Chương 14: 1.13. Prey-Type Face

Dawn found Seth and shook him awake with the sound of clattering wood. He rolled to one side; he jolted with the realization that he was about to touch an unlit, then found that A. he was alone in the tent and B. he'd spent last night quietly yearning to do just that. Both realizations discomfited him. From outside, Annalise's son called, "Touch!"

"That was just my pant leg," came Ofelia's reply.

"No meat."

"Nine opponents out of ten that'd be a touch. You just got chicken legs."

"Get back to your corner. Dick."

"You're a dick."

"You."

"You." Seth sat up, cast last night's quilt from himself, and opened the flap of the tent to a bright mint-colored morning. Dew dappled the rushes and wildflowers around the canvas tent. Beside the wrought-iron spectre of their mother's carriage, Tiago and Ofelia were sparring with wooden practice swords. They moved with precision, and steely focus, and the same intentional gravity in each step that their mother displayed in the forest.

First circling silently and then launching into rapid sequences of attack and parry that whistled the air with the passage of their blades. Draco and Draka watched silently as their owners fought, huge glassy eyes attentive from under their jet shags, thinking whatever horses think when they observe tawdry little biped struggles. Seth crawled the rest of the way out of the tent and stretched to his feet.

"Morning," he said. Tiago looked his way.

"Morn—" A span of birchwood practice sword sank into his gut and doubled him over.

"Touch," Ofelia sang, and then "no no no stop no back to your corner" as Tiago advanced on her with a clod of dirt in his fist. Seth wandered to the carriage while the al Ydrises chased one another and peered through its door at the merry clutter inside: bedrolls, books, bread, boots, bladed weaponry. A space had been cleared on one seat upon which sat a birdcage with a fluttering, peeping wood thrush in it.

"Where's Annalise?" Seth asked.

"Went on ahead of us to Laramme incognito." Tiago threw the dirt at his sister, who mostly dodged.

"She's doing what she did in whatsitcalled. Your town."

"Prossimo?"

"That's the one."

"Why?"

"She likes to get the measure of a place before the carriage rolls in," Tiago said.

"How it treats an unaccompanied Necropolitan-looking woman of clear means." Ofelia, perhaps sensing an escape from sword work, perched herself on the carriage step.

"How'd you like cuddling our mom last night?"

"You know, Miss al Ydris, you're giving the impression you're preoccupied with this." Seth reached into the carriage and came out with the waterskin Annalise had assigned him last night.

"My life is devoid of gossip, Mr. il Gutierre," Ofelia said, as Seth drank.

"How is a twenty-four-year-old teenager meant to survive on the road? Unless there's some kind of courtly scandal in Laramme."

"Doubt it," Tiago said.

"It's a logging town, right?"

"That's right," Seth said.

"Maskayans and Plainfolk, mostly. Prossimo trades with them on the regular, since they're not shackled up to an iron artery yet. Timber, potash, wild onions. That kinda thing. When I was visiting, there was a murani hardcamp that was moving in."

"Not bad." Tiago retraced his footwork in the freshly turned earth.

"Get us some game, maybe." Seth wiped his lip. A little fuzz on there; he needed a shave.

"From the murani? They don't really trade with humans."

"We're not human anymore, Mr. il Gutierre." Ofelia waved the tip of her sword like a conductor's baton.

"We're unlit."

"Not sure they see it like that."

"They'll trade with Anna." Tiago flapped a dismissive hand.

"You want a lesson, il Gutierre?" Seth returned his waterskin to the carriage's cluttered bench.

"You wanna teach a rank amateur?"

"Not exactly, but if you're sticking around, I ought to. Come on." Tiago stepped next to him and reached through the window.

"You're good, Feeli." Ofelia swung herself to the carriage roof and sat on its edge, tapping her heels against the leering skeletons carved on its rear quarter. Tiago edged a map of West Plainland and its criss-crossing iron arteries aside, and found Polecat's cutlass beneath it.

"This is you?"

"Yep." Tiago pulled the sheathed cutlass out and handed it to him, handle-first.

"In an actual fight, we're gonna just hand you a gun or a spear and keep you back."

"I love that." Seth cinched the braided buckskin belt around his waist and felt the weight settle on his hip.

"Great idea."

"But you can carry that chopper there into a lot more spaces than you can bring a spear, so you might as well know how to use the thing." Tiago swung his sword up to his shoulder.

"Now, you're a little guy—""We're the same height."

"I'm physically sixteen and you're a little guy—don't interrupt, by the way—and you've got a blade fit for drunken stormshippers and a prey-type face."

"A what- type, now?"

"So if you draw blades with someone, don't look brave and don't act tough. Look afraid. They'll underestimate you. And the best way to win a sword fight is very quickly."

"Look afraid to swordfight?" Seth wiped his bangs from his face.

"I'll do my best."

"A lot of what you'll learn, keep under your hat until you've got your range and your opportunity just right. Don't wanna stance up and spin a moulinet when someone thinks you're about to go at them like you're chopping steaks."

"A moulinet being?" Tiago's sword flickered in a balletic figure-eight across his body and then snapped back to its position. His face registered no effort.

"Oh," Seth said.

"It's mostly for peacocking and getting your wrist up to snuff. You'll get there." Tiago held up a hand as Seth went to draw his blade.

"Don't draw. We're not using it yet. Just wear it around wherever you can; get used to the weight and the feeling."

"That's lesson one?"

"That's lesson one-half. Pass me the broom, Feeli." A lacquer-handled broom shunted from the carriage's roof and plopped into the dirt.

"Good pass, Feeli." Tiago picked up the broom and tapped it against a carriage wheel, dislodging a cloud of dust. He held it out in front of him, headfirst, and dropped into a lithe combat stance, off-hand held behind his back.

"Mirror me," he said. Seth did so, and felt like a wading duck.

"Foot's too far out." Tiago indicated it with the head of the broom.

"Straight under your knee. Good. Now what we're—" Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Tiago took a sudden lunge forward and the broom shoved hard into Seth's midsection. Seth stumbled backward a pace and wiped hastily at the streak of pale dust that Tiago had marked his borrowed shirt with.

"Ouch. Bastard."

"Not a bastard, il Gutierre. Dad's a dead drunkard, but he had a ring." Tiago took a slower step forward and rested the broom head against Seth's chest.

"So what we're gonna do is this. Without crossing your feet or dropping out of stance, keep the head of this broom right where it is. Just barely touching you. Don't let it get too far away, and don't let me—" He took another sudden flickering step. Seth staggered back this time and the broom danced with him upon his sternum.

"Good." Tiago returned to stillness.

"But don't cross those feet."

"Don't cross the feet," Seth repeated, and as the two fell into slow exercise, the broom between them, he watched Tiago's marshfire eyes. They had the same round expressiveness as Annalise, but the customary smile which lifted the corners on the Verdugo's face was absent on Tiago's. His skin was a deeper shade of gray, his mouth wider and thinner. Little hallmarks of the departed father they all clearly despised.

Seth wondered how much more Tiago looked like his mother now that they were both unlit; what other differences had been snatched away along with all the color?

"How is it?" he asked.

"Being an unlit? The broomhead wiggled with Tiago's shrug.

"Fine. I like flying." Ofelia found a book seemingly at random and cracked it open.

"Mom thinks it's a curse."

"Well, she would," Tiago said.

"She loves kids, and going unlit sterilizes you. Probably wishes she could've given us a sibling or two. Plus, she got snuffed when she was forty, so the slow-age thing isn't quite as sweet as it could've been."

"Thirty-eight," Ofelia said.

"Mom got unlit at thirty-eight."

"Whatever."

"Two whole years is not whatever."

"What I'm saying is that unlits age about five times slower," Tiago said.

"And now she's gonna be in her forties for the next half-century. Stay loose, Seth. Don't bend your knees that much." Seth obeyed.

"Some curse."

"Well, we're twenty-four," Tiago said.

"Twins?"

"Yep. And we look sixteen. That's annoying. It's all well and good for Feeli. My voice has been cracking for, what, seven or eight years now. Twenty or so to go."

"It's not all well and good for Feeli," Ofelia said.

"I used to have the loveliest eyes, you know, and now they're pitch black. And my ta-tas are coming in with the speed of a continental shelf."

"Thirty-year puberty has to make dating tricky," Seth said.

"Maybe," Tiago said.

"But at least it'll widen our hotness window on the other side." He retreated. Seth advanced.

"The thing that makes dating impossible is the unlit thing." Oh. Right.

"Not even in the Necropolis? Thought everyone's unlit there."

"Most everyone, sure." Tiago's nail tapped rhythmically on the broom handle.

"But we're only there a couple months out of the year. Fine place to go unlit, if you fancy. Bet there's plenty of—" Tiago lunged. Seth jerked backward. The broom kept its position.

"Good." Tiago returned to his measured pace.

"Plenty of ink-eyed ladies who'd love to be the one who snuffs a human out. It's a mark of pride. And no fear about going scarecrow, cause the Psychelith sucks your soul up as soon as it pops out."

"And that's what makes you walk and talk and such, still?" Seth said.

"Because the only guy I knew who went unlit, he went totally zombie. Just stared into space and starved."

"The Legion word for that is scarecrows," Tiago said.

"It's what happens when there's nothing around to catch the soul when it detaches. Once it goes back to the wheel, you're gone, even if your body isn't. It's just breathing meat."

"There's storage beside the Necropolis Psychelith, of course, but that's where ours are," Ofelia said.

"And mother's. Lots of room to float around, or whatever a soul does in a massive crystal. I like to imagine ours stick together. Like a school of spooky fish."

"I thought a Verdugo's soul was in their sword," Seth said. Tiago shook his head.

"Mom's sword does have a mini-psychelith thing built into it, but it's empty. It's just for emergency extraction in the field and such."

"An animaxis?" Seth remembered the word from a sorceress he'd once gotten drunk enough to pickpocket.

"Well, well." Ofelia's monotone colored with something close to regard, Seth hoped.

"Mr. il Gutierre knows the big sorcery words."

"Watch the foot," Tiago said.

"Keep it in." Seth corrected his stance.

"Annalise sorta lied when she said the sword doesn't eat souls, then."

"It can swallow one, I guess," Tiago said.

"But swallowing's not eating. You're supposed to keep it vacant if you can help it, and if you've got a soul in storage, you spit it back out to the turning wheel or the Psychelith as soon as you can."

"So you're all just walking around without a soul?" Seth advanced as the broom's bristles retreated.

"I have a soul," Tiago said.

"It's just not on-hand. When you leave your house, are you homeless?" Seth followed Tiago's footwork through a stalking circle and a quick backward two-step.

"I might not be the right man to ask."

"You're not homeless, dummy. You've got a nice tent now."

"With our mother," Ofelia said.

"Which we're being very normal about." That bumped loose the question Seth had tied down, and he felt it wriggling to the surface as he and Tiago pursued one another across the length of broom.

"Can I ask about that thing last night? With Annalise?"

"No." Tiago's voice hardened.

"You can't."

"What thing?" Ofelia asked.

"Did she have another episode?"

"Shush, Feeli." Tiago's eyes darted.

"Yes. But it's not what you're here to worry about, or talk about."

"Okay," Seth said.

"I was just worried—""Don't. Not for you to worry about. If it happens again before we've moved you out, stay on your side of the tent and don't touch her. It'll pass. The sword just speeds it up. And it doesn't happen that often. It's gotten better." He took a flash-step back. Seth gave chase.

"You could leave the sword with me and—" A violently sudden lunge from Tiago sent the broom into Seth with enough force to knock him to the ground.

"You're getting your own tent, il Gutierre. You forget?" Tiago scowled down at him.

"She doesn't need you to take care of her. That's what her family's for."

"Okay, okay." Seth sat up and caught his breath.

"Shit, man. Just trying to help."

"No thanks," Tiago said.

"Thank you for offering though, Mr. il Gutierre," Ofelia said. There was a clear chastening note in her voice. Tiago sighed.

"Yes. Thank you. Sorry." He extended his hand.

"Look, she's got a tough job. If you want to help her out, you help with that." Seth hesitated then took it and let the younger al Ydris help him up.

"She seems to think you can." Tiago slapped some dirt from Seth's elbow.

"And she's smart. So whatever. Just don't put your foot out too far." Seth was about to ask what that meant and remembered the fencing instruction.

"Would that have kept me from falling over?" Tiago blew an amused huff through his nose.

"That was your mouth, not your foot. Keep the two separate next time."

"Horse." Ofelia got abruptly to her feet atop the carriage and pointed.

"She's coming back." Tiago pursed his lips.

"Early?" Seth looked between Annalise's kids and the tension on their colorless faces.

"What does that mean?"

"Dunno." Tiago jogged out to meet the incoming rider, whose dark silhouette resolved into Annalise, her eyes hidden below her hat, her expression serious and drawn. Before Demetrius slowed to a halt the Verdugo was dismounting, hopping from his black iron stirrup. She swept her roadwarden hat from her head and hung it on a lantern hook by the carriage door.

"Morning. Change of plans." Ofelia peered from the roof.

"Something wrong, mother?" Annalise opened the carriage and clambered inside. Seth heard her rummaging around.

"It is a red-feather. Sik-Ersetim, probably. Anna will know. And it struck again just before dawn. We're taking it now." She pulled the door shut.

"Before Laramme?"

"It went for a family this time." A strange, organic crackling noise from within the carriage, like setting bone. Then Annalise's voice again, strange and rasping.

"We do it now." The door opened and Annalise's body emerged without Annalise's head atop it. The Verdugo, with her full lips and long nose and laugh lines, had disappeared. Her new face was younger and rounder but marred by a vicious scar that notched her brow, slashed across the bridge of her nose, and terminated at her upper lip. Her hair was cropped short in a platinum pixie cut with bangs laying unkempt across her thick, stormy eyebrows.

But the biggest difference was the ears, which were long and pointed, and the gossamer whiskers that emerged delicately from either side of her incongruously cute little nose. This was a muran's head, perched on Annalise's muscular body. Seth forced a blink.

"What's with—""That's Anna," Ofelia whispered.

"One of mom's heads. The head she wears to kill seraphs."

"Girl." Annalise—Anna? —held a hand out.

"Sword."

"Yes, ma'am." Ofelia hesitated.

"Were there books?"

"Some," the Verdugo grunted. Her voice had lost its lilt, Seth realized. She was speaking with the same Plainfolk twang he had.

"Later. Sword, girl." Ofelia quickly fetched it from where it leaned by Draco and Draka's yoke, and held the dreadnaught blade out to her mother(?). Anna tugged Ofelia close, laid her forehead against her daughter's, and shut her eyes for a slow breath. Then she shoved Ofelia away and gave the girl a quick cuff on the shoulder as she buckled the broadsword to her back.

"Stay here. Be safe."

"Yes, ma'am." Anna's head snapped around like a raptor tracing a songbird's flight.

"Boy." Tiago stood at attention.

"Mother."

"You're scouting." Tiago nodded and hurried to the carriage. He took the birdcage out and placed it on the ground; its prisoner flapped and caterwauled.

"I'll catch up with you. Just have to, uh… birdproof myself." Anna inclined her head in assent and Tiago hustled further afield. Her narrowed eyes slid to Seth.

"Spear."

"What?" Her thick silvery brows lowered further.

"Get me a spear, thief."

"Right. Uh—" Seth looked for Tiago, but the guy was out seeking a likely bush to do his business behind.

"Where do we keep those?"

"Carriage." He hustled for the carriage, trying to match the kids' no-nonsense haste as he opened the door. Spear, spear. Where's the spear?

"Roof," she said, like he was stupid.

"You think we fit a spear in there?"

"I'm not exactly an expert on this yet," Seth said, but all the patience he remembered from Annalise was gone, and the woman just frowned in response. He scurried to the roof and found a nearly-empty locking rack with a spear lying horizontal in its final sconce. Leaf blade and lugs on the side, just like Annalise preferred. He felt her unmerciful stare intensify on him as he fumbled with the locking mechanism and finally slotted the spear out from it.

He climbed back down to his suddenly taciturn employer, who yanked the spear from his grip before he had the chance to proffer it. She jerked her head toward Demetrius.

"Get on." His brow furrowed.

"I'm coming with you?" She nodded. Over her shoulder, Ofelia peered at Seth with evident concern.

"I kinda recall you telling me that I wouldn't be doing much seraph hunting myself," he said. Anna rolled her eyes.

"You want this job or not, il Gutierre?"

"I do. Really. I just—""Act like it, then." He took a deep breath and climbed onto Demetrius, whose shoulders were almost as tense as his.

"Back up," Anna said.

"Not reaching around you this time." He scooted back and the stranger wearing Annalise's body swept onto Demetrius in front of him. Her butt had scarcely graced the saddle than she seized the reins and set her horse galloping out into the harsh, bright morning, with Seth il Gutierre clinging desperately on for dear life.