I paused, and then said again, “I don’t know.”
Solemnly, she replied, “Empyrea keep you, my friend.”
“And you.”
* * *
The wind was at my back the entire way to Greythorne, pushing me forward even as trepidation crept like a spider across my skin. The crops of flax had grown tall and coarse, and they waved somberly in the cold gusts, field after unharvested field.
The village depended upon the flax harvest to fuel its textile production, which kept the villagers fed through the winter. They’d never let it dry up and shrivel on the stalk.
But as troubling as the flax fields were, the sheep pastures that came after were much, much worse.
It was the smell that hit me first, rank and rotten. Covering my nose and mouth with my cloak did little to block it out. The more ground I covered toward the village, the stronger the stench got.
Then I saw the crows.
They were gathered by the thousands, pecking at the disintegrating corpses of Greythorne’s flocks. The sound of my approach disturbed them, and they took to the air in a swirling mass of black feathers and clacking beaks, wildly winging across the sky.
When the curtain of crows finally parted, I got my first glimpse of Greythorne, eerily still in the far distance, save for a few sickly strings of rising smoke. The Day of Shades had arrived with no banquets or bonfires, no barrels of apples, no kegs of ale.
Madrona stopped two miles out from the village, balking along a border I could not see and that she would not cross. I had no choice but to climb down and go the rest of the way alone.
“Thank you, girl,” I said, letting her nuzzle my cheek with her nose. “Now, off with you.” I slapped her rump, and she bound off the way we had come, mane flying.
I walked the rest of the way alone.
I approached from the northwest, seeking the protection of the hawthorn thickets, though it made my progress slow. It was hard to know if the extra caution was warranted; no one seemed to be guarding the territory, Tribunal or otherwise. Had I an army at my back and a sword in my hand, I would have stormed the place with a war cry and won it with barely a fight. But I had no great weapons or strong warriors; I was unarmed and alone, a single girl running headlong toward her own downfall. And that was the favorable outcome.
I reached the edge of the refugee camp at dusk.
The smoke I’d seen in the distance wasn’t from cooking or campfires. It was from the smoldering remains of collapsed tents and scattered clothing. Renalt’s fleur-de-lis flag had been raised above the scene, the Tribunal’s starred black banner flying below.
It wasn’t enough to apprehend the immigrants—this was the work of those who wanted to see the Achlevan settlement and all it stood for destroyed. Decimated. And then were so proud of the havoc they’d wrought that they erected a flag in the ashes to claim it.
With an angry cry, I kicked the pole until it fell, landing at a steep angle against an overturned cart—my cart. The one I’d won from Brom and brought to the camp. Its load of once-red apples was spilled and spoiling on the ground.
Whatever reservations I had about making myself known were cast aside as I climbed up the wagon wheel to tear down the Tribunal’s flag. I clutched it tightly, dragging it in the dirt to the center of the village, where the charred remnants of Achlevan spindles still sat in a blackened pile.
I didn’t announce myself; I simply tossed the flag onto the ground, drew a bead of blood, and as it dripped onto the banner—landing at the center of a star—murmured, “Uro.”
As the flag burned, I waited.
The villagers began to appear quickly and quietly, stepping from darkened houses and from behind stone buildings, their faces obscured by the grimacing, oversize animal faces of their Day of Shades masks. My breath caught, remembering my childhood terror at seeing the population of the village in these costumes for the first time. They’d been laughing, leering, dancing frenetic little jigs; a comical cavalcade compared to the absolute stillness of those assembled now. Within minutes, I was enclosed in a circle of monstrous caricatures: long-tusked boars’ heads, open-mawed jackals, rabbits with glaring red eyes, and horses whose muzzles were warped into twisted grimaces.
“Grotesque, is it not?” I turned to see Arceneaux’s long-limbed acolyte Lyall striding toward me from the direction of the old mill. He looked from mask to mask, his face a strange mixture of disgust and admiration. “A tradition so old, I doubt anyone in this region could recall its origin.”
“The Day of Shades marks the time when the line between this plane and the spectral one is at its thinnest.” My eyes dragged across the procession from ox to bear to crow. “These are representations of the quicksilver guides who take us across the Gray.”
“Very good,” Lyall said. “A proud tradition. I was very careful to note each soul’s specific conjuration when I cut their tethers. Figuring out the particulars of this phenomenon will make a very intriguing future course of study after our current explorations come to a close. And I know it’s an unnecessary flourish, dressing them up this way, but I did like the symmetry of it, replacing one kind of harvest celebration for another. And it has been a marvelous year for the collecting of souls.”
I knew it then: These people were dead. Every last one of them.
They were standing right there in front of me, and they were dead.
I could see the signs now: mottled, purpling skin showing under collars and beneath cuffs, shoulders hanging at an unnatural angle . . . and on a few, burns in the shape of an unholy seal, a corruption of blood and feral magics both at once.
My stomach contracted, but I swallowed back the rising bile and asked, “Who are they now? Whose souls did you use for this”—my lip twitched—“experiment?”