I’ve always felt as though I had to hide, and not just because of that voice in my head or all the things I’ve done in my village in secret. There was another level to it, I’ve just never bothered to look into why—and I don’t have the answer for that now. But I am clear that I’m done. I’m tired of suffocating under fabric, especially as we head off into a territory where no one knows me or what I can do.
And if Merc thinks I’m that hard to look at, then his eyes can go elsewhere.
Winding my arms around my steep-angled legs, I let the piece of turban fall back to the floor.
“Where did you go?” I ask.
“I do rounds to ensure our safety.” Now, his tone goes dry: “Such as it is.Go to sleep. We have about three more hours before the sun’s up, and we’d be wise to head off as soon as we can see properly. I’d like to enter the Badlands in broad daylight and we’re still hours away.”
There’s a determined exhale, and I don’t know whether it’s about continuing the journey before us, or him trying to follow his own order to sleep.
“Stop thinking,” he says.
“You cannot read my mind,” I snap. “And I’m not thinking of anything.”
A grunt comes back at me. “Sleep…”
There’s another word after that one, spoken so softly, it barely travels. Yet my ears in all their straining hear it well enough.
Woman, he calls me.
Thirty-OneA Harvest of Sorrow.
When I wake up again, the morning has finally arrived. All of the windows and doors leak threads of the dawn’s light, the closed shutters not nearly as tightly fit as I thought. Merc and the horse are gone, but his pack and his leather surcoat are by the door next to the saddle, so I know he hasn’t left me.
Or at least… I can’t imagine he’d leave without so much of his gear.
Rubbing my eyes, I get to my feet and stretch, my bones realigning themselves in a series of pops and snaps. As I look around, my face registers the subtle currents of the drafts in the room, and it feels good for my nose to be unfettered, my eyes to be unobstructed, my skin to feel the air, even with all the ash. When I bring up my hand to brush some wisps of hair back, another part of the turban unwinds, and on reflex, I start to pull the length over my forehead and nose.
I stop myself. And tuck the soft fabric back into the twist from which it came.
Then I go for the door, following the path of footfalls in the soot made by Merc going in and out during the night.
With the early daylight coming in so many kinds of gaps, it’s impossible not to properly notice the overturned chairs, the dishes that are broken, the things that have been scattered around. Whoever owns—or owned—this house left in a hurry, which is what one would do when a fire has broken out in your neighbors’ places and you want to save as much as you can of your things. Even though I don’t know the people, I picture the merchants who traveled to my village, and pray they’re okay.
A gust of wind blows against the house, whistling through the seams, and making the shutters vibrate against their—
One of them rips open, and light pours in.
The massive blood splatter is to the left of the doorway, under the window.
Most of it’s on the floor, but there’s a splash up the wall that speckles the glass panes… as if someone with many injuries was thrown there on a surge of great violence. Most of the stain is brown, indicating that a number of days have passed since the incident, but what marks the window remains a brilliant, bracing red.
Fates, that was a tremendous amount of blood. And with a feeling of piercing dread, I pivot around—
My hand rises to my mouth and locks on. There’s another stain over by the hearth, big as a puddle in a lane after it’s rained for nearly a week.
Right where I’ve been sitting all night long.
With a feeling of foreboding, I walk over to the stairs to the second floor. I fear what I’ll see up there, yet I can’t stop my feet as they mount the creaking, soot-dusted steps. Rounding the rough-hewn bannister, I look across an open, raftered space that’s streaming with sunshine. Another set of shutters has blown open… so the rust-stained quilts on the tiny bed and even smaller crib are cruelly visible.
The parents were killed downstairs. The children up here.
Did they hear their mother and father fighting off the intruders? The breaking of furniture and the scattering of things down below?
Squeezing my eyes shut, I moan in the back of my throat, and my descent back down the stairs is a trip and fall that nearly lands me on my head. With a shuddering shamble, I bolt out the door—
The ruination from the fire overwhelms me.
