The Fate of the Tearling

by Erika Johansen

  Chapter 4

  Brenna

  No more tears now. I will think upon revenge.

  —Mary Stuart (pre-Crossing Angl.)

  There was blood on her hands.

  She stared at her palms, trying to remember. The past few days were a blur, but then everything had been a blur since her master had died. From that moment on, she did not remember time as a concrete thing, only a river in which she occasionally bumped against the shore. She remembered killing the Queen’s Guard, but not how she had escaped afterward. She did not know how she had gotten here.

  To her left was a small stream. Brenna bent and rinsed her hands, scrubbing at her nails to get rid of the dried blood. She had killed a man in Burns Copse, she remembered now, killed him for food and coin. She had caught him before he had time to pull a weapon, and he had merely stared at her, hypnotized, until she slipped a knife between his ribs. He had a horse as well, but she could not ride, and there would be no way to sell the horse without attracting attention. The entire Tear thought her albino, and the master had said that was a good thing, a good secret to keep. But she was no more albino than she was madwoman, and since the master had died, she had already begun to recover some of her color, her life. But not enough to sell a horse without anyone noticing, not yet. Not enough to blend into a crowd.

  The master.

  She had shed no tears for him, but that was only because tears were such a cowardly way to grieve. First one sought vengeance, and then, long years later, when all ledgers were balanced, one could wallow in sorrow. The master’s voice still echoed in her head, screaming; she could not quiet the sound. She had felt him die, felt his agony and, worse, his absolute panic in that final moment when he had realized that there was no way out, that he had finally met a force with which he could not strike a deal. She had been taking on his pain her whole life, ever since they were children; the effort had turned her white.

  She straightened from the stream and turned east again, seeking her quarry. She did not use her sense of smell, not precisely; rather, it felt as though she were cutting through distance, wading through thousands of people, all their myriad feelings like muddy water, until she found exactly what she sought. This particular gift had been quite useful to the master, for whenever someone tried to flee the shipment, there was no way to hide from the tracker inside Brenna’s head. It was a powerful skill, and when she was young, the Caden had tried more than once to acquire her, to cleave her from the master. She had killed three of them before they finally gave up. Last year, they had tried again; several of them had come to the master, requesting a temporary loan of her services to find the Raleigh heir. But they would not pay what the master demanded.

  If they had only paid! Brenna thought fiercely. This particular path was one that her thoughts had trodden many times before, but it grew no less bitter, no less urgent. If they had only paid, perhaps the master would still be alive!

  She turned her face into the wind, sensing its movement on her tongue. The bitch was out there still, but no longer moving. Now she was in a cold, dark room. Brenna tested the walls, tasted them on her tongue, and found them to be thick stone.

  “Imprisoned, are you?” she whispered. She could not be sure, but she fancied the bitch could hear her. There was power in her, great power; Brenna could sense it even now, distant and faint, just as she’d always been able to sense the force up in the Fairwitch. She had briefly considered turning her steps northward on this journey, traveling up to the mountains and seeking assistance. Whatever was up there was powerful, for certain; Brenna felt its pull beneath her feet. But there was some sort of upheaval going on in the Fairwitch now, and she could sense the lines of force that had always underlain the Tearling beginning to shift. Too uncertain, and she wanted no distractions. She had food enough to get her to the Mort border, and really, she needed very little to sustain her. Rage was more nourishing than food.

  But if the bitch was in the Demesne dungeons, she might be beyond even Brenna’s reach. It would serve the master nothing if Brenna died trying to get into the Palais. There must be another way.

  After another moment’s thought, Brenna began to look around the woods. Most of the animals had fled at her approach, but they were beginning to creep out again, now that she was still. A few minutes’ searching found her a grey squirrel, peeping out from behind a tree. She was on it before it could blink. The squirrel bit and tore at her, but Brenna ignored the sting—pain was only a trick of the mind, after all—and wrung its neck. Pulling out the dead man’s knife, she slit the squirrel from throat to belly, allowing the blood to drip and puddle on the ground. She had to be quick. Blood would bring other predators, and they might attract a hunter. She could deal with such a person, but had no wish to leave a trail behind. She was free now, yes, but the master had often told her never to underestimate the Mace.

  Tossing the squirrel aside, she bent to the small puddle of blood, taking a deep copper breath. Knowing where someone was, that was easy. Finding out where they were going to be was more difficult, but it could be done, and probably far more easily than getting into the Mort dungeons on her own.

  What if she dies there?

  Brenna refused to consider that idea. The bitch’s death in Mort custody would not be pretty, but it would be a holiday compared to what Brenna had in mind. Brenna had suffered, the master had suffered, and she did not believe the future would rob them of revenge.

  She remained very still, staring into the scarlet puddle for a long time, her eyes wide, each breath a hiss of pain. A quarter of a mile away, on the Mort Road, traffic continued, an exodus of wagons and riders heading east, refugees from New London returning to their homes on the border. None saw Brenna, but all of them shuddered as they passed, as though they had hit a pocket of freezing cold.

  Brenna finally straightened, smiling. A further hint of color had come back into her cheeks. She grabbed the bloody knife and the bag of food, then turned her steps southeast.

  Javel wrapped his cloak more tightly around himself, wishing he could somehow draw into the shadows of the overhanging building. Another Mort street patrol had passed him only a few minutes ago. Sooner or later, someone was going to notice that he was simply standing there, not moving, and assume that he was up to no good.

  The address Dyer had discovered sat opposite: a stately brick house, three stories, surrounded by a high stone wall with iron gates. Javel could not even peek in the windows, for two guards stood just inside the gates, opening them only for certain people. According to Dyer, Allie’s buyer had been a Madame Arneau, but that was the only information Javel was going to get. Ever since they had seen the Queen on the Rue Grange, Allie might as well have dropped off the face of the earth. Dyer and Galen had moved their base to an abandoned factory in the steel district, and their evenings seemed to be taken up entirely with unexplained errands and secret nighttime meetings with men Javel did not recognize. These men were Mort and carried steel, but they were not soldiers. There was a rescue attempt under way, and Javel felt like more of a nuisance than ever.

  Across the street, an open wagon circled around the house from the back. They must have stables back there, for when men arrived, one of the guards on the door was quick to take their horses around the side. Javel had already seen several men come and go. Two of them had been drunk. An awful realization was growing upon him, turning his stomach and weakening his knees.

  It could be any sort of house, he told himself. But that was nonsense. This neighborhood might be cleaner than the Gut, but some things were the same everywhere. He knew what he was looking at. He rubbed a hand across his brow and found that he was perspiring, even in the late autumn chill. He had known that these were the odds, he reminded himself. No one bought a pretty woman like Allie to make her into a servant, and he had done his best to accept the fact that she might be a whore. But now he had begun to wonder if his best would be good enough. When he imagined his wife under another man, he wanted to kick and punch, to b
reak things.

  High, merry laughter made him look up. A group of five women had emerged from the front of the house, chattering among themselves. They carried bags on their shoulders. All of them were tarted up, dressed in glittering fabrics, their eyes painted, their hair piled atop their heads.

  Allie stood in the middle.

  For a long moment, Javel couldn’t move. It was his Allie, all right; he could see her distinctive blonde curls, now gathered in a bunch on top of her head. But her face was so different. Older, yes, lines at the corners of her eyes, but that wasn’t the real change. His Allie had been sweet. This woman looked . . . sharp. There was a tightness about her mouth. She laughed as merrily as the rest, but not the laughter Javel had known: broad and secretive, cold as the skim of ice on a dark lake. Javel watched, astounded, as she climbed into the wagon of her own free will and seated herself beside the other women, still laughing.

  A man, tall and burly, had followed them out the door. As he climbed into the wagon, Javel saw the flash of a knife beneath his coat. Another guard, then, although Javel had already noticed in his explorations of Demesne that most prostitutes were treated far better here than in New London. Even the street girls were not molested. He did not know why five high-end whores should need a guard in Demesne, but with both the guard and the driver to take into consideration, Javel could not take the chance of approaching the wagon.

  The driver clicked to the horses and left the enclosure of the walls. As though in a dream, Javel followed, forcing himself to stay more than a hundred feet behind. A dark hole had opened inside him. Over the past six years, he had imagined Allie’s life often, many images pouring through his head, driving him into the pub just as surely as a man would drive goats to market. But he had never pictured her laughing.

  When the wagon halted for traffic at the next intersection, Javel crept closer, ducking into an adjacent alley, and made a second unpleasant discovery: all five women, including Allie, were speaking Mort. The wagon turned into the Rue Grange and Javel followed, though he was forced to duck and dodge. This was the marketing segment of the Rue, and the street was always busy, crowded with vendors’ stalls and customers for the shops. He was beginning to lose the wagon when, miraculously, the driver slowed, pulling to one side so that the women could alight and spread along the sidewalk. Two of them crossed the street, and Javel realized, astounded, that this was a shopping excursion. Allie went straight into an apothecary.

  The driver remained with the wagon, and the guard stayed with him, but his eyes roved the street continuously. Javel got the sense that he would be ready to move at the first sign of trouble. Javel slipped closer, not even sure what his plan was. Part of him wanted to flee back to the safety of the warehouse, to the time when he knew nothing of Allie’s fate at all.

  Keeping a weather eye on the guard and driver, he strolled casually toward the apothecary. People jostled him, but he ducked and dodged around them, watching the door. The driver was telling some story now, the guard smirking, and Javel slipped past them and inside the shop.

  He found Allie in a darkened corner, waiting in front of the counter. The apothecary was nowhere in sight, but Javel could hear the sound of bottles being moved behind a small green curtain. He wished that he could do this in other circumstances, without an audience that might reappear at any moment, but he also realized that he might never get such a chance again. It was now or never.

  “Allie.”

  She looked up, startled, and Javel felt the world shift on its axis as he saw her eyes, cold and distrustful beneath their violet-painted lids. She looked at him for a long moment.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’ve come—” Javel felt his throat lock, cutting off the words. He summoned his memories: those nights sitting half asleep in pubs, Allie’s face floating behind his eyes, the hatred for himself that had washed over him in endless waves. Six long years he had left her here, so that she could become the woman before him. If he left her here again, how would he live with himself afterward?

  “I’ve come to take you home,” he finished awkwardly.

  Allie emitted a brief, throaty sound that he finally realized was a chuckle.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re my wife.”

  She began to laugh, the sound like a slap to Javel’s face.

  “We can get you out of here,” he told her. “I have friends. I can keep you safe.”

  “Safe,” she murmured. “How sweet.”

  Javel flushed. “Allie—”

  “My name is Alice.”

  “I’ve come here to rescue you!”

  “A knight in shining armor!” she exclaimed brightly, but her eyes did not change, and Javel heard a great deal of anger just beneath her bright words. “And where were you six years ago, Sir Knight, when your bravery could have done me some good?”

  “I followed you!” Javel insisted. “I followed you all the way down the Mort road!”

  She stared at him for a long, cold moment. “And?”

  “Thorne’s people were too powerful. I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t think we could get away.”

  “And in all the years since?”

  “I was—” But there was nowhere to go from there. What could he tell her? That he’d been at the pub?

  “I tried,” he finished brokenly.

  “All right, you tried,” Allie replied. “But since you were a coward then, you don’t get to claim bravery now. You’re six years too late. I have built a life here. I am content.”

  “Content? You’re a whore!”

  Allie gave him another long, measuring look. That look had always been able to make Javel feel about two feet tall, but he had only seen it a few times during their marriage, usually when he had promised to do something and forgotten. He felt as though a spell had been cast upon her; if he could only get her away from here, he could surely break it and change her back.

  “Is anything wrong, Alice?” a voice asked. Javel turned and saw the burly guard who had been on the wagon, standing just inside the doorway. His gaze was fixed on Javel, and the look in his eyes made Javel shudder. The man would like nothing better than to beat him to a pulp.

  “Nothing at all,” Allie replied brightly. “Just trawling.”

  At this, Javel’s mouth dropped open, and he suddenly understood the dual purpose of the shopping trip, the reason for the women’s fine dresses and heavy paint.

  “Well, let me know if you need anything, ma’am.” Clearly disappointed, the guard backed out of the shop.

  Javel suddenly realized that he had understood the man perfectly, that he had been speaking in Tear. Violence in every muscle, that guard, but his manner toward Allie was utterly deferential. Javel turned back to Allie, wishing he could take his last words back, but he sensed that it wouldn’t matter.

  “I am a whore indeed,” Allie replied after a long moment. “But I am working, Javel. I earn my own money and answer to no one.”

  “What about your pimp?” he shot back, hating the venom in his own voice but unable to control it.

  “I pay rent to Madame Arneau. Reasonable rent, far more reasonable than the rent on a similar space in New London.”

  Javel could not reply. He only wished that he might have this Madame Arneau’s neck in his hands, even once.

  “In return, I get a suite of beautiful rooms and three cooked meals a day. I am well guarded from predators, I work my own hours, and I choose my own clientele.”

  “What sort of whorehouse gives a whore that much freedom?” he demanded. “It’s bad business, if nothing else.”

  Allie’s eyes narrowed, and if possible, the coldness in her voice became even deeper, sharper. “The sort that realizes a happy, healthy prostitute is a more profitable one. I earn three times your salary as a Gate Guard.”

  “But we’re still married! You’re my wife.”

  “No. You gave me away when you watched me climb into the cage six years ago. I want nothing from you, and y
ou have no right to demand anything from me.”

  Javel opened his mouth to protest—surely marriage could not be dissolved so easily, even in Mortmesne—but at that moment the apothecary reappeared from behind the green curtain. He was a tiny, balding man with spectacles, holding a small box in his hands.

  “Here you are, Lady,” he said, offering the box to Allie. He, too, spoke Tear, and this puzzled Javel, who had heard no Tear on the streets of Demesne and had been forced to pick up his tiny smattering of Mort word by word. “Two months’ worth, this is, and you want to make sure to take each one with a substantial meal. They may increase your sickness otherwise.”

  Allie nodded, producing a purse full of coin. “Thank you.”

  “Come back in two months’ time and I will mix you another batch, but you want to discontinue use after the sixth month, else they may harm the baby.”

  At the final word, Javel felt a wave of unreality wash over him. He barely marked Allie handing over several coins and tucking the box into her bag. The apothecary looked between the two of them and then, clearly sensing the tense atmosphere, disappeared behind his curtain again.

  “You’re pregnant,” said Javel, not so much to question Allie as to convince himself.

  “Yes.” She stared at him, as though daring him to continue.

  “What will you do?”

  “Do? I will have my baby and raise a fine child.”

  “In a brothel!”

  Allie’s gaze pinned him like sunlight. “My child will be cared for and then schooled by three women Madame Arneau keeps for no other reason. And when my child gets older, there will be no shame in knowing that Mother was a whore. What do you think of that?”

  “I think it’s criminal.”

  “You would, Javel. I might once have thought so too. But this city is better to women than New London has ever aspired to be. Perhaps it was brave of you to come here, I don’t know. But yours is a low-risk bravery. It always was, and I deserve better than that. If you value your skin, don’t ever approach me again.”