An Inheritance of Ashes (21 page)

A perverse pain rose up in my throat—
Uncle Matthias's winter boots
.

“What are you asking me to do?” I whispered.

Heron looked down at me, down his broken, twisted nose. “Go home,” he said, “to your family. You can't do this to them.”

I swallowed. Hard.

“Keep the boots if they fit,” I forced out, and he whuffed a grateful breath. “You'll need them in the spring.”

He nodded sharply and pulled on the boots. “Anyone out there?”

I opened the smokehouse door and looked into a sudden dazzle of snowlight. “No,” I said. And then, through a thick throat, “Go.”

He eased out the door, cautious, and up the gravel path. I turned my foot sideways and wiped his bootmarks from the new snow, left alone between white ground and gray sky. My own boots made a solitary path back to the kitchen porch.

“I'm back,” I called to Marthe as I banged through the door, hands blue with cold and worry. Eyes red from endless tears.

“Good,” she said, laying bread dough for an overnight rise. Simply, kindly:
Good.
I edged up the stairs, peeled my work clothes off, and eased into a clean nightdress. The mark of the burnt Twisted Thing stained my windowsill. I stared past it into the snow, into the fine space between two worlds.

Watching for a light. Waiting.

I WOKE TO A TRACKLESS WONDERLAND OF SNOW, A WORLD
turned sparkling white. The kind of day that, when I was young, was my favorite of all—a morning building snowmen with Marthe on the side of the hay barn and then the hot spiced cocoa Uncle Matthias made to welcome us home. The sun was high above the trees, and from the road to the river, the fields glittered and dreamed.

I overslept,
I thought with a tinge of panic, and dug for a clean pair of work pants. Heron would be back; Tyler would be back. Thom was trapped in the Wicked God's world, waiting.

We didn't have a second more to lose.

I threw my hair into a ponytail on my way down the stairs, calling, “Marthe, what time is it?”—and stopped. Marthe sat at the table wearing a creased frown. And Lieutenant Jackson perched in Thom's usual chair, his elbows on the table.

“What's happened?” I managed.

“Nothing,” Marthe said slowly. I swallowed hard, trying to look less like I was half jitters and half lies. “The lieutenant wants to hire our boat to row out to Beast Island.”

“Sergeant Blakely requested the family's privacy this morning,” the lieutenant said. “Something to do with his young nephew arriving home ill. So we're off to investigate the river.”

“Right,” I said, and grabbed the banister to stay upright. They hadn't found Heron, or Thom's messages, or the knife. And Tyler—Tyler was ill, at home.
What does ill mean?
The alarms in my head shrilled. “Sure, take the boat,” I said, and Marthe eyed me, bleak and tired. I looked away, at the lieutenant's pleased smile.

“Much obliged to the both of you,” he said, and rubbed his short-cropped curls. “There was just one other thing I missed asking the other night.”
I've got to go,
I thought fruitlessly as he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a carefully folded bundle of paper tied with butcher's twine. He pulled the knot and dealt the pages like playing cards. “You wouldn't recognize any of these faces?”

Marthe took the first one. I came to the table and uncurled the second with my fidgety hands. They were wanted posters: pen-and-ink portraits of Asphodel Jones's irregulars, traitors every one of them, who had fought the army at John's Creek.

I didn't recognize any of them: a slight man with distant eyes and a crown that was softly balding; a thickset boy, younger than me, who could've been a Sanchez cousin; a woman, dark-eyed, round-faced, bob-haired, with a tilt to her eyes somewhere between Sergeant Zhang's and the Thaos'. They looked normal: shopkeeps or diligent shepherds. I let out a breath I hadn't even meant to hold.

Heron had army buttons. I hadn't thought him an irregular, truly. But the more he said
I'm nobody,
the less I could make it feel true.

There was another page beneath them, the most folded, the most loved.
They're sending John Balsam's likeness from John's Creek to the sea,
I remembered, and unfolded the worn sheet of cotton paper.

It had yellowed on the road. The ink-black image was stained by dust and sweat, and the creases worried at its thin, stern mouth. I flattened the likeness on the table and leaned close for a better look.

The face of John Balsam was sharp and lean, all harsh lines, as distant as the river. He had dark, straight hair, and his eyebrows were sketched in fine beneath it. The artist had made his cheekbones high and his jaw as square as a barn wall. He looked off the page, thoughtful, brooding over all our rescued tomorrows. He looked halfway familiar, and I squinted at the ink.
He looks,
I thought, wistful,
like a hero.

“Well, miss,” Lieutenant Jackson's too-hearty voice said. “That's our boy. John Balsam.” He beamed, his eyes warm for real now: every inch the picture of soldierly pride.

“I'd only heard the name,” I said. For all my thoughts of who might be waiting to receive that twisted knife home, I hadn't actually thought of John Balsam as a man, with a man's face.

“I saw him once,” the lieutenant said, softer. “From a distance, in our camp once the Wicked God was slaughtered. He walked so tall. Even with everything we'd been through, he walked like a man who could find his way through hell. Made a man want to follow him; see how it's done. See if perhaps you could turn out like that yourself.”

Marthe flicked the paper with a fingernail. “What changed to send you hunting him, then?” she said acerbically.

Lieutenant Jackson left the desert and drifted back to earth. “That one's not a Wanted, ma'am, it's a Missing. He's not been seen since after the battle; he just plain disappeared. We thought he was dead until the sightings began: a town outside the Great Dust; a farmstead by Ball Creek; on the old black road outside Ooltewah, cutting back brush for a campfire. Then it was people telling stories of John Balsam saving them from beasts and bogeys with his God-kill knife.”

Liars,
I thought, with not a little scorn. And then reconsidered it. Perhaps this was what Heron had meant: farmhands and soldiers wanting to see their hero so badly that they conjured him up for themselves. Passed around stories of such sighting or such passing by, because then that grace might touch them, too.

“Wherever he is, he headed north,” the lieutenant said. “It's where they say his family's from: far away, in the winter wastes. And so all of us scouting north ask after John Balsam.”

Marthe's lips pressed together in an edged smile. “And what'll you do with the man when he's found?”

“Give him his army, ma'am,” the lieutenant answered, ignoring Marthe's flippant eyebrow. “De Guzman is our provisional general, but John Balsam saved us all. We stand ready to march at his order, or establish his territory, the moment he's found.”

Marthe lifted the other brow. “Poor man,” she murmured. “All I have to run is a farm.”

I stared down at that brave, strong jaw to hide the disbelief in my eyes—and finally understood Heron's wild-eyed fear. They'd never believe that he'd just found—or been gifted—John Balsam's God-kill knife. The Great Southern Army wanted their Godslayer. Bad enough to string any man who had a piece of him up high and name him John Balsam's killer.

“I hope he comes back to you,” I said softly, tracing the stern mouth, the all-seeing eyes.

The lieutenant's discipline sagged just enough to speak of long miles and a hope wasting on wintering branches. “I'll ask you to show us the boat,” he said.

I folded up his wanted posters and handed them across the table. “Right away,” I said, and put on my boots. “Marthe, I'll visit at Lakewood Farm afterward?”

She looked out the window and nodded; there was precious little outdoor work one could do under all that snow once the chickens and goats had their feed. “Give Eglantine and James hello for me,” she said, and it felt good. It felt good to go somewhere and not have to lie.

The lieutenant tied his posters lovingly back into their bundle. “We'll have it back to you by dusk,” he promised, and let himself out the door.

I walked him down the orchard path, across the blank white sheet of the riverbank.
No bootprints this morning,
I thought as he shipped the oars.
No Heron, no Ada, no ghosts.
Sergeant Zhang and Corporal Muhammad stood shivering by the dock, muffled in caps and gloves, miserable with cold. “Good luck,” I told them.

Corporal Muhammad beamed. “Thanks!”

Stay away all day,
I thought, and waited for the boat to disappear before I brushed the thick snow off the orchard path.

The stones had been scattered by the snow and by my hasty, light excavation.
YOU HAVE TO OPEN
—I read, and halfway guessed—
THE HOLE WIDER. WE ARE TRAPPED. HELP US FREE.
And then in a scatter of barely legible rock:
HURRY.

My hands shook like dead leaves.
Open the hole wider.
Spill all hell itself into the river, into Roadstead Farm.

We couldn't. There had to be another way.

“Thom, that is crazy,” I murmured bitterly, and wiped the stones away.

GETTING CHANDLERS' AID,
I spelled out, and then helplessly:
WE LOVE YOU,
in the message's broken ruins. And strode across the empty fields to Lakewood Farm.

The walk to Nat and Tyler's was achingly familiar: over the wood-and-wire fence, and then a shortcut through the soft-hilled pastures that paralleled the black road and took the river to its mouth. Even in the morning light it felt warm with habit: just another snow day, chores suspended, where I went over for Mrs. Blakely's honeyed churros and endless talk with Nat by the fire. Except for the worry that gnawed, ratlike, at my guts.
Thom,
ran round and round my head.
Walk faster.
I put my head down and clambered through the fields.

The curtains were open at the Blakely house, bright and welcoming to all. I took the steps up to their door two at a time and knocked. James Blakely answered it with a hint of surprise. “Hallie,” he said, and flung the door wide. “What's wrong?”

It would take too long to list all the real answers. “Nothing,” I said instead. “I just heard Tyler wasn't well.”

He nodded, his face grave. “Come in,” he said, and I ducked inside after him.

Lakewood Farm was everything I remembered—everything I'd always wanted our own house to be. Bright lamps burned in the cushioned parlor room. The air smelled of sweet tea and posole and fresh baking, and even black-clad, even in mourning, the house had a spirit, a
life
. Mrs. Blakely sat on the patched sofa, spinning new yarn from a basket of autumn wool. Nat and James were carding, sleeves rolled up, for the spinning basket. Cal's voice moved steady above them all, reading about a boy and a quest and a stone from a fat old-cities book.

On the mantel, above the fire, the vial of John's Creek ashes that Tyler's regiment had borne home stood watch over the whole family. A memorial to Nat and Tyler's father, who was gone; an honored and beloved grave.

Tyler was in his father's chair, the one with the footstool attached to its end, with his leg up at a splayed angle as he moodily darned a sock. I let out a breath. He wasn't dying. He was right there.

“Hallie,” he said, and struggled upward. His uncle Cal gave him a torn-up look and boosted him upright with one silent hand. “Please, sit,” Tyler said. “No, never mind—let me get you some tea first. You're frozen.”

James and Callum glanced at each other, knowing, and my face flamed painfully bright.

“Can we sit in the kitchen?” I asked, and wrung my ponytail out. “I'll get snow all over your rugs.”

“That's all right, Hal—” James started, lazily, until Eglantine of all people halted him with a hand.

“That's very thoughtful, dear,” she said, and for the first time in a long, long time she actually smiled. “Why don't you two have a snack?”

James looked at her, then looked at us. Sat back down and shut his mouth.

Nat stifled a snort. My face flamed hotter.
Don't argue,
I told myself, and picked my way to the stove, my hair dripping rivulets of snowmelt.

Ty followed me slowly. His shuffle was worse than usual today, a halting, sliding rhythm that bumped all the wrong ways. “I'll get the kettle,” I said when he gained the kitchen door.

“Hal—”

I quirked an eyebrow:
Spite or pride?
We didn't even need to say it anymore. He sighed and sank into a kitchen chair, his bad leg stretched achingly wide.

I sank the dipper into the Blakelys' rain barrel and filled their copper kettle high. “How much did Heron tell you?” I asked, and he squinted.

“Heron?”

My stomach iced over. “Heron left last night, to find you. He was going to tell you about Thom.”

Tyler struggled upright in his chair. “
What
about Thom?”

The tears started in my eyes again: involuntary, evil things. “It's him, Ty,” I said, as low as I could. “I saw the ghost, and he's not a ghost. It's Thom. I saw his face in the river. He reached out to me. He's stuck on the other side—”

Tyler ran a hand through his messy hair. “Oh, damn.”

The tears seeped into the corners of my mouth. “I should've come myself last night. I just
needed
you,” I said, and sank to my knees before his chair. “I need—” The words choked dry.