Chương 6: Sister Ashveil

The market district smelled of fish and copper and the particular sweetness of vegetables beginning to turn. Keth walked between stalls with Aurelian at his side, Elian trailing behind. Voss had sent them for supplies-salt, oil, bandages-a rare outing, air that didn't taste of sweat and training yard dust. The commander was at the garrison, filing reports, probably sleeping in a chair. His hand had been worse this morning. The shaking visible even when he tried to hide it. Probably overuse of his echo.

"So," Aurelian said, "this is the famous market."

"You're from here," Keth said.

"Was from here, this got to the barracks. Then Voss's yard." Aurelian stopped at a stall selling apples, picked one up, examined the bruise on its side, put it back.

"Haven't exactly been sightseeing."

"It's Commander Voss" Keth corrected. The market ran along the harbor road, stalls pressed shoulder-to-shoulder under awnings of patched canvas. Fishmongers shouted prices over barrels of silver herring, their knives flashing as they gutted the morning catch and tossed the offal to cats that wove between customers' legs. A woman sold bread from a cart, slicing loaves with a wire, the smell of yeast mixing with the harbor rot. Children ran between the stalls carrying messages, coins, small packages wrapped in cloth.

A soldier in Census black haggled over the price of rope, his voice rising, the merchant's voice rising higher, both knowing the soldier would win but the merchant needing to pretend otherwise.

"Salt," Keth said, reading Voss's list.

"Then oil. Then bandages."

"Salt's that way." Aurelian pointed toward the harbor, where the fish smell was strongest.

"Oil's near the bread. Bandages..." He looked around, shrugged.

"Someone's selling them somewhere. We can ask." They walked. The crowd was thick. There were housewives with baskets, laborers with empty hands, a group of Unmarked conscripts in training grays, their heads shaved, their eyes which were too wide. One of them stared at Keth's scar. Keth stared back. The conscript looked away.

"Famous," Aurelian said, grinning.

"Shut up." Aurelian laughed, loud enough that a fishmonger looked up, mildly annoyed, then went back to his knives. They found the salt stall near the water, the merchant an old woman with hands swollen from decades of brine. She weighed the salt on a scale with a bent arm, squinted at the measurement, added a pinch more with her thumb.

"For Voss," Keth said.

"The commander?" The old woman's eyes narrowed.

"He owe me from last month."

"He sent us with exact coin." Keth counted it out, the copper warm from his pocket.

"Said to tell you the debt's cleared." She took the coin, bit one, nodded. Wrapped the salt in paper that smelled of fish and handed it over.

"Tell him the pink salt's coming next week. It's better for wounds. Stings less""I'll tell him," Keth said, though he doubted Voss would listen. They bought oil from a thin man with a stutter who measured it into a clay jug, his hands steady even when his voice caught. They bought bandages from a woman who sold them alongside needles and thread, who looked at Keth's scar and offered a salve "for the healing," free of charge. Keth declined. She insisted.

He took it, tucked it into his pocket, felt the weight of her pity and didn't know what to do with it.

"That's everything," Aurelian said.

"Unless you want to browse. Maybe buy a nice hat. Something with feathers."

"I don't wear hats."

"You should. Hats are mysterious. Scar plus hat equals intriguing stranger."

"I'm fifteen."

"Fifteen and intriguing. Not mutually exclusive." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Elian stopped. Keth turned. His brother stood in the middle of the street, looking at something across the way. A cart rolled past, the driver shouting, and Elian didn't move, he watched something in the distance.

"What?" Keth asked.

"That," Elian said. Across the street, past the fish barrels and the bread cart and the arguing soldier, a woman sat cross-legged on a wooden crate. She wore ash-gray robes and had her head covered in some black colored cloth, she had no shoes, her feet black with street dirt. Her eyes were different colors... one brown, one clouded white. She wasn't shouting. She spoke to a crowd of three, her voice low and steady, almost conversational, the words drifting through the market noise like smoke through a window.

"The Hunger ate the world," she said.

"Then it ate itself. Then the First Corpse was born. We are the mold on the Corpse's skin. The mold does not know it lives on a body. The mold thinks it is the world."

"Street preacher," Aurelian said. He had an apple in his hand, Keth didn't know when he'd stolen it.

"Church of the Last Meal or something. Crazy people talking to crazier people." But Elian didn't move. He watched her with the calm he watched everything, but something else too. Recognition? Keth couldn't tell.

"Come on," Keth said.

"Voss wants supplies before noon."

"Wait," Elian said. He walked toward her. Normal steps, weaving between a fishmonger and a child with a message pouch, just a boy crossing a street. Keth followed. Aurelian followed Keth, taking a bite of his apple, then spitting it. It was sour. The crowd of three was leaving as they approached. One dropped a coin in the woman's bowl. She didn't acknowledge it. She kept speaking, her voice the same low register, like she was talking to herself and letting others listen.

"We are not the first life," she said.

"We are the digestion of the first life. The First Corpse was whole once. Then it was eaten. Then it was scattered. Now it tries to remember itself. It sends signs. It sends hunger. She looked up. Her brown eye found Keth. Her white eye found Elian. She didn't move her head. Just her gaze, split between them, seeing two things at once.

"You," she said to Keth.

"You smell like the original sin."

"I don't know what that means," Keth said.

"Of course not. No one does. That's why it's original." She reached into her robe and pulled out something small. A seed, black and wrinkled, the size of a fingernail.

"Plant it. See if it grows." Keth took it. The seed was warm, almost hot, like it had been sitting in sunlight. But the day was gray.

"Why?" Keth asked.

"Because you need to learn what grows here. And what burns." She turned to Elian. Her white eye fixed on his face, unblinking, the clouded iris moving slightly, tracking something Keth couldn't see.

"The boy who walks through doors," she said.

"The boy who carries weight he cannot name." Elian didn't smile and didn't speak. He looked at her, calm as ever, and Keth saw his hands were clasped in front of him, the knuckles white.

"You don't know what I am," Elian said. It wasn't a question.

"I know you are tired," she said.

"I know you are trying to be ordinary. I know something in you is pulling, and you are pulling back, and neither of you is winning." She reached out, not touching him, her hand hovering near his shoulder.

"I do not know its name. But I know it is heavy. And I know you are brave to carry it." She lowered her hand. Her face changed. The calm cracked. Tears started down her cheeks, slow and silent, like rain on stone.

"I am sorry," she whispered.

"I am sorry for what you carry. I am sorry that I cannot take it. I am sorry that no one can." Slowly the tears stopped,"I'm Sister Ashveil, from the church of the last meal. If you are in trouble or have questions meet me there" Then, She stood fast, unsteady, her bare feet slipping on the crate. She stepped down into the street, ash-gray robes swirling, and walked away without looking back. The crowd was gone. The street was empty where she had been, except for the bowl with its single coin.

Aurelian let out a breath.

"Okay. That was... that was something."

"She was crying," Keth said.

"Yeah. That's the part that worries me." Aurelian picked up the coin from the bowl, examined it, dropped it back.

"Crazy people don't cry like that. Crazy people cry for attention. She cried like she was mourning." Elian was still watching the street where she had disappeared. His face was the mask again, but his hands were still clasped, still white.

"Elian," Keth said.

"She knew I was tired," Elian said.

"That's all. She saw a tired boy and she felt sorry for him."

"She said more than that."

"She said what she saw." Elian turned to Keth. The brown eyes were still Elian's eyes, still his brother. But something moved behind them, something that had not been there four weeks ago.

"She saw me pulling. She didn't know what I'm pulling against. Neither do I."

"You're still Elian," Keth said.

"Yes," Elian said. He walked toward the salt stall. Keth stood in the street, the seed hot in his palm, and watched his brother's back, and did not know what to say. Aurelian nudged him.

"Come on. Before Voss sends a search party."

"Yeah," Keth said. They walked back through the market, past the fish barrels and the bread cart and the arguing soldier who had finally won his rope. The crowd had thickened, the morning rush in full swing, and they moved against it, three boys in coats too big, carrying supplies for a man who was trying to keep them alive. They reached Voss's house. The yard was empty, the training post standing alone in the dirt. Keth went to the corner where the rain barrel sat and planted the seed in the earth beside it.

He didn't know why. The woman had said to, and he didn't have a better reason not to. It didn't grow. In the evening Keth had asked about the original sin from Voss,"It's just a superstition those crazy bastards from that church follow nothing else" he said. That night, Keth woke to the sound of humming. Not his mother's. Something else. A low, tuneless sound, like wind through a broken flute. He sat up. The room was dark, the hearth embers dead. Across the room, Elian's mattress was empty.

Keth found him in the yard. Elian stood by the rain barrel, barefoot, his nightshirt thin against the cold. He was looking at the ground where Keth had planted the seed. The dirt was undisturbed. Nothing had grown. But Elian was humming.

"Elian," Keth said. His brother turned. The humming stopped. His face was calm, blank. But his eyes were wrong. The pupils were too large, swallowing the brown, and they didn't focus on Keth. They focused on something behind him, or above him, or inside him.

"You're sleepwalking again," Keth said.

"Am I?" Elian looked at his bare feet, at the dirt, at his hands.

"I suppose I am."

"Come back to bed."

"In a moment."

"Elian."

"I said in a moment, Keth." Not sharp. The way he ended conversations. But then, softer: "I was dreaming about her. The woman from the market. She was standing in a doorway. Humming. Like mother used to."

"She's not our mother."

"No. But she was crying. And in the dream, I understood why." Elian looked at the seed, at the dirt, at the wall beyond the yard.

"She was crying because she knew I was pulling against something. And she knew I would get tired. And she knew that when I get tired, I might stop pulling."

"Stop pulling what?"

"I don't know yet. But I'll know when the time comes." He turned and walked toward the house, his feet leaving prints in the dew-wet dirt.

"Don't tell Voss. He has enough to worry about."

"Elian—""Please, Keth." Keth stood in the yard, alone, and listened to his brother's footsteps fade into the house. The wall stood beyond the yard, black against the stars. The seed did not grow. He touched the scar on his face. The dead tissue felt nothing but the living tissue around it felt everything.