An Inheritance of Ashes Read online

  A bird called somewhere outside, in the bright and endless distance. Tyler stared for a long moment at Heron, at the miles of grief written on his face. “You know where he’s gone, don’t you?”

  Heron’s hands closed softly around thin air. “No,” he said, and Tyler sagged in on himself. “I don’t.”

  Heron studied the three of us: me with my good hand grasping my bandaged one; Nat, gravestone-still and sharp as a blade; Tyler, a ruined, caving building of a boy. My hired man stepped around Tyler with a woodcarver’s delicacy and picked up the twisted knife.

  I caught my breath, expecting thunder, mayhem . . . something. Heron flipped the shredded leather grip gently into his hand. Outside, the birdcall faded, and wind rustled the trees.

  Nothing happened. It was just a knife.

  Heron’s mouth crimped with a disgusted affection. And then he shook his head, picked up the leather wrapping, and looped it carefully about the curves and whorls of the knife that killed a god.

  I scrubbed my good hand across my eyes. “How is this here? How is that knife on my farm?”

  Heron wrapped the shining blade; checked his knots twice. “It was given to me,” he said quietly. “I’m carrying it north.”

  “You’ve had it the whole time?” Tyler exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? The Great Army’s tearing apart the countryside for even a hint of John Balsam. That knife’s the most important thing in the world.”

  Heron’s studied blankness slammed up like a fence. I caught my breath: I’d lived too long with Marthe’s anger, silent and cold, to believe his stillness was sincere. “I’m taking it north,” he said, his eyes viciously bright. “Back to his people, where it belongs. Not to sit in a shrine to bilk pilgrims, or go to the highest bidder, or help some general set himself up as mayor-for-life in some backwater town. Home.”

  Tyler flinched. I swallowed and tasted burnt wicker and feathers. The family of John Balsam would have no regimental memorial. No one would have brought them a vial of ashes from John’s Creek. Just like Marthe and me, they had nothing.

  They needed something to touch and hold, so that they could finally grieve.

  Heron hefted the leather wrapping and turned his stiff dignity onto me. “Miss, I’ll understand if you’d rather not have this on your land.”

  “Other people didn’t,” I guessed, and his eyes fell.

  “I left the town of Jasper through a window, by night, ahead of a full western regiment. Three farms by Ball Creek were overrun entirely by Great Army soldiers after rumor got out of my passing.” Heron winced, but his voice stayed low and steady. “No, I won’t flatter myself: its passing.”

  Nat scowled. “That’s bull. The army mustered up to protect our land.”

  “Never underestimate,” Tyler put in softly, “what men do when they’re desperate.”

  Heron looked him over again, this time quietly appraising. “Or what they’ll do when they’re that thirsty for hope. I learned fast to pretend I was just another veteran, but I’ve never stopped for shelter for more than a few nights since.”

  The rest went unspoken: Not until now. Not until the coming winter forced him to ground.

  I shook my head. This was too big for me. This was bigger than my whole world: our crooked fields and the riverbend that held off the hills and forests north. I turned to Nat in mute appeal, and she crossed her arms. “We can’t tell anyone about this,” she said.

  I nodded. Not Mrs. Blakely, not James or Callum. Not Marthe, and I bit my lip against how dangerous it was to keep things from Marthe. To her, even more than to me, this farm was everything. She’d fought Windstown to a standstill to keep it, strained both our bodies to the breaking point, broken with every friend who questioned whether we could run Roadstead Farm alone. If she knew John Balsam’s knife was here—and the whole Great Army keening for it like kittens orphaned at birth—she wouldn’t hesitate: she’d throw Heron off the farm by sunset to starve in the coming snow, and if she did, I would fail. We’d already fixed the fences; the woodpile was stacked full. One week, and Heron was already giving Roadstead Farm a chance. He was giving me a chance to keep this family alive.

  I snuck a glance at my half-full pack. It sat ready against the stonework, as it had for eight long years, a waiting spider in a web of dust. Not yet, the still, small voice in my head wailed. I hadn’t failed yet.

  Heron stood before me, stiff and unshaken, his peculiar grace bleeding into the very air. It wasn’t just northern manners, it was his sense of calling: the way a person held themself high when they were devoted, without compromise, to something greater than themself. He hadn’t failed yet either. He couldn’t fail.

  And abruptly, I wanted him to bring that funeral knife home.

  “Leave it in the stool,” I said quickly, before I could take it back. “Nobody comes here; nobody but me. Leave it there and don’t move it ’til springtime.”

  Heron’s dignity broke. “You’re serious. You’ll hide me. Hide this.”

  I straightened my spine and felt that sense of calling through it, so proud and rich. So brave. “We won’t breathe a word of it.”

  “We swear,” Nat added, and I tossed her a grateful glance. Her cheeks glowed hot with determination. “We are not like that to folks in the lakelands.”

  Tyler stared at us for a long moment, right across the space where Heron cradled the twisted knife. His lips parted, and his face was so full of warmth and indecision that it threatened to flood. “I swear,” he repeated after a moment. “I give you my word.”

  Heron’s shoulders sagged. When he lifted his head, the hunted cast was gone from his eyes. “Thank you,” he said, his voice ragged and a little wry. “All of you. I won’t forget it. And you won’t regret it, I swear.”

  A hollow promise from a man with three patched shirts and a cooking pot to his name. But it filled the room with such bright and enduring force that my bones knew it was true.

  Heron checked the knots on his makeshift sheath and set the knife down on the stool. Its hinges creaked under the slight weight: an altar or an opened grave. Heron blinked and looked between us awkwardly, once again a man not much older than I was: far from home and friendless in a pair of broken boots. I wet my lips against the silence. The memory of John Balsam’s knife in my hands made time to milk the goats feel trivial.

  “What’s in the basket?” he asked hesitantly.

  Nat’s expression hardened. “Something that needs to burn.” She scooped it up, abrupt as weather, and slipped past me out the door.

  Tyler took one step after her and then turned back, shamefaced. “Sir,” he said, and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  Heron sighed. “It’s all right.” He tentatively held out a hand. Tyler hesitated and then shook it, sharp and crisp.

  “It’s Heron?”

  “It’s a family name,” Heron said, and his eyes ran down Tyler’s polished buttons. “You were a corporal?”

  “A private,” Tyler answered, with the same defiant pride as when I said I’m half owner of Roadstead Farm. “Under Captain Sanchez, Lakelands Division. Private Tyler Blakely.”

  Heron’s mouth curled in a bemused, bitter smile. “Private,” he said, and his eyes lingered on Tyler’s leg. “Thank you for your service.”

  Tyler nodded, suddenly stiff, and limped out the smokehouse door. Heron dropped his outstretched hand slowly, and the hitch of Tyler’s gait faded down the graveled path.

  “I should help Nat with the basket,” I said after a moment.

  Heron shuffled, and his arms pulled in behind his back: standing at attention. “What would you like me to do?”

  Chores, I thought ruefully. The most sought-after relic in the world was in my smokehouse, and he was worrying about the morning’s lost work. He wants things to be normal again, I realized, and settled into my boots with a breath. “Fill the malthouse cistern with water. It’s halfway done, and the bucket’s outside the malthouse.” I paused, reddening. “It’ll need washing fi
rst.”

  “Miss,” Heron said, and dusted his palms on his trousers, wiping away the touch of destinies. “I’ll find you when it’s done.”

  I nodded and pulled myself down the steps, out of the trapped smell of smoke and secrets and my own spilled blood. The sunlight hit like cold water. I wrapped my arms around my chest and hugged my flannel shirt close.

  Heron’s silence followed me down the path, hung doglike at my heels. I stopped, turned my head, regarded him. He stood shadowed in the doorway with the knife laid flat atop his palms, or as flat as it would ever lie again. A shy stranger with a distant accent and the knife that leveled gods, who watched me with the same wary respect you gave a temper, a fist. Who expected no kindness. And who’d taken my scraps of it as gifts, each and every one.

  When the Wicked God fell, I thought, he looked away.

  “Who are you?” I asked softly.

  A thin expression flickered across his face. “No one,” he said, and wrapped the twisted knife in both hands. “I’m nobody.”

  Tyler Blakely was waiting for me at the poultry barn tree, his shoulders high as fences. “Nat’s gone ahead,” he said to my boots.

  “Always does,” I replied, putting a palm against the wall. My legs were still wobbling, still wouldn’t stop shaking. Tyler gave me one long glance and took my arm. I leaned on him precariously, and he eased me over until we were both braced, side by side, against the chestnut tree. “Most of what I remember from when we were kids is the back of Nat’s head.”

  Tyler’s mouth crinkled in a genuine smile. “Don’t forget being pushed in the river.”

  “We never pushed me in the river,” I pointed out. “Only you.”

  Tyler elbowed me lightly, and I smiled—a smile I didn’t have to force for the first time in a long time. He chuckled, and then his face shadowed into uncertainty. “You’re all right?”

  The chickens clucked softly through the wall behind us, troubled by the noise and strange voices; by the smell of Marthe’s pyre on the wind. There was no point in trying to hide my weakness. He’d already seen. “Still shaky,” I muttered.

  He offered his browned arm. “Walk with me?”

  I hesitated. I couldn’t tell if he needed the help or was offering it, and I couldn’t take his weight, feeling like this. It doesn’t really matter, I decided. It’s not like he can take mine either, and I hooked my arm gingerly through his.

  It pressed warm through my shirtsleeve. I noticed its every move, starved for human touch as I’d been all summer long. It’s just Tyler, I reminded myself as we staggered, the worst three-legged race in the world, around the corner of the farmhouse.

  The pyre in the kitchen yard glowed high, hot, and ravenous. The smell was stronger here: split wood, burning leaves, the sweet, metallic nastiness of death. I coughed hard into my sleeve, and two doggy heads perked up by the porch steps. All of a sudden the world’s worst three-legged race was fighting to stand upright in a pile of tumbling, wiggling worry.

  “Kelsey, down,” Tyler said helplessly, too unbalanced to move. Joy snuffled at my bad hand with worried intensity until Nat materialized and grabbed her leather collar.

  “Puppy, no,” she said, and Joy grumpily subsided.

  “Thanks,” Tyler said. Kelsey’s tail twitched. He glared impotently at her panting smile.

  Nat looked at him, at me, at the way we leaned together like a barn about to cave in. “Maybe you two should sit down.”

  I stumbled gratefully to the porch steps, Tyler beside me, and the dogs paced protectively at our feet. Cal Blakely, perched on the other side of the crackling pyre, gave us a compact wave. “You’re all right, Halfrida?”

  I flexed my palm inside the bandage. “Yeah,” I answered. The knife that killed a god was in my great-grandmother’s parlor stool. After the fight we’d had and how I’d lost the Twisted Thing, my sister might never speak to me again. But I was breathing. It was a start.

  Cal nodded. “Marthe and James want to talk backup plans. They’re waiting on us inside.”

  I thought longingly of the smell of Marthe’s baking, buried now in death and ash, and my stomach growled. I climbed the steps, caught between hunger and duty and the temptation to sleep for a week. “Here, hold on,” Nat said, and skipped ahead of us to get the door.

  Tyler and I glanced at the back of her head, at each other, and grinned.

  “What?” Nat said, and then the knob turned and Marthe opened the door.

  “There you are,” she breathed, blocking the doorway with the pained roundness of her belly. Her spine sagged a little at the sight of my bandaged hand. “What happened?”

  “We got—” I stopped cold. Caught with John Balsam’s knife in our hands. I wiped my fingers against the sweat-stiff hem of my shirt. I didn’t keep secrets from Marthe. Not secrets that actually mattered.

  Not secrets that mattered, except for what Uncle Matthias had really said the night he left.

  “Hallie?” she said, edged with strain.

  “Just took a moment to get back,” Nat broke in, as confident as ever: the real reason she was always five steps ahead of us. “We didn’t want to set too hard a pace.”

  Tyler’s cheeks bloomed into two spots of furious crimson.

  Nat looked back at us, and the upbeat, responsible face she’d put on for Marthe slipped. Don’t, she glared. Tyler’s fingers tightened on my arm. I bit my lip, feeling like a traitor, and impulsively added, “We’re both a little wobbly. Tyler helped me back.”

  Nat’s eyebrows shot up to skyscraper peaks. Tyler turned to stare. Marthe looked between us and read something in that silence that satisfied her, or at least made her not want to ask. “There’s tea,” she said finally. “You can wash up in the kitchen sink.”

  Nat held the door wide for us, and we dragged into the kitchen, kicking off boots and thick hiking shoes. “I can see your back teeth,” I muttered, and Tyler shut his jaw with a snap.

  “Thanks,” he said after a moment.

  I swallowed an obscure embarrassment. “It’s just what happened,” I said, and Tyler shook his head.

  “Don’t,” he said, and looked me in the eye, his white-bleached hazel to my brown one. “Just . . . thanks.”

  The adults at the table caught sight of us, and Mrs. Blakely came half out of her chair.

  “Tyler, look at you, you have to sit—” she started, and his shoulders sagged like a prison sentence.

  six

  “WHAT ARE THE CHANCES,” JAMES SAID, “THAT THERE was just one?”

  “Make plans, Jim. Don’t catastrophize,” Marthe replied, and refilled our rose-painted teapot.

  James leaned forward, his elbows on the table in a way Marthe only tolerated from him. “I’m not catastrophizing,” he said, and surveyed the table: cooling sweetcakes and stray crumbs scattered beside a double handful of our good teacups—Oma’s fine china from when the old cities fell. It was a proper neighborly visit, if you watched it from the neck down. But the strained eyes and sour mouths told a different tale: this was a council of war.

  “Nobody ever sights just one Twisted Thing,” James continued, and took a molasses cake. “We prepare for more. A lot more.”

  “We shouldn’t have to prepare at all,” Marthe said icily. “They said the war was over—”

  “It is,” James cut in, a hair less calm. Tyler stared at his plate uncomfortably. “But you know that nothing about the war was certain.”

  “No, I don’t,” Marthe snapped. “I know the recruiter said if I gave him my husband, the world would be safe again. He seemed mighty certain, that man from John’s Creek.”

  A thin hiccup noise escaped Mrs. Blakely’s lips, and Nat took her hand, tight.

  Marthe leveled a cool stare at James Blakely. “The Wicked God’s dead. You were all at least willing to tell us that. If the Twisted Things are still loose on the countryside, don’t you tell me it’s not certain and we should just be afraid when you tell us to. I paid too much for that.” Her hand drifted to
her belly; made a fist. “It was too much to have bought nothing.”

  The kitchen door opened, and Cal Blakely clattered inside. “Fire’s out,” he said. He dropped a kiss onto James’s head and clapped Tyler’s shearing knife onto the table. It was clean now—dull, scratched metal once again—but a sprinkling of rust still remained where the Twisted Thing’s feather had fallen. “What’s the plan?”

  “Blame and recriminations,” Nat said dryly, and her mother shot her a reproving look.

  “We are discussing,” Mrs. Blakely said, “how Twisted Things might have got into the Hoffmanns’ yard.”

  “Tea?” Nat said, and poured Cal a cup.

  “The funny thing is, it’s supposed to be settling down out there.” Cal took the teacup, blew on it to cool it off. “I spoke to a traveler down at Prickett’s last time I was in town, and he said the land’s coming back in the southern townships. The Wicked God’s desert is sprouting new grass. John’s Creek is never going to be a normal town again, but things’re starting to grow.”

  “It’s all over down there,” Tyler said softly. “Why’re they here?”

  James stirred a speck of honey into his tea. “Right. Fine. Marthe’s right: we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We don’t know if they’re here in numbers. We don’t even know if this is the first sighting here since the war.”

  “You want to talk to the neighbors?” Cal asked.

  James looked down at his fingernails. “I want to talk to Alonso Pitts.”

  I sucked in a breath. That weather sense I’d grown in the years before Papa died, tuned to my family’s thunderstorm moods, roared to life.

  “James,” Marthe said warningly.

  “You don’t have to like him,” James said, with the edge of an old, bitter argument—and it was definitely the oldest argument I knew—“but he’s still mayor, and he’s got a right to know.”

  “I’m not disputing that,” Marthe said through gritted teeth. “But I won’t have him poking his nose around here, and I won’t have him speaking for this farm.” She took a gale of a breath. “My father is dead. I am not taking on replacements.”