“My story is the same as all the others. Everyone I love has died; all my nightmares have come to life. Our world is lost, and so are we. There. Will that make a good story for your collection?”
—Collection of stories written by refugees in occupied Ventera
Curated by Hob Cavaserra
After dinner, Eliana claimed a seat in one of the busier common areas of Crown’s Hollow and cleaned her knives.
From her stool by the fire, she could see everything in the low-ceilinged room: Red Crown soldiers switching watch shifts, supplies being tallied, refugees being carried into the sick wing on makeshift stretchers.
According to Simon, they would leave Crown’s Hollow in the morning, once fresh horses had arrived. Until then, her spot by the fire was the perfect place to settle and notice everything worth noticing. Most of the passing rebels didn’t look twice at her. Maybe Simon had decided it was best to keep word of her identity from spreading.
A pity, that.
Her blades were hungry.
Remy lay beside her, head resting on his folded jacket as he read the latest entry in his notebook. Patrik had loaned him a pen; fresh ink smudged his fingers.
“Can we go to bed yet?” he asked with a yawn.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Too much work to do.” She held up Nox, her crescent-shaped blade, and rubbed at smudges that didn’t exist.
Remy set his notebook aside. “You’re lying.”
She smiled at him. “Am not.”
“You’re not telling the whole truth, then.”
Eliana glanced up as Navi sat down beside them.
“Eliana,” Navi said in greeting.
“Your Highness.” Eliana gave her a mocking bow.
Navi ignored her, looked instead to Remy. “Hello there, my friend. Did you like your supper?”
Remy nodded and passed Navi his notebook. “I wrote down the story you told me about Saint Tameryn and the wolf. I changed some things.”
“For the better, I’d wager.” Navi scooted closer to him and settled his notebook in her lap. “I didn’t do the story justice.”
Remy flushed pink. “I liked it.”
“You know, I think I’m ready for bed after all.” Eliana folded her knives into a rag she’d snatched off a crate. “Remy, let’s go.”
He frowned at her. “But Navi’s going to read my story!”
“I don’t care.”
“Oh, Eliana.” Navi touched Eliana’s hand. “I was hoping we could get to know each other a little.”
A taut humming cord inside Eliana gave way. Her surveillance efforts seemed unimportant in the face of a sudden, roaring fury.
“All right. Fine.” She faced Navi, legs crossed, as though they were friends exchanging secrets. “Remy and I are risking our lives to get you to Astavar. What intelligence are you carrying that’s so important?”
Navi’s smile was as patient as Eliana’s was brittle. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Where was my mother taken? What’s happened to her?”
Remy sat up. “El…”
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
“And where was Astavar when Ventera fell?”
Navi’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry?”
“Where was Astavar when the Empire stormed our borders? Raped our men, women, and children? Burned our libraries and farmlands? Executed our king and queen and their children on the steps of Saint Ghovan’s temple in Orline?”
Her body vibrated with anger. She pressed her palms flat to the floor. “Where was Astavar when my father was killed?”
All activity in the room had fallen tensely quiet. Eliana felt the eyes of a dozen rebels upon her.
“You were hiding,” Eliana continued, her voice soft. “Hoarding your food and your weapons. Fortifying your borders. You watched us bleed. You heard us scream for help. And did nothing.”
“I won’t apologize for my people doing whatever was necessary to keep themselves alive,” Navi said at last. “Just as you won’t apologize for what you’ve done to protect your family. And I wouldn’t ask you to.”
For a moment Eliana couldn’t speak. The truth of Navi’s words knocked her in the gut.
She ignored the memory of Harkan’s voice, held out a hand for Remy, and felt a cruel thrill when he obeyed.
“Don’t talk to me about my family,” she said. “And stay away from my brother.”
She spat on the floor by Navi’s feet. Then she turned, Remy in hand, pushed past the staring rebels, and left the room.
• • •
“Ah, Eliana!” Patrik looked up from his table in the common room. “How lovely to see you up and about at this hour.”
Hob, seated beside him, glanced up at her, then scowled at the notebook he was writing in.
Eliana hadn’t been able to sleep. She’d been lying on the tiny, lumpy pallet she shared with Remy, tensely staring at the ceiling with an iron fist in her stomach and knots turning in her shoulders. She’d borne it for a good hour before giving up.
Now, she was…what? She didn’t know. Looking for information? Maybe these rebel saps knew something about the people who’d taken her mother.
Looking for a fight? Her body melted a little at the thought. God, yes, a fight would do the trick. She longed to punch something until the skin broke on her indestructible fists. Maybe she could wake up Simon, piss him off. He’d try to hit her, and she’d make him pay for it.
“Patrik.” She stepped into the room and nodded at him—a little sheepish, a little soft. The apologetic bounty hunter, finally starting to see the error of her ways. It was almost a funny enough thought to make her laugh right there in front of them. “Hob. I was hoping someone would be awake.”
Patrik beckoned her over. “Someone’s always awake here. We’re peeling potatoes. Well, I’m peeling potatoes. Hob’s writing.” Patrik let out an aggrieved sigh. “I’m used to it though. Doing all the work around here, I mean.”
“You poor, overworked darling,” said Hob, his voice a deep monotone.
Eliana chuckled and took her earlier seat at the hearth.
“And will you not say hello to me?”
Eliana jumped to hear Simon’s low voice from the shadows. She hadn’t noticed him there, slouched in a stained, high-backed chair, long legs propped up on an overturned crate. He gazed at her over the rim of his glass, blue eyes gleaming in the firelight.
Irritated with herself for having missed him, Eliana snapped, “Are you ever not drinking?”
With a tiny grin, he mumbled into his glass, “Helps me sleep. Keeps me sharp. Keeps the voices at bay.”
“Which is it, then?”
“All. Or none.” He leaned his head back against the chair, closed his eyes, and let out a long, animal groan of satisfaction. “What about you, Eliana? What voices do you hear in the deep dark of night?”
The sound of her name on his lips lingered in the crackling hot air by the fire. Eliana tore her gaze away from his bared throat; long silver lines of scar tissue shifted as he swallowed.
Then, from the nearest door, a soft voice broke the silence: “Patrik?”
Patrik turned, a smile spreading across his face. “Linnet! Shouldn’t you be in bed, little one?”
A small child, maybe eight or nine years old, crept forward from the shadows, a ratty doll clutched in her hands. Bandaged cuts and purple bruises marred her pale skin.
“I don’t like sleeping,” said Linnet. She climbed into Patrik’s lap and stared gravely at Hob’s notebook. “I think I’m ready now.”
Hob looked up at her. “You don’t have to, Linnet, if you don’t want to.”
The girl’s fingers were white around her doll, her thin lips cracked. “I want to. I promise.”
Eliana’s throat clenched at the girl’s haunted expression. “What are you going to do to her?” she asked sharply.
Linnet peered at Eliana through the shadows. “Who’re you?”
“Just a monster who likes to wear masks,” Simon mumbled into his glass.
Linnet’s eyes widened in alarm.
“Linnet’s going to tell us her story for Hob’s collection.” Patrik fixed first Simon, then Eliana, with a cutting glare. “And no one’s going to interrupt her, are they?”
Hob opened his notebook to a fresh page. “You’re nine years old, aren’t you, love?”
Linnet kept glancing over at Eliana with something like awe on her face. Her gaze dropped to the knives at Eliana’s belt. “Yes.”
Hob began writing. “Can you tell me your family name?”
Linnet rested her chin on her doll’s head and said nothing.
“What about where you lived?” Patrik asked softly.
Linnet squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head a little.
“That’s all right.” Hob smiled. “You don’t have to tell me that.”
“I don’t remember,” Linnet whispered.
“I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning,” Patrik said. “An apple, maybe? A hat? A belt buckle? No, that can’t be right…”
Linnet smiled shyly. She stroked her doll’s snarled hair ten times before she began to speak.
“The bad men found us in the morning,” she said at last.
Hob’s pen scratched across the page.
“Mama said to be quiet,” Linnet continued, “so I was, like playing fox-and-rabbit, but then Will sneezed right when the bad men were walking outside our door.”
“Can you tell me who Will is?” Patrik asked.
Linnet’s mouth screwed up into a mean little bow. For a long moment, she didn’t speak.
The words hit Eliana like a punch to the jaw. Suddenly Linnet wasn’t Linnet; she was Remy, frail and tiny, telling a story he should never have had to tell.
The skin on Eliana’s wrist began to itch, right where the old refugee woman had touched her.
Don’t look at them.
Don’t look.
She shot out of her chair, ready to storm for the door. She didn’t have to listen to this. She wouldn’t listen to this.
But Simon grabbed her arm, held her fast. He said nothing; the icy look on his face was enough to stop her in her tracks.
She glared at him, fuming. She could start a fight, kick herself free, put a stop to story time and give this poor girl a show.
Instead she settled back onto the hearth beside Simon. He wanted her to listen, for whatever malicious reason he’d concocted? Fine. She would listen. And, later, she’d make him regret it.
“The door was already smashed,” Linnet was saying, “because we had a party with Mama. She said, Let’s have a mess party.”
“A mess party?” Patrik whistled low. “That sounds fun. What is that?”
“That’s when you make your house dirty instead of clean,” Linnet explained.
“That sounds like the best kind of party I could possibly imagine.”
Linnet bit her lip. “We set fire to the garden and let our animals go loose, and then Mama… She smashed the windows with an ax. It made her cry, doing it, because Papa loved those windows.”
Hob glanced up, his face soft. “Why did he love them?”
Linnet shook her head slowly—back and forth, back and forth. “Because,” she whispered after a moment, “I painted them.”
Eliana looked away, toward the dying fire. The air in this place was stale, sour. Too many people with unwashed bodies and rotting hurts. She breathed in and tasted death on her tongue. An ill knot was expanding in her belly, forcing its way up through her chest.
Her mother’s words returned to her: If you don’t learn to tuck away that sick feeling, it will consume you.
She closed her eyes, clenched her fists. The fire was too near, too hot. Her skin crawled from it; the heat siphoned all the air from her lungs.
She should never have left her bed.
“Why are you making me stay for this?” she asked, her voice tight and low.
“Because I can,” Simon replied and then downed the rest of his drink.
“We tore up our beds and our pillows.” Linnet was whispering faster now. “We made red dye from berries and painted the walls. Mama said…Mama said…”
Patrik glanced at Hob. “Maybe we should stop for now—”
“No!” Linnet flung away her doll. It hit the wall and dropped to the floor. “Mama said it had to look real.” She gasped a little, like her own words were choking her. With nothing now to hold on to, she clutched the table’s edge, stared fiercely at it. “Mama said it had to look like people died there. We were hiding, and the bad men came, and Will sneezed, because he sneezes when he gets excited, and I was crying. I couldn’t help it. Mama said…hush. She held her hands…over my mouth—”
The girl was having trouble breathing. She looked around, wild-eyed, and then, before Eliana had time to prepare herself, Linnet scrambled off Patrik’s lap and ran to her.
She slammed into Eliana’s front, threw her arms around her neck, and buried her face in Eliana’s braid. She clung there, her little bird’s body trembling like it was ready to crack. Her breath came in frantic gasps against Eliana’s ear.
“Mama said…” Linnet whispered, over and over. “Mama said hush. Mama said please be quiet…”
Eliana couldn’t move, could hardly breathe with this weight she didn’t ask for hanging from her neck. She wanted to shove the girl off her, then rip Hob’s notebook from his hands and throw it into the fire.
It will consume you.
Breathing thinly through her nose, she tamped down the rising panic winging hard up her throat.
She didn’t think of Remy, probably tossing with nightmares down the hall. He’d never slept away from home, not once in his life.
Didn’t think of her dead father, her vanished mother, the soft way they’d looked at each other before war ripped them apart.
Didn’t think of Harkan and his warm bed, the scent of him like coming home.
A girl couldn’t think of these things, couldn’t think about teary-eyed children and their tragic stories—not if she was also a killer.
I am the Dread of Orline.
“Then what happened?” Eliana asked. Her voice came out thick, not the hollow, flat thing she’d tried for, and she hated herself for it. She needed to get out of this room before it ate her alive.
I will not be consumed.
“They marched inside,” Linnet whispered. “I saw wings on their chests. That’s the Empire’s sign.” She turned her face into Eliana’s neck. “Did you know that?”
“Yes.” Eliana’s collar grew wet beneath Linnet’s chin. The heat of the fire licked up her back. What was the old prayer? For Saint Marzana, the firebrand. Remy would know. “I did know that.”
Ah, yes. She remembered the prayer now: Burn steady and burn true. Burn clean and burn bright.
She stared across the room at Hob and Patrik, hoped her unblinking bright glare made them squirm.
“They took Mama by her hair,” Linnet said, “and dragged her into the back room. She was screaming so loud it hurt my ears, and Will, he’s big, he beat the bad men, had one of his fits when he starts spitting and hollering, and he looked at me, and…and…”
She didn’t say anything after that. She pressed her face tight against Eliana’s neck, shivering.
“He told you to run,” Eliana finished for her. “He gave you time to run.”
Then she unfolded the girl from her body, lowered her to the floor. Patrik was there immediately with the abandoned doll and a quiet endearment.
Eliana pushed past them both to Hob’s table. Rage snapped up her body like the lash of a whip.
“Why did you do this?” She jerked her head at Linnet, now cradled in Patrik’s arms. “Why make her relive it?”
Hob watched her calmly. “She wanted me to write it down, so she wouldn’t forget.”
“How many do you have?”
“One thousand three hundred and twenty-five. I’ve filled twelve books so far. People come through here, they have stories to tell. Some of them want me to write them down. Some write them down for me.” Hob took a deep breath. “I think someone ought to know about them. About everyone. Even if it’s only me and Patrik.”
Eliana eyed the notebook and its gnarled pages with disdain. “It’s a waste of time,” she spat, “writing stories for the living dead.”
Then she left them, Linnet calling faintly after her. The girl didn’t even know her name: “Mama?”
Eliana stormed out into the cramped, dark corridor and around the first corner, then subsided against the wall, her heart drumming for an escape and her hands shaking. She fisted them in her jacket, bit down hard on her tongue.
It had been a mistake—to leave Orline, to strike her bargain with Simon, to drag Remy along with them. Reckless and sloppy.
She should have gone from her mother’s empty bed straight to Lord Arkelion’s door and demanded he help bring her home.
She’d been a loyal servant of the Empire for years, hadn’t she?
I will not be consumed.
Maybe that would be enough for them to accept her back.
That, and the map of Crown’s Hollow now living in her brain.
“It seems the Dread has a heart after all,” said Simon, appearing around the corner so silently that she startled.
She managed a tiny laugh, thinking fast. He could not suspect, or he’d shoot her on the spot. “Is it such a shocking thing to imagine?”
Simon lightly touched the crook of her arm, and there was a fragility to the movement that surprised her. The fire-warmed heat of his body suffused her own.
“Come,” he murmured. “I’ll walk you to your room.”
It was a quiet walk, and by the time they reached her door, Eliana had coaxed the proper fall of tears from her eyes. She turned her face up to Simon, gave him a good view.
Her mother had told her that her beauty would make working for the Empire both easier and harder.
This time it made things easier. She saw the shift on his face as he looked at her—tiny but obvious. A softening and a craving.
A thread of triumph unspooled in her belly.
Farewell, Wolf. May death find you at your greatest moment of joy.
“Remy always says there’s hope for me yet, even after everything I’ve done,” she said quietly. Forlorn was the word. “I’m not sure he’s right.” She laughed, her eyes full.
Simon shifted, hesitated, then cupped her face in one large, callused hand. His touch was so delicate it sent a chill down Eliana’s front, despite her new resolve to end him.
“People like us don’t fight for our own hope,” he said quietly. “We fight for everyone else’s.”
Then he opened her door a crack and stepped aside. “Good night, Eliana,” he said, then swiftly moved past her and was gone.
Eliana entered the room and shut the door behind her. Once inside, her face hardened to stone, and her heart along with it.
She wiped her cheeks dry and gave Remy a gentle shake. “Remy, wake up.”
He turned, grunting. “El? What is it?”
“Stay quiet. Get out of bed and put on your boots.”
“Why?”
“We’re leaving.” In the dark, her smile was vicious, but she kept her voice kind. “Simon needs our help on a very important mission.”
