Chương 17: 1.16. Afraid of Being Afraid

They put a few miles behind them on the way to Laramme and stopped at its fielded outskirts, by a fenced-off clearing where the distant, lumpy dots of a cattle herd grazed. Annalise kept to herself and her children, speaking in low tones to them when she did speak. Now and then he'd catch her looking at him, her face full of guilt and the unbridged urge to approach him. But she didn't. Nobody stopped Seth from sleeping outside that night, away from the Verdugo's tent—but not so far away he couldn't listen.

He lay on the lumpy ground and watched the stars while he pieced his next steps together. When, at the edge of hearing, Annalise in her tent began to snore, he stood up, quiet as he could (which was very quiet) and got dressed. He left the bedroll where it was. He wasn't built for sleeping outside, anyway. Stables again, then? Why not? It beat the belly of a seraph. He felt his feet take him to the carriage. He waited, like a hunter tending a trap, for that fucking pipsqueak Fox to say something.

But the maddening thing was silent. He teased the carriage door open. He wouldn't take much—he'd learned his lesson about robbing Verdugos. Only his gear and enough money to get him a meal and a cot in Laramme. From there he'd steal a horse from someone who couldn't fuck his life apart, and on he'd go, to wherever was next. Tiago was sleeping on one of the carriage benches, swaddled in furs and pillows, snoring up a storm. Sounded like his mother.

Ofelia— For the second time that day, he saw a place where something ought to be sleeping and wasn't. He turned from the carriage and saw her, a hundred paces away, sitting upon the ranch fence. She waved. He exhaled heavily, shut the carriage door, and crossed the field to her.

"Hello hello, Mr. il Gutierre," Ofelia called, as he approached.

"Trouble getting to bed?"

"I guess so," he said.

"Me, too. Would you care to sit with me and look at the sleepy cows? I find it helps." The jig was up, at least for tonight. Seth wasn't about to attack this poor kid to get what he needed. He forced himself into a frame of casual camaraderie and found a spot a few feet down the fence from her.

"Sure." The cattle lay in huddled groups, dreaming whatever dairy dreams they had. A calf, snuggled against its mother's splotchy stomach, twitched its ear as the fence creaked beneath Seth's weight.

"Was today the first time you saw a seraph?" Ofelia asked.

"First time that close," Seth said.

"I saw one in a field once, five or so years back, killing sheep. Pretty small. Like a horse. The hands scared it away with shotguns."

"A yellowfeather then, maybe," Ofelia said.

"If the guns worked."

"Maybe. Erheis killed it, I guess."

"No, he didn't," Ofelia said.

"We got Erheis's books. He hadn't killed a seraph in a decade or more. We call that kind of Verdugo a preacher. His only business is people on their knees."

"Well, we reported it." Seth tried to hide his annoyance.

"And someone killed it."

"Mmm." Ofelia kicked her feet.

"That's good." A field cricket churred into the silence that followed.

"You are wondering, I think, about Anna," Ofelia said.

"Not really," Seth lied.

"Just another head, right? A second head that's a second asshole." Ofelia smiled with patient humor.

"You're wondering why, I mean. You've seen how well Annalise fights. Why would she need another skull for seraphs, especially one as misbegotten as Anna?" He rested a foot on the fence's lower crossbar.

"I guess you have a theory?"

"Annalise uses Anna," Ofelia says, "because Annalise is afraid."

"Of seraphs?" Ofelia nodded.

"She's afraid of seraphs and of being afraid of seraphs." Seth watched the cows and didn't speak. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"A few years ago, we'd cornered one," Ofelia said, "and she had a… moment. Sort of like the episode you saw, but waking." Seth remembered the whimpering and the jerking.

"As bad as that?"

"Oh, it was horrible. She froze in the face of this stampeding redfeather. It only happened once, and it hasn't happened since, but it nearly killed her—it would have killed her."

"What saved her?"

"A murani seraph hunter named Nik saved her," Ofelia said.

"She worked with us for a season, half a decade ago. You've seen her face, but not the rest of her." Seth rubbed his face." She's Anna?"

"She's Anna's donor. That was her last hunt. She saved Annalise, but not herself. Told Mom with her dying breath to take her head and use it—said she wasn't finished killing seraphs." Ofelia smiled wanly.

"She was an asshole, but she was fun like that, sometimes. I'm glad a part of her is still around. And it really helped Mother, too. Not seeing her friend die, I mean, though we'd all joked about what a relief that'd be, one time or another, the way Nik was." Seth laughed humorlessly.

"But having a head to hunt seraphs helps her partition it," Ofelia said.

"Anna is a great tracker with an encyclopedic knowledge of them. She has purpose and drive and knowledge and viciousness. She's a place Annalise can fill up with the horrible stuff, so the rest of her can be okay." The stench of that place revisited Seth's mind, and he wished he had as separated a place to put it.

"Tiago's right, you know." Ofelia stared out into the dark.

"She's gotten a lot better. The first few years after her unlighting were not good. A bit ironic. The more heads she's managed to get, the more like herself she's become. But she's never once worn anything but Annalise to an execution. I wonder why sometimes."

"If you're in the mood for sharing secrets," Seth said.

"Who's the Verdugo she killed?" Ofelia had no outward reaction to the question.

"She mentioned it?"

"In passing," he said.

"I'm the only one still alive who heard it. What's the story?"

"The story isn't my place to tell, I'm afraid." She hopped from the fence.

"You'll have to ask her."

"Maybe I'll do that," he said. He knew he wouldn't, and though he tried to keep the knowing out of his voice, she turned in the night and looked at him closely.

"I know you're getting ready to leave," she said.

"I wasn't—""I won't stop you and I won't wake anyone up, though I can't let you take anything from the carriage but your own effects, I'm afraid. I don't imagine Annalise would chase you, once she found out."

"I'm not," he said.

"Where would I even go?"

"I lack the energy for a truth tasting, Seth," Ofelia said.

"So you'll have to forgive me if I'm wrong. Perhaps I'm just reading into you how I might be feeling, if I was you." He let out the rest of his breath on a loose raspberry and clammed up.

"It's a strange life," she said.

"And not an easy one. And Annalise is a strange person, though she tries not to be. But I think you should at least meet Lisa first."

"Lisa's another head?" Ofelia nodded.

"What's she like?"

"She's very nice. She's brassy." Ofelia tilted her head.

"I think you'll like her. I'm sure she'll like you."

"Well." Seth lowered himself from the fence.

"That'll be a nice change." Ofelia breathed a soft laugh.

"Thank you for speaking with me, Seth. I think we might be friends one day, which would be nice. I don't really have any at all, outside the Necropolis. Unless you count family. And what properly teenaged teenager would?" She gave him a brief wave from the hip.

"Good night." She meandered away from him, back to the carriage where her brother slept. The door opened and shut. The calf twitched again. The mother shifted; her tail rested across her baby's. Seth stayed a few more minutes like that, leaning on the fence, and then he returned to his bedroll and went to sleep.

"You want to say it?" Tiago drummed his fingers on the carriage's tarnished silver doorknob.

"It's pretty satisfying."

"I don't know the words like you do," Seth said.

"Yeah you do. Everyone does. Whatever, I'll take this one." Tiago opened the door and swung onto the carriage roof.

"Praise the Sorcerer General!" The pronouncement belted out across Laramme's gathered citizenry.

"Praise the Deathspell beneath which he shelters us! Praise the Verdugo and make way!" Through the carriage's frosted glass windowpane, Seth watched the crowd brace themselves.

"I thought you didn't come out from the carriage."

"I couldn't bring this yoke to a roadhouse." Annalise reached under her seat and tugged the thick, dripping black canvas bag from beneath it. Sik-Ersetim's cloven skull sat sodden within.

"Remember what happened last time I carted around body parts?" Her grin hitched.

"Just a joke, Seth. You know how I get."

"All good," Seth said.

"Go on." They still weren't talking very much, Seth and the Verdugo. He wasn't sure why; he supposed he was still angry at her, although it felt more like he should be angry and was unenthusiastically playing the part. Annalise just seemed like such a different person, despite her own insistence otherwise. A person Seth couldn't help but like. Chin up, il Gutierre. She'll put that asshole head on again one of these days and you'll have the rich opportunity to get pissed off all over again.

Annalise hiked the bag into her arms and stood from the seat. The door pulled open and the Verdugo's son/troubador gave a curt bow as she stepped from the carriage with a cheerful "Morning, all! Anyone want to see up a seraph's trachea?" Ofelia snapped her book shut and retrieved her slim saber from its hook.

"You can stay in the carriage, if you like."

"No, no. It's okay. I should get out there." Seth stretched out the knot in his lower back.

"I'll make myself useful and find us some dinner."

"Are you sure? It's Tiago's turn again. We could enjoy his wonderful crud."

"I think a roast chicken or something," Seth said.

"Yes?" Tiago retrieved the executioner blade.

"No complaints from me."

"This doesn't skip you, you know." Ofelia stepped from the carriage.

"Just moves your turn out."

"We'll see what mom says."

"I already know what she'll say. She'll say sure look Tiago don't be a lazy eejit ya wouldn't sleep in the same house as a shovel 'n it's yer turn tomarrah."

"You're shit at impressions." They bickered in whispered tones on their way toward the scaffold and their waiting mother. Seth opened the opposite carriage door—the one facing away from the gathered crowd and the scaffold and the cheerful Verdugo climbing onto it. With a quiet, measured pace, he wound round the carriage and into the gathering, and as Annalise spoke to the assembly, he did what he was best at.

Across the chasm of time and death, the echo of Rohan il Agante came dripping with genial malignancy: What else are you good for, Seth il Gutierre? He went thieving.