4. Kit
Kit
I knew no peace.
Everything I once loved about my life had been ruined, or at least tainted, by the buzzing fly of a man known as Penny Oliver.
Our encounter in front of the cheese monger left me equal parts angry and wracked with guilt.
Thirteen years of avoidance had put distance between me and thoughts of the suffering so many families had endured because of my involvement with the Bone Men.
If I didn’t think about how many bodies I’d delivered or how many unwitting souls I’d led into the abyss, and if I reminded myself that I never killed anyone personally, I couldn’t be held accountable for that pain.
But how many Penny Olivers had there been that I didn’t know about? How many children grew up without a grave at which to mourn? I could only deny culpability for so long.
I cut my shopping short; I couldn’t look anyone in the eye after that.
The walk out of town and up the hill toward home gave me time to collect myself, but Penny’s words echoed in my head, and I couldn’t silence them no matter how hard I tried.
Clearly, my sobriety was an obstacle to mental peace.
Back home, I locked myself inside, put away my groceries, and snagged the open bottle of whiskey off the counter on my way to the den.
Halfway there, my gaze caught on the narrow ladder that led to the attic.
I hadn’t ventured up there in years, but I was haunted by what lay above.
Tucked away in the dark, a chest held a handful of my father’s old journals, what few escaped the bonfire I’d had four years back after receiving word that he’d been arrested and executed for his crimes.
He kept meticulous notes for years, detailing his descent into madness and the hellish rites he’d undertaken to rise through the ranks of the Bone Men.
I had no desire to read any of it. I’d lived those horrors, and seeing them on the page in his precise, flowing script made it feel all the more obscene.
I’d planned to destroy them all, but the first few made mention of my mother, and I couldn’t bring myself to burn away that bit of her, too.
Now, I found myself wishing I had. But a part of me knew I’d need them again someday, just like I knew I’d need to go back to the Bone Men eventually because my work there wasn’t really over.
I’d pushed those thoughts aside for years, but it was becoming clear that I couldn’t keep that up for much longer.
I hadn’t deterred Penny from his mission, of that, I was sure. I hadn’t ever successfully deterred anyone who came after me. Inevitably, it ended in me running, leaving behind whatever semblance of a life I’d built for myself and finding somewhere new.
There had been five other towns before Forstford, and every one of those had ended in disaster.
I was physically chased from the first when the townsfolk found out who I really was three months after I arrived.
Then, after an entire year of doing all the right things, I was ordered to leave the second town when a traveling merchant recognized me and spread the word to anyone who would listen.
I barely made it a month in the third town before the rumors found me again.
The fourth was more promising, and I managed for a year and twelve days until some men came chasing tales of a Bone Man hiding in plain sight, and I ran in the middle of the night to avoid trouble.
The fifth was home for a grand total of five months, and I didn’t even fight when I was confronted about where I’d come from.
There didn’t seem to be a point by then, and I wandered for the better part of three months after that until I found Forstford and put down roots.
I didn’t want to leave or find somewhere else to hide.
I was so tired of running.
On top of that, I couldn’t deny the scathing truth Penny had dropped on me in the market.
He had a point, even if it wasn’t the one he’d been trying to make.
Maybe this was my way to fight them. Maybe the answer to the cult’s destruction had been in front of me the whole time, and I’d been too terrified to see it.
I wasn’t a simpering seventeen-year-old anymore.
I was old enough to know the difference between submission and a means to an end.
If Penny and I joined forces, we could take the Bone Men down piece by piece, starting with his father’s remains.
I shut that line of thinking down.
If I was going to go back, I would do it alone and on my own terms. Penny would only be a liability. That meant I would need to find a way to send him home before I committed to risking my life to oppose a cult determined to leash the god of suffering for their own ends .
I bent to set the whiskey bottle on the floor before it could slip from my suddenly weak grip.
The thought of delving into those journals made my hands tremble.
If I’d thought myself a coward before, I clearly hadn’t realized the extent of my desire to pretend that the first seventeen years of my life hadn’t happened.
Up those rickety rungs, dark with mildew and crumbling with rot, were mementos of a life I’d tried to forget and now needed to remember.
“You really are a coward, Kit,” I hissed to myself. “Just climb the damn ladder.”
It took a feat of will to pull myself up into the murky darkness of the attic.
When I got there, I stood, shaking like a terrified little boy.
My eyes slowly adjusted to the half-light from the tiny west-facing window, illuminating the collection of boxes and crates piled haphazardly in the far corner.
A thick layer of dust covered all of it, reminding me how long ago I’d hidden it away.
I stepped off the ladder, wiping my quaking hands on the thighs of my slacks. My palms were damp, and my mouth was dry, but I forged ahead. The sooner I got what I was looking for, the sooner I could return to the quiet of my den to read about my father’s infernal predilections in relative peace.
Not that there was much peaceful about that.
The floor creaked underfoot as I crossed to the window, raising clouds of dust in my wake.
By the time I brushed away the thick coating from the chest containing my father’s journals, the air was almost too thick to breathe.
I tugged my shirt over my nose and pried the wooden lid open, staring down at the bundle of books inside until I dredged up the courage to pull them out.
The leather bindings were warm against my hands, their spines rough and dry from years of storage.
The sensation, like chapped skin catching on fabric, made me recoil in disgust. It was like my father reached out from the grave and gave me the barest taste of what was in store when I pulled back those covers.
If I was this uncomfortable handling the books, what hope did I have of coming through the Oaths with my mind in one piece?
With a growl, I snatched the books from the chest and gathered them in my arms. Before I could change my mind, I hurried down the ladder, crossed the house, and dumped them in a heap on the coffee table.
I returned to the hall and retrieved my bottle of whiskey. It was only a quarter full, which wouldn’t get me drunk enough to handle digging around in the specters of my past. So, I detoured to the kitchen and fished out the last bottle of alcohol in my cupboard.
My stomach grumbled, and I realized I was needed at the forge in the morning. Drinking on an empty stomach was a bad idea; supper would have to come first.
I refused to acknowledge that I was stalling.
As hungry as I was, I had little desire to eat, so dinner was thickly sliced bread toasted over the cookstove, then slathered in honey and with far too much cheese melted on top.
It would hopefully be enough to cut the alcohol I planned to consume over the next few hours.
I choked it down, then washed the dishes to give my meal time to settle while I finished off the open bottle.
When I was done, I made it only partway to the den before I heard a knock at the door. I considered ignoring whoever was there, but a few moments later, they knocked again. I had a feeling I knew who it was and that he wouldn’t stop until I answered.
I was not drunk enough for this.
With the whiskey bottle tucked under my arm, I undid the locks and cracked the door to see Penny standing on the mat, looking particularly sorry for himself. The temptation came to close the door again, but the look on his face stayed my hand.
“About what I said in the market earlier…” His green eyes squinted, and his shoulders curled in, making him look even younger. “It was rude, and I shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” I scoffed. “Showing up here, disrupting my life, and expecting me to be grateful for the opportunity to help you. I’m happy here.”
Happy didn’t feel like the right word, but it was the best I had.
Degrees of contentment were all I’d allowed myself since my escape, for fear that the guilt that accompanied true happiness would be too hard to bear after so much darkness.
But how could I explain that to a man who had no concept of the horrors I’d seen?
Thunder rolled above us, and Penny cast an uneasy glance at the brooding clouds crowding low against the treetops. Rain was imminent, and he wasn’t dressed for it. By the looks of him—his clothes wrinkled and smudged with dirt—he hadn’t spent the last night in a bed.
I didn’t want to feel sorry for him, but I did.
Often when I’d been sent out to gather bodies for the Bone Men, I slept in alleys and doorways and begged for food on street corners to sustain myself. I knew that desperation and, even if this was his own doing, a part of me hated to see him suffer.
He wrung his hands together, and his eyes slid back toward mine. “I realize you had good reasons for leaving. For getting away from it and distancing yourself. I tried to make you feel guilty for that, and that was unkind.”
The last shred of the anger I’d felt in the market dissipated. Penny’s doe eyes and hangdog look had taken all the wind out of my sails. As far as I could tell, he genuinely felt remorse for what he’d said, though frankly he didn’t need to. It had been the truth.
The clouds split open, and rain came down in heavy sheets. Penny flinched, and his shoulders drooped further.
I sighed and slumped against the door. “Do you have a room at the inn tonight?”
He shook his head. “I don’t have the coin for one.”
“Of course you don’t.”
I shut the door and headed for the den, skirting the table laden with books. Grabbing a pillow from the couch and a fur off the back, I returned to the front hall.
When I pulled the door open again, Penny stood at the edge of the porch looking out into the rain. He jerked his head around when he heard the creak of the hinges.
“Here.” I held the bedding out to him. “I’m not letting you in, but you can at least stay out of the rain.”
He took the items without a word, and I closed and locked the door behind me.
Back in the den, my whiskey and I returned to the coffee table. There was nothing left to distract me and no more stalling to be done.
“…This is the worst decision you’ve made in a very, very long time,” I said to the crushing silence.
I stared at the pile of books, and a feeling of dread swelled in my gut. There was no going back if I started down this road again. There would be no peace, no quiet and unassuming life, no salvation.
Maybe there never was. Not for men like me, anyway.