Candor sat in the dwindling light of the evening, her back straight against the smooth carving of the chair. That morning, the trio had awoken feeling remarkably refreshed. Almost cheerful, the girls had descended from their whittled room and begun their search for supplies. Thorn instructed the girls to find food for the next few days; he was going to find news of the land.
Immediately, as if she had been waiting for them, Pean appeared on the lower deck of the tree-trunk house.
“Good morning.” Pean, unclad in mud, was lovely. She tied her long dreadlocks with a thin cord at the small of her neck, and her skin was incomparably smooth.
Candor noticed she carried both swords strapped to her back, not hung at her waist. Without thinking, both girls offered their customary greeting, fingertips to their lips, open palms offered. Pean had raised an eyebrow but did not comment.
“We need to find food.” Candor said. “Can you help us?”
Without a second question, Pean led the girls around the swamp-city, pausing in certain shops, crossing a variety of different suspended bridges, and heckling several of what seemed to be her colleagues as they raced around the circular land bridge that bound the metropolis.
Before the sun had reached its zenith, the girls deposited their bounty in their rooms. Pean helped them bring their food up; she had even secured them each another water skin, for which they were immeasurably grateful.
“Your people are incredibly generous.” Candor remarked. They had not exchanged items nor offered any sort of payment.
Pean shrugged. “We do not want; if someone is found wanting, we all help. We all live and die together, and we sleep together forever. Helping is what the ancestors ask of us.”
Candor frowned. “What happens if someone breaks the law?”
“The law?” Pean looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
Unsure how to explain, Candor paused. “If someone hurts someone else, or takes something that belongs to someone else, or doesn’t live by the will of the ancestors,” Candor struggled to put order to her words, “what happens to them?”
“Oh,” Pean’s tinkling laugh filled the room. “The ancestors see and know all, even as they are under us. If someone has broken with their family, with our people, the ancestors punish them during Aislin Alaugh.” Pean shrugged. “So, there is very rarely any cause for trouble here.”
“Oh.” Candor nodded. She was not sure she understood, nor if she would trust this judicial system, but it seemed to sustain their society.
“I guess our village wasn’t much different.” Candor said to Letti after Pean had left. “Absent the dead relatives killing their descendants in other descendants’ bodies.”
Letti chuckled. “Extra fishing and garden duty by majority approval does not a comparable legal system make.”
The girls had performed the Aiadar as the space allowed, before settling down to wait for Thorn.
Returning from her thoughts of the day, Candor heard the rattle of the rope bridge and Thorn’s heavy steps.
“The fires are beginning.” He said without preamble before sinking into a chair.
“Hadn’t they already?” Candor asked. Wondering idly if Thorn’s massive frame would collapse the thousand-year-old chair, Candor sniffed the air. Odd, she thought, I can’t smell anything.
“You won’t smell it.” Thorn spoke from behind his hands.
“Why not?” Letti asked.
“The fire doesn’t consume the grass or the land or the houses, things that produce traditional smoke." Thorn explained. “They set fire to the swamp itself. The water. Or rather, whatever is in the water that burns the spirits up from their graves and into the air.”
Candor blinked. “So, the fire burns the tiny animals that we can’t see that inhabit Icaria and their dead bodies give off an odorless smoke.”
Letti cast her Candor the look that she had so often before, the look that said no one likes a know-it-all.
Thorn shrugged. “I wouldn’t phrase it as such to the ghosteaters.”
“You know we don’t like to be called that.” Haela’s voice sounded from the doorway, and her staff cracked on the floor as she banged it in soft reproach.
“You are curiously educated.” Haela turned to Candor, her eyes wide and searching.
Uncomfortable, Candor dropped her gaze. “I read a lot when I was growing up.”
“But what books, and what sources I wonder.” Haela observed Candor for another moment, before turning to Thorn. “I worry for you tonight. Things have been restless here, far too restless.”
Unsurprised, Thorn nodded. “I’ve gathered.”
Haela clucked. “Of course, you went digging through everyone’s heads. The world feels tight, like a bridge with too much tension. I have not felt this since the last great die off.”
Thorn flinched.
“Bands of men and horses, what look to be mercenaries clothed in the nobles’ gold could be spotted on the horizon not two weeks ago.” Haela informed Thorn.
“So, I heard.” Thorn shook his head. “That you have seen anyone is odd indeed. There is nothing for Durevin here.”
“There is power in bodies.” Haela quipped. “I fear the next three days will be more restive than we have experienced in many years. The ancestors can feel the changing of the land; it comes to them before it reaches us. The land and water tell them, more than the air tells us.” Haela shook her head. “Perhaps they will visit me tonight.” She smiled sadly, and Thorn, surprising the girls, stood and hugged the old woman, returning her sad smile.
“You know how many lives you saved when you left.” Thorn released the old woman. Candor could see tears in her eyes.
“I know. And I would leave again. But I mourn the loss of my family and my faith.” She took a moment to compose herself before rounding on the girls. “You two, be careful tonight. I don’t expect you to have an issue.” She gestured at Candor. “But you, be careful and do not wander. Keep an eye on Woden Thorn. His mind is not like most, but of our smoke, even he will be susceptible.”
Bewildered, both Candor and Letti promised the old woman to be careful.
“Right!” Haela exclaimed. “I almost forgot.” She pulled out three long pieces of fabric from a pocket in her various robes. “Wear these as much as you can. They are made from the skin of our fish. Our hunters wear them in the days after Aislin Alaugh, when the smoke can still linger.”
Each of Haela’s guests grasped her gift, thanking her profusely. She smiled, radiant as the sun for a brief moment. “It’s nice to have someone to care for again.”
Then, before any of them could form a response, she whirled around and departed, leaving the little wooden apartment that much darker than it had been.
“What did she mean I wouldn’t have a problem with it?” Candor asked Thorn, pulling her new mask across her face. The soft skin bent over a small piece of metal that Candor pressed against her nose. Forming to the shape of her face, Candor could breathe, though the air smelled distinctively fishy.
“Probably just that you didn’t have any trouble withstanding the call of the foul fish.” Thorn did not look at Candor as he pulled on his mask. His was a bright orange; Candor’s a brilliant turquoise, and Letti’s a glimmering pink.
“And I did.” Letti sounded apologetic.
Thorn shrugged. “As long as we wear these and keep an eye on the door, we will weather it.”
“Why did Haela say she lost her family and friends?” Candor asked. She pulled her indigo sword onto her lap and began to inspect it. Not a mark.
Thorn sighed. “Many years ago, she found a cause that she felt was worth leaving her people for. She saved many lives, even earning herself a place in Fae songs.” Thorn pulled his own sword out of its sheath. “But when she returned, no one would mate with her. She has had no family of her own, and as she said, her ancestors don’t visit her anymore. Now,” Thorn ran his whetstone along the side of his blade. “Whether this is because she somehow understands that spirits cannot return from the dead and her conscious mind cannot explain it, or she simply explains this punishment to her people, I cannot say. I do not pry about her faith.”
Candor was looking at Thorn suspiciously. “This cause she found; I don’t suppose you had anything to do with it.”
“I—” Thorn froze. Three heavy drumbeats punctured the air, reverberating off the walls of their room. A moment of silence then—boom. Boom. Boom.
“It has begun.” Thorn stood and moved to the door.
The girls joined him and the three stepped out onto the porch that ringed the tree-trunk house. Between the adjacent homes, the trio could see the surfaces of the swamps flicker flames.
“Twins above.” Letti whispered. The fire crawled across the water like smoke above trees. Languid, liquid, the orange light flashed and wavered between the homes. True to Thorn’s prediction, the fire did not consume any wood or grass. Soon, the marsh that encircled Haela’s home bore flames. Some, Candor noticed, were brilliant, blood red, whereas in some places, the flames burned a warm yellow. She was about to ask Thorn why this was when a horrible, blood curdling shriek rent the air.
Letti shivered, her fists turning white against the rail of the porch. Thorn’s brow furrowed. In the next moment, as if lightning had struck, more voices echoed into the night air. Yells, hollers, and wails seemed to bend around the smoke, giving the night itself a ghastly feel.
“If we can’t smell the smoke, why can we see it?” Candor asked Thorn quietly.
“Beats me.” He shrugged. “The grey smoke is from fires and pyres they set the days before to prepare themselves for the celebration. The smoke that offers their bodies as hosts isn’t so visible. You can see it just above the flames if you look closely.” Thorn pointed. Sure enough, Candor and Letti could see a small shimmer, almost rainbow in its appearance. It glimmered seductively through the air.
“Come on.” Thorn gestured to the girls to return to the room. A loud pattering clattered below them, the sound of running feet. It made the hair on the back of Letti’s neck stand on end; the chaos of those footsteps echoed the many legs of the monstrous spiders clacking through frozen twigs.
Finally feeling the suppressed panic that enters one’s stomach when one understands there is nowhere to run and nowhere hide, Candor slipped back into the room and threw her indigo sword over her back, clasping her old iron sword to her waist. Letti strapped a dagger to her belt, and the three folded themselves onto the floor, listening to the moans and scrapes and running footfalls of the possessed ghosteaters.
Thorn insisted they take turns sleeping, one sleeping at a time and two awake. “If one of us succumbs to the smoke, someone else needs to be awake to stop us from leaving.” Thorn explained his reasoning.
Neither girl argued. The noises had reached a fever pitch, and the grey smoke of traditional fires gathered at the top of their room. Candor sweat profusely. She and Thorn took first watch. Candor leaned against the side of what was once the inside of a tree. She tried to recite poetry to herself.
The princess crossed the ocean red
Refusing every prince’s bed
Until one day she found a man
And—
A scream of ecstasy emanated from what seemed to be right next to her. On her feet, sword extended before she knew what she was doing, Candor realized the sound came from someone on the platform below her. Sheathing her sword, Candor moved to the door, placing her back against the wood next to the frame and tried to listen for any sound that would indicate a potential intruder. She heard nothing.
Moderating her breathing, Candor scanned the room. Thorn sat in the far curve, near to Letti’s sleeping form hands over his mask. Candor could tell by the rise and fall of his shoulders that he was breathing hard.
“Thorn.” Candor hissed.
After a moment, Thorn looked up. Candor could tell he was having trouble focusing on her. Crossing the room swiftly, Candor knelt in front of Thorn, smelling the fish that had died for her mask.
“Thorn look at me.” Candor grabbed both sides of the big man’s face and directed his eyes to hers. “Snap out of it. This is the first night.”
Thorn grunted and jerked his head in a small nod. Rummaging through her pack, Candor tugged out a shawl and wrapped it around Thorn’s orange fish-skin. Thorn grew still, breathing more deeply. A lucidity returned to his eyes, and he nodded in thanks. Then he froze.
Slowly, Candor turned and stood. Standing in the middle of the room behind her stood a ghosteater, his face stretched into the horrible grin that Candor had grown accustomed to seeing in the streets. Shadowed from the darkness of the room, lit by the orange licks of light from the doorway, the man seemed to leer, his long dreadlocks sticking out from his head like a mane. He seemed to vibrate, as if his entire body were the string of a lute, freshly plucked.
Candor had only a moment to draw her sword before he lunged at her. He was unusually quick, but Candor sliced him on the shoulder. She had no interest in killing this man. She wondered if he was accustomed to fighting, Thorn and Mo were the only people Candor had fought with such speed.
By the way he limped towards her, Candor hazarded a guess that the smoke and his ancestors were informing much of his fighting style.
Again, he lunged, and Candor struck him in the nose with her elbow, causing blood to spurt onto the floor. She sheathed her sword, altering her strategy. She would maneuver him to the door, she decided, and try to flip him over the rail. He would land in the water but would be otherwise unharmed. Candor worked the man’s limbs, forcing him to backpedal. Catching his heel on the edge of the doorframe’s fabric cover, the man tripped backwards, and hit the rail with force. Darting forward, Candor swiped up his feet, hauling him over the porch in one smooth motion. Stepping back into the doorway before anyone noticed her, Candor glanced around the room. Letti lay on the ground, awake now, but staring at the ceiling unseeing. Thorn stood, holding his broadsword with one hand. He seemed to be battling himself.
“Thorn.” Candor said softly. “Thorn, put down your blade.”
Thorn shook his head as if he were having trouble hearing her. Slowly, Candor edged around the room keeping an eye on the door, before approaching Thorn with both hands raised. Between them, Letti sat up. Quick as Candor had ever seen her move, Letti hopped to her feet. Her eyes too, Candor could see, were glazed over slightly.
“Candor.” Thorn seemed to have returned to himself for a moment. He dashed forward, dropping his sword, and grabbed Letti.
“Thorn, what do I do?” Candor cried. “How do I keep you here.”
“Come here.” He kept a hold on Letti. “I need you to trust me.” His voice was labored.
“Are you in your right mind?” Candor felt a deep dread sink into her gut. She stepped back slightly, sinking into a fighting stance.
“Almost.” Thorn looked Candor in the eye. “Not for much longer.”
“I trust you.” Candor said softly. She watched Letti’s eyes begin to flick back and forth in panic.
“I need you to cut your wrist.” Thorn gasped. His jaw muscles pulsed. He dropped to his knees. The smoke swirled above them, the dark light in shadowed patterns on the floor. For the briefest of moments, Candor felt as if she were in a nightmare, the kind she could recognize as a child, the kind she used to be able to pull herself out of.
“Candor.” Thorn choked.
Quick as she could, Candor snatched the dagger off Letti’s waist and sliced her left wrist open. She offered it to Thorn, unsure what he was going to do.
Gently, Thorn took Candor’s wrist. “I’m sorry.” He whispered. Then, without hesitation, Thorn dropped Letti, pulled down his masks, and pressed Candor’s wrist to his mouth.
Candor shrieked, startling Letti on the floor, who leapt up into a crouch. She backed against a wall, growling like a wild animal. A small pressure on Candor’s wrist forced Candor’s gaze back to the horror at her hand. Thorn mumbled a word, and she felt her skin begin to writhe. Quickly, Candor snatched back her arm and wrapped her bleeding wound with the shawl that had dropped from Thorn’s face. Thorn pressed his snakeskin mask back to his mouth.
“Why in the name of the twins did you do that?” Candor could feel tears begin to sting her eyes. She felt betrayed, violated. Her stomach convulsed and Candor leaned over the basin she had so recently washed herself in and vomited. Wiping her mouth, Candor replaced her mask, shivering. Keeping her sword between herself and Thorn, Candor worked her way back around the room until she was near enough to Letti that she could catch her dark-haired friend if she bolted.
“I needed that to keep me sane.” Thorn’s voice was stronger, his voice lucid.
“Do not come near me.” Candor angled the tip of her sword towards his heart. “You monster—”
Letti screamed, her voice high and piercing. Running at Candor she dodged her friend, dark curls bouncing madly, and dashed towards the door. Both Candor and Thorn lunged after the girl but were too late.
Letti was gone.
~.~
“Don’t touch me.” Candor spit as Thorn made to grab her elbow.
Thorn pulled back, as if scalded. “You said you trusted me.” He said evenly. “I need you to remember that now.”
“Now I don’t trust you.” Candor only looked at the big man to keep him in her sight. “The only reason I am with you now is to find Letti.”
“Then let me help you instead of using me as an enemy.” Thorn snapped. He quickly found the tip of a violet blade in his face.
“You took my blood. You swallowed my blood. You licked my flowing blood off a cut I made for you. You aremy enemy.” Candor replied coldly.
“I swear to you, I mean you no harm.”
The pair stood arguing at on the porch at the base of the house they had just vacated. After Letti had fled, both Candor and Thorn sprinted after her, but she had disappeared into the night.
“You swear to me? Oh, you swear to me?” Candor was nearly hysterical. “That means so much. You are a man I barely know, I don’t know, whom I have allowed myself to trust, whom I have followed through forests willingly and blindly. Well, no more.” Candor hissed. “We will find Letti, and we will part from you.”
Thorn, Candor noticed detachedly, looked pained.
“I will swear to you in the words of majik that I mean you no harm.” Thorn said softly.
“If I knew the significance of this, I might be more inclined to listen,” Candor said, voice hard. “But you never seemed to trust me enough to offer me majik.”
“And yet, I offer you this.” Thorn’s voice seemed to change as he articulated a long phrase, its meaning impacting Candor’s mind like hammer blows. She gasped, nearly going to her knees.
Thorn’s intent rushed through her, snaking up her bones and between her skin and her veins. She knew without any doubt he would protect her, and he only wished her safety.
Unable to respond, Candor gritted her teeth and nodded. Her wrist throbbed. “You walk first. You know where you are going. I will cover your rear.”
“Will you stab me?” Thorn asked in a feeble attempt at humor.
“Does it matter?” Candor replied bitterly. “It’s not like you’ll die.”
“No.” Thorn sighed. “This is true.”
Placing his palm upon his pommel, Thorn started forward, Candor a few paces behind. The warmth of the fires heated their boots and lower trousers until Candor was certain her skin would burn. She ignored it. Shrieks and calls still echoed through the night, though Candor thought, just by the sheer exhaustion of her body, that the morning might be coming. At least with the sun they would be able to find Letti more easily.
Thorn crossed a bridge over the fire, and Candor followed, feet feeling as though the blood inside them were boiling. Thorn began to climb the staircase around the edge of a house, and Candor said a silent prayer as her feet cooled slightly. The ache she now felt was much more manageable than a pulsing, burning pain.
A dreadlocked woman stood in Thorn’s way, appearing out of the smoke. Across her face, a large, toothed grin. Her eyes seemed to bore through Thorn.
“Hello.” She said. Her voice rang monotone. Candor shivered; it was a thoroughly unnatural sound. “The ancestors of Family Grimariant greet you.”
“Well met.” Thorn inclined his head. The woman allowed Thorn and Candor to pass before striking up a conversation with herself. The sight of the woman speaking to the smoke haunted Candor as they crossed bridge after bridge. Thorn began to call softly for Letti, but Candor did not join him. Something told her not to join the clamor.
Dark grey smoke from various pyres ebbed and flowed, cupping the light of the water-fires and dispersing it, lending the terrain an ever-changing face. Candor could have circled the tree-trunk house where they had been staying three times and would never have known the difference. Every so often a ghosteater would appear as if of the light, out of the smoke, and would leer, occasionally greeting Thorn or Candor by name, always speaking for their ancestors.
“Thorn.” Candor finally hissed. “Thorn we cannot continue like this.”
Thorn stopped and turned. His mask had turned from a bright orange to a dark grey from the smoke particles it had stopped. He nodded.
“We need to find her before tomorrow night.” Thorn shook his head. “No one, and therefore no ancestor, should have an issue with her. We should return for a sleep and look in the daylight.”
A short babbling broke out from behind Thorn, and Candor jumped. Two ghosteaters faced each other, each speaking in some language neither Candor nor Thorn recognized.
Without warning, one of the ghosteaters snatched a knife from beneath his tunic and shoved it into the woman’s throat. Gurgling, she fell to the ground. The man then turned to Thorn and Candor, mad grin stretched across his face. He lunged at Thorn and found himself with a blade through his sternum. Wrenching it free, Thorn turned and gestured to Candor to back up. She stared at him, disgusted.
“Who are we to decide their fate?” She asked quietly.
“We are who they kill if given the chance.”
“So, an absence of mercy requires its equal.”
“Yes.” Thorn did not appear angry or frustrated. “I swore an oath to protect you. He was a threat.”
“Do not place his death at my feet.” Candor said harshly. “I would not end someone in this state. I am no judge.”
“You watched him kill someone.” Thorn finally, exasperated, turned to face Candor as they worked their way back to the house.
“I watched him act in punishment according to their own laws.” Candor tried to explain herself. “I cannot judge them by my sense of justice.”
Thorn snorted and opened his mouth to respond. A sharp shape reared from behind him, and Candor leapt forward, knocking the big man into the side of the house and plunging her indigo sword through the eye of a ghosteater whose own blade tip rested inches from where Thorn’s spine had been moments before.
Thorn raised an eyebrow as the woman fell into the flaming water below. Candor just shook her head, her hands shaking. She had never killed a human before. Turning, she threw up for the second time that night.
“Come on.” Thorn said, not unkindly, and grabbing Candor’s arm, moved them along the rope bridge nearest to them. After what seemed like an eternity, Thorn returned the pair to the house as the smoke lightened. The sun had arrived.
Candor collapsed onto the bedsheets Letti had abandoned. “Use your newfound powers to let me get some sleep.” She growled at Thorn, who nodded.
Thorn watched Candor’s now grey hair flop over her face as she curled into the bed roll. The soot darkened her fringe as her violet eyes scrunched shut. He sighed. He had not wanted to suggest the outcome they had reached so quickly. Now was not the time to tell Candor of her blood, but neither had it been the time to ask for her trust. Thorn knew, despite the distance they had travelled together, the girls had lost their entire village to an unknown enemy, and he was the first face they had seen since. They would have been fools to trust him as they did. Perhaps, Thorn thought miserably to himself, they were fools to trust me at all.
He listened as the sounds outside the house quieted. They needed to find Letti before the second night descended. He would give Candor a short sleep, but they needed to search while they still possessed the light and the fervor still rested below fever pitch. Thorn stretched, waiting for the time to pass in this wretched place. He regretted, just for a moment, ever leaving the Kotemor mountains.
~.~
Candor awoke with a yell and her indigo sword at the throat of the offender. Thorn sat still under her blade.
“I need to rest.” He stated quietly.
Rubbing her eyes, but decidedly not apologizing, Candor exchanged her blankets for the place on a carved chair that Thorn had recently vacated.
“Things are quiet.” She observed.
Thorn grunted. “On smoke, they are sensitive to sun.” He yawned. “They will lie down and sleep wherever they are like lizards or cats. This is the best time to find Letti.”
Candor gazed at the large lump of the man. “How is it,” she asked slowly, “that you know so much about this ceremony, but you could not hold your mind against the smoke without…” Candor trailed off, unable to articulate Thorn’s crime.
He breathed out. “Perhaps the fumes are stronger this time.”
Unlikely. Candor thought but did not press her questions. She had no interest in talking to the man more than she absolutely needed to. The feeling of his tongue on her wrist haunted her, and she squeezed her cut, the sharp pain ricocheting up her arm and bringing her mind into focus.
A few hours later, she shook Thorn awake. “We need to look for Letti.”
Thorn rolled to his feet, and the two set off amid the smoke and fire once more. The scene of the village seemed much less threatening during the day. Though the dark smoke held the sun like walls, ricocheting its golden rays onto the houses that felt almost foreboding, the daytime city did not inspire the same fear that the night did.
Careful to stay on the higher levels of the city as much as possible, Thorn and Candor crisscrossed Ank Ahela. Thorn had been right once more. Bodies of ghosteaters sprawled wherever there seemed to be horizontal terrain, sunken in deep slumbers. Many burned as they had fallen asleep near the flames. Thorn and Candor pushed as many away from the edges of the fires as they could but did not stop to try to heal any wounds.
Finally, as Candor walked up another staircase near the edge of the city, she saw familiar curly dark hair. “Letti.” Candor breathed.
She sprinted up the stairs to find her friend splayed out along the top of a deck. Her fish-skin mask was gone, but she seemed peaceful.
“Thorn.” Candor called. “Thorn.”
Thorn gathered Letti in his arms and directed their small procession back to the room where they placed Letti on the bedroll.
“We need to tie her down.” Thorn said. He rummaged in his pack, extracting several lengths of cord. “I’ll show you the knots. Place her hands behind her back.”
Hating herself, Candor did as she was told, clasping Letti’s hands over the back of her tunic.
Thorn demonstrated how to make a loop and wind the longer end of the cord through it. “Now wrap the space between her hands several times, leaving the end of the cord dangling. With it, Thorn bound Letti’s feet the same way.
“You should sleep.” Thorn rumbled. “Tonight will be worse.”
“How could it possibly be?” Candor groused, but she sunk once more onto the bedroll.
“Because tonight we see their faces.” Thorn whispered. Head clear, he felt thoroughly miserable.
The night fell with shrieks of the waking dead. Candor started from sleep, searching quickly for Thorn. He sat against the far wall, broadsword propped between his bent legs. Somehow, the grey smoke had doubled in their room, occupying the top of their apartment. Finding herself ravenous, Candor helped herself to some of the rations they had been generously given by the ghosteaters, before taking a long swig from the skin. She offered neither victual nor quench to Thorn. He did not ask for any.
Letti woke with a small yelp, looking around wildly. With a spring of hope, Candor thought her friend’s mind had returned from its dance with the odorless smoke, but her eyes stared through Candor and Thorn. Thorn shook his head slightly, and Candor slumped back against the wall.
“We have two more days of this?” She asked weakly.
Thorn merely nodded.
They waited as the shadows lengthened, and the light that filled their room danced from the fires outside, offering an unstable variant to its daytime alternative.
A rumble vibrated the house slightly but ceased almost as it began. Thorn’s eyes flicked up to Candor, but he did not say anything. Shifting uncomfortably, Thorn flinched as a woman’s voice began to keen, almost chanting as it reached a crescendo. The sound echoed, its depth and immediacy unnatural, as if the smoke that now hung low in the city forced it upon Candor’s mind. She shuddered but did not clasp her hands to the ears. Instead, she recited a bit of poetry and rubbed the smooth ridges along the grip of her sword.
Soon several more voices joined the heavy song-screaming. Letti too began to add her voice to the cacophony, softly at first and then more loudly as whatever she was hearing urged her on. Thorn twitched. Before her mind caught up, Candor found her sword crossed with Thorn’s, his teeth bared and his eyes feral.
Her blood, whatever solace it had offered him, offered it no more. Candor almost wished Thorn had asked her for more, but she knew she would not have given it freely. Candor ducked, hearing Thorn’s sword whistle over her head and sink into the side of the house. Haela would not be pleased. Candor’s thoughts sparked randomly. And why isn’t his promise holding him from hurting me?
Candor kicked Thorn in the stomach, and when he was doubled over, darted around his large frame to climb onto his back. Grasping the collar of his tunic, Candor pulled. Thorn choked but did not pass out. Instead, he backpedaled quickly, using his full weight and his momentum to slam Candor off the wall of the ancient tree trunk. She collapsed. Thorn grabbed Candor by her hair and uttered a wordless yell. Candor swung at Thorn’s legs with her sword, but he jumped, oddly lithe for his frame. He shook her, then, pulling her up to his eye level, Thorn roared. His eyes, Candor remarked detachedly, seemed to be entirely black for how wide his pupils had grown.
Thorn took the two steps left to the door and unceremoniously dumped Candor over the rail, even as she had done to the ghosteater the night before. Her stomach lurched as Candor fell the short distance to the burning water below. The dark water enveloped her, and as her body reached equilibrium, Candor opened her eyes. The water was cool, a sharp contrast to the heat at its top. The flames above her shown like gems, sparkling, glowing, winking in the air above like the backside of the sun. Candor gazed up for a moment, utterly entranced; the perspective was unlike anything she had ever seen before.
Her breath growing taught in her chest, Candor kicked hard with both feet, propelling herself to the surface. She burst through the top of the water, attempting to raise herself high enough to see where the portico began. Two lengths away, Candor noted, she dove back under the water, a slight scream escaping her lips. Though she had not offered her body to the flames for very long, the heat that had grown for two days scalded her skin. Swimming under the flames, Candor reached the porch as the building started to shake again. Low on breath, Candor watched in blurry horror as the dark edge of the porch seemed to move over her. Backing up as rapidly as she could underwater, Candor tore between the flames, flinging herself up onto the wooden deck, gasping and shaking, her body at once cool and burning hot.
A growl sounded above her accompanied by the unmistakable sound of descending footsteps. Scrambling to her feet, Candor faced the staircase. Thorn, sword in hand, strode slowly down the stairs, dragging his sword. It clanked as it hit each descending step.
“You will not hurt my Schula.” Thorn’s mouth moved, but the words did not match. The sound did not seem to emanate quite at the same time as Thorn’s lips moved; it was as if he had desynchronized in time.
“Thorn.” Candor cried. “Thorn it’s me.”
Her foot slipped. The tree trunk vibrated again; as Candor glanced down to adjust her stance, Thorn attacked.
“She did nothing.” Thorn roared. His broadsword glanced off Candor’s indigo blade. Candor slid on her knee to his far side, hopping up the stairs to take the high ground.
“She was not yours to take!” Tears streamed down Thorn’s face. “And for what?” He swung again. “For the power of the dead?”
Candor, utterly bewildered and puzzled as to why the house continued to shake of its own accord, did not try to reason with Thorn again. A terrible solution formed in her mind, and she grit her teeth.
The horrible singing grew in volume and intensity, and, Candor gasped, the trunk began to shift over the swamps. Candor did not have time to watch the base of the trunk quench the fires below as it floated across new territory. Thorn slashed and struck harder than he ever had, and with his unusual quickness, Candor found herself at a distinct disadvantage. Up the stairs they fought. Candor’s skin and muscles screaming from the abuse they had recently endured, but reason did not seem to penetrate Thorn’s being.
With a horrible jolt, Candor realized the adjacent house was moving too; she stepped back on the footbridge as it drew taught between the two structures. Thorn followed, apparently unconcerned if he sliced any of the ropes that held it up. Now Candor fought for her life and the structural integrity of their suspended platform.
The light between the houses dimmed; the fires slowly quaked as the houses moved. Glancing down, Candor yelped. Where the bases of the houses had recently floated, an unburning water revealed rows and rows of bodies.
Candor’s block weakened by her shock, she felt the skin of her left triceps tear open, and she screamed. Emboldened, Thorn struck again. Candor bent backwards, nearly in half, but as she made to stand, the building jerked to a halt, and she tumbled backwards down the stairs. Utterly focused on maintaining her grip on her blade, Candor rolled to a stop just above the corpses.
For a moment, the world seemed to stop moving; they seemed so peaceful. Their wrinkled faces paled with their time under the water, their dreadlocks flowing with the current from the houses’ movement, the ancestors presented a picture of perfect silence. Candor noticed that each wore a deep black robe, similar to the colored robe that Haela wore.
Rolling to her back, Candor felt a stabbing pain in her torso. Rib. She thought grimly. Up. She thought next, as Thorn pounded down the stairs. We’ve got to get up.
Unsure why Thorn had become so fixated on killing her, Candor sheathed her sword, waiting until she could see Thorn’s eyes before she shouted.
“I killed Shula. I did, I killed Shula!” Candor whirled, pounding around the far side of the circular deck and across a taught rope bridge. She prayed it held their weight; she had no interest in taking a short swim with these ancestors. They seemed nice and dead enough, but after the last two days, Candor was uninclined to test this assumption.
Roaring incoherently, Thorn thundered after Candor, his rage evident in the wide arcs of his sword.
Candor found the darkness of a door and tucked herself into the room. Keeping her back to the wall, she edged around to make sure she was its only inhabitant at that moment. Discovering herself to be mercifully alone, Candor returned to the doorway and rapped on its frame.
“Thorn,” she called softly. “Woden Thorn.” She used the name Haela had used. Wondering if that was his title or his first name, Candor steadied herself and waited for him to storm into the room. Men fight with rage, Candor thought to herself. Thank the twins for their anger. Slowly, she unwound the rest of her bandage. Waterlogged, it slipped off her wrist easily. She could feel warm blood begin to seep heavily down her hand.
Thorn burst into the room, flailing, unusually ungainly. Instead of engaging him with a sword, Candor threw her sword, embedding its tip in the far wall. It distracted Thorn just long enough for Candor to once more jump on his back.
Pressing the fingers of her right hand between his lips, Candor shoved her left wrist into Thorn’s mouth, feeling his teeth part slightly. Forcing her hand into a fist so Thorn wouldn’t bite a finger off, Candor left her wrist there for one more second before tumbling off the large man’s back. She scurried across the room, retrieving her sword as Thorn hunched over. Candor circled him lightly, exhausted.
After a long moment, Thorn regained his full height. The gold in his ears glittered, as the rest of him seemed to suck the light out of the room.
“Candor?” He asked weakly.
“Thorn.” Candor did not drop her sword, but she sank into a chair, letting out a breath.
“What—” Thorn looked around, realizing he was not in Haela’s room. “What happened?”
“You succumbed to the smoke. Somehow.” Candor replied flatly. “You nearly killed me. The buildings move, did you know that? And then I stuck some of my blood down your throat and you’re back? Thanks for that, by the way, informing me that you would need more blood.”
“It wears off.” Thorn muttered, still rather shocked.
“So, I learned.” Candor stood, rediscovering the sharp pain under her heart. She winced.
“Can I—”
“No.” Candor cut him off. “Let’s get back to Letti.”
“You left her?” Thorn’s tone dropped to disbelief.
Candor eyed Thorn sardonically as she stepped out onto the porch. The bodies still glittered eerily below, but the singing had stopped sometime during their fight. “Well, between possible death at running and certain death at staying, I elected to fight you outside the room where my friend was singing mad songs.” Candor did not check to see if Thorn was following her.
“Fair.” Thorn muttered.
The two crossed the rope bridges still pulled tight between the structures and returned to Haela’s room.
Letti lay on the ground, humming softly, eyes unfocused.
“You should give her your blood.” Thorn said, dropping into a chair. “We could even sneak out tonight if we were all lucid.”
“No.” Candor did not bother conveying her rage at this newly articulated plan. “That is a violation I will not commit her to.”
Thorn seemed to be ready to respond but closed his mouth. Candor was grateful.
“Now.” Candor turned on Thorn. “I will be tying you up.”
“No.” Thorn shook his head. “I will not be tied up.”
“I am not fighting you again, Thorn.” Candor could not believe the selfishness of this man. “You can’t die. I can.”
“I need to be able to protect you.” Thorn maintained eye contact.
“Protect me?” Candor lost her temper. “You fool.” Unable to remain still, Candor jumped to her feet and began to pace. “You don’t tell me my blood is an option. You take it without my permission. You don’t tell me it will not keep you sane for three days. You try to kill me. I am forced to offer you my blood again. You. Will. Do. This.”
“No.” Thorn fingered his sword. “I chose to keep that information from you for a reason, but I do not regret it. And I will not be bound.”
“Why.” Candor did not phrase this inquiry as a question.
“Forever is a long time to be in a cage.” Thorn said softly.
Utterly exhausted, and unwilling to argue with vagueries, Candor relented. “I will tie your feet.” She too met Thorn’s eye. “I do not trust you. I do not want to give you any more of my blood. I will not have you armed. I will tie your feet. As you feel the smoke come over you again, you will find it somewhere in your tiny brain to remember that you are to remain tied, or I will cut off your hands and wait until the death days are over before replacing them.”
Thorn looked horrified.
“You cannot die.” Candor finished. “But you said you can feel pain.”
“You are crueler than I first imagined.” Thorn whispered, almost impressed.
“I have had a skilled teacher.” Candor walked to Thorn’s pack and gestured. “You may find the cord.”
~.~
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