Chapter 12 #2
“We didn’t think aught of it,” Kaelson told me.
“His first dance, the Duke doesn’t let anyone dance with the lady, but he’s new and it’s a common affair.
You haven’t seen one. We had plague, and that shut down normal plans.
But it’s for all of us, like. Not a ball, but a celebration for the city.
It was nice of them to attend.” He waved a hand, as if nobility were a different breed who didn’t need to make sense.
“She talked to people though.” He looked at me, the cup between his hands. “She talked to them, boy. That’s all.”
I didn’t have a hard time believing the Butcher had been cruel and controlling. I didn’t need a list. “How do we keep Audrey safe?” I asked them.
“D’you remember Sean?” Kaelson asked Thomas, frowning.
“Aaliyah’s Sean?”
I looked down at my cup again, grappling with my impatience. We were here, doing this. I considered making an excuse and walking out, but I knew I wouldn’t.
“No. No, Sean from Park and Twelfth. His wife moved to Ange’s Pass after the war.
” Thomas just shook his head. “Shame. He was solid. Sean’s dad, he’ll be in the halls of Velkyn.
If anyone got in, he did. Those days, industry ran the city and the bribes flowed.
Sean’s papa, he’d have none of it. Got himself on the wrong side of the wrong people. I grew up with Sean.”
Was there a way to graciously exit their journey down memory back alley? I settled back in my chair and hoped the drinking drastically increased. I’d wish them well when they went to piss.
“Every now and then he’d say something that’d just stop me in my tracks. ‘Nah, can’t buy from that butcher, they nearly killed us a few months ago selling my da poison tripe’ just casually in conversation.”
A smile flickered over Thomas’ face. “I heard him talked about, now you mention it. What was his pa’s name? Allen?”
“Something like that,” Kaelson agreed, snorting a bit. “Sean, he was solid. He was on his way home after wearing the tabard for less’n a moon with a couple older chaps. They made sure he got home safe. His family, they had enemies.”
“They would’ve,” Thomas agreed.
“Found his old man strung up,” Kaelson said, shaking his head. “They got to him. Can’t remember how. It was bad. I didn’t hear the details of how it’d been done. Always figured that’s a kindness when people keep it to themselves.”
Thomas nodded silently. Neither of them were drinking. I’d be lucky to get out before the candles burned low.
“The ones walking with Sean, they said it was the worst they’d seen. One of them was sick. Couldn’t do a thing about it, was just sick all over himself. Sean cut his papa down, got him covered up before his little nieces got home. That was the kind of man Sean was.”
I wondered if Audrey would mind terribly going to bed. If I had to do this, I’d rather have done it stretched out on the divan in front of her fire. These two, they’d be able to do this all night, I suspected.
“So, when they told me he’d deserted outside Wolfswail, I didn’t believe it,” Kaelson went on, his voice dropping a little lower. “I couldn’t. Not Sean. He’d been missing, him and a couple dozen scouts.”
“Winter,” Thomas said, as if that explained everything.
“The first,” Kaelson agreed, glancing over. “Remember the sound of them?”
Thomas swallowed audibly, then drank.
“Wolves,” Kaelson told me. “That’s what we said to ourselves. Just wolves. Rumors flew, of course. What’s new, right? We were all jumping at shadows. But when Sean tried to run…”
“He lived?” Thomas asked, his voice flat. “He saw it and lived?”
“He saw it and lived,” Kaelson said, on a slow outbreath.
“Anyone else and I’d’ve called them a coward.
I saw his eyes.” He looked up at me and a chill went through me.
“They weren’t wolves, boy. Not anymore. Mayhap not ever.
They picked us off, any time anyone left the army.
We were sitting ducks outside of the mages’ rings. ”
Thomas blew out a slow breath and reached to fill up his cup.
“I saw a print, once,” Kaelson told me, as if this was life-saving information he was imparting in this moment.
And mayhap he thought it was. Or mayhap he couldn’t tell what was now, and what was then.
“Looked like it could’ve come from a wolf, except it was bigger than my torso.
A single print, boy. We were terrified, that winter. ”
Despite myself, I felt myself picking up the rhythm of the story, skipping ahead. I knew they’d taken Wolfswail. I knew both these two had been there.
What did Ylva know of these wolves?
“And yet,” Kaelson said, the edge of bitterness entering his voice. “And yet, when the Duke knocked on Wolfswail’s doors, they opened.”
“Why?” I asked.
Kaelson shook his head slowly. “I don’t want to know, son. I don’t want to know what had been done to the other towns after we rolled through. I don’t want to know what they were scared we’d do.”
Thomas lifted his cup. His hand shook.
“What he made us do,” Kaelson corrected, and his eyes were on me, but I wasn’t his audience.
I reached out and took the jug, topping off Thomas’ cup myself.
“He told Wolfswail if they let him in, he’d make them La’Angi citizens,” Kaelson told me, the words brisk. “They’d have homes and jobs. They’d be spared. But they had to open the gates. If they didn’t, he’d kill them all. Everyone. Man, woman, child. Dead.”
My belly clenched.
“They don’t tell you that part,” Kaelson added, with an almost friendly smile. “Don’t feel bad for not knowing. Well, there were people there who were even more scared of us than we were of those wolves. They came. In the night, in the snow, they came. Women, children, families.”
They both stopped to drink. In solidarity, I wrapped my hand around my cup.
“Can’t blame them,” Thomas said, without infliction.
“Never said I did.” Kaelson’s reminder was delivered lazily.
“They came, and the Duke, he said, ‘Well, you’re traitors, aren’t you?
Prove you’re loyal to us, and you’ll be rewarded.
’ They were given weapons and put on the front lines.
They were the first ones in through the gates they’d left open. They helped us storm their own city.”
I struggled to imagine a world where that could happen. “And they fought?”
“What else would they do?” Kaelson asked me softly. “They’d brought their most vulnerable with them.”
“I was in the third wave,” Thomas said, and Kaelson fell silent.
“They didn’t all fight. Some just walked in and died.
But some would lift their weapons. They knew the people they were fighting, too.
” I heard him swallow audibly. “One ahead of me…they fought someone who called them by name. They were crying. The Duke kept the infants.”
“For how long?” I asked but regretted the question almost instantly.
“We were there all day,” Thomas said. The words were hoarse.
“Southern mages, they don’t work the way ours do,” Kaelson told me, nudging my cider.
“They mess with the weather, like. With the stones and the water. Well, Wolfswail streets, it wasn’t made for lots of rain because their mages, they keep the city safe and warm.
When the blood flowed, it didn’t drain right.
Caused traffic issues, with all the piss and vomit and blood. It was slow going.”
I couldn’t look at Thomas. I couldn’t quite picture that much death.
“Killing everyone, that’s a time-consuming thing,” Kaelson said conversationally.
“But it was kill or be killed. Some of the deserters made it through. And the infants, of course. By the evening, they’d made it to the central square.
I was running things outside the city, so I can only tell you what I’ve heard.
But the Duke, he thanked everyone. Mind, they’re exhausted.
They’ve been swinging weapons all day, searching cellars and lofts alike for survivors, dragging them into the street, wading through entrails and rubble.
And he says, ‘Any man who can turn on his neighbor isn’t a trustworthy man.
’ And he made our boys kill those Southerners who’d survived, who’d fought alongside us or been brought to us, who’d been promised safety. Like vermin.”
Kaelson shifted slightly and I made the mistake of glancing up and catching myself in his gaze, hypnotic in the light of the lamp.
“That’s the man whose daughter you’re fucking,” Kaelson said, softly.
“Who could terrify a population protected by giant wolves, who could massacre a city down to the last infant. Do you need me to tell you what he did to her mother? Because, friend, when we’re talking about personal affronts rather than political ones, the Duke is less efficient. ”
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was a desert.
“Tell him,” Thomas said. “We’ve come this far, Kael.”
Kaelson’s eyes dropped down to the table. He blinked a few times, then sniffed. “Shit.” He let out an impatient huff. “I’m not going to sleep right for the rest of the winter,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his eyes.
I lifted the cup in my hand and took a pull.
“I can’t tell you what happened that day,” he said, the words hoarser. “No one can. He only keeps survivors for a purpose.”
I remembered, suddenly, that grey morning, the crossbows levelled at me. The blood oath I’d sworn to the woman in the next room.
I wanted to weep.
I’d seen the evidence everywhere of how loyal other people were to him.
This wasn’t a be terrified of the Butcher talk. It was a no one will keep your secrets from him talk.
“I can tell you confidently Arabella used to love tapestry. She made many around the keep. Her tapestries were a mark of pride. She favored landscapes. Pretty orchard settings, and the cliffs in the winter.”
Thomas shook his head, lifting his hand to his eyes, and I could feel the sinking feeling in the pit of my belly.
“I don’t know what happened,” Kaelson said, quietly.
“I stepped back, took on a simpler role, after Wolfswail. I wasn’t listening to much of anything.
But I heard, and it might’ve been a rumor…
I heard she refused to do any featuring him.
Not a single one. She liked what she liked.
He broke her fingers. Not just broke. He pulverized them.
” Kaelson let out a shaky breath. “I didn’t believe it, until I saw her one day, on the way to the tourney, her sleeves were so long they dragged on the ground, but they were resting in her lap. Big lumps of things. Utterly useless.”
“And the time she told the cook she loved his candied violets,” Thomas said.
Kaelson shrugged. “I was going to let that one go. Remember what he did to Jessie? He delivered the wine to the keep, back in the day.”
The tart cider filled my mouth, but all I could taste was bitterness.
No one would keep her secrets. When the Butcher was near, everyone just did what they needed to survive.
How was it that I’d forgotten that key requirement? Always manage the monster.