It would have been safer for Aster and Clementine to wait with the others in the woods—now that Aster had revealed their identity to the public, the whole of the Scab would be hunting for them. But it was important to Aster, getting there a day ahead of the others. It would give her and Clem time to talk to her parents.
If they were still there.
“They’ve probably been moved on, haven’t they?” Clementine asked neutrally, as if she’d read Aster’s mind. They were bent almost double underneath the burlap cover thrown over the wagon, both of them dressed in black hallowers’ robes. “Mallow and Tansy both tried to write home once we got to Ferron, but the letters got sent back unopened. Their families weren’t there anymore.”
Aster craned her neck to look up at her sister, raising a brow. It wasn’t like Clem to be a pessimist—but then, Aster supposed, maybe her sister was just guarding her heart. This wasn’t like most challenges they’d faced. This was personal.
“Yeah, well, you know how it is,” Aster said carefully. Her stomach churned with every bump on the road, and she swallowed to steady it. “Families get moved around all the time. Maybe Sullivan needed them at another camp. Or maybe he traded them off with some other landmaster. Or maybe our folks got themselves into some kind of real trouble, and they were…” Aster trailed off.
Executed.
“Well, I very much doubt that,” said Clementine, and despite the pit in her stomach, Aster knew she was right. Aster’s parents had never been the type to step out of line. Be better than your betters, that was what her mother had always said. Work their land and respect their laws. If you did as you were told they would treat you more kindly.
We’re like dogs to them, Aster thought bitterly. So long as they behaved, so long as they were loyal and obedient and they did the work expected of them and never showed their teeth, they’d be fed and sheltered and maybe even indulged with a patronizing kind of love. And plenty of people, including Aster’s parents, had told her to be grateful for that.
But she wasn’t an animal. She was a person. And it was time she demanded to be treated like one.
“Aster, you’re making that face,” Clementine said. “Like you want to hit someone.”
“This is just my face, Clem.”
“You’re hoping our parents are there,” Clementine went on shrewdly. “Not because you’ll be happy to see them, but because you’re spoiling for a fight. Aren’t you?”
“And what if I am?” Aster asked, more defensively than she’d intended. It was sweltering here underneath the burlap cover, enough to make Aster drip with sweat, and her anger only served to make her skin burn that much hotter. “Nearly ten years since they sold us to the welcome house. You think my resentment’s gone away in that time? No. It’s full-grown now.”
“What would you even say to them, though?”
Aster ground her jaw. Nothing she could say would change the past.
“It’s not about what I need to say to them. It’s what they need to say to us. We deserve an apology. Or at least—at least some acknowledgement that what they did was wrong,” Aster explained.
Clementine said nothing, though Aster could read her silence well enough. Clem didn’t think their parents were wrong for choosing to sell them; she thought the landmasters were wrong for forcing them into such a cruel decision. That was what they were fighting for—a future where no one would have to sell their daughters off in order for them to survive.
But just because Aster understood that well enough in her head, it didn’t change the betrayal she felt in her heart. For all she’d been through, Clementine still didn’t truly understand what Aster had experienced. And Aster was grateful for that, beyond words—but it was lonely, not being able to talk to her sister about this.
I wish Violet were here, Aster found herself thinking. Clementine looked up to her, and so Aster had to set a good example for her. But Violet would have understood Aster’s anger, even if it wasn’t entirely fair. Aster would have been able to speak honestly with her. And then, when the time actually came to face her parents, maybe Aster would be able to do so with something like a clear heart.
The wagon jolted to a stop. Eli rapped twice on backboard. “We’re here, friends—habits on.”
Aster and Clem glanced at each other before dutifully donning the headwear that all hallowers wore—a black veil, symbolic of the Veil between the world of the living and the dead, that covered the face. It clung to Aster’s cheeks like a cobweb. Then she threw off the burlap cover and hopped out of the back of the wagon, her spine aching as it straightened, dust kicking up at the hem of her robe as she surveyed the camp.
Aster’s memories of Shade Hollow were as scarce as the patches of drygrass that dotted the cracked earth. The smell of it came to her first: the acrid scent of coal, then the taste of grit between her teeth. The cabins threatened to cave in on themselves, leaning drunkenly against one another in ramshackle rows. Crude iron wardants stood outside each one like scarecrows, a last line of defense against the dead. Among the living, women hung their laundry to dry, children ripped and roared unsupervised, and men filed in and out of the mouth of the mine up the road like ants on a hill. Yes, this was it … this was home. This was the dirt that she and Clementine had drawn in with blackened fingernails. That was the water pump where they had washed the honey from their hands in the summer. But “home” was smaller than Aster remembered, and filthier, too. She felt as if she had stepped into one of Raven’s leadpoint drawings, soot smudged across every surface in a thin gray film, even casting a pall over the brutal, beating sunlight.
A single ravener patrolled the area, a long gun slung over his shoulder. There would be more down in the mines, but, for now, they would just have to deal with this one.
“Do you remember where your family lived? What name did they go by?” Eli asked quietly. He too was dressed as a hallower—a Brother and his Sisters come to spread the faith to the people.
“Walker,” Aster said, the name strange on her tongue after so many years. “Wilma and Clyde Walker. But I’m … I’m not sure which house we lived in.”
“All right then, let’s ask around,” Eli said.
He went first to the ravener, leaving Aster and Clementine behind so the ravener wouldn’t sense the magic of their favors. The two men talked in low voices for an uncomfortably long time, and Aster’s skin began to itch with anxiety. She knew lying didn’t come easily to Eli. What if he couldn’t sell their story? Or this ravener ordered them to turn around anyway?
Aster had a revolver hidden underneath her robe … just a simple six-shooter, not a voltric pistol. They’d saved those for the rest of the group, still making their way here through the woods. But still, if there was going to be trouble—
Then, finally, Eli turned around and waved them forward. Aster relaxed, but only slightly. Something about being back here put her on edge, threatened to pull her mind apart and push her heart to a gallop.
The ravener disappeared up the hill and left them to go door-to-door, delivering gift baskets that they’d claimed were filled with garlands of grayleaf but were in fact filled with food, medicine, and weapons. At each house they asked after Aster’s family, too, but were met each time with shifty eyes or blank stares. Either no one knew where her parents were … or no one wanted to tell them.
Fifteen minutes later, though, they knocked on the door of a house with a broken front window and a dirty-faced dog peering out of it. It barked twice, sharply, announcing their presence. An old woman cursed it as she came to the door, holding the mutt back by the scruff of its neck. Dark veins snarled beneath her papery skin, and her blond hair was thin and brittle as dried corn silk.
“Afternoon, ma’am,” Eli said.
“I’ve heard enough sermons in my time,” she said shortly.
Aster caught the door before she closed it. “Actually, ma’am, that’s not what this is about…”
The old woman’s milky eyes widened with surprise as they t
old her of their true work and warned her to keep silent until the time came to strike. No one was going to be forced to join the fight, Clementine reassured her—but regardless, they wanted everyone to have the means to take care of themselves until it was over.
“One last thing,” Aster said as the old woman grinningly beheld her gifts. “We’re looking for Wilma and Clyde Walker and were told they lived here. Do you know where we could find them?”
The mischievous smile that had spread over the old woman’s face faded immediately.
“Wilma and Clyde Walker?” Her voice dropped. “Didn’t you hear? Didn’t you see?”
Something about her tone made Aster’s scalp prickle with dread. “See what?”
“You must have come in from the south. If you’d been coming from the north, you would’ve passed them. They’ve been out there for four days.”
Aster struggled to remain grounded, focusing on her quavering breaths, on the unbearable heat, on anything other than the old woman’s words.
“You mean…” Eli said slowly.
“The raveners had them executed—left out in gibbets for the vultures and vengeants. Their daughters were two of those Good Luck Girls, the ones behind the attacks on McClennon. Maybe you’ve even met them, if you’re doing all this on their orders. I reckon you wanted to find Wilma and Clyde to save them from retribution, but old man Sullivan must’ve seen it coming and got to them first.”
Aster’s chest grew tight. Sounds suddenly became distant and muffled, colors overbright. She had been prepared to meet her parents, had been prepared to hear that they had been moved along. But she had not been prepared to learn that they were simply … gone.
Murdered.
The old woman’s dog whined and licked Aster’s hand, and the old woman pulled him back gently.
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, truly,” she said. “The Walkers … they were good folks.”
And the door creaked shut.
Aster swallowed and turned to Clementine, who was trembling, tears standing in her eyes.
“Hey,” Aster said softly, touching her shoulder. “This doesn’t change anything, hear? We’ve had to find our way without them for years. We still have each other. You still have me, Clem.”
But Clementine shrugged off her hand and walked away, wiping furiously at her eyes from behind her veil.
“This is our fault. We got them killed,” she choked.
“Clementine—Grace, please—”
Aster started after her, but Eli touched her elbow.
“Let her go,” he said.
Now tears started burning in Aster’s eyes, and she blinked them away angrily.
“Of course,” Aster said, her voice breaking as Eli followed her back to the wagon. “Of course he murdered them. Of course he took my parents away from me. The landmasters have already taken everything else. Why not this, too.”
She climbed into the back of the wagon and curled into herself, grateful now for the veil covering her face. She did not want Eli to see her like this, devastation breaking across her like a storm. He climbed up and sat down next to her, the wagon sagging with his weight. He said nothing for a long time, and his silent, solid presence was reassuring.
“They don’t even deserve my grief,” Aster said finally, swallowing painfully. “That’s the hell of it, Eli. They betrayed us. They abandoned us. And now … now I’ll never get to make it right with them.”
When Eli spoke, his voice was soft as the tulle on her skin. “You can still say what you need to say, Aster. The Veil’s not so thick that the dead can’t sometimes hear us.”
But now, somehow, after all these years of imagining this moment, Aster suddenly found herself without words. She had not ever expected to come back to Shade Hollow, and now, to find it just as she’d left it, but without her family …
“It wasn’t real, Eli,” Aster said, her voice growing thick. “None of it was real. I loved them. I trusted them. And I loved this place, even though…” She closed her eyes. “I miss it sometimes. I miss all of it. I miss the girl I was then.”
And maybe that was the real loss she was grieving here. The tears were pouring freely down Aster’s cheeks now, and she didn’t bother to wipe them away anymore.
“Two things can be true at the same time,” Eli said. “It can be true that your parents loved you, and it can be true that they hurt you. It can be true that you have good memories of this place, and it can be true that you deserved better. You’re allowed to feel whatever it is you’re feeling, Aster, and it’s okay if it doesn’t make sense right now. Your love was real, though. It’s okay to mourn it.”
Aster’s mind was a scattered mess. When she’d been a little girl, she’d wanted nothing more than to get away from here. But she’d also missed it once she’d been sold to the welcome house, and built it up in her mind as something precious that had been taken from her. So now, to come back to it with fresh eyes, older eyes, and see how ugly it truly was … and to realize how ugly it had always been …
“I grew up in a mining camp a lot like this,” Eli said quietly. “Before me and Sam ran away. They start the boys working young—soon as you’re big enough to hold the tools. It’s dangerous work, even for the little ones. Especially for the little ones. But the damndest thing was…” He laughed a little. “I couldn’t wait to do it. I looked up to Sam and the other boys in the mines like they were the heroes in a two-copper novel. They looked so tough with their beat-up helmets and their steel-toed boots and their greased-up faces and their picks on their backs. I wanted to be just like them—never mind that half of them would be dead before the age of thirty, and half of those that survived would suffer from dust lung or a crushed leg or some other ailment the landmaster couldn’t be bothered to treat. Sam himself was only twelve when he lost the fingers on his left hand to an accident. It was a bad place, Aster. A place where children were sent to suffer and die. And yet there was still some part of me, on that first day, when I got my hardhat and boots, that couldn’t contain my excitement. And then we went down into the tunnel, the theomite glittering all around us … it was like being swallowed by a star.” He looked at Aster. “That was real. The love and admiration I had for my brother was real. The excitement I had to start working, and the pride I felt once I did … the loyalty and friendship I felt towards all the other boys working with me … it was all real, Aster. As real as the pain and the suffering and the hate and the anger and the resentment. Just because you found some joy in a bad situation doesn’t mean you’re childish or spineless or—or grateful, somehow, to the people who hurt you. It just means you managed to make something beautiful grow where there shouldn’t have been any life at all. And that in itself is a beautiful thing.”
Aster sniffled quietly, wiping her nose on her sleeve, the words a balm on the burning shame and anger she felt.
Aster let out a shaky breath. “Thank you, Eli,” she murmured, letting herself lean against him. He stilled, seemingly surprised, and then, after a moment, wrapped his arm around her shoulder. The heavy weight of it reassured her. She was still tense under his touch—she suspected she always would be—and it was tempting to hate herself for that, or the world, for making her this way. But Eli was right in that two feelings could exist side by side. She could be tense under a man’s touch, even if it was gentle … and she could be grateful for that touch all the same.
“I’m sorry I brought you here,” he said. “I should’ve known something like this would happen—”
“No, I’m glad you did,” Aster said, and she was. At least now she knew. Not knowing would have been, in some ways, worse. “We have to find Clementine, though. She thinks this is our fault. And maybe it is … by the dead, this is such a mess.”
Eli climbed into the driver’s seat. “She went north. She can’t have gone far. We’ll find her, Aster.”
North?
“Oh hell,” Aster swore, “she went to see them. We have to stop her.”
Eli’
s face crumpled with horror, and he quickly turned and snapped the reins to start the horse down the road. But before they even reached the edge of Shade Hollow, he stopped at the sight of a posse on horseback blocking their path—three raveners, one mortal man, and …
“Clementine!” Aster shouted, leaping down onto the road and reaching for her pistol.
“Ah, ah, careful,” the man called out. He dismounted, grabbing Clementine by her collar just as the old woman had held her dog. He was short and slender, impeccably well dressed, with bronzed skin, slick black hair, and a thin, twitching moustache. Aster recognized him from Derrick’s meticulous description, from the secondhand horror stories she’d heard growing up right here in Shade Hollow.
Leonard Sullivan.
22
Aster expected rage, but instead, her first reaction was simple, stunned silence. For all she and her friends talked about landmasters, they still felt more like an abstract threat than men made of flesh and blood. They were like the weather, a force beyond her control, destroying lives without thought or remorse. And Jerrod McClennon had just about lived up to the legend that Aster had built up around him, crackling with charisma and deadly intent every time he entered a room. But to know this weasel of a man had worked her parents to the bone before killing them so cruelly, to see him now with his hands on her sister—
Anger welled up from her stomach.
“You let her go, or I swear I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Sullivan said with a chuckle, and the ravener behind him dismounted and pushed up to the front.
Lizzy Greene.
Eli, who had moved to stand beside Aster in a subtly defensive stance, drew a sharp breath. “A lady ravener…” he whispered. “Aster, is that—”
“When I saw your little declaration of war in the papers, we figured you might come home to try to get your parents out of harm’s way,” Sullivan went on. “So I decided to get here first myself, and I sent for Elizabeth, as well. She’s been tracking you vermin for some time. My men had orders to report any suspicious behavior to me immediately, and, well … you certainly didn’t keep us waiting long. A couple of fallen women, though, thieves and murderers no less, donning the sacred robes of hallowers to tell their lie? That’s low, even for you.”
The Sisters of Reckoning Page 23