Seeklight

“What’s a day?” mumbled the obese figure on his equine. “The damn kid’s old enough—why should we wait? Come on,” he whined, “let’s get on with it.”

“The Regent’s orders,” intoned the Lady Marche, “said that for seventeen years the son of the old thane would be protected.

The Regent would be interested to hear how you heed his wishes.”

“Who’s going to tell him?” blustered the subthane. He glared at the old woman but looked away after a few seconds of her sharp gaze in return. “All right, then,” he said, jerking on his equine’s reins and wheeling the animal around. He pointed to one of his men. “You—stay here with them. To make sure they’re here,” he glared over his shoulder at Daenek and the woman, “when we return in the morning.”

The trail through the fields erupted into dust as the men rode away from the house in its little clearing. The guard left behind glanced at the Lady Marche and Daenek with a smoldering hostility submerged somewhere beneath his narrow, hard-planed face. He dismounted from his equine, then walked to the edge of the field and stamped a wooden stake into the ground with his boot. When the equine was securely tied—it seemed to be always trembling in a state of constant hysteria—the guard pulled something wrapped in cloth from one of the pouches on the saddle.

“C’mere,” the guard called, but Daenek remained where he was standing, with the Lady Marche a couple of meters behind him in the doorway. The guard crossed the space between them and held out the object, nested in the unfolded cloth. “Know what this is?” he said. “Don’t touch it.”

Daenek looked at the man’s extended hand. “It’s a gun.” An old one, he thought. The kind that shoots metal bullets, like in the old stories in the books. A very old one. Maybe so old that—

“Uh-uh, I know what you’re thinking,” said the guard. His eyes darted to the Lady Marche and then back to Daenek. “But it works. One of the last ones around here that does.” A note of childish boasting tinged his voice as he picked at one of the rust specks on the long barrel. “And I know how to use it, too.”

Threatening. “So don’t try running, boy. Or 111 drop you.”

Silent, Daenek turned and walked back to the house. The Lady Marche put her hand on his shoulder but he pushed it away and stepped beside her into the dark interior.

Stepke’s books weighed in his hands like stones. The words on the pages flowed over his eyes like water, leaving nothing behind.

He put the last faded volume on top of the pile and leaned back against the wall of his room. My father spoke that language, he thought. And all the others. A sense of loss opened inside him, like a phantom heart. It’ll end with me—no one will know all those words again. Regret, but no fear, moved inside him when he thought of the coming morning.

He heard the Lady Marche calling him from downstairs. With a sigh, he got to his feet and walked to the stairway. She was waiting for him at the bottom step.

“Go to the kitchen,” she said. Her voice was firmer, as if from several years ago, but the muscles of her face were still tight and the skin moist with fever. She supported herself on her silver-headed stick.

Puzzled, Daenek turned and saw the subthane’s guard sitting in the front doorway, his back against the frame and his eyes watching the little scene with suspicion. It had been more than an hour since the others had left, but the guard still had his gun cocked and ready in one hand, cradling the weight of its barrel in his other.

“Go on,” she said. He glanced at her eyes, but they were unreadable. Slowly, he moved towards the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” called the guard, leaning forward.

“It is a day like any other,” said the Lady Marche, “and people become hungry.” She walked over to the guard and looked down at him. “Would you like something to eat?” she asked stiffly.

The guard started to scramble upright, grasping the door frame with his free hand and pushing himself up from the floor with the hand holding the gun. “Yeah, maybe some—” he began, when the Lady Marche suddenly moved.

Daenek saw the blur of motion from the corner of his eye. He spun about in the kitchen doorway and saw the end of the arc the silver-headed stick drew through the air. Its point did not crack across the guard’s face, but noiselessly laid itself against the skin of his cheek. There was a sharp, loud noise, an explosion of light reddened with blood, and the guard crumpled away from the stick. A fragment of a howling noise was choked off in his throat.

Daenek, frozen where he stood and not yet comprehending, watched the little wisp of smoke, faint in the sunlight from beyond the door, emerge from the stick’s point and dissipate into the air. The Lady Marche turned her face, now looking very old and tired, towards him.