Кейт Форсит - Relics, Wrecks and Ruins - Anthology of Speculative Fiction Short Works

Beside the child, old Maya’s eyes blank and her final breath slips free on a soft sigh.

I am drenched when I reach my sister’s cottage, one village away. The storm has softened to a drizzle of tears, but another chases after and will roll over the house soon. Lightning claws at the low clouds. Thunder growls a second later.

My soul-breaker’s blue cloak is soaked through, the wool darkened to midnight. It weighs on my shoulders as heavily as old Maya’s death weighs on my mind. Things shouldn’t be this way.

I open our little house’s thick wooden door and hang my cloak to dry. My boots go neatly beside my sister’s… and another two pairs.

One I recognize. They belonged to my brother-in-law, but Freya can’t yet bear to give them away. Redil died six months ago. The unsouled’s city crushed him as he searched for salvage materials to fix a neighbor’s roof.

He was a good man. Kind. Intelligent. Now, he is lost. A human that cannot be replaced under the Council’s current laws. Just because his soul could not be retrieved in time and no new soul-takers were born.

I pause, staring at the other pair of boots. They are soul-master green. The color of the old forests, of algae, of envy. Veloni is here. My Council mentor and supervisor. The one who disagrees most with my ideas for how to move our people onto a more certain path to survival.

In the narrow entryway of neatly laid stone and thickly plastered walls, I rest my head against the wall and close my eyes. My body hurts. It always takes me a day or so to recover from a soul-break and absorption. But this is worse than usual. All of me aches and blood still seeps through the cut between my ribs. Have I done something wrong?

Or is it a sign that I’m close to transforming into a soul-master? Is that why Veloni is here?

The thought gives me strength. I transfer the blue-metal scissors to my skirt pocket and head for the warmth of the living space where the smell of rabbit stew lingers and my sister awaits my return.

“Jena!” Freya rises awkwardly from her seat before the fire. One hand presses into the small of her back, another helps push her from the chair. A grimace crosses her delicate, pale features. She is thinner than she should be at this late stage of pregnancy. The loss of Redil stole her appetite and her smile at once. I hurry to her side and help her stand. Her breath comes in quick little gasps. One hand strokes her swollen belly.

But she clasps my cold fingers with her warm ones. “You’re back safe. I was beginning to worry.” Her dark-shadowed eyes search my face and flick an uneasy look toward Veloni, seated in the second chair. If Freya is trying to give me a message, I cannot read it. I kiss her cheek and turn toward my mentor.

“Master Veloni.” I touch two fingers to the still-tender spot on my ribs in the traditional salute between soul-breakers and soul-masters.

She rises from the cracked-leather chair and returns the greeting. Her long, graying hair is tied in an intricate knot, decorated with simple wooden beads. Over a plain gray linen shift, she still wears her emerald cloak. So… she arrived before the storm broke and didn’t expect to stay long. I repress a smile for having kept her waiting.

There is an awkward silence as she looks me over, with one brow arched, dark eyes cool, narrow face a mask. My pale blue tunic is still spattered with blood. My hair damp and flat. I try not to fidget. I have helped as many children into the world as she ever did before becoming a master. More, in fact.

Thunder booms over the house, shaking stone and rattling glass.

Veloni switches her chill glance to Freya. “You will leave us in private.”

Freya starts, her eyes widening. She touches her forehead and hurries from the room. The bedroom door closes, but it’s thin enough that she can hear if she tries. And she will. We’ve always looked after each other.

I take a seat without being asked. It is my house, after all. The cushion is still warm from where Freya rested. It smells faintly of jasmine, her favorite flower. With a gracious wave I invite Veloni back into what is usually my seat.

Her lips thin for a moment, but she sits on the edge, her spine straight. Leather creaks beneath her. I deliberately relax, trying to ignore the heavy thudding of my heart, certain it must be audible in the silence between growls of thunder. A log cracks sharply in the fireplace, spitting sparks. My muscles tense but I keep my calm expression of inquiry.

Let her speak first. I will not be the supplicant again. Not until I’m a master. It’s been made clear to me, many times, that I’m below notice until then. The Council can’t be changed from the outside.

Veloni breaks our locked gaze first and brushes at her skirt, wiping away invisible obstacles to order.

“It has come to our attention,” she begins without looking at me, “that there are twenty-three children in the three villages you service.”

I suppress a smile and wait. Of course there are children, I resist saying. It’s my job.

She clears her throat. Her eyes—the tannin brown of deep forest pools—lift to mine. She examines my face like a panther waiting for the right moment to pounce. Waiting for me to make a mistake.

But I won’t. I’ve worked too hard for this. She’ll see I’m right. They all will.

Leaning forward, she narrows her gaze. “Twenty-three unsouled children in your villages.”

“And?” I lift both brows and allow a small smile to curl my lips. The Council can do nothing now. The children are too old to be soul-takers and their designated soul-bringers died at the births, believing their souls had been passed on to the newborns. But I crushed the pieces and scattered the glittering fragments of finished lives into the air. They floated, sparkling dust in the sunlight.

“Why would you do that?” Veloni’s tone is sharp. A frown pulls her thin brows close. She points vaguely at the cottage front door. “Why would you risk everything the Council has achieved since the fall of the unsouled cities? Everything we’ve planned?”

I grip the chair arms, my fingertips white. “Because you don’t listen. ”

“Pfah!” She dismisses me with a wave. “We listened. Over and over. To you and to your grandmother, before. You want to let children be born without them receiving the souls of their elders. It is you who have not listened.”

My control breaks and I rise, standing over her. “I do. I listen to grandparents cry as they give up their souls and their lives too early. I listen to their families sing with voices strangled by tears. I listen to the sound of my scissors cutting the throats of children who have no soul-giver. Then I listen to their mothers cry in my embrace. And I have no comfort to give them but to say ‘The Council rules it so.’”

I rest my hands on her chair and push my face close to hers, whispering because my chest is too tight to hold enough breath for a shout.

“You,” I say. “You and the Council make me murder children for want of a soul they do not need. And I’ve proven that. Those twenty-three unsouled children are perfectly fine. Healthy. Happier than soul-takers, even. Their eyes are eager and innocent, not weighed down by tired old souls that have lived through too much loss.”

Veloni’s eyes glitter. Her jaw hardens then she opens lips stretched into thin slits.

A muffled cry of pain sounds from the bedroom. Something thuds against the door, then the floor. Another cry. More like a scream.

“Freya!” I rush to the door and push it open against a heavy weight on the other side. A watery, pinkish liquid smears across the flagstones.

Freya is slumped on the floor, arms wrapped about her belly, weeping. Darkness stains her shift.