Matthias, his blond curls mussed, sat across from the Rocaan. Matthias looked odd without his biretta, like a man who had recently awakened and not yet got his bearings. His sash was twisted, and there was dirt on the shoulder of his robe. Matthias—even in the height of the battles around Jahn—had never looked this disoriented.
“You’re sure it’s human?” the Rocaan asked. He had never seen a bone before, at least not a skeletal bone. He had seen only the bones the cooks threw to the dogs that guarded the river’s edge.
Matthias nodded. “I have been around bodies,” he said. “It’s human.”
And then the Rocaan remembered: when Matthias was an Aud, he had been part of the group that had reclaimed the bodies from the Kenniland Marshes. A few had risen to the surface during a particularly bad storm, and someone had guessed—probably Matthias, based on his scholarship—that more would be beneath the marshes’ surface. All of the bodies had been dead a long time. The Rocaan had overseen the burial, but the bodies were already in their coffins. It had taken Auds and townspeople almost a month to reconstruct the skeletons they had found in the marsh. The dead, they had assumed, were part of the Peasant Uprising and had been buried in a mass grave.
“What would it be doing in the sanctuary?” the Rocaan asked, not sure he wanted the answer.
Matthias shook his head. “I’ve been wondering the same thing. The blood has me the most bothered. There were blood and bones discovered in and near the palace during the invasion, as well as in the guard barracks. This has something to do with the Fey.”
The Rocaan clenched his fist. “They leave us nothing. Don’t they understand the concept of holiness?” He closed his eyes and leaned back, wishing this would all end. They had taken so much from him. Now the only place he would be able to worship would be the tiny room from which he had first seen the Fey.
“I don’t think it matters to them,” Matthias said.
The Rocaan opened his eyes. He didn’t like sitting across from Matthias. Matthias was tall and thin like the Fey, and he was the one who had suggested the use of holy water as a weapon. He had never believed in God or the Roca, and he twisted the Words Written and Unwritten into something that could do his bidding.
Matthias should never have learned the secret to holy water. Now the Rocaan would have to choose—forcefully, decidedly—his successor before he died. Andre was a possibility; he had faith. But Andre had no knowledge of the world. That was the problem with the faithful: they refused to examine the present.
He swallowed. He set the bone in a silver bowl on the table beside him. It clinked as it fell, and Matthias winced. The man had never shown this much sensitivity before.
The Rocaan didn’t like it.
He nodded to Matthias as a form of dismissal. Matthias didn’t seem to understand the gesture.
“I will take this all under advisement,” the Rocaan said.
“Take what under advisement?” Matthias asked. “All we know is that there could be a problem in the sanctuary. We don’t even know what it could be.”
“If I hear of anything out of the ordinary—”
“You’re saying that pools of blood are ordinary now? I already sent Andre to call a meeting of all the inhabitants of the Tabernacle. If someone is missing, then we will know what happened.”
The Rocaan didn’t like Matthias’s tone. The sarcasm didn’t belong in their relationship—whatever it had become. “You shouldn’t have acted without me,” the Rocaan said.
“Why not?” Matthias asked. “All the Elders are authorized to act in your stead. We run the Tabernacle.”
“Yes, but I lead it.” The Rocaan said the words softly. He wanted Matthias to hear the undertone, to understand that things do not always go according to plan.
Matthias leaned back and pursed his lips together. He apparently heard. “Well then, Holy Sir,” he said after a moment, “I will cancel the order.”
“Do that,” the Rocaan said. He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see anymore, to think anymore. He wanted the fire to warm him, and he wanted these days of worry to end.
The chair creaked as Matthias’s weight shifted. Then someone rapped on the door. The Rocaan sighed and opened his eyes. Matthias was standing, his hands clasped over his belly. He was looking at the door with a wistful expression as though he were a little boy gazing at something forbidden.
“Get that,” the Rocaan said, not bothering with the niceties. “I’m not available except in an emergency.”
Matthias nodded without really looking at the Rocaan. The Rocaan squinted. His assessment was wrong. Matthias wasn’t wistful. He appeared frightened. A shiver of fear ran down the Rocaan’s back. He had seen Matthias alarmed, but never terrified. What would frighten him so?
Matthias made his way to the door. He opened it and slid out, so that the person behind it wouldn’t see the Rocaan in his high-backed chair. The Rocaan brought his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and pinched. The pain felt good. It woke him up, made him remember that he was alive. He picked up the silver bowl and stared at the bone. Someone had died in the Tabernacle. Or someone had poured blood and planted a bone in the most sacred spot on Blue Isle. A Fey ritual? Did they hope to gain power that way?
Perhaps he should ignore the King’s order and send a small ship off the Isle. Nye had a tiny band of Rocaanists who might be willing to leave the country now that it was under Fey domination. They had lived with the Fey for over three years. They would know if this was some kind of Fey trick—and they would know what to do about it.
An ache was building behind his eyes. But they would also want holy water to take with them to Nye when they returned. The Rocaanists on Nye had no real leaders. The Aud who had formed the band had died years ago, and they had worshiped without instruction for nearly a decade. It had been the Rocaan’s decision to let them continue on their own, thinking it best to keep Rocaanism confined to Blue Isle. The risk he would take sending that ship out would be greater than the information he received. With some thought he would be able to learn what he needed right here.
The problem was that neither side was talking to the other. He had never even met a Fey. He had seen them only from a distance, during the invasion, when they had fought his people on the courtyard below. The Words Written and Unwritten said that any man who did not know his enemy was a fool. The Words preached knowledge at all costs. And the Rocaan had allowed them to ignore the knowledge in the face of terror.
The door opened, and Matthias slipped back inside the room. If anything, he looked even paler than before. He was winding a curl around his forefinger, a gesture the Rocaan had never seen before. Matthias nodded once, as if in acknowledgment that he was interrupting the Rocaan.
“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 one 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 jus
t 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.
Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey (The Fey Series) Page 36