The Knight and the Butcherbird

6

The day I found the antlers, I went to Finch.

Finch said, “What’s up, buttercup?” but I addressed her formally, as supplicant to Secretary, rather than child to parent.

I said, “Why do people change, Secretary? Why are they one thing, and then another?”

She studied me with one eye, then the other, exactly as a bird would. “I remember many stories about such things. Which one do you want?” she asked, and I answered, “All of them.”

It took weeks. Every evening I went to her, and every evening she told me a different story. She began with demon tales, of course—those boring, priestly parables that all seem to end with children being eaten. Once upon a time there was a little boy who loved his mother so well that he plucked her feathers for her every night, until one day she grew fangs and ate him, et cetera.

Then came the older stories, stranger and more fantastic, with no obvious moral. Once upon a time there was a doctor who was poisoned by radiation and became a great green-skinned giant. Once upon a time there were five children who transformed themselves into animals in order to rescue their world from invaders.

(Here Sir John interrupted, although it’s bad manners to interrupt a Secretary when she’s telling a story. He said, “But the Applegate texts are centuries old! How could she possibly know them, without libraries or hard drives—was she even literate ?” And I said, “Shut up.”)

Then came the oldest stories of all. Stories which were older than hard drives or libraries, older than the written word itself, which had survived more than one apocalypse. Once upon a time there was a woman who became a tree to escape a hunter. Once upon a time there was a seal who became a woman because her skin was stolen by a fisherman. Once upon a time there were seven brothers who became seven ravens because their father cursed them.

You see the pattern, don’t you? That’s the true work of a Secretary, of course: not only to remember the stories but to make sense of them. To find the patterns and fashion them into answers.

Why do people change, Sir John? Because they are cursed, pursued, poisoned, trapped, under siege. Because they have to.

(“Very well, Secretary, but I did not ask why . I asked how .”)

Once you understand why (I spoke a little louder, to discourage further interruptions), the how is simple. I stole Ramp Pharmacist’s scope and made a study of May’s blood. It took months of work, but I didn’t mind; I have always liked to look at her, and she has always liked to be looked at.

Do you know what human blood looks like, up close? Tiny castles circled by tiny walls, like a thousand little enclaves. Demon blood is different: there are no castles and no walls. Instead there are endless, winding tendrils, which branch like roots or antlers—

“Yes,” said Sir John, so harshly that he escaped the bounds of parentheses and entered the story proper. “We know. Of course we know. Did you really think an outlander child with a prehistoric microscope had discovered anything we don’t already know in the grand laboratories of the enclaves?” There was such bitterness in his voice that I suspected it wasn’t me he was asking. He rubbed his hands over his face. “For years I have brought the enclaves everything they’ve asked for: bones, blood, fur, teeth. Skulls, bleached and tied to my saddle. Whole corpses, wrapped in tarpaulin. They have dissected demon brains and disintegrated demon skeletons. They have gotten no closer to understanding how a person becomes a demon.”

We were sitting cross-legged on Finch’s back porch—my back porch, now. Finch always said there were certain places where it was easier to tell stories, and to hear them: around a fire at night, in the mist at dawn, on a porch at dusk. In-between places, balanced on the border between familiar and strange.

“That’s because they studied the dead,” I said, not unkindly. “I studied the living. And do you know what I found?”

I leaned forward, and so did he, his face stretched taut. He must be a very loyal knight, I thought, to care so much about the answer to his king’s question.

So I gave it to him: “Cancer. Of the pancreas, specifically, but also in her right hip and both lungs. At least, that’s what Ramp said, when I showed him the slides.”

Sir John blinked. “But cancer is common, out here. Your early exposure to toxins and carcinogens—the radiation from the wars—half your babies are stillborn, and the other half don’t live to see forty. There are enclave analysts that say you’ll be extinct within the next two generations.”

A Secretary ought not roll her eyes at a supplicant, so I didn’t, but honestly. Did he think we didn’t know how many people we lost every year to flash floods and heat waves, COVID and cancer? Finch’s sons had both died in the same warm, wet year, when the winter frost never came and the mosquitoes hung like malarial clouds in the valleys. I wondered sometimes whether she’d really adopted me because I had brains, or just because I had a pulse.

“Yes, exactly,” I said. He frowned, and I tsked my tongue. “Consider the shrike, then. Maybe once, a long time ago, it was a different kind of creature altogether. Maybe it ate seeds and berries, as a good songbird should. But then came a drought or a flood or a famine—the end of the world, to the shrike. Some of them starved, probably, but some of them survived. Some of them changed .”

He was still frowning.

I lowered my voice, gave it a little rise-and-fall rhythm; one of Finch’s tricks. “Everyone thinks you get sick because you begin to change, but it’s the opposite: you change because you get sick. Because you have to. ” I smiled, and knew it was my scavenger’s smile: wide, and full of teeth. “The wheel turns, Sir John, but so do we.”

I saw the moment he understood. His eyes went round. His mouth slackened. Then he was on his feet, striding up and down the porch while his hawk sat on the rail—still hooded, although the sun had nearly set.

He spoke almost to himself. “Is it—can it really be that simple? There are no demons in the enclaves—less evolutionary pressure, I suppose. But she was an outlander, like you.” An odd comment; of course May was an outlander. “If they’d caught her early on, they might’ve seen the cancer on a scan or a test. God, they would have locked her up in a lab and never let her out.” He’d stopped before the hawk and was stroking its breast with one knuckle. His hand shook slightly. “They would already know. But they don’t.”

“So go tell them. Go claim your reward.”

He flinched at the sound of my voice, as if he’d forgotten I was there, and turned sharply.

People don’t always like the stories a Secretary tells them—the truth is rarely popular—but no one has ever looked at me like he did: with real revulsion.

“Do you know that shrikes once went by another name, in the Old World? Butcherbirds, they were called.” His voice roughened. “Your mother named you well.”

I flinched. Had Finch known, somehow, what I would become? “But you said the King of Cincinnati asked you—”

“And did you stop to wonder why, before you told me your little story? Did you imagine the great kings of the enclaves only wanted to help the poor outlanders?”

The conversation seemed to tilt beneath my feet. Suddenly he was the one telling the story.

“The enclaves are crowded. The armies are ready—where do you think all your iron has been going?—and the kings are restless. Is it right that they should rule only a single city, when kings and presidents once ruled empires? They were content to wait, for a while. Why kill what is already dying? But then came the first reports about other things in the outlands. New things, strange things, which wouldn’t be so easily conquered.”

“Demons,” I said; he didn’t bother to nod.

“The missions started six months after the first confirmed sighting. Priests, to call them demons, and knights, to slay them. The Bible and the gun—an old formula, well proved. But we’ve failed . Every year there are more of them, and fewer of us, and now the outlands are full of our failures: demons that survived and escaped and made their homes in the wastes and wild places. So the kings wait behind their walls, for now. But if they knew how to kill a demon before it was born—if they knew a blood test or a cheek swab could tell them which of you would turn ... Come with us, they might say, for chemotherapy in our fair city! I doubt they’d even bother to send back ashes.”

In the dusklight Sir John’s face was cold and colorless, like a stone angel looking down over his graveyard. “Do you have any idea how many people you’ve killed, to save your lady wife?”

Once, I might have been guilt stricken. I might even have wept, like a child who has discovered, too late, that knives are sharp. But I’d already committed one murder for May, and I hadn’t wept a single tear.

I stared back up at him, just as cold, and asked, “Wouldn’t you do the same, for someone you loved?”

“Yes,” he said, in a voice that made me aware, suddenly, of the rifle he still wore on his back. He took a step toward me—heavy, inevitable, the angel stepping down from his plinth—then stopped. Something cracked in his expression, human flesh visible beneath the stone. “For all the fucking good it’s done me. Cancer. Jesus.”

He turned and crooked his arm at his hawk. His vambraces were tied at his hip, so there was nothing but thin cotton to protect him from those long, curving talons. Bloodstains bloomed beneath the points of each claw as it alighted; he didn’t seem to notice.

He left then, pausing only to bow and offer a supplicant’s traditional thanks: “My gratitude for the story, Shrike Secretary. May it guide me true.”

“So long as it guides you the hell out of Iron Hollow,” I said, and didn’t regret what I’d done, not at all.

At six, I’d thought love was a full belly; at sixteen, I’d thought it was wildflowers and gooseberries and Mayapple’s mouth on mine.

At seventeen, I knew better: love is whatever you’re willing to kill for.