Текст книги "King of flesh and bone"

Автор книги: Liv Zander

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Except at the Pale Court.

That realization sunk in.

Sunk in and festered.

I blinked back useless tears. They neither untwisted bone nor changed how he’d tricked me. “Did you lock her up, too?”

“Njala came and left as she pleased until wicked mortals stole her from me in their never-ending pursuit of power.” A kiss to my head. “You will remain by my side for eternity.”

I stole from me Master.

My fingertips numbed, so I stroked them through the horse’s mane. “That’s why you condemned Orlaigh to your service… She’s the one who stole her?”

“In a lapse of judgment only; otherwise, she would grace my throne like those responsible for Njala’s death.”

Her death.

The more I learned of all this, the less sense it made, mostly because everyone told me something different. What did Orlaigh have to say about this? She once told me that mortals feared what they didn’t understand, and I had no inclination to spend eternity in fear. Who was this creature who held me captive?

A god with no conscience?

A man with a grudge?

His next words came calm, but concise. “Heed my words, little one, you have no friends out here, not anymore. Word will spread of the woman who rides with me, eats with me, beds down with me. The wicked might go to great lengths to get me to remove this… curse, as you call it, stealing you away to use as bait.”

Bait.

My mouth turned dry.

I truly was doomed, wasn’t I?

My voice came out a mere whisper, vocal cords thin. “And how far would you go to see me returned?”

Did I have any value anywhere?

His answer came as the click of his tongue. The horse galloped over the land, hooves thundering so loudly underneath, it almost distracted from the deafening rush of blood in my ears.

Never my whore, forever my woman.

Those words had meant something to me when he’d spoken them, if only for the bit of dignity they’d returned.

His silence stripped it away once more.

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Chapter 11

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Enosh

“Why did you refuse me your promise not to run?”

After hours of silence, the question startled my woman enough that she hissed under the ache of her sore muscles. “Lying’s a sin, and I’ve piled up enough of those in the last month.”

“Had you given it, I may not have twisted your legs, little one. Maybe you could have escaped.”

For a while.

She shifted from one seat bone to the other. Hours on horseback had taken its toll on her flesh, but not once did she so much as whimper, as though leaving the Pale Court was worth the pain.

Feet wiggling whenever long strands of grass brushed along her ankles, lungs expanding wide when we passed fragrant flowers, a gentle smile lining her lips whenever a breeze wafted around us. When had her mortal body ever felt this light, this warm and alive in my arms?

Never.

Perhaps Orlaigh was right. I couldn’t lock her away between bone inside a kingdom as quiet and cold as death. It hadn’t always been like this. Winding staircases adorned with the most intricate motives, bridges spanned over statues so detailed you could see the veins of the animals they depicted, rooms appointed with the finest furniture… Ah, the Pale Court was a shadow of its former glory.

Because I’d made it so.

I had given an oath never to receive mankind’s bones again and look what it got me. My woman’s chain had been so short, a good part of the dais around my throne remained unpainted. How fine the other part looked with her vines and those delicate roses shedding their petals.

“You wouldn’t believe me anyway,” she said after a while. “If I have to be a whore, then at least I want to be an honest one.”

“I don’t recall ever paying you.” She shifted again, her muscles souring with shame, her bones growing heavy with guilt I failed to make sense of. “Why so much distress over a word?”

She shrugged, her gaze drifting toward a waterwheel that spun along a creek, the wings of the mill cutting the air. “A man is free to divorce his wife after three years of fruitlessness. Can even sell her to the whorehouse. John never did.”

I shifted sideways, clasping her chin to bring her gaze to mine. “Fruitlessness?”

“I never gave him a son, as is a woman’s purpose.” Her voice was so strangely thin compared to that bite she often carried. “To make it worse, I was the one who sent him for pinweedle moss. Healers say it cures a barren womb, you know. So up the falls he went to where it grows, only to hit his head and die. It’s my fault.”

Her fault?

Oh, my little naïve mortal. Her womb was neither cursed nor barren. Perhaps the only thing I would have rectified, no matter how I adored her imperfections, for she would carry my child, painting eternity with life and laughter. Giving me the purpose of a man instead of the ungrateful duty of a god.

But a babe in such a bare place…?

Oh, what a predicament.

“Is that why you’re so desperate to rest his bones, little one?”

She nodded. “It’s the least I owe him.”

“So devoted to a man who never claimed your heart?”

“It’s not the man I’m devoted to, but the promises I made before—” She stopped herself right then. “Well, you know. I swore an oath before a priest, vowing to be a good wife, and I intend to see it through in death, for I didn’t in life.”

“An oath before a false god.” All forgiven because she worshipped me so nicely when she kneeled by my feet, dozing off with her head on my lap while I stroked her soft hair. “And a pathetic act of guilt.”

She spun around, her blue eyes narrowed. “An act of duty and commitment. Not that I expect a god who abandoned his duty to understand its meaning.”

Ah, there was that bite again.

Adorable.

I rewarded it with a kiss to her temple. “Duty. Vow. Oath.”

She used those words often.

All things she remained faithful to over a husband tossing in the ground with each full moon. And all it had taken was a ridiculous vow before a priest who worshipped a god who didn’t exist? For all the things I understood of Ada’s flesh, her soul eluded me, as was my nature.

My woman cared little for dresses finer than those of any queen, the rich food I provided for her sustenance, or the diamond set into her collar. How refreshingly honest this midwife was compared to the titled stock of lords and ladies who painted their lips as though it would hide the lies they spoke. As Njala had…

But not my Ada.

No, my little one marked the bone, barraged through my corpses, tried to escape my kingdom, and snarled at me whenever her lips didn’t tremble with a moan. She pledged nothing but her hatred; she swore nothing but her escape. And now she even refused to make me promises she knew she wouldn’t keep?

That made a promise from her mouth valuable, indeed.

So trustworthy, I longed to kiss one from her lips. I wanted to taste her commitment to remain by my side. How blessed that bastard of a husband was to have a woman who, even in death, honored her vows. And what if I wanted her to make such a vow to me? Ought I to take her as my wife?

Mmm. Lots of temples between here and the Pale Court…

I stroked over her belly that would swell with my child soon enough. “Your flesh is perfectly imperfect.”

And I longed for it almost as passionately as I ached for the devotion and dutifulness she’d stood by all this time. For the wrong reasons, yes, but with admirable resolve, nonetheless. What did a husband do with a wife, anyway? So many customs in so many places, all equally confusing.

“People are staring.” Her neck shortened as she curled herself against me in a poor attempt at hiding her face. “Devil be damned, you had to ride in on a dead horse with white eyes and give me a damn feather dress, right?”

I willed my mare up an incline, avoiding the farmers and merchants who moved grains and goods along the road. Their mumbles followed us as long as their stares, sparking restlessness in my core.

“Hold on,” I said, once more spurring my mare into a canter, eager to return to the safety of the Pale Court, but there was the issue with my woman’s exhausted flesh.

We didn’t slow until the first bellows drifted on the wind, along with the bitter fumes of burnt oil. Each time metal clashed against metal, my little mortal retreated deeper into my arms.

I quite liked it.

Then the bellows turned to screams. Screams to deafening battle roars that manifested in nothing short of bloodlust, which swept through the lines of soldiers like a flood of rage. Axes hacked into flesh and crushed bones, pikes scratched along metal until they found their way into guts.

Wounded scattered the ground, screaming in pain, some dragging themselves over the dirt toward their severed limb. Oh, mortals and their frail bodies… fighting over creeks, riches, titles, only to end up as food for the crows.

Flames crackled where they’d lit the ground on fire, smoke rising in raven-black billows. On instinct, I steered away from it, but the stench of my charred flesh already crept into my nostrils.

“This is awful,” Ada mumbled when, far ahead of us, a soldier thrust a sword into another’s belly.

When I spotted Yarin, clad in leather armor with a sword in his hand, I rode up to him. “Blending in?”

“I don’t have corpses to come to my defense, should I need it.” The God of Whispers winked at my woman in that certainty he had around females, knowing their every thought. “I’m afraid you missed the part where they set the oil-soaked ground on fire and burned hundreds, brother. A coincidence… or immaculate planning?”

“Mortal needs slowed our travel. Mark the corpses you want raised.”

“You’ve only just arrived.” Yarin sheathed his sword. “Maybe a stroll along the nearby creek, Ada?”

“Your brother broke my legs.”

“Twisted,” I corrected, but Ada stiffened against me as he undoubtedly poisoned her mind with his whispers. “You won’t blend in anymore if I raise the dead and send them after you faster than you can shift into your realm.”

“I only said that I’m surprised you didn’t snap her neck yet.” At the pinching of my lips, Yarin’s curled into a smirk. “The dead never run from you, and you seem oh-so desperate to keep her.”

“Point out the four bodies.”

“Raise five more for me.” A growl formed at the back of my throat, but only until he added, “Do this for me, and I’ll make your woman love you.”

A shift beneath my ribs.

Love me.

Whatever that weasel saw on my face brought a self-satisfied smirk to his. “She’ll adore you, brother.”

My heart quickened.

Adore me.

“She’ll be tormented by such ardor that she would never leave your side,” he said. “Never.”

Never leave.

Always stay.

Everything inside me demanded that I comply, even more fervently when Ada cut my brother a poisonous glare. No matter how deep my power reached into her flesh and bone, answering the desperate call of her neglected body, her rebelling soul sat behind a barrier not even I could breech. How long had it been since I roused her lust?

Longer than she would accept.

Let alone confess to herself…

Should that bother me?

No, but it did with such alarming intensity, I was tempted to agree. To have my mortal reach for me at her own choosing, pledging herself to me like only my enamored woman would.

Or my wife.

“Mark the bodies,” I bit out.

“Suit yourself.” Yarin gazed over the field. “Let me see… mmm, which ones to keep?”

“Are you jesting? You haven’t even bound them yet?”

“Weighty choices shouldn’t be rushed.” Yarin tapped his lips and shrugged, glancing over the stone block walls surrounding Airensty. “One must choose the men and women he surrounds himself with wisely. Ah! This one will make for fine entertainment.”

I let my mare follow him toward a dead soldier, pressing my mouth against Ada’s ear. “Listen to him and he’ll drive you mad. It is his nature.”

Ada nodded. “Is he doing it to you as well?”

Driving me mad, for certain. “None of us have power over the other. We don’t sense each other’s presence, which makes Yarin, in particular, quite a nuisance.”

Ada watched with rapt attention when Yarin reached his hand over the dead body, binding the man’s soul to its flesh. “What happens if he doesn’t chain it?”

“Souls detach from their mortal bodies after a while, slower if death came suddenly, and you cling to it longer. Once it leaves, it becomes part of his realm, a loud place between the gruesome thoughts of mankind.”

When Yarin arched a brow at me, I focused on the corpse, commanding it to rise. Leather armor groaned as the man first twitched, then stood, glancing around disoriented.

The soldier pressed a hand to the gaping wound on his belly, fingers shaky when he pulled a dagger from his guts under whimpers. “Wh-what happened?”

“He feels pain?” Ada asked.

“Or so he believes,” I clarified. “Raised corpses with their souls bound don’t understand what they are… at least, not at first.”

“So, he thinks he’s still alive.”

“Ah, Enosh…” Yarin swatted toward the wound. “Please do fix this. Otherwise, he’ll just bleed on my rugs, not to mention how ghastly it looks.”

All it took was a thought, and the wound closed beneath the leather while the corpse grew frantic. Such was their plight as their minds were too simple to grasp what lay beyond their mortal realms.

Whatever Yarin whispered into his mind calmed him, and my brother strolled over to a woman who wept over the body of a man—presumably, her husband.

He stroked his fingers through her matted brown hair, then grinned up at me. “Under all that filth, I daresay she’s beautiful.”

“Also, alive.”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

Ada’s heart beat faster, stumbling over its irregularity as Yarin pulled a knife from its sheath. “He can’t just kill her.”

“He won’t.” Not in her sense. Eilam loved to preach about how there needed to be a balance between the three of us, throwing a fit whenever one of us ended a life. “Close your eyes, little one.”

She didn’t.

Of course she didn’t.

My little mortal watched as Yarin leaned over the woman, placing the knife in her lap and his mouth to her ear. “First, little Henry taken by yellow fever, and now Thomas… What’s there left to live for? Nothing. Why not put an end to this misery?” Without a single tremble, the woman took the knife and pressed the glinting blade to her neck. “Do it. You know you want to. Can’t stand the thought of continuing like this. Do it now. Cut!”

One slice, deep enough that dark red blood sprayed from the woman’s neck with each dying beat of her heart, raining down on her husband’s corpse, soaking the front of her dress.

I tasted bile.

Not mine.

My little mortal leaned away from me before she retched onto the ground. She emptied her stomach of her breakfast as all strength leeched from her muscles. I would need to find her food and, if possible, a bed so she may rest.

“Shh…” I pressed a hand to the back of her sweat-covered neck, sensing how the exhaustion of the day finally overpowered her. “See, my little one? Your plight could be worse. You could have ended in the arms of my brother instead.”

“I didn’t think this through,” Yarin yapped as he bound the soul. “That’s on you, Enosh. Always rushing me. Now look how she bled out, her skin all pale and sickly. At least fix the wound or it’ll make odd slapping sounds each time I thrust into her. Who wants that?”

With a sigh, I closed the wound, then let the woman rise. “Two more. Hurry up. My little one is tired and in pain.”

“That one over there, with the spear stuck in the head. Oh, don’t cry, sweet thing.” Yarin stroked tears from the woman’s face that would dry out soon enough on their own. “There will be no more hunger, no sorrows. I’ll take care of you now, yes?”

The woman nodded. “Yes. You’ll take care of me.”

“That’s right, my love. You’re mine now, and I’ll have you in any way I want.”

“Any way you want,” she crooned and pressed her hips flush against him. “I love you.”

“Of course you do.” Yarin’s eyes snapped to mine as my veins heated, but they ignited when he grinned and asked, “Jealous?”

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Chapter 12

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Ada

“We shall bed down at the tavern,” Enosh said, steering toward the glinting lights of the town ahead. “You need a warm meal, a bed, and rest. Something I should have taken into consideration, but… I haven’t had to care for a mortal in a long time.”

He said it as though he wanted to apologize for starving me half a day but didn’t quite know how. “Thank you.”

The tips of his fingers slowly raked over my scalp, which he did often, seemingly content with the monotone motion. “How come you never remarried?”

“Probably because proposals are sparse around barren women who got their husbands killed.” Beyond tired, I let myself sink back against his chest. “Eternity will feel twice as long if I keep wondering so… will you tell me how Njala died?”

There was a long beat of silence until he finally cleared his throat. “There was an argument between Lord Tarnem and me when he demanded more corpses than we’d agreed upon. Against my telling her not to get involved, Njala left the Pale Court without my knowledge to speak to her father.”

“Orlaigh helped her sneak away?”

His chin brushed along the side of my head as he nodded, first stubbles catching on my strands. “He kept her from me, sending her across the land with Commander Mertok, trying to force my hand by keeping her out of my reach. When he refused to come to his senses, I marched thousands of corpses to his hold. He offered a parley then, stating a misunderstanding, saying that he himself had fallen victim to a betrayal. He lured me into a frozen valley.”

“And trapped you.”

“Ah, my little one, a moment of utter folly on my part, but gods are not free of failure, and I was desperate. Eventually, I freed myself and leveled his kingdom to the ground. I chased across the lands beyond the Soltren Gate in search of my companion. But by the time I reached Njala, months later, Commander Mertok slit her throat as… as an act of revenge.”

My ears pricked at the hesitation. “You didn’t chain her soul?”

“It departed quicker than I could act.”

Quicker than he could act.

An unexpected hollowness formed in my core. When I turned to look at him, I shuddered beneath his unguarded stare and how those hairline cracks in his icy mask opened into gaping craters. Shadows played around his face in the setting darkness, as though wanting to hide what I discovered behind the fractured facade of the cruel god.

For the first time since Enosh had taken me captive, I saw the man beneath the immortal, heartbroken and vulnerable, the reasons for his undying rage clearer the more he shared with me. For us mortals, grief ended with death, but his lasted for an eternity, spent as what had to be a lonely existence.

I straightened and looked forward once more, not liking how all this softened me toward him. “If you killed those responsible for your loss, then why condemn the rest of us?”

“Because the depravity at the mortals’ core is to blame for all this, their never-ending hunger for power, which is not for them to have.”

“If we’re all so bad at the core, then why keep me? I’m one of them.”

“Mmm, yet you carry the least of it, a precious particularity about you I failed to recognize when you first came to me.”

There was that word again.

Precious.

My core expanded at the sheer sound of it, my ears utterly unaccustomed to the word. How twisted my life had become, where I tried to escape the man who refused to let me go, only to get back to the man who’d once wanted rid of me.

I rubbed at my itchy eyes. “One step out of your court and you could’ve cut one of those virgins down some idiots had sacrificed off a trunk two hundred years ago.”

“Lift your chin. Higher!” His fingers wrapped around my throat, tilting my head back until he had access to kiss along the side of my neck where he whispered, “For as much as I torment you with need, you do the same to me, mortal, or I would have tossed you outside to let you die among the corpses. Servant, plaything, treasure… above all, you are my woman.”

I shuddered.

Not an unwoman.

Not a woman.

His woman.

He held no power over my body out here, but his words infiltrated me just the same, sending gooseflesh across my skin. The ardor in his tone even over a word such as plaything, the possessiveness of his grip where another had once threatened to discard me… The urgency with which he wanted me roused a faithless flutter in my belly.

I ignored it. “Maybe—”

“There he is!”

My gaze swung around.

My fingers numbed.

A handful of villagers hesitantly approached from a dark orchard, carrying limp corpses or wheeling them on handcarts, the moonlight breaking against the blades strapped to the three men among them.

Enosh hissed at the sight of the torches they carried, the horse dancing underneath us as if it sensed its master’s fear.

He feared fire.

Why else would the feathers grow damp against my skin where he dug his fingers into my belly, pulling me against him as he shouted, “Return to your hearths!”

They didn’t turn but at least they stopped, exchanging glances, shrugs, and mumbles. Of course, gossip about a man riding a dead horse had spread.

“M’Lord…” A woman stepped forward, the girl draped over her arms a pale blue even against the orange flickers of fire, old sores speckling her cheeks. “This is Anna, my only child. The pox took her three winters ago.” Her eyes shifted to me for a breath before the woman lowered her head. “My husband and I will give you all we have if only y-you… merciful Lord, please let her rest. For days, she battled the fever. All I w-want is for my daughter to rest in peace. Y-you have this power, do you not?”

My throat shrank to suffocating tightness as I glanced over my shoulder at Enosh. His jaws clenched; eyes so fixed on the flames licking the moist evening air that he spared the girl not even a glance. The girl wasn’t mine but, had I been blessed with a child, wouldn’t I beg the same as this woman did?

Yes, I would.

Only when I pressed my hand to Enosh’s chest did he look down at where I touched him, then his eyes met mine as his deep voice verged a predatory growl. “Little one, the answer is no.”

I swallowed against the grip of heartache and hatred. “She’s just a child.”

The one I never had, yet I felt her mother’s agony bone-deep. Whatever had happened to Enosh, these people had nothing to do with it. Least of all this little girl, her brown hair neatly braided, the end tied with a purple ribbon.

“Enosh,” I whispered. “Can you do this for me? Just this once? Please? Rest them, and they’ll be on their way.”

At that, the muscles in his jaws jumped, but he neither barked nor grunted. Was he considering it? He had to be. Oh, please, please, he had to give me this one thing.

But he shook his head ever so faintly, letting my heart sink as he looked back at the woman. “I have no use for your earthly possessions. Go home.”

“But Lord!” The woman ran up before me, her little girl’s lifeless limbs tossing about, but it was the hiss of fire following behind her that straightened Enosh’s spine. “I am your humble subject. Whatever you wish of me, I will…” Her voice trailed off, eyes going to me once more before she rearranged the lifeless body of the spindly girl. Then, head lowered, she pushed the threadbare cotton of her dress down, exposing a breast. “If you wish to lie with– Augh!”

The man beside her fisted her hair and yanked her about with brute strength, but still, she didn’t let go of her daughter as arms flopped about. “How dare you whore yourself out in front of everyone?”

“She’s doing it!” The woman stabbed a finger at me, voice tight with grief and anger. “He can sard me forward and backward, plunder all my holes—”

Smack.

Her husband’s palm hit her hard enough that the woman spun, then sunk to her knees on a groan. “Shut your mouth before I beat you close to death. Harlot!”

A cry lodged from my throat. “Enosh, please—”

“Be quiet,” he snarled, then turned to let the strength of his voice shatter through the night. “This is my only warning. Leave, before I let the corpses open the ground and swallow you whole.”

I trembled at his roar.

No, the ground did.

It shifted beneath us, letting some people stagger sideways while a wooden wheel vibrated off its axis. The handcart broke down, letting two beaten corpses roll off and splay out in the dirt. A woman cried out.

“Enosh, the ground is shaking…” My words drowned beneath the villager’s screams. “Wh-what is happening? Oh my god, oh my god, oh my– Are you doing this?”

The corpses twitched.

Their death-veiled eyes blinked open.

They jerked to their feet.

Except for the girl.

Still resting in loving arms, Anna wrapped her small hands around her mother’s neck, then clasped tightly. She choked her mother harder with each violent snap of her jaws. Little teeth dug into the woman’s neck, cutting through skin and ripping flesh until her mother screamed. Yet the woman didn’t let go, clasping her daughter tighter as she scrambled to her feet and ran.

It was too terrible.

Too painful to breathe through.

“Stop it!” I shouted, hands pressing to my mouth as I watched the dead chase the living. Whatever rage my voice carried, in the end, it distorted into a long wail of helplessness. “She’s just a little girl…”

Enosh held me tighter. “Be still!”

He let the horse thrust into a canter, passing town after town until my arse burned nearly as much as my tear-filled eyes. The wind made it only worse as we thundered along a dirt trail that eventually changed into the ca-lop-ca-lop of iron clashing cobblestone, lights illuminating windows from afar. I twisted and dug my face into Enosh’s shirt, dampening it with my tears.

This late in the evening, villagers paid us no mind. Not until a man spotted the horse’s white eyes, starting that first mumble, which soon hushed across the village like the foreboding breeze of a storm. They all came together—some wearing their nightcaps—while sleepy-eyed children hid behind skirts as they took in our dead steed.

After Enosh passed the scorching waft of heat from a quiet forge, he rode the horse up to the tavern and dismounted. “I sense the tension in your muscles and the sickness roiling in your belly.” He pulled me down, immediately steadying me on my gnarled legs. “Dare run, mortal, and I shall have the most decrepit corpses the ground has to offer drag you back.”

Sickness wasn’t nearly strong enough a word to describe all the nasty things I wanted to spit at him. After a month at the Pale Court, I’d nearly forgotten how the world outside suffered, fathers feeding their dead children to the wolves just to keep them from wandering.

I pushed his chest. “Right now, I’d crawl through the shit in the streets to get away from you.”

He gripped my arms with bruising strength and shook me. “You want to leave me?”

“How could I not want to leave you? Any woman in her right mind would!”

Something ignited in his eyes. “Then my brother shall give you a wrong mind!”

“I hate you.” I lifted my chin high and met his stormy gaze. “I hate you so much that not even your brother is powerful enough to change that.”

His head jerked back as if I’d struck him. It lasted for the fraction of a breath before his gray eyes darkened with… I wasn’t sure.

He picked me up, carried me up the steps to the tavern, and kicked the door open. “Oh, little one, how you’ll scream my name within the next hour.”

“The fuck I will.”

Behind the door, the three-story tavern lay empty—aside from the town’s drunkard leaning crooked against a wall of wattle and daub. The stench of ale soured between the cracks of rough-hewn tables and benches. Beside them, the tavern keeper stared at us from underneath her plain, cotton wimple.

She blinked wide eyes at Enosh, her hands fumbling with her brown skirts as she curtsied. “I think… I think I know who you are. Heard stories as a wee lass.”

“Then you’ll know it best to be quiet about it.”

She nodded. “Does the King need a boy to lead his horse to the stables?”

Enosh frowned. “My horse is in need of nothing, but I require your best room. You will bring us fresh meats, warm bread, and berries if you can find them. I also expect a tub to be brought to our room filled with clean, warm water and a rag.”

She stared at me for a moment until, with a start, she worked herself out of her daze. “Yes, Your Grace. Gretchen!” Fingers snapped toward the narrow archway behind her. “Come to heel, girl! We have a guest, none less than the King of Flesh and Bone himself. Go prepare the large room. Take the driest kindle—”

“No fire.” Enosh rummaged through the pocket of his breeches, letting a handful of gold coins clink into the woman’s meaty palm. “Will this cover the night?”

“Your Grace is too generous,” she said, reaching the coins back to him. “After a life full of nothing but tales about you from some stinky old priests… I don’t want your gold.”

“My woman is weary. Let this be clear, I will not tolerate your begging at my door. Take the coin, for none of your kin will find rest with me.”

The woman chuckled, a hearty sound that shook her entire belly. “I have no children. All kin abandoned me when I was a young lass. All I have are three dead husbands who broke my heart and my purse. I beg of you, do not let them rot.”

“I can tell we’ll be good friends.” Enosh turned toward the stairs, following a pale Gretchen, pressing me tighter against his chest as he whispered, “I shall raise corpses outside for protection. Nobody leaves this town… least of all, you.”

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