The canvas walls billowed with the breeze coming off the Wide Galenic River. Edwin had been to this river many times over the years but always on the Hulblich side. The traces of lead flowing down the vast tributary had always smelled to him like butcher’s blood. He smelled that now as he bargained with a plump and nearly naked man in the village of Kessel.
Kessel was the last small town along the Wide Galenic before entering the large metropolitan city of Brennan. Strong storms had slowed their passage, and after four days on the road, Edwin was eager to hurry on to the Iron City. He was certain Olen was in need, and he and Marko were going to help her. It felt good to be on the opposite end of giving.
Marko had led him into a five-poled tent behind one of the many wooden huts that made up the town. Stacked crates, piled sacks, and goods of every kind were strewn about the place. The portly man lay on a pile of stained pillows eating pickled ocean fish and drinking Marko’s fresh ale. He was shirtless atop the endless pillows. Too bloated for pants, he wore a canvas kilt below his waist. His skin was stained brownish yellow from his chin to his belly. His name was simply Leo.
“I would offer you some,” he said to Edwin, indicating the fish, “But I do not hate you.”
“I see,” Edwin said, not understanding.
“He means you won’t be able to stop eating, just like himself,” Marko explained from behind a curtain. He scraped a thin blade across his neck and wiped away long black hairs.
“Ahh,” Edwin said, and focused back on the reclining trader. “Then, I thank you. What we need are clothes of the gentry and ruling class.”
Leo lazily fished another fillet out his wooden bucket and sucked on it between cheek and jowl. His eyes rolled back as if in ecstasy. “So good,” he said dreamily. “But yet it makes one so thirsty.” He drank from the ale pouch and addressed Edwin. “Clothes of the gentry. Which city?”
“Millthrace,” Edwin said.
“Millthrace,” Marko echoed.
Leo pulled out the fillet and dipped it back in the brine bucket. “That should not be too difficult, and for a reasonable price.” The slippery fillet wiggled in his fat fingers as if it was still alive. Leo forced it into his mouth.
Marko wiped his face and joined Edwin. His neck was clean, and his beard was gone, except for a finely trimmed mustache and short black chin hair. A sharp jawline and strong muscles lined his neck. He was a handsome man, more so than Edwin ever would have guessed behind that long beard and exaggerated grin. He was even calmer now as if shaving his face had cleared away Marko’s bothersome character. His black hair was swept to the side, just as Edwin had described of Mayor Brynn.
“Why Marko,” the sticky-fingered man said, “You look like a mayor-general already!”
Marko took over the trade and bargained with the recumbent gentleman. He and Edwin had discussed their needs and what they were willing to pay during their walk to Kessel. They had agreed they would not go higher than fifteen coppers, and that they could earn back about five or six by selling their goods afterwards. But Leo was a tough negotiator and the trade quickly grew heated.
“No coppers then!” Marko spat, after Leo refused his last offer of eighteen.
Edwin leaned in and whispered, “Don’t offer him silvers.”
“No coppers and no silvers!” he shouted, glaring an eye at Edwin. “Instead, we give you one barrel of pickled rock herring, fresh off the first ship in Brennan!”
Leo choked and fumbled for the ale pouch. He took a big swig and coughed into his hands.
“Insanity!” Edwin exclaimed, knowing the high price for such a delicacy. “Come now!”
“A barrel?” Leo asked, just as surprised.
“One full barrel,” Marko said. “Off the first ship we see.”
Leo sat forward and spoke like an educator towards foolish children, “Ships deliver fresh fish, not pickled. I have no need for fresh fish.” He shuddered and continued. “The sweet stuff is made in the city, and it does not come cheap. Only time can cure a barrel of herring, and time my friends, is money. I wrote that,” he said proudly, while covered in brine. “Are you sure you can do this?”
“Of course!” said Marko.
“Impossible,” said Edwin.
Marko side-kicked at Edwin’s ankles.
Edwin side-kicked back.
Leo pushed himself to standing. He was not much taller than when he was lying back. He put his hand out to Marko, and they both shook vigorously. He then offered his wet palm to Edwin.
He did not like it. Every silver, every copper, every item in Marko’s cart would be traded away for a foolish game. It was a silly ruse to begin with, and even Edwin was no longer certain his plan would work.
“Trust me, Edwin,” Marko insisted, and he heard the soft endearing voice of the Millthrace mayor coming through. So quickly he had mastered the tone. “We have come this far,” Marko said.
Reluctantly, Edwin bowed to the sticky Leo, holding his clean hands behind his back. “I accept all terms of the offer,” he said.
The deal done, Marko hurried out of the tent while Edwin stayed behind. “One more thing,” Edwin said. “I am also in the market for leather-bounds. Histories and faerie stories if you have any.”
Leo promised him the libraries of University, if given some time, but for now he only had two small volumes to sell. Edwin paid a hefty six coppers for the books, and met Marko outside the tent.
“Why would you agree to blow our fortune on a barrel of fish?” Edwin asked. “You should have offered nineteen coppers.”
“And you should not disagree with me when I am trading! I could have talked him down to half a barrel!” Marko said, coming up to Sonny. “When the game is on, and Marko is dealing, your job is to agree with anything I say. The answer is always yes! Anything less and the plan falls apart.”
“That’s fair, but it always feels like you never let me all the way in on the plan.”
“Because I don’t!” Marko said and gave his raucous Marko Meloon laugh. “For example, why spend nineteen coppers when I can get a barrel of pickled fish for free?”
***
Bakku reached the lush green crest of the Caraway Mountains, and for the first time since leaving Olen, he stopped running. It was quiet here, his silent solitude only broken by the shushing leaves of ocean-side sumac and the faraway call of a lonely gull. Even during his long confinement in Nerikan he had rarely been alone. His beetle-like jailers had always been there, clicking, clawing, poking at his flesh, searching for new veins to open in his thickly scarred hide. It had seemed so simple then, the idea of ending his life. Weighed against endless torture, he had found the strength to do something he had naturally found abhorrent. But he was free now.
“No! You are not free!” he scolded himself and thought of Olen.
He was not free, because he now had the duty of protecting her, and she must never know the truth. She must never know that she was the reason Bakku must die. He would have given up his quest for death quite easily. He had discovered that not long after bursting free of the barrow. Just a few days back in the sunlight, and he had changed his mind. He would not leap into the flames of Calderra. Instead he would risk fleeing to some new and distant land, and live alone in peace until once again captured. But then he had met her.
Olen held a seed that connected their worlds. Brynn would use her much as he used Bakku. She too would be placed in chains, forced to open and close the doorway to the Ether at Brynn’s will. And she would do this, suffering for eons in Nerikan, as he forced her to swallow the life-giving blood of someone she had once loved. And there they would sit, Bakku and Olen, forever chained, forever Brynn’s slaves, and Bakku forever shamed for letting this happen.
He pulled the sumac aside and continued to Calderra. He trekked north, wading through wide-leaved plants. When travel was easy he jogged ahead with renewed vigor, but when the foliage overwhelmed him, he trudged ahead, bending a wide path through the leaves. For two days and nights he ran across the Caraway mountaintops.
He neared the isthmus known as the Melle where the mountains edged west. From this vantage he could see ships sailing south of him on the Westing Sea and far north on the Olmere Ocean. The outline of Bran’s Wall tracked between these two waters in the field below, a grey contour atop the green grass. He was near the place of his greatest effort, a place he had once known of as home. He leapt down a few lengths of mountainside and pushed aside lithe tree trunks as he passed through. Moss-covered boulders lined the forest floor. He clawed off the lichens and rubbed his thumb over the edge of the stone. Still sharp. Still jagged after all of these years. They were remnants of the stone he had cut away from the Caraways. They were boulders unused in Bran’s folly. He pressed ahead and entered a clearing.
It was a stony oasis, a dry grey refuge hidden among the lush mountain forest. The ground was level and flat here, and cleared of all growing things. Four huts of stacked granite stood much as he had left them, tall and wide with flat stones arcing up to a roof. They stood like stone beehives growing out of the ground. The huts were not beautiful, but the stones stood as true as the day they were laid.
Beyond the huts stood a wide cavity leading into the Caraways. This tunnel he knew reached nearly all the way to the Westing Sea, just one last span of stone holding back the waters. A month’s more work with his pick and he could deliver that sea across the Melle. Not a month, he thought, that was who he once was. A day’s work for Bakku. The time for such labor had passed; he had a new task now, which he must not delay much longer.
He slipped out of the forest and into the familiar haven. He felt the stone huts. They seemed so large back then, before Bakku was Bakku. This one, he thought as he touched the southeast hut, was his. He had built them all, but this one was home. He could not even make it through the undersized door anymore. A fire pit sat centered between the huts. It was black with fresh ash. He touched the cinders. They were wet. He knelt and swept a finger through the pit. Orange coals. The fire had recently been doused. He cursed himself.
“Away, devil!” a voice behind him called out.
Bakku rose up, tall above the stone houses, and spun around. A teenaged boy stood in front of the deep mountain cave. He held a hatchet with both hands as he blocked the doorway. The muscular child stood boldly, yet the shaking hatchet betrayed a deep fear.
The boy commanded, “Leave us, fiend!”
Bakku lunged forward, unsure if this was one of Brynn’s hunters.
The boy stepped back, righted himself, and stepped forward again. “I am not afraid to die to protect my family.”
“Who are you?” Bakku asked angrily, as if to an intruder in his home.
The boy seemed shocked Bakku could speak. He still held the hatchet in both hands and held it up threateningly. “Burke,” he said. “My father is Richard Burke. And if any of us are harmed, he will hunt you down and skin you, even if he has to travel all over this world to find you. I promise you this. Now leave!”
“Burke?” he asked, letting the name echo through the depths of his remembrances. Burke, a name he once spoke. A name that was once his own. A name he was no longer a part of. So many years separated him and this boy, so many generations. He had thought his family was gone, but here stood a Burke. Despite the eons that had passed and the generations, this boy was part of him.
“You are a Burke?” Bakku asked. The boy looked confused at the question.
“Just leave us,” the boy pleaded, his false bravado fading. “Can’t you see we have nothing for you? Let us live.”
Shadows moved behind the boy. An older woman appeared next to him. She held a pole ax awkwardly. Two young girls came around her side holding small cooking knives.
“Leave here,” the old woman demanded. “It’s true. If you harm us, the men will hunt you. They will make you suffer. They will not give up.”
“Yes,” Bakku said confusedly, but he was not sure what he was agreeing to. “Suffer,” he mumbled, searching the family’s faces for traces of those he had once known, many births and many deaths ago. The boy, his stance, like one Bakku may have made before he changed. The woman, her mouth, maybe there a hint of the lips that had once smiled his way. And the girl, was it fantasy, or did she appear like a child from eons ago? What Brynn had done in a day, the natural order of life had done over the ages. Hints were there of the faces he had once known, but the conjoining of new lines and new blood had altered them to something new. Yet it was his family, he could not deny it. They were Burke, like Bakku had been, so long ago.
“Go away!” shouted the youngest child, a girl of no more than seven summers.
The Caraway Mountains rose beyond the family, leading into the Melle and Calderra. He would go away and let the family live in peace, as it had done for so many generations. But he could no longer head west. He had cut a wide path over the mountains and through these woods. He would be followed. This family, his family, would be found. Janus Brynn would know their heritage. He would make them suffer.
“Live,” he said and nodded to the family. “In peace.”
Bakku turned towards the eastern horizon. Towards Millthrace. He escaped back into the thick woods, dashing through the vegetation, letting tree limbs whip at his face. He cut straight downhill and into the prairie known as the Melle. Then he raced due east for all the afternoon, leaping over streams and pounding across the plains. Furry meadow fauna rose up on their haunches to stare in awe at this new larger faster mustang that thundered across fields on two legs. Then, for the second time in two hundred thirty years, Bakku blasted a gaping hole in Bran’s Wall.
He was back in the hard scrabble flatlands of the Mecan Plains. Millthrace and Janus lay ahead of him. Only one family line would end this day, he promised, the line known as Brynn.
***
Olen had sat in the fields outside Brennan for days, delaying the inevitable. Her long journey had taught her how to survive with very little, but nonetheless she was hungry. She would have to go inside the city and buy food. Maybe she would spend a couple coppers to rent a cot for a night. After that, she would have no more excuses. She would have to go on to Kessel.
A carriage rolled out of the ancient stone arches, heading north to Millthrace or Daegan. A wealthy-looking family sat in the open-aired cart. In the back a small girl of about Olen’s age watched the side of the road. She held on to the seat in front of her as she stood and surveyed the tall grasses of the Bluestem Prairie. The girl was dressed no differently than the men. She wore a white button-down shirt, with the cuffs rolled up to the elbow. Absent was the dress or skirt, as this child wore long pants in soft olive. On her feet were black boots with tall shafts wrapped snuggly above her calves. A dark belt around her waist held up her pants, but it also held a round metallic water canister and a large jagged knife. Olen barely felt the ripple, but knew her garb had changed as the carriage rolled out of sight. For the first time she wore something that felt absolutely right. If this was what Brennan girls wore, she thought, then she would fit in nicely.
Olen walked out of the grasses and stepped through the massive stone archway.