unbidden, as whole and as unquestionable as the knowledge she was being hunted. It was a compulsion as sure and steady as the sea: her two legs were not enough. The urge to drop and run on all fours like an animal nearly overtook her, Marta fighting against it as she willed herself to maintain her humanity.
***
Marta awoke as Isabelle’s hand descended, the mute woman freezing as Marta’s eyes opened. Isabelle stank of drink, but she still possessed the wherewithal to recognize Marta required no rescue. She rose, Isabelle claiming a hide as Marta took her watch. Within moments, Isabelle’s breath deepened, the woman sinking into sleep.
Out of habit, Marta scanned the room for Graff’s amethyst Breath. Instead she found the dark gleam from Creature’s open eye, Caddie rolled into a ball beside the table. It wore a wet and wicked sheen, but Marta suspected the sensation was just the vestige of the dream she still needed to brush off.
She spent the first hour seated, but soon her weariness forced her to her feet. It was shortly thereafter she heard the door to the shack close, and Marta peered out the corner of the two canvas walls to see Conroy step away from his home wearing her former coat. He stumbled a bit, Marta watching him approach one of the stinking barrels and fumble with the lid. Unable to operate it, Conroy moved off outside of Marta’s field of vision to relieve himself.
Her mind again fully awake, Marta returned to her bedroll. It was not for several minutes more before she realized their host remained absent. Peeking back out the break in the canvas corner without finding him, Marta stepped out. The blast of sudden moonlight made the outside air almost shimmer.
She heard his voice not far off, a whisper on the wind. There were numerous tales of thieves luring travelers back to their homes and plying them with drink before slitting their throats. Conroy seemed far too contrarian to work with others to bait such a trap, but she still left nothing to chance.
Marta found him seated on a boulder in a small clearing, the moonlight’s shadows hollowing out his sallow features further. The man paid her no mind, staring up at the brewing storm clouds dancing over the moon and muttering. Having been the victim to whiskey’s enfeebling embrace on occasion, Marta left him to clear his head in peace.
The next hour ended up far less eventful than the second, only the scrape of Conroy’s door alerting her to his return. She was contemplating waking Luca for his watch when Creature cawed. It started quietly, a shuffling of feathers Marta nearly missed, followed by the rusty scrape of his voice, which quickly crescendoed. Sleep already tugging at her, Marta considered ringing his neck to buy them silence, but summoned her cold torch.
Focusing her Blessed Breath in her palm, she cupped her hands around it like reflectors focusing a lantern’s light. Aiming the beam at Creature, she saw the crow fluff his feathers, his beak knifing down in challenge as his volume grew. Luca stirred, and Marta again considered ending the bird when she caught sight of Conroy.
He had slunk between the canvas flaps so silently that Marta initially missed him, only spotting him now because his eyes caught the reflection of her light.
“Just checking on my guests,” he whispered.
“Then why the knife?” Luca asked calmly, Marta now catching the knife’s glint in Conroy’s hand.
“This…” Conroy looked down at the knife as if unaware it was there. “This… I—”
Conroy leapt, his blade brandished at Caddie. Luca was just as swift, his imbued lockblade out of his pocket and snapped open even as he lunged to intercept.
Luca never stood a chance.
Marta covered the ground instantly, her phantom blade hissing. There was no thought in the reaction, simply a sweep of her blade through Conroy’s throat to unleash a gout of blood. Marta took the brunt of it as she caught his falling body, but some of the hot drops rained down upon Caddie’s face. At their touch, the girl awoke, her eyes fluttering to blink out the blood running into them in red rivulets.
Marta thrust the dying man away, Conroy hitting the tent wall, where his arms tangled in the canvas. Illuminated in the light of Marta’s phantom blade, he gave the impression of a great moth caught in a spider’s web. Her blade still extended, Marta watched him until his eyes went glassy and he finally gurgled his last. Only then did she notice Luca stood beside her, Isabelle now crouched not far off. But she refused to look away from the man until finally his three Breaths came undone upon his death and floated out of his body. Only then did she look to Caddie.
The girl brushed at the blood on her face, looking to her fingertips, where it appeared quite black in Marta’s ethereal light. Luca quickly pulled off his neckerchief, but Marta snatched it from his hand and wiped away at Caddie’s face.
“You’re fine, Caddie. Just a little mess,” Marta soothed as she sponged. But suddenly the girl’s face shifted from fear to interest, the girl turning away from Marta’s ministrations to Conroy’s corpse. Marta feared what she would see, but she looked nonetheless.
The black Breath slowly crawled from Conroy’s throat to hover above his gaping mouth, the malevolence Marta felt upon their first encounter again fanning her in waves of nausea. She heard Luca mutter a Dobra curse as Creature’s caws reached a fever pitch. Seeing such an unnatural thing alone should have been enough to inspire the revulsion she felt, but it was the image of Caddie reaching for the unnatural Breath like a giggling infant grasping for a toy that horrified her most.
Luca’s swiftness again amazed Marta as he struck at the abomination, and again it easily evaded his blow to disappear through the wooden roof so suddenly Marta could scarcely track the movement. Conroy’s natural Breaths still hovered there, slowly drifting away from each other on their separate courses as Creature continued to croak.
“And I was afraid of Graff’s Breath,” Marta muttered dryly.
Luca looked to her, his eyes wide and usual carefree demeanor discarded, making Marta wonder if she saw his true face in this moment.
“Again, the black Breath of Waer!” He spok
e each word as if invoking a vile curse.
“Waer’s just a superstition,” she answered curtly. “She’s no more real than Sol.”
Luca swore again in his secretive language before returning to Acwealt. “I Listened to him before he struck, and that was not the man we met today! That thing, it took Conroy! It made him turn on us!”
“Then we’ll be more discerning in who we trust in the future,” she shot back.
“You dense, intentionally obstinate woman! If it took him in a night, who’s to say it won’t take one of us? Who do we trust then?”
His question hung in the air beside Conroy’s retreating Breaths as Marta pondered. “We’re not safe here,” she finally announced. “Pack up anything useful in the house and don’t forget his garden. We leave soon as it’s light out.”
Luca opened his mouth to argue, but a look from Marta and he and Isabelle disappeared for the shack, their weapons at the ready. Looking from Caddie to Conroy’s carcass, Marta noted her former greatcoat soaking up his blood. Dunking it in the rain barrel might keep it from staining, and it was warm. But Marta decided against reclaiming it as she examined Conroy’s tanning liquids. Where they were headed, a Newfield army coat would prove a liability, and they already possessed too many of those.
“And bring me his rawhide coat,” she yelled after them.
***
By dawn, Luca and Isabelle packed up fully as Marta picked through Conroy’s liquids until she found the black dye. Despite their need for haste, Luca still took the time to shave, as he had every day on their harried journey. Why he wasted this time each day irked her, but Marta bit her tongue.
“Creature.”
Marta recoiled at the word, at first believing Caddie was calling her an animal. Then she looked to the girl, who could not tear her eyes from the bird. The crow in turn regarded its former owner as no more than a fresh meal. Although the girl clearly wanted the bird, Marta had no intention of saddling them with an animal that might give away their position. But then she spied a splotch of blood she missed behind Caddie’s ear, and the answer was decided for her.
“You care for the bird, but if I ever tell you to keep him quiet and you don’t, I’ll wring his neck myself. Then and there.”
Caddie paid no mind to the cost, instead striding to the crow, which did not resist being picked up.
“Sweet Sol, you’ve gone soft,” Luca joked.
“She’ll grow bored of him by day’s end. And then we’ll eat crow.”
“Clever, carrying your meals around as pets. Is that why you keep the two of us, in case you get hungry?” Luca’s smile widened, but a hard look from Marta and his amusement bled away. Isabelle barked her harsh laugh.
Marta kept her face hard so Luca would remain ignorant to the truth. In her heart, she wanted to give the girl something that brought her pleasure, no matter how fleeting. If Creature amused her, then he was worth the added threat. The girl deserved something to make up for the bloody scene that awoke her, something living to distract her from all the death clinging to them. She had to give the girl some small form of hope.
Because Marta knew she would ruin it soon when they arrived at Ceilminster, where she would kill Caddie’s father. Such a cold-blooded assassination was necessary, would save the nation of Newfield from a second civil war. It would spare untold lives, but her father’s murder before her eyes would also irreparably damage the already damaged girl, perhaps finally beyond repair. Marta could not stay her hand, could not turn away from her duty, but she hoped to put off crushing Caddie as long as she possibly could.
Chapter 4
Blotmonad 5, 558 (Nine Years Ago)
Luca’s fingers sought his tweed trousers in the dark so as not to disturb the slumbering woman. Her name was Saiera, and though she was not the first woman to spend the night in Luca’s vurd, he had no need to brush her Mind to know she intended to be the last. Luca did not begrudge her this notion any more than the previous woman who imagined the same eventuality. Or the ones before her. Striking out on his own three years ago, Luca quickly proved himself a prodigious trader and bought his own wagon within a matter of weeks. It was small, with only clear glass in the single window, but he painted it in garishly bright shades of red with blue trim and yellow wheels. Each year since, he made a show of repainting it so that all in his wolari would know his affluence. The interior he decked out with a trove of trinkets and so many pillows that a man might drown. Luca cared little for these cushions or doodads, but the women loved them, and he loved the women in turn. His tweed trousers were his favorite indulgence, their designs said to be all the rage in the upper-class gaji. Luca bought not one, but three pair, making him the envy of any gentleman the world over. They were his pride and joy, Luca soon able to distinguish between their designs in the dark by touch alone.
Saiera wanting to tie her future to his made perfect sense. Between his good fortune and better looks, he drew hungry stares wherever he walked in the wolari. But it was his silver tongue that lured the long string of women that joined him in his vurd, some saying he was capable of charming Waer herself. Others maintained Luca’s unnatural gift explained his parents’ poverty, they having traded all their fortune for their son’s silver tongue.
During the daylight hours, Luca took pride in his success, but late at night as the yogani burned low, he occasionally felt shame, not from what he had risen to, but what he had risen from. He could never fully brush off the grubber mud, but he now earned enough not to care how the others saw him.
At least it should have.
He had acquired more than enough to be fully content, but the idea of contentedness bothered him worse than the moniker of grubber. There was a complacency to it that irked him to no end. His sensible sister, Lela, would no doubt chide him if he ever gave voice to it, the woman incapable of politely avoiding a topic, and instead always rushing at it full on. Despite this being the height of Dobra impropriety, Lela somehow became popular among the other women of the camp, something his father loved to boast about.
Luca could not help but notice his father never bragged about Luca’s accomplishments.
Grasping his pockets to keep the coins from clinking, Luca pulled on his trousers with the green pattern. Slinking to the door, he left Saiera alone to luxuriate in his bed. The majority of the wolari was already awake, the ample meals steaming, decorations strung up, and a makeshift stage being erected. Although all this was normal activity every time the camp set up outside another small town, tonight was decidedly different: an evening where there would be no trade with the gaji. The site of their camp was far from any town or thoroughfare, their location unknown to any outside the wolari because that night they would welcome back Simza’s daughter.
Simza spared no expense on the evening nor in sending her daughter to study in the sprawling city of Polis just a year past. As the matriarch of this particular wolari, Simza sat at the very pinnacle of social standing, a leader whose rank could only be equaled by other Ikus matriarchs.
Although consisting of only ten distinct Dobra tribes, there were countless wolaris among each of the tribes, groups of families bearing different surnames, but tracing their ancestry back to the tribe’s founder. Other than the patriarch, or in the case of the Ikus, matriarch, membership in the wolari was a fluid thing, any family able to pack up their vurds and join another wolari within the same tribe. The different Dobra camps swelled or diminished with their collective fortune, the weak disappearing by the day while the strong prospered. On occasion, a wolari would grow too large for the small towns the Wanderers lived off to support, so it divided with a new matriarch chosen to lead the splinter group. With hardly fifty wagons, Simza bore no illusion of growing prosperous enough to divide.
The other ten Dobra tribes tracked lineage via the male line, but the Ikus were unique in leadership passing from mother to daughter, the matriarch taking on the surname of Ikus at the moment of her ascension. Unlike other Ikus matriarchs, Simza took no husband.
Even with all secrets quietly shared among the wolari, none knew the identity of her daughter’s father, and none cared. They only understood that someday Jaelle Morjana would eventually take the surname Ikus to lead them as her mother did twenty years prior.
It took a very little excuse for the Dobra to celebrate, but the return of the matriarch’s daughter would be an especially raucous affair. With all the attention poured upon the returning Jaelle, Luca thought a small trinket tossed Saiera’s way would earn him more affection than Saban’s price for it.
Each time the wolari found a flat spot to stop, they formed three concentric circles, the important members in the center, the majority of the families in the second, and the grubbers occupying the outer. Making sure to situate himself at least a quarter turn from his parents’ vurd, Luca’s wagon resided of the outermost ring. Unlike the highly touted Tinkers, with their technological marvels in gaji society, Saban was only a tinker, a fixer of broken knick-knacks and procurer of trinkets. He occupied the outer ring nearly opposite of Luca, but instead of skirting the camp, Luca strolled through the center, greeting everyone with his infectious grin.
Immune to Luca’s charms, Saban clung to his initial amount on a hairpin for hours on end until they came to a price neither was entirely pleased with. As the older man handed the gift over, Luca heard two horses approaching. Simza’s bieta Bo, who towered at least a head higher than the rest of the camp, appeared first. His companion was a far shorter woman, whose dark ringlets bounced with each of the horse’s steps.
“Ah, Her Highness finally arrives to behold her subjects,” Saban muttered. He still raised his hand high in greeting, his smile belying his words. Bo gave the two grubbers a perfunctory nod, but the woman raised her hand in turn, shifting her gaze and allowing Luca to catch full sight of Jaelle.
The Imbued Lockblade (Sol's Harvest Book 2) Page 5