I can’t just stay here while he goes,” Epiny protested to Spink. Her husband had just come in the door, and she had practically run to him to try to sway him from my cruel order.
“What are you talking about?”
I stepped around the corner into the hall, tugging at my collar. Had clothing always been this uncomfortable? Spink’s second pair of boots were, despite his small size, a bit too large on me. The old workaday sword belt that held my mediocre weapon looked out of place with my fine new clothes, but I refused to set out completely unarmed. I’d have given a great deal to have Sergeant Duril’s little “pepper pot” gun. Epiny had Spink’s back to the door and was looking at him with rebuke. I rescued him.
“Epiny, it’s not up to Spink. It’s my decision. You’re not going.” To Spink I said, “I’ve told her that she must stay here while I call on the Captain. One way or another, I’ll have that key. One way or another, I’ll have Amzil tonight. The children and the cart are already waiting for us on the edge of town. If I must do violence, I don’t want either of you involved.” I rounded on Epiny and spoke as severely as I could to her. “If you go, you’ll only rouse suspicion. I know it’s hard. But what you must do right now is stay here and wait.”
She turned to Spink. “Couldn’t we go to the prison and be there, in case he needs our help?”
“And take Solina and put her in danger? Or risk alerting the guards that we are up to something? No, dear. Hard as it is, you will both have to stay here and keep the candles lit and preserve the illusion that you are enjoying a quiet supper together.”
“I can’t do it!” Epiny wailed, even as Spink looked at me aghast and said, “Surely you don’t mean for me to stay here like a tethered dog while you face all the danger?”
“I do mean it. And, Epiny, you will. For Solina’s sake. And, quite bluntly, for the sake of Spink’s career. It cannot look like he had anything to do with this. It’s bad enough that it will be known that your cousin was involved. But I think you can make me out to be extremely eccentric or the black sheep of the family. Or simply say you have no idea why I did it.”
“But what if you need help?” Spink asked me.
“Look. I’ve thought it through carefully. If I fail, if I cannot free Amzil, and we are, well, captured. Or killed. Or captured and then killed. Well, you must be here and intact. So that the children have something familiar to come back to. All you have to do is talk to Kara and you will know that was Amzil’s plan; evidently she always feared this would catch up with her. And now it has.”
My voice faltered on those final words. “But, Nevare, see here—” Spink began.
I lifted a hand. “No. Stop. It is time for you to stop being a part of my disaster. It’s time you had a little peace, a bit of contentment, some time to enjoy your child without the hardships I’ve brought on you. I did all this, don’t you see? I wrote it out in my journal, you read it, and you know what I mean. My misfortune opened Epiny up to the magic. It nearly dragged both of you to your deaths last time we battled it. I bent the magic to my own ends when I made the ground give up food for Amzil. And now it will have its revenge on me. It is as implacable as Orandula. And I can’t let you be caught up into this scales-balancing. Stay clear. Stay safe so that I can do what I must with a clear mind, not worrying about Solina’s future as an orphan.”
Epiny gasped at my last words and clutched her babe closer. I looked at Spink. “I saw you command, that night when I rode against you. I saw you made some of your line hold fire, and not step forward until the first volley had flown. Very well. Tonight you hold your fire and wait. I am the first volley. If we all go out into the battle together, when we fall, there will be no one left to catch the children’s lives for them. Stand at my back, Spink, so I can go out without fear.”
His mouth worked and he suddenly looked much younger. He got very pink around the eyes, and then he put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and held her. “Good luck, Nevare. And good-bye.”
“Nevare!” Epiny cried, but I knew I could not stay any longer. I hunched my shoulders and stepped out into the twilight. As I strode away from their humble little house, I clapped my borrowed hat on my head and breathed a fervent prayer to the good god to look after them. Then I hardened my heart and refused to think on them any more that night.
I strode down quiet streets lit only by the lamplight that seeped out from houses. Far too many of them were dark and abandoned. Even when I reached the main street of the fort and turned, an eerie quiet prevailed. There were no longer that many soldiers to be out and about in the evening, and Captain Thayer’s strict rules had reduced even that number. He disapproved of drunkenness, gambling, and even rowdy songs and lively dances. With the town outside the fort reduced in population, there were few places for the soldiers to go, and little to do once they got there. No wonder Kesey’s graveyard card parties had become so popular.
The cooling night air was settling the dew. The moisture woke the odors of burned timber and abandoned buildings. As I drew closer to the jail where I had been held, I debated with myself, and then decided that a bit of reconnoitering might not be a bad idea. I walked past it and then approached it again from the alley. I walked as quietly as I could through the coarse grass and the uneven debris there.
The uppermost floor had been burned away to timbers and rafters. The ground floor was mostly intact, but no lights showed through the broken panes of the windows. That left the foundation level, the cells built mostly belowground. The fire would not have bothered them. I halted and stood still, listening, but no sound came to me. The walls, I recalled, were thick blocks of stone mortared together. If Amzil wept, ranted, or screamed, I could not hear her. My heart stood still at that thought, and squeezed at the idea of her in a tiny, lightless room, waiting to die in the morning. I drew in a silent shuddering breath.
I nearly tripped over a broken piece of stone, and in the darkness, I walked right into a tree branch. I caught myself against the building before I fell and froze there, hoping I had not made too much noise. My eyes were adjusting to the dark and I suddenly knew where I was. The rubble that had tripped me had come from the escape hole that Lisana’s roots had torn in the side of my cell. Daring to hope, I knelt in the darkness, but the wall had been roughly but effectively mended with stone and mortar. I’d find no easy entry there. On the ground, I could still feel the lumpy cascade of root that had torn the walls apart.
Then, with a strange shiver, I touched the trunk of the tree that had sprung up from it. In the darkness, I stood up, feeling the bark, then pinching a glossy leaf. The aroma from it was unmistakable. A kaembra tree was growing from the roots Lisana had sent to free me. Strange thoughts rushed through me. I felt that somehow I closed a circle. Touching this tree, I touched Lisana, I touched Soldier’s Boy, and beyond them, the ancestor trees in the distant vale. Even, I thought to myself, Buel Hitch. But more than that, I suddenly thought. Touching this tree, I touched both forest and Forest. I touched a life left behind, and just for a moment, I yearned for it.
Then, “Good-bye,” I told them all. “Chances are, I won’t free Amzil. Chances are, I’m condemning myself to death tonight. But it’s nice to think that you’ll go on together, even if I don’t. So I forgive you for taking what you could get of each other, even if it left me on the outside. I even forgive you, Soldier’s Boy. Farewell.”
I heard something then, a soft shifting in the darkness. I froze. I waited. I breathed quietly, counting my indrawn breaths. Nothing. There was no more sound, and I judged that I’d heard a cat, or more likely a rat creeping down the alley. Silent as a shadow myself, I completed my circuit of the building. Very gently, I tried the door at the end. Locked. But I recalled there was another one. I went around the side to it and down a short flight of stone steps. Well did I recall trying to negotiate those steps with painfully tight shackles around my ankles. I went down them and tried the door handle. It, too, was locked. Captain Thayer’s sentries would be inside, guarding her cell.
Well, then, it was time to get the keys.
I walked quiet as a ghost as I left the vicinity of the jail, and then, as I neared the headquarters building, I lifted my head and put a bit of the soldier into my stride. I knew from Spink that Captain Thayer had left the house he had shared with Carsina and taken over the commander’s quarters. Those rooms I knew from my days of reporting directly to Colonel Haren.
I was surprised to find a lamp burning in the office, and when I entered, a grizzled sergeant sitting at the desk. He looked both bored and alert, as only old soldiers know how to do, and did not startle in the slightest when I came in. His gaze took in my civilian clothes but he gave me the benefit of the doubt. “Sir?” he addressed me.
“Good evening, Sergeant. I’ve come to call on Captain Thayer. I’d present you with my card, but I’m afraid that bandits robbed me of everything I owned on my way here.” I let enough displeasure creep into my voice to suggest that perhaps I blamed him or Captain Thayer for that. In truth, one of the duties of the regiment was to keep the King’s Highway free of brigands, so if it had happened, I would have been justified in my displeasure.
The Sergeant stiffened slightly. “I’m sorry to hear that, sir. And I’m sure Captain Thayer will want to hear of your experience. However, it’s a bit late for this sort of call. Perhaps you—”
“Had I not been set upon, beaten, and robbed, I assure you I would have arrived much earlier and would have had the leisure to observe all the courtesies of such a call. As it is, I’d like to see the Captain this evening. Tonight, and now would be preferable.”
It was too easy to slip back into that arrogance of the nobleman born, and even easier to take it the two steps into insufferable spoiled prig. I gave my head a slight toss and preened my hair back from my face as I had sometimes seen Trist do in our cadet days. I saw a cold flicker of disdain in the back of the Sergeant’s eyes. He knew now that I would not leave until the Captain himself had sent me away, and he was resigned to it. He came to his feet and politely asked, “What name shall I give the Captain when he asks who is calling?”
“Rosse Burvelle.” I had not known I was going to steal my dead brother’s name until that very moment. To this day, I cannot say why I did it. It stuck to my tongue and I would have called it back if I could. Several people had already heard me called Nevare. And yet there it was, done in that moment, and the Sergeant had already turned, tapped at the door, and then entered to the gruff command from within.
I stood for a few moments, sweating in a dead man’s good coat, and then the Sergeant returned. His manner had changed. He bowed to me and wide-eyed told me please to enter right away. I thanked him and did, closing the door firmly behind me.
When those chambers had been Colonel Haren’s, they had been a retreat from the primitive conditions at Gettys. They had been carpeted, tapestried, furnished from floor to ceiling, and always there had been a great fire burning on the hearth that made the room seem an elegant furnace. I wondered what had become of all Colonel Haren’s furnishings. Perhaps they had been shipped back west after he died, or merely packed away into some forgotten storage. In any case, they were gone. The room looked barren; deliberately barren.
A tiny fire burned on the hearth. There was a heavy wooden desk and a straight-backed chair, very similar to the Sergeant’s. For visitors, there was a simple wooden chair facing the desk. At the other end of the room, a narrow bunk was neatly made up next to a very plain dresser. His sword belt and saber were hung neatly on a hook next to his overcoat. A stand held a tin washbasin and ewer. The doors of his wardrobe were closed. It could have been a cadet’s room at the Academy. It smelled of wood polish and the candles that burned there; there was no friendly scent of tobacco, nor any sign of a bottle of sherry or brandy to welcome a guest. Discipline. Penance.
The man seated at the desk was as austere as the room. Despite the evening hour, Captain Thayer still wore his uniform, with his collar buttoned tight. His hands rested side by side on the desktop before him as if he were there to recite a lesson. Despite his sun-weathered skin, he looked pale. He licked his lips as I came in. I’d taken my hat off and now I stepped toward him, my hand held out. “Thank you for receiving me, Captain Thayer. I’m—”
Before I could introduce myself, he looked at me and said, “I know who you are. And I know why you’ve come, Mr. Burvelle.”
My heart sank. He knew?
“You’ve come to inquire into the death of your brother, Nevare Burvelle. Your sister knew he was here, enlisted under a false name. I knew that eventually there would be this reckoning. And I am ready for it.”
Despite his brave and honest words, his voice shook slightly. He swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice was a bit higher. “If you wish to demand satisfaction of me, you have that right.” His hands moved very slightly on the desktop, a faint scrabbling motion. “If you wish to bring formal charges against me, you have that right also. I can only tell you that when I took action that night, I believed I was acting in the name of justice. I’ll admit to you, sir, that I killed your soldier-brother. But it was not without provocation. I was deceived, sir. Deceived by your brother’s false name and deceived by the harlot I had taken for my wife.”
He suddenly lunged for his desk drawer, jerking it open and reaching inside. I took two steps back, certain that he would pull out a pistol and kill me where I stood. Instead, his shaking hands pulled out a packet of papers bound with a piece of string. He pulled the knot, the string came undone, and they spilled across the desk. Only then did I know them. Why she had kept them, I’ll never know, but I would wager that every one of them was there. All the letters I’d written to Carsina from the Academy. On the top of the pile, smudged as if it had been opened and read many times, was an envelope addressed to Carsina in my sister’s hand. He coughed as if trying to clear his throat of a sob. He took another document from the drawer. I recognized the enlistment papers I’d signed when I joined the regiment. And with it, an envelope addressed in my father’s hand.
“I didn’t know he was a noble’s soldier son.” Thayer’s voice was choked. “I didn’t know that he and Carsina had previously been…together. I had no idea until I took over as commander. Haren’s records were a mess. And the command had changed so often since he died, no one had put things in order. So it was up to me. First, I found the letter from your father, warning Colonel Haren that your brother might try to enlist. It was in the Colonel’s private papers. I thought it a sad little document and wondered why he’d kept it. But on the back of the envelope, he’d made a note.”
His hands spidered over to pick up the envelope and turn it over. My blood moved cold through my veins. I tried to take slow breaths, to stand as Rosse would have stood as this tawdry little story unfolded. Thayer swallowed loudly. The envelope fell from his nerveless fingers. He took a shuddering breath. “I could scarcely believe what I read, sir. But when I looked up the enlistment papers for Nevare Burv, there was no denying it any longer.” He looked up at me and strain tightened every muscle in his face. In a strangled voice he said, “It was bad enough to know that your brother had been a noble son, a soldier son gone bad. I felt terrible that we, that he had died as he did. But worse was to come, sir. Far worse for me.”
His voice faded. He looked at his desk. His hands crept across the scattered papers there. “I felt terrible, sir, but it was sorrow for what your family had endured. I tried to write to your father and could not. Simply could not. I thought perhaps it was better that he never know the fate his errant son had met. But then, in early spring, a courier came. And I could scarcely believe my eyes. For there was a letter for my Carsina, my beloved dead wife. And it came from the sister of the man who had tormented her with his attentions and then desecrated her body. I could not believe it. How could she even have known Carsina?
“Curiosity overcame me. I opened it. And what I read tore the heart out of me: it made clear the connection between the man I’d killed and the woman I’d loved. It made a lie of the love I’d had for Carsina. I’d been a fool. She’d probably been laughing at me all the time when I offered her my name. I went through her things then, and found other letters. I found an earlier letter from your sister, one that had concealed a letter for that man, a letter she trusted that my Carsina would hand to him. I knew then she had been seeing him. And beneath her night things, tied with a ribbon, as if they were a treasure, I found all these. Letter after letter from Nevare. Highly improper correspondence.
“She had lied to me. The heartless bitch. She led me to believe she was untouched and pure. But here we have the evidence of her perfidy. She was a lying, cheating slut. And because of her, I took a man’s life!”
Outrage filled me. “She was nothing of the kind!” I barked. I had never imagined that I would be defending Carsina’s reputation, let alone to her husband. But as I recalled her, I could not keep quiet. “She was a frightened girl, terrified that if you knew she’d been engaged to a man you despised, you’d break your word to her. She was not wise or temperate, but she was certainly not a slut. I knew her since she was a little girl, and I can vouch for that. She’d thought she’d found true love with you.” I’d advanced to the edge of his desk. Now I leaned over it, hands braced on it as I forced the truth on him. Epiny was right. Some people definitely deserved to hear the truth. “Her dying words were spoken of you, with love. She asked me to go and fetch you, because you’d promised you wouldn’t leave her side. Yes, I gave her my bed to lie down on. But I never touched her that night, sir. And when we were engaged, I might have stolen a kiss or two, but certainly no more than that!”
He stared at me in consternation. “But…your brother…” He leaned back in his chair, tipping his head up to lock eyes with me. I stared back, made both fearless and foolish by my anger. “No,” he said, and his voice quavered. “It’s you. It was you. You’re Nevare Burvelle. But…you were…you were—I killed you.” He rose from his desk, nearly knocking his chair over as he scrambled away from me. He held his hands, fingers crooked, out in front of him. They were shaking. “I choked you with these hands. My fingers sank into your fat throat, and you screamed for mercy, even as I imagined that Carsina had screamed. But I gave you no mercy, for you’d had no mercy on her—”
“I never hurt Carsina. And you didn’t kill me,” I said flatly. “That’s a false memory.”
“I killed you.” He spoke with absolute certainty. “You pissed yourself and when I let your body fall to the street, my men cheered. I’d done what any honorable man would do. I’d avenged my wife’s violation.” His voice faded. He looked at his desk. His face was pale and sweat stood out on his forehead. “But then I found the letters. She’d made a fool of me. All those sweet words, all her shyness and hesitation—all to mock me.” His voice dropped on those words, chopping them out. “Did you laugh at me together, when she crept off to see you? Did you enjoy your charades in the street, to make everyone think you did not know each other? Did you laugh at me when you were touching that body, kissing those lips? That harlot’s lips!”
“Don’t say those things about her,” I warned him in a quiet, deadly voice. I defended the thoughtless, careless little girl I’d known. “She was no harlot, sir. She was alone. Childish,” I said. “Frightened. Too filled with heart and not enough head. Dreaming of romance with a handsome cavalla officer. A girl forced by circumstance into a woman’s role.”
I doubt that he heard a word I’d said. The man was unhinged. “I killed you,” he repeated, staring at me. “I remember that night so clearly. I stood like a man and took a man’s vengeance. But now it’s all changed to shame and dishonor. Because she lied to me. She lied to me.” His eyes lit with a sudden, cruel hope. “But you did those other things, didn’t you? You killed that whore, Fala. You poisoned those men. You still deserved to die!”
“No,” I said quietly. I was edging slowly around the desk, moving toward him. I’d take him down quickly. I didn’t want him to shout for the Sergeant. “I didn’t do those things. And I didn’t deserve to die.”
He looked at me. His breath was coming in little shaking gasps. “How can you be here?” he asked, and his voice broke on the words, going high as a boy’s. “I killed you. How can you be here, so changed from the monster you were?”
“Magic,” I said flatly. I was suddenly finished arguing with him. Logic has no impact on a crazy man. I felt only disgust for a man who would blame his bad choices on his dead child-bride. I had no time to bother with him. “Magic has brought me back. And I’ve come for only one thing. I’ll keep you from killing another innocent person. Give me the key to the jail where Amzil is held. Give me the key, and we’ll both vanish from your life. You’ll never have to think about us again. You can forget all about us.”
His hand betrayed him. It darted toward his coat pocket, as if to protect the hidden keys from me. Then he caught himself and suddenly quiet seemed to flow over him. “No,” he said softly. “No. You aren’t real. This is another dream, isn’t it? Another nightmare.” He pointed an accusing finger at me. “The doctor said the tonic was supposed to stop these nightmares.” He seemed to expect I would vanish.
“It’s not a dream. I’m real.” I thudded my fist against my chest. “But I’m not here to hurt anyone. All I want is the key. Why not give it to me? Why not let it all be over?”
His eyes darted around the room. I wondered if he’d even heard my words. Was he looking for escape? A weapon? If he shouted for the Sergeant, he’d probably be heard. I didn’t want to deal with both of them at once. I turned abruptly and headed toward the door. He probably thought I was leaving; instead I stopped, bolted it, and then spun back to him. He hadn’t moved. But his eyes got larger.
I kept my voice calm as I moved slowly toward him. “Thayer, all I want is the keys to the jail. That’s all. No one else needs to know anything else about this. You can burn those letters. You can remember Carsina as she was, sweet and pretty and very in love with you. Forget the ugly lies you’ve grown in your mind. Go back to being the man you were.”
He shook his head. Tears filled his eyes and some spilled. His voice had gone squeaky. “Someone has to be punished for this. You both made a fool of me. Someone has to pay.” He looked at me and suddenly the whites showed all around his eyes. There was no rationality there. “You came back as a Speck. You were seen. You killed all those men, all my men. You made them pay with their lives for what I had done. And now you’ve come back to kill me.”
“I don’t want to kill you,” I lied. “Just the keys, Thayer. That’s all I want from you.” I took a slow step toward him. He retreated from me, as smoothly as if he were my dance partner, moving toward the hearth rather than his hanging sword. Good. Again I advanced and he retreated.
“Someone has to be punished. Someone has to pay.” He repeated the words like a prayer. He held up both hands, palms out toward me. “Did you know I’m to be flogged tomorrow? I ordered that. I’m not afraid. I know I deserve no less. Doesn’t that satisfy you?”
“No. It doesn’t.” I couldn’t conceal my disgust with the idea. “And you shouldn’t do it. Flogging yourself and then hanging an innocent woman will not change anything. They’re a coward’s way out of admitting the wrong you did. If you want to be a man, stand up and admit what you did. Clear my name for me. Give me back my life.”
For an instant, it all seemed that simple. Here was a man who could clear me, one who could reconvene a military court and clear my name. There had never been any real evidence against me. Heads were cooler now. Hope for redemption glimmered before me. He shattered it.
“No.”
“Why not?” He had retreated another step. I didn’t advance. I waited for an answer.
“Because…because everyone would laugh at me. Everyone would know how you both deceived me and cuckolded me. Everyone would know what a fool I’d been! And you—” He pointed a sudden accusing finger at me. “You killed that whore. Everyone knows it. You did wrong, and wrong must be punished. I must be punished!” He all but shouted the words and I flinched. I didn’t want the Sergeant to hear an outcry and try the door.
“No, Thayer.” I said it quietly. My hopes for a sane resolution died. The man had no sanity in him. Now all that mattered was freeing Amzil and getting her safely away. Abruptly, I was aware of time passing. Surely the Sergeant would soon expect the Captain to appear and dismiss him from his duties for the night. Time to put an end to this charade. I took a breath, steadied myself, and edged closer to him. I tried to keep my voice reasonable while my heart pumped hatred for the man. “You don’t need to be punished. No one needs to be punished any more than they have been. You were a man drilled hollow with grief. You weren’t yourself that night, when you said and did those things. And you didn’t do what you think you did. You didn’t kill me. You see me, don’t you? I’m right here. You don’t need to be punished. And I think you know that Amzil killed that fellow in self-defense, of herself and her children. She doesn’t deserve to hang for it.” I spoke quietly, calmingly, easing closer to him as I did so. I wanted to leap on him and throttle him, but even more than that, I reminded myself, I wanted to get the keys from him and get to Amzil’s cell without him raising any sort of an alarm.
“Oh, no. She deserves to be punished, too. She’s a whore. She can deny it, but she’s a whore. She…it was her fault. I went out there once, to Dead Town. She said she wasn’t a whore, but she was. She was.” He was nodding to himself now. My mind was trying to take in what he had just said. My head spun with what he had just admitted. No wonder Amzil had hated him so. As if either she or I had needed more reason.
He pointed an accusing finger at me. “She was a whore. And you were a murderer. And my wife was a slut!” His voice rose to a near shout on the last word. Then he dropped to a hoarse whisper as he retreated toward the fireplace. “And you all made me do bad things. And all of us have to be punished now!”
“You’re insane!” I said. I tried to draw my saber from its scabbard. The notched old blade hung up on the tattered leather. I jerked at it, and the scabbarded weapon came loose from the worn belt. And then he spun, snatched up the fireplace poker from its rack, and rushed at me with it raised over his head. I tried to block the descending poker, but only succeeded in softening the blow. It hit me on the collarbone, and I muffled my cry of pain. Must not alarm the Sergeant outside. The descending poker rolled off my shoulder and down. I caught hold of the end of it as it passed and rammed the handle of it into the center of Thayer’s chest. He gasped with pain and his eyes bulged. I dropped my useless weapon and grappled with him. Foolishly he chose to hang on to the poker. I hugged him tight, not giving him enough room to swing it again.
His teeth were bared like an animal’s and there was no human intelligence in his eyes. He snapped at my face. I jerked my head back and then slammed it forward, crashing my forehead into his. I saw stars and he managed to get another short flailing swing in with his poker. It hit my hip. I was taller than he was. Hugging him, I managed to lift him off the floor and then threw my weight against him. We slammed to the uncarpeted floor together, and I was sure we made quite a loud thud. I had to finish this quickly before the Sergeant came in. I grabbed the man by his collar, sat up on top of him, and slammed the back of his head, hard, against the edge of the hearth. For an instant, his eyes unfocused. Then his hands darted to my throat. I tucked my head down tight to my shoulders, and while he struggled for a grip, I bashed his head against the stones again.
The third time, his head smacked wetly when it hit the masonry. Suddenly he was boneless, limp beneath me. His eyeballs jiggled in their sockets. I felt queasy, but forced myself to keep my grip on his collar. I would not be tricked. His head turned to one side. He made a peculiar sound. His eyes were open, his mouth lax.
I was shaking as I climbed off him and stood up. Blood was spreading slowly from under his head. Was he dead? Had I killed him? I didn’t care. I dropped hastily to one knee and rifled his pockets. The ring of keys, heavy brass ones, were exactly where I thought they would be. I took them.
I wanted to flee. I knew I must not. I stood, caught my breath, smoothed my hair, and recovered my hat from the floor. I straightened my jacket. Then I stepped to the desk. I gathered up all the love letters I’d written to Carsina, and my sister’s two letters to her. I picked up my enlistment papers, and the vicious little note my father had sent. I refused to read it. I glanced in the desk drawer where he’d kept them. A medicinal smell rose from it. There were no more papers in the drawer, only two empty bottles, a half-full one, and a large sticky spoon. Gettys Tonic. I took the letters to the fire and dropped them in, one at a time, stirring them with the poker until I was sure that every page was burning well. Then I carefully put the poker back in its stand.
I glanced at the Captain. He hadn’t moved. As I stared at him, his chest lifted slightly. Still alive, then. I recovered my useless saber, shoved it fully into its sheath, wedged it inside my sword belt, and hoped it would pass a cursory inspection. Soundlessly I walked to the door and unlocked it. Then I moved back to Thayer’s side. His eyes had sagged shut. I took a deep breath and dropped to my knees beside him.
“Oh, no! What’s wrong! Captain Thayer, what’s wrong, what’s wrong!” I raised my voice even louder. “Sergeant! Sergeant, come quickly! Something terrible has happened.”
No one came. I sprang up, went to the door, and jerked it open. The Sergeant was just coming back in from outside. He gave me a guilty look. He smelled of strong, cheap tobacco. I flapped my hands and babbled at him. “He said he didn’t feel well. Then he gave a sort of a twitch, and his mouth started working. And he fell to the floor and started jerking! Sergeant, I’ve been calling you and calling you! The Captain has had some sort of fit! He’s fallen and struck his head. He won’t speak to me!”
As the man rushed past me to look in on his fallen commander, I shouted, “I’ll get a doctor. Don’t leave him alone! He might choke. Which way is the infirmary?”
“Down the street to your right! Hurry, man!” he shouted over his shoulder.
I ran out of the building, slamming the door behind me, and turned left, toward the jail. The street was mostly dark. Light leaked from some windows, and lanterns burned outside the entry to a barracks. I ran in and out of that pool of light as soundlessly as I could, wondering if my wild tale had been foolish or bought myself more time. The Sergeant would stay with the Captain for some time, assuming help was coming soon. When no one arrived, eventually he would go to the door and shout for help or perhaps run for the doctor himself. This time of night, most likely the doctor would have to be roused from his bed. It would be some time before anyone had leisure to wonder what had become of the Captain’s late-night visitor. I reached the jail. I paused and caught my breath. My imagination peopled every shadow in the dimly lit street with crouched figures. Nonsense. Focus on the real danger. There would be two of them. Some element of surprise would help. I stood in the dark, calming my breathing and trying to create a story for why I was there with the keys. I couldn’t think of one and time was trickling away from me.
I went silently down the stone steps. This door would open onto the cell level. My hands shook as I felt for the keyhole in the dark. There were four keys. The third one turned the mechanism with a sharp “clack.” I froze, listening. Nothing. No. A voice, muffled by distance or a closed door, inside the building. A man’s voice. I opened the door, eased through, and shut it behind me. I was in a stone-flagged hallway, one I remembered too well. A single lantern burned on a hook, yielding dim illumination. The cell doors that opened off it were staggered. Each had a small barred window at eye level, and a slot for a meal tray at the bottom. I went past the cell that had been mine without looking inside it. She wouldn’t be here. Spink had said she was in a “punishment” cell, one without a window.
I passed six cells and came to a second door. It, too, was locked. Luck gave me the correct key the first time. I turned it in the lock, then I pressed my ear to the door. The man’s voice was louder, a droning monotone. There was no window in the door. Stronger light spilled in a puddle from under it. I took a breath, unsheathed my sword, and opened the door.
Another hall, this one lit by a succession of lanterns on wall hooks.
At the end of that hall, a door was ajar. Light and the man’s voice were spilling out of it. I listened a moment. Was he singing? No, reciting something, over and over. I moved stealthily closer. I was halfway down the hallway before I recognized it.
It was the same night prayer my mother had taught me. The man was repeating it over and over in a horrid, breathless way that spoke of fear beyond measure. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Swift and silent as a plains cat, I padded down the hall and then peered around the edge of the door.
It took me a few moments to make sense of what I saw there. There was a small guardroom with a table and two chairs, and beyond it, a locked door. One guard sat at the table, his head slumped forward on his chest. The other sat stiffly in his chair, laced up to attention. He was the one speaking, saying his hopeless, helpless little prayer over and over. Every surface in the room, the walls, the floor, the tabletop, the guards themselves were netted over with pale white root. The only parts of the room innocent of the spreading filaments were the iron hinges and reinforcements of the door. As I watched, a network of rhizomes worked its way up over the slumped guard, as if spinning him a shroud of white lace. It sank into him as it worked, tattooing his clothing to his flesh as it dug into him as ivy digs into a stone wall. He was definitely dead.
But the other guard was as emphatically alive. His arms were bound to his sides with roots and his legs were clenched tight together with them. I wondered how they could have both been overcome so quickly and so thoroughly, and then didn’t want to know if the roots could truly grow that fast. The man looking at me gave a sudden squeal and then said, “Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god!” In horror, I watched as the roots began to thread themselves into his ears. He squealed again, and then abruptly the noise stopped. The guard suddenly spoke in a very calm voice. “He says he does what you should have done before you left the town that night. And she says, she says, she says she wants all of you, she always wanted all of you, that she wept when the old god stole parts of you away. Come to the tree outside, she says, and she will gently take you in.”
He spoke conversationally, in such a rational voice that I answered him the same way. “I don’t want to come to you, Lisana. I want Amzil. And as much of my own life as is left to me.”
The man did not speak again. He made a gargling sound and then shook his head back and forth in a sudden, vigorous negative. His mouth opened, and a wet wad of bloody root spilled from it to cascade down his chest.
And from the other side of the locked door, I heard a woman give a muffled scream.
“Amzil!” I cried, but I doubt that she heard me. In the instant of silence that followed my horrified shout, I heard a small voice behind me.
“Mummy?” Kara asked in a terrified whisper. I whirled. She stood behind me, staring in horror at the root-wrapped men. She wore only a short white nightshirt, and she was barefoot. Where had she come from?
“Get back!” I bellowed at her. “Don’t let the roots touch you, Kara. Get back!” I swung my gaze back to the small room. “Get out of my way, Lisana. I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m coming through!” I touched my bared sword to the stone floor. I pushed it into the room, and the tiny tender roots that webbed the floor parted and writhed back from the deadly touch of the iron. A stouter one resisted, but then parted with a snap and curled back on itself. Panting fear, I trod the narrow path my blade created. The small room seemed to stretch a mile. I reached the door and had to free my right hand to try a key. It didn’t work.
“Mummy? Is she in there?”
I glanced back. Kara had returned to the doorway. I silently cursed whatever moron had let the child escape supervision. Why had she come? How had she gotten here? But there was no time to even think of that. The rootlets were webbing across the floor behind me, obscuring my path, and creeping out the door of the chamber toward the child. “Kara, get back!” I roared at her. “Stay away from this room! I’ll bring your mum to you, but you must stay back!”
She gave a wail of fear and anger at my angry response. She retreated, but I feared it was only a few steps. I turned away from her and shoved the second key in the lock. It fit, but would not turn. Something tugged at my boot. I looked down to see roots creeping across the leather toe. I could feel the tiny invasions as it thrust little anchors into my boots. I ripped my boots free of it, stamped my feet angrily, and then tried the third key. It wouldn’t go in. Neither would the fourth. I didn’t have the key! And on the other side of the door, I could hear Amzil wailing. “I’m coming. Amzil, I’m here, I’m coming!” I shouted through the thick wood at her, but could not tell if she heard me.
I slashed again at the creeping roots, and the smaller ones fell away as before. But some of the webbing was thicker and stronger now and it did not yield. I started through the keys again in desperation. As before, only the second one would fit the lock. I shoved and rattled it and then, inspired, pulled the key out a tiny bit and turned it again. It gave. I pulled the iron lock free of the hasp and furiously threw it on the floor behind me. It landed on the roots and they retreated from it as if I’d thrown a hot cup of water on thin ice.
I pulled at the handle of the door, but it did not budge. The roots that had flowed across the edges of the wooden planks held it fast. I screamed in fury and slashed at them with the blade. Behind me I heard Kara’s voice again. “Nevare, will they kill her? Are the strings eating her?”
“Get back!” I roared at her again, and with a mighty wrench, I tore the door open.
The revealed chamber was no bigger than a cabinet, forcing the occupant to choose between standing and crouching, and it reeked of old urine and fear. Amzil screamed as the door opened. She was pressed into the corner of the tiny chamber, dancing to keep her feet free of the questing roots. Tiny wounds on her legs were bleeding and the little white roots wriggled happily as the drops of blood fell on them.
“To me!” I roared at her, as if I were rallying my troops for a charge. “Amzil! To me!”
I do not think she recognized me, but she leapt, first to my arms and then swarming up to my shoulders. She was making terrible little panting cries that changed to a shriek of horror when we both heard a little voice crying, “Mummy! Mummy, help me! Nevare, help, help!”
I tried to turn. I could not. My feet were laced to the floor and I roared in fury as the little roots penetrated the leather and bit into my flesh. I pivoted and saw little Kara, shrieking at a root that had wrapped her thin, bare leg. The pallid white tendril suddenly flushed pink. “Save her!” I yelled at Amzil, and tore the woman I loved from my back to hurl her across the small chamber. She landed on the writhing mat of roots, yelped in fear, and levitated like a cat on a hot stove. She did not appear to touch the ground as she flew across the room and out of the door to Kara. I dragged at my feet but my boots were held firm. I felt the roots as little white worms that burrowed into my flesh. I slashed at them but I had stood still too long. The roots had grown thicker. The iron scored but did not part them.
“Kara! Kara!” Amzil cried. She was dragging at her daughter, but the root only wrapped around her leg more tightly, biting into the child’s meager flesh.
“Cut her free!” I roared and threw her the saber. I saw her catch it by the blade and cry out as it cut her fingers, but then she turned it, seized the hilt, and flailed at the greedy root that gripped her child as if she were whipping the floor with the blade. In my mind, I heard an exclamation of pain as the root parted.
And then I heard Soldier’s Boy, speaking very clearly inside me. “She wants you. I’ve no idea why. I think I am better off without you. But Lisana wants you to be part of us, and so she shall have you. Come to us, Nevare.”
“No!” I said, and somewhere a woman’s voice echoed that word in dismay. But my own utterance had no strength. The little roots that had penetrated my boots were worming into my feet, drawing off my blood and my will. Would it be so bad? I’d be one again, whole, and with a woman I loved, a woman who loved me. We’d live a very long time. Wasn’t that what I had wanted? I would have peace.
“It will all be all right,” Lisana’s voice said quietly. A soft lethargy had begun to creep through me. “The child will take the woman to where she must go. They’ll flee together. And you’ll come back to me. It will be an end to all that has divided you, an end to living a false life. You’ll be where you belong. Where you have always belonged.”
I lifted my eyes to Amzil. She stood half a dozen steps from the door, Kara in her arms, the sword in her hand. “Run!” she shouted at me. “Pull your feet out of your boots and run!”
“I can’t. It has me.” I found I could smile. “You go, Amzil. Find a better life. Kara knows where the horse and cart are. Epiny loaded it for you. Flee. Don’t stop in Dead Town. They’ll look for you there. Get well away from town and then hide in the forest. It’s not as dangerous now! Go!”
“No!” she screamed at me. She slashed at the roots crawling toward her, and they fell back, but that was no help to me. Shrieking in frustration, she snatched up her child and ran. I watched them go, heard the slap of her feet down the stone-flagged hall and felt the little roots in my feet dig deeper. It was done. I’d salvaged what I could from my old life and now it was time to let it go. I resolved not to scream.
But an instant later, scream I did as flames engulfed the room. Amzil sent a second lantern crashing to the floor to follow the first. That one broke, the oil splashing my boots and trouser legs. The hungry flames leapt up to follow the splattered oil. “Now run, you great idiot!” Amzil yelled at me. She came into the room, through the flames, whipping the saber’s blade against the floor. Roots scorched and writhed and I heard Soldier’s Boy shout angrily.
Ignoring flames and wriggling roots, Amzil clashed the blade again and again on the floor, working in a circle around me and literally chopping me free of the roots that gripped me. As she worked, she kicked at roots that squirmed and crawled toward her own lightly shod feet. I lifted my feet and like a chained dog strained against the final tethers that held me. Soldier’s Boy’s angry roar in my mind was abruptly silenced as a wild slice of the blade severed the last root. The oil-fed flames were licking up the walls and leaping at Amzil’s skirts. The burning carpet of roots made a choking smoke. Kara had come back to the door. “Come out of there!” she shrieked at us, and hurled another lantern into the flames. As it shattered, the fire roared and leapt higher. I snatched Amzil up and held her above the flames. We fled. The hall before us was dark, lit only by the dancing flames behind us. As I passed Kara, I tried to grab her by the arm. The child was faster. She swarmed up me like a little monkey and clung to her mother. I scarcely felt her added weight as I ran down the hall.
Fire fears no magic, I thought. I glanced back once. Smoke was roiling toward us. The timbers of the ceiling were starting to kindle. I opened the door, ducked through it with my burdens, and then closed it quickly behind me. We were outside now, but still mostly concealed in the stairwell that led to the lower cells. Amzil slid from my arms to stand on her own. Kara was weeping, her shoulders shaking in terror. “Hush now,” I had to tell her. “We must go quietly.”
The streets of Gettys seemed unnaturally dark to our fire-dazzled eyes. The door to the headquarters building was ajar and light spilled from it. We crept from the stairwell. Amzil started to go down the alley. I seized her hand and led her in the other direction. I did not want to pass the tree. We walked quickly, quietly, and turned off the main street as soon as we could. “We’ll have to make our way to a gate from here,” I told them. “And we’ll have to go quietly and unseen.”
Kara suddenly ceased her muffled sobbing. In a thick little voice, she said, “The east gate. That’s where I sneaked in. He goes behind his sentry box to drink. Everyone knows that. He smells like Gettys Tonic.”
The child was right.
Once we were outside the walls of the fort, we limped through the deserted streets of Gettys Town. My feet were in agony and Amzil’s little better. I wanted to carry Kara, but Amzil would not let go of her daughter. As we turned toward the cottage on the outskirts of town where the other children and the cart awaited us, I asked Amzil quietly, “When did you recognize me?”
“Kara was calling you by name. But I think I knew it was you when you threw me across the room and then flung a sword at me.”
“Why?”
“It was the look in your eyes. I don’t know how you can be here, or even how you can be Nevare. But I’m glad.”
I knew it would be a foolish time to try and kiss her, and wasn’t sure how she would react if I’d tried to embrace her in front of her daughter. So we walked a while in silence before she suddenly exclaimed in annoyance. “Must I do everything?” she demanded of the night, and then seized my hand so that I had to turn to face her. She pushed in close against my chest and I held them, mother and daughter. I kissed the top of Amzil’s bent head. She smelled of lamp oil and smoke. It was a heady fragrance. She turned her face up to mine. I bent to kiss her.
Kara squirmed between us. “We have to hurry,” she told us. “We have to get Sem and Dia from that mean woman.”
“What mean woman?” I demanded, suddenly afraid.
“While the missus was there, she was nice. And she wasn’t mean until Dia started crying and wouldn’t stop and that made her baby wake up. She scolded Dia and Sem told her to leave our little sister alone. And then she called Sem a whore’s son and said about…said about Mummy deserving what she’d get, that she was going to hang tomorrow and was in jail tonight and we’d be orphans and that if the missus had half a thought in her brainless head, she’d turn us out into the streets.”
“That bitch,” Amzil said with great feeling.
“Yes,” agreed Kara. “So that was when I knew I had to come back for you. And I took Sem aside and told him to obey her, so I could creep out after dark. And I told him to get Dia and our things into the cart after I left. I told him to keep Dia quiet, and to move the cart farther from that woman’s house.”
“He’s too small,” I protested, but Kara calmly replied, “You’d be surprised what Sem can do when he wants to do it. He’s very determined. And he’s helped the missus harness the horse to the cart before.”
She was right. When we reached the cottage, all the lights were out. All seemed peaceful there. If the woman knew her charges had escaped, she did not care. Kara confidently led us past the cottage, and just beyond a shambles of a barn, Sem sat on the seat of the cart, holding the reins. Little Dia was sound asleep in the bed of the wagon. Kara and Amzil wearily climbed into the back of it and joined her. I mounted the seat and sat down behind Sem. “Let’s go,” I told the boy.
“You want to drive?” he asked me, offering up the reins.
“Only if you think you can’t handle it,” I told him.
He slapped the reins on the nag’s back and we rattled off into the night.