BLOOD SPACE
I

     On the air was the smell of smoke. Alys was dirty with it.

     How long had she been walking? The way back was a shroud of fog. The path ahead steep and rocky. Her heels and calves and back were blooms of fire. Not far now. Not far now to the mountain's windy peak.

     A sudden gust. It went through her like a ghost. And another. Now and then the gusts would worry the fog below and she would see black desert stretched out forever. Stones shining in the gravel. Far away the warm glow of a city.

     She cursed Fenris for dragging her here. It felt like retribution though she knew that was to come; retribution flickered in her future like the shine of a sun-licked blade. She stopped, caught her breath, hugged her furs close as the wind whipped by, and thought of the village, of Willum, of their daughter Elia. She sighed.

     Near the peak the fog thinned out and Alys found Fenris stood at a cliff edge, staring down. Serensestra - the blue sun - shivered like a coin above.

     "Alys." His voice was as she remembered. Flat. Cold. He turned to her. Pale. His face harsh and angled.

     Alys almost spat. "What have they done to you?" By the blue light he was corpse-like. "Was it worth it?"

     "Alys be kind." He sniffed the air. "Do you smell that?"

     "Of course I do."

     "Smoke."

     "The festival."

     "A thousand fires," said Fenris, "and dancing and songs, and when Serensestra wanes you'll send your loved ones off to die."

     Alys shook her head. "Not me. Not Willum."

     "They'll come for you. Eventually."

     Alys looked past Fenris, saw the distant flicker of fires. And on the wind was the ghost of drums, chimes, songs. This was a grey day. Grey fog and grey smoke. Bundled clouds like steel wool. Beyond the fires the sea was dull as solder except where the white peaks foamed.

     Alys was tired. Her body ached for warmth. "Have you got what I came for?"

     Fenris smiled. There was a sadness in him. Alys felt it was for her. When he came forward, and Alys reached out, he took her by the hand. "I'm sorry," he said. "For what we did. For what it's done to you and -"

     She pulled away. "The scroll, Fenris."

     He nodded. Took it from beneath his robes. "Don't hate me for this...for what I let them do, I -"

     Alys scoffed. "Don't tell me you had no choice."

     "Oh I had a choice, Alys. But this is Blood Space. The brotherhood -"

     Alys snatched the scroll. "I don't hate you," she said. "I pity you."

     Fenris winced. The words had wounded him. "I hope you find what you're looking for," he said. "Truly I do." He collapsed into a bundle of robes, and the robes ripped upwards and became a winged thing, and the thing took to the sky.

     Despite the cold, Alys watched as Fenris dwindled in the grey distance. She thought of the Huntahn Brotherhood, of their Star Crypts hung high above the clouds, and dreamt of setting them ablaze. She turned and began her slow descent.

     By the time she had reached flat ground Alys was close to collapse. Her feet were bundles of pain, her shoulders like anvils at her back. As she neared her village the fog cleared. The air was thick with the chatter of the festival and the godlike groan of drums.

     The village was ramshackle. Black mud roads wet with recent rain. An abandoned cart. Here and there were tiny tin shacks, hung with trinkets, clothes to dry, doors bent and swinging and riddled with holes. The odd domicile, towering and wooden, rose behind the wet tin roofs. A few were draped in Huntahn banners, blood red and sodden.

     She soldiered on, found Willum waiting on the threshold. He ran to her. It was all she could do not to fall in to his arms. "Good work," he said, and kissed her.

     She ran a hand through his hair. "Where is she?"

     "Asleep. By the fire."

     Alys was inside. A small room. A flickering hearth. She went to it and stabbed the fire, spread the embers, closed the grill to choke it out. The room was plunged into darkness. "Not the fire Will," she said. "I said not the fire."

     She looked to Elia's cot. Still and silent. A stark black cage.

     Willum lit a candle by the stove. "I'm sorry, Alys. I forgot."

     Alys sighed. She found a chair. "It's fine. Here..." She handed him the scroll. "I got it."

     "Fenris, is he -"

     "Turned. But he wished us well."

     Willum stared blankly for a while. "Do you want to do it?"

     Alys looked to Elia. Nothing. She took the scroll and broke the seal. A letter fluttered out. Willum picked it up and read: "I pray to the night-god Lamashtu you get what you need from this. You may despise me for what I have done. I did what I needed to survive. I know you..." Willum paused. Cleared his throat. "I know you of all people will understand this. I wish I could do more, but I pale in comparison to the power of the Huntahn Night Brothers. I am nothing compared to them. Good luck. Fenris."

     Alys smiled. If Fenris were nothing, what did that make her? "We should burn that," she said. "If a Night Brother finds out he helped us..."

     Willum nodded. "Yeah."

     Alys unravelled the scroll. Yellowed parchment. Ancient black writing. "This is just swirls," she said. "I can't. Can you read this?"

     Willum took it. Frowned. "I could ask the pellar, or..." He scratched his head. "Or there's an apothecary in -"

     "No, no." Alys stood, took back the scroll. "We have to keep this between us. Just us."

     "But Alys -"

     "I don't know the punishment for this sort of thing? Do you?"

     Willum's mouth hung open. He took the seat behind Alys, looking boneless and collapsed.

     Alys screwed the parchment in her hands and said, "Let's just eat. Let's eat and figure this out later."

     Willum stood slowly. He put his hands on her shoulders. "Good idea, Alys," he said, kneading gently.

     Willum went to the kitchen. Alys still wore her furs so she took them off and hung them. Heavy and damp and stinking of smoke. She took a seat and locked her eyes on the cot. A black cot, barely lit. The candle behind it was more living. It made the dark room dance.

     Alys rubbed her eyes and felt herself drifting. No. When she slept she felt a dark thing hanging over her. She went instead to the kitchen, left the cot alone to suck at the life and the light. "Need any help?"

     Willum smiled when he saw her. "You could get the knives out for me."

     The knives. She took from the hook a ring of keys, unlocked the cabinet, stretched up and found the lockbox, brought it to the kitchen table. A red rusted lockbox. Military grade. She opened it with another tiny key and took out the bundle of cloth. She unravelled it. The knives flared.

     She stared for a while. There was blood in the future of these knives. Blood and tears.

     Willum was at her side. "Thank you, A."

     They ate slowly, sparingly, mantis meat and lettuce that was meek and sun-starved. All the while she thought of the symbols. The useless symbols.

     Willum put his knife down. "Maybe we should contact Fenris again. He-"

     "No," said Alys. "No. We can't risk it."

     "Then what, Alys? We can't read that scroll. How is it supposed to help us? Help Elia?"

     "We'll think of something."

     "You can't just keep saying that."

     Alys put her fork down hard. It rang off the plate. "I don't know, Willum, okay? I don't know. I'm doing my fucking best."

     Silence for a while. Willum pushed his food around his plate. "Sorry..."

     "No." Alys sighed. "No. I'm sorry."

     Willum had the scroll again. He unravelled it. Stared for a while. "Maybe there's something in one of the books."

     They had collected books, tattered tombs on the occult, on black magic, on the worship of daemons. "It's...not a bad idea." Alys took the scroll. Rivers of ink - rolls and winds - black and impenetrable. "Maybe -"

     "Mummy?" Elia's voice. Alys and Willum locked eyes and Willum's eyes showed nothing though Alys knew there was a terror in his gut. She knew it because it was in her, too; a cold broiling terror.

     "Mummy?" Elia's voice. But another voice as well. Dark and deep. A dark brown voice like a creature taught to talk.

     They got up together and went to her.

     Elia stood candlelit in her cot. Her shadow a huge black smear behind her. Alys shoved the scroll to Willum, pierced him with her eyes. "Hide it." She went to Elia. "Yeah Elia. I'm here." About the child was a pocket of cold. It stood Alys' little hairs on end. She ignored it, swept a strand of sweat-damp hair from her daughter's head, and said, "You need to go back to sleep little one."

     Elia frowned. "Why is the fire out?"

     Alys flicked her eyes to the hearth. A pit of blackness. Because I am afraid what you might do, she wanted to say, I am afraid of fire and blades and hot water and deep water and wind and rain and...

     But she said, "It was just...It was too warm. We lit a candle instead, see?"

     The candle went out.

     Willum was back and he came to the cot and took Elia's hand and said, "We'll put the fire back on, don't you worry Elia. You go back to sleep and we'll put the fire back on."

     "No," said Alys. "We won't."

     Everything stopped. Willum looked at her. Elia looked at her too, with dark eyes.

     Then she slapped her.

     Alys fell back with a crack, sent a little table scuttling. For a moment she was lost, her head swimming, the feel of her daughter's hand aglow on her cheek like a brand. Willum was shouting. Elia was crying. Alys turned, saw her daughter's shadow was a spindly black thing, looming, with claws and antlers and the cone of a snout. And then it was gone; it dashed across the wall and out of sight.

     Now Elia was sobbing. Alys found her feet, half-crawled to the cot, swept her daughter up and felt her shirt soak up the tears. "Sssh. There, there." Alys bobbed on the spot. Elia shivered, brittle as a leaf. "Sssh, sssh. It's alright."

     Willum was there too. He wrapped his arms round them both. "It's alright," he whispered. "It's alright now."

     It wasn't. Alys' eyes flicked from corner to corner, shadow to shadow, from the black panes of the windows to the glow of the kitchen. There had been a thing in Elia. It was gone from her now. Gone from Elia, but not from the house.

     Never from the house.

 

     Alys sat and held Elia for a while. Her cheek throbbed. That had been the strike of a man, of a beast. Alys felt it in her neck and in her gums.

     Willum was making up the cot. He looked over. "You alright?"

     Alys nodded, whispered, "She's drifting off."

     "Bring her here."

     No warmth where Elia was. Just a cold bundle like a wrapped-up ceramic.

     Alys stood slowly, and as she lay her daughter down she felt the white-hot pang of guilt. Everything she did was machine-like. She was a mother machine, laying her daughter down, stroking back a strand of hair, kissing her because it was her task. It was all a task. She did not love Elia and it ate at her. It twisted in her gut like a blade.

     Elia was sleeping. "I'll get the books," Willum said.

     They went to the kitchen. Alys gathered up the knives and wrapped them and shoved them away. Willum brought a stack of books and they hit the table with a thud.

     "Where do we start?"

     "I guess just flick through them," said Alys. "Try and find a symbol that matches."

     They lay out the scroll and took a book each. On Dark Secrets, Alys read. It was leather-bound. She ran her hand over the cover. No dust.

     Willum had a big black book before him. He held it up. "What about this?"

     A hex, faded to grey. Alys checked the scroll. "Not here."

     On Dark Secrets held nothing of use. Each page a block of text more ponderous than the last. She scanned Grendel's Grimoire, Vampyre Bloodlines, Elder Reole's On the Five Points of Nees, and a battered old tomb with too ragged a cover to read. As they read, the last of the evening's blue light waned, and when it was too dark to see Alys fell back in her chair with a huff. "This is useless. We're never going to -"

     "Here," said Willum.

     He held up a little book with pages of tanned skin. A circle etched in blood-red ink with three dots at its centre. Alys recognised it; it appeared on the scroll not once but three times. "Yes! What does it say?"

     Willum bit his lip. "It's...It's in Old Yord."

     Alys' heart sank. "Fuck it."

     "Alys, the pellar will be able to -"

     "No Willum. It's too dangerous."

     He leant forward. "Alys if we can get rid of this thing and save Elia, surely it's worth it." Alys said nothing. Willum laughed. "What sort of a life is this Alys? This isn't living. I would risk this - this thing we have here - for a chance at helping Elia, wouldn't you?"

     It was a jagged question. It burrowed deep. Alys pictured Elia dying, cold porcelain Elia and her face collapsing and her tiny fingers curling up like little shrimp. Alys felt the sting of tears. Oh, Willum, beautiful Willum who had been with her since childhood, who had kissed her in the rain by the great Arch of Aoceles, before Serensestra and black mountains and devil-books, who had put a baby in her that was not a baby but a poisonous black seed. What in the name of all the million gods did he expect her to say? He wanted a lie; he wanted her to say that she loved their daughter more than him but the words were a syrup in her throat. And Alys knew that if the time came and the black sands of Serensestra opened up and the red pit churning churning churning asked for a sacrifice she would drop Elia in a heartbeat. Willum safe and by her side. Her daughter into depths of fire.  

     "Yes," she said, and wiped a tear from her cheek.

     But it was not enough for Willum. "Alys," he said. He cleared his throat. "Alys, do you mean that?"

     Alys looked at him. She pleaded with her eyes not to make her say it. But he did. "No," she said. "I don't. I...I don't -"

     Willum fell back in his chair. "You don't what?" he asked sternly.

     "I don't love her," she whispered.

     Silence. Silence that was suffocating and Alys thought to break it, but with what? An apology? Willum was pale, as pale as Fenris had been. He closed the book before him.

     Alys took his hand. "Willum, I -"

     Thud thud thud. A thud at the door that filled the house. The door shaking in its wooden frame. Thud thud thud. Alys darted to the door and left Willum slumped at the table like a corpse. Behind the door a baby cried, and a woman too.

     "Hello?" the woman said. "Oh gods. Hello? Is there anyone in there?"

     Alys looked to Willum. He showed her nothing.

     "Who are you?" Alys asked. "What do you want?"

     The baby cried. The woman was crying too now, and the cries mingled in to something cold and sharp. "Please," she said through sobs. "They're coming. They're coming for her, for my baby, please, you have to -"

     Alys felt a shock of cold.

     Willum was up and by her side. "The brotherhood?" he asked.

     "Yes," came the voice, "yes yes the festival, my baby, they're going to take her!"

     Alys had her eyes on the door. The only thin thing between a world of chaos. She placed her palm to the wood. "Willum we can't -"

     "Alys you know what they'll do if -"

     "They'll do worse to us all if we help her."

     "Stop it." Willum batted her hand away. "We're helping her."

     Alys pressed herself to the door. "We can't."

     Thud thud thud. "Pleaaaaaaaase." The thuds rang through Alys. And the cry. "Just take my baby, just take her, I'll fight them off, I'll -"

     "I'm sorry," Alys said. She had wanted to sound stern but her voice had faltered. "I'm sorry we can't help you."

     Then Willum had her shoulders and was shoving her aside. Alys lost her feet and fell to the ground. When she looked back the door was open, and now she was rushing to the kitchen, her body like a liquid, like an alien thing, and the cabinet was open and the lockbox down and she was running to the threshold, watching a woman and a baby piling in, all wrapped in wet rags, and she was pointing a knife like a gun. "Get out," she said through gritted teeth.

     Willum stepped forward. She turned to him, knife up. "Back Willum," she said.

     "Alys what -"

     "Back!"

     She pushed forward. Pushing the woman back out in to the night. The world outside a sheet of blackness except where the moon caught the rain. They stepped in to the mud together. Smoke. Distant drums and distant screams. Somewhere far off the brotherhood were picking for themselves those they would feast on.

     "I'm sorry," Alys said, though she wasn't, not really, not if it were a choice between this and her house aflame, her and Willum two black corpses led out like driftwood.

     The woman fell to her knees. Her face wet with tears. "Please, I beg you -" Her daughter writhed in her arms. The woman held her out like an offering. "Please..."

     Alys trembled. The knife wobbled. In the darkness doors were opening, and in the yellow glows were the black shafts of people. At the end of the street were two dark figures. Night Brothers.

     Alys gestured away with the knife. "Go," she said. "Go."

     The woman was shaking her head, muttering, sniffing, pleading.

     Alys took her by the shoulder and pulled her to her feet. As she did the woman thrust her baby in to Alys' arms. Alys stepped back. The baby fell from the nest of arms and landed in the mud. The woman cried out, dropped to her knees again, grabbed at her baby that was all black and shining.

     The figures in the darkness grew larger.

     Alys stepped back with the knife raised up. "The brotherhood," she said. "They're here. Run."

     The woman was still. The baby writhed and wailed in her arms. For a moment Alys thought the woman meant to die here, that as some sick punishment she would be forced to watch the Night Brothers shove their swords through her and carry the baby to be drained and discarded. Then she was up, shaking and sobbing, and she ran, took her baby into the night.

     Alys fell back through the door and slammed it shut. She let the knife clang to the floor. She wiped the rain from her eyes.

     "It had to be done," she said, pressing her forehead to the door. Willum said nothing. The muted rap of the rain was the only sound. "It had to be done."

     "Okay, Alys."

     Willum went to the kitchen and Alys heard a chair scrape and the sound of closing books. She went to the window and saw only darkness.  

 

     They didn't speak that evening. Willum went to bed and Alys sat by the cot and tried to read. She couldn't read; she chose one of Elia's books, Tales from the Old House, but she felt eyes watching her from the shadows. She turned a page and in the quiet scrape she thought she heard whispers. She set the book down and watched Elia. Shallow breathing. A little hiss with each breath. Alys sighed.

     She did not remember falling asleep but she dreamt of their home before Serensestra. A pink sea under shafts of sun. Yellow sun. Their life a long yellow thing sprawling out like a cat. She woke up and cried. She cried as quietly as she could, and for a long while.

     When she was done she wiped her tired eyes and went to see Elia in her cot. Her tiny dependant. She could build a palace for her on some world of always sunshine. She could pick her up and walk into the sea with her and let her go into the black foam. No god or man would stop her. Instead she went to bed, found a place beside Willum. And Willum, in his sleeping, turned and wrapped her in his arms, kissed her neck in that drunken way, sighed a sigh that was full of peace.

     A sound in the darkness. A rustle. Rats in the walls? Nails on wood? Alys stiffened, dared not move. Now she heard the pad of bare feet on the floor. Her heart thrummed like a bell. Not rats or rain but the beast that was her daughter.

     She jumped up. "Willum!"

     Willum was on his feet. This was a scene well rehearsed. "Elia?" he asked, bleary eyed.

     Alys said nothing. All around was pressing darkness. Then Willum lit a candle and the room flickered to life.

      Something clattered in the kitchen. The knives. Without a thought Alys was running, running naked through the house with Willum at her side. "Wait! Alys! Wait!" She did not think of the cold on her skin or the colder cut a blade could make.

     The lockbox had been ripped open. It sat - like a maw, like a trap - on the kitchen table, empty but for the tattered remnants of a cloth. No Elia. Willum had the candle in hand and he thrust forward, batting back the darkness. Now they both stood naked and waiting for a knife to find them.

     "Elia?" Alys called.

     Willum turned. His face bright by the candlelight. "Get back to our room Alys."

     "Don't be stupid."

     "Please, Alys, now, I -"

     "I'm not leaving you here," she said. "Anything she'd do to me she'll do to you too."

     Willum shook his head."I'm not worried what she'll do to you."

     Alys frowned. "What?"

     He stepped forward. "I'm worried what you'll do to her."

     She had no time to respond. Elia came at them from the darkness, bounding on all fours like a demented dog. "Willum look out!" She pushed him backwards as Elia leapt, face twisted and orange, mouth agape, tongue limp like seaweed, like a fish. Willum fell backwards and the candle faltered and in the dark was a deafening wail.  

     Alys was on the ground and Elia was atop her, strong as a man. Alys could see the flash of teeth, eyes like egg whites, and then the flicker of a point. A knife. It came down and found Alys' shoulder and she screamed. The knife rose again. Alys held up her hands. Not my eyes, she thought, Willum loves my eyes.

     Willum! He came out of the darkness and grabbed Elia and lifted her up, knife thrashing, and threw her across the kitchen. She slid over the table, clattered to the floor with the twisted lockbox. "Quick," he said.

     Alys found his hand and she was up. She put a palm to her shoulder and the blood came through her fingers. She looked about. "Where is she?"

     Then she saw her; Elia crawling, crawling crab-like across the ceiling, out of the kitchen and out of sight.

     Alys found the knife on the floor.

     Willum was shouting. "Alys wait!"

     The hilt wet with her blood.

     "Alys!"

     She was in the main room. Powdery blue in the moonlight. The cot had fallen, spewed its contents like guts, and Alys stepped over it, not feeling her nakedness or the blood running down her, not feeling her skin or her feet or her wound.

     But Willum was beside her. He grabbed her knife hand, pulled her back. A twitch in her shoulder. "Stop," he said. "Listen."

     Crying. Sobbing. Elia. She had found a corner, curled up, and when they went to her she looked up with doe-eyes all wet and red. Willum swept her up. "There, there, Ellie," he said. "It's alright."

     Alys fell in to a chair. Fingers of pain in her shoulder. Like fingers wriggling in her skin. She looked to Willum and Elia moonlit by the little window and then to the knife red with blood. She lay the knife on the ground by her feet. Her feet speckled with blood. "I'm worried what you'll do to her," Willum had said.
     The words found her heart like steely bolts.

 

II

    

     The pellar's tent was part parlour part butcher's hut, stinking of jasmine, burnt cloves and old blood. The rain tapped at the sheeting above. Plucked and gutted chickens swung from wire. In a corner a bucket of liquid bubbled and steamed though Alys could see no flame.

     The pellar tapped at his desk, shuffled scrolls, his back to Alys.

     "Can you read it?" Alys asked.

     He turned. He was a hunched old man the village all called Dampeyes, wizened, with a grey tangle of hair on his head. He was hung with beads and jewellery. He was looking at the book, his soft lips moving silently. "This book," he said at last, "tells of a being called the Kindastadht. An ancient creature. Summoned from injustice."    

     Injustice. The word hung in the stinking air. "How do I get rid of it?" Alys asked.

     Dampeyes shook his head. His trinkets jangled. "It does not say. But, it speaks of a scroll upon which the secret is written."

     "And this scroll, it will have some sort of spell? A spell to get rid of the Kindastadht?"

     "I cannot be certain."

     Alys reached out, took the book carefully from the pellar's gnarled fingers. "This symbol," she said. "What does it mean?"

     Dampeyes breathed a rattling breath. "This symbol is of the alphabet of Minominos. The Mages of Minoscopia will know how to read it."

     Alys closed the book. "Who are they? Where are they?"

     The pellar held up a finger. "I warn you, girl, you are meddling with things better left alone."

     The pellar stood slowly. He left the tent and Alys followed.

     "Please," said Alys. "Please. I need to know."

     Outside the rain was soft. It billowed in the breeze like steam. Dampeyes trudged down a muddy black path, his roughspun cloak dragging behind. Alys pulled her furs close. "Where are you going?"

     "Follow," he said.

     They stood atop a hill, and Alys looked down at the village below. "Okay," she said, and followed the pellar down a sloping path. He led her to a great trash field that glistened with rain. A hundred wooden boxes dark with rot, metal sheets and springs and old engines caked in rust, here and there crops of rock sprouting out. They trudged through it all and under rickety wooden structures draped in old furs and they got cold and wet with the rain that came down sideways. As the pellar went on ahead Alys stopped, found something bulky beneath a mass of sheets and rugs. She lifted the rugs which were heavy with rain and saw a seat, a chipped windshield, an engine.

     "Here," the pellar called, and waved for her.

     Alys came to his side. He stood before a box of foot-long metal cartridges. He handed one to Alys. It was misty and wet. She wiped it with her sleeve and saw writing: Serensestra - Sector C. "What is this?"

     "A map," said the pellar, squinting through the rain. "On it you will find Aloriim, and there the Mages of Minoscopia."

     The rain was picking up. It rattled on the rubbish around them. "Aloriim?" Alys asked over the rain.

     "An ancient place, from a time before the dying of Serensestra," Dampeyes said loudly, "before the Huntahn Brotherhood and..." He smiled. On his face were tears as well as rain. "Come, back to my tent, out of this weather."

     Back at the tent Alys removed her furs. Sodden now. The pellar produced an old stone rune and coal-black twigs and wrapped them together with twine. He handed it to Alys. "This is a ward. It will help protect you from the Kindastadht."

     Alys thanked him and shoved it in the pocket of her furs. It felt likely to snap on the walk home. "Aloriim," she said, "these mages; how long a journey?"

     "On foot?" asked Dampeyes.

     "It will have to be." The brotherhood forbade ships or speeders or skiffs.

     "A week. Give or take a day or two."

     "I see." Alys was creaking still from her trek up the mountain. Her shoulder throbbed beneath her shirt. She thought a week of walking might kill her. "Elia, my daughter, I have to take her with me. The Kindastadht has targeted her."

     The pellar nodded. "You should take her, yes, but she is not the target," he said calmly. "You are. You and your husband."

     She almost asked why. Injustice, she remembered. That was why. "This thing wants to destroy us. Willum and I. I can feel it. I can feel it in the air. In the walls."

     "You have done something," said Dampeyes. "Something terrible, and it has visited the Kindastadht upon you." He went to stand. "It is not my place to -"

     "We killed someone," said Alys. The words had jumped from her throat, from the throat they had slept in since Elia was a babe. It was freeing to hear them, to feel them ring the air. Alys shook her head. "Not...not directly, not...We didn't murder her."

     Dampeyes was sitting. He had locked his bony fingers.

     "We - Willum and I - we had fled Jordania. Do you know it? A red planet, but beautiful, in the Republic."

     "The Republic of Old Ohm," said the pellar, and nodded.

     "Yes. It's on the border of Blood Space. Well, it was. The brotherhood came and took our planet and we fled. We spent every coin we had and fled to Vismar first but the war came for us and we had nowhere to run, and our friends got us passage on an old Class II and we flew for Serensestra. We were desperate. I was pregnant with Elia. Me and Willum and our friends Fenris and Sef and Sienna and their little girl, just born. We found this place, this village, and we heard it had been founded by refugees like us and we thought it would do. It would do for now. But then the brotherhood got here too and...I'm sorry."

     A tear had broke down the pellar's lined cheek. He shook his head. "Go on, girl," he said, and wiped his tear.

     Alys stood. "I've...I've said too much already."

     She turned to leave and the pellar took her hand. "The children," he said, squinting his red and watery eyes, "it is about the children, isn't it?"

     Yes, she thought, the children that have lived like black plants in our lives, in our past, for four desperate years. She pulled her hand away, gathered up her furs. "Thank you for your help," she said. "Thank you."

     The pellar wiped his eyes. "I bid you good fortune," he said. "I will burn a kretata for you while you journey."

     Alys did not know what a kretata was. She didn't think it mattered. She smiled, turned to leave, then thought to ask a question. A dark question. She could push it away but it existed now inside her, the rot was there, and if she did not ask it and the time came...

     "I need something that can kill," she said. "Painlessly. Just...in the event that we don't manage to -"

     "I understand, child," the pellar said.

     As the pellar searched his desk Alys stood in silent shame. Whatever Dampeyes handed her she would not use. She thought this lie over and over as her neck burned and her palms turned clammy.

     "Here." The pellar handed her a ball of black wax, closed her fingers around it. "A Chokeroach."

     "And this won't cause pain? Or...leave a mark?"

     Dampeyes shook his head. "Administer it during sleep and the victim will feel nothing."

     The victim. She thought of Elia blue and cold. She thought of Willum. "I can't take this," she said. "Sorry."

     "Take it. You need not use it."

     Alys felt the ball in her hand, the black ball like a clot. I won't use it, she thought, I won't use it, I won't use it, I won't use it, but she was asking how to administer it, and the pellar was saying, "Unravel the wax and squeeze the roach inside. Set it down and it will know what to do."

     "I won't use it," Alys said. She was telling the pellar, herself, the universe.

     The pellar said nothing. They stood for a second as the rain rapped at the tent.

     "I won't use it," Alys said, and left.