The False Martyr (121 page)

A bird lit from the grass
at the side, streaked across her path, and intercepted the arrow in
midflight. It fell, tumbled with the force of the blow and landed
at her feet, just as she shuddered from the death blow she had not
received. She breathed. She was still alive. She looked down, still
wondering how there was not an arrow in her chest. She saw the
bird, saw the spasmodic beating of its wings, the loll of its head,
the shock in its eyes.
Me
, she thought,
that was supposed to be me
.

She looked back at the men
on the wagon. They were gap jawed, every bit as shocked as her, but
that did not stop the second man from pulling his trigger. He
jerked as he did so. Teth would never know why – the sting of a
bee, glint of the sun, the spasm of a muscle. It didn’t matter.
What mattered was that the Weaver was in control. What mattered was
that even here, even now as she acted against everything the Order
had made her to be, she was not allowed to escape, was not even
allowed to die.

Teth screamed. The arrow
left her bow, flew exactly where she had aimed it, sent the young
man with the pendant falling from the wagon, clutching at the shaft
that had connected the pendant directly to his heart. His fellow
met the same fate before he had another bolt in his crossbow. He
fell to the opposite side, hit a soldier hiding behind his wagon as
he went, driving the man into his own sword.

Teth screamed again and
locked on the next wagon, the next set of crossbows. They were not
even loaded. The soldiers that held them were not even trying. They
stared at her in shock. They were worthless, could not give her
what she wanted. Arrows flew from her bow so fast as to almost fly
in parallel to end their worthless futility.

Somehow, she was walking
forward, was almost to the first wagon, voice a banshee, rising
again and again to the heavens in a shriek. She cast her bow aside,
pulled the knife from her belt, and yelled at the first soldier she
saw, “Kill me! Do it! Do it or I’ll end you!”

The man barely tried.
Shaking as if facing a demon rather than a girl, he lunged with his
spear and missed her completely. She caught the shaft as it went by
and pulled its owner to her, slashing his throat as he fell past.
Blood sprayed over her, covering her hand, draining onto her legs,
splattering across her face. She cast the man aside and held her
arms out for the next. He would have to do it now, was too close to
miss, was motivated by fear and revenge. Not even the Weaver could
stop him.

A pole blade cut into his
side, threw him into a wagon, and took him to the ground before he
could thrust his spear forward. Teth screamed at the big dockworker
who was nearly touching her, looked at the pole blade in his hand
and drove her knife into his chest. Again and again she hit him,
screaming the entire time, until he fell backward from the road,
gasping and writhing, chest a stain of red.

More men came at her then,
but she had lost herself completely. She had become exactly what
the Weaver had made her to be, and she fulfilled that calling with
a brutality that would have sickened Hilaal himself. Men came at
her with spears and swords and hooks, allies and enemies, from in
front and behind and the sides. Every one of them was bigger than
her, stronger, older. And none of it mattered. They fell as fast as
her knife could move. They tripped on rocks, ran into their
fellows, were blinded by the sun, hit by errant arrows, nudged by
frightened horses, but more than anything their hearts were
pierced, their throats were slashed, their organs were spilled by a
girl who moved like a force unto herself, a girl that they could
not touch, who showed no mercy, who was created by the Order over
generations then positioned perfectly to ensure that not a one of
them survived.

And as she killed, she
screamed. Guttural screeches rose from the very core of her being
until she had no more voice to give them life and they became
silent howls, the rage of a ghost seeking its revenge on the
living.

Chapter 70

The
56
^th
Day of Summer

The crowd was even bigger
today. Dasen was not sure how that was possible. There were men and
women, young and old, wealthy and workers. They had formed just as
they had two days prior, arriving just as he emerged from the inn,
led by their champions, drawn to their saint. The Tappers had made
it known that Lady Esther planned to take food and water to the
camp, so they brought wagons of both with them. They marched with
Dasen at their lead, singing another hymn, packing the streets and
trailing for blocks.

The last remnants of the
army had arrived that night and gone at first light, but supplies
were still moving, men were still gathering, and the governor had
declared another curfew – the last, he promised. That promise was
not enough for Lady Esther. The people of the camp had not had food
or clean water in days. The sickness was likely spreading, people
were starving and dying. Another day would be that many more bodies
piled into wagons, that many more children without parents, that
many more parents crying over children. Dasen could almost convince
himself that it was a cause worth marching for, one worth dying
for.

“
Halt,” Governor Colmar
called as they turned onto the wide road that would lead eventually
to the camp. “Return to your homes. No one is allowed on the
streets without specific permission from me or Field Marshal
Landon.” He looked at the line of soldiers to either side of him.
There were perhaps fifty of them. They had formed a makeshift
barricade across the street with carts and barrels not more than
twenty paces in front of Dasen. Governor Colmar, in his full armor,
was the only man among them on a horse, but at least twenty held
heavy crossbows aimed at the crowd.

Dasen searched for Kian
among those men. He had promised that he would be there, that he
would be the one taking the shot, but what if he had been
redeployed? What if he hadn’t received a bow? What if one of the
other men got nervous and fired first? He felt his breath catch and
his knees grow weak. He tried to keep himself steady.

Valati Lareno was there to
support him. “Say something,” he whispered.

“
We will go to our
brothers and sisters at the camp,” Dasen managed. He tried to yell,
but his voice was strangled by fear. This was it. It had all come
to his. Deena Esther was going to die. He almost felt like it was a
part of himself that would take the arrow. “We bring the Order’s
mercy. It will not allow us to be deterred. We will see that Its
work is done.”

He heard the thwack of the
string on wood. He turned toward the source but never saw the arrow
that hit him.

When he woke, he was on
the ground. He looked up at a hundred bleary eyes blocking every
bit of the sky above. The eyes were popped. Jaws hung. Faces were
frozen. Dasen brought up his hands. They were covered in red. His
chest hurt like his heart had been pierced. His head rang. Kian
hadn’t been kidding about that hurting. He stared for a while at
his hands believing for some time that the blood was his own,
believing that the bolt standing in his chest had actually made it
through the leather.

“
My lady,” Garth bellowed,
his mighty voice rising to the heavens. “What have they . . .
?”

“
She’s shot,” Valati
Lareno screamed. “The Order have mercy, they shot her.”

Dasen’s thoughts were
moving slowly, but he recognized his cue. He spasmed, raising his
chest to the sky then shook slightly, trying to give a show without
overdoing it. “Aghh,” he moaned. “Aghh.”

Valati Lareno reached a
hand to his face ostensibly to brush away a strand of hair, but it
ended with him smearing blood down the side of his cheek. “Be
still, my lady,” he said. “Be still. We will get you to safety.” He
lowered his head to Dasen’s lips. “What is that, my lady? Please,
save your energy.”

Dasen had wondered what he
would chose as Lady Esther’s final words, but it seemed that, even
in that, Valati Lareno would pick. “You’re dead,” he whispered.
Dasen did his part. He shuddered slightly then lie as still as
possible, eyes open, mouth slack, barely breathing

“
Yes, my dear, sweet lady.
Yes,” Valati Lareno declared. He pulled a square of black lace from
his sleeve and laid it across Dasen’s face. “She’s
dead!”

The crowd gasped, a murmur
spread and grew to a roar. “Her final words.” He waited for the mob
to grow silent. “Her final words were, ‘The Order’s will must be
done. We must cast out the chaos that holds us so that the Order
may reign again!” Dasen wondered how he had managed to say all that
with a final gasping breath, but the crowd seemed not to care. They
thundered.

Garth was lifting him
then. His strong arms sliding under his back and legs. Dasen
allowed himself to lie limp in the big man’s arms despite how the
vest shifted to pinch his neck and arms.

“
The governor’s done
this,” someone in the crowd yelled. Dasen recognized it as Jaren
playing his part. The crowd roared again. “He has killed the
Order’s chosen for his Exile masters. He must face the Order’s
judgement.”

Dasen was moving back
through the crowd now, Garth carrying him slowly so that as many
people as possible could see his body before it disappeared.
Through the gaps in the lace, he watched their faces go from shock,
to sorrow, to fury as he passed. Their voices went from murmurs, to
silence, to screams. Then they were flowing around him, charging
toward the barricade, taking back their city all in the name of a
false martyr, a saint that had never existed.

#

Garth carried Dasen
through the doors of the River Maiden and into the common room. Pig
blood ran down his arm in a long line to his middle finger where it
dripped slowly to the floor. The rest of it had pooled around his
stomach were it bowed in Garth’s arms and soaked into the dress to
transform the silk from yellow to orange-brown. For Dasen, the
world was still spinning. His chest ached so that even the small,
slow breaths he allowed himself were painful. He was growing faint
for having his head dangling upside-down in Garth’s arms, and
everything was bouncing.

The few people who
remained in the common room gasped when they saw the bloody corpse
in the Morg’s great arms. Dasen could not see from his angle, but
Garth must have put on a show of his own because the people
universally blanched and stumbled away as if the body in his arms
was an example of what happened to those who crossed his
path.

“
The Order save us, what’s
happened?” Mr. Tappers screamed from the end of the bar. “Is that
Lady Esther? Oh, the Order take us, no! Please, oh please, no!” He
ran around the bar, waving his hands, voice rising like a girl who
had seen a rat.

“
She’s dead,” Garth
rumbled, voice broken by grief. “The governor’s men killed her. Her
followers are seeking justice. The city is chaos.”

“
The Order be merciful, it
can’t be. That idiot. How could he?” Mr. Tappers moaned. “Please
take her to the side room and lie her down. Let her rest now that
the Order has called her back.”

Garth dropped his head,
great beard falling across Dasen’s chest so that its tip was
stained with the blood pooled at his middle. He walked to the
private room.

At the same time, the few
residents remaining in the inn began clamoring. “The city in
chaos?” “A mob?” “Riots?” “What do we do?” They crowded around Mr.
Tappers seeking reassurance.

They received none. “You
heard the Morg,” Mr. Tappers proclaimed. “I cannot guarantee your
safety here. We are too close to the mobs. You must seek refuge
elsewhere. Please, you must protect yourselves and your families.
Run to the docks. The army is still there. Tell them what has
happened and beg for their protection.”

Men yelled. Women
screamed. Children cried. Families formed into single units. And
they ran. Some men dashed back to their rooms for purses or prized
possessions, but most of them just ran. And the innkeeper herded
them out the door.

Garth crashed into the
private dining room, slammed the door behind him, and set Dasen in
a chair. The blood that had been pooling on his stomach flowed down
all at once, staining the front of his dress and splattering to the
floor. Dasen retched as its smell rose, sharp, metallic, and
rotten. He had barely noticed it before, but now, as it started to
dry, he felt it pulling at his skin, sticking to his clothes, and
clinging to his face.

“
You alright?” Garth
asked.

Dasen looked to the door,
made sure it was secure. Shouts, clamor, and commotion pounded its
surface as the inn’s residents sought their escape. No one would be
able to hear what he said over that. “My whole chest aches so I can
hardly breathe, and my head is spinning, but I’ll survive.” He
tried to stand, became lightheaded, and had to catch himself on the
table. Garth held his arm to keep him from falling. “Help me get
out of this dress,” he said when he had recovered enough to
stand.

“
Humph,” Garth said and
stepped back to the door. Dasen looked at him then tried to work
the buttons on his own. They were small, tight, and ran up the back
of the dress. His fingers were slick and sticky at the same time
from the blood that covered them, and the vest restricted him so
that he could barely reach his back. He would never be able to
unfasten the buttons, but he couldn’t stand to wear the
blood-soaked, stinking, choking dress for another
moment.