The Dead Seekers Page 4

  Mari listened to be sure he didn’t circle back and then reached for her dropped cloak. She saw her hand still covered in blood, though the scent of it had already filled her head. Her face would be just as smeared. There was little to be done about it. Still, she grabbed wet leaves off bushes and tried to wipe herself off.

  Doubt nagged at her again.

  Before she killed him, she had to know—to be sure about him.

  When she worked her way through the woods, following the noise he made, she didn’t even glance at the one silent body in the clearing. She kept the narrow dagger in hand, its blade flattened against the inside of her forearm. Well beyond the clearing, he already sat on the ground before another small fire as he rummaged through his pack. She circled around the fire’s far side, watching him carefully.

  This time, his strange almost-blue eyes rose and fixed on her.

  “I have food,” he said. “Though I do not know all of what is in here as yet.”

  How could he not know what he carried? Up close, he was alluring, though too pale. His manners seemed almost childlike.

  “I am Tris,” he said.

  He pulled a white cloth something out of the pack and looked up at her, perhaps expecting something. Did he want her name now? She rarely told that to anyone, so why him?

  “Mari,” she said, for all the good it would do a dead man.

  “You are Móndyalítko,” he said, unwrapping the bulky white cloth.

  This was an easy guess by her dusky skin and the fact that he’d seen her go through the change. Though she wasn’t really one of her people anymore, since they didn’t want her.

  Unwrapping the cloth, he held it out with both hands. Inside it were small wheat rolls.

  “Most likely baked today,” he said. “Heil is particular about bread.”

  Who was Heil? A man’s name, so maybe the older one who’d answered the herb shop door. But she fixed on those rolls. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten fresh bread.

  He sat there, holding them out. She rose out of her crouch, keeping her blade tightly gripped and hidden, as she reached out. She took one, backed a quick step, and crouched again. And she didn’t take her eyes off him, even as she bit into the roll and tore it in half.

  Tris?

  What did that name mean? Hers meant “little one of the water.” It was odd to even think of him as anything other than the Dead’s Man.

  He held out the flask, and she froze and stopped chewing. She wasn’t about to drink anything she couldn’t see.

  “Water,” he said, as if reading her face. “I do not care for wine, but it is clean . . . from a well.”

  She was only a little thirsty, and she had her own water. Again, he sounded more like a child than a man. On impulse, she reached out for the flask.

  “Why did you help me?”

  She froze with the flask near her mouth at his sudden question, the first thing he’d even asked of her. He hadn’t said a word about what he’d seen her do. A normal person would be in shock, pelting her with nervous questions.

  But not him.

  “Why?” he repeated.

  Mari rarely interacted with other people, but she could lie well enough—better than enough.

  “I was traveling,” she answered, speaking Old Stravinan, “too late at night and alone. Not wise. Heard shouts, and then saw . . .”

  She shrugged slightly.

  He nodded once and softly said, “Thank you.”

  She had no idea how to respond. He said nothing more about what he’d seen or about her. Anyone else would have. Something about him pulled at her, and she fought it off. He was still the one she’d been hunting for so many years. Maybe there was a reason he hadn’t called upon any spirits tonight.

  He drew a chunk of cheese and picked up a small knife.

  “Why didn’t you use that”—she jutted toward the blade—“instead of the stick?”

  He shrugged. “It is too small. The branch was better.”

  They both fell silent as he sliced the cheese, holding out every other sliver to her. She ate in slow bites, savoring its rich flavor. Then a sudden guilt rushed in for accepting food from him. He ate a roll and drank from the flask.

  When they’d both finished, he motioned to the ground where she sat.

  “Sleep,” he said. “There is little of the night left.”

  The thought of sleeping across the fire from him didn’t sit well with her. Of course, she could just kill him in his sleep, and there’d be two bodies to be found later. But she wondered, where was he going and what was he going to do now? How was it connected to that peasant who’d knocked on the shop’s door? Why was he helping anyone—or was he?

  Mari scooted back another step in her crouch. She settled slowly, pulling half of her long cloak under herself before lying down. Slowly closing her eyes, she kept her ears locked on every little sound.

  And he said, “If anyone comes—”

  “I’ll hear them,” she finished for him.

  It wasn’t to reassure him; it was a warning.

  After a long pause, he added, “No one will likely come. They were probably passing thieves, and most people near here know who I am.”

  Mari waited two breaths. “And who are you?”

  Another pause passed before he answered, “Sleep now.”

  —

  Tris awakened early next morning well before the sun lit up even a small portion of the sky above the trees. He lay there studying the strange young woman lying across the smoking fire’s remains as if asleep. Some of her thick, dark brown hair had fallen across the lower half of her pretty face, covering her mouth.

  Her clothing was faded and travel-worn, and she was long in need of a bath. She lay there so perfectly still with her eyes closed.

  He had never allowed anyone to sleep at his fire. He did not belong with other people—and they did not belong with him. There was something about this woman—threatening as she was—that did not make him want to disappear.

  She was most certainly not asleep.

  And he did not believe her story.

  Rolling over on his back, he studied the lightening sky. No one would be simply passing by at night in this isolated area—no one with any sanity, no one except perhaps for him. That part of her story was an obvious lie.

  He had also not missed the hatred in her eyes last night; that at least was familiar, though he did not know her reason for it. Even those who came seeking his aid were more relieved when he left than when he agreed to help. Horses and dogs did not let him near; hence, he always walked wherever he went. Strangely, cats were never bothered by his presence.

  Tris grew tired of waiting for dawn to finish and rolled back on his side.

  And there were those eyes watching him. Nothing else had changed; she had not moved even to brush hair off the upper side and lower half of her face. There were only those yellowish eyes, appearing more amber in the faint light, like those of the deadly cat the night before.

  She studied him, perhaps searching for something.

  Who was she? Did it matter?

  Yet, there was more to his reaction to her than just her other self. She was alone in this world. She knew what it was to be surrounded by people and yet be completely alone. When she finally sat up, he had no idea what to say.

  “There is safety in numbers,” she finally said, as if that was a pure fact.

  He took a slow breath. “True.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “North.”

  She rose, swept back her cloak, brushed off clinging leaves and needles, and finally tucked away the blade she thought he had not seen. Sensible for a woman in the wild, even one with two shapes.

  “North,” she said, “so am I.”

  He should have told her to go her own way; instead,
he rolled to his feet and hefted his pack.

  When he began to walk, she fell into step beside him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mari traveled northward for three days with the Dead’s Man—or “Tris,” as he called himself. They spoke little, not that she wanted a chat with him, unless to ask a stealthy question, which he always evaded. Nothing new in that, since by the first nightfall after being caught, she knew he’d give nothing away through words.

  They walked each day, all day, and made camp at night.

  He asked her no questions in return, which was fine. So she waited, watched, and hoped to learn why before she saw where he was going. Maybe something in that would finally quell her small doubt and free her to kill him.

  Though she hadn’t seen him do anything to prove it on the night in the clearing, she believed he was the Dead’s Man. She just needed to be absolutely certain it was he who’d murdered her family.

  Stravina was heavily forested, especially inland from the gulf toward the east. Most major roads were maintained, and he stuck to those. Thankfully it hadn’t rained along their journey, though it was as chill as the many rainy nights she’d spent alone in the wild. Normally, she found a hollow or old low-branched fir tree in which to huddle, but she wasn’t about to do that with him.

  Even being bedded down across the fire from him, or anyone, made sleep difficult. She hadn’t truly slept—didn’t dare to—in the last few nights.

  His pack proved an endless source of basic provisions, though. When the rolls were gone, there were baked crackers instead. When the cheese was gone, he revealed jerked-and-dried beef, and she dug up a few root vegetables. She commented once about how well he’d packed for his journey, and he only frowned in thought, as if such a thing had not occurred to him.

  “Heil always knows how much to pack,” he’d finally replied.

  Mari considered pressing for more about this mysterious older man she’d seen once in the dark doorway of the herb shop. Learning more about Heil might be of little use in finding the truth about Tris. Then again, it might be the roundabout way to end the doubts that still stalled her vengeance.

  In the late afternoon on the third day, she was studying his finely cut black cloak, his well-made boots, and his pack. Her people were travelers, but by the look of him, she hadn’t expected him to fare so well on a three-day trek.

  She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Why aren’t you riding a horse? You look like you could afford one.”

  He slowed, blinking rapidly, and looked at her as if he’d been lost elsewhere.

  “A horse?” she repeated.

  “Horses do not like me,” he answered, and walked on.

  She didn’t bother asking why, since this was one of his wordiest answers so far. Not long after, he stopped again and looked around. For the first time since she’d joined him, he appeared uncertain, but of what?

  “Where are you going?” she asked, hoping for something more than “north.”

  When he turned his head, his eyes had a bit more color in the waning sun than at night.

  “Jesenik,” he answered. “A village about two leagues east of Soladran and three south of the northern border.”

  It sounded as if he’d never been there.

  Mari knew Soladran well, a teeming city built on the border to the Warlands. As an unwanted child driven from one family to another until she gave up, she’d traveled widely, even into that bloody land of warring free-lords and ever-changing borders. Up ahead, she saw a fork in the main road.

  “Soladran is straight on,” she said, “and it can’t be much farther than three leagues, four at the most. If this village is two to the east, we should turn off now. The path might be narrower but will run closer than the main road.”

  He gazed ahead. “Yes . . . good.”

  Mari took the lead this time, now that Tris accepted her implied familiarity with the region. For her own needs, they’d come that much closer to her learning more about him. And whatever that peasant boy had come seeking back in Strîbrov, it might reveal a bit more about the Dead’s Man.

  —

  Tris followed the wild young woman with no more idea why she had joined him than he had three days ago. She wanted something from him, though she had yet to say what. When she thought he was unaware, she still looked at him with an unexplained confusion and an even more mysterious hatred.

  Perhaps he had banished the spirit of someone she loved and wanted still. There were always those who did not want him or the “services” he rendered to others.

  No, it was something else with this “two-fleshed” woman.

  For one, he did not know her and had never seen her before. He would have remembered her among all of those he had forgotten over the years. Even more, he had heard of “shifters” as well as “mockers” and “tweens” among the Móndyalítko, though he had never encountered one; to the best of his knowledge, few ever had, or, rather, known it when it happened. What puzzled him more was that she was alone—by choice, it seemed.

  Móndyalítko were a communal people who traveled in extended family groups and larger ones. However, for him, the mere thought of them brought unwanted memories of the worst kind.

  Mari turned off the main road onto the narrower path.

  “We’ll make it before dark,” she called without looking back.

  As he followed, panic welled up, signaling the memory would come again. He felt himself slipping back. Here and now ceased to have meaning . . .

  At thirteen, he had been wandering the manor grounds, trying to be alone and away from anyone. His father rarely returned home anymore, preferring mistresses over Tris’s mother, but the baron did come back sooner or later. Tonight was sooner.

  Tris stopped atop a hillock overlooking the countryside and heard rolling wheels in the distance. Below along a distant side road, a procession of three Móndyalítko wagons rolled through the Vishal lands. Thankfully, his father had not seen this and sent soldiers to run them off at sword’s point.

  Tris watched those wagons, built like small houses painted in wild colors. The one in front had red shutters, and a big man sat on the forward bench with a pretty woman on the other end and a little girl between them. All were dark-haired and dusky-skinned. Two more wagons followed, one with ivy green trimmings and the other in yellow.

  Their horses were enormous, thick-legged beasts with clean coats that shimmered even at dusk. People on benches and two walking beside the last wagon were dressed in bright colors with the occasional glint of bangles, baubles, and other cheap adornments. Some had their hair covered in tied or lanyard-bound scarves and kerchiefs.

  Tris felt a pained urge to run to them. Perhaps they could take him away with them, never to return. But he could not abandon his mother—not yet—and stood watching that colorful life he could not have roll into the woods and out of view. And still, he lingered.

  Darkness fell.

  When he forced himself to return home, passing between guards at the gates and the front doors, they all bowed their heads respectfully. It meant nothing compared with the dread of dinner with his parents.

  Tris’s first hint that something was wrong came with a white flicker.

  It shot past him down the entryway toward the dining hall before he saw it clearly.

  He did not need to see. Another rushed out of the hallway’s sidewall.

  Tris stopped and stared at a white, transparent man in a cleric’s robe, whose feet did not touch the floor stones. As a child, he had seen similar mere wisps at night in the manor. They had not frightened him.

  A scream of agony echoed through the stone manor, and then another.

  Tris bolted down the passage for the dining hall.

  When he slammed through the heavy double doors, neither of his parents was inside the hall. There were only two house guards and servants who would have
been setting up for dinner. All were running, screaming, shouting amid a torrent of white wisps tearing about the high hall’s air.

  For an instant, he was too stunned by anyone else seeing those white forms.

  One wisp slammed into a young serving girl’s back.

  Her mouth gaped in a silent scream. When that white blur shot out of her chest, she was already falling, and slammed face-first against the stone floor. At another pained cry, he saw an elder maid jerk in a convulsion and slump down against an oak chair into stillness, but her eyes and mouth never closed.

  Tris shuddered at every impact of white he saw crashing into someone trying to escape.

  This was his fault, though he did not know how or why.

  And his mother was somewhere inside the manor.

  He spun and ran for the manor’s front doors. He had to get out of here and hope those white dead spirits followed, led to wherever he went. He had to go somewhere that anyone living would hesitate to follow. As he hit the front doors and shoved one wide-open, he paused and looked back.

  That was a mistake.

  There in the passage behind him came a black form as slender as himself and exactly the same height. Even the shape of its dangling hair looked like a silhouette of his own. He froze, somehow unable to move, waiting to hear a footfall, but none of its steps made a sound.

  It kept coming . . .

  “Tris!”

  That cry jerked him from terror and . . .

  Tris stood in the side road, staring ahead, the weight of his pack slung over one shoulder somehow feeling as if it had tripled. There was no hall, no screaming servants, and no guards rushing toward those sounds and to their own deaths. No black form in the mirror image of himself. There was only the thick and darkening Stravinan forest all around him.

  Mari stood facing him from three paces ahead, her features flat except for the creasing of her brow over narrowed, amber eyes.