He pondered for a moment before replying. “They stole from me, too. It’s nothing I can get back but, if I can help you…” His head bobbed in a slow nod. “Maybe I’ll finally have some peace.”
The journal lay open in my lap, its pages lined with endless words. Rites, and brands, and body stealing swirled through my ale-addled brain… It was overwhelming.
But I couldn’t turn back now. I owed this to my mother. To Sayla. Even to Merrick. I owed it to myself. To prove that I could do something right for a change. That I was capable of more than walking mindlessly behind a plow for the rest of my life.
“What’s the second Oath?” I asked.
Kit expelled a long breath. “A sacrifice of bones.” The vague phrasing clearly meant something to him, but I was puzzled until he elaborated. “A body. Like your father’s.”
The thought stalled me. “You think someone took my father for their initiation rites?”
He nodded. “The Bone Men are always looking for tributes to Eeus. Any they can find, and they were sparse thirteen years ago. Must be damn near impossible to find one now.”
I swallowed, tasting acid in the back of my throat. “What about the third Oath?”
Kit sighed and plucked the book from my grasp. “On second thought, perhaps youarebetter left with questions than answers. No sense getting stirred up about an unlikely future.” Standing, he tossed the tome onto the coffee table where it landed with a heavy thud. “Wash up. I’ll make coffee and get something to clean that.” His parting nod at the vomit on the rug made me blush.
Sounds from the kitchen filled the void of Kit’s absence. Leaning forward, I peered around the doorframe to watch him fill a metal pitcher at the sink.
Only a handful of seconds passed before my attention fell to the journals. Pitching farther forward on the sagging sofa cushions made my stomach lurch, and I stilled, swallowing carefully before grabbing the book and resting itatop my thighs. I opened the crusty leather cover and flipped to the page where I’d left off.
It is such a small thingto wear the mark of Eeus, to have his image burned into my flesh. The pain reminds me that to live for Eeus is to live a life of suffering. We have become so overcome with decadence and greed that we have forgotten that the basis of existence is adversity. There is no life without death, no light without darkness. The scales of this world have been tipped too long and too far in the direction of abundance. We have forgotten the humility and humanity that times of scarcity bring.
I will not allow Kit to grow in a world that hides him away from pain. No son of mine will be spared the suffering that forges a boy into a man.
Son?
Then this wasn’tKit’sjournal, but his father’s.
I read the last line again.
No son of mine will be spared the suffering that forges a boy into a man.
My parents never sparedmefrom the consequences of my actions. Experience was, after all, the best teacher. I’d learned plenty from broken arms and bruised knees, but somehow, I doubted that was the kind of pain Kit’s father had in mind.
The smell of coffee brewing wafted to my nose as I resumed reading.
I will not allow the rot and decay of abundance to taint him. He will grow into a man who knows full well the struggle and pain that make life worth living. With any luck, Eeus will be walking this plane again before he grows old enough to have sons of his own. If only my wife might have seen us then… But her death is what brought me back to the darkness and out of the light. Her death is what reminded me that, without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without death, there can be no life.
Kit, the son of a Bone Man. Kit, whose father wished him pain and scarcity in the name of a depraved god.
Kit, who lost his mother.
Sorrow hung heavily over me as I read on.
All is as Eeus wills it. We will meet again when I take my last breath, and we will spend eternity together in the fields of the afterlife. We will be heroes known throughout the land, the faithful followers of the almighty Eeus, the Great Equalizer, the Balancer. All will bow before us.
I jerked in surprise when Kit set a steaming mug of coffee in front of me.
“I thought I told you to wash up.” He dropped a towel to cover the vomit on the rug.
“He was your father.” It felt more profound than it sounded out loud.
As Kit settled onto the sofa, breath eased out of him like the air seeping from the cushion seams. “He was a lot of things,” he muttered.
I took the coffee for a sip and found it scalding. Muscling through a painful swallow, I set the mug back in a bare spot on the table.
“What happened to him?” I asked in the silence. “Your father?”
