Karys sat alone in the darkest corner of the Orago’s bar, and stared into the dregs of her drink. The letter lay on the table in front of her. Folded closed, but she could see the writing where the ink had bled through the cheap paper. Neat, practised, impersonal handwriting. Her limbs felt heavy. She did not want to move.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Ferain.
Shouldn’t she feel more sadness? Shouldn’t she feel more … anything? She had last seen Oboro when she was fifteen. He would be thirty-one now. Would have been thirty-one now. She did not know if she would have recognised him if they passed in the street—for some reason, she could not recall his face at all, and the realisation chilled her. His voice, yes, and the way he walked, but not his face. There was a brother-shaped emptiness in her memories.
“No great loss,” she muttered.
“Who was he? Family?”
Karys swallowed the remainder of her drink. Shrugged. She had no desire to talk. After leaving Worked Dispatch, she had wandered back to the Orago and ordered their cheapest spirit—an opaque barley wine that tasted like yeast. She didn’t normally drink much, but it had seemed like the right thing to do. Like she should do something, even if it didn’t matter, and she didn’t feel anything. A gesture to mark the moment. Going through the motions.
“Is there any possibility that the letter is false?” asked Ferain softly. “A New Favour trap to lure you out?”
She shook her head.
“I realise it might sound unlikely, but if they faked—”
“I know who sent it,” she said shortly.
One of the clerks at the neighbouring table looked over, and frowned. Clearly wondering why she was mumbling to herself. Karys hunched her shoulders. Leave me alone. Everybody leave me alone. On the wall to her left was a framed gazette from over a decade ago—the public notice of a child-killer’s trial, the victim a little Vareslian girl murdered in Miresse. The edges of the paper had yellowed and curled.
“The letter is dated last Sunday,” said Ferain, then paused. “Maybe you could still make it. How far away—”
“I’m not going to the send-off.”
A long silence. Karys glanced toward the bar. Another drink, maybe. Something harder, maybe. That’s what people did, wasn’t it? Drowning grief. Except she wasn’t grieving. Not really. She drew her finger in a circle around the rim of her empty glass.
“My brother,” she muttered. “Oboro was my older brother. And I haven’t seen him in fourteen years, so I’m not going to the send-off. It would be pointless.”
“Pointless?”
She shrugged again. No, not “pointless,” exactly. But saying that was better than “not worth the trouble.” Besides, returning to Boäz after all this time? They wouldn’t even know she was a deathspeaker. And if they found out, well. That would be bad.
“I think you should go,” said Ferain. “Even if you weren’t close to him. Take the chance to say goodbye.”
Something white-hot and ugly rose inside her, and Karys shut her eyes. If she spoke now, if she even opened her mouth, she would lose control completely, and she could not afford that. Her head felt too light; the alcohol soaking in.
“Excuse me, cas?”
The timid voice was new. Karys grimaced and lifted her head. The same curly-haired man from earlier was standing in front of her table. He had medium brown skin and thick eyebrows, and his expression was curious.
“Is something the matter?” he asked. “You seem upset.”
Nuliere help her, she could not handle this. Karys picked up the letter, and rose. Her chair screeched against the floor when she pushed it back, and other people in the bar looked around.
“Sorry,” said the man, surprised. “I didn’t mean to disturb, but you looked familiar. Did you perhaps once work at the court?”
“No.” She brushed past him.
“Cas?”
Karys strode across the room and out the front door of the Orago. Hot blood pulsed against her skull, and her ears rang. Leave me alone! She kept walking. The chill air of the streets outside burned in her throat.
“Who was that?” asked her shadow, flowing after her. “Karys?”
The last of her patience gave way.
“Do not fucking talk to me!” she snarled.
Ferain recoiled, taken aback. She had spoken too loudly, her voice hoarse with anger, but she did not care—did not care what anyone in this miserable little town thought, or about Ferain’s feelings, or about the send-off. The letter creased inside her grip, and the drizzling rain flecked her clothes.
Her feet carried her. Her shadow stayed quiet.
Karys had no destination, nowhere to go. She took the old bridge to the South Quarter, then followed the path alongside the canal. At this time of year, the Korasis River trickled by Miresse in a thin, drear stream; it would be months before the annual winter flood washed the walls clean, and swept the year’s filth all the way down to the sea. Refuse and raw sewage collected along the banked slopes of the waterway, along with small dirty shrines dedicated to Swask. Fickle, demanding herald: ever jealous and quick to anger. People still worshipped him, after a fashion. The heaped offerings seemed fewer in number than Karys remembered, but they still remained—piles of river stones and knotted slipweed, strings of warbler eggshells threaded with silk.
She remembered arriving here, and seeing the bluish streetlamps scattered on the surface of the river, the close-packed buildings rising high above her head. It was scarcely forty miles from home, but it had felt like an entirely separate world at the time. It seemed so small now.
Up ahead, a group of kids were wrestling down at the base of the canal, all of them covered in mud and yelling. Karys slowed to watch them. A skinny dog growled and yapped at the children’s heels, ears flat against its head. One of the boys threw a rock at the animal. It shied away, but continued to bark.
Funny, really. If she had not come to Miresse, she wouldn’t be a deathspeaker. No Sabaster, no compact. Down in the canal, one of the larger boys pushed a girl over, only to get kneed in the stomach for his troubles. On the other hand, she was still alive. That was more than could be said for Oboro, apparently.
How did he die?
One of the mud-soaked boys noticed that Karys was watching them. He yelled a crude obscenity. Expressionless, she flipped him off, then continued along the edge of the canal. With the heat of her anger fading, the world seemed greyer. She had left her coat at the Orago before she left for Worked Dispatch, and her bare arms prickled in the cold.
All it would have taken was one more sentence in the letter. A few words of explanation to say whether it had been sickness, or drowning, or … she didn’t know. The omission felt deliberate; it would have cost nothing to include the cause of death, especially given the expense of sending the message via Dispatch. The absence seemed ominous; it tugged at her.
The buildings grew smaller and poorer, and the shrines to Swask increased in number as Karys drew nearer the edge of town. Where the canal forked, residents had erected a ramshackle monument of the herald: the figure of a barrel-chested man with his head thrown back to the sky in exultation, arms spread in challenge. It marked the site of Swask’s death; during the Slaughter, two Ephirite had cornered the Bhatuma, and drowned him in his own river. They had then dismembered him, as if to share the trophy equally, and carried his halved remains back to their own domains. That was how it went with most of the weaker heralds; less a fight than an execution.
On the only occasion Karys had been summoned to Sabaster’s domain, she had seen her master’s collection of corpses. Swask might have been among them, she could not be sure; she had been too frightened to pay much attention. She did, however, remember the largest and most terrible herald amongst the Ephirit’s trophies. The Bhatuma’s enormous body had been distended by workings, so that their limbs could not be distinguished from the bloated protuberances of their flesh and sinew and bone—but Sabaster had left their face untouched. Masculine and beautiful, their skin like oiled bronze, their dead eyes the colour of moonlight. Karys did not know who the herald had been, but their face had haunted her nightmares ever since.
No creature, no living being, could be restored from that state. For better or worse, the Bhatuma were not coming back.
Karys slowed, and stopped. She had reached the border of Miresse. The afternoon was heading toward evening, and the scrub-covered hills ahead of her were shadowed. If she followed this road, kept walking into the night, she would eventually reach Boäz.
How did he die?
A cold wind swept over the street, and seemed to carry with it the faintest trace of sea salt. Maybe that was only her imagination. A gnawing, burning feeling had coiled up in Karys’ chest; not grief, but something harder and quieter.
When she was ten, Oboro had lost his temper and hit her. Just that one time on the switchback above the boatyard, his twelve-year-old knuckles landing on her jaw and knocking her back. It hadn’t hurt much, but he had meant it to hurt—she saw that on his face. Until that day, she had never perceived her brother’s streak of viciousness, and it would be years before she realised it was in her too. But his fist had scarcely left her face before he went bone-pale and started apologising, then crying. Oboro never cried. She sat with him out on the windswept bluff, and he sobbed his heart out, and neither of them needed to say anything.
She had loved him, then.
“What would I tell Winola?” she asked.
There was a brief pause. When Ferain spoke, his tone was impossible to decipher; Karys could not tell if he was angry or hurt or indifferent.
“The truth,” he said.
“What if she asks to come with me?”
“Do you want her to?”
Karys shook her head. The idea was awful. “No, that would be … no.”
“Then tell her that as well.”
“Do you think she’ll leave? Run back home to Psikamit?”
“No.”
“Too invested in her research?”
Ferain’s voice remained flat. “She risked a lot to be here. To help us.”
“Are you angry?”
“Why would I be angry?”
“I never know what you’re thinking.”
“I’m not angry.” Her shadow sighed. “I’m … frustrated. It doesn’t matter.”
“Frustrated with me?”
“Karys, you’re shivering. Please go back to the inn.”
It wasn’t that cold. But Ferain seemed weary, so she only nodded and turned to face Miresse again. The streetlamps were flickering to life; their lights shone glassy and pale blue, almost the colour of hallowfire.
By the time Karys reached the Orago, the clerks had all departed, replaced by the evening crowd. People were singing, and a fog of osk smoke hung around the building. A beggar sat in the alley opposite the side entrance, a teenage girl with a gaunt face and no shoes. A few coins lay in her bowl. She did not even look up when Karys passed.
Winola was waiting in their room, sitting on the edge of her bed. She quickly rose when Karys opened the door.
“What happened?” she asked, her brown eyes wide. “I was worried. You said you were going to Worked Dispatch, but that was…”
Karys took the letter out of her pocket, and smoothed the paper. Then she walked across the floor and handed it to Winola. The scholar’s eyes flicked over the page, and her face fell.
“My older brother,” said Karys. “Ferain thinks I should go.”
Winola looked up. “Of course. I’m so sorry.”
Her expression made Karys uncomfortable. “We hadn’t spoken in years. It’s unexpected, that’s all. Bad timing.”
“I understand. Will you need to travel far?”
“The village is about a day’s journey from here, but I won’t stay there long.” Karys rubbed her neck. “Can you wait in Miresse until I get back?”
The scholar nodded seriously.
“Whatever you need,” she said.
Karys turned away, fervently wishing that Winola would stop looking at her like that. At least she had not asked to come to Boäz; bad enough that Ferain would be there. Karys couldn’t allow herself to think about that part too much. She walked over to the dressing table, and picked up her box of Silkess desserts from where Winola had left them that morning.
“Thanks,” she said. “I … thanks. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Up close, the girl in the alley did not look any older than fifteen. She dozed, head bent to her chest. Her short hair was matted, her knuckles split over old scars. Karys reached into the waistband of her own trousers, pulled out a handful of sixths, then crouched and dropped them into the begging bowl with a soft clatter.
The girl started and woke.
“Embrace watch over you and her heralds bless you,” she said automatically.
“Unlikely.” Karys held out the dessert box. “I’m in liege with the enemy. Here.”
The girl’s eyes darted down the street, then back to Karys. “What?”
“Take it. It’s for you.”
The girl accepted the box, wary and unsure. She lifted the lid, and her eyes widened. “What is … why are you giving me this?”
Karys stood up again. She gave a small shrug, and turned back toward the Orago.
“I didn’t want them anymore,” she said.