20 – 4
Aren't I meant to feel something?
The Windrunner's knife, now mine, dangles from my fingers. The slick steel of its blade glistens in the last lights of the setting sun.
Guilt? Remorse?
Little droplets of slow, sticky red roll down my neck, trickling from the crescent-cuts his grip opened on my face. With the back of my wrist, I smear them across my cheek.
Horror?
The ruts of the narrow trail catch and grab at my feet. I stumble, but don't fall. His corpse is somewhere back there, eyes staring sightless up at the sky.
Isn't that how the stories go? 'And so the hero, having been left no other recourse than to strike his foe down, did fall to his knees at the side of his enemy and weep at what he had done'?
The last of the sunset fades behind hill and tree, the lights of Amberdusk town wink into life, and I don't. No tears fall, nor am I overcome with horror, guilt, or remorse.
Why not? What's wrong with me? I come to the point where the trail evens out and widens into a road; and it is there that I stop, unable to take another step. Let my head fall back and see the first of the distant, silver-soft stars come out. Whatever it is, it can wait. I need to sit down. Drop my head and blink tired, aching eyes.
There's a patch of grass over there, near some trees. It'll do. Cross the empty road and slowly collapse. I end up on my side, curled around the knife laid flat on my palm. It's not slick anymore. It doesn't glisten in the light. The blood's dried into a muddy, flaky crust. It itches, cracking as I bend my fingers around the wooden hilt.
I should scrub it off, find somewhere to get clean, but that would require I move.
I don't want to move. I want to know.
It's hard to think. The knife keeps distracting me. I close my eyes. Breathe in deep, let it out slow. Wind rattles bare-leaf branches. I'll try again.
He kept touching me, brushing and grabbing and pinching at me. He took permission from my silence, growing bolder the longer it went on and the further we went from town. I still feel them. Every last one. Maybe that's why. Maybe they're keeping me from feeling anything else.
They're not why I killed him. I killed him because he was a Windrunner. He deserved it. They deserve it. Every last one. They're not stealing food to blunt starvation's edge or taking clothes from drying lines to warm themselves in winter cold. They kill and hurt and ruin for the joy of it. They're no better than the bramble-beast. I didn't mourn it. I didn't weep for it while it burned.
Why should I shed a tear for one no better?
Breathe in deep, let it out slow. The scent of grass scent fills my chest. I drift away.
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A frigid gust brings me shivering back. I open my eyes to the sky, see the star encrusted vault of the deep, true night. My fingers are chilled stiff, knuckles popping and dried blood flaking as I force them to unfold. They all ache in protest of motion, but it's my index that hurts worst. I blink until the blear and blur leaves my eyes. It's swollen and bruising purple, either sprained or broken.
The side of my face throbs, a second bruise blooming. Four crescent-cuts, scabbed over and stinging, trace a line from behind my ear to under the line of my jaw. The fifth, from his thumb, is just under my eye. The earth's cold dulls the pain. It does nothing for my hip, and the third, hand-shaped bruise that spreads across my skin. At least it didn't bleed.
Are there more? There's the discomfort from sleeping on the ground; but beyond that, I can't feel any. I'll have to strip down and look myself over to be sure, but it would seem that these three are all the wounds he managed to give me. I groan to my feet, knees and ankles popping.
Dirt and dried blood itches where it clings. It's up to my wrists. It's on my clothes. It's on my face. I need to scrub it off, find somewhere to get clean, before someone finds me. I need to figure out what to do with his corpse before someone finds it.
Milo would know what I've done the moment he saw me. He'd have to tell Adelaide, of course, who'd have to tell Lavinia. One of them would tell Clarke. How could they not?
I can't go back.
Jeremiah's, then. He won't care a whit. I'll go to him.
- - -
Even late as it is, crossing half of Amberdusk town without being seen should've been difficult. I had expected as much, anticipating an exhaustively cautious journey from lamp-shadow to alley-shroud, hardly daring breathe while a passer-by passed me by. There was always someone: patrolling lamplighters, late-night laborers, stumbling drunkards, and children out to do exactly what their parents said not to.
Half the streetlamps I pass are unlit. The rest have burnt low in their glass bulbs, casting misshapen circles of fading light. They must've been lit well before sunset to be guttering now. The shadows they make are deep and broad, easy to hide in and flit between, and utterly pointless. There's no one here.
Some of the stalls in the square are on their sides, their broken shelves strewn across the stones. The jagged, crystalline teeth of a broken window leer from the frame that holds them. Shards crunch and splinter under my boots as I get close enough to look into Morrow's taproom. The stone that broke is as large as my fist, sitting at the end of a long scrape in the dusty floor. There are footprints, too; clustered together just inside. They split off into at least two sets, all headed towards the bar. More broken glass is sprinkled across the counter, glinting in the dim light.
I look back at the mess of stalls and shelves. It would seem that someone helped themselves to what remained of Jeremiah's liquor, then drunkenly decided to start breaking things. The question is: who? Are they just folk at the end of their tether, like the smith had been, or had Connall not come to town alone? My cheek throbs. If he'd said anything about that, I don't remember it.
A chill wind sends a shiver down my spine. Glass grinds to dust as I turn on my heel and leave. I've more immediate things to see to. It can wait.
I drum the knuckles of my uninjured hand on Jeremiah's door. Nothing. I knock again. Nothing. I graduate from that to pounding it with my fist, rattling the wood in its frame.
Nothing.
I squint through the gaps in his shutters. There's just enough light to see him, his large body sprawled across the floor of his front room. A puddle glistens faintly on the floor, spreading from his chest in a misshapen circle.
I'm back on the pier, kneeling on the dry, splintering wood. Clarke struggles to breathe behind me while Merigold laughs. Pike's fingers dig into my hip and the side of my face, nails cutting crescents into my skin. You're quite beautiful, he whispers, a serpent's slide through rotting leaves, I don't imagine you've heard it much before, but it's true. His breath is sour, his mouth is wet, and Juliana dies.
Bile surges in my throat, acid burning my tongue and scoring the back of my teeth. I gag, spattering vomit on the dirt below his window. My eyes sting and run with tears while my nose fills with snot.
He's not dead. He's her brother. He would've fought. He would've won. He's not dead. He's not.
I hawk, spit, and scrub my mouth with my sleeve. Stagger back to the door. Lean on it. Breathe in deep, let it out slow. Once more. This time, I'll use the knife.
The rounded pommel bangs into the wood. I hear him startle awake with a curse and the crash of a breaking bottle. See? Not dead. Drunk. He groans and shouts hoarsely, “Go 'way! S'late!” I keep hammering. Glass rolls over stone. He must've sat up. “I said 'go away!”
The rounded pommel bangs into the wood.
“For shit's sake!” He stomps to the door and jerks it open with a face like thunder. Whatever he's about to say dies in his mouth when his bleary eyes fall on me. “Moonlit – hell –, girl; what happened to you?!” He doesn't touch me. He doesn't even try. I love him for it.
I sniff. Clear my throat. “Do you have a spade?”
“Do I have a...” He pauses. “I do. D'you need it?”
“I do.”
“Alright.” He steps aside. Lets me in.
I was right. Not a whit.