THE EMPTY BED IN SILVER CREEK

Riley

I rode into Silver Creek before dawn on the Voice's orders.

The order had come the night before, tucked inside a potion wrapper the same way every order had reached me for two years. The handwriting was small and sharp.

"Retrieve the boy, bring him to the capital, and use him to keep the Luna obedient now that the Rite has made her untouchable," the letter said.

I read it twice.

"Use him to keep the Luna obedient," I said out loud to my horse. "Now that the Rite has made her untouchable."

The horse did not answer. I folded the letter and put it in my coat.

I rode hard through the night. The road to Silver Creek was dark and empty. I told myself I was a soldier for the starving and that this was necessary. I told myself that the palace deserved every knife the rebels sent, and that the boy was a leash I needed.

"The boy is a leash," I said to myself as I rode. "That is what the Voice called him from the start. A leash for the girl."

But the words felt wrong in my mouth now.

I reached Silver Creek before dawn. The village was quiet and the sky was still dark. The tavern was dark, and the door was unlocked.

"That is strange," I said, because the tavern door was never unlocked at night. I pushed it open.

"Hello?" I called into the dark. "Is anyone here?"

No one answered.

I stepped inside and lit the small lamp on the table. The room was cold.

"Isabella's father is gone and no one has heard from him in three days," the neighbor woman told me later when I asked her, but I already knew he was gone. The stove was cold and there was no smell of ale. The floor was clean.

"Where is Noah?" I asked out loud to the empty room. "The boy should be in the corner bed."

The bed in the corner was empty, the three frayed blankets folded with more care than Noah has ever managed. I stared at those blankets for a long time.

"Noah never folds his blankets," I said. "He never has the strength to fold them. He leaves them in a pile and Isabella folds them when she comes home. These blankets are folded neatly, with the edges tucked. Someone else folded them, or he folded them when he had more strength than I have ever seen."

I walked to the bed and touched the blankets. They were cold.

"The potion bottle beside the pillow has not been touched in days," I said, looking at the small bottle on the stool beside the bed. It was full to the top. The wax seal was unbroken.

"He takes a dose every night," I said. "He has taken a dose every night for two years. If this bottle has not been touched in days, then he has not needed it for days. Or he is gone."

I sat on the edge of the mattress and the mattress creaked under me.

"I have spent two years refusing to look at this room," I said quietly. "I came here every month with bottles from the north. I handed them to the tavern keeper and I left. I never asked about the boy."

I looked around the small corner where Noah slept.

"I notice what I have spent two years refusing to look at," I said. "The small worn spot on the floor where the boy dragged his chair. He dragged his chair to the window to watch the road for Isabella. I can see the marks in the wood. The floor is worn smooth there."

"The shelf of drawings he never asked about," I said, looking at the low shelf above the bed. There were small drawings pinned to the wood, drawn on scrap paper. A house with a crooked roof. A wolf with large eyes. A woman with long hair, singing. A boy and a girl holding hands.

"I never asked about these drawings," I said. "I saw them every time I came, and I never asked who drew them. I told myself the boy was a leash. A leash does not draw pictures."

For the first time in my life I heard myself thinking about Noah as a person and not a leash.

"Noah is a person," I said out loud, and my voice shook. "He is twelve years old. He coughs every winter. He draws pictures of his sister. He waits by the window for her to come home. He is not a tool to keep the Luna obedient. He is her brother."

I stood up and walked to the table in the center of the tavern. The table was old and scarred with the syndicate's old brand, a circle with a line through it that the rebels used to mark their houses.

On the table, over the syndicate's old brand, someone has scratched a fresh crescent and vine. The scratch was new and clean, the wood still pale where the knife had cut.

"Someone scratched this over the old brand," I said. I touched the fresh mark with my finger. "A crescent and vine. The same shape as the seal on every order from the Voice. The same shape as Isabella's mark."

Beside it lay a note in Noah's handwriting, steadier than any hand that has ever held a pen through a coughing fit.

I picked up the note. The paper was folded once. I opened it.

"Riley," the note said in large, careful letters. "I left willingly with the kind man, because the kind man knew the whole song and finished the verse their mother began."

I read it once, then I read it again.

"What song?" I asked the empty tavern. "What verse?"

I read it three times. My hands started to shake.

"It is not the Voice's agent and not the palace's," I said. "I know the handwriting of every agent the Voice sends. This is not their paper. This is not their ink. The Voice's agents do not call themselves kind. The palace guards do not know any songs."

"And the man who took the boy has done in a matter of days what two years of my potions never allowed," I said. I looked at the untouched bottle beside the pillow. "For two years I brought potions from the north. The bottles arrived already prepared and sealed. I handed them to the tavern keeper and he gave them to Noah. Noah coughed less for a day, then coughed again. He never got better. He only stayed alive."

"Without a cough to justify the bottle, the boy no longer needs me," I said, and the truth of it hit me hard. "If he left willingly, and his handwriting is steadier than any hand that has ever held a pen through a coughing fit, then he is not coughing anymore. Someone healed him. Someone did what my potions never did."

I sat back down on the edge of the empty bed and held the note in both hands.

"The Voice told me to retrieve the boy and use him to keep the Luna obedient," I said. "But the boy is gone. He left with a kind man who knew his mother's song. He is not waiting to be used as a leash."

"And if the boy no longer needs the bottle, then he no longer needs me," I said. "I have told myself for two years that I was helping him by bringing the bottles. I told myself I was keeping him alive. But I was only keeping him sick enough to control his sister."

I looked at the empty bed, the folded blankets, the drawings on the shelf, and the fresh crescent and vine scratched over the old brand.

"The boy no longer needs me," I said quietly.

And then I thought of Isabella in the capital, under the King's guardianship, with the silver mark on her collarbone and the name Liora in her wolf's mouth.