A Haven in Ash Page 4

  She sat in front of the house. She’d hefted out an armchair, the fabric full of holes. And she lolled in it, sunken low, and swigged from a ceramic bottle.

  A beady eye fixed Jasen as he approached. She lifted a hand. “Hail.”

  “Pleasant sunning,” Jasen greeted.

  Shilara peered skyward. “Wouldn’t call it sunning myself. Atrocious weather for summer.” Another sip at her bottle. “Well, come on by then, lad, sit yourself down. I know you’ve not happened upon me by coincidence. One moment.” And she thrust upward, heading back into the house with a bang of the front door, bottle still in hand.

  Jasen obliged, stepping off the path and navigating the overgrown patch leading to her. As well as her weapons, plus years’ worth of broken spears, a log pile spilled out from one edge of the house. There were also, here and there, straw dummies, crudely fashioned but recognizable enough. Most were half-rotted, and had gone to die where they fell. A couple remained standing, staked into the ground. One was relatively fresh. Another, a wood block surrounded by a thick wad of wool and covered in leather, had seen much better days: most of its stuffing lay in the grass at its base.

  Shilara returned with a footstool. “There.” She shunted it out of the door, which she slammed behind her.

  Jasen winced. No wonder the place was on its way to dilapidation; she was doing a damned good job of shaking the house apart.

  Shilara took up her seat again. “Sit down there, why don’t you?” She pointed to a spot on her right, which put him closer to the front door and, beyond it, that row of split logs.

  Jasen obliged, pulling the footstool to where she’d indicated. It was wood, and banged up; plenty of nicks had been made in the legs and seat.

  He lowered onto it. Not comfortable.

  Shilara took a swig from her bottle.

  Jasen watched her from the corner of one eye. Shilara was a reedy woman, and fit—it was rare not to see her practicing thrusts with her spear, or swipes with her daggers, or footwork as she squatted behind a shield, taking intermittent swipes at some imagined foe. But her habit of daytime drinking had put a pouch around her middle and a layer of fat about her neck that reminded him of a bullfrog. Maybe it had contributed to the greying of her hair too; she was only in her fifties, but the color had been robbed of it for years.

  She extended the bottle to Jasen. “Want a nip?”

  “Uhm.” He considered, more tempted than he would ever let on to Alixa. Poor girl, if she were here she’d probably have a heart attack at Gressom’s offer. Having said that, Alixa would probably have had a heart attack at the sight of the woman’s house. Jasen didn’t think she’d ever come this way—much too improper for her.

  “I’ll pass,” he said at last.

  “Suit yourself.” She took another tipple. Jasen watched enviously.

  For the best, he reminded himself. Smelling like grain alcohol when his father returned would be yet another mistake today to add to the list.

  “You aren’t on guard duty today,” Jasen said to make conversation.

  “If I am, I’m doing a ruddy poor job of it.” Shilara shook her head, lips puckered. “Only one here with any experience, and they’ll take me for a half-day each week. Disgusting.”

  Jasen didn’t say anything. Not much to say. Shilara knew the village barely tolerated her presence, her ways, and he knew it too. What else was there to say?

  The silence here was a different sort to the others today. Not companionable, like when he spent time with Alixa, each relegated to their own thoughts. Nor was it a thoughtful one, as when Adem chose his words and Jasen waited, expectant, for his father’s wisdom. This one, Jasen couldn’t find a word for. It was not uncomfortable, but not particularly friendly.

  Shilara was the one to break it. “Foggarty’s been talking about replacing me. Me. I fought in the war, for the love of our ancestors. Only one of us to have come back from the thing.” Her lips puckered again, and she stared into the middle distance grimly. “Does it mean anything to them? No. A lady shouldn’t don armor, shouldn’t wield a spear. Ridiculous. Women need to fight sometimes too, lad.”

  Jasen listened politely. He didn’t think Shilara was sharing this out of any great sense of camaraderie, didn’t think she was confiding in him. This was a woman venting, and on this rare occasion she had someone to vent to. Well, Jasen could oblige her today.

  “Complacent,” she murmured. “That’s what they are.” A sip of alcohol. It glugged in the bottle, barely upended each time she lifted it; it was close to full. Despite her tendency to drink through the day, Jasen was certain this was still her first—she made them last. Had to, with only a small stipend in the few hours of work she was granted each week. And she did like to talk about a person keeping his or her wits about them.

  Another disdainful shake of the head. She opened her mouth as if to say more, but then closed it, words bitten off before they could come.

  After a time, Jasen said, “I’m sorry.”

  Gressom looked at him with a frown and drawn eyebrows. “For what?”

  “For what you said, about the captain of the guard looking to replace you.”

  “Why’re you sorry? Not your fault, is it?”

  “Err, no,” he said quickly, heart beating sharply—another telling-off coming to him, from the village outcast this time—

  “Well, don’t be sorry for the actions of others,” Shilara said, turning back to look toward Terreas’s center. “Pointless. You can’t apologize for someone else. Your words are meaningless, and theirs are unsaid. Nothing is achieved.”

  Jasen chewed his lip. Was that true? Perhaps … but he could still feel regretful, couldn’t he?

  He was fairly sure he could.

  Shilara drank again, twice in the silence that filled the air between them. The tang of alcohol wafted on a momentary light breeze. Jasen decided that he was glad he hadn’t taken up Shilara’s offer. The stuff smelled bitter.

  “Why’d you come?” she asked. Not demanding, not even really curious, by her tone; just a question now her complaints were out of the way. “Been a while since I’ve seen you.”

  “Sorry. I’ve been … busy.”

  “Uh huh.” Her voice held no malice, but still Jasen felt a twinge of guilt. Then she said, “Lot of hubbub in the village this morning.”

  “A little,” Jasen said.

  “What for?”

  “Me.”

  “You?” Shilara affixed him with a beady eye again. “What did you do?”

  It came tumbling out: “I crossed the boundary this morning. Only for thirty seconds! One of the boys from the village was out there, in the rye, and there was a scourge stalking him—and he’s just eight, far too short to see over the crop, so he’d have just wandered and wandered—so I leapt over and grabbed him, and ran back—and that’s it.” He paused for a breath, and one breath became two, three, four … before Shilara spoke again.

  “Scourge are dangerous, Jasen,” she said in a low, almost conspiratorial, voice.

  “I know,” he griped. “I’ve heard it plenty today, and I’ve heard it plenty every day before this one too. Scourge are a menace. They stalk the land they’ve claimed, lying in wait for a hapless fool to step out in front of their jaws.” He squeezed his fist tight and knuckled his thigh sullenly. “I’ve heard the warnings. I’m not stupid. I wish everyone would stop treating me like I am.”

  A pause. Shilara watched him; Jasen felt her eyes on his cheek. He didn’t rise to meet them, just dug his knuckles deeper into flesh—another red mark to add to those left by his father’s fingers during the assembly meeting.

  “You’re no fool,” she said. “Brave, I’d call you, risking life and limb like that.”

  Jasen’s heart skipped.

  “Really?” He daren’t believe it.

  “You say the boy was being stalked by one of the beasts?”

  “We—that’s Alixa and me—could see it moving through the rye. And then after I had Tery and was brin
ging him back, it burst out.” He tried, and failed, to tamp down a shudder at the thought of it loping after them in great bounds, only the rye tangling about its legs keeping it from devouring Jasen and Tery both. If he tried, he could still pick up the scent of rot, like the faintest whisper on the breeze.

  “You got away,” Shilara observed.

  “Barely.”

  “What was it like?” She leaned in, and now Jasen did look up, meeting her gaze. Only this gaze was mad. Her eyes seemed to bulge as she lit on him, wide and manic. “How did you feel?”

  Jasen hesitated, coughed a strangled word. “I—you fought in the war, didn’t you? When they first invaded?”

  “So?”

  “So you’ve seen them? Once?”

  “Once,” she agreed, and shifted back just a fraction. Some of that mad light faded—and then it was back, and she reached for him, clutched his forearm with a grip that was unnatural in strength for a woman. “I want to know how you felt. Up close to it, face to face … what did you feel in that moment?”

  It came back to him, and for an awful moment he was not in Shilara’s disorderly yard, but instead in the field of rye, fleeing with all the power he could push through his legs, as fast as he could, Tery gripped fiercely hard.

  “Afraid,” he said. “Terrified. I thought my life would end.”

  Shilara nodded, tiny movements of the head. “Yes.” She reclined, but never once took that penetrating gaze off of him. “That’s the nature of the scourge. And the rest of the village are right, on this: the world out there is overrun.”

  “I know,” Jasen said.

  “The scourge scent a man. They have no mercy, no decency. And they will persist in hunting their prey until they have him …”

  “Or until he crosses onto this side of the boundary,” Jasen quietly finished.

  He swiveled on the hard seat, peering to look at the boundary. Miles out, and farther down this very gentle slope, he could pick out the thin line not by the wall itself—it was too low and distant for his eyes to train upon—but the transition immediately afterward to the untamed expanse of rye.

  Rumors circled in the village. Jasen had heard tell for years that it was Shilara who had discovered the boundary, learned that this was the line the scourge would not cross. He had never believed it; why would the village shun someone like that? But perhaps they thought her a conjurer of strange magics, like Baraghosa, as well as a stubborn old woman who refused to take her rightful place in society and put down the weapons she surrounded herself with, and in their fear they had cast her out.

  That begat more questions, and now Jasen had tired of them.

  He rose. “It’s been nice talking to you, Ms. Gressom.”

  “Shilara. I say it always.”

  “Yes, uhm, Shilara.” He hesitated, and finished awkwardly, “I hope you have a pleasant day.”

  “Course I will,” she said, and Jasen was plainly aware she would not—how did one fill so many empty days for so many empty years?—but there was again no annoyance in her voice.

  He ambled back toward the path, stepping over the remains of a battered target.

  “Jasen.”

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  Shilara was frowning at him, a thin line pressed between her eyebrows.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  A long silence, and he wondered if maybe she was drunk, if the alcohol finally had taken her mind … and then she said flatly, “Tread carefully.”

  That was all. And so Jasen nodded, said, “I will,” and turned away.

  He felt her eyes on him until he was out of sight.

  Not just her eyes followed him, but her frown. It wasn’t the sort she’d worn when bemoaning Foggarty and the guard detail’s desire to remove her from the sole job she had, nor was it the grimace she’d worn as she’d called the village complacent. This was a different sort, one Jasen didn’t think he’d seen ever, and the ghost of it stuck in his brain like a stain.

  5

  The afternoon continued to pass listlessly. Jasen roved from place to place without intent, stopping and sitting down once in a while on a bench, upon the steps leading into a public building, or just an alley where he might lurk, unnoticed. A few villagers stopped and spoke to him, but not many, and those who did spoke shortly. Likely they had heard about today’s excursion beyond the boundary. Perhaps they were conflicted. Perhaps simply disdainful.

  Mr. Hughes filled the hole that eventually formed in Jasen’s stomach. Jasen liked to visit the bakery early in the day, when the scent of pastries and the rich, heavy loaves hung over the entire street like a glorious fog. Today, he only realized his growing hunger when afternoon was crawling toward evening. The shelves were almost empty by then, and Jasen’s favorite—a swirled pastry infused with a marmalade of crushed berries—was nowhere among the leftovers. He opted instead for a slightly flat-looking slice of fruit bread (dry, it turned out), paid with one of the coins his father gave him once a week, and made off before Mr. Hughes could ask about the outburst he’d witnessed earlier between Jasen and Alixa.

  Three times, he looped around by the Weltan place. Each time, Alixa was nowhere to be seen. So he returned home; but his father did not return at his usual time, nor long after, so when the sky through the windows had started to dull as the sun sank, Jasen extracted himself from the empty house and pointed himself toward Alixa’s one final time, just in case.

  She was perched on the rock again when he arrived.

  “Good evening, cousin,” Jasen greeted.

  She jerked around with a start. “Jasen! Don’t scare me like that.” And she clutched her heart, as if to keep the thing from bursting out of her chest.

  “Sorry. Um … room for another?”

  She fixed him with a probing sort of look, half a scowl; not very happy to cede space on the boulder to him, after the way the day had gone. But she relented, her pout not diminishing in the slightest, saying, “Yes, you may join me,” as she scooched over.

  Jasen lowered himself onto the soft carpet of moss. Normally he’d throw himself down casually at Alixa’s elbow, but now he was slow and careful in his movements.

  Alixa did not make conversation. And this quiet between them was not particularly companionable.

  Jasen forced himself to say something, anything that might lighten the mood …

  “So how were your family? You know, about today.”

  … and instantly failed.

  Alixa pursed her lips. “Not pleased.” That was all she said.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jasen saw her frown deepen and thought she might turn on him and tell him to make off after all, and maybe never come back. But then she opened, the way a daidai fruit’s flesh gave way at just an inch of pressure, relinquishing the sour stone at its core.

  “It was awful, positively awful. Aunt Sidyera lectured me all afternoon—because she’d heard, somehow, even in that little room of hers she hardly ever leaves. I didn’t even start weaving until mid-afternoon, because she just kept on and on and on.” She squinted at Jasen, a glimmer of envy in her face. “You’re lucky she didn’t see you when we parted earlier, because I cannot imagine the talking-to you’d get.”

  Jasen could. It would be over-dramatic, incredibly repetitious, and likely Sidyera wouldn’t pause for breath until her entire rant had been issued five times over. A nightmare, to be sure. He shot a nervous glance over his shoulder, just in case Sidyera was able to somehow detect his presence and drag her creaky old frame out here to tell him exactly what she thought, even if it took till dawn.

  Possibly best to avoid the Weltan place for some time, after all.

  “She’s gone to bed,” Alixa said, reading his face. “Though I’ve half a mind to go back and wake her up.”

  “Please don’t,” Jasen begged.

  “Well, I ought to. Not like I crossed the boundary.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Alixa huffed. F
olding her arms, she went on, “And then my mother and father came home.”

  Again she ceased, and after waiting a moment for her to say more, Jasen asked, “And …?” He did not wish to ask—but perhaps this was his penance. Alixa could repeat her encounters, and he could add another layer of guilt to the mound piling up. Presently it came to his shoulders, but after Alixa’s recounting it would bury him right to his crown, and he’d drown in it and it all would be over.

  “My mother was disappointed,” Alixa said, “obviously. It was clear on her face in the assembly meeting.”

  Jasen could see it plainly in his mind’s eye. Aunt Margaut’s face was an expressive one, better at the negative than positive, which Alixa had inherited. Hurt would be plainly wrought upon her features.

  Another stab of guilt. Coming up to his chin now.

  “She didn’t say a lot,” Alixa continued. “Only that I ought to reconsider who I spend my time with in the future.”

  Less a stab, more a punch in the gut.

  Jasen almost blurted, “Really?” But he kept it in. He should feel terrible. He’d done a bad thing, crossing the boundary. Everyone knew it, everyone had said so, and so he should believe it.

  A small voice began, But Tery …

  He silenced it but frowned to himself, his gaze lost somewhere far beyond the mountains ahead of them.

  “My father said more,” Alixa said. Glancing at Jasen, she added flatly, “I shan’t repeat it; it would be improper.”

  Jasen loosed a low sigh. His uncle Davyd was a loud man, quite the opposite of Aunt Margaut. In the days when she was around, Jasen’s mother had told him that his uncle was boisterous in his youth, a rule-breaker. Margaut had tempered him, and two and a half decades of that tempering influence had made him an echo of her—just a much more outspoken one. Jasen hadn’t enjoyed drawing the man’s ire in his own hijinks, and he disliked even more that Alixa had endured his anger tonight. All words, of course—but as Jasen grew older, he’d started to think that maybe words were worse than fists. Bruises healed. The wounds torn by words didn’t; they just festered, turning into scars that split apart, raw and bleeding just like the day they were opened.