Чарли Андерс: Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

Someone gave the retainers hot barley wine, to warm them up, which just reminded Ythna of the Beldame Thakrra all over again, and she found herself crying harder than ever as she drank from the communal jug. Some time later, she needed to relieve herself, and couldn’t bear to soil the same ground where the Beldame had bled to death. She begged an Obfuscator until he gave her permission to go around the Tomb to the front entrance, where some simple latrines had been set up. Ythna thanked him profusely.

The latrines were lined up like sentry boxes, perpendicular to the front pillar of the Tomb. Beyond them, there was the edge of a dense forest of oaks, birches, and pines, stretching all the way to the distant white mountains. A chill wind seemed to come from the woods as Ythna slipped inside one of the latrines, hiking up her shift. When she came out again, the red-haired woman was there.

The woman gestured for Ythna to be silent. “I’ve been observing you,” she whispered, with an accent that Ythna couldn’t place. “You’re cleverer than the rest. And you’re actually grief-stricken for the poor dead Beldame. All your friends are just pretending. I want to help you.”

“You killed her,” Ythna said. “You killed the Beldame. I saw you step out of the tomb right after she fell.”

“No, I swear I had nothing to do with her death,” the woman said sadly. “Except that it created a door for me to step through. That’s how I travel. My name is Jemima Brookwater, and I’m from the future.”

Ythna studied the strange red-haired woman for a moment. Her black boots were shiny but scuffed, her puffy pants had a grass stain on one knee, and her fine velvet coat had a rip in the side, which had been hastily sewn and patched. Whatever this woman was—crackwit, breakbond, or something else—she was not an assassin. But maybe Ythna should tell Trex in any case.

“It was good to meet you, Jemima,” Ythna said. “I should go and rejoin the others. Be safe.” She turned to go back around the tomb toward the other retainers, whom she could hear chanting the grief spiral with dry, exhausted throats.

“Let me help you,” Jemima said again.

Ythna turned back. “Why would you want to help me?”

“I told you, I travel by using the openings created when someone important dies unexpectedly. And I feel bad about that. So I made a vow: every time I travel, I try to help one person, one deserving person.”

“And how would you help me?” Something about this woman’s way of speaking reminded Ythna of the Beldame, except that Jemima was more animated and lacked the Beldame’s dignity.

“I don’t know. You tell me. It’s not really helping if I decide for myself what sort of help you need, is it?”

Ythna didn’t say anything for a moment, so Jemima added:, “Tell me. Your mistress, Thakrra, is dead. What do you want to do now?”

Nobody had ever asked Ythna what she wanted, in her entire life. But more startling than that was to hear Jemima say Thakrra was dead, by name, because it hit her all over again: the feeling of hopelessness. Like she had swallowed something enormous, that she could never digest even if she lived forever. She heard the droning chant from the plains on the other side of the tomb, and all of a sudden the voices sounded genuinely miserable instead of forced and dried out.

“There is nothing you can do for me,” Ythna said, and turned to leave in the shadow of the great criss-crossing limbs of the Tomb.

The woman chased after her, speaking quickly. “That’s just not true,” she said. “I really don’t want to tell you what you should do, but I can help with anything you choose. For example, I can get you out of here. That forest is full of landmines, but I know a secret underground passage, which archaeologists discovered hundreds of years from now. And I could forge whatever documents you might need. Your Empire outlawed proper computers. They keep obsessive records on paper, but with a few major flaws. You can be anyone.”

Ythna turned back one last time, tears all over her face. “I cannot be anyone,” she said. “I can only be what I am: one small piece of the Beldame. Who do you belong to? Are you completely alone? You seem like someone who just comes and goes, like a ghost. And you want me to become a ghost as well. I can’t. Leave me alone.”

“Listen.” Jemima grabbed Ythna’s arm. They were almost back within view of the massed group of retainers, Obfuscators, and Officiators. “This is not going to go well for you. I’ve read the history books, I know what happened to a retainer whose master or mistress died suddenly, without making arrangements first. If you’re lucky, you get reeducated and sent to a new household, where you’ll be the lowest status and they’ll treat you like dirt. If you’re unlucky…”

Ythna tried to explain, with eyes full of tears and a voice suddenly hoarse from crying and chanting, that she didn’t care what happened to her. “I can’t just dishonor the Beldame by running away. That would be worse than enduring any abuse. If you know so much, then you have to understand that.”

At last, Jemima let go of Ythna’s arm, and she turned to go back to the others before she was missed.

“At least I tried,” Jemima said. “I do admire your conviction.”

“There she is,” a voice said from behind them. “I told you. I told you she was conspiring. All along, conspiring. And scheming.” Maryn stood at the edge of the tomb, pointing at Ythna and Jemima. Beside her, Obfuscator Trex advanced, raising the brass rod of his valence gun. Maryn was a foot shorter than Trex and wore simple robes like Ythna’s next to Trex’s bulky chrome-and-leather uniform. But Maryn’s excitement and triumph made her seem twice as big as the strong, fussy man.

Jemima grabbed Ythna and pushed her behind herself, so that Jemima could take the brunt of Trex’s first shot and Ythna would have an extra few seconds to live.

“The penalty for conspiring to assassinate a Beldame is death,” Trex said, chewing each syllable like a nugget of fat. “I am mightily empowered to carry out the sentence at once.”

“I don’t want any reward,” Maryn said. Everybody ignored her.

“Wait,” Jemima said. “You are being duped here. I know you’re an intelligent man, I’ve read about you. Trex, right? I know all about your illustrious career. And I have a perfectly sensible explanation for everything you’ve witnessed.” Jemima was reaching into a tiny holster hidden in the braided piping on the side of her velvet coat, reaching for a object the size of her thumb. A gun.

“Please,” Ythna said to Trex. “We didn’t conspire. I only just met this woman.”

But Trex aimed his valence gun, sparks coming from the connecting tubes, and said, “You are both found guilty, and your sentence is—”

Ythna closed her eyes, waiting for a sizzling noise and the acrid stench of Jemima being torn molecule from molecule. Instead, she heard Maryn scream and thrash the air. When Ythna opened her eyes, Trex’s headless body was falling to the ground, and Trex’s head was rolling to a stop at Maryn’s feet, an expression of supreme disgruntlement forever sealed on Trex’s face.

A man wearing a black uniform, as simple as Trex’s was ornate, was running away, sheathing a bloody sword of a curved design that Ythna had never seen before. An opaque helmet, shaped like a teardrop, obscured the man’s features.

Jemima gave another one of her foreign cursewords and ran after the man. Ythna took one look at the headless Obfuscator and the wailing Maryn—whose screams were likely to bring everybody running—and followed Jemima.

The man with the sword reached the outermost pillar of the M-shaped tomb, and ran through the wall without breaking stride. One moment he was there, the next he was gone. Jemima and Ythna reached the wall a moment later, and Jemima ran straight for the spot where the man had vanished. And then she, too, was gone. Ythna’s momentum carried her forward before she could even think about the insanity of what she was doing. She hit the massive-blocked granite wall at the same point as the other two, and felt a sensation like a million tiny hands tugging at her. And then her senses were stolen away, one by one. But not before she had a glimpse of a million bright threads of different colors, crisscrossing around her in the midst of infinite darkness.