Hooded

by A A Woods

  The man’s hand slapped against his belt, drunk fingers fumbling for a weapon. His eyes were filled with the ugly, greasy hatred that the guards of Jemelle tried, unsuccessfully, to hide.

  And Carlette’s temper snapped.

  Anger crashed through her in a violent wave. Before she’d even decided to act, she had him pinned against a wooden beam, one arm against his bristly neck.

  “You’re right to be afraid of us,” Carlette hissed, the man’s fear leaking into her senses, injecting her with the razor-sharp high of the hunt. “Even now, I could take over your mind and make you do whatever I want. What do you think it feels like to die slowly under my hand, without even the freedom to breathe?”

  “You can’t,” the man snarled, his breathing rough as Carlette pushed her arm into his windpipe. “It’s i-illegal.”

  “So is threatening property of the king. That didn’t seem to bother you before, now did it? But I’d rather fight Yokan herself than be in your disgusting mind for a single instant, so perhaps I should find another way to uphold Tuleaux law…”

  Carlette jerked her hand forward, pulling on the leather thong wrapped around her middle finger. In an instant, her armguard bristled with spines, shimmering in the firelight and pressing against the hunter’s skin, leaving a hundred tiny indentations.

  “Do you know what these are?” Carlette whispered, her voice silky. “The frill-spines of a snow snake. Very poisonous. For some reason, the trappers don’t keep them. They only care about the skins, something about fashion in Delasir, but I think they’re missing the most valuable part. A single prick from one of these,” Carlette pushed her arm closer for emphasis. The man strained to press himself into the wall. “And you’ll be on the ground in seconds, every muscle in your body frozen. More than a prick and you’ll start hallucinating. Your mind will fill with demons and monsters, more terrifying than anything in this world. They’ll eat you alive while you scream, and no one will be there to help you because it’s all in your mind. What do you think, sir? Does that sound like a good way to die?”

  The bar was so silent Carlette could hear the wind shrieking outside, Howl’s sign shuddering from side to side. The faces around her were like a painting, frozen, straddling that line between stillness and violence. Carlette knew that one wrong move could push the whole crowd against her.

  Despite her strength, even she couldn’t fight the entire lodge at once.

  Carlette gave the hunter a final push, grazing his neck with the spines, before stepping back.

  “Next time you think a girl in a bar looks like an easy target,” Carlette snapped, “remember this. Remember me.”

  Tossing a single coin on the bar, Carlette turned and shoved through the door, returning to the blistering cold the way a girl falls into her lover’s arms. It was comforting to be back outside, or at least familiar. Her feet slapped against the wooden slats and she forced herself to slow down. To breathe. Her rage was a molten thing, pulsing, demanding blood, and she was grateful to be so far away from all those people.

  All those potential victims.

  When she had reached a safe distance, Carlette stopped and jammed her gloved hand through the iron bars, hanging over nothingness. Ice crystals scratched against her face and the frozen metal numbed her forearm, even through the thick leather, but she didn’t move. She hoped the chill could quell her temper… and her fear.

  This had happened before, in Jemelle. The last time, instead of leaving a fear-soaked stranger behind her, it had been a guard. And he had died. Carlette remembered the storm that man had set off inside her, the tornado of emotion that she couldn’t rein in. She was younger and more volatile, but the expression in Grand Mera’s eyes had told her it was more than that.

  It was a problem.

  The headmistress had covered it up. Sent a few men away, told a few lies to the witnessing classmates. But Carlette had been pulled from general training. The use of her power had been restricted, oppressively controlled.

  And she’d been reminded, again, to never reveal how she came to Jemelle.

  Staring down at the trees that stretched up towards Durchemin, behemoths so huge that the Moian tribe built entire cities in them, Carlette thought about her mother. A lost girl, stumbling into a foreign orphanage. Eyes so pale that Mya had never been sure. No father named, no family to look for her.

  Who were you?

  Grand Mera’s voice came into her mind. Stay the path. It was a comfortless piece of advice, but it somehow deflated Carlette’s anger. Allowed her to exhale. Warm breath plumed around her face like smoke.

  You are a weapon, not a wild creature.

  You can control this.

  Shoving away from the cage, Carlette glared out at the landscape.

  She had a job to do.

  Turning her back on the sweeping forest, Carlette wrapped her cape around her and kept walking, ignoring the ache of her numb feet and the pain in her shoulder where the man’s grimy fingernails had dug in.

  But it was the soft, persistent rumble in her stomach that kept her anger simmering, waiting for a spark.

  Chapter Six: Tuleaux

  As the edge of the city came into view, Carlette braced herself. Her numb hands clenched, the spines on her armguards rippling. She’d seen the fences before, returning every so often for a customary check-in with the Magistrate and the occasional holiday, surrounded by Jemelle guards and tight with fear. But no matter how many times she rounded the cliff’s edge and saw Tuleaux draped on the hillside, a crooked, sprawling elbow of life around the glittering Commercant Bay, she never got used to the bodies.

  There were more than a dozen today, drifting in the wind and bouncing gently against the wooden slats. Long hair—white, brown, black—whipped in the icy breeze, as if the spirits of their ancestors called them to the afterlife, leeching the remnants of soul from their bodies like cotton mopping up a spill. Signs hung around withered, frozen necks, their crimes scrawled in barbed Delarese.

  Enhabited a settler.

  Attacked a man in the Convent.

  Tried to escape.

  But right beside the cage, so close that Carlette could smell the last of her putrid, clinging fear, hung a muscled Moian woman. Her dark brown hair was a tangle of dried blood, crusting around the bullet’s exit wound like ice around a riverbed. Animal bones decorated her torn furs and the bleeding paw tattoo stretched up her right cheek, claws curving over strong facial bones.

  Her crime had earned her a place of distinction. The worst of the worst.

  Stinks of Voka.

  Carlette ducked her head, silently filing herself behind the line of people waiting to pass through the gates and into the city. She wondered what the woman had done to deserve such a label. Voka was a name still spoken in whispers, a face that the older settlers could still describe. Carlette had once heard a grizzled trapper tell the story of Voka’s rebellion. She had listened with bated breath, surrounded by other round-eyed children as he described the wolf-rider who had united the tribes, marched against Tuleaux, burned down half the city before a traitor in her company stepped in and stopped the torrent of Voka’s power. If not for that brave spy, Delasir would have lost the bay, lost their port in Ferren, and, likely, lost the war.

  Had this Moian woman hanging on the fences enhabited an Amonoux? Or was it just the Bloody Paw tattoo that the Magistrate hated so much? Or maybe this native woman was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, her heritage in question, her paperwork incomplete.

  Carlette passed four fingers across her forehead for the woman, careful that no one saw the gesture. She pulled out Grand Mera’s edict and forced herself to stare ahead. A few bodies on the wall were worth the peace that Delasir brought, she reminded herself. The triumphs across the sea were more important. Carlette was a citizen of the King, loyal to the cause.

  Sometimes it was hard to remember that.

  “Papers?” demanded a guard, holding out one hand while the other rested on the two-barreled pistol
on his hip.

  It was a capital crime for Carlette to so much as touch a gun, much less shoot one, but their steely glint and shadowed purpose had always fascinated her, a pull as strong as the minds of predators.

  Like all monsters, she had an affinity for lethal things.

  She held out Grand Mera’s letter and the guard flipped it open, eyes narrow and dubious. Carlette waited, examining the gate. It was crafted from two enormous iron slabs fitted into the stone and wood, etched with a history of scars.

  “Traveling alone, are you?” the guard asked, eying Carlette as if she were a rabid dog.

  “It’s in the letter.”

  “So it is,” he said, voice dripping with skepticism. “That woman risks a great deal, sending you without an escort.”

  “Grand Mera,” Carlette said, enunciating the name, “has seen fit to send me without wasting time of those who cannot spare it.”

  “Aye, because it’s so hard to keep a bunch of half-breed brats in line?”

  “There are more dangers outside our walls than in, sir. Dangers that I would imagine you’re keenly aware of.”

  Carlette gave the guard a once-over, unable to hold back her scorn as she took in the clean uniform and polished weapons. This paunchy man had probably never walked Durchemin or visited Jemelle. High enough in rank to be trusted with the wall but low enough to avoid actual battle, Carlette imagined him laughing at the men sent out into the wilderness, pompously dismissing those who guarded the crown’s most valuable asset, never once wondering if he should see for himself the cold, danger-laced life he had been spared by either connection or bribery.

  The guard’s narrow mouth puckered. He thrust Grand Mera’s letter back at Carlette.

  “Be on your way. If I get so much as a sniff of trouble from you…”

  He gestured at the bodies, his expression twisting into the malevolent brother of a smile.

  Carlette slipped past, too angry to do more than nod her head. More men oversaw the influx of travelers, their scowls ominous as Carlette took her place. The travelers around her fell silent. She could feel their eyes settle on her hood like burning pinpoints of sunlight, so hot and unfriendly it was a wonder she didn’t catch fire.

  She counted down the steps as she trundled forward.

  Four.

  “Unnatural,” muttered a settler behind her, a woman laden with as many pelts as she could carry.

  Three.

  The man in front of Carlette kept glancing back, his nervousness making him move even slower.

  Two.

  Carlette’s fingers ached. Her blood pounded. She could feel the radiating heat from where the mercenary had grabbed her, spun her round. Every whisper seemed to make the handprint grow, until she felt like her whole body was being touched, prickled by the hissing whispers that she couldn’t escape.

  One.

  The man in front of her finally slipped through the gates. Carlette followed, exhaling with relief as she stepped onto the staircase that would lead her down to Tuleaux.

  Even in such a state, Carlette was soothed by the beauty of her home.

  Tuleaux was built into the mountainside, its wealth concentrated on a high plateau overlooking the sea, the Geldrue, defended on one side by mountain and on the other by open air. Carved into the stone walls sweeping down from the Geldrue were a network of tunnels, easily shut, that made the ground beneath the merchant homes a maze of prison cells, storage chambers, and the protected, underground lattice of the Convent of Others.

  At the bottom of the cliff, as organized as dumped pebbles, were the Slants. Less grand than the Geldrue, it made up for its lack of ornamentation in size and noise, wrapping around Commercant Bay like a welcome mat for the sailors who had braved the Haute Sea to reach it. Interspersed with sharp church steeples and trading squares—including the enormous Chantiere, where the Gaulday celebrations would be thickest and where, with any luck, Carlette might be presented to the Woodsman in a few days—the Slants were mostly made up of brothels, bars, restaurants, and other establishments made to serve the men and women disembarking their ships after weeks of travel.

  And, of course, Mya’s orphanage.

  Overall, Tuleaux gave the impression of a lichen, immovable and stubborn as it clung to its rocky base. Sailors often lamented that the colony didn’t compare to the stretching elegance of Beraselle or the bristling menace of Revinburg. But to Carlette there was a gut-deep comfort as she filled her lungs with crisp ocean air and watched the trade ships bob in the harbor. It reminded her of a time before she wore the anchor tattoo, before she’d even known she was destined to wear one. The smells of Tuleaux—so acute to Carlette’s senses—brought back memories of stealing biscuits, of chasing stray cats through the docks, of sitting for hours with Quaina in their favorite spot and guessing what each ship held.

  Her eyes prickled shamefully. Carlette took a deep, salty breath, marveling at how even the warmest of memories could cause pain.

  Perhaps there was nothing in this world that didn’t.

  Reaching the Geldrue, Carlette let herself be funneled towards the Slants. The gaping tunnel network swallowed the poorer travelers as they ambled towards their destinations. She could have flashed her letter and joined the well-dressed merchants heading towards the Magistrate’s home, a monstrosity of stone and steel overlooking the bay like a squatting demigod.

  But she didn’t want to give up her freedom so soon.

  Following the crowd as it wound through the cliff, Carlette tried not to think. She tried not to notice the whispers, the thoughts, the fear. Tried not to think about why she was there and how much had changed. As the sun reappeared and she stepped outside, she tried not to see the tall, painted roof of Mya’s orphanage. Cheerful. Bright. Welcoming.

  Carlette swallowed and walked the other way.

  Grateful for the throng of afternoon shoppers, she let the Rae du Ora swallow her, disappearing into the chaos of the city’s main boulevard.

  She wasn’t ready to face Mya. Not yet.

  So instead she took in the familiar establishments, each one accompanied by another jab of memory. Petibon, the sweetshop run by an enormous, kind-faced woman who gifted scraps to grinning orphans. The Elephant’s Ear, a pub decorated with the enormous heads of exotic creatures and the object of Quaina’s favorite game, stealing the loose tusk from the bar’s namesake mount. Bijoux, where the ruddy-faced jeweler would chase them halfway to the docks just to make sure their grubby hands stayed far away from his glittering silver and steel creations. It had been so long since she’d walked freely in the city, Carlette had almost forgotten the feel of it. The gritty, stubborn cheer that the settlers seemed to have adopted with single-minded purpose. These men and women had chosen a difficult life in a dangerous place and made the best of their situation.

  She missed the days when she’d been a part of it.

  Carlette wandered through the alleyways, towards the docks. Three ships were unloading, the sailors and seafaring hoods shell-shocked and ruffled. But Carlette drifted past them. She wove through the hive of activity with hunched shoulders, ducking a swinging crate, darting around a cluster of gossiping men, stepping over a hound’s taut leash. Voices rose and fell behind her like the waves, but her attention was sharp. Steadfast.

  Finally, Carlette slipped behind one of the dock’s many lighthouses.

  With a sigh, she sank to the ground, throwing off her hood and letting her boots hang over the water. Noise still babbled behind her, but she focused on the steady inhale and exhale of the ocean as it crashed into the dock’s pillars, on the sun-kissed warmth.

  She’d always found it strange that Quaina had loved to come here. Loud-mouthed and wry, Quaina was a creature of spotlight. She thrived in noise and bedlam the way Carlette thrived in silence. There was no place that Quaina could not infuse with her boundless energy. But at least once a day, Quaina would come here, Carlette in tow, just to stare out at the ocean.

  Once, Carlette had asked her why
.

  “I like to dream of something else,” Quaina responded, her face uncharacteristically serious. “Something better.”

  At seven, Carlette couldn’t imagine anything better than exploring the city with her best friend. But now Quaina’s words were weights around Carlette’s heart. Better was infinite, endless, tantalizing. Better was a world without guilt, without the white rings around her eyes.

  Without the heavy burden of the past.

  Lost in memory, Carlette didn’t notice the clumsy footsteps stumbling around the corner.

  “Not every day there’s a pretty girl waiting for me ‘ere,” said a deep voice, followed by a hiccup.

  Carlette whipped around, fingers ready to clench. But her hands relaxed almost at once. A man stood behind her, face soft and veined, eyes slightly crossed. His tattered clothing was streaked with wine stains and bits of food, and the flask in his hand wasn’t the only thing that reeked of stale alcohol.

  But it was his eyes that drew Carlette’s attention.

  His murky, mud-brown irises enclosed not white around his pupils but red.

  “Who are you?” Carlette asked, forcing herself not to wrinkle her nose as the man plopped down next to her.

  “Name’s Eylon,” he slurred, offering her his flask. She shook her head. “Just as well, can’t afford much more af’er last night.”

  Carlette watched Eylon take a deep drink, tipping precariously backwards. His neck pulled tight and she caught a glimpse of the anchor tattoo, harsh against his cracked, ruddy skin. As his rancid stink filled the air, Aheya’s plea returned to her.

  Please. Just see what you can find. If there’s a chance, any chance…

  Breathing through her mouth, Carlette steeled herself and pushed the question towards him.

  “You’re the Null, aren’t you? The man without power?”

  Eylon’s head tilted, his bleary eyes fixed on his hand as if the flask there might refill by some magic.