Лорел Гамильтон - Strange Candy

Jasmine nodded and reached a hand out to the child. Lisbeth came to her, small arms hugging her. They sat together in the dark, holding each other. Lisbeth couldn’t love, not really. But every child needs love, whether they can give it or not.

“You won’t leave me?” Lisbeth asked in a small voice.

“I won’t leave you. You can come visit me during holidays.”

“You’re still afraid of me, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“But now I’m afraid of you.”

“Yes.”

The child leaned her back against Jasmine, small hands holding the woman’s arms around her. Every child needs to be held.

She rested her chin on top of Lisbeth’s head, and rocked her gently, comforting herself as much as the child. From one monster to another, Jasmine thought, I’ll show you how to stay alive. I’ll show you how to drink tears and spill blood. We’ll carve them up and feed off their fear, and no one will know but us.

Jasmine glanced up at the room’s monitor. Are you there, Bromley? she thought, are you there? Maybe he knew, maybe he had always known. Why did you keep me alive, Bromley? Why?

She hugged Lisbeth, and felt the first hot trails of tears on her own cheeks. Jasmine whispered into the child’s hair, “Monsters beware, here be dragons.”

This story, like the Sidra and Leech stories and “A Token for Celandine,” is set in the world of Nightseer. The main character is an assassin, and like Edward in the Anita books, Jessa found that killing ordinary humans was too easy. She kills only wizards. This story shows some of her origins, and that you really can’t go home again.

JESSAMINE Swordwitch stood among the ruins of Threllkill village. The forest had moved in to reclaim the small clearing. Twenty houses it had been at its largest, a tiny inconsequential place, but it had been home.

One of her mother’s roses had gone wild. It climbed over the broken chimney, pale pink flowers clustered against the sun. The air was thick with its scent, cloying sweet. The black-limbed cherry still

stood against the shattered pile that had once been the garden wall.

Jessamine felt her mother’s magic pulse through the wild growth. An earth-witch’s touches stayed with the plot of land. Mother would not have minded that an orange-flowered trumpet vine strangled her garden or that wild grass grew where she had tended her strawberries.

The thought that her mother’s body could still be there, hidden in the green growth, came suddenly. She caught her breath, eyes darting for a glimpse of white bone amidst the wilding strawberries. But there was nothing left of her mother save the roses and the cherry tree. Scavengers had long since picked apart the bones. Twelve years was a long time this close to the forest.

“What happened here, Jessa?”

She jumped, startled, and turned. Gregoor leaned against a soft green mound that had once been a part of the kitchen. “I’m sorry, my thoughts were elsewhere.”

He snorted. “I could see that.” He gestured, arms wide. “What destroyed this place?”

“Old age, an act of the gods.”

He frowned and crossed arms tight over his chest. “Are you going to tell me the story behind this place or not? You drag me out to the wilderness. Tell me nothing. You accept a job without consulting me and then tell me I don’t have to come along.” He pushed a hand through his short brown hair. “Jessa, we’ve been swordmates for a year. Don’t I deserve some type of explanation?”

She smiled at that and walked over to stand against the leaf-covered wall, beside him. Her hazel eyes looked at a place somewhere over his head, while her strong, small hands stroked his hair. “In Zairde there are no peasants, only the poor. We were poor, but I didn’t know that as a child. We had food, shelter, toys, love. I did not think we were poor, but we were not rich. My mother was the village earth-witch. She never used her magic for personal gain or to harm, unless attacked. Even then she was squeamish of the kill. She wouldn’t understand my entombing people in living rock.”

“You’ve only done so twice, and both times it saved our lives.”

She smiled down at him. “Yes, there is that. But I stand here with my mother’s magic still strong in the earth and I shield myself.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid, Gregoor.” The summer wind stirred her dark hair. “I promised my mother I would never use my power for evil. I have broken that promise many times.”

“You’re afraid her disapproving ghost will haunt you.”

“Yes.”

“Jessa.” He hugged her to him. “Please tell me what happened here.”

“One day an old sorcerer and his son came to spend the night. I had never seen a truly old sorcerer, for they can live a thousand years. But this one was old. His son was young and strong and handsome; the village girls watched him out the corners of their eyes. During the night the old sorcerer died.”

Jessamine’s hands stopped moving. She stood absolutely still. “The son accused us of poisoning his father. He destroyed our village with fire and lightning, storm and earthquake. My father and my brothers were all killed. When it was over, only my mother and I crawled away.”

Jessa took a deep, shaky breath. “My mother, as the village earth-witch, took our grievance to the Zairdian courts. They did nothing. Two days af ter they declared the sorcerer’s son innocent of wrongdoing, an assassin killed my mother.” She looked down at him, meeting his eyes.

His brown eyes were wide, astonished, pain-filled. “Jessa.”

She placed fingertips over his lips. “It was a very long time ago, Gregoor. A very long time ago.”

He gripped her hand. “What happened to the sorcerer who destroyed this village?”

“He died.” She smiled down at him. It was a smile he had seen before—a slow, tight spreading of lips that filled her eyes with a dark light. He called it her killing smile. “He was the first wizard I ever killed.”

“And that is why we specialize in assassinating wizards?”

“That is why I do. I do not know why you do it.”

He stood eye to eye, no taller, no shorter than she. “I do it because you do it.”

“Ah,” she said and gave him what no one else had received from her in twelve years—a smile full of love. “You took this job so you could come home, then?”

“I took this job because the sorcerer I slew had a mother, as I had a mother. It seems she has gone mad. The entire province wants her dead. The sorceress is Cytherea of Cheladon.”

“You have sent us to kill Cytherea the Mad, Jessa.”

She stopped him with a gesture. “She seeks her son’s killer, Gregoor, and has killed hundreds seeking me. I think it is time she found me.”

THEY came to the first town at dusk. A gibbet had been erected in front of the town gates. Three corpses dangled from it, moving gently in the summer wind. They had been hung up by their wrists, and there was no mark of ordinary violence upon them. No hangman’s knot, no knife, no axe had killed the three.

Gregoor hissed, “Mother Peace preserve us. I have never seen anything like that.”

Jessa could only nod. The corpses, one man and two women, had been drained of life, magic of the blackest sort. The flesh was a leathered brown, like dried apples. Their eyes had shriveled in their heads. They were brown skeletons. The women’s hair floated around their faces that were cracked with horror, mouths agape in one last silent scream.

Jessa shook her head: that was nonsense. The dead did not retain the last look of horror. The jaws had simply broken and gaped open, nothing more.

“Come, Gregoor, let us get inside.”