THIRTY-FOUR
LITTLEBARROW
Meret didn’t recall much of his life before he became an apothecary.
Not for trauma or regret or anything nearly so impressive, rather there simply hadn’t been much to tell. He had been born to a mother and father who had struggled to provide for him and his siblings. He’d worked hard and eventually became accepted as a student to a master and, years later, here he was.
But he remembered his uncle.
Or, specifically, his uncle’s stories. Not that the man had been a bard—though he had been a drunk, so he wasn’t too far off—but he’d traveled, seen villages beyond his own, met people who looked nothing like him, had conversations he never thought he would.
Those were all fine, but what he really liked were the stories about the Vagrants.
Back then, he’d been too young to hear the caution in the many tales about those dangerous, magical lunatics. Of course, he’d also been too old to be very impressed with all the explosions, garish costumes, and rampant violence that had spellbound the other children. Really, he wasn’t sure until this moment, in that cold house in Littlebarrow, that he realized what he’d really loved about those stories.
Vagrants mattered.
For as savage as the Scar was, it was fraught with cowards like him. Farmers cowered from the Revolution, volunteered their harvests to avoid being conscripted. Merchants cowered from the Imperium, heaped flattery and riches upon the mages to escape their wrath. Even the barons of freeholds, the powerful and the wealthy, were only so because they suckled just hard enough at the asses of the even more powerful that they were permitted to hold on to their stations.
But not the Vagrants. The Vagrants cared nothing for boundaries, for heavy-handed philosophies or overbearing ethics. No one could tell them where to go, who to speak with, what they could or couldn’t do. Revolutionaries and Imperials, Haveners and Ashmouths alike, all stepped a little more carefully when a Vagrant’s name was even mentioned.
That was power. That was meaning. That was mattering.
Or so he’d thought.
He’d once cursed his parents for not being born magical so he could become a Vagrant himself—Mer the Plague, he’d always thought that would be a good name. Later, of course, once he realized how much gore would be involved, he promptly apologized to his mother and father, but he’d never really stopped believing that the life of a Vagrant was a life of self-realization.
Until now.
“What was it like?”
Sal glanced up as he blurted the question out. Rather than sneering at it, her eyes widened in surprise. She glanced him over, scrutinizing him with a tinge of disbelief before clearing her throat.
“Oh, um. Okay, wow. I thought you’d have known by now, but that’s okay.” She leaned forward, a serious look on her face. “All right, so before you do anything, make sure that you both want it, right? Talk about it, take your time, make sure you’re not just ready but ready for this person and they’re ready for you, too. After that, though, sometimes it’s nice to start with kissing their neck or—”
“NO!” He hadn’t meant to shout that. Or to leap out of his chair. He cleared his throat, settled back down. “Er, that’s not… I mean, I have been… uh, back in Bitterbough, I met this…” He performed a thoughtful flail. “No, that wasn’t my question. I mean… what was it like? To be with someone as a Vagrant?”
Her brow furrowed. “Listen, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but it’s not like we shoot fire out of our junk.” She paused, considered. “Most of us don’t, anyway.”
“I mean… there are no stories about it.”
“I mean, I’m flattered you’d think there would be, but we aren’t that good.” She paused, considered again. “Most of us aren’t, anyway.”
“I guess I just never thought that Vagrants did that,” Meret said, looking down at himself. “Make love, feel those things…” He looked back up at her. “Do Vagrants fall in love?”
Another blurted-out stupid question, he chided himself. One that she would no doubt relentlessly mock him for. And by the long, leering grin that sprawled across her face like a snake in heat, he guessed she was getting ready to do just that.
But then a moment passed. And her smile shrank. Then disappeared. A troubled look came across her face, as though the answer that came to her lips wasn’t the one she wanted to give. Or one she even knew.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“But what you just told me with Jero, that—”
“That wasn’t love,” she interrupted with a glare he didn’t notice.
“Then it was just sex?”
“I didn’t say that, either. I don’t have just sex. I—”
“Then what was it? Animal lust? An urge? Was it—”
“For a guy with such a cute face, you sure do fucking ask to be punched in the mouth a lot,” she warned. “No, it’s nothing like that.” She scratched at a scar on her cheek. “But it wasn’t not like that. It was… I don’t know.”
He opened his mouth to offer his help. But then he remembered what she had said about his mouth and decided, instead, to sit quietly for a moment. She leaned back, searched the table for whiskey that wasn’t there, drummed her fingers as though it would make it appear, and when it didn’t, settled for making a fist and slamming it on the table instead.
“It’s just… being tired,” she said. “Tired of running, tired of hurting, tired of…” She gestured vaguely to herself. “This. All of it.” She stared up at the lamp hanging from the ceiling, sighed. “Sex is… nice, now and again. Not for everyone, but for me. It makes me feel like… like…” She squinted. “Like someone can look at all this blood and scars and think there’s nothing wrong with me.
“But it’s not enough,” she continued. “Not really. You can’t just cling to the nights where everything is going well. You start needing days where you wake up hurting and someone else is going to make the coffee for you. You start needing jokes that are just the right kind of bad and needing someone who isn’t going to care if you don’t say the right thing all the time. You need… you need…”
She held out her hands. And all the empty space between them was the answer she didn’t want to give, but the only one she had.
“More,” she said. “And you can’t get that from a Vagrant.”
He blinked. “Because of your code?”
“No, you dumbshit, because of our names.”
There was anger behind her voice, hatred, even. But it was neither the all-burning fire nor the smug venom he’d come to expect. Rather, it was a weary anger, a flame that had been burning too long but couldn’t be extinguished, so it settled for devouring the ashes.
She leaned back in the chair, her sigh so deep it came out of her scars, her wounds. Perhaps she’d been holding herself too proudly before, or perhaps the light had been too dim, but only now could he see the full extent of the injuries she carried. He could see the old scars, see the new wounds that would become more, as they wound a jagged map across her skin.
All that pain. All that blood. And still, her eyes were full of that fire. Still, she burned.
Long after nothing was left.
“It’s like…” She held out her hands, trying to explain and still coming up empty. “You become a Vagrant, you break your oath, you get your ink, and you take your fancy name, and you think that’s the end of it. But it doesn’t end there. It doesn’t end after the first caravan you rob, after the first village you burn, after the first man you kill.
“It keeps getting bigger, the name. You don’t even realize it at first. It becomes something profane, something uttered in whispers and used to scare children. When someone speaks it, it carries weight. And that weight gets into everything you carry. The steel on your hip keeps getting heavier. The cuts you carve get deeper. The body counts get bigger and the flames grow higher. Until…”
“It’s too heavy for you to carry anything else. Anyone else. All you have left is the name.”
He stared at those hands. At the scars that wended across her palms like pink rivers. At the calluses and the burn scars that came from carrying that terrible weapon at her hip. At the emptiness.
For all that her hands wore, all the blood and suffering, they were still empty.
“You can still have it, can’t you?” he asked, not looking up. “Love? Like, you and Liette…”
“We have something,” she said. “We have something that’s less than I should be able to give her. I can give her good days, good nights, some of them so good we can pretend they’ll always be like that. But she deserves more than that. She deserves someone who’s always coming back home, someone who doesn’t make her cry so much.”
She laid her hands on the table. She stared at them, as if she expected them to do something.
“And that’s not something I can give her,” she whispered. “That’s not something I can even hold.”
“Is that it, then? Hold a sword or hold someone’s hand?”
“Pretty much.”
Meret frowned, stared at his own hands. They still seemed too soft to him—a few calluses here and there, a stain from mixing the wrong tincture that one time. He used to hate them, too small to hold a sword, to do something meaningful.
But if they had to be this soft to hold someone close… if they had to be like this to still be himself…
“What about what she wants?” he asked.
“Huh?” She looked up, perplexed.
“What if she’s willing to carry it with you? Or them? Or whoever?”
She shook her head. “You can’t ask someone to do that.”
“Why not?”
She furrowed her brow. “Why can’t you ask someone to stand by a door, night after night, wondering if the last time you walked out is the last time they’ll ever see you? Why can’t you ask someone to hold you at night because you keep seeing dead men’s faces in your dreams?” She sniffed, stared at him. “Would you?”
In his dreams, it was so simple: pick up a sword, fight the bad guys. It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered that things would end badly—he wasn’t an idiot, after all. But he hadn’t exactly considered that the sword could reach farther than just him. Not like she had.
But then… those burdens existed, regardless of what he did, didn’t they? He could mend wounds, stitch them shut, keep them clean. But he couldn’t bring back the dead. He couldn’t make the wars stop.
Pick up the blade, people die.
Leave it alone, people die.
Even she—Sal the fucking Cacophony—didn’t know how to solve that problem.
What hope did he have?
“I think—” he started to say.
The glass interrupted him.
A faint rattle. Nothing too alarming. He looked up and saw the cups on his shelf trembling. Far away, a distant echo, was the sound of something great striking the earth. It lasted only a second.
Both of them fell silent.
And watched that shelf.
Until it rattled again.
“Meret.”
He looked back at her. She was staring at him. Leaning over the table. Her hand was extended to him. Upon her palm, she held something.
A single feather. Stained red.
“Tell me what you remember about what we talked about,” she said, “the part with the Crow Market.”
“The Crow Market.” He blinked, struggling to recall. “Uh, Ashmouths, a Freemaker, another mage… Rudu? Rudu the Club?”
“The Cudgel,” she repeated. “Rudu the Cudgel. This is his Redfavor. You remember what that is?”
“I do, but—”
“Do you know where Clef’s Lament is? It’s east toward—”
“The edge of the Valley. Like a day’s ride from here, I know it.” Meret’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “Sal, are you asking—”
“No,” she said. “I’m not asking. I’m telling.” She licked her lips. “I’m telling you that Liette doesn’t deserve what’s about to happen. I’m telling you that if you take this feather to Rudu, he’ll take care of her. I’m telling you that…” She closed her eyes, drew in a shuddering breath. “I’m telling you that I don’t have a lot. I don’t even know if I’m walking out of this town. I can’t offer you much… but…”
She swallowed hard, opened her eyes.
They didn’t burn. They glistened.
“Liette,” she said, “has to get out of here. I’m telling you that. I’m telling you that I need you to do it.”
He stared at the feather. Something that small and simple. Just a feather with some paint on it. And she was extending it to him like it was a blade, like it was worse than a blade. She wept for it. A Vagrant would do anything for it. A town would… would…
“Sal,” he whispered. “Is Littlebarrow in danger?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
“Because of you?” he asked.
Another nod.
He’d known it. But now he believed it. Everything Sindra had said was true. Everything he’d done here meant that Littlebarrow would burn.
He’d leave behind this town, the cinders and ash that it would be reduced to. And if he took that feather, that’d be all he’d have left of this place.
All for her. For Liette. For both of them.
Meret frowned. And he sighed deeply. And he looked into her eyes.
“Just so we’re clear,” he said as he reached out and plucked it from her hand, “if you do walk out of here, you come find her. Find me. Because you’ll owe me a lot more than a fucking feather.”
“What are you doing?”
Somehow, Sindra’s voice was so ripe with contempt that it rang out loud and clear over even the groaning of the wagon’s axles and rime-coated wheels. Meret made a mental note to congratulate her when he wasn’t covered in sweat.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he wheezed as he pulled hard on the wagon’s yoke, the wheels offering a faint, defiant squeak in response.
“You appear to be trying to move Rodic’s old wagon out of his barn,” she said. “But it looks like you’re being fucking stupid.”
“Good, good,” Meret grunted, face screwed up in effort. “So long as one of us is on top of things.”
Sindra watched him struggle, arms folded. “It’s got to be one of us. Or have you not fucking noticed we’re the only ones left?”
Meret paused, glanced up at her from beneath a sweat-soaked brow. “Did they get out okay?”
“I…” The anger from her face thawed, just a little. “Yes. All the elderly and children were given seats on carts. Everyone else is walking. But they’ve got enough food, water, and warmth to get them to where they’re going. I made sure of that.”
He nodded. “Thank you, Sindra. For everything.” Then he returned to pushing.
“Everything I’ve done for you should warrant me more gratitude than a few empty words, boy.”
“Anything left in my house is yours.”
Her face fell. “Then you’re really doing it, aren’t you? You’re leaving Littlebarrow.”
“Soldiers are coming. You said it yourself.”
“And you didn’t believe me. What changed? Did she tell you what was coming?”
Meret grunted as he pushed. “She did.”
“This wagon is for her, then, hence why you’re not out on your own right now.”
His jaw clenched. The wheels groaned. “It is.”
“Moron,” she growled. “Fucking moron. Do you know what that woman is? Do you know what she’s done? To this town?”
This time, Meret didn’t bother answering. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Littlebarrow was their home, Meret. It was our home. And she just fell out of the sky and ruined it. For what? That other woman?”
“She’s important.”
“No one is that important.”
“Probably not, no.”
Sindra’s brow furrowed. “Then why are you doing this? Why are—”
“Because I don’t fucking know what else to do,” he snapped. Salt dripped into his eyes, stung them, but he didn’t blink. He forced his eyes on Sindra’s, his hands on the yoke. “I’m an apothecary. I mix herbs and set bones and people still die. You’re a fighter, you’ve got a sword. But people still die.”
“People are always going to die, Meret. You can’t stop that.”
“No. I can’t,” he said. “Helping her won’t stop that, either.” He let out a hot breath. “I don’t know what will stop it. I don’t know if anything will stop it. But I know I can’t watch it happen.” He grunted, digging in his heels, shutting his eyes and pushing again. “So I’m doing this. I won’t have it said that I didn’t do everything I could.”
He shoved as hard as he could. The wheels wouldn’t so much as budge. Probably his imagination, but had they gotten more stubborn than they were a moment ago?
He opened his eyes. It wasn’t his imagination. It was Sindra on the other side of the yoke, pushing back against him.
“No,” she declared.
“No?” he asked, not moving.
“No, I’m not going to let you throw your life away,” she said, shoving back against the yoke. “No, I’m not going to let you ruin yourself for that woman. No, I’m not going to watch another good man die for shitty ideas for the respect of people who don’t deserve it.”
“You can’t stop me!” he shouted as he shoved. The wheels squeaked.
“I fucking put men six times your size on the ground, boy. I can stop you.” She shoved back. The wheels groaned.
“A man six times my size doesn’t exist! Get out of the way, Sindra!” He pushed. The wheels growled.
“Damn it, no! You want to leave, let’s leave. But we’ll do it so we have a fighting chance. Fucking see reason here.” She pushed back. The wheels shrieked.
“No!” Meret shouted, shoving.
“You idiot, you can’t seriously—”
“I am serious.” He shut his eyes, he pushed as hard as he could. “I am serious and I am here and I can do something so I’m going to fucking do it!”
He heard the whistle of her prosthetic as she kicked the side of the cart angrily. “Not with this hunk of fucking—”
The wheels roared.
Mud and frost fell off their spokes and axles as the wagon came rolling forward suddenly. A body hit the earthen floor. A shout filled the barn as the wagon came rolling out.
Meret didn’t open his eyes until he felt the cold air on his face. And when he did, Sindra wasn’t there.
“Fucking piece of fucking useless…”
He turned at the sound of her cursing, saw her still in the barn, sprawled out on the floor. She struggled to find her feet, moving awkwardly. It took him a moment to realize what had happened.
The pistons, he thought as he looked at the limp mass of metal hanging from her knee. The pistons in her prosthetic. They came undone. I told her not to wait so long to see someone to tend to those. I need to—
He paused, stared at her.
Need to what? Help her? So she can get up and stop me? Stop all of this? He swallowed something bitter as she met his stare. No. You can’t go back to doing nothing. You can’t just leave.
He closed his eyes. He started pushing the wagon.
She’ll be fine. She knows how to fix it.
The snow started to fall heavier. A cold wind swept through his hair.
She knows how to get up, anyway. The cold will bother her joints, but she’s tough. She can take it.
The cold seeped into his body. The wind moaned softly.
She’s a soldier. She’ll be fine.
He kept pushing the wagon. Until he didn’t.
“Fucking damn it,” he sighed.
Sindra leaned against the door frame of the barn, struggling to reach down to her prosthetic, bashing it with her fist as though it could simply be beaten into working again. A litany of curses poured out of her mouth, each one more angry, more desperate than the last.
“Come on, come on, you stupid piece of shit.” Her voice grew hoarse, squeaking with tears held at her eyes. “Fucking magic. Why won’t you work? Why can’t you just—”
She fell silent only as Meret approached. She looked away as he stared at her prosthetic.
“Can I help?” he asked.
She met his gaze, lips curled tightly, refusing to let the words come out of her mouth. After a time, she nodded so stiffly and swiftly that he would have missed it if he blinked. He returned it, just as tersely—she preferred it that way.
He knelt down, took a tool out of his bag, and got to work pushing the pistons of her prosthetic back into alignment.
“This changes nothing,” she said. “You’re an idiot.”
“You’re trying to save me, so what’s that make you?” he asked.
“Also an idiot.”
“I guess we’d have to be,” he said softly. “Both of us could have found bigger towns than a hole like Littlebarrow.”
She looked out over the town, its little houses disappearing under the snow. “It’s a lot of shit swept together, true.” She looked for a long time. “But it had its charm.”
“It did,” Meret said. “Good people, too.”
“Idiots for building it all the way out here.”
“Makes sense that two more idiots would come to stay here, doesn’t it?” Meret looked up as he slid a piston back into place. “Makes sense that two idiots should leave together, doesn’t it?”
She kept him in her gaze, her mouth twisted into a frown. Still, that was a step up from a scowl at least.
“You haven’t changed your mind about those two,” she said.
He shook his head.
“You’re still going to try to help them.”
He nodded.
“Even though they don’t deserve it.”
“I’m…” He sighed, clicked the last piston into place. “I’m not going to leave anyone behind, Sindra. Not them. Not you.”
She stared down at her prosthetic, rolled her ankle. The sigils glowed with faint life. The metal squeaked comfortingly.
It wasn’t fixed, of course. Without a machinist to work on it, it’d just pop out of place again. And the cold wasn’t good for her joints, especially where the prosthetic connected. All he’d done, really, was push a few rods into place so she could walk again for a short time.
And she was still walking.
For now.
“I won’t ask you if you’re really sure,” Sindra said, her voice soft. “Because I know you are.” She looked up at him. “I just want to know two things. First, are you going to regret this?”
He frowned. “I don’t know.”
“No one does until it’s too late.” She sighed, nodded. “Second, do you expect me to be nice about it?”
He blinked, baffled. “Uh… no?”
“Good, because I’m not going to.” She pushed past him, took a spot at the yoke, and glanced over at him. “Go and get Rodic’s fucking bird. Moving this is going to take forever if we have to rely on your skinny ass.”