My dear friend is dead because of me, and it’s unbearable that her hand is still warm as I take it in my own. “I’m so sorry…”
The tin cup with the herbs I served to her this morning is crushed on the floor, some heavy boot nailing the thin metal flat on the floorboards. They think I’ve been working black magic on her. They slaughtered her to ward off evil, and also because they just want to kill and couldn’t find me. Yet.
“It was not supposed to… end like this.”
She was so frail, she wasn’t a threat to anybody. She was going to die peacefully, fading away from old age. Not in this manner, brutally sacrificed like an animal to the superstition of villagers who know nothing of true magic.
And if I’d left this morning when she told me to, none of this would have happened.
A surprisingly gentle hand rests on my shoulder. “You are not safe here.”
I wipe my face under the hood and know that the cleansing ritual is only halfway done. To finish the job, they have to cut her arms and legs off, lay her torso face down with the limbs running to the cardinal compass points, and light the rest of her on fire.
They will be back when they can’t find me at the Gauntlet.
“But I can’t leave her here like this—”
“You have no choice.”
Outside, villagers run by, their torches flaring in the cloudy windows.
“She is dead,” the mercenary says more forcefully. “There’s nothing you can do for her now. But you can save yourself.”
“I’m to blame—”
“Are those your daggers?” He jabs a finger at the body. “No? Then you are not to blame. Comeon.”
He pulls me to my feet and all but drags me over to the door. I’m almost at the threshold when I slip out of his hold and race back for the shelves. I find the seam by feel alone, release the latch, and push my hand inside the hidden compartment. Taking out the velvet bag, I tuck the weight of the royal coins into the pocket of my cloak, and take one last glance back at the bed.
“I can’t leave her.”
I say this as I’m returning to him, and I only know we’re outside again when the cold hits my slippered feet and bare hands. He leads me back into the alley, and as we get into the shadows, he’s talking to me as we go. I can’t hear him and have to stop.
Wrenching over, I gag as my stomach attempts to evacuate itself, but there’s no food in me to throw up. The next thing I know, I’m arguing with him, even though I don’t know what we’re going on about.
“—at the Gauntlet. Imust,” I hear myself saying.
“You’re determined to make this difficult, aren’t you.”
And yet he takes me forward in the direction of the pub, leading with his body. We go quite a distance, using crisscrossing side lanes to stay out of sight, before I realize he’s got a dagger in each hand. As I catch a glance at another couple of men thumping down the main thoroughfare with torches held high, their meaty faces red and twisted with rage, I don’t want to be in this mercenary’s world—
I stop again, and he doesn’t notice. He keeps going.
Backing up against the side of a row house, I hang my head and struggle for breath, thinking of all the bairns I saved, all those little gray bodies I brought back to life by something I’ve never understood. Then I think of what they did to Mare.
What if they decide to kill everybody I’ve helped?
The mercenary’s in front of me once again, his heavy boots like a pair of boulders on the cobblestones. “What’re you doing—”
“I have to go turn myself in.” I shudder, waves of fear swamping me. “If they don’t kill me and cleanse the village, they’ll go after the bairns I’ve attended to on the birthing bed—”
“Are you mad?” he snaps.
I picture all the children I’ve brought back, at the ages they are now, and see them just like Mare, their eyes, mouths, and guts pierced by knives, their hearts and lungs taken out and burned, their bodies laid out in the market square for another bonfire. The smoke that will rise from their mangled corpses is supposed to be a sign that the cleansing has worked, the black magic is gone.
“You don’t understand what I’ve done,” I say. “All those families… they’re going to kill the children unless—”
“You really think this is about you?” His voice is strident. “All that mob wants is a target for their fear. I don’t know what you’ve done with their offspring, but they’re not going to hurt their own. They’re after you because you don’t matter, and the same is true with your friend back there. Both of you are nothing, so you’re an easy sacrifice.”
