“Where does thee think thee’s going?” Aunt Cord was pawing at the soot-mark on her face with one gloved hand, and when she lunged forward in an attempt to grasp Pylon’s reins, she stumbled over the box and almost fell. It was Susan, still bent over to her aunt’s side, who grasped her shoulder and held her up. Cordelia pulled back as if from the touch of an adder. “Not to him! Ye’ll not go to him now, ye mad goose!”
Susan turned her horse away. “None of yer business. Aunt. This is the end between us. But mark what I say: we’ll be married by Year’s End. Our firstborn is already conceived.”
“Thee’ll be married tomorrow night if thee goes nigh him’ Joined in smoke, wedded in fire, bedded in the ashes! Bedded in the ashes, do ye hear me?”
The madwoman advanced on her, railing, but Susan had no more time to listen.
The day was fleeting. There would be time to do the things that needed doing, but only if she moved at speed.
“Goodbye,” she said again, and then galloped away. Her aunt’s last words followed her: In the ashes, do ye hear me?
3
On her way out of town along the Great Road, Susan saw riders coming toward her, and got off the highway. This would not, she felt, be a good time to meet pilgrims. There was an old granary nearby; she rode Pylon behind it, stroked his neck, murmured for him to be quiet.
It took the riders longer to reach her position than she would have expected, and when they finally got there, she saw why. Rhea was with them, sitting in a black cart covered with magical symbols. The witch had been scary when Susan had seen her on the night of the Kissing Moon, but still recognizably human; what the girl saw passing before her now, rocking from side to side in the black cart and clutching a bag in her lap, was an unsexed, sore-raddled creature that looked more like a troll than a human being. With her were the Big Coffin Hunters.
“To Seafront!” the thing in the cart screamed. “Hie you on, and at full speed! I’ll sleep in Thorin’s bed tonight or know the reason why! Sleep in it and piss in it, if I take a notion! Hie you on, I say!”
Depape—it was to his horse that the cart had been harnessed—turned around and looked at her with distaste and fear. “Still your mouth.”
Her answer was a fresh burst of laughter. She rocked from side to side, holding a bag on her lap with one hand and pointing at Depape with the twisted, long-nailed index finger of the other. Looking at her made Susan feel weak with terror, and she felt the panic around her again, like some dark fluid that would happily drown her brain if given half a chance.
She worked against the feeling as best she could, holding onto her mind, refusing to let it turn into what it had been before and would be again if she let it—a brainless bird trapped in a barn, bashing into the walls and ignoring the open window through which it had entered.
Even when the cart was gone below the next hill and there was nothing left of them but dust hanging in the air, she could hear Rhea’s wild cackling.
4
She reached the hut in the Bad Grass at one o’ the clock. For a moment she just sat astride Pylon, looking at it. Had she and Roland been here hardly twenty-four hours ago? Making love and making plans? It was hard to believe, but when she dismounted and went in, the wicker basket in which she had brought them a cold meal confirmed it. It still sat upon the rickety table.
Looking at the hamper, she realized she hadn’t eaten since the previous evening—a miserable supper with Hart Thorin that she’d only picked at, too aware of his eyes on her body. Well, they’d done their last crawl, hadn’t they? And she’d
never have to walk down another Seafront hallway wondering what door he was going to come bursting out of like Jack out of his box, all grabbing hands and stiff, randy prick.
Ashes, she thought. Ashes and ashes. But not us, Roland. I swear, my darling, not us.
She was frightened and tense, trying to put everything she now must do in order—a process to be followed just as there was a process to be followed when saddling a horse—but she was also sixteen and healthy. One look at the hamper and she was ravenous.
She opened it, saw there were ants on the two remaining cold beef sandwiches, brushed them off, and gobbled the sandwiches down. The bread had gotten rather stiff, but she hardly noticed. There was a half jar of sweet cider and part of a cake, as well.
When she had finished everything, she went to the north comer of the hut and moved the hides someone had begun to cure and then lost interest in. There was a hollow beneath. Within it, wrapped in soft leather, were Roland’s guns.
If things go badly, thee must come here and take them west to Gilead. Find my father.
With faint but genuine curiosity, Susan wondered if Roland had really expected she would ride blithely off to Gilead with his unborn child in her belly while he and his friends were roasted, screaming and red-handed, on the Reap-Night bonfire.
She pulled one of the guns out of its holster. It took her a moment or two to sec how to get the revolver open, hut then the cylinder rolled out and she saw that each chamber was loaded. She snapped it back into place and checked the other one.
She concealed them in the blanket-roll behind her saddle, just as Roland had, then mounted up and headed east again. But not toward town. Not yet. She had one more stop to make first.
5
At around two o’ the clock, word that Fran Lengyll would be speaking at the Town Gathering Hall began to sweep through the town of Mejis. No one could have said
where this news (it was too firm and specific to be a rumor) began, and no one much cared; they simply passed it on.
By three o’ the clock, the Gathering Hall was full, and two hundred or more stood outside, listening as Lengyll’s brief address was relayed back to them in whispers.
Coral Thorin, who had begun passing the news of Lengyll’s impending appearance at the Travellers’ Rest, was not there. She knew what Lengyll was going to say; had, in fact, supported Jonas’s argument that it should be as simple and direct as possible. There was no need for rabble-rousing; the townsfolk would be a mob by sundown of
Reaping Day, a mob always picked its own leaders, and it always picked the right ones.
Lengyll spoke with his hat held in one hand and a silver reap-charm hanging from the front of his vest. He was brief, he was rough, and he was convincing. Most folks in the crowd had known him all their lives, and didn’t doubt a word he said.
Hart Thorin and Kimba Rimer had been murdered by Dearborn, Heath, and Stockworth, Lengyll told the crowd of men in denim and women in faded gingham. The crime had come home to them because of a certain item—a bird’s skull—left in Mayor Thorin’s lap.
Murmurs greeted this. Many of Lengyll’s listeners had seen the skull, either mounted on the horn of Cuthbert’s saddle or worn jauntily around his neck. They had laughed at his prankishness. Now they thought of how he had laughed back at them, and realized he must have been laughing at a different joke all along. Their faces darkened.
The weapon used to slit the Chancellor’s throat, Lengyll continued, had belonged to Dearborn. The three young men had been taken that morning as they prepared to flee Mejis. Their motivations were not entirely clear, but they were likely after horses. If so, they would be for John Farson, who was known to pay well for good nags, and in cash. They were, in other words, traitors to their own lands and to the cause of the Affiliation.
Lengyll had planted Brian Hockey’s son Rufus three rows back. Now, exactly on time, Rufus Hookey shouted out: “Has they confessed?”
“Aye,” Lengyll said. “Confessed both murders, and spoke it most proud, so they did.”
A louder murmur at this, almost a rumble. It ran backward like a wave to the
outside, where it went from mouth to mouth: most proud, most proud, they had murdered in the dark of night and spoke it most proud.
Mouths were tucked down. Fists clenched.
“Dearborn said that Jonas and his friends had caught on to what they were doing, and took the word to Rimer. They killed Chancellor Rimer to shut him up while they finished their chores, and Thorin in case Rimer had passed word on.”