“Take your name? Your ancestry?”
“But there’s some mistake,” she said. “We haven’t done anything. What could Udi have done?”
The man shook his head. “Not this household. This village. First the people, then the crops, then the ancient bones you’ve scattered or concealed. And in the springtime, the very ruins of Chamsarat, stone by stone. By next summer it will all be gone.”
“You knew Pankolo’s name.”
“From traders in Shyram. He’s the big man in town, they said. The one with all the horses. I had to see to those horses.”
Majka shuddered, recalling the tremor in his hand.
“They gave me your name as well. Majka, the savage one. You’re a little bit famous.”
“They don’t know anything, they’re dullards like Pankolo.”
“They know that you chopped a man to bits with a machete.”
“He climbed in Udi’s window,” she said. “A baby, not old enough to walk. You make it sound as though I liked it.”
“Did you?”
“He was touching Udi. He was drooling.”
The stranger closed his eyes. What if she just walked to the cellar and took out the machete? Or screamed? Udi could jump from that same window, run away into the night.
“You’re not alone, are you?”
“Of course I’m not alone.”
“You don’t have to do this. You’re a human being.”
“Oh no,” he said, “not for ages.”
She should get up now. Stand up, walk to the cellar. She felt as if her legs were missing. As if by some nightmare procedure they had been removed.
“You starvelings,” said Wren. “You beggars with your rags and rotten teeth: you’re what’s left of the Forever People. A sad end to the story, isn’t it? But you’re still an inconvenience to my master. This is an election year, after all.”
He sighed and leaned forward, resting elbows on knees. “He’s quite the ambitious man. He would make a modern country of us, do away with old factions and beliefs. But he can do nothing without votes. Tell me, Majka: who would vote for a man whose forefathers scalded eight thousand peasants to death? No one, in fact. So the legend must be disproved, the evidence effaced. The work began years ago: my master’s grandfather arranged for the disappearance of certain history books, and their authors. That was good enough for a time. But a would-be Proconsul attracts far closer scrutiny. It was his wife who put her foot down. Rub out the stain, she said.”
“The stain.”
“Chamsarat Village. You.”
He drew a weary hand across his face. Something in the gesture freed Majka to rise and move towards the cellar. Weak with fear, dragging her feet like a whore at sunrise. She had wanted him to fuck her. She had prayed for it. Her first prayer in ever so long.
“They also told me you were kind-hearted,” said Wren.
She turned away from him, leaned her cheek against the cellar door. “Anything else?” she asked.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Drunks talk.”
He was approaching. She rested her hand on the doorknob, exhaled, tried to make her face serene. Udi would get away somehow. Others would die but not her son. He would cross the ravine and flee into the Thrandaal and become a prince of the forest, wed some Thrandaal girl, found a new clan, die surrounded by family in a mansion of logs.
All at once she felt the warmth of him, the clothes that still smelled of her husband, his breath in her ear. The cellar stairs would be in shadow, black as pitch. She would just lean forward a little, as though groping for the wall. A reverse grip on the weapon. A backwards thrust.
Her left hand felt the touch of his fingers.
“They told me you were beautiful.”
“And wanton?”
His fingers released her. “Yes, but they lied. That was their envy speaking. I’m a good judge of such things.”
She turned the doorknob.
“Take me first.”
“Nonsense,” he said.
“In the cellar, where Udi won’t hear. I want it once more before I die.”
“You want no such thing. And I, even less.”
She reached back to fondle him: there was proof of his lie. Then she bit down on the wailing in her soul and pushed open the door and slid her hand along the wall.
Nothing.
She lurched down a step, groping wildly. “Your machete is at the bottom of the stairs,” he said. “Don’t go for it, please.”
She whirled, snarling. Time to kill, she was the savage one, she still had hands and teeth.
And then her legs simply buckled and she dropped on the stairs. To fight this man was to die and save no one. Tear-blinded, she pawed at his feet. Babbling, apologizing, begging him to let Udi go.
“It was a fine idea, the machete,” he said. “I hid your axe, of course, but I could do nothing about a weapon already in the house. And when you went to fetch these clothes I had only a moment. I might have overlooked the cellar, distracted as I was by your charms.”
Mockery. She couldn’t care less. She pressed her head against his leg. Fighting not to howl, scared witless at the thought of Udi waking and rushing from his bedroom.
He crouched down, placed a rough hand on her cheek.
“You must try to understand.”
“Go rot in the Pits.”
“One day, no doubt,” he said. “But tonight there’s still work to be done. And you must help me.”
“Help you kill us?”
“No, Majka. Help me stop that man, and his long line of bloodsuckers. Help me ruin them for good. I’ve thought about it for years. Now at last it can be done.”
He was a lunatic and no more. This was all much simpler than she’d supposed. “You should rest a little,” she said. “Sit down, there’s still soup in the kitchen, or I could bring you some—”
He pulled her roughly to her feet. “You’ll bring me those bones.”
“Bones?”
“The bones of the Ve’saqra, woman. Haven’t you been listening? My master is a beast and the descendant of beasts, but he could win. The family has been washing out stains for generations, now, and their work is almost done. Only proof of the massacre will stop him. Can you give it to me?”
She felt her own words doom her, but she spoke them all the same: “I can’t. I never would anyway. You’re his—dog.”
Once again the man grew still.
“It’s worse than that. I’m one of his bastard sons. My mother washed linens on his estate: she probably washed her own blood from the sheets, after he dragged her to his room. His spymaster took me from her when I was half Udi’s age, and when that old killer died I inherited the job. And I’ve done my share of killing. Three senators. Four heads of rival families. Never fear, I’ll spend eternity in the Pits.”
He was sweating, his gaze naked at last.
“There was a time before it started. A few mornings in our shack in the servants’ ghetto. My mother brought apple cores back from his kitchen. They were delicious, if you chopped them fine.”
She couldn’t help him, or kill him. She did not know which of the two she should want. Perhaps they were one and the same.
“The bones are the only proof,” he said. “Where are they, Majka? You can’t have lived here your whole life and not know.”
She couldn’t speak. Udi’s life, the lives of all the villagers, caught in her throat.
“Where?”he demanded.
“They’re lost,” she said at last. “Graverobbers. It’s been four hundred years.”
“Graverobbers made off with bones that scald at a touch?”
“People will buy anything,” she said. “And there are ways of carrying them—”
Wren’s eyes narrowed. Majka stammered: “I mean, couldn’t you? If there were any? In pails of water, or—”
“Across the hayfield,” he interrupted, “in that ruin of a barn, six men await my signal, Majka. Chewing mutton, sharpening their spears.”
“Just six?”
“Six is quite enough. You have no fighters here to resist them. And they are terrible, terrible men.”