The Sisters of Reckoning

by Charlotte Nicole Davis

“We weren’t supposed to kill Sullivan, though,” Clementine pointed out, a twinge of worry in her voice. “What if McClennon and them assume we did? Why would they give in to our demands then, if they think we’re just going to kill them all anyway?”

  “We left no hard evidence. They’ll have their suspicions, but nothing more,” Aster said, exhausted.

  “I don’t know, I’m with Mal—I don’t really care why it happened, I’m just glad the bastard’s gone,” Raven said with a laugh. “The folks at Shade Hollow’ll keep our secret, and to the rest of the world he’ll just … disappear, like the dead only know how many of our people have. It serves him right.”

  “And now that he’s out of the way, it’ll make it that much easier for his other mining camps to free themselves,” Zee added. “The raveners aren’t going fight if they’re not getting paid.”

  “Not that we couldn’t take them if they did. You missed a good scrap, Aster,” Mal said.

  Tansy let out a long-suffering sigh. “You almost broke your neck.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  Aster forced a chuckle. “Seems like you all did just fine without me.”

  Violet glanced over her shoulder back at Aster, worry flashing in her eyes.

  “Come on, though, Aster, you’ve hardly told us anything about your fight with Sullivan,” Mallow pushed. “What did he say when—”

  “You all go on ahead,” Violet interrupted. “I think our horse sprung a shoe. We’ll catch up in a minute.”

  “You sure? We can wait,” Eli said, swinging his own horse around.

  “We’ll be fine,” Violet said pointedly.

  Eli still looked uncertain, but Raven waved him forward. “Come on, we have to get that body back. Those two can handle themselves.”

  Aster was too tired to argue, but once the others were gone, she sat up a little straighter and tried to muster her last reserve of willpower. “What the hell, Vi? You know damn well you don’t know how to fix a loose shoe. Now I’m gonna have to do it.”

  “There’s no loose shoe, you fool,” Violet muttered back. “I just wanted to get the others off your back for a minute. You can stop pretending to be happy now.”

  Aster scoffed. “I’m not pretending. I’m thrilled. We freed my hometown. I’ve been dreaming about doing that since I was a little kid.”

  “Don’t bullshit me. That’s not how we are with each other.” Violet spun around in the saddle so they were facing each other, their knees touching, their calves entangled. The wind twitched at Violet’s hair, and she tucked the loose lock away behind the shell of an ear. “Talk to me, Aster.”

  Aster felt a lump forming in her throat, and she swallowed painfully. “I … I thought it would make me feel better, seeing Sullivan dead … but instead, I just feel sick.”

  “Because it doesn’t bring them back,” Violet said softly.

  “No…” Aster’s words were slow, strained, as the truth forced its way to the surface. “Because he made me do it. First Sullivan took away any choice I had in making things right with my family … and then he took away any choice I had in killing him for it. And maybe I would’ve done it anyway, maybe I would have decided they were worth risking everything for, but … now I’ll never know. And I am so tired…” Her voice cracked, and she let it. “I am so tired of people taking my choice away from me.”

  She fell forward in Violet’s arms, crying softly into the crook of her neck. Violet wrapped her in a strong embrace.

  “I just feel so damned helpless, Violet. I let this happen.”

  “There’s nothing helpless about you,” Violet said fiercely. “You’re the strongest person I know.”

  “But it’s so hard being this way. I have to work at it. And it’s wearing me down. I can’t do this forever.”

  Violet pulled back, and her blue eyes shimmered with tears of her own. “Well, you don’t have to, hear? You don’t have to be strong around me, Dawn. And if the day ever comes that you decide it’s too much, you let me know, and I’ll take you away from all this.”

  Aster laughed hollowly. “What, just … stop fighting? And what about everyone else?”

  “To hell with everyone else.” Aster sighed, and Violet pressed on. “I’m serious. Dawn, you’ve done more good in the past year than most people do in their whole lives—certainly more than me. No one would blame you for walking away.”

  Aster thought of Sid, who had found ways to keep fighting even after devastating loss. Of Priscilla, who was still fighting even though she was old and gray. She shook her head.

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “Yes, you can. You’ve never learned to be selfish, that’s your problem. So let me teach you, as someone who knows too well. This world has already taken so much from you, and you’ve given it so much more—but it does not get to have all of you. You have to save some for yourself.”

  Aster wiped at her eye with the heel of her hand. “And some for you, too, is that the deal?” She’d become so close to Violet, she could not imagine trying to go back to a time when she hadn’t shared everything with her.

  Violet smiled, her teeth flashing in the fading sunlight. “Well, yeah. Like I said, I’ve always been selfish … but you’ve helped me learn how to give more of myself to others, too. We can hold each other accountable.”

  Warmth spread through Aster’s chest, and the knot of tension there loosened for the first time that day. She laughed a little, self-consciously, suddenly embarrassed that she had gotten so worked up in the first place.

  “Hold on, now, was that a smile?” Violet asked, tilting Aster’s chin up. “I thought you were too tough for all that.”

  “I am.” Aster shoved her away. Violet raised an eyebrow, holding her gaze for a heartbeat before turning back around in the saddle.

  “All right then. I’ll leave you to your brooding,” Violet said over her shoulder. “But promise me that you’ll try to forgive yourself—not just for Sullivan. For all of it. For being a human being.”

  “I promise,” Aster murmured. She wrapped her arms around Violet’s waist and leaned against her as Violet urged their horse forward again. The warmth in her chest seemed to fill her whole body now, her cheeks burning with it.

  “Violet,” Aster said after a while, her voice almost lost in the chorus of the forest as it slipped into the evening.

  “Mm?”

  “Thank you.”

  * * *

  When Aster and Violet returned to Camp Red Claw, they found Derrick and Eli fighting.

  They pushed their way through the crowd that had gathered around the boys in the square outside the meeting hall, the Scorpions egging the boys on as they circled each other with arms raised protectively in front of their faces. Eli was still dressed in his hallower’s robes, the loose black sleeves shucked up past his elbows, the dust from the road casting a ghostly pallor over his dark skin. Derrick wore only his trousers, suspenders cutting into his bare white shoulders, freckles dusting his arms and a chest surprisingly wiry with muscle. He pushed a sheaf of red hair out of his bloodied face as he made a desperate lunge at Eli, his knuckly fist flying towards Eli’s chin. Eli swatted it away impatiently and tried to grab him, but Derrick ducked out of the way, hopping on the balls of his feet like a sparrow.

  Aster and Violet exchanged a knowing look. Aster heaved a sigh and stepped into the clearing.

  “What the rip is going on here?” she demanded.

  The boys both stopped and looked up at her.

  “Aster—?”

  “Aster—!”

  “CLEAR OUT!” Aster ordered the crowd. The rest of her friends were nowhere to be found among them. Where the hell were they?

  “Aster,” Derrick cried again, running towards her unsteadily. His nose looked broken, a thin trickle of blood dripping down to his lip. By the Veil. “Aster, you promised me, you promised me—”

  “Your little pet landmaster here heard we killed Leonard Sullivan and went rabid,” Eli interrupted, rubbing at
a cut on his chin.

  “Don’t you speak for me!” Derrick’s voice was harsh and scabbed. As often as he and Eli had butted heads, she’d never seen him like this before, and some part of her shrank away from his anger instinctively. It was the same anger that, in his brother, had almost gotten Clementine killed. Violet stepped forward, straightening up as she did when it came time to assert authority.

  “You watch your tone, Derrick,” she warned. “Ripping hell, I can’t leave you unattended for more than five minutes, can I? Where are the others?”

  “They’re in their cabins, getting some well-deserved rest,” Eli answered for him. “I volunteered to take care of Sullivan’s body myself, and I figured I’d get Derrick to help me, since all he does is sit on his ass anyway. Found him lying around in his drawers and scribbling in his notebook. As soon as I told him the old boy was dead, he lit into me. I tried to walk away—this was about as far as I got before I decided I might as well start hitting back.”

  Derrick’s face reddened even further. “I won’t apologize for my anger! You promised me no one would be killed!” Then he turned to Aster, his voice cracking. “You all were supposed to be different.”

  Aster’s exhaustion beat against her skull, a dull headache that pulsed in time with her heart. It had been a long day, and she had no energy left to try to justify herself to Derrick. But his anger was already slipping off him like an ill-fitting suit, beneath it a raw look of hurt and betrayal that Aster knew all too well.

  “Violet, do me a favor and take Eli to the medical ward,” Aster said wearily. “I’ll talk to Derrick.”

  “You’re all right with him?” Violet asked, looking between them.

  Eli sucked his teeth. “She’s fine. She’s not afraid of the fairblood boy.”

  Aster felt her face warm with frustration. “Eli, I told you that’s not—”

  “Come on.”

  Eli and Violet left them, Violet looking over her shoulder worriedly. But Aster just waved her on.

  “I don’t need you to babysit me,” Derrick muttered under his breath once they were out of sight.

  “The hell you don’t,” Aster shot back. “Clean your face.” She tossed him a dustkerchief to stanch his bleeding, and he pressed it to his crooked nose, sitting down in the dirt with a heavy sigh of his own. Aster sat down next to him, still uncomfortable being so near a half-naked man, but less so now that he had crumpled beneath his own upset.

  “You weren’t kidding when you said you’d studied hand-and-foot combat. You have a mean uppercut,” Aster said more gently.

  But Derrick wasn’t having it. He sniffed, wincing as he did so. “This is no laughing matter, Aster.”

  Fair enough.

  “Let me start by saying none of us killed Leonard Sullivan,” Aster tried again. “The bastard threw himself onto my blade when he realized we intended to take him prisoner.”

  “And you expect me to just believe you?”

  Aster squared up. “Yes, actually, I do. And I’m not exactly happy about it, either. I can’t even begin to explain how it felt for him to just…” She broke off, thought better of it. He could not understand. “Look, I won’t mourn a man like him, true, but I do wish it had gone differently.”

  Derrick continued to sulk in silence, the dustkerchief sopping with blood now, and Aster furrowed her brow as she tried to read his expression.

  “Are you mourning him, Derrick?” she asked suddenly.

  “No,” he said with disgust, throwing the dustkerchief away. “I was frightened of him. Just as I was frightened of my family. Of my brother. But now I am also frightened of you.”

  “But I told you—”

  “You didn’t mean for it to go that far, I know. That’s what they always say.”

  Aster fell silent. Derrick closed his eyes and took a steadying breath, his ribs standing out underneath his skin like piano keys.

  “Why were you so frightened of your brother?” Aster asked quietly. Because she recognized this fear of his, the kind that twisted your every thought into the shape of a monster.

  His eyes cracked back open. “Do I really need to answer that question? Do I really have to explain such a thing? To you, of all people?”

  “But you’re not some Good Luck Girl he could kill without consequence.”

  “No. True. He could only get away with so much, with me.”

  Suddenly certain things about Derrick were beginning to make sense in Aster’s mind: his skittishness, his insecurity, his disgust for his family, for himself. Was it the abuse that had left him so fragile? Or had his brother simply seen a fragile thing and sought to crush it?

  Or both?

  “My father did not protect me,” Derrick went on. “He recognized my weakness and despised it. Pushed me off on his brother to raise. Then Uncle Jerrod saw how soft I was and took it as a chance to pull and twist me in his own image. I don’t know who I am, Aster, only what others have done to me. And I trust you to understand this, better than I ever could.” He looked up at her then, his eyes glassy. “So when I see how you are with your sister—with all of the people you call your own—I am filled with so much hope. And longing, because I did not know it could be that way. I have never known a family like this—one built not by blood and power but by love and respect. And I know it’s not my place, but I want to be a part of it. I want that more than anything. But not…” He took another deep breath, steeling himself. “Not if you’re going to be just like them.”

  Any other time, if anyone else had accused Aster of being just as bad as a landmaster, she would have reacted with anger. But she understood Derrick now—why he was so afraid to trust others, how easily that trust could be broken. She did not know exactly what he’d suffered, but she knew enough. And so she would be patient with him, as she’d had to learn to be patient with herself.

  “Derrick,” she said softly, “surely you can see the difference between people like your family and people like us. Between the—the cornered animal lashing out for its survival and the hunter chasing it for sport.” She had to speak in metaphors with him; she knew he found that soothing.

  He pushed his hair back. “Yes … at least, I think I do … I just—” His face contorted with frustration as he grasped for words. “I am just so afraid of doing the wrong thing. Of being the wrong thing. Of becoming my brother.”

  “I don’t think you could be as cruel as your brother even if you were trying,” Aster said. “You feel others’ pain too much and too deeply. And maybe, to your family, that made you weak or—or soft, but it’s what I admire most about you, Derrick. You say you wish you were a part of this family, but as far as I’m concerned, you already are.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “I do.”

  For the first time, Derrick smiled, then winced again as his face muscles pulled at his tender bloodied nose.

  “I’m … I’m sorry for making such a scene,” he said, his face reddening now. “That was … unlike me.”

  Aster huffed a laugh. “Honestly, it was good to see you have some fight in you. I’m going to need you to make it right with Eli, though. I can’t have you two going after each other every time you’re in a room together.”

  “We both just think the world of you,” Derrick said, his voice a little quieter.

  Aster glanced down awkwardly. She wasn’t sure what to do with that, wasn’t sure how to tell him that she loved him less like a sweetheart and more like the big sister he’d never had. She did not want to hurt him when he had shown her true vulnerability for the first time. But Derrick seemed to sense her discomfort, taking her silence for an answer, looking away and clearing his throat.

  “Anyway,” he chirped, “I’ve been a proper fool. But I promise I’m going to make it all up to you.”

  “Oh?” Aster asked, relieved. “And how’s that?”

  “Well, firstly, I’d like to give you this…” Derrick loosened the theomite ring from his third finger, the thin silver band embedded with a
square black jewel. It was more delicately crafted than Baxter’s ring had been, the metal decorated with a fine filigree.

  Aster shook her head. “Derrick, I can’t possibly accept this—”

  “I’m offering it to you as a friend,” he insisted. “Please, I … it represents everything I want to shed myself of, and I know you will have more use for it than I ever could. Please.”

  Aster hesitated, then accepted the ring, sliding it over her thumb, where it fit as if it had been made for her. The metal was still warm. Her chest tightened with tears. She had never expected to experience such tenderness from any man, let alone the son of a landmaster.

  “Thank you, Derrick,” Aster said softly.

  “And secondly—” he continued.

  “Secondly?” What could possibly top this?

  Derrick grinned impishly. “Secondly, I’m going with you to kidnap the Harker brothers.”

  24

  Aster and her friends spent the next few days planning their move on the Harker brothers, twin kings of agriculture. But while they were lying low, plenty of their allies were on the attack. Every day scouts arrived with coded messages written in one of the languages of the Nine, detailing every new victory and defeat. But for all the bad news that came in—failed ambushes, destroyed supplies, Reckoners captured by the law—there was far more good. In Northrock, Cora and her friends had organized their strike, and dustbloods throughout the city had emptied the factories and filled the streets. The first national bank had been burned to the ground, the statues of the landmasters of old had been pulled down, and the capitol building had been seized and turned into the Reckoners’ headquarters. It didn’t take long for other cities to light up as well, until the whole of the north was burning. Cora wrote to reassure them that though the lawmen had been merciless in their retaliation, they were outnumbered and losing the will to fight.

  Best of all, though, was the news that the Reckoners in the north had captured Sylas Cain—one of the heads of the great landmaster families and council member of the Landmasters’ Guild, the man whose name had been on seemingly every factory in Northrock’s industrial district. With both Cain and Sullivan now out of the picture, they’d taken out a third of the guild’s leadership. Camp Red Claw was filled with drinking and music the night of the news.