CHAPTER II

We do not fully understand the fate of the demon-cursed. Corporal Jona, the Lord of Joni, might even still be alive inside his bones, his soul attached for an eternity to the tainted flesh. I toyed with the box, and wondered if Jona’s spirit still lingered, watching the world he had left. Could he see the fabrics of life like Senta mystics? Could he see the truths of the world like us? Did his human soul wander the woods, silently weeping her name to the starlight: Rachel… Rachel… Too late for his soul, we must study his life.

***

First, before we stopped at one of the churches of Erin in the city, my husband and I dragged Jona’s skull and uniform to the captain of the City Guard. We insisted upon a visit with him, right away. We wanted to make a scene there. If demon’s children could live here so long undiscovered, and serve in the king’s men, the city guard needed to be reminded of their failure, and the severity of it. We waited in the captain’s office while he washed his hands and face to meet with us respectfully. We carefully placed the demon’s skull upon blank papers on his desk, so the empty sockets could stare directly at the captain while we spoke.

The captain stopped at the door when he saw the skull. He spat and told us to put it on the ramparts or take it away, but never let the traitor look upon his captain again. We left it there while we spoke with him, to stare at him. It was his responsibility to catch them here, and now the church of Erin was involved because we found the skull. We wanted to make a scene, and shame him.

Names came to me when I saw the captain, and faces. I knew the captain would not know more than he had already told us. He had not been in the Pens with Jona. “Nicola Calipari,” I said. “Where is he?”

“That old dog? I don’t know,” said the captain. “If he’s on duty, he could be anywhere. His people will know where he went. Last I heard, he worked the Pens, near the abattoirs, but I know he made inspection rounds. He was on inspection when the corporal showed his true colors. Of course, records don’t mean anything for an old-timer like him. His men might be lying to me just to keep him on the books until he gets the farm. Last I knew he was in the Pens. Could be anywhere.”

We wanted to shame the captain, for allowing a demon child to work in his command for so long. We tested his blood for demon stain, to shame him. We commanded him to test everyone in his command. Let them bleed and know why they bleed.

We spread a sheet of his finest heartwood paper under his open palm. We nicked him with his own dagger, and let him bleed a few drops onto the page. Then we held the paper over a steel bin, and set the paper on fire. When the fire reached the blood, the red stain held the smoldering line of ash back. He was not a demon’s child.

The captain bowed to Erin, and promised to cleanse his blood at a temple of Erin that very night, even if he didn’t need it. He kneeled before me and begged for a blessing.

My husband placed the wolfskin paw upon the head of the man and spoke the blessing for the man. It was the first time he had spoken since arriving in the city. I had missed the sound of his human voice. I placed a red flower in the captain’s hair—red, the color of blood and hunting.

We told the captain that we would seek his help when we were ready, whenever we were ready. We asked for his patience in this matter. He nodded. He closed his eyes. We left him there, kneeling and praying. The king’s men would know we were here. They would let us work in peace, even unto blood and death.

Outside, I took my husband’s hand. “Speak to me again. Let me hear your voice. Speak to me that I may remember who you are.”

He sniffed the air. It’s hard, here. I remember what it was like for the demon’s child from long ago—how he felt here. It still lingers in me, though decades have passed. This place terrified him. And, it saddens me. It isn’t our home. We don’t belong here.

“For me?”

“I’ll try,” he said.

***

We went down near the animal pens where the butchers kept their beasts. The animals arrived on river ships to the edge of the ocean water. They were shoved from dark cages below deck until they came to the city on ships, shoved from one dark cage to another, waiting for the death they can smell all around them, pressed together in the heat and the mud. The Pens district was where the smell was the worst.

This was Jona’s home. Every street was his. His ancestral lands sat in the center of it, his house was hidden somewhere inside the new buildings that sprouted up around it, obscuring its place. There were people here he had known for years. I nodded at my husband. This.

I know. Can’t you smell his stain here?

And, I could, eventually. If I pushed Jona back from my own memories, and tried to ignore the rising waves of his life here, I could feel the taint in the air, like an edge of metal cutting at the stink of animals and death.

When we reached the Pens’ guard station, Sergeant Calipari wasn’t on duty. The new sergeant grinned and told us to call him ‘Pup’, not Sergeant, but I knew that before he spoke. Pup had been promoted since all the other guards Jona knew had died except for Calipari. It wasn’t the stain. This was a dangerous place, and dangerous work. Pup said that Nic was ill, and on leave for good. He wasn’t coming back.

Nicola Calipari had killed the betrayer, Jona. He alone had felt the demon child’s tainted blood spilled all over his skin at the moment of Jona’s death. The old sergeant would be trapped in poisoned visions of the dark soul he had destroyed when he had stabbed his friend, mistaking these for mere nightmares. He was going to be sick as dying.

I looked around the room. I saw a thousand moments. I saw them merge into one moment. I could still smell Jona, here, under all the smells of scrivener’s ink and interrogation room blood. I opened my mouth to speak, but my husband touched my arm. The new sergeant pointed to the edge of the city, past the walls, where Calipari had gone to be close to his beloved. Calipari thought the stain would kill him. He didn’t want to die in a cluttered room above cluttered rooms, alone. He wanted to die in Franka’s arms. Pup spoke so quietly about Calipari’s death.

My husband scoffed. “He won’t die. Jona’s blood wasn’t that strong. He will make everyone around him very sick. Why do men like you ignore the temples when you are in need? You give alms, and pray for help alone, but never let your face be seen by mortals when you seek your interventions.”

Pup shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that stuff, sir,” he said. “Anything else I can help you with?”

The tavern was far beyond the city walls, to the east. My husband and I left Jona’s skull with the church of Erin in the city. We pulled the wolfskin over our back and charged through the streets. We were wild dogs, running, big like wolves. Women screamed and men drew back from us.

My husband had lied to the sergeant. Nicola might die. He might take people with him in death. We had to run.

***

We were back to the wall, and beyond it, but this time at the far eastern edge. The swampy pine forests stretched out across the hills with the black, muddy veins of roads. I smelled the wind against my face. We were home.

Night fell, and we didn’t stop. We kept our wolfskins on our backs and loped overland straight through woods.

We smelled the tavern before we saw it. Drunk men had lost their way to the outhouse and had leaned into the trees. I smelled it all over the roots at the ground against my nose. I smelled the cook fire dusting the trees. Lamplight in the dark guided weary travelers to a place of rest.

My husband stopped at the edge of the light. He told me to go forward; he would search the perimeter for any signs of the other two demons.

I looked up at the building. The bottom floor bustled with travelers and local farmers. In the rooms above, travelers slept, and the owner slept, and his staff slept after drinkers abandoned the bottom floor.

I went to the barn first. I smelled someone human there, and heard a child breathing. The horses whinnied nervously at my scent. But I needed to see in the dark a little longer, so I kept wolfskin.

I recognized the boy when I saw him. Franka’s son was sleeping on some hay, waiting for men to come with their horses and a few coppers for his trouble. He snored with his mouth slack, and flies buzzing around his teeth.

I pulled my hand and back free from the wolfskin to reach into my pack. Stretching my hand out, I poured holy spring water over his head. It must have been very cold. He woke with a start.

“Drink this water,” I growled.

“Wha…?” stammering, he stood up, clumsily backing into the wall.

I remembered myself. He was a child, and me, a wolf in the shadows. I pulled the wolfskin from my back completely. I smiled as warmly as I could, a woman in full, and kind.

“I am Erin’s Walker,” I said. “Do you know what that is? It is someone who helps people. I’m here to help. You’re Franka’s son, aren’t you? I’ve seen you before, but you do not remember me seeing you. Drink this.”

“I…?” He shook his head, wiping sleep from his brain. I watched his face as his mind struggled to name what he had just seen. A dream, surely. A woman rising up from the body of a wolf, speaking to him.

I handed him the water. “Drink this.”

He took the water, sniffed it, smelled the sweet flowers that had blessed the bottle. He drank hesitantly. “It’s good,” he said, surprised. He took a deeper swallow.

“You’re going to have to spend some time in the temple,” I said.

“I’ve never been to temple,” he said. He wasn’t looking at me. His back was to the wall. “I should get my ma.”

“She isn’t feeling well, either, is she?”

“Not for weeks. Bellini doesn’t want sick people working,” he said, “so I have to pick up the slack for ma.”

“Good man.” I ruffled his wet hair. He pulled away as if I had struck him.

***

Inside the public house, the owner woke at the noise of doors opening. When he saw me and my husband, he was quick to realize we weren’t paying customers. He eyed me, waiting for the trouble to start. His name was Bellini.

“People are dying here,” I said. “We came to help.”

He nodded, sternly, and told Franka’s son to lead us upstairs. He’d be up later, behind us. The boy took me upstairs, to the top floor, where the slate roof kept the sun’s heat long into the night. The staff slept here, sweltering in beds too hot for paying guests.

Franka’s son knew the way without a light. I followed him down a black hallway lined with buckets of rotting vomit. The heat did not improve the odor. No maid would serve this floor, and Franka was too sick to deal with these buckets herself, without encouragement. At least Bellini had the good sense to isolate the sick.

The boy opened a door at the end of the hall. Moonlight spilled over him from the doorway. “They’re sleeping,” he whispered. I walked in to the room. A woman and a man snored beneath an open window, curling into each other like wild roots despite the heat.

I had seen enough to know how deep the stain would run here. The whole place might need to be burned down. I turned to the boy. “They shouldn’t be together at a time like this,” I said. “He will only quicken her illness. You need to go downstairs, now, and tell Bellini to get everyone out of the inn. Everyone needs to leave. Go.”

The boy did not go far. I don’t think he understood what I was asking him to do. I don’t have children. I can’t make sense of them. Wolf pups would have understood everything, and instinctively known to flee this tainted hallway.

The bodies in the bed moaned. A woman’s voice, as thin as dying, rose from the tangled sheets. “Who’s there?”

I pushed the boy back from the door, and stepped into the room. I closed the door behind me. “I’m from the Church of Erin. I have come seeking a woman named Franka and a man named Nicola Calipari,” I said. “You are sick. I can heal you.”

The man awoke, too. “Who sent you?” he demanded. I recognized his voice from Jona’s memories, weak as it was. He was so frail. He tried to sit up in the dark, but couldn’t muster the strength. Franka pushed him down. Even in low light, I saw the man before me and knew his cheeks and eyes had sunken into his face since the day he drove a blade into Jona’s body.

“You need help,” I said. “The illness that plagues you is the poison of tainted blood, from Jona.” I grabbed clothes from the floor, and threw them at the bed. I could burn their clothes, later. We didn’t have the captain’s men here to enforce our commands. We’d have to work in stages. “Dress yourselves and come to the yard. Take anything that burns with you. Your bedsheets. Your clothes. Your books and papers. Bring it all.” I looked behind me towards the sounds of the first floor. Men were shouting. My husband was shouting. Bellini was not going to clear the building. “Actually,” I said, “let’s throw it all out the window. We’ll burn everything.”

I opened the room’s only window. I leaned out. I howled to my husband below. I have them. Burn their things below.

He howled back to me. I hear.

The mattress was the first thing to go through the window. It was little more than a large bag of feathers and hay sewn shut. It wasn’t hard to shove it through the gap. Little goose feathers floated down from holes in the seams. Next, I threw all the clothes they weren’t wearing, and all the buckets of the hall.

Sergeant Calipari could barely stand. Franka helped him into a chair. He heaved where he sat, but there wasn’t much inside of him. It spilled across his chest and stayed there. He didn’t have the strength to clear it away. She wasn’t as weak as him, yet.

I pushed Franka away from him. I told her to keep cleaning. I cleaned him up while Franka worked, throwing papers and the pillows from the furniture. She must have been embarrassed that anyone found her in such disarray. She must have been embarrassed that she hadn’t been able to help the sick as I could. I made Calipari swallow dandelion wine with mint to settle the burning inside of his guts. I didn’t have enough with me. It would take weeks to clean away the worst of his demon-fever. He was too sick to speak. We had to turn the tide inside of him, and burn everything he had touched that could not be cleaned.

***

In the yard, the fire attracted a crowd. Everywhere the demon stain had seeped in from Calipari’s deep fever of sweat and vomit, the fire caught it like kerosene, and coughed up balls of fire. People came out of their rooms to watch. Spectacle was more effective at clearing the building than our holy command.

My husband had already left, running through the dark to reach the nearest temple. We would need more supplies to fight the demon’s death tide rising inside his killer.

The drunks cheered now. Later on, their hangovers would be worse and the occasional bout of coughs would linger long into the night. Some among them might die, if they had been here night after night, drinking in the stain. My husband would try to walk the farms and houses here while I stayed with Calipari. The temple would help. Even Imam’s clergy would try to help. Death does not care whose god you serve.

***

I stayed with Calipari, in a cleaner room, on the second floor. After a few days, Franka was healthy enough to work downstairs. I couldn’t convince her not to work. We tried to quarantine the place, but Bellini only allowed us to block off the inn rooms. The tavern remained open against our command. We would fix that soon enough.

First, we focused on the man. As the stain faded from him, Sergeant Calipari was able to talk for long periods of time. With Calipari’s face and voice to feed Jona’s memories, a candle flickered in my mind, burning steady, then growing clear as scenes separated from each other. But Calipari himself was a hollowed out shell of the battering ram with legs that Jona had known. He should have been a tightly wound spring, not this feather on a mattress.

“What are you looking at me for?”

I had been staring. It made him uncomfortable.

I closed my eyes. “Do you feel strong enough to talk a while?”

“Yeah,” he said. The weakness of his voice betrayed him. I waited a while more. He said nothing else.

I smiled. “This isn’t an interrogation. I’m just picking up the pieces, healing the sick, and making sure there are no more.”

He still didn’t speak.

“We won’t hurt anyone, I promise. We’re trying to help.”

“Well,” he said. With my eyes closed, I imagined his face, his mouth screwed up like he was about to spit out the side where there was a gap in his teeth. “I don’t know. It wasn’t right, but, I know what happens when demon stains get involved. I don’t want to think about what comes next. Never good when we can’t handle it ourselves. You aren’t even human like us. You’re this other thing, a wolf or a priestess or something.”

I opened my eyes and reached out to touch his arm. “I’m human, Sergeant. I’m also a wolf. The divine goddess Erin wills me so.”

“What do you want to know, anyway?”

“Anything you want to tell me. If you want, you can just tell me about Jona. You don’t need to implicate anyone. We won’t be arresting anyone. If there’s a crime, we’ll hand the criminal over to the king’s men.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. He was right not to believe me. I don’t know how familiar he was with church law, but my husband and I could kill anyone who carried the stain, or burn down any building. If he knew the extent of our duties, he wouldn’t speak a word. He rested silently, considering. I thought it a sign that he knew more than he was giving me. It could have been fatigue. He fell asleep for a time, as did I in my chair. Franka came up from downstairs with soup, and woke him up with a gentle hand. He ate what he could stomach of it. I didn’t touch a drop. I stayed there, quiet and still. Franka did not touch my arm to offer soup.

It took a long time, but Calipari finally spoke. “People get sick,” he said.

“They do.”

“People die?”

“Sometimes.”

“I know some people that died,” he said. “Lost plenty good boys. Lost so many. Some of them, I know why. Some of them, I don’t. You expect it to happen sometimes, especially you walking about down with the worst of everybody. Still…”

I nodded. He still had trouble looking at me. I had come here to save his life, and he couldn’t even make eye contact because he knew what might happen if he spoke. He knew something I could use. “Help me,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess I should.”

He did.

***

Jona was the Lord of Joni. He still had the family home, but no lands in the city or out of it. All the good furniture and finery were long sold off. The house stayed together because they only used a little bit of it, and watched the roof for signs of rot. His mother sewed dresses for noble families luckier than hers.

Jona’s father’s fortune had been stripped during the war. Smuggling was illegal, but everyone did it in wartime. Jona’s father wasn’t smuggling things the king needed, and he had so much land that could be sold off to pay for war. For his crimes, the Joni lands were confiscated, and he was hung next to common thieves, disgraced and poor.

My husband and I would have to dig up the body, later, and burn the ground where we found it. Jona’s stain probably came from his father, a demon’s child himself.

After the lord’s death, the war continued for months, and food was expensive. Jona’s mother had nothing but land to sell for it. Trees came down as the ground was sold. Jona watched what was left of his family’s estate devoured by the streets and shops and abbatoirs of the city that took his father to take the family’s land. He watched from his bedroom window while men with hammers and sweating backs placed stone upon stone. He wore black the day his father died. He kept wearing mourning black long after his father’s death, because his mother told him to, because she had to sell land to buy bread for her son, and the king hadn’t even left the widow half a coin from the ancestral treasures. Land to sell was the only wealth they had left. Jona wore cheap wool, itchier than hay, and watched the workmen building where once he had swung from the trees, carefree in white silk.

Jona’s grandfathers were all dead, and her mother’s brothers had died in the war. Without a patriarch, the family fell hard into poverty. Jona’s mother found work as a seamstress.

Her son grew up tall, and strong.

Jona entered the city guard. His mother threw him out of the house for swearing an oath to her husband’s murderer. He wasn’t doing it for the king, but she’d never understand that. The best that she could ever do is see how it could help her son improve their life. After he trained, out in the countryside, he returned to the city. He lived in barracks for a while, scrivening until he was promoted to Corporal to walk the street. He traded coin for cards and dice. His mother came for him in the barracks, and begged for him to come back into her house. She was an old woman alone. She had no one else, and she loved him. With time, she came to see the wisdom of his choice, even if she still hated the king. He could become an officer someday. He’d earn the fleur instead of buying it like the other young nobles. He’d bring honor back to the family name, marry well, and maybe things would be better for the grandchildren.

He loved the work. He was good at it, and it filled his days with something meaningful.

That’s what the sergeant knew. That was what the world knew.

I asked Calipari if he knew which parent held the demon taint.

He nodded. “It was the father.”

“How do you know?”

“Jona told me before I killed him.”

“Have you checked?”

“Of course not,” said Calipari. “This is a nasty business. If the king and the captain want her checked, they can send someone else. It was all in the report.”

“Was it?”

“Did the captain say anything about checking her?”

“No. He didn’t mention a report, either.”

“Well, she’s pretty old, and there are lots of reports. Too much paper in the guard, you ask me. If I spent more time with a good bat in my hand and less time with the cheap quills they kept sending me, the Pens’d be a different place. Be a better place. I’ve seen Jona’s ma a few times. She won’t have any more kids at her age, and I don’t want to burn anyone.”

He looked over my shoulder. I was sitting by the window, and he was lying in bed. He looked out at the blue sky, and the rolling sea clouds that had survived the journey this far inland.

I waited for him to speak. I folded my hands, and raised my eyebrows. I let my silence draw him out.

“She didn’t betray the city,” he said.

I leaned in close to him. I spoke close so he would listen. “If she housed a demon as wicked as Jona, she betrayed the whole world of men,” I said. “He never slept. He couldn’t. The stain inside of him kept him awake all night. While all decent folk were sleeping, he was killing people. He was working for the worst criminal in the city all night long. His mother probably knew when she saw the money coming in. I will test her blood myself. We will not hand her over to the guard lightly, but if she helped a demon child murder innocent people…”

Calipari looked at my hands. They were human. When he spoke, his voice was weary. “That’s not my business,” he said. “That’s Captain’s problem now, not mine. Jona saved my life. I killed him for it.”

“Why did you do it if you didn’t like it?”

He looked me in the face. I recognized this face. Calipari was a hard man, ready to fight when it was needed. He was fighting now. “Jona betrayed the city, and the king’s men. Good boys died because of him. It wouldn’t be a duty if it was easy. And it’s not my duty anymore, so I won’t do it. Please, leave his ma alone.”

“It’s amazing she’s still alive,” I said. “Every man with two masters must choose his side. He chose a third path. He betrayed all his masters for you and for Rachel.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“I am Erin’s Walker, Sergeant. I see inside the demon child’s mind, even in death. I see all that he remembers. I know there is more for you to tell me.”

“How can you do that?”

I shook my head. “You did the right thing, Sergeant. Eventually, every demon-stained mortal succumbs to the wickedness in their blood. You might have saved that part of his soul that passed as human. You can save more people from the Nameless deep in Elishta.”

He looked back to the window, and the gathering clouds. “No,” he said. “Men like him and me don’t get saved. I know what I did was right. I hate that I did it. Jona was one of my boys for almost three years.”

“Have you killed many people?”

“Of course,” he said, “but they were all criminals. Even if they were good sometimes, nobody was any good for long where I was stationed. And I know Jona wasn’t all bad. He was human, too, wasn’t he? He wasn’t just a demon child. He was a man, too.”

“Did you burn a girl last winter?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We found that one. Bled true. Anchorites missed her. She was sneaking out at night like a dumb kid. Got

in trouble. Didn’t even know what she was, inside.”

“She bled true,” I echoed.

“Burned her alive. She’d done nothing to deserve it.” Calipari sighed, and looked down at his hands. “She was a demon’s child, too. If there’s two… I guess everyone needs to go looking around for more. Two of them, one after another, you’d think the crusades were still on.”

“There may be more. My husband and I will try to find them. There were only three that Jona knew about, including himself, and of these three only Jona is dead. The girl was not one of them. Jona ruined the tests with his own blood to condemn that girl,” I said. “She died because Jona sent her to burn instead of the true demon child. There are others he sent to you to protect people who did not deserve protection. They weren’t burned, of course, but they were hung. You hung them like thieves.”

Calipari put his hands to his eyes. “Please, don’t tell me this.” He coughed, his chest shuddering. He pulled his hands away. His face had hardened into a stone. “How many?”

“Do you really want to know? This wasn’t your fault, but his. The deed is done.”

His courage broke. “No, I don’t want to know.” He turned away from me. The window was open. If he could have sat up, he could have seen Franka with her son, riding a horse in the yard while her mother watched over him. The boy wasn’t his, but he was the only father that boy would ever know.

“How many was it?” His voice was tight, his eyes turned from me. “Tell me.”

“Nineteen, with the girl.”

“Elishta but that’s a lot. Nineteen. Do you know their names?”

“He remembers their names, and so do I. Had he done what he was supposed to do, you would have been number twenty.”

“Elishta, that’s a lot,” he repeated.

“The innocent die,” I said, “There is no perfect justice, because there are no men as wise as wolves. Wolves say that it is easy to be wise when your belly is full. When your belly is empty, it is wise to fill it. Farm with all of your heart. You are not a uniform anymore. Show mercy when you can, and live in peace.”

He turned his gaze back to me from the window. His courage returned to him. He was the coiled spring Jona remembered, again, even if he couldn’t stand up to walk downstairs, yet. “I said I’d help you.” He pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer near his bed and began gracefully scripting locations and letters of reference for us to his informants across the city.

I went downstairs and prepared his lunch myself. When I returned, he stopped to eat, and then picked up his quill again. “This might take a while,” he said. Paper, then, from all over the tavern. By nightfall, a stack of papers was piled beside his bed, sorted by the numbers of guard posts upon hand-drawn maps. More marks in the maps indicated people and places to go. He gave us letters of introduction, too. People in the Pens wouldn’t trust us, but they’d trust him. “Here,” he said, “I’ll stay here a while, but I got land waiting for me as soon as I’m strong enough to take it. I served twenty years. I got the farmland waiting for me.”

Sergeant Calipari gestured at the man who had appeared behind me like a shadow from the hall. My husband had returned. “He don’t talk much do he?”

“My husband?”

“Yeah,” said Calipari, “is he all right?”

“He’s been talking all along,” I said. “Silence is a word to us, Sergeant.”

“Can’t be a nice word. What does he mean by it?”

I looked over at my husband. He turned away from us, and wandered into the hall. I knew what he was saying: these men who would have died instead of going to a church themselves; who help us because we saved, not because he wants to protect the people of the world from the demon children, and all those who protected the wicked from discovery.

I stood up from my chair, the papers under my arm. “He means to tell you whatever you wish to hear,” I said. “You and he have much in common. We both hate this business as much as you do, in our way.” I bowed to Sergeant Calipari. “You need to recover your strength. Spend a few more seasons here, maybe a year, even if you’re strong enough to leave. There will be plenty of work here for a strong man when we’re done purifying the place.”

He laughed. “Burning it down, are you? Thanks for finding me, and helping me get healthy again. I’ve never been sick like that before. I don’t think anything I ever had was as bad as that.”

I bowed again. I followed my husband into the main building. It was early, and few people were in the tavern. Only the barman, and two hardened drinkers with nowhere else to go until their coins ran out.

My husband spread fireseeds across the top of the bar. Bellini cursed hard. He demanded to know what we thought we were doing, furious and terrified of what he knew we might do.

My husband pushed Bellini from the seeds. “Accept our help,” he snarled. “We’re trying to save your life, and keep your patrons safe.”

In the city, the Guard Captain bows to us. The Bishops of Imam’s faithful and the greatest Lords of the city would greet us as equals among them. In this stinking tavern, this sweating man screamed at us to stop saving his life, and the life of all his patrons here.

I stepped in front of my husband and smiled at Bellini. If I had the wolfskin on my back, he would have seen it for the threat it was. I gently pushed against Bellini’s chest. He tried to punch my husband over my head. He hit only air. My husband was faster than men. He grabbed Bellini by the hair and threw him into the tavern yard. He tossed fireseeds across the man’s back. I struck a match beside my husband, and tossed it at the thrown seeds, giving life to them. The lit seeds took root in Bellini’s skin, blooming to life like firecrackers on a string. The flowers had long orange stalks, and petals of flame.

Bellini rolled around the sand to stamp the fire, screaming in agony. A fireseed was no worse than a bee sting, but there were a lot of them, and they hurt him deep.

We told everyone in the tavern to leave. They did. Someone helped Bellini to his feet, the flowers still eating into his back. They ran for the woods.

My husband and I cleared out all the people from the rooms, even Calipari. The building might not survive what we needed to do next.

My husband and I spread the seeds across the bottom floor, in the kitchen, and up the stairwell. We spread three thick layers of seed down the fourth floor hall and through the rooms. We didn’t need a match. We stepped into the yard and waited. We handed around a flask of dandelion wine and waited for the heat to come. Under the glare of midday, the growing heat from the slate roof ignited the seeds on the fourth floor. The flowers bloomed from there, all the way down, feeding on the fuel inside the stain to burn bright and hot. The flowers of the fireseed didn’t burn hot enough to ignite the building, but they came close in Calipari’s sickroom. Wallpaper singed and peeled. Cheap wooden furniture warped and collapsed.

The burning flowers lived for only a few hours. After releasing their heat, the fireseeds’ fruit congealed into the tips of the blooms like igneous pebbles. These would be swept through the building, slipping into every crevice. Many would be swept away into the yard. The wind would take them, and when the heat of high summer returned, the new fireseeds would blossom. Any taint in the tavern yard, no matter how small, would fuel the burning flowers. Someday there would be purity here.

We had not made a cure here. It was too late for that. Instead, we created the system of a cure. We would be here to keep watch, in the shadows of the woods, smelling for any sign of the stain accumulating in one place. Things would be better here someday. The people here would slowly get better. The fireseeds would blossom on this land for years to come.

***

The hard work was done. The local temples of Erin and Imam could take over, nursing the land and its people back to health. My husband and I returned to Dogsland, on the hunt for the bones of the demon child of a succubus that created Jona, the Lord of Joni. We were on the hunt for the immortal one, too old to know what demon had made him, or how many generations back it was. We were on the hunt for Rachel Nolander, the doppelganger’s daughter that had escaped another death in Dogsland, a first generation demon. We took the skull from the church so it would stay near me. The Pens were not safe, even for us, but we found a room as close as we thought we could risk. We ate dinner in our room, with the wolfskins on our backs, and all the furniture pushed against the walls to keep it out of our way.

We spread Calipari’s map across the floor carefully, leaving gaps where he left gaps so we could step between the pages on the floor. The skull was with us. I could touch it if I wanted to risk an infection. I could study it.

I did.

What is it like, to hold a million moments from another’s life inside your mind? It’s like living on an island, with two oceans beneath you: the ocean you see when your eyes are open is yours; the ocean you see when your eyes are closed is not. I had to swim in someone else’s waters, and I did. For days I studied the maps, and I closed my eyes. My husband waited for me.

I’m starting to remember. I’m starting to see the shape of the memories.

Do you see the man and the monster, and do you see with our eyes into his life?

I’m starting to see it all.

Write it down. Write it all down.

Yes.