Ammonite

“I showed her the ways of the Death Spirit, I showed her I was worthy. I ignored all her pleas and killed her slowly, one piece at a time. One piece at a time.” She seemed to shake herself back to the present. “So why have you come? To test me again?”

One morning when Marghe was eight and running through the door on her way to play outside in a hot, steamy rainfall, her mother had caught her by the arm and told her she could not play until she had tidied her room. Marghe had pulled free and said plaintively, “But I already did that.” She must have sounded a lot like Uaithne did.

Unthinkingly, she said the same thing now as her mother had said then. “I don’t believe you.” But she did.

Uaithne dipped her bloody hand in a pocket and pulled free something that glittered in the sunlight. Marghe reached out reflexively and took it. After so long handling only bone and wood and leather, the metal felt slick and slippery.

A wristcom. Broken.

“See, the same as the one you wear.”

Marghe examined the wristcom. No way to tell whose. Fear pushed at her guts like an expanding bubble of air. “When did you take this? How long ago?”

Uaithne shrugged. “Sixteen moons, perhaps less.”

Winnie. She had killed Winnie. “You killed my assistant.” She was angry now.

Uaithne shrugged again. “I cut off her fingers, then her toes, but she kept testing me, threatening me with the light-killing demons on rafts, to see if I would stop. So I cut off her arms, to show I was worthy—”

Marghe shook her head, trying to shake the world away, but the sun stayed in the same place, her breath still steamed in the cold, this woman was still talking about murdering Winnie Kimura, torturing her to death.

“—she died squealing like a two-day-old foal until I cut out her tongue. She lived a long time. You send strong messengers.”

Deep breaths. In. Out. “I sent no one,” she said, then remembered she had just told Uaithne that Winnie was her assistant.

Uaithne smiled slyly. “She said you would come, and here you are. You almost fooled me, too, coming on a horse instead of a raft. But I know who you are. I’ve met you before.” She shifted the knife to her other hand. Blood stained the hilt. A ritual cadence crept into her words. “You have spoken to me in my waking dreams, for I have tranced and I have seen Death. Now we are in a living trance, and you have come. Speak to me, sing to me, tell me what you need of me.”

Madness and worship glittered in her eyes like chips of ice, and Marghe was afraid. Fear spiked under her ribs and fluttered under her skin. Sweat burst out on her face and began to freeze.

“Marghe.” The voice came from behind her. Marghe only dared turn her head slightly. Aoife was standing there empty-handed, balanced like a dancer, ready, eyes fixed on the knife in Uaithne’s bloody hand. “You are not needed here, Marghe,” she said softly, still not moving. Uaithne was swaying now. “Go help Borri in the yurti.”

Marghe backed away slowly, out of reach and out of earshot, until her legs threatened to give way and she had to stop. Aoife spoke to her soestre softly, moved a step closer. Uaithne stopped swaying and Marghe wondered what she had said. Aoife rested her hand gently on Uaithne’s arm, still speaking. She pointed to the taars. Uaithne nodded, listening. Aoife talked on. Uaithne smiled, clapped her hand on Aoife’s back, returned her knife to its sheath almost as an afterthought. She laughed and walked away. Aoife joined Marghe.

They walked back to the yurti in silence. Marghe was perturbed by her sense of security in Aoife’s presence, recognizing the feeling for what it was: the passing of responsibility for her personal safety from herself to Aoife. That scared her almost as much as Uaithne had.

She dreamed of the cull: red knives flicking, blood pumping over well-muscled arms wrapped around the necks of terrified taars and running into clay pots. Only fill them half-full, Aoife said, or the pots will break when they freeze. And Uaithne picking up a bowl, nodding to her and smiling, and drinking, drinking until sticky red poured down her chin, slicked her furs, began to fill the tent like a dark whirlpool. Learn to swim, Uaithne whispered, learn to swim, and the children of the Echraidhe laughed and splashed and played as the blood rose higher and higher until it lapped thickly at her chin.

Marghe surged up out of her nightbag, panting. Everyone was asleep. The hearth still glowed; the inside of the tent was red and full of other people’s breath. She groped in the dim light for her overfurs.

It was snowing, a soft, silent fall. She walked away from the yurtu, away from the pens, past the Levarch’s tent, until she was alone in the dark quiet. Soon it would be time for the days of dark—nine days of twilight. She hated Tehuantepec.