The Sisters of Reckoning

by Charlotte Nicole Davis

It was to be Aster, Tansy, Mallow, and Eli making the trip to Camp Deathstalker: Tansy to help them in case someone got hurt in the tunnels, Mallow to provide backup support against the vengeants they were sure to encounter, and Eli to serve as the liaison from Camp Red Claw. They woke up at five o’clock in the morning to make sure they could get a full day of travel in, Cutter offering to outfit them for the underground journey.

  “Aster! Look alive. Today you become a Scorpion proper,” Cutter said with relish. He was the only one who seemed fully awake, eyes bright with excitement and voice at full volume while the rest of them grumbled and squinted in the low-burning lantern light of the equipment shed.

  “How much longer is this going to take?” Aster groused.

  “Not long. Don’t worry, we’ll have you trudging through the bowels of the mountain in no time,” Cutter promised as he pulled items for her off the shelves. “The captain over at Deathstalker is a friend of mine, as it happens—Sidney Miller. We’re both central tribe. He grew up in a rebels’ camp and went on to be a soldier in the War for the Nations, but the Arkettan army hunted his war party down. Sid got away, fell in with the Scorpions, and he’s been with us ever since. He’s a prickly bastard, I’ll warn you … but then, I reckon he has the right to be.”

  War for the Nations? Aster struggled blearily to remember what she could from her schooling. It certainly had never mentioned anything about a war with the Nine Nations. None of the Ladies had mentioned it either, though, not even Marjorie, who had must have lived through it and who had been happy to share her history with the younger women.

  Maybe her tribe wasn’t involved, Aster thought.

  Or maybe it had been something she hadn’t wanted to remember.

  Aster thought of asking Mallow if she’d learned anything about it in Ferron, but Aster didn’t want to take away from the spirit of adventure that seemed to have seized the others. Everyone else had already been geared up. Tansy stood in a mining coat that seemed to swallow her while Eli helped her buckle it up, and Mallow took comically large steps as she practiced walking in the heavy layers. They were barely recognizable beneath the getup: a mining helmet made of hammered metal with a lantern on top, a thick canvas coat, slick rubber waders, and steel-toed boots. The coat was adorned with iron links that reminded Aster of chain mail from stories about the old Empire.

  She was not overly eager for her own transformation.

  “Aster,” Eli said softly, coming to her side once he’d finished helping Tansy. Despite herself, Aster felt her stomach flip at the sound of his voice.

  “It’s my turn, apparently. Care to explain why Cutter here has us wearing our own body weight in mining gear?” Aster asked.

  Eli chuckled a little at that. “The iron overcoat is to protect us from vengeants,” he explained. “And the rest is to protect us from the mountain. It’s hard going through these tunnels, lots of uneven ground and low ceilings and long stretches half submerged in water. Not to mention the fact that it’s bone cold and dark as the shadow of the Veil. The camps have been working on a cart system, but it’s not completed yet. We’ll be on foot for this.”

  “It’s not going to make the going any easier, but I won’t have you all exposed to the elements down here,” Cutter said firmly, checking the others’ lanterns.

  “Here, the waders go on first. I’ll help you out,” Eli offered, holding them open.

  Aster hesitated. The mining gear went over the clothes they were already wearing, and yet, still, there was something inherently intimate about letting someone dress you. Mallow and Tansy hadn’t seemed uncomfortable accepting the boys’ help … but then, they had not been through what Aster had been through.

  I wish Violet were here, she thought. Or Raven. They would understand. Maybe—

  “Left foot,” Eli said. And then, so as not to show her fear, Aster did as she was told, stepping into the left leg of the waders, gripping Eli’s broad shoulder for balance. Then they did the right. She and Eli stood flush against each other, their foreheads almost touching as he brought the suspenders over her shoulders and snapped them into place at her waist with gentle hands. His breath smelled faintly of the coffee he’d downed in three swallows to wake himself up.

  Aster wondered if he could hear her heart racing as he helped her into the jacket next. A rush of shame raced up the back of her neck at the thought. She was not some blushing schoolgirl to swoon over a boy. It felt offensive, almost perverse, that she could react this way at all, an insult to the endless hardships she’d suffered. Never, in all her nights at the welcome house, had she welcomed a man’s touch. So why the hell should she now?

  Unease churned inside her belly. Discomfort gnawed at her skin. She wanted to shrink away, and she wanted to lean into his touch. She hated herself for wanting to enjoy this. She hated that she couldn’t.

  Finally Eli found a helmet for her, placing it on her head like a crown. He stepped back, smiling at his handiwork, teeth bright white against his dark gums. Aster was sweltering underneath all the gear, and every breath felt as if her chest were being pressed by a stone.

  “Well? How do I look?” Aster asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking. Her face was hot, but it had nothing to do with the extra layers she was now wearing.

  Eli looked her up and down slowly, nodding in approval. “Like a Scorpion,” he said.

  “Like a fool,” she corrected. She looked to Tansy and Mallow, smiling unevenly, desperate to put this confusing moment behind her. “Come on, then, you all. Let’s get this circus into town.”

  * * *

  Eli had been right: this was hard going.

  Aster could scarcely catch her breath as they hiked through the endless underground labyrinth. There were inclines so steep that they had to crawl forward on all fours, and the declines were dangerously sharp and slippery. In some places the ceiling sank so low they had to crouch for hundreds of feet at time; in others the walls pressed in so close together that they had to turn sideways to squeeze through the narrow gaps. Pools of standing water filled the tunnels with a damp, earthy scent that made Aster’s stomach heave. Even during the dry, level stretches with room enough to stand and turn around, the ground was pitted with potholes and littered with stones the size of a man’s skull. They were all of them one misstep away from a broken ankle. The mining gear was difficult enough to maneuver in as it was, but now, with mud caked onto Aster’s boots and her coat soaked to the waist, every step was a mammoth effort.

  And all of this in impenetrable dark and graveyard quiet. At least in the camp there had been light and life to distract them from the fact that they were a hundred feet underground. Here they had only their feeble headlamps and the chorus of their labored breathing. Aster could not remember when she had ever felt so small, so insignificant. It was folly, to think they could cut through this eons-old mountain. She felt its crushing weight above her like the judgment of the dead.

  And to think, there were landmasters, mortal men, who thought they owned these mountains, who had put a price on every pebble. They would not last two ticks down here.

  “By—the ripping—Veil,” Mallow panted as they faced another incline. It was the first words anyone had spoken in at least an hour. Eli, who was taking point, turned to face them, the yellow-brown light from his headlamp making Aster squint.

  “Go ahead and take a breather,” he said, though he himself scarcely seemed short of breath at all. “On the other side of this hill is a base camp. We’ll stop there for the night.”

  “Is it nighttime already?” Tansy asked, her voice faint. Like all of them, her face was painted with mud.

  Eli nodded. “Almost. I know it’s impossible to tell down here, but the vengeants still know when the sun’s gone down. We made good time today. Usually, when one of us makes these runs with a group of hotfoots, it’s a struggle to get to the base camp before the dead attack.”

  Aster could not even begin to imagine trying to shepherd a family of runaways through these tunnel
s. It was a miracle the Scorpions managed to get anyone out of the Scab.

  This is why the Lady Ghosts do things the way they do, Aster thought. This is the alternative. What the Ladies had built was just as enormous and complex, just as dangerous, but in an entirely different way. They were fighting against men, not nature.

  A sudden dark thought occurred to Aster, and when she spoke, her voice was so small it didn’t even echo.

  “Eli … the vengeants down here, are they from folks who died trying to make these tunnels? Trying to travel through them?”

  Eli, who had stopped to take a drink, lowered his canteen and looked at Aster levelly. “Where did you think they came from?”

  Aster shook her head. She guessed she didn’t know. It was so much easier to pretend that vengeants didn’t come from anywhere, to think of them as some natural disaster rather than the restless spirits of the wronged dead.

  “So … how many people have you lost down here?” she asked.

  “Too many,” Eli said brusquely, turning back to face the incline, and he started up it without another word.

  Aster exchanged glances with Tansy and Mallow. Maybe she’d touched on a tender subject.

  They followed Eli up the hill, panting as they dug their heels into the clinging clay. The muscles in Aster’s legs seized up in protest. The arches of her feet knifed with pain at each step. Aster was sweating so much beneath her getup that she didn’t feel the cold leaching into the air around them. She wanted to catch up to Eli, wanted to apologize, but it was all she could do to keep upright.

  Thank the dead we’re stopping for the night, she thought. She could not take much more of this.

  Finally the slope evened out, and at the top was a wide, open space with a sparse campsite—two large canvas tents and scattered crates of supplies. Eli was already striking up a fire.

  “Hey, brother, let us help,” Mallow said, wiping at the mud on her cheek with her rough gloves.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he muttered. “This won’t take long. Just—go on and get some food out of the crates. It should all be labeled.”

  They set to it, cracking open the crates and fishing out salted pork, dried bread, and canned beans. Then they got out the tin plates and cutlery. By the time they were done, the little fire had flickered to life, Eli squatting on his haunches next to it as he stoked it with the poker and added a fistful of grayleaf to keep the vengeants at bay. He stood when he saw them with their hands full.

  “Here, I’ll fix you all’s plates—” he began, but Aster held up her hand and shook her head.

  “No,” she insisted. “Let someone else fix your plate for a change … but don’t get used to it,” she added pointedly when she handed the plate over.

  Eli smiled a little as he took it, his fingers brushing hers. She looked away quickly, turning to serve Tansy and Mallow, and finally herself, and then they all sat wearily on the ground around the campfire. They shucked their gloves and headgear and dug into the tasteless meal.

  It was then that the vengeants started, their keening echoing in the dark like the howls of a shot dog.

  “Here we ripping go,” Mallow muttered, taking a swig from her canteen as if she wished it were something stronger. Eli closed his eyes, a pained expression descending over his face. Aster looked at the others in concern. They were used to Zee and his acute fear of raveners, but Eli’s sorrow in the presence of vengeants was unexpected.

  “Eli … are you doing all right?” Tansy asked. “I mean, I know that probably seems like a foolish question down here, but … are you?”

  “These mountains are a grave,” he muttered, setting his half-eaten plate of food down. “I hate it down here. I always have.” His dark eyes met Aster’s then, and Aster felt a drop in her stomach as she remembered her first conversation with him, when he’d told her how much he missed the sun. Dustbloods deserved better than to creep around underground like vermin, that was what he’d said. What the Scorpions had built was nothing short of a miracle—and yet it still wasn’t enough. “Up there, you can’t know who the vengeants were,” he went on. “But down here, they have names. Every one of them was someone we failed.”

  Aster set her own plate down. “Eli,” she said urgently, “you can’t blame yourself. You all gave these people a chance at freedom—that was more than they ever had working for the landmasters.”

  “And if you lost one of these two, would you be able to shift the blame so easily?” Eli asked, jerking his chin at Tansy and Mallow. “If it was their cries echoing down these tunnels, would you be able to sleep soundly here?”

  Aster’s blood froze at the thought as she was suddenly thrown back to the memory of when she’d had to leave Violet behind. It didn’t matter that Violet had survived; the guilt was still sharp enough to leave Aster gutted. When Eli saw her struggling for a response, he seemed to relent, his expression softening.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have … Sometimes I get … It’s like I said—I just hate it down here.”

  “Then why did you agree to come?” Aster asked pointedly. She didn’t mean to make it seem like an accusation, but she couldn’t help it. The vengeants’ wails grew louder still, though it was difficult, with the way sound traveled down here, to gauge how much closer they might be.

  Eli took a breath to steady himself. “Because after the way that meeting went, I didn’t trust anyone else to do right by you,” he said softly, barely audible above the rising din. “Sam and Cutter are family, of course, but they’re too busy to run this errand, and the rest of the boys … I’ve never seen them that angry before. At first I thought it was just that they hated McClennon too much to ever want to play host to his son—that’s what it was for me, Aster, and I won’t pretend I don’t still feel some type of way about that. But for the rest of them, it’s more than that … it’s you all, too. For suggesting that they ought to risk their lives or take up arms on behalf of a bunch of fallen women. I reckon it’s easier for them to believe that Good Luck Girls are traitors than to admit they can’t protect the women in their lives from the landmasters … that they can barely even protect themselves. I think it wounded their pride, seeing you call them out for that—but you’re giving them a chance to get it back, too. They’ll see that soon enough.” He shook his head, picking his plate back up to finish the last of his supper. “But until then … I just think you’re safest with me.”

  Aster felt her hackles rise at that. She didn’t need Eli’s protection; she’d done just fine without it for eighteen years. She almost said as much. But something about the worry lines cut into the stone of his face held her back. Perhaps he was the one in need of protection—from himself. From the shame that ate away at him though he’d done nothing to deserve it.

  And that was something Aster understood.

  Another piercing shriek from the dead. The temperature dropped even further, freezing the sweat on Aster’s brow. Mallow threw a worried glance at Tansy and reached for the sawed-off shotgun at her hip.

  “Eli, these bastards are getting closer,” she said. “Are you sure we’re safe here?”

  He reached for the poker to stoke the fire again. “As long as we keep the grayleaf burning, they won’t come too close—”

  And then an unseen something passed overhead with a keening cry, the wind in its wake snuffing the campfire and plunging them all into darkness.

  15

  When the fire went out, Aster’s courage went with it, her heart plummeting to her stomach. She scrabbled for her gun. She might just have been able to keep a level head down here as long as she could see where she was going, but to be trapped in utter darkness—

  There was a roar of noise and a flash of light as Mallow let fly from her shotgun.

  “No!” Eli cried. “We can’t risk hitting each other. Everybody back to back first.”

  Eli reached for Aster in the dark, his hand brushing against her forearm. Aster jumped instinctively at his touch, then found his wrist and held it tight. She r
eached out with her other hand for Tansy and Mallow, grabbing blindly in the dark. Her fingers caught on the cold, greasy mail of someone’s iron overcoat. Tansy yelped.

  “It’s only me!” Aster shouted over the growing roar of the vengeants. “Quick, where’s Mallow?”

  “I’m right next to her!” Mallow yelled back. They formed up in a circle, linked at the elbows. The air around them buffeted even more violently as the howling vengeants swirled closer. The iron on their coats was the only thing keeping the dead at bay, but the vengeants were sure to test that strength against that of their invisible teeth and claws any minute now.

  Eli’s arm flexed against Aster’s as he reached for his own shotgun.

  “Okay, Mallow—” he began.

  “We still can’t see shit!” she protested.

  “We wouldn’t be able to see them if we had light anyway! Just fire straight ahead and I’ll do the same. We’ll rotate our circle around until we’ve cleared the area. That should give us enough time to get the fire going—”

  Sudden, numbing cold as invisible claws raked across Aster’s calf, unprotected by iron. Pain exploded in the twitching muscle, and blood soaked her denims. She buckled at the knee, letting out a cry she didn’t even recognize as her own.

  “Aster!” Eli roared. He fired off two rapid shots from the hip. The muzzle of his gun flashed like lightning. Mallow answered him with two shots of her own, driving back the vengeants approaching from the other direction. Aster struggled to stay balanced on her good leg as the four of them spun around, Eli and Mallow firing continuously until they ran out of rounds. The vengeants’ cries grew scattered as they seemed to retreat, but Aster knew they’d be back in a second.

  Aster heard the snick of Eli holstering his gun. “We don’t have long. I’m going to get the fire going,” he said.

  The fire couldn’t be more than a few feet away, but still, the thought of him leaving them filled Aster with sudden dread. “Eli, wait—”

  But he was already gone, his absence a vacuum as he disappeared into the dark. Aster shivered, half from fear, half from the cold still radiating out from where the vengeant had attacked her. She sensed the others turning to face her.