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The Bajuman - One
My eyes were burning again, so I sucked in another lungful of ants. As ever, the sensation was only unpleasant for the first few heartbeats. Then the ants stopped scuttling, my eyes stopped burning, and all the bad parts of my life faded away.
I liked to let the rush guide itself. I closed my eyes and saw things that had never happened play out across my crimson vision. The familiar sense of unbelonging faded, and everyone who walked the streets outside was aware of me, my place in the world, my worth. The knife wound in my left thigh from several years ago ceased aching. Gone was the time I sat and watched my father dying from the grot-plague, and here was an image of the two of us beside a lake on the Cantrass Plains; we were fishing and laughing, and he loved and respected me then as he never had for real. My eyelids lightened as the sun emerged from behind a cloud, and as the effect of the ants' dying breaths began to fade, my father's eyes turned black and his skin began to pale.
"Bajuman! Someone to see you."
I groaned and sat up, wiping a couple of rogue ants from my chin. Shelya saw – she always saw – but she grunted and looked away, and left the door to my room open as she descended the creaking stairs. She saw, but she didn't care.
I made sure the lid was screwed tightly onto the ant pot, gauze in place to allow them to breathe. I'd dropped a grub in yesterday and they were still working at it, slicing off parts of its body, slicing again, reducing their food to mouth sized chunks. I thought the grub moved slightly, though it could have been the vibration as I swung off the bed.
I held my head. It hurt. Two bottles of rotwine and an evening of gush ants would do that to a person.
"Who is it?" I called. I heard a pause in the movement from below, but Shelya did not reply. My rent money was good enough for her, but she only spoke to me if it was absolutely necessary. The pause ended and the rattle of bottles began again. There would be people in her small tavern again tonight, drinking and eating and telling each other that someone else was dead. I often sat up here and listened. Information was a large part of my job, and the realisation that these people actually seemed to miss the trials and horrors of the Great Plagues made me feel better about myself. I'd spent many years coming to terms with the fact that I was as good as anyone, and better than some, but being Bajuman left its scar.
I felt a tickling on my cheek and plucked the last ant from my skin. It struggled between my fingers, waving its antennae at the air, and I studied it closely. Strange, that a little creature like this could have such an effect. I placed it on my tongue and closed my mouth.
My room was small and functional, but comfortable enough to call home. A bed, a cupboard for my clothes and shoes, a chair and desk, a small shelf piled with books, and a partitioned area in the corner for toilet and washing. I had an old rug on the floor supposedly woven by Cantrass Angels – payment from one of my clients – and though threadbare and dusty, it retained its brilliant colours as though made only yesterday. It gave the grey room a much-needed vibrancy. I stood on the rug and dressed, hiding my knives, short sword and crossbow beneath my long coat. Then I closed my eyes and sighed, trying to forget the gush ants and ready myself for cruel reality.
Someone to see you, Shelya had said. None of my few friends ever visited me here. Which meant that this was either a new client seeking my services, or someone come to kill me.
* * *
I went down the narrow back stairs, passed Shelya in the kitchen – she didn't even acknowledge me – and slipped from the back door. Something squealed and scurried away along the alley. Something else growled and chomped, and the squeal ended.
The alley stank, and it wasn't much better when I emerged onto the main street. I looked left and right, trying to spot shapes hiding in shadows, but I saw only the usual whores and dealers. I nodded a brief greeting to some. A man ran by, hands flapping around his head, and I closed my hand around my sword's handle. But no one and nothing followed.
I turned right and leaned close to the first window of Shelya's tavern. The place had no name, but the small sign above her front door told everyone what they needed to know. It showed a splayed hand with the middle finger missing, fingertips painted red. Come here to drink, but bring your own mugs. It was an ironic dig against the militia who, until the Great Plagues had faded to an end a couple of years before, had cut a finger from anyone found sharing drinking vessels in taverns or food halls. Having endured the last of the Plagues, many people now struggled to survive with only a finger or two on each hand.
There was only one person in the tavern. The woman sat at a table with her back to the door. She wore a heavy leather coat, hood lined with a type of fur I'd never seen before, and as she closed a hand around her glass I saw gems twinkling on her fingers. So, she had money. One good sign. If she was a client she could pay, and it was usually only people as low as, or lower than me who would bother to want me dead. One of the few blessings of being Bajuman.
The woman drained her glass of rotwine and refilled it from the bottle Shelya had left. I was tempted to wait here and watch this woman get drunk, but something told me I'd be waiting a long time. I was sure she could afford much better that rotwine, but she seemed to be enjoying the rancid drink nonetheless.
I opened the door and barged in, hand hovering low so that I could pull a knife if needed. "Does that fucking Bajuman live here?" I roared. The woman turned in her seat, eyes wide and scared, and I stared her down.
Shelya dashed from the kitchen hefting a carving knife, but her shoulders dropped when she saw me standing there. "It's you," she said. She pointed at the woman with the knife, as if unaware that the rest of the tavern was filled with empty chairs. "There she is."
"So I see."
"You're Korrin?" the seated woman said.
I eyed her up and down, enjoying her discomfort. There was something about her I didn't like, but I could not yet place it. Strange, for me. Reading people was much of my job, and it had saved my life on numerous occasions.
She didn't seem to be looking down on me. That didn't make me as comfortable as it should.
"Who's asking?" I said.
She stood, hands clasped before her stomach. She bore no weapons that I could see. In this neighbourhood, for someone carrying the goods she wore, that was brave or stupid. This woman looked neither. "My name is Rhyl Santon," she said. "I come from the Northern Districts."
"I could have told you that," I said.
She smiled, reinforcing the something I didn't like. Even though I still didn't know what that something was. "What else can you tell?" she asked.
"A test?"
She inclined her head, shrugged. Her lips were darkened with rotwine, but she did not appear drunk. I suddenly had a craving for a glass myself. I stepped past her and emptied the bottle into her glass, took a long draught, smacked my lips together.
"You should lose a finger for that," she said.
I showed her my hands. "Full complement." I looked her up and down again, examined the coat and the fur I did not recognise, the gems on her fingers – small, so probably expensive – the intricate tattoos that circled her neck and disappeared below her high-cut dress. "So, you want to know about yourself. Well, you're rich."
"Well observed." The sarcasm did not change her face.
"You're travelled. You've been to Long Marrakash. You like to have more than people know about, and you approach every conversation from a position of power. And that tattoo that runs down from your neck does not touch your breasts." I glanced down, then up at her face. A small, uncomfortable smile played there, and I knew I was right on target so far. Now for the killing stroke. "You're married. You use rhellim one evening in two, and prefer to make your husband lie down while you ride him."
"How do you know that?"
"Lucky guess." I stared at her chest for longer than was necessary and felt a moment of satisfaction when she started to fidget.
"You're Bajuman," she said, and I smiled, because they all tried to play my own game. "Nobody likes you, and you're only tolerated because no one can be bothered to hunt you all down and banish you from Noreela City."
I sat in the chair she had been using, smiled, clapped my hands lightly together, and realised that perhaps I liked this Rhyl Santon after all. The thing bothering me about her had resolved itself in her last statement; she was a fair woman, but she hated showing that. I guessed that in her circles, that would have been seen as a weakness.
"You don't mind that I'm Bajuman," I said. "I appreciate that. Would you like some more rotwine?"
She paused only for a heartbeat, then smiled. "Not everyone needs to live to old prejudices." She sat opposite me and relaxed. The strain went from her face and her shoulders fell. She tapped her fingernails on the scored tabletop as though trying to read the countless names carved there.
"I charge ten tellans per day," I said. "That's the basic. Once you've told me how I can help you, that may change."
"Depending on how dangerous it may be?"
"Or how interesting."
"Oh."
Shelya must have been listening to our conversation. She came in with another open bottle of rotwine, smiling at Rhyl Santon and ignoring me completely. "Can I get you some food?" she asked.
"No, thank you."
"I'd like some," I said. Shelya walked back to the kitchen, sniffing thickly as she passed from view.
"Will she bring you anything?" Rhyl asked.
"No."
"But she lets you live here?"
"I pay. Bajuman money is the same as anyone elses."
Her head tilted and her lips pursed, and I knew what was coming.
"Don't pity me, rich woman," I said.
Rhyl turned away. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I'm strong. I find hate easier to deal with than pity." I poured the wine – Shelya had brought two glasses, at least – and sat back in the chair. It crackled and groaned, and I laced my fingers behind my head. "So, how can I be of service?"
"First, you come highly recommended. I asked five people I know – friends, acquaintances – who could help me in this matter, and three of them gave your name. They know of you through reputation, I believe. They say you can get things done quickly and ... quietly."
"The advantage of being untouchable is that nobody sees or notices you. It helps me hear things, see things, get places."
"Do you only work in the City?"
"Mostly. I once did some work in the Widow's Peaks, but it's too wild for my liking. I like my luxuries." I sipped more wine and thought of the dead ants melting away in my stomach.
"I need you to find someone for me," Rhyl said.
"Missing person." I looked away from Rhyl and sniffed for cooking food. Well, she's already up to fifteen per day, I thought. Noreela City was a city of missing people, and finding one was like finding one particular sewer rat. A true challenge.
"Not missing," she said. "Taken. Stolen. Kidnapped." For the first time there was a break in her voice, and I looked in time to see her touching her left eye.
"Someone close to you?"
"A friend."
"You haven't been to the Militia?"
Her eyes widened. "You think they'd help?"
"You're monied. You're decent."
"Mage-shit, they're just as likely to be the ones who've taken him."
"Him?"
Rhyl nodded. "Do you want to write down the details?"
I tapped the side of my head. "Keep it all up here. That way, no one can take it."
"Very well." Rhyl stood and paced the tavern for a few beats, finishing at the window through which I had first seen her. She rubbed greasy grime from the glass and looked out onto the street. Lanterns were being lit now, and reflected flames danced across her features. Was she smiling? Crying? I could not tell. Only a small mystery in my life full of many, but it was important that I knew.
"His name is Fod Larima."
I kept my surprise to myself. Fodder!
"He is a friend of mine and my husband's. We took him in three years ago, and three days ago someone stole him from our house."
"Stole?"
Rhyl glanced at me and away again, flustered. "Kidnapped," she said. "They came over the wall and forced open a downstairs window. Larima was asleep. We found a few small bloodstains, but no signs of a struggle, so we assume they struck him over the head and carried him away. Must have been at least two of them. Like all fodder, Larima is a big man."
I nodded and closed my eyes, trying not to act too surprised. By the Black this was interesting! But it was also, I was already certain, quite hopeless.
"You do know that he's probably been eaten by now, don't you?"
Rhyl began to cry, and this time she did not try to hide her tears. She was either very good, or they were completely genuine. I went with genuine, and turned away.
"Please," she said, "you don't need to do that. It's no shame."
"Forgive me," I said. "Like all Bajumans, I'm used to averting my eyes." And making someone uncomfortable is the easy way to their truths, I thought.
"I can't believe that's happened to him. Not Larima. I'm not able to believe it. He's so intelligent, and loving, and such a good friend to us. How could anyone!"
"There are still those who eat fodder as a delicacy," I said. "And others – a few – who still regard eating them as their birthright."
"How could anyone?" Rhyl said, quieter.
"Sit down," I said. "Let's have another drink. Tell me everything you know, answer my questions, and I'll do the best I can."
"You're taking it on?" she said, delight cutting through her tears.
"Of course. You're rich, and you'll pay well."
Rhyl nodded, dabbed at her eyes. "And, of course, it's an interesting case."
"Of course," I said.
Rhyl sat down and took a drink of rotwine without flinching, then upended her glass and crunched it down onto the table in the customary deal-done sign. This gesture was so far below her social circle that I was slightly taken aback, but I finished my glass and did the same. Neither of us bled from the smashed glasses; a good sign.
"You'll find him," she said.
Vale of Blood Roses - One
There is a smell in the air as he throws stones at the skull ravens, and he has smelled it before, and recurring nightmares come back at him like yet more of those vicious birds, pecking and probing and doing their utmost to undo his mind. Jakk Young pauses with one stone remaining in his hand and three ravens in the tree. The odds excite him. The creatures watch him with their soulless eyes, and soon they will call back their brethren he has scared off.
He sniffs, throws the stone and watches the final three birds fly away. Even then it feels as though they are laughing at him. He sniffs again, taking slow, measured breaths. He turns around slowly, scanning the woods for any sign of movement. But there is nothing, and he is alone. The smell has vanished now – if it was ever there at all – and those briefly recalled nightmares are beyond his grasp once more. But the memories, though faded and sometimes so remote that they feel like the recollections of others, are always there.
Jakk gathers his backpack, bow and the ground squirrel he shot earlier and starts for home. The woods have come alive again now that he has seen away the skull ravens, and the canopy sings with the busy, complex concert of Pengulfin Woods' wildlife. Wood sparks grind their legs to scratch out their mating calls. Song birds try to outdo each other in range, volume and beauty. Ochre tree frogs groan and growl, lizards whisper their way across rough bark and crown ants whistle softly as they expel venom into the guts of their unfortunate prey. Noises he knows and is familiar with, and they make Jakk feel at home. He knows the geography of this part of the forest so well that he could walk this final mile with his eyes closed. The noises and smells make shapes, locating tree and path, rock and stream. He has been here for fifteen years, yet it is only recently that he started to understand the language of the land.
A hundred steps further on, he knows that something is wrong.
That smell, he thinks. It came back like the ghost of a memory, not smelled but remembered; caked dust, blood-roses trampled underfoot, death in waiting. He knows it is bad, but his memories are in turmoil, fighting and rolling with nightmares so that he is not quite sure which are which. The idea that he could have lost so many bad memories is, in a way, worse than being able to remember them all. They stalk him, unknown and hidden away. Even after so long, he knows that dangers you can see and understand are much less terrible than horrors you cannot.
He is suddenly eager to reach home. He enjoys hunting in the woods, welcomes time on his own away from Bindy and their child Romana, but now he wishes nothing more than to be with them again. The frogs' calls are mocking, the wood sparks do not bode well. And as he crests the small rise to the east of their homestead in a clearing in the woods, and that smell from the past is real once again, he sees that one of his nightmares is about to make itself known.
* * *
His daughter Romana stands at the entrance to their humble home, one hand holding the door half-open behind her, the other pressed to her mouth as if to hold in a cry. It's not like Romana to be so quiet, and Jakk knows that she is shocked, upset or afraid. Perhaps all three.
Bindy is a dozen steps from the timber building, kneeling beside a shape splayed on the ground. The shape is a man. Jakk's wife seems frozen above him, one hand outstretched but unable to touch whoever it is.
That's where the smell is coming from, Jakk thinks. That shape. That person. Blood roses rotting, and he must have come here to return my nightmares to me.
Bindy looks back at the building. "Roma, bring water, quickly."
"Mother...?"
"Water, Roma. And see if you can find the horn. We need your father here."
For a few beats Jakk feels like an intruder, viewing a scene he was never meant to see. They don't know I'm here, he thinks, and for a few beats more he remains motionless and silent, watching his wife's naturally caring soul fighting and debating what to do, how to touch.
What must she be seeing? That stink is bad, and it would be amazing if the person is not already dead.
"No need for the horn," he says at last. The relief on Bindy's face is a comfort, but also a warning.
"Jakk, thank the Black! He stumbled in, collapsed, and I think he might be—"
"Don't touch," Jakk says. He hurries down the gentle slope, keeping to the path they have worn here over the years. He knows the route so well that he does not need to look, and that way he can examine the man sprawled on the ground before his wife.
Dead, Bindy wants to say. I think he might be dead. But Romana is still watching from the doorway and listening to her parents' conversation. A growing girl, death is becoming something of a preoccupation. The fact that Jakk refuses to talk about it perhaps makes it worse, but he has seen too much death to be able to discuss it with his daughter. Every question she asks dredges up bad memories.
And Old Parkgan doesn't help, wandering through the forest and telling anyone who will listen that the Cataclysmic War has marked the end. Borrowed time, he says. We're all inhaling the land's final breath.
As if to prove everyone wrong, the prone man groans.
"Roma, hurry with that—"
He shouts, sits up and reaches for Bindy. She falls back and kicks out, knocking his hand aside and scurrying backwards on hands and feet.
"Bindy!" Jakk drops the dead ground squirrel and bow and runs, pulling his knife as he does so. It whispers against the leather scabbard, and his blood is suddenly on fire.
"Jakk!" the man says when he looks around. "Jakk Young!"
Jakk pauses a dozen steps away, hand still clasping the knife's handle. The man has dark skin. No hair, a bulky body that may have once been strong. To begin with Jakk does not know him, because he has changed so much. But he can smell him. And he can see the blossoming blood roses on the man's stomach, spread in a splash as though planted there with a flourish. "No," Jakk says. "I don't know you."
The man laughs. It sounds mad. "But you know these, Jakk?" He runs his hand across the tops of the stubby flowers, and fleshy petals kiss at his fingertips. "And you know you can't forget what we did, can't just shut it away!"
"Roma, that water, now," Jakk says. She disappears inside and closes the door behind her.
"It's come," the man says.
"What's come?"
"Revenge... like we always knew it would." The man raises himself on both arms, stretching forward as if to take a bite from the air. "Jakk, I only just got away! They've already got Rufiere and Leeza, and I only just..." He touches the blooming things across his stomach again, and below them Jakk can now see a deep, ugly cut. Things protrude from there, and they look like coiled grey guts. "But I didn't get away for long. I cut one, it bled, and now..."
Jakk feels cold. Revenge, the man said. And those nightmares are circling, coalescing, and Jakk can hear them mocking him from where he thought he had buried them away. "Stay away from my family," he says quietly.
"You have to get away!"
"Stay down. Don't get up." He walks backwards to where he dropped the bow, picks it up and strings an arrow. He does not take his eyes from the sick man, not for an instant. That would be dangerous.
"Jakk?" Bindy says. "Who is he? What's wrong with him?"
"Haven't you told her anything?" the man asks. He laughs but there's little humour there, only disbelief. "Nothing at all?"
Jakk sights along the arrow. Shut up, he thinks, shut up, shut up, please give me any excuse and I'll make you shut up.
"Ventgoria," the man says. "Jakk and I fought the Soyaran from the Poison Forests."
"Jakk fought the Krotes in the Cataclysmic War," Bindy says, but she's looking at Jakk now more than the man
Jakk stares back. He blinks slowly. I'll tell you soon, he tries to convey. I lied, and I'll tell you soon. But not right now.
"It's come for us," the man says again. "The heart and mind." He spits out a mouthful of blood.
Jakk breathes in deeply and wonders when his turn will come.
* * *
The valley was not meant to be there, so that's why they went in. It appeared before them as they marched north out of the bloodied borderlands between Ventgoria and the Poison Forests. Behind them they had left a field of dead bodies, piled three deep and burning. The southerly breeze gusted the stench of burning meat after them, the smell of guilt having little effect on these people. They had left any morals at home years ago. Remorse had no place in their new world of blood and money.
Barr wore a necklace of thumbs sliced from his victims, one from each. At least forty were strung around his neck. Jakk had told him how foolish he was being; there was no trusting the blood of the Poison Forest tribes. But Barr had started collecting these gruesome trophies at the beginning of their campaign, and none of them had sickened him yet. Jakk knew that Barr had an immortality complex, with knife wounds, acid spit burns and a badly healed slashed throat testament to his claim. Jakk also knew that when such men fell, they fell hard.
The others – only four remained from their original force of twenty – marked kills in their own unique ways. Rufiere kept shreds of cloth from his victims' clothing, and he was making himself a ragged coat of many colours and textures. Leeza cut her arm every time she killed, and her left arm was a scarred map of victories. They held various other mementoes, medals of success and marks of triumph... but Jakk kept nothing. He was not here to keep score, a tally to boast of later in life over mugs of rotwine around camp fires. He knew the face of every man, woman and child he had killed, and sometimes at night they smiled at him.
"What in the Black is that?" Rufiere said. He claimed he had a Book of Ways, and though the others knew him as a liar, they grudgingly admitted that he always found the most favourable routes from one place to the next. "Shouldn't be here. This is woodland and grassland, a few marshes, all the way north to the Cantrass Plains. No valleys. Nothing like this."
"Obviously your little book's wrong," Barr said.
They had topped a small crest and now a narrow valley lay before them. It was a deep, almost brutal wound in the land, its sides a mixture of sheer cliffs, shale slopes and rocky promontories, with only a few seemingly manageable routes down into its depths. It ran south to north, its southernmost reach before them now. Sunlight fought to illuminate its depths, but clouds to the north and a heavy yellow mist closer by sought to deny the sun access. It gave the valley the appearance of somewhere that did not belong.
Rufiere pulled the small battered leather-bound book from his jacket pocket and made a show of consulting several pages. "A way north," he said. "That's what should be here. Look, double-humped hill to the east, flatter ground to the west with a forest a few miles distant. And here..." He pointed ahead at the rift in the ground. "Here, an easy route north. Streams to drink from, terrain not too difficult to cross."
"Looks difficult as fuckery to me." Barr took a lump of harshroot from his pocket and bit off a chunk, chewed, grimaced past the initial bitterness to the alluring sweetness beneath.
"We should take a look," Jakk said.
"Listen!" Leeza hissed. She rarely spoke, and when she did her voice, with its exotic southern accent and deep seriousness, sounded unused.
They all listened and Jakk heard the sound immediately. Heard it, but did not quite believe. "Machines?" he said.
"No," Rufiere said. "Can't be."
"Why not?" asked Barr, inviting argument.
"Because all the machines are dead." Jakk stepped forward to distance himself from his mercenary companions, trying to decide exactly what he was hearing. Grinding, clanking, the sound of venting steam and sighing heat, wheels whispering over loose stones...
"There!" he said. Machines! He could hardly believe it. The machines had died three years before at the end of the Cataclysmic War, and since that shock the land had been suffering a steady regression towards more basic times. Now, in this valley that should not exist, he could see three machines working the hillside, plucking short purple plants from the ground, dropping them into fleshy hoppers on their backs and venting shredded greenery into the air behind them.
Jakk had forgotten how beautiful they were. Their movements were smooth and graceful. Their fuel was magic.
And magic was no more.
"This is not real," Jakk said.
"Looks real enough to me." Barr was the first of them to step across the obvious boundary between the land that should be there and the valley that should not.
For an instant Jakk expected something to happen to him. He would disappear, collapse or be destroyed because of his trespass. Jakk held his breath and watched his fighting companion start down the slope. Barr paused after a few steps and raised his face to the sky, and Jakk thought, This is when it happens. But he had seen enough corpses to know that he was far from dead.
"Smells good," Barr said. "Smells like blood. Coming?"
The machines worked away to their left, lower down the slopes and deeper into the valley. They seemed to not notice Barr's invasion into their territory.
The others followed Barr, and Jakk followed them. Perhaps I've seen enough of blood, he thought. But he had long ago stopped trying to deny his true nature. The idea of a fight drew him on, and the mention of blood set his own on fire.
The possibility of slaughter had not yet entered his mind.
* * *
The woman was walking slowly across the hillside, stepping carefully between sprouting heathers and looking down at her feet. She carried a soft bag in one hand and a squat metallic device in the other, the two connected by a thin flexible tube. Every few steps she paused and worked the device in her right hand, expelling a few droplets of red fluid onto the ground. She waited as if to watch the drops soak in, then moved on. Behind her, marking the path she had taken, thin red shoots were already peering between blades of grass.
She's beautiful, thought Jakk. He was more used to the infected, scarred Soyaran women of the Poison Forests, and seeing this woman's smooth pale skin and raven hair was a shock.
She looked up as they approached, and for a beat her expression did not register anything, almost as if it took her a few moments to see them. Then she stumbled back with a cry and fell over.
"Wait!" Jakk said. He moved forward, hands held out. "We're not here to hurt you." Then why are we here? he thought, if hurting is what we do best?
The woman crawled back, her face an image of terror. She had dropped the bag and dripping device and they leaked into the ground. Maybe it's the weapons, Jakk thought. Or our sudden appearance from out of the valley. Maybe she's the only one here.
Jakk reached for his bow and slipped it from his shoulder. The woman screamed again.
"Who are you?" he asked. The question felt foolish, but she spoke words that made no sense, garbled noises that conveyed only fear and upset.
"Just another tribe," Barr said.
"No, she doesn't recognise us, doesn't think—"
"Tell us who you are!" Rufiere shouted. "You shouldn't even be here. You're not in the book, you're not here!"
Still the woman screamed, and Jakk saw that she was looking at their weapons; the bow in his hand, the sword and knives strapped to his belt.
He heard the whistle of the arrow at the same instant it embedded itself in the woman's throat.
"No!" Jakk shouted.
Barr laughed. Leeza scolded him half-heartedly. Rufiere sighed and shook his head, looking down at the book that lied.
The woman lay on her back, hands clawing at her throat as blood began pulsing from the wound.
Jakk ran, careful to step over the bag she had dropped. By the time he reached her the woman had stopped moving, and he saw the life go from her eyes.
"Why did you do that?" he shouted, turning to Barr.
"Way she talked, she's just another—"
"She looks nothing like the Soyaran!"
"Well, maybe not her face. But—"
"But nothing. We're finished here. The Ventgorians don't want our help anymore, Barr, and the killing is over."
"Jakk?" Leeza said, and she seemed genuinely confused.
He looked at her, at Rufiere, and when Barr drew his knife and walked past him to the dead woman Jakk turned to stare down into the valley. He heard clothes ripping, Barr grunting and sighing, and then the crunch of her thumb bone breaking as he took his trophy.
I really believed it had all ended, he thought. And then the smell of fresh blood wafted up from the depths of the valley, and he knew that they were somewhere special.
* * *
"Barr," Jakk says.
Barr looks up and coughs more bloody mess. He smiles a red smile. He knows that Jakk would never have forgotten him.
I could kill him now, Jakk thinks. Slit his throat while he's puking. Let it flow for real. But he has not killed anyone for fifteen years, not since the folded valley opened itself to them.
Barr's smile widens, strings of vomit hanging from his nose, blood speckling his cheeks. He spits and wipes the mess from his lips. "I knew you'd never forget," he says. Though his voice contains a triumphant lilt, there is nothing of hope in him. Jakk can see that the man in dying, and he knows it very well.
"Barr," Jakk says again.
"Who is he?" Bindy asks.
"Someone I thought was dead."
"You know I'm stronger," Barr says. "You know it take a lot to kill—"
"Someone I wished was dead." Jakk raises the bow again. The gut creaks as he pulls back, a sound that fills the clearing in the forest that he calls home. Livestock grow still, birds' singing fades, chickens stop pecking at the ground. Jakk remembers the woman dropping those fluid seeds, how Barr had killed her and what he did to her after she was dead. He'd seen that many times before – especially from Barr – but this first dead woman of the folded valley stuck in his mind. He supposes it was the first truly innocent death he had seen.
"Won't be long now," Barr says. He has stopped vomiting and he sits up, moving slowly as if every move pains him. "They've killed Rufiere and Leeza, and two moons ago they came for me. I got away, but..." He indicates his stomach where the blood roses bloom. "Soon, they'll come for you."
"Daddy?" Romana says. She is standing at the door to their home, a jug of water slowly tipping in her left hand and darkening the front of her dress.
"Stay back," Jakk says.
"But..." She is looking at Barr's injuries and what grows there, and the bloody mess on the ground beside him. Jakk wonders what she makes of this man's drawn, haunted expression. Haunted, even through his grin.
"They'll die too," Barr says. He nods at Romana and she drops the jug. "Her. And the woman. They'll kill them too, and they won't be as lucky as me. You should hear what they did to Rufiere. How he screamed. How he begged."
"The woman is my wife," Jakk says. "Don't you even look at her."
"Remembering more now, Jakk?" Barr stares at Bindy, very obviously looking her up and down.
"Enough."
"Jakk?" Bindy says. Jakk can hear the fear beneath her voice and he goes to her, keeping the arrow trained on the wounded man.
"Enough to know you won't escape?" Barr asks. "You must know that."
"Then why come to me?"
"Because I'm twisted."
"You're talking shit."
"Enough to realise you were just as bad? We were all just as bad, Jakk. It's just that some of us lived with it, while others fought against it. And lost. Fight it and you always lose."
Jakk has the sudden feeling that Barr is not only talking to them. He looks around, and there is no one visible through the trees, no hint that they are being watched. But he can suddenly smell those blood roses again, and the scent is so much sweeter than that rising from this man's death-vomit, the blossoms on his stomach, the redness seeping from their leaves. His rush of memory solidifies some more.
"I was not as bad as you," Jakk says.
Barr laughs, a wet croak. "You always knew what you wanted, you were just never strong enough—"
"I was nowhere near as bad!"
"Jakk, what's happening?" Bindy says, and Jakk can see that she is glancing around the clearing as well. Because she saw me doing it? he wonders. Or can she sense something as well?
"In the house," he says, and Bindy knows the gravity in his voice.
"Romana." Bindy ushers their daughter inside, but the door does not close. She is watching her husband.
"I came to warn you," Barr says. He coughs another spurt of blood, dark and rancid.
"Why?" At the edges of his perception more of those nightmares dance, memories stalking him like wolves probing a field of sheebok.
"We were brothers," Barr says quietly.
"No."
"Brothers of the sword, the knife, the bolt." Barr spits and groans, pressing one hand to the roses sprouting across his stomach. They seem to envelop his hand, curling and stretching to cover his skin.
"What has come?" Jakk asks.
"The ghosts. Ghosts of the folded valley. Come for us."
"What killed Rufiere and Leeza?"
"I just told you! What we did killed them. The heart and mind has come for us at last, and—"
"You did it, not me. It was over for me by then." Jakk still holds the bow, aim never wavering. He has seen Barr's tricks before, knows him too well.
Romana whispers something behind him, but Bindy hisses something in response.
"I'm dying," Barr says.
"Good."
"Maybe you can..."
"I can what?" Jakk is becoming impatient, eyes flickering around the clearing as he senses something not only watching him, but marking him, knowing him.
"Make amends." Barr grins again, and Jakk can no longer see the bleeding, wounded, dying man. He sees the warrior that was – a murderer by any other name – and the chord of severed thumbs he wore around his neck. And he remembers more of what that warrior-murderer did in the valley they unfolded.
Jakk blinks slowly, then fires the arrow into Barr's chest.
The dying man gasps in surprise, and it is the last sound he makes.
"Jakk!" Bindy shouts. The door slams shut.
I can't hear Romana, Jakk thinks. If she saw, she'd have screamed. If she saw what I did, I'd have heard her by now.
Barr writhes on the ground for a few beats, hands pressing around the arrow but never actually touching it. He blinks rapidly at Jakk, eyelids moving slower, and then finally they, and he are still.
"If making amends is the only way, then that's a good beginning." Jakk turns away without another glance and walks to the house. He must prepare his family to leave.
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