The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) (2 page)

“That’s enough, Kora. Your brother has the sense to guard what he says in public. You can talk to him yourself if it’ll make you feel easier, but don’t chastise him. That’ll only make him worse. Now, help me straighten out these threads.”

Kora bumped the living room table, lifting one end off the floor.

“Careful! I know that isn’t your grandmother’s table, but I’ve grown fond of it.”

Kora took ten minutes to get the threads sorted, then announced, “I’m going to bed.”

“Me too. Take a glass of water to Zacry, won’t you? He forgot again to fix one.”

“He always does.” Kora poured the drink and eased open her brother’s door. The window she had slammed was shut no longer; the curtains billowed in the breeze. She glanced at the bed, and had light enough to see that no shadow of a head fell across the pillow.

Eavesdropping at the tavern by day was one thing. To sneak off to God knew where after
Zalski’s curfew was another.

“Zacry Porteg, I’ll whip your hide I will.”

Kora placed the glass on the bedframe and climbed outside.

The night was cool and clear, the full moon high. Kora sprinted to the road, wondering which direction to take, but a cursory glance revealed a human shape just in her range of vision, heading toward the river, the Podra. She cursed beneath her breath and followed. Her legs were longer, and she overtook Zacry within minutes.

“What are you playing at?” she demanded.

Zacry looked at her in terror. “Don’t tell Mother!”

“Oh, stop it. You know I’m not a snitch. Just where do you think you’re going?”

“The riverbank. Opal….”

“Your friend from school?”

“Opal told me people hide stories for the
Letter
half a mile from the general store. In a tree, so they can’t be connected to anyone specific.”

“How would Opal know that?”

“Her father’s the local correspondent.”

Kora was stunned. “Opal’s father writes for the
Letter
?”

“A real important issue’s coming out,” said Zacry. “At least, Opal thinks one is, ‘cause her Pop’s been real nervous. Listen, he stores his work in that tree and someone from the paper picks it up. Let’s go look.” Kora’s eyes narrowed. Her brother sensed her reservation, for the night was too dark to read it plainly. “Please, Kora….”

“Oh all right. If it’ll stop you leaving home again as soon as I drag you back.”

They left the road to cut quicker to the Podra and found themselves in a wheatfield. The stalks, as tall as Zacry, closed them in. They walked in the harvesters’ lanes between the rows. Kora noted, “This is Farmer Byjon’s land. The tree’s on Farmer Byjon’s land?”

“It must be,” said Zacry. “Ha! I wouldn’t mind him taking the blame if Zalski gets his hands on an article.”

Farmer Byjon had a knack for muscling people out of the property he wanted. He kept a riverside path in good condition for public use—mainly to stem hostilities—but to skirt around his fields to find its start would take the siblings well out of their way.

“As long as Old Byjon doesn’t find
us
,” said Kora. And she felt an inexplicable tingling in her limbs, a sensation that had nothing to do with the farmer.

“Get down.”

“What?”

Kora yanked her brother to the dirt. Five seconds passed. Ten. She felt through the earth bodies coming from behind, shuffling through the wheat stalks. Nearer and nearer they came; were they walking in her row?

No, they were one lane over. A male voice spoke.

“Why does he want us searching the riverbank? It won’t be here.”

“No, it won’t, but I don’t ask questions. Neither do you.”

Kora heard an exasperated groan. A third voice said, “Let’s just get this done, shall we?”

A troop of six men passed on Kora’s left, two yards away. From the earth she could see their trousers, their boots, but not with any distinction. Her mind started racing: were these men soldiers? They moved with military discipline, and they looked to be wearing uniforms, dark army uniforms….

Then they were gone. Zacry hazarded a whisper.

“We have to get those notes.”

Opal’s father may have left no name on his documents, but he worked in the village as a scribe of legal proceedings, mainly property and tax transactions. His writing would give him away.

Kora and Zacry ran bow-backed after the soldiers, their heads below the level of the wheat. The troop moved without urgency, and the siblings circled around it to come upon the river through the fields. Brother and sister stepped as close to the edge of the last row of stalks as they dared, peering out to look for the proper tree while a cloud moved before the moon and gave them a bit more cover. One oak they passed, then another; the first was too thin to be the one they wanted, the second too solid. A bolt of lightning, however, appeared to have struck the third. Even in the dark, the damage was obvious.

The soldiers were catching up; Kora could hear them coming down the bank. Before she could yank her brother back, Zacry sprinted forward, still bent low, in a beeline for the tree. He took maybe five seconds to grab the papers, five seconds in which Kora failed to breathe, before he took off with his loot. Zacry angled his flight away from the approaching troop, to dive through the edge of the wheatfield thirty feet from his sister. Both of them lay flat. They could not leave; the uniforms were too close. Kora watched the men comb the burned and twisted trunk, watched them dig around the roots, but they never turned to the stretch of unharvested grain just to their left. Her heartbeat pounded inside her ears, and though she was certain the strangers would hear it, they did not.

Even when the troop moved on, Kora’s body felt tense and heavy. She and Zacry inched toward each other, and Kora nodded in silent approval of her brother’s daring. They made their way home without speaking a word, darting from landmark to landmark, constantly peering over their shoulders. Kora had never felt so relieved as when she closed Zacry’s window behind her. Her brother’s eyes were sparkling with excitement. He looked like he wanted to cheer.

“We did it!”

Kora collapsed on the bed, but she smiled at him, a forced smile. Part of her wanted to beat him senseless, but how could she, when his insanity had saved a good man’s life? “Give me the notes,” she said. Zacry clutched them to his chest. “I’m bringing them to Opal’s dad tomorrow,” she insisted. He handed them over. Curiosity got the best of her, and she was more disappointed than she would have thought to find them in shorthand, which she had never learned to read. She jumped to her feet, to bear down on her brother. “If you ever
sneak out again….”

“I couldn’t, could I? You’re gonna check every night.”

“Bet your bottom I’m gonna check.”

“This was the first time, I promise. I just had to see what was there. You understand, don’t you?”

He looked so pathetic, so innocent. Kora sighed. “I guess so,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “Go to sleep, Zac. To
sleep,
you have school in the morning. And don’t you tell a soul what we did, not even Opal. I mean it, not anyone. Someone could overhear. You know what’s riding
on keeping this secret?”

“Our necks, that’s what riding on it. Yours for sure, you’re of age. Listen, I’m not stupid.”

Kora patted his shoulder again. “I know you’re not. What I don’t understand is why Opal told you about her father.”

“We’re best friends. We tell each other everything.”

“Almost everything,” Kora corrected.

“Right, almost everything. No one at school knows about her Pop but me. She only knows ‘cause he’s not as careful as he should be with his work. He tossed some notes in the fire once, but the logs had burned down. The parchment didn’t light, so Opal found it. And then she followed him one Saturday when he left the house. He usually tells her where he’s going, and that time he didn’t, so that’s how she found the tree. He should’ve waited ‘til she’d gone to bed.”

“
You
should go to bed,” said Kora. “I don’t need to know anything else about Opal’s pop.” 

Kora bid Zacry good night. Back in her room, the smallest of the house, she took a quill and inkbottle and sat on the floor. The moon gave her just enough light to see what she was doing. She wrote on top of the first page of shorthand, “The army almost found these. They were combing the bank. Act with caution.”

She let the ink dry and stuffed the pages beneath her mattress, her mind racing. Why would Zalski’s army patrol south of the village, and what were they hoping to find? Had they been tipped that the
Letter
stashed its work there? How close was Zalski to shutting down the paper? The
Letter
was all Kora had, all anyone had, to know what truly was happening throughout the kingdom.

She climbed into bed fully clothed, burning for answers, filled with dread of the coming month, when the paper’s next issue should come out. She prayed that the night’s adventure had satisfied her brother’s thirst for heroics, at the very least. Kora prayed to the Giver, Herezoth’s one and supreme deity also simply addressed as “God,” who in his justice took as well as gave and had seemed in a taking mood of late; whom the priests said used believers and non-believers alike as instruments of his benevolence and compassion, speaking to the human heart and inclining human will rather than directly interfering in the world he had created; who rewarded or punished in the afterlife according to one’s willingness to be an Instrument. She entreated him to grant Zacry the wisdom to keep from trouble, knowing all the while the only way her prayer would be answered would be for her to watch over and to teach him. But how could she? How could she when the government required children his age to spend nearly all day at school, and she had no choice but to pass what few hours he was home helping their mother sort thread, prepare and repair the loom, wash and fold cloth for sale at market? Soon she grew distracted, breaking off her prayer midstream as her mind tried to picture what could possibly become of her family. All the while, she never forgot the notes on which she lay.

Kora knew she would not rest that night. For the life of her, she could not foresee Zacry learning to keep his head down. She could not foresee any future for him but one that ended all too soon, unless….

Kora almost smiled from nostalgia to remember the legend of the Marked One. Her father first told her the story when she was eight, and it had not impressed her, because as gifted a storyteller as her father had been, this particular tale lacked any and all precision. In Herezoth’s darkest times, he said, when the kingdom was suffering worse than it ever had before or ever would, a hero would appear to save the kingdom’s future, with special instincts or powers from the Giver no one else in history had displayed.

“What kind of suffering?” she asked, picturing a famine or a flood.

People weren’t sure about that; there were disagreements. Most said the suffering would come as the result of black magic.

“So who’s this hero supposed to be? A knight? A good sorcerer like Brenthor?”

That last was a common guess, at least among those who held the black magic theory. All the legend itself said was that he would have some kind of mark on his face to identify him; thus, the hero was called the Marked One. Some held Brenthor himself had been the Marked One, with a distinctive mole above his lip hidden by a moustache.

Kora had always deemed the legend too ridiculous even for a child to accept, though her best friend, a boy named Sedder, had been fascinated when she asked him if he knew of it and he said no. As for the hero, she could not imagine a concept as fantastically mundane as the “Marked One.” She always pictured a noble knight in white or perhaps gold armor on a shining steed, with a sword in his hand and a birthmark, perhaps the sorcerer’s mark, on his cheek. Every fairytale she had ever heard featured such a warrior. And thousands by now had to be praying for his arrival.

If he were to come, Kora thought with scorn, the Giver had better send him soon, so he could fix things up north in the capital. How much worse could conditions get before they matched those so broadly painted in the legend?

* * *

Kora rose the next morning to find her mother already up. Feigning a better sleep than she experienced, she said she was going for a walk.

“Wait ‘til it’s warmer,” her mother suggested.

“More soldiers come out when it’s warm. And I don’t mind a brisk breeze.”

The crisp weather spurred Kora on, and she traveled the quarter mile to Opal’s house in record time. She hid the shorthand notes in her tattered jacket. She had to squash them, but they were safe, and the one soldier in her path never gave her a second thought. Had he been in the search party the night before? Kora had not marked faces in the wheatfield, and did not trust herself to meet the man’s eyes in daylight. She only felt calm when the compromising pages disappeared beneath Opal’s door. Then Kora went home to weave; the morning dragged on, and her meager lunch of bread and cheese did little to shorten the minutes.