Chapter 4

The mercenary had a thick, dark head of hair that was cut to her chin. Her brown face looked like it was made of granite, and her black eyes squinted a little when she saw me. Such fascinating eyes—not only one hue of black, but many, with traces of brown that shone through the darkness. While she judged me as a possible threat or employer, I maintained my shoulders back and fought against the useless part of my mind that was preoccupied with color, light, and form. I couldn't help but gulp at her gleaming, wicked weapons. And stop a respectable two feet away.

With a tone I had never heard before, she replied, "I only take cash; I don't exchange my services for goods." In order to avoid seeming too interested in our chat, especially when I said, "Then you'll be out of luck in this sort of place," a few nearby residents made an effort to avoid making eye contact.

Even while sitting, she was huge. "Girl, what is your business with me?"

I'm guessing she saw me as a youngster in my layers, lanky from hunger, even though she might have been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty years old.

"I have a doe hide and a wolf pelt for sale.

I thought you might want to buy them. "You steal them?" "No," I said, meeting her gaze.

“I swear, I hunted them myself.”

She gave me another glance with those gloomy eyes. "How."

It was a command, not a question. It could be that the person had interacted with others who didn't treat oaths as holy or words as commitment. And had given them the appropriate punishment.

When I finished explaining how I had brought them down, she motioned towards my satchel with a hand and said, "Let me see." I pulled out both carefully folded hides. "You weren't lying about the wolf's size," she said. "Doesn't seem like a Witchwolf, though."

She ran her hands over and under them, inspecting them with a skilled eye. She set her price.

I blinked, but resisted the impulse to do so once more. She was paying far too much.

"I'm guessing that the two girls across the square are your sisters," she said, glancing past me. All of you have that brazen hair and that insatiable expression. They were still making every effort to listen in without being seen.

"I don't require your sympathy."

"No, but the other merchants have been inexpensive all day, and you need my money." Everyone is too preoccupied with those calf-eyed zealots bleating across the square." She pointed at the Children of the Blessed, who were still ringing their silver bells and leaping in front of anybody who attempted to pass.

"Up to you, girl," the mercenary said with a slight smile as I turned to face her.

"Why?"

"At a time when we needed it most, someone once did the same for me and mine," she said with a shrug. Assume it's time to pay back what you owe.

Weighing my options, I watched her once more. "To make it more fair, I might also give you some wood carvings my father has."

“I pack lightly and don't need them. However, these—she patted the pelts in her hands—"spare me the trouble of killing them myself."

As she went for the coin purse inside her thick coat, my cheeks grew hot and I nodded. If the clinking was any sign, it was heavy with at least silver, possibly gold. In our region, mercenaries were often well compensated.

We could only rely on the Treaty's strength, which was established 500 years ago, because our territory was too small and impoverished to support a standing army to patrol the wall with Duskarra. However, the aristocracy could afford to pay for hired swords, like this woman, to protect their territory bordering the immortal world. The impression of comfort was as illusory as the signs on our doorstep. Deep down, we all understood that there was nothing we could do to combat the Witches. From the moment we were born, regardless of our socioeconomic status or position, we had all been warned against it; the warnings were sung to us as we rocked in our cradles, and the rhymes were chanted in the schoolyards. From a hundred yards away, one of the High Wiz may transform your bones into dust. Not that I or my sisters had ever witnessed it.

However, if we ever met them, we continued to hope that something, anything, could be effective against them. The market had two booths selling iron scraps, charms, trinkets, and incantations to allay these worries. They were out of my price range, and even if they were effective, they would only give us a few minutes to get ready. Both fighting and running were pointless. Yet, anytime they left the cabin, Celina and Amanda continued to wear their iron bracelets. Isaac always wore an iron cuff around one wrist, which he kept beneath his sleeve. He had previously extended an invitation to purchase one for me, but I declined. It seemed excessively intimate, like a payment, and like an everlasting reminder of what we were and weren't to one another.

The coins were as heavy as a millstone when the mercenary placed them in my waiting palm, and I put them in my pocket. My sisters could not have failed to see the money, and they were undoubtedly already considering how they might convince me to part with some of it.

As I felt my sisters closing in, like vultures surrounding a corpse, I said to the mercenary, "Thank you," but I couldn't help but notice the bite in my tone.

"A word of advice, from one hunter to another," the mercenary said as he stroked the wolf hide.

I raised my brows.

"Don't venture too deep into the forest. Yesterday, I wouldn't have been anywhere near you. With a wolf this size, you'd have the least of your worries. I've been hearing increasingly about those things slipping through the wall.

I felt a cold spider crawl down my back. “Are they—are they going to strike?” I would move my family out of our miserable, damp area and head south—far away from the invisible wall that divided our world—before they could cross it, if that were the case.

Once, long ago and for millennia before then, we had been slaves to High wiz overlords. We had previously created magnificent, expansive societies out of our blood and labor, and we had constructed temples to their deities. Once, we had revolted throughout all the nations and territories. The War had been so bloody and devastating that it required six mortal queens to craft the Treaty in order to bring the carnage to an end on both sides and for the wall to be built: the North of our world yielded to the High wiz and witches, who carried their magic with them; the South to us cowering mortals, who are now condemned to earn a living from the land forever.

With a face as hard as a rock, the mercenary said, "We don't know what the witches are up to. We don't know if the High Lords' leash on their beasts is slipping, or if these are targeted attacks." An old nobleman who claimed it had been getting worse for the past fifty years was under my protection. Two weeks prior, he boarded a ship going south and advised me to leave if I had any sense. Prior to his departure, he confessed to receiving word from a friend that a gang of virelya had broken through the wall and devastated half of his village in the middle of the night.

“Virelya?” I whispered. Although I was aware that there were different kinds of witches and that they differed as much as any other animal species, I could only name a few.

The mercenary's midnight-black eyes blinked. "as huge as a wolf at day, witch at Night" Additionally, a nasty, vile witch is created. The nobleman said that they had reduced the villagers to actual ribbons.

I felt sick. My sisters appeared so frail behind us, with their fair complexion so infinitely delicate and shredable. We would never stand a chance against something like the virelya. The Children of the Blessed were idiots; they were fools.

"Other than more recruits for me, and you staying well away from the wall, we have no idea what all these attacks mean," the mercenary continued. Particularly if the High Wiz begin to show up— or, worse still, one of the High Lords. They would make the virelya appear to be canines.

I examined her rough, scarred hands, which were dried out by the weather. "Have you ever encountered a different kind of Witch?"

"You don't want to know, girl—not unless you want to be hurling up your breakfast," she said as her eyes closed.

I was really experiencing a combination of illness and anxiety. I took the chance and asked, "Was it more lethal than the virelya?"

The woman drew back the sleeve of her thick coat, exposing a tanned, muscular forearm covered with horrible, twisted scars. Their arc was so similar to that of a virelya, but as she put it, "it didn't have the brute force or size of a virelya, but its bite was full of poison." I was out for two months, and it took me four months to regain my ability to walk. She lifted her trouser leg. Despite the terror of it twisting in my stomach, I found it to be gorgeous. With her tanned skin, the veins seemed like frost— solid black, spiderwebbed, and crawling. "Healer said there was nothing to be done for it— that I'm lucky to be walking with the poison still in my legs. Perhaps one day it will cripple me or perhaps it will kill me. However, I will at least go knowing that I was the first to murder it.

As she dropped the cuff of her pants, the blood in my own veins seemed to cool. Nobody in the square would have dared to talk about it or approach anyone if they had seen it. Additionally, I was at my breaking point for the day. As a result, I paused for a moment, supporting myself against what she had told me and demonstrated to me. "Thank you for the warnings," I said.

She smiled slightly and glanced behind me, "Good luck."

My arm was then seized by a thin hand that pulled me away. I knew it was Celina before I even glanced at her.

"They're dangerous," Celina warned, pulling me away from the mercenary while her fingers dug into my arm. "Don't approach them again."

"Is there something I need to know?" I questioned softly as I looked at her and then at Amanda, who was pale and tense. Celina only cared about protecting Amanda, and I couldn't recall the last time she had ever attempted to warn me about anything.

"They are beasts, and they will seize any copper they can get, even if it's by force."

"She stole from you?" I asked the mercenary, who was still inspecting her new skins.

"Not her," Amanda whispered. "Some other one who passed through." He was enraged that we only had a little amount of money, but—

"Why didn't you notify him—or me?"

"What might you have done?" Celina scoffed.

Did you challenge him to a battle with your bow and arrows? And if we reported anything, who in this dump of a city would give a damn?

"And your Thomas?" I asked calmly.

Celina gave me what I thought was her try at a pleasant grin, probably as she remembered the cash I was now carrying, but her gaze was drawn to something behind me. "Your friend is waiting for you."

I spun around. As a matter of fact, Isaac was standing across the square with his arms crossed and leaning against a structure. Even though he was the oldest son of the only affluent farmer in our village, he was still slender from the winter, and his brown hair was now untidy. We were drawn to each other by a sort of darkness that lay beneath our somewhat attractive, quiet, and shy personalities, that shared sense of how miserable our lives were and would always be.

Although we had known each other for a few years—ever since my family had relocated to the village—I had never given him much thought until one afternoon when we found ourselves strolling along the main street together. I had only spoken about the eggs he was selling at the market, and I had been drawn to the variety of colors in the basket he was carrying—browns, tans, and the lightest blues and greens. He left me at my cottage feeling not quite so... lonely, even if it was simple, straightforward, and maybe a little uncomfortable. I brought him into that dilapidated barn a week later.

In the three years since, he had been my first and only lover. We would sometimes meet every night for a week, and other times we would go a month without seeing each other. However, each encounter was the same: a flurry of shedding clothing, shared breaths, tongues, and teeth. Sometimes we'd speak, but he would mostly discuss the stress and obligations his father put on him. Frequently, we would remain silent throughout. Although our lovemaking wasn't exactly great, it was still a release, a break, and a little selfish.

Even though we had never shared love—at least in the way I thought others used the term—a part of me had crumbled when he announced that he would soon be married. I was not yet in such dire straits that I would beg him to see me after his marriage.

Isaac nodded in his characteristic way before strolling away down the street—out of town and to the old barn, where he would be waiting. Although we were never subtle in our interactions with one another, we did take steps to prevent them from being too blatant.

"I do hope you two are taking precautions," Celina said, folding her arms and clicking her tongue.

“It’s a little late to act like you care,” I remarked. However, we exercised caution. Isaac drank the contraceptive potion himself because I couldn't pay for it. He was aware that I wouldn't have touched him if not for that. I pulled out a twenty-mark copper from my pocket. I placed the breath into Amanda's palm without even glancing at my sisters and said, "I'll see you at home."

Later, after another meal of venison, as we were all sitting around the fire during the tranquil hour before bed, I noticed my sisters giggling and whispering to one another. I don't know what they had spent all the coppers I had given them on, but Amanda had returned with a new chisel for our father's wood carving. The cloak and boots, about which they had complained the previous evening, were overpriced. But I hadn't reprimanded them for it, not even when Celina went out a second time to chop more wood without my permission. Fortunately, they had not experienced another confrontation with the Children of the Blessed.

My father was sleeping in his chair, his cane resting over his twisted knee. At any time, it's a good idea to talk to Celina about Thomas. I opened my mouth and faced her.

But there was a roar that half deafened me, and my sisters screamed as snow burst into the room and an enormous, growling shape appeared few inches from the door way.