Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

There was a pause. Winter swallowed.

“Do you know what happens to girls from the Prison when they get too old?” she said, after a moment.

“If they’re reformed enough, they get married,” Bobby said. “Or else they get sent off to Murnsk to take holy orders.”

“Married,” Winter said, pronouncing the word with distaste. “That’s one way of putting it. Do you know how that actually happens?”

Bobby shook her head, her smooth cheek pressed against Winter’s shoulder.

“When some farmer out in the country needs a new wife for himself or one of his sons, and doesn’t want to go to all the bother of courting a girl, he sends a letter to Mrs. Wilmore. She writes him back with the. . the stockbook , who’s ready for marriage and each girl’s disposition, and the farmer chooses the girl he likes as if she were a side of beef in a market stall. Then he comes and picks her up.”

“Oh.” Bobby was quiet for a moment. “What if the girl says no?”

“She doesn’t have a choice. The Prison is a royal institution, which means that we’re all nominally wards of the king. Until we’re of age he can give away our hands to whoever he likes. Not that most of the girls would think of saying no,” Winter added bitterly. “Most of them look forward to it.”

Another pause. Winter cleared her throat.

“In any case. Jane was a year older than me, and a man named Ganhide decided she would be ideal. He was a real brute, bigger than Folsom and meaner than Davis. When we heard about it, Jane and I decided we had to run away.”

Jane had tried to run away before, of course. It wasn’t really very hard to get out, but the problem was staying out. Everyone within a hundred miles knew Mrs. Wilmore, and that she paid a bounty on runaways. And even if a girl could get to the city, without a proper identity all she could ever be was a thief or a whore, and that would land her right back at Mrs. Wilmore’s, or worse.

Winter took a deep breath. “Jane came up with a plan to run away and stay away. She was always the one with the plans.

“Only Mrs. Wilmore was one step ahead this time. They knew Jane would try something, so they locked her up. It took me ages to find out where they were keeping her, but I managed to get to an outside window. It was behind the old building, you know, with all the brambles?” Winter shook her head. “I tore my dress half to pieces.”

“I once chased a fox in there,” Bobby said. “I lost a shoe and never did find it again.”

“Jane had a plan,” Winter went on, “as usual. She told me how to sneak in through the kitchens, and where she thought the proctors would be. And she told me”-Winter’s throat grew tight-“to pick up a knife, one of the big ones, while I was there.”

“Why?”

“In case I ran into Ganhide. He was due in that evening, you see. There was a rumor going around that Mrs. Wilmore had promised him his ‘wedding night.’ The other girls were laughing about it.” Winter’s hands clenched into fists. “I told her that if I found him, I’d. .”

“Take the knife,” Jane said, as though instructing a friend in how to carve a roast. “Put the point of it about here”-she raised her head and put a finger on her throat, just under her chin-“and press in, upward, as hard as you can.”

“What happened?” Bobby said.

“I found the knives in a locked cabinet, but I broke it open with the back of a ladle. It wasn’t hard getting into the main building after dark. There were hardly any lights, just a candle here and there so the proctors wouldn’t break their necks when they did their night rounds. Jane had gotten nearly everything right, except-”

“Ganhide was there?” Bobby said in a strangled squeak.

Winter nodded. “Right in front of her room. He must have only just arrived. He was trying to unlock the door. I think he was drunk. When I saw him, I must have made a noise, because he turned around. He was right there , right in front of me, stumbling and half-blind in the dark. It was like he was offering me his throat, and all I had to do was reach up. .”

Winter’s fingers had gone very tight on Bobby’s arm. It must have been uncomfortable, but the girl made no complaint.

“I couldn’t do it,” Winter said, after a long silence. Her eyes were closed, but she could feel the tears leaking through. “I just couldn’t. I’ve thought about that moment a thousand times since then. I couldn’t bring myself to kill a man, a brute who was going to take my best friend and. .” She swallowed. “And then I came here, and since then I’ve killed God only knows how many people just because they were fighting on the wrong side, people who probably had families and children who cared more about them than anyone ever did about Ganhide. It doesn’t make any goddamned sense.”

There was another, longer pause. Bobby, finally stirring from her silence, whispered, “What actually happened?”

“What?” Winter blinked away tears. “Oh. I dropped the knife, and it clattered on the floor and I got scared and ran for it. He didn’t get a good look at me, so nobody ever found out. But the next day he took Jane off and I never saw her again. I couldn’t even watch when they led her out of the building. I just hid in my bed and cried.”

“That’s horrible.”

“I thought so at the time.” Winter closed her eyes again. “But it was nothing out of the ordinary, really. I mean, there are hundreds of girls in the Prison, and most of them go on to marry someone. They probably all have. . friends who are broken up when they leave.” In the darkness behind her eyelids, two points of green light stared at her. Can you be haunted by someone who isn’t dead?

• • •

They lay in silence for another interval. Eventually, Winter cleared her throat. “Sorry. That’s not really the story of how I escaped, is it?”

“You don’t have to go on if you don’t want to.”

“To be honest, the rest of it isn’t much to tell. Jane and I had planned everything, and a couple of friends of mine helped out. I put together a knapsack, climbed the fence, and spent two very hungry weeks walking through fields and stealing food where I could. Eventually I got to Mielle, where I knew the sergeants recruiting for Khandarai service sometimes came. I made myself up as a boy so I could work on the docks, and made a little money. When the sergeant did come by, I told him I’d run away from my father because he was a drunk, and gave him everything I had to take me on without proper papers. I nearly got caught on the crossing, but-”

“Shh,” Bobby hissed.

She rolled over, and suddenly they were face-to-face, only inches apart. For a single frozen moment, Winter thought Bobby was going to kiss her. Her protest froze in her throat.

The corporal sat up, tossing the sheet aside.

“I heard someone moving,” she said.

“Someone getting up to take a piss,” Winter mumbled, still slightly in shock. “Or have the Desoltai finally come to slit our throats?”

“Feor,” Bobby said. “Where’s Feor?”

Winter rolled over herself. The other bedroll was empty. She looked up, and just caught sight of a slim figure moving cautiously through the tangle of sleeping men. Winter surged to her feet, kicking the blanket off, and swore viciously. Then, with Bobby just behind her, she set off in pursuit.

• • •

“She can’t have gone this way,” Bobby said. “The sentries would have stopped her.”

“We’d have seen her if she doubled back,” Winter said. They’d lost sight of the Khandarai girl as they’d approached the edge of the fitfully lit camp. Feor moved easily over the sandy ground and past the sleeping soldiers with more grace than Winter would have given her credit for. “Besides, the sentries will be looking out, not in.”