10. Cain
10
CAIN
Cain left Arienne under the care of Lucretia, madam of a local pleasure house. Lucretia owed Cain—he had solved the murder of one of Lucretia’s women last year. The patrollers dismissed the death as no great loss to society, but locals had suspected the death was part of a series of prostitute killings all over the Capital. Lucretia had called upon Cain to find the one responsible.
It had taken Cain almost a fortnight to deliver the culprit to her. He made no special mention of the pains he went through, including a rooftop confrontation where he was stabbed with the knife that had presumably been used to mutilate the victims’ faces. Lucretia had not asked after his wound either, only telling him softly that she owed him a great favor as her bouncers took the whimpering man away. To this day, Cain did not know what kind of end the murderer had met. He remembered only admiring the look on the madam’s face, of something that reminded him of relief.
Cain had known from a young age that it was advantageous to have people around the market square indebted to him, and that even small favors could create large debts over time. He also understood that the effect was greatest when he wasn’t keeping track of who owed him what.
Helping a fugitive sorcerer escape was quite a large ask, though, and even with what she owed him, Cain had been uncertain if Lucretia would be willing to help. But the madam took in Arienne without a word.
Cain did ask himself what he hoped to gain from helping Arienne, but came up empty. Still, Fienna hadn’t taken in a twelve-year-old boy and fed him and taught him to read and write because she had some grand design in mind.
There was a wide array of shops near the pleasure house, which wasn’t far from the market square. Cain liked coming to this square, one of the larger marketplaces of the Capital, because there were so many kinds of people buying and selling. Each shop and stall reflected its proprietor’s origins, making the whole area more vibrant and chaotic than the drab, austere stone buildings native to the city.
Cain loitered in the bustling winter market under the overcast sky, exchanging wordless greetings with the shopkeepers and street vendors. Although many of them had received Cain’s help over the years, he understood that any one of them would have no choice but to inform on his movements if pressed by the likes of Septima.
Cain knew one of the new hires at the travel and outdoor goods supplier had recently moved here—a man who didn’t know him and spoke little Imperial. That was the best he could do if he wanted to make a discreet purchase. When the owner left for his midday meal, he stepped into the shop.
A cheerful man not much older than Cain greeted him with a smile. “Welcome, buyer!” Cain did not recognize the clerk’s accent, but judging from the worn fur coat he was wearing while right next to a stove, he must have come from a warmer province.
Cain chose two sets of dark blue travel clothes that looked like they would fit Arienne, a pair of leather boots, bedding, and some food. He asked the worker to recommend a sack for travel, and was presented with a leather rucksack, the clerk singing its praises in a broken yet confident Imperial that only the people of this market and the merchants by the docks would bother to decipher.
“From Bachria, buffalo leather-skin. Very endure. Very light. Your good benefit!”
He held up a thumb.
Cain knew some Bachrians living and working in the market square. They held feasts for the entire neighborhood at least once a year, per their custom. Cain made it a point to attend them all bearing gifts. He remembered them complaining that it was impossible to get good buffalo meat in the Capital, a situation he had helped rectify by introducing them to a trader who dealt in Tanvalian bison.
He held the sack up and pretended to be astonished by its excellence, adjusting his spectacles. It was indeed light, and soft as well. It was the right size for Arienne, enough for her to carry what she needed in what was certain to be a long journey ahead for her. He gave the clerk a nod of approval and proceeded to pick out other supplies for Arienne. He reminded himself that whoever was pursuing her would be looking for a girl with neck tattoos. She could use a scarf to cover her clan markings.
At the same store, he bought a coat for himself, the tan one he had on being completely unfit for wearing to a funeral, not to mention stained with blood from the night he was attacked, as well as from when he’d met Devadas in the alleyway. There were other, fainter stains, each reminding him of a job turned violent. The new coat was black, hopefully preventing the problem of such obvious stains in the future. It had a hood attached, convenient for covering his face from both the cold weather and recognition by others. After some haggling, he sold his bloody coat for store credit, then stuffed the things he had bought for Arienne in the leather bag.
He paid. The pouch he had received from Septima showed no signs of getting lighter. Putting a few extra coins in the shop clerk’s palm, he asked for a delivery to be made to Lucretia’s place.
“Before the sun sets.”
“ Gaita z’bak, ” said the clerk, his smile widening even further.
If the goods arrived early, Arienne might just leave before dark against his advice, without saying goodbye. Come to think of it, he hadn’t asked her where she was going. He wondered if she even had a destination. She was a sorcerer after all and could probably take care of herself, but seeing as she’d been shivering from cold in a dress more suited to be worn under proper clothing than as proper clothing, maybe she couldn’t.
Now in his somber new coat, Cain headed for Fienna’s funeral. The capital of the Empire was surrounded by no walls or gates. It had grown so fast that the old city walls ran in a circle only around the heart of the city. As he walked on, the buildings started decreasing in number until he was out in the fields. Fienna was to be buried in a cemetery east of the city, the place where most of the people from his neighborhood were buried.
Arlanders cremated their dead. In their homeland, family and friends would bring fire from the volcano to light the death pyre where their loved ones lay. But here in the Imperial heartland, where almost every acre of its flat and fertile land had been cultivated long before the Empire came to be, using wood to light a body on fire was far too costly.
It took a long time to get to the cemetery, but Cain still arrived early. Snow flurries fell silently from a moody gray sky. Tombstones of all sizes stood in neat rows. The cemetery keeper pointed Cain to where an old gravedigger sat resting on the edge of Fienna’s coffin, a freshly dug grave beside it. As Cain approached, the digger rose quickly from the coffin and sat on the ground next to it. The coffin was inexpensive but still made of good material. The dye shop owner, when he had dropped by, mentioned she had paid for the funeral costs. She wasn’t going to be present today, however. Perhaps because her only worker had turned up dead. She had seemed very busy when he’d passed her storefront on the way here.
Cain had not had the chance to go to his parents’ funeral. He had no idea if there had been a funeral at all. Even as they were being pursued for treason, they made sure their son at least could escape the clutches of the prefect. Cain didn’t know what to think of such parents. He could resent them or feel grateful, but either way, they weren’t coming back. And Cain could never return to Arland.
At Fienna’s gravesite, there were still only Cain and the gravedigger. From somewhere across the cemetery came the strains of a funeral dirge, in a language he didn’t know.
“You family?” The gravedigger seemed unable to stand the awkward silence.
“I am not.”
“The plot and the coffin, they were bought by the shopkeeper this girl used to work for. Doesn’t look like anyone is going to show up, does it? We can start if this is it…”
Cain didn’t answer. For the first time since her death, he was remembering what Fienna was like in life, rather than trying to solve her murder. Her hands were always this improbable color or that, depending on the day’s work at the dye shop, sometimes the dyes staining the knots on her braids, or the corner of her smile. She had always been tired when they met, but she always spared the time to listen to Cain. The rare times Fienna asked for favors, he was more than eager to grant them. But all the things he had done for her, all the stories he had told her, seemed like they were for naught, as they were useless in preventing this outcome.
He should’ve given her more of his time. He should’ve been more concerned with what was going on with her. He was too busy trying to make her laugh with trivial stories of his daily life, rather than asking what troubled hers. There had been so many more important things, but he had wasted their precious time together talking about old Agatha or olive oil or new infatuations. He should’ve thanked her more. Listened to her more.
As he stood there, the folds of his new coat accumulating a white dusting of snow, he noticed people in small groups approaching the grave from the cemetery entrance.
Cain wiped his spectacles with his sleeve and looked again. Scores of people, it looked like, murmuring as they approached.
“You there! The young man! Are you family of Fienna?”
This was shouted at him by an old gentleman walking with a cane. Not answering, Cain took a closer look at the people coming toward them.
Some were wiping away tears, others looked angry. Some kept clearing their throats, and still others were consoling one another. Cain recognized none of their faces.
Soon, they were surrounding the grave and Fienna’s coffin. The mourners did not seem to know one another very well.
“She was a healthy young girl, how could she all of a sudden…”
“And her family? Where can they be, did she have no one…”
Some leaned on the coffin and burst into tears. Cain was unsure of what was going on. The mourners kept arriving, and soon the crowd was several concentric circles deep, with Cain finding himself in the very middle, along with the gravedigger, who looked confused. Cain surmised that he was regretting how he had sat down on the coffin.
The old man who had arrived first hooked his cane on his wrist. He gripped Cain’s hand.
“Three years ago, when my family first arrived here, we didn’t have anything to get started with our new lives. But Fienna was very generous to us. I had hoped our business would succeed and I would repay her, but then this sudden tragedy…”
The old man seemed to have decided Cain was a member of Fienna’s family. Swept up in the moment, Cain returned the grip of the old man’s hand.
Others followed.
“She set me up with an apprenticeship to a healer, and told me to be a good healer myself…”
“I had fled the prefect and came here with nothing. I took to drink. Fienna bade me to stop drinking and start working. She gave me money while I learned my trade…”
“… and that child who was at death’s door, now she is going to school. If it weren’t for Fienna…”
“Who did this to her? If I ever get my hands on him…”
In his inadvertent position as head mourner, shaking the hands of those who came, Cain realized that everyone or almost everyone gathered here had clan markings on their necks. They were Arlanders, who had come from all over the city. Which meant there were plenty of others who had not yet heard of Fienna’s death, or those who couldn’t attend the funeral for one reason or another. The people who mourned her could number in the hundreds. Septima had said Fienna received money from Gladdis. He was beginning to understand where that money had gone.
There were a few who asked what he was to Fienna, but Cain didn’t know how to answer. Nobody asked after a while, perhaps sensing his distress.
Soon, everyone had said a few words, and a few young and strong among them stepped forward. Six in all, including Cain. The gravedigger tied rope to all six handles of the coffin, and they slowly lowered the coffin into the grave. When it rested on the dirt below, they tossed in the ropes first, then took up spades to cover the coffin with the freshly tilled earth beside it.
“And the tombstone?” asked the old man who had first talked to Cain. “Why is there no tombstone ready?”
The gravedigger shrugged. “One never arrived. Nor is one expected to.”
The old man looked aghast as he turned to Cain, who was busy shoveling dirt into the grave. He then turned to the people behind him.
“There’s not a single one of us who hasn’t received succor from our late friend. To think she must be buried in a grave without a marker! What will the world say of our people if this is so?”
The old man took out money from his pocket, put it in his hat, and passed it to the next person. The hat jangled as it was passed from person to person, and by the time the hat was returned to its owner, it was over half full of coppers and silvers. The man handed the hat to Cain.
“Erect a good stone for her. One my grandchildren can look upon and remember her…”
Cain said he would and accepted the hat now heavy with coin.
The snow thickened. The wind was stronger. Still, the mourners would not leave. They stayed by the graveside and talked. Some sat in a crouch, some stood, and some who rather lacked in decorum leaned against the tombstones. They all, however, spoke of the same things, of how kind Fienna had been and how she had helped them. Cain gave the gravedigger some money and asked him to bring the mourners drinks. The gravedigger grumbled about the need for making such arrangements before the funeral, but he was silenced when a few more of Cain’s silvers landed in his palm.
Why hadn’t Fienna told him that she was taking care of so many of them? Cain had been avoiding Arlander immigrants ever since he ran away from that country, so he wasn’t surprised that he didn’t know a single soul among the crowd in the cemetery. Still, it astonished him that he had been so ignorant of the extent of Fienna’s reach.
The old man, tapping his cane on the frozen ground, started singing in Arlandais in a low voice. The mourners followed suit, some weeping midway through the song. Cain recognized the mournful melody, but not the lyrics. They contained a mention of the dragon of the mountain helping the dead to their eternal rest, that lay beyond the blue veil of the sky. In Arland, the smoke from the cremated went up into the sky, much like the white plumes of the volcano. But here, Fienna was being buried in the earth… and the Empire did not believe in an afterlife. In the brief silence after the dirge ended, Cain wondered if in death he would meet Fienna again.
“Since you’re all from back home,” said a tall, older woman with a black headcloth, “did you hear the rumors? That Its Excellency the fire-dragon has taken the form of a woman and come down from the volcano to slaughter the Imperial legion?”
“I did hear that a princess in hiding has come out into the world to fight against the Empire.”
“I heard that, too. Last month, it was. News of this princess has even reached Kamori and Ledon.”
“They say she carries a flaming sword.”
“Father, does Arland have princesses?”
“Don’t you suspect it’s all rumor? There was one like it awhile back…”
“But I heard it, too. They say it’s real this time.”
“Then there might be another massacre, like the one twelve years ago…”
“That’s not what it feels like in Arland, they say. The prefect isn’t like he used to be. The legions are about to change shifts in the three provinces of Lontaria and he is scared of being replaced…”
Cain had almost succeeded in forgetting about Arland. As a son of convicted traitors, he was better off without ties to his old country. Since he ran away, Lukan and Fienna were the only reminders of the homeland that he no longer belonged to. But at this news, of an Arlander princess standing up to the Empire all by herself, Cain felt a muscle pulse somewhere inside him, one that he hadn’t realized he had.
Cain remembered what Septima had said about how an outpost near the border between Kamori and Arland had been ambushed and its Powered legionaries slain. He listened in silence. The voices of the Arlanders around him, which a moment ago had sounded so sorrowful at Fienna’s death, were now infused with a kind of vitality, or hope.
But he wasn’t the only one listening.
There was a man who hadn’t talked or mingled with the other mourners, who stood by himself even now. Cain assumed this was Gladdis’s man, the one Septima had told him about. He took care not to seem interested in the man.
By the time the gravedigger returned with a cask of wine, the silent man had left. Cain hadn’t noticed him leaving, but that was fine.
He followed the man’s footprints in the snow as they led him out of the cemetery.