Jeph Bales finished checking the porch wards not a moment too soon. His family was already inside; children washing for supper, Iain and Norine in the kitchen. He looked out as the last rays of sun vanished and heat leached out of the ground, giving the demons a path up from the Core.
As those stinking gray mists began to rise, he moved inside, even though it would be a few moments more before the corelings solidified. Jeph didn’t believe in taking chances where demons were concerned.
But as he reached to close the door, he heard a wail and looked up. Down the road, someone was running hard for the farm, screaming all the way.
Jeph took his axe, always by the door, and moved out as far as the porch wards would allow, his eyes flicking nervously to the corelings coalescing in the yard. He thought of his eldest son, and how he would not have hesitated to run out and help the stranger, but Arlen was dead fourteen years now, and Jeph had never been so brave.
“Be strong and run on!” he called. “Succor is at hand!” Corelings, still more smoke than flesh, looked up at his call, and Jeph tightened his grip on the axe. He wouldn’t leave the safety of the wards, but he would strike a demon to clear the path if one came too close.
“What’s happening?” Ilain called from inside.
“Keep everyone inside!” Jeph shouted back. “No matter what you hear, stay inside!”
He pulled the door shut, then looked back. The screaming stranger was closer now. It was a woman, her dress soaked in blood, running as if her life depended upon it, as well it did. She had something in her hand, but Jeph couldn’t see what it was.
Corelings swiped at her as she passed, but their claws lacked substance, and merely scratched when they should have torn. The woman seemed not to notice—but then she was already screaming.
“Run on!” Jeph called again, hoping the feeble words gave some encouragement.
And then she was in the yard, and almost to the porch. Jeph recognized her just as a flame demon, fully formed, shrieked and leapt into her path.
“Renna,” he breathed, but when he looked again, it was not Renna Tanner he saw, but his wife, Silvy, murdered by a flame demon fourteen years ago in that very place.
Something hardened in him then, and he was off the porch before he knew it, swinging the steel axe with all his might. A flame demon’s armor could turn the edge of any weapon a man could take to hand, but the creature was small, and his blow sent it tumbling through the dust of the yard.
Other corelings shrieked and leapt for them, but the way back was clear. Jeph grabbed Renna’s arm and pulled her along behind him as he charged to safety. He tripped on the porch steps, and they went down in a heap, but when a wood demon came at them it struck the outer net, sending a spiderweb of silver magic through the air before it was thrown back.
Jeph cradled Renna in his arms, calling to her, but she kept on screaming, heedless of her safety. She was drenched in blood, her dress soaked and her arms and face covered, but he could see no injury on her. Clutched tightly in her right hand was a large, bone-handled knife. It, too, was coated in blood.
“Renna, are you all right?” he asked. “Whose blood is this?” The door opened, and Ilain came out, gasping at the sight of her sister.
“Whose blood is this?” Jeph asked again, but if Renna heard him at all, she gave no sign, continuing to scream and sob, the blood and dirt on her face streaked with tears.
“That’s Da’s knife,” Ilain said, indicating the bloody blade she clutched so tightly. “I’d recognize it anywhere. He never lets it out of his sight.”
“Creator,” Jeph said, blanching.
“Ren, what happened?” Ilain asked, leaning in and taking her sister’s shoulders. “Are you hurt? Where’s Da? Is he all right?”
But Ilain got no more response from her sister than Jeph had, and she soon fell silent, listening to Renna’s cries and the answering shrieks of the corelings at the wards.
“Best bring her inside,” Jeph said. “Put the young’uns in their rooms and I’ll take her to ours.” Ilain nodded and went in first as Jeph lifted Renna’s quivering form in his strong arms.
He laid Renna down on his straw mattress, and turned his back as Ilain came in with a bowl of warm water and a clean cloth. Renna had stopped screaming by this point, but she still gave no response as Ilain pried the bloody knife from her hand and laid it on the night table before undressing her and cleaning the blood from her with firm, even strokes of the cloth.
“What d’you suppose happened?” Jeph asked when she was bundled in the covers, still staring silently off into space.
Ilain shook her head. “Don’t know. Long run from here to Da’s farm, even if you leave the road and cut straight across. She must have been runnin’ for hours.”
“Looked like she came up from town,” Jeph said.
Ilain shrugged.
“Whatever happened, it wasn’t corelings that done it,” Jeph said. “Not in the middle of the day.”
“Jeph,” Ilain said, “I need you to go out to the farm tomorrow. Maybe they were attacked by nightwolves or bandits. I don’t know. I’ll keep Renna hidden till you get back.”
“Bandits and nightwolves, in Tibbet’s Brook?” Jeph asked doubtfully.
“Just go and see,” Ilain said.
“What if I see Harl lying dead of a knife wound?” Jeph asked, knowing it was what they were both thinking.
Ilain sighed deeply. “Then you mop the blood and build a pyre, and for all anyone ever need know, he slipped off the hay ladder and broke his neck.”
“We can’t just lie,” Jeph said. “If she killed someone …”
Ilain whirled angrily on him. “What in the Core do you think we’ve been doing all these years?” she snapped. Jeph put up his hands to placate her, but she pressed on.
“Have I been a good wife?” Ilain demanded. “Kept your house? Given you sons? Do you love me?”
“Course I do,” Jeph said.
“Then you’ll do this for me, Jeph Bales,” she said. “You’ll do it for all of us, an’ for Beni an’ her boys, too. There ent no need for anything what’s ever happened on that farm to reach the town’s ears. What they make up is bad enough, and to spare.”
Jeph was quiet for a long time as they matched stares and wills. Finally, he nodded. “All right. I’ll leave after breakfast.”
Jeph was up with the dawn, hurrying through his morning chores despite the tired ache in his bones. They had tried all night to get a response out of Renna, but she simply stared at the ceiling, neither sleeping nor eating. After breakfast, he saddled their best mare.
“Reckon I’ll avoid the road myself,” he told Ilain. “Take a shortcut through the fields southeast.” Ilain nodded, throwing her arms around him and hugging him tightly. He returned the embrace, the pit of his stomach heavy with dread at what he might find. Finally, he let go. “Best to get going while there’s still time enough for a return trip.”
He had just mounted his horse when the sound of hoofbeats reached his ears. He looked up to see a cart approaching, carrying the Herb Gatherer, Coline Trigg, wringing her hands with worry, and the Town Speaker, Selia the Barren, looking grim. Selia was nearing seventy now, tall and thin, but still tough as boiled leather and sharp as a Cutter’s axe.
Beside the cart on one side rode Rusco Hog, and on the other Garric Fisher and Raddock Lawry, Garric’s great-uncle and the Speaker for Fishing Hole. On foot behind them were Tender Harral and what looked like half the men of Fishing Hole, armed with thin fishing spears.
Garric kicked his horse ahead when the farm came in sight, galloping right up to the porch where Ilain stood and pulling up so short the beast reared before settling.
“Where is she?” Garric demanded.
“Where is who?” Ilain asked, meeting his wild glare.
“Don’t play games with me, woman!” Garric snarled. “I’ve come for your whorin’, witchin’, murderin’ sister, and you well know it!” He got off his horse and strode up to her, shaking his fist.
“You stop right there, Garric Fisher,” said Norine Cutter, coming out of the house holding Jeph’s axe. She had lived on Jeph’s farm since before his wife died, and was as much a part of the family as any. “This ent your property. You keep back an’ state your business, ’less you’re looking to take a coreling by the horns.”
“My business is that Renna Tanner murdered her own da and my son, and I’ll see her cored for it!” Garric shouted. “Ent no point in hiding her!”
Tender Harral caught up and interposed himself between Garric and the women. He was young and strong, a match for the older if just as bulky Garric. “There’s no proof of anything yet, Garric! We just need to ask her a few questions, is all,” he told Ilain. “And you, if she’s said anything since Jeph left.”
“We need to do more than that, Tender,” Raddock said, getting off his horse. He was born Raddock Fisher, but everyone in the Brook called him Raddock Lawry, because he was Speaker for the Hole on the town council, and legal arbitrator of disputes in his borough. A mass of grizzled hair from ears to chin, the crown of his head was bald as an egg. He was older than Selia but shorter-tempered, full of righteous passion with a knack for stirring it in others. “Girl needs to answer for her crimes.”
Hog was the next to dismount. He was imposing as always, the man who owned half of Tibbet’s Brook outright and held debts from the rest. “Garric speaks honest word when he says your father and Cobie Fisher are dead,” Hog told Ilain. “My girls and I went to investigate some shouting we heard at the store last evening, and found them in the back room I rented Cobie, dead. Not just stabbed, they was … mutilated. Both of them. Stam Tailor says he saw your sister there just before it happened.”
Ilain gasped, covering her mouth.
“Horrible,” Harral agreed, “and that’s why it’s best we see Renna right away.”
“So clear the door!” Raddock ordered, pushing forward.
“I am Speaker in Tibbet’s Brook, Raddock Lawry, not you!” Selia barked, silencing everyone. Jeph reached out to help her down from the cart. As soon as her feet touched the ground, she gripped her skirts to keep them from the dirt and strode over. The younger men, outweighing her several times over, shrank back at the force of her presence.
One did not get to be Selia’s age easily in Tibbet’s Brook. Life in the Brook was hard; only the sharpest, most cunning and capable folk survived to see full gray, and the rest treated them accordingly. When she was younger, Selia had been forceful. Now she was a Power unto herself.
Only Raddock stood his ground. He had ousted Selia as Town Speaker more than once over the years, and if age was power in Tibbet’s Brook, he was stronger, if not by much.
“Coline, Harral, Rusco, Raddock, and I will need to go in and see her,” Selia told Jeph. It wasn’t a request. The five of them were half the town council, and he could only nod and stand aside, allowing them entrance.
“I’m going, too!” Garric growled. The crowd of Fishers, his kith and kin, gathered angrily around him, nodding.
“No, you’re not,” Selia said, fixing them all with a steely glare. “Your blood is up and none can blame you, but we’re here to learn what happened, not stake the girl without a trial.”
Raddock put a hand on Garric’s shoulder. “She ent getting away, Gar, I promise you that,” he said. Garric gritted his teeth, but he nodded and stepped back as they went inside.
Renna was still lying in the same position they had placed her in the night before, staring at the ceiling. She blinked occasionally. Coline went right to her.
“Oh, dear,” Selia said, spotting the bloody knife on the night table. Jeph cursed silently. Why had he left it there? He should have thrown it down the well the moment he saw it.
“Creator,” Harral breathed, and drew a ward in the air.
“And here,” Raddock grunted, kicking a basin by the door. Renna’s dress was soaking within, the water pink with blood. “Still think we’re just here to ask a few questions, Tender?”
Coline looked over the bruises on Renna’s face with a concerned eye and a firm hand, then turned to the others and cleared her throat loudly. The men stared dully for a moment, then gave a start and turned their backs as she drew back the covers.
“Nothing’s broken,” Coline said, coming over to Selia when her inspection was complete, “but she’s taken quite a beating, and there are bruises around her throat like she was choked.”
Selia went and sat down on the bed beside Renna. She reached out gently, brushing the hair from Renna’s sweating face. “Renna, dear, can you hear me?” The girl didn’t react at all.
“Been like this all night?” Selia asked, frowning.
“Ay,” Jeph said.
Selia sighed and put her hands on her knees, pushing to her feet. She took the knife, and then turned and ushered everyone out of the room, closing the door.
“Seen this before, after demon attacks, mostly,” she said, with Coline nodding along. “Survivors get more of a fright than they can handle, and are left staring off into the air.”
“Will she get better?” Ilain asked.
“Sometimes they snap out of it in a few days,” Selia said. “Sometimes …” She shrugged. “Won’t lie to you, Ilain Bales. This is the worst thing ever happened in Tibbet’s Brook as far back as I can recall. I’ve been Speaker on and off for thirty years, and seen a great many folk die before their time, but there ent never been one killed in anger. That kind of thing may happen in the Free Cities, but not here.”
“Renna couldn’t have …!” Ilain choked, and Selia took her shoulders, gentling her.
“That’s why I was hoping to talk to her first, dear, and get the story from her lips.” She glanced at Raddock. “The Fishers have come looking for blood, and they won’t be satisfied without it, or a good explanation.”
“We got reason,” Raddock growled. “It’s our kin dead.”
“Case you ent noticed, my kin’s dead, too,” Ilain said, glaring at him.
“All the more reason to want justice,” Raddock said.
Selia hissed, and everyone fell silent. She held the bloody knife out to Tender Harral.
“Tender, if you’d be so kind as to wrap this and hide it in your robes till we get to town, I’d be grateful.” Harral nodded, reaching for it.
“What in the Core you think you’re doing?” Raddock shouted, snatching the knife before the Tender could take it. “The whole town’s got a right to see this!” he said, waving it around.
Selia grabbed his wrist, and Raddock, outweighing her twice over, laughed until she drove her heel down on his instep. He howled in pain, letting go of the knife to clutch his foot. Selia caught it before it could hit the floor.
“Use your head, Lawry!” she snapped. “That knife’s evidence and all have a right to see it, but not with two dozen men outside with spears and a defenseless girl numb with fright. The Tender ent gonna steal it.”
Ilain fetched a cloth, and Selia wrapped the knife, giving it to the Tender, who stowed it safely in his robes. She gathered her skirts and strode outside, back arched and head up high as she faced the gathered men in the yard, who grumbled angrily and fingered their spears.
“She’s in no condition to talk,” Selia said.
“We’re not looking to talk!” Garric shouted, and the Fishers all nodded their assent.
“I don’t care what you’re looking to do,” Selia said. “No one’s doing anything until the town council meets on this.”
“The council?” Garric asked. “This ent some coreling attack! She murdered my son!”
“You don’t know that, Garric,” Harral said. “Could be he and Harl killed each other.”
“Even if she didn’t hold the knife, she done it,” Garric said, “witchin’ my son into sin and shamin’ her da!”
“The law is the law, Garric,” Selia said. “She gets a council meeting, where you can make your accusations and she can say her piece, before we name her guilty. Bad enough we’ve had two killings, I won’t have your mob doing a third because you can’t wait on justice.”
Garric looked to Raddock for support, but the Speaker for Fishing Hole was silent, edging toward Harral. Suddenly he shoved the Tender against the wall, reaching into his robes.
“She ent tellin’ you all!” Raddock shouted. “The girl had a red dress soaking!” He held Harl’s knife up for all to see. “And a bloody knife!”
The Fishers gripped their spears and shouted in outrage, ready to push right into the house. “The Core with your law,” Garric told Selia, “if it means I can’t avenge my son.”
“You’ll murder that poor girl over my dead body,” Selia said, moving to stand directly in front of the door with the rest of the council and Jeph’s family. “That what you want?” she called. “To be named murderers yourselves? Every Fisher?”
“Bah, you can’t hang us all,” Raddock scoffed. “We’re taking the girl, and that’s that. Stand aside, or we’ll go clean through you.”
Hands in the air, Rusco stepped aside. Selia glared at him. “Traitor!”
But Rusco just smiled. “I’m no traitor, ma’am. Just a visiting businessman, and it isn’t my place to take sides in this kind of dispute.”
“You’re as much a part of this town as anyone!” Selia shouted. “You’ve been in Town Square twenty years, and on the council near all of ’em! If you’ve a place that’s more home than this, maybe it’s time you went back to it!”
Rusco just smiled again. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I got to be fair to all. Standing against a whole borough is just bad business.”
“Once a year at least, half the town comes to me, ready to run you out for a cheat, like they did to you in Miln and Angiers and Creator knows where else,” Selia said, “and every year, I talk them out of it. Remind them what a benefit your store is, and how things were before you came. But you stand aside now, and I’ll see to it no decent person sets foot in your shop again.”
“You can’t do that!” Hog cried.
“Oh, yes I can, Rusco,” Selia said. “Just you try me if you think it ent so.” Raddock scowled, and it turned venomous when Hog went back to stand with Selia in the doorway.
Hog met his eyes. “I don’t want to hear it, Raddock. We can wait a day or two. Any man puts hands on Renna Tanner before the council meets is banned from the store.”
Selia turned to Raddock, her eyes blazing. “How long, Lawry? How long can Fishing Hole go without Bales’ grain and livestock? Marsh rice? Boggin’s Ale? Cutters’ wood? I’m betting not nearly so long as we can go without ripping fish!”
“Fine, you call the council,” Raddock said. “But we’ll lock the girl up in Fishing Hole until she has her trial.”
Selia barked a laugh. “You think I’d entrust her to you?”
“Then where?” he asked. “I’ll be corespawned before I let her stay here with her kin, where she could run off.”
Selia sighed, glancing back at the house. “We’ll put her in my spinning room. It’s got a stout door, and you can nail the shutters and set a guard, if you wish.”
“You sure that’s wise?” Rusco asked her, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh, feh,” Selia said, waving dismissively. “She’s just a little girl.”
“A little girl that killed two grown men,” Rusco reminded her.
“Nonsense,” Selia said. “I doubt she could have killed one of those strong men herself, much less two.”
“Fine,” Raddock growled, “but I’m keeping this,” he held up the knife, “and that bloody dress, until the council comes.” Selia scowled, and their eyes met as they matched wills. She knew Raddock Lawry could whip the town into a frenzy with the items, but she didn’t have much choice in the matter.
“I’ll send runners today,” Selia said, nodding. “We’ll meet in three days.”
Jeph carried Renna out to his cart and they took her down to Selia’s house in Town Square, locking her in the spinning room. Garric nailed the shutters closed from the outside himself, testing the wood carefully before grunting and agreeing to leave.