Jeff Salyards - Veil of the Deserters

I wanted to turn away-I didn’t see how this would answer any question except how long it took for ten men to choke to death-when the Memoridons moved closer to the men at either end, raised their hands, touched the two men on the chest and the back, and dipped their heads.

Both men kicked more violently, thrashing as if being cut or burnt, and then they suddenly stopped, nearly at the same time. Their chins dropped onto the ropes that were strangling them, and the soldiers still on the platform cut them down in turn. Both men collapsed to the dirt in heaps and lay there, motionless, and the Memoridons moved to the next men in line and laid their hands on them as they had done with the first pair.

The Memoridon on the left took a little longer than the one on the right, but otherwise, it was nearly identical. And so it went down the line-the choking, the jerking as soon as the Memoridons touched them, the Syldoon being cut down once they had succumbed to whatever was being done to them.

But on the second to last pair, I heard Soffjian say, very quietly, “They are taking too long. Too long.”

The Memoridon on the right finished with her man and he was cut down, and she moved to the final man on her side of the gallows and grabbed his chest and back. But her partner seemed to be struggling, as her man was twisting and turning so hard she was having difficulty keeping her hands on him. The man next in line was turning purple and already kicking his legs violently, so hard that he struck the Memoridon and knocked her away from the other Syldoon she was trying to save.

She finally finished, and the Syldoon on the platform cut her man down, but the remaining Syldoon was struggling so much she could barely get her hands on him, mouth open, tongue out, eyes rolling back into his skull, the veins and muscles popping out on his neck as he fought for breath that wasn’t coming. The other Memoridon completed her ritual with the final man on her side of the gallows and rushed over to try to steady the hanging man enough for her partner to finish, but he suddenly went slack. She placed her hands on him, tried to perform whatever it was she needed to do, but it was too late.

The Memoridon looked up to the Syldoon on the platform, slowly shook her head, and he cut the man down. The other nine on the ground were all beginning to move again, pulling the cut nooses from around their necks, gasping for air, slowly sitting up with dazed expressions on their faces.

But the tenth did not stir. Would never stir again.

Still, a cheer went up from the Syldoon who made up the bulk of the audience, and several ran forward to pull their comrades out of the dirt and embrace them. Two Syldoon carried the dead body away from the platform, and I realized that when I first started watching, I expected them all to die, and when they were cut down in turn, I had assumed that they would all be spared. Somehow, seeing the tenth strangle to death was just as awful as if I had seen the lot of them.

Soffjian shook her head sadly, though I suspected she was more upset about the Memoridon’s failure than the man dying. “Too plaguing slow.” She turned her horse and said, “Seen enough, brother? I’m sure your commander will be delighted to welcome you home, and the Emperor will doubtless be thrilled to hear that the final operatives in the field have returned as bidden. Albeit much tardier than expected.” Both Memoridons rode off. I was both thrilled and irritated that Skeelana looked over her shoulder at me before disappearing around the corner of a building.

The captain got the team moving again, the wagon creaking back into motion, and the other riders and the wagon behind us as well, as he took a side street toward the Avenue of Towers.

I waited, on the off chance that someone would volunteer the explanation, and when it was clear I would keep waiting until I ran out of breath myself, I asked, loudly enough for anyone to hear, to improve my chances of actually receiving an answer. “What did the Memoridons do? And why is that called the rite of manumission?”

Everyone seemed pensive and lost in their thoughts, but Hewspear was the quickest to respond. “When a Syldoon slave has completed his training, after a tenyear, he is given a choice-walk out of Sunwrack and all the lands of the empire, never to return again. Back to their original homelands, or go where they will, so long as they depart. Or stay and undergo the rite.”

“How would anyone know that they didn’t belong, that they were exiled?”

“Instead of receiving a tattoo, they would be branded on the side of their necks, and given a scroll that specified the allotted time that they could journey, depending on where they were headed.”

“And if they lost the document?”

“Any branded former Syldoon without a document is hung or otherwise executed, this time without a reprieve.”

I took one last look at the gallows before it disappeared behind us. “And if they choose to stay, to do the rite we just witnessed. What happens to them? What were the Memoridons doing to them?”

“Bonding with them,” Hewspear replied.

“Bewitching them,” Mulldoos countered. “Unless the bitches can’t get the job done, and good men die for no plaguing good reason.”

I opted to respond to Hewspear. “Bonding? How, and why?”

“A Memoridon can slide into nearly any man’s mind, given enough time and opportunity, but never so easily as when he is at his most helpless. It’s difficult to be more helpless than dangling at the end of a noose. The Memoridons take that moment to form an intimate bond, unlike any other.”

“If by ‘bond,’” Mulldoos said, “you mean getting raped in the ass, then yeah, the pair get bonded right good.”

Hewspear ignored him. “As you saw, a man can only hang for so long, so the Memoridons have to be quick. Soffjian did have the right of it. And sometimes, men panic.”

“Yeah,” Mulldoos said, “Choking to death does queer things to some folks. Hard to figure.”

Hewspear sounded a little irritated but pressed on. “Once the Memoridon establishes this bond, it is not easily broken. It can be strained with distance or time, so tenuous it is barely a vibration. But rarely sundered. Particularly if the Memoridon is skilled and strong. Unlike the skinny wretch who doomed the man on the gallows just now.”

Mulldoos spit into the street.

“To what end? Why is it necessary to form such a bond?” I asked.

Braylar replied, “How do you think my sweet sister was able to track us to the Grieving Dog in Alespell?”

“Soffjian was one of a pair that, uh, bonded with you? While you hung?”

“Not our whole party, but most, yes. You see, a Memoridon can only maintain so many such bonds at any given time. But Soffjian can manage more than most. She is a viciously talented girl.”

“So how does a Memoridon track you? Another Syldoon. Whoever.”

“Ordinarily, a Memoridon can only sift through someone’s memories if she is in very close proximity. But once she has formed the intense bond of the manumission rite, she can follow the memories, or at least what passes as the residue of them, and identify who they belong to.”

We were approaching the tall outer wall and the Avenue of Towers at its base. “Wait, I don’t understand. How is that possible? Memories are contained in a person. Aren’t they?”

“For the most part, you are correct. And not being a memory mage, I cannot pretend to understand how it works exactly. But I asked the same question you did. And the explanation I received was, when you walk through the world, you leave indentations. So, too, you do the same with your experiences and your memories of them. A Memoridon who shows talent at hounding is trained to sense them, identify them.