Carrying bodies never got easier.
The heaviness that sagged in my arms, the dullness that ached from no spark of life, no tautness of muscle. Like a sack of grain. That was what our bodies were reduced to.
I shifted the woman’s weight as I walked, Kiera a vigilant shadow at my side. I’d nearly reprimanded her when she’d kicked that bottle earlier. Clumsiness got one killed.
But now she glared into every dark corner we passed, as if every shadow held an assassin. Her hands never strayed from my knives in her belt. I’d noticed how she seemed to reach for unseen weapons out of habit. What weapons did her fingers miss?
This was the first time I’d seen her the way she must’ve been before we met. A guard. Someone trained to notice everything, to be prepared for anything. A tightly pulled bow string ready to spring into action.
But I could also see the fear and the horror of what had happened pulling her shoulders tight, her spine straight. The wildness in her eyes when the woman died. It pierced a part of me that had long since grown numb.
Maybe that was why I’d handed her my knives. Because, for the moment, I finally, fully believed every word she said. But these moments would run dry, like a deserted well. Trust rarely lasted. As anything did.
I glanced down at the pale woman in my arms.
Too many bodies . . .
We didn’t speak a word until we reached Floren’s dwelling. Kiera read the carved sign above the door.
“A pyrist? Won’t he ask questions?”
“His business is burning the dead, not how they got there.”
Kiera’s lips pressed in a grim line, but she knocked on the door.
Within moments, Floren opened it, his bald head shiny with sweat. He glanced at the body in my arms and sighed. “I was about to catch a wink, but I suppose I can do one more.”
“Busy night?” Kiera gritted out.
Floren barely spared her a glance, ushering me inside. “Not terribly. But I do think I’m coming down with a malaise.”
I gently laid the woman on the table he gestured to. “Shall I ask Sophie for a tea, Floren?”
He sniffed. “That would be lovely, thank you. Now put those young muscles of yours to use and stoke the fire.”
I obliged, skirting around Kiera who was eyeing Floren the way a falcon would a mouse. The “pyre” wasn’t much more than a stone furnace, built to hold several bodies at once. He had baskets of wood and skins of oil to feed the fire and a large barrel to sweep the ashes into.
For the luckier folks who had families around to care, they would take their loved one’s ashes and release them to the sea, the air, or the earth with prayers that the gods would find their souls.
Everything given must be returned. Everything lost must be found.
The reason I came to Floren was because he had a kind heart, never turned a body away, and, when his barrel of ashes was full, he would bring it to the sea. The lonely and the forgotten drifted home on his small mercy.
I tossed wood into the slumbering fire and sprinkled oil to speed the flames.
“She’s ready,” Floren announced.
He had washed the blood from her skin and coated it and her hair with flower-scented oil. He was the only pyrist I knew who did that. When I’d asked him about it, he’d simply said, “It smells sweeter than death.”
“This feels wrong,” Kiera whispered as we stood around the woman’s prepared body.
My fingers twitched, as if to reach for hers, but I curled them into a fist instead. “It’s the best we can do.”
Kiera didn’t take her eyes off the woman. “What’s her name? What if she had more family? What if?—”
“She said her brother was all she had. And we can’t drag her body around, asking for details. Her brother, if he’s still alive, would thank us for this.”
“Thank us, yes.” She laughed bitterly. She hesitantly grasped the woman’s hand and squeezed once. “I suppose if she were my sister, I’d want the same. If all I could hope for was a fast fire and the prayers of strangers, then it’s better than nothing.” She backed away from the table. “Do it.”
