Writers of the Future, Volume 29 (37 page)

Mara stepped back to study him, the way he lay in the brush. Before she
could think better of it, she stooped down to the body and turned it roughly,
holding its shoulder off the ground with one hand while she fumbled with the straps
on its back. The dead man's arm felt like clay under her hands, cooling and softly
pliant. After a moment's work, she had the scythe free, and she let the man drop
back to the ground.

“What the hell do you want that for?” Rey said. He stood back from her
as she swung the scythe up to rest against her shoulder.

“Don't know,” she said, running her fingers down its haft. “Just working
something out. The last pair didn't have them when they died, right?”

It felt solid enough, and heavy. Not a well-balanced thing, with all its
weight in the blade.

Rey stared at her. “That's damn creepy.”

“Yeah,” Mara said, and shrugged, and then turned and walked back to the
road. Rey followed her after a moment.

When she was almost there, she stopped.

The harvester's horse hadn't gone far. They found it by the roadside,
facing away from them. Its white-gray tail swishing.

A sick feeling rose in Mara's gut.

“That horse,” Rey said. His voice was strained, rough.

Mara held up her hand, telling Rey to stay where he was. She put the
scythe on the ground and crept forward, going slow and careful to avoid startling
the horse. She talked nonsense to it under her breath, so it would hear her voice
and know she was there. “Hey there,” she whispered. “It's okay; it's all right.
Everything is going to be fine.”

She took up the broken tangle of its reins, threading her hand down
familiar leather. The horse stood its ground, skin shuddering, eyes white-rimmed
with panic.

“It's fine,” she said again, but something hot welled in her eyes.
“You're all right.” Her throat closed up on the words. She couldn't say more.
Instead, she touched the softness of the gray horse's nose and stood petting it, her
head bowed, blinking fast.

“Mara,” Rey said. He hadn't come any closer. “It's the same horse, isn't
it.”

Mara tried to respond, but her mouth was dry. She said nothing.

“Isn't it?”

She nodded, jerkily.

“Oh, damn,” Rey whispered. He'd gone sandstone-pale. Stood there with
his hands out like he was looking for something to steady him, but could find
nothing.

Mara turned the horse away from the tree. Behind its saddle, it carried
Keera's pack, hooked to the flaps.

A cold pit opened up in Mara's gut. That was it, then. No chance that
she'd just traded the horse away or anything like that. Everything she'd had was in
that pack, everything but her gun.

“What does it mean?” Rey said, his voice shaky. “Did that bastard—did he
kill her?”

“I don't know. Could be he just stole the horse. Could be she's
fine.”

She twined her hand in the horse's mane. Maybe that could be, but she
didn't think so.

She should never have let Keera go. It should have been her
responsibility. And now look at it, her baby sister dead. Killed away from home
where they couldn't even bury her. It wasn't right.

“Yeah, that could be,” Rey said. He didn't sound like he believed it,
either.

They stood there by the side of the road in quiet, Mara scratching the
crest of the horse's neck and thinking about her sister being dead. Then Rey folded
up as if someone had punched him in the gut and dropped to sit on his heels. “I
don't know what to do, Mara.”

She said nothing.

“It'd be easier if I'd seen her,” he said. “But now I don't know for
sure. I don't know if we've killed the man that killed her, or if she's even dead at
all.”

“I know,” she said.

“What are we gonna do?”

She considered. Then she walked forward, pulling the horse along by the
reins. It didn't want to move. “We'll go home,” she said. “Keera would hate us if we
fell apart now. The town still needs protecting.”

Rey nodded, very small. Mara bent and offered her hand; he took it, and
she helped him to his feet. His eyes were glassy with unshed tears.

Mara didn't feel like crying at all, anymore. She just felt that cold
pit yawning inside her, as if something dead had its hand stuck through her stomach
to grip at her heart.

“Come on,” she said.

She picked up the harvester's scythe again, from where it lay in the
weeds. Rey said nothing. They walked the long road back together and no one
spoke.

M
ara woke the next morning
twisted up in her bed, the blankets twined through her arms, panting and damp with
sweat. She couldn't remember what she'd dreamed. But it had been something bad, and
something loud, and echoes of it still rang through her head even in the stark pale
light of morning.

“What did I do?” she said aloud. “What have I done?”

She got up and wiped her face clean and made herself some chicory. She
drank it standing by the window, looking out at the Lady's house, barely visible on
its distant hill. High up, set away. Where she could look down on everyone.

The chicory burned her throat and settled her nerves. When it was done,
she left the window and went to the place in the corner where she'd propped the
harvester's scythe, covered in sackcloth. It seemed smaller than it had been the day
before.

With a hand that still didn't shake, she twitched the cloth away.
Keera's rifle leaned against the wall where last night Mara had left the long-bladed
scythe of a harvester.

“Damn it,” she said, very softly.

If only she'd felt surprised, though. That would have made it better.
But no part of her was shocked. There was only the creep of horror up her spine, a
cold twist in her gut. And the slow burn of shame. Because hadn't some part of her
known it already? Hadn't some part of her seen it, out on the river road?

She set her back to the wall beside her sister's gun and slid down until
she sat in a heap on the floor. She pressed her forehead against her knees and
closed her eyes. She stayed like that for a long time.

R
ey didn't need to know yet, not
until she'd figured it all out. He was mourning enough. She took the gray horse and
rode out as soon as the sun came up. The horse jigged underneath her, spooked at
phantoms. She spoke quiet words to him but he wouldn't calm.

The sun crept higher as she rode, already a white glow in a pale sky.
The last dying gasp of summer. The day would be mercilessly hot.

The trip to the river road felt long, though she urged the horse to a
trot. But she finally turned onto the road and went to the place where they'd left
the dead harvester. She swung down from the horse and left it tied to a tree while
she made her way down the slope. Her boots skidded on loose dirt. For a moment, she
couldn't remember exactly the spot where they'd left the body and she circled round,
riffling through bushes and weeds, but then she saw a flash of bright color on the
ground. The color of one of Keera's shirts.

She brushed the leaves out of her sister's face with the flat of her
hand, straightened the fall of her hair over her shoulders.

But Keera would never pass for sleeping.

“I'm so sorry,” Mara whispered.

And there, alone, she let herself cry.

After a while, she dried her eyes on the back of her hand, went back to
the horse, and got the coat she'd worn that morning. She took the coat back to
Keera's body and snugged it up over her shoulders.

“I'm going to make things right,” Mara said, voice hoarse. “And then
I'll come back for you.”

But of course, Keera couldn't answer.

Mara lingered a while longer, and then went back up to the road. She
untied the horse and swept into the saddle. If she needed answers, she had a good
idea of where to look.

D
on't go,” the finch warned, but
Mara went on up the hill to the Lady's house. The clockwork finch fluttered around
her head, its movements quick and uncertain.

“You knew, didn't you?” she said, never stopping her mad charge up the
path. “And you did nothing.”

“I am her creature. What do you expect me to do?” The finch swooped and
dove and the clanking sounds in its belly were louder than ever. “I tried to make
you see.”

“I see fine!”

At the crest of the hill, Mara left the finch behind and burst through
the Lady's front door. Dead things crunched under her feet, rodent bones and bug
wings. The clockwork birds shrieked on the rafters, all together, a mad chorus. She
rounded the corner and hit the Lady's door with her arms outstretched. It flew open
and Mara half-fell into the room, stumbling and skidding over the floor. The Lady
whirled from the window, her head high. Mara stopped and stood, fists clenched so
her nails bit into her palms. “My sister is dead.”

The Lady moved to her armchair and sat. She folded her hands in her lap.
“I know. I am sorry.”

“I don't give a damn. Somehow, you did this.” Mara stalked the floor,
gripped by a teeth-grinding feeling that wouldn't let her rest. She had to keep
moving, or it would all spill out.

“It wasn't me that killed her,” the Lady said softly.

And didn't that cut as sharp as a harvester's scythe.

“You changed her,” Mara said.

The Lady moved her hands in her lap, stretching her thin fingers. They
were different than before, slimmer and less wrinkled. The rings hung loosely on
them. “Why are you so quick to blame me?”

“Because only you could do it.” She swept around the back of the Lady's
chair, passing by the green tapestry with the eagle gripping a man in its claws.
“Because you've got to be doing something up here other than watching the road and
fixing my eyes. You've got to be getting something out of it.”

“Yes,” the Lady said. “That's true. I protect my town, and in return, I
am fed. Each of you will feed me, in time.”

Mara stopped dead. “What do you mean?”

“It is as I say.” The Lady stretched out her long bare neck, turning it
as if to work the kinks out. “Don't you see it every time you look at me? I am a
creature that feeds on death, girl. When someone dies here, their spirit feeds me.
Makes me stronger. I was weak when you killed those two on the road. Now I am strong
again.”

“No.”

The Lady had always helped her, been nothing but generous to her. Made
her able to see again.

“It's so.”

“So we're only food for you,” Mara said, her voice tightly
controlled.

The Lady wrung her head back and forth. “It's not like that. You are my
people and I love you. My greatest wish is for everyone in the Goldwater to live to
old age and die happy, surrounded by the ones you love.”

“So the reason no one comes here, no one leaves?”

The Lady drew into herself, tucking her elbows close to her sides and
pulling her head back into the shade of her big cowl neckline. “The towns where I
lived before were not understanding. Accepting. I could not stay anywhere for long.
So I thought it best to take this town and keep it small. To take one group of
people and their families who would grow to know me as a guardian. No need for
outsiders. No need to stir up trouble.”

“The harvesters don't exist.”

“No.”

Mara exhaled a long breath and went to the window. She put her hand on
the sill in case she needed the support. It wasn't even that she didn't know what to
think, what to say—but that she
couldn't
think. Every
thought felt like spring ice, cold and thin and so brittle.

“None of those men Keera killed were harvesters.”

“No,” the Lady said. “Travelers, traders. But you understand, you were
still right in your job. You kept the Goldwater safe.”

Mara clenched her fingers on the edge of the sill. Paint cracked and
flaked. She whirled and faced the Lady. “You made Keera look like a harvester. She
could have come back!”

“But she knew. And she would have told you and her man. No one would
have been safe here anymore.”

“
You
wouldn't be,” Mara said. “How could we
know the truth and still let you live up here, a stinking carrion bird, picking our
corpses clean.”

The Lady hissed and sprang from her chair. “Keep a civil tongue around
me, girl,” she said, beak clacking. “And how thin is your outrage when now you have
what you've always wanted. Your old job back, your old man. Isn't that so?”

Mara froze.

“And don't forget who gave you those
eyes
.”
The Lady's chuckle grated on Mara, an unnatural thick sound.

“Take them back, then,” Mara said, and took three long strides to meet
the Lady in front of her chair, where they'd always sat when Mara came for
treatment. Only this time Mara reached for the knife in her boot and came up with it
gleaming in her hand like a tooth.

The clockwork finches on the rooftop screamed louder and louder.

“You don't know what you have said, girl,” the Lady said, and she drew
closer.

Mara looked at how the tip of the Lady's beak curved down into a cruel
point. She raised the knife.

The Lady's head darted out of her cowl faster than Mara could track, and
her beak gaped open. Mara fell back, wrenching her head back and slashing out with
the knife at the same time. She caught the edge of the Lady's dress. But the tip of
the Lady's beak caught Mara's left eye, raking through it and popping it free of its
socket, tearing through the flesh of her eyelid down to her cheekbone.