Seeker

“You’re filthy. Do you know that?” Quin asked the horse as she grabbed its muzzle. “It’s a bit hard to tell now if you’re a horse or a pig.”

She was in the stable, grooming Yellen, the enormous bay horse her mother had given her when she’d turned ten. Yellen nipped at her in a friendly way as she curried his back. Beyond Yellen was a fresh pile of hay at the back of the stall. Quin wondered if she could sleep there tonight. She had done that a few times when she was much younger, curled up next to her huge horse. It was more appealing at the moment than sleeping at home.

A few tears slid down her cheeks and landed on the floor of the stall. Roughly she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. This had happened a lot in the last month—nothing, and then suddenly tears. Another one rolled down her cheek, but she ignored it; she was tired of her own weakness.

“Turn!” she ordered. Yellen stared at her blankly, his ears twitching. She pulled his head around and moved to his other side. “You’ve forgotten English, haven’t you, you great lump?”

With the horse, she still had a sense of humor. With people, her humor had dried up. She hadn’t spent much time with Yellen that year. John had gotten her attention instead. But John was gone. Quin herself was supposed to be gone, and yet here she was. Now the horse was the only one she knew who didn’t make her think of things she’d rather forget.

“Easy,” she soothed as Yellen stamped a foot. “Or I’ll leave you muddy.”

She had vowed to herself that she would leave, but she’d stayed. The night John left, she’d slept alone in the loft of the barn on the cliff. In the morning, she’d been woken by sunlight coming in through the eastern window.

She lay there for several minutes, feeling the warmth on her closed eyelids. As the sun slowly came up, she stayed motionless, until its light bathed her arms and hands. Then the heat of its rays sparked pain from the athame brand on her left wrist. Even bandaged, it began to throb.

It’s still there. It will always be there, reminding me of what my hands have done.

She could leave, she thought then, but it would not change things. She would know what she was, and every time a stranger looked at her, she would wonder if they knew it too. And if she left, what would happen to Fiona and Shinobu? They would be left on the estate without her, stranded with Briac.

So, she had stayed.

Briac had taken her and Shinobu on five more assignments since that first night. She understood it all now: the wealth behind the estate, how her family survived. And there was nothing virtuous about it.

With each new assignment, thoughts of leaving had grown more remote. She’d been raised to obey Briac’s word as law. It was difficult to break that habit. And the more she helped him, the more assignments she carried out, the more she was becoming like him and the less she deserved to get away. John had said she was born to use the athame, and she wondered if she was also born to be like Briac.

Now, in the stables, she watched her arms moving the brushes across the horse’s back and was overcome by the feeling that her limbs were disconnected from her, as though her body belonged to someone else. Her new scars were healing. There was the line on her forearm, where her father had cut her during that last practice fight, the small cut on her neck from the Young Dread’s knife, and there was the brand on her left wrist. The blisters from the brand had gone, leaving only the shape of an athame, still bright pink and tender. The scars also felt foreign, like marks on another person’s body.

Without noticing, she’d stopped brushing Yellen and was staring at her right hand, inside the strap of the bristle brush. She moved her little finger to assure herself that the hand still listened to her some of the time.

“John …” she said aloud, then stopped, embarrassed.

She often imagined he was with her, his warm arms around her as she laid her head on his chest. When those daydreams ended, she would feel cold, and wonder if his eyes were lonely now, without her. Even so, she was glad he was gone. John had still wanted to become a Seeker, even after she’d warned him. In leaving, he had saved himself from a profound mistake.

Yellen stamped his front foot again and twitched his ears.

“Easy,” she murmured.

The horse stamped again and began pulling at his lead rope. She heard the other horses in their stalls, whickering and stamping also. Then she noticed a smell.

Smoke.

She stopped moving and listened. There were distant shouts, and something else—a low roar that she now realized had been present for some time. Quin slipped out of Yellen’s stall and over to the stable door.

Sliding the door open, she felt a wave of heat and found herself staring out at a wall of fire. It took a moment to understand what she was seeing. The trees near the barn were burning. Not just burning—they were being completely consumed by flames.

People were yelling across the commons, and she could see shapes in the distance—many horses running, with men on their backs. The estate was under attack.

Quin slid the door shut and leaned against it for a moment, assessing the situation. The fire was only yards away from the wooden structure of the stable. The horses were stamping and whinnying, some of them kicking at their stalls.

Putting a hand on Yellen’s nose to calm him, she slipped his bridle over his head, then quickly threw a blanket and saddle onto his back.

She peeked through the doors at the opposite end of the stable and saw darkness. The men and fire had not reached that side of the barn, so she pushed those doors open and herded the horses from their stalls. The smoke was getting thicker and they were beginning to panic, but Quin swung a rope at their flanks, driving them into a run toward the open doorway. Out in the night air, they milled about her, too frightened to move farther from the stable.

Something flashed across Quin’s line of sight, about twenty yards away. As she reached for Yellen’s reins, an oak tree near the dairy barn burst into flame. She glimpsed a torch high up in its branches, and now she could see the person who had thrown it, a figure in dark clothing and a mask, riding away across the commons on horseback.

The weather had been dry for many weeks, and with a roar, the tree began to burn fiercely, sending the horses into a terror. One bolted wildly, crashing through the others. Quin was caught in the crush of bodies as all of the animals, Yellen included, took off for the forest.

She fell, but someone was there, catching her.

“Quin!”

“Shinobu!”

There was ash in his hair and smears of it across his face.

“Come on,” he said. “We have to get to the woods!”

Through a cloud of smoke, they ran until they reached the trees. Then they paused beneath the branches, coughing.

“A cottage is on fire,” he told her. “Yours, I think. I saw it across the commons.”

Like her, Shinobu had his whipsword at his waist. An old crossbow that looked about to fall apart and a quiver of bolts were slung across his back. He had raided the meager weapons supply in the training barn.

“Who’s attacking?” She asked the question, thinking of hordes of shadowy victims coming to the estate to get revenge upon them. But of course there was no mysterious answer. As soon as the words had come out of her mouth, she knew who was attacking. She felt a sick twinge in her stomach. Even though he’s kicking me out, John had said, I have to find my way back. Quin realized some part of her had been waiting for him. But not like this. Was he really burning down the estate?

“We’ll get a better look from the other side,” Shinobu told her, not meeting her eyes.

“My mother?”

“I haven’t seen her.”

She started to run again, but Shinobu caught her arm.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait. What do we want to do?”

“We’ll find my mother, and then our fathers—”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“I agree we should find Fiona, but why do we want to find Briac and Alistair?” he asked.

“We’re under attack! They’re better fighters than we are.”

“We’re not under attack. They’re under attack. Which means they’re distracted.” He stared at his feet, a lifetime of loyalty making it difficult for him to finish the thought out loud. At last, he looked directly into her eyes and said, “We don’t talk about it, Quin, but why should we stay, after what they’ve made us do?”

Quin struggled for a moment with an automatic instinct to follow her father. But Shinobu was right. He was saying the words she should have said. He was suggesting they do what she should have done a month ago. The estate might burn, but this was not a home anymore.

She said slowly, “We could find Fiona and get away.”

“If we’re lucky, Briac and Alistair will think we were killed,” he told her. “This is a chance for us. A perfect chance. It won’t come again.”

She nodded her agreement. “All right. Let’s get my mother.”

They ran until they had circled around the edge of the commons and were nearer the cottages. There they came to a stop, crouching behind a fallen tree. The men on horseback were setting fire to the buildings. Her own cottage was burning. Behind it, farther away, she could see Shinobu’s, also ablaze. And the others, the cottages deeper in the woods, many of which had not been used for decades. All burning.

“Do you see her?” Quin asked.

“No—yes. She’s there!”

Halfway across the commons, heading toward the pastures beyond the dairy, was Fiona. Her beautiful face was twisted in a look of terror, and the ends of her hair were on fire, orange flame upon red hair, streaming behind her as she ran. Why was she running across the meadow instead of into the woods? With a sinking heart, Quin noticed her mother’s wobbly gait. She was drunk.

Quin started to go after her, but Shinobu put a hand on her shoulder, holding her still.

“They see her too!” he whispered.

He was right. Three of the men on horseback were galloping after Fiona.

“Look,” Shinobu said.

The lead horseman was now clearly visible. He wore a mask, but they would have recognized him anywhere.

It was John. She had known it would be him, but actually seeing him in a mask, burning the estate, was a different matter. And he was riding straight for Fiona.

“It’s Briac he hates,” Quin said quickly. “He’s always hated him. He won’t hurt my mother. I know he won’t. Should we help him, Shinobu? He only wants …”

She trailed off as the three horsemen caught up with Fiona. Two men grabbed her and pulled her roughly into a saddle. All the way across the meadow, she could hear her mother cursing at them.

Quin was on her feet. Shinobu seized her arm and pulled her back down again. “What are you doing?”© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

In the distance, Fiona screamed. One of the men had slapped her, and now her hands were being tied.

“I—I have to go talk to him.”

“No!” hissed Shinobu, keeping a tight grip on Quin’s arm. “He’s attacking us. He’s burning the estate. He might do anything, do you understand? Hurt your mother, hurt you. He’s not your boyfriend now. He’s different! If we want to get away with Fiona, we need better weapons.”

Quin stilled, Shinobu’s words sinking in. “You’re … you’re right.” With great effort, she turned away from John. He was … She didn’t know what he was at this moment. Was he against her, or only against Briac? Would he truly hurt them?

She watched Fiona still struggling with the men across the commons. They were plainly willing to injure her, and Quin was determined to get her mother off the estate alive.

“Do you know where they keep the guns?” Shinobu asked. “Are they at your house?”

“They weren’t in the training barn?”

Shinobu shook his head. “Come on. We’ll check both houses.”

He took her hand, and together they ran toward the burning cottages, still keeping to the trees. They passed the cabin that had been John’s. It too had been set alight, and very recently. The furniture inside was burning, and smoke poured out the door. There was no reason to burn everything. It was an act of pure hatred.

At the edge of the forest, they sprinted across an open space to Quin’s cottage. But it was hardly a cottage anymore. By the time they reached it, Quin’s home was completely engulfed in flames.