House of Blood

It rained at dawn.

A thin, cold drizzle. But the second it touched the chains on my wrists, the iron turned the color of old blood and *crumbled.* Rust ran down my hands like brown sugar. The cuffs split and dropped into the sand.

All around me, ten other prisoners stared at their own empty wrists.

”Well,” Tamsin said, flexing her fingers. ”The captain wasn’t lying about that.”

”Yeah.” The boy’s voice cracked. ”That’s one thing.”

His name was Emmet. He was fourteen. He had a sister named Pia, nine years old and sick all winter, who was why a noble’s horse was now a very large problem.

”We can’t stay on the beach,” said a scarred deserter called Harl. He’d survived the night by being the first one flat on the ground. ”We starve out here.”

I wasn’t listening. I was looking north, where the fog had thinned for the first time, and a smudge of white peaks floated on the horizon. The Frost Mountains. Closer than they had any right to be.

The cliffs ran out a mile east, and behind them lay a shallow valley full of grass. Waist-high, silver-green, rippling in a wind I couldn’t feel. It looked like a place for a picnic.

*Nothing’s moving in there,* Aurelix murmured, tight against my throat. *And there isn’t a single bird.*

I’d noticed that too.

---

We went in at noon, because the valley was the only road. The cliffs were sheer, and the sand at night belonged to the thing in the tide line.

”Single file,” I said. ”Hands on the shoulder in front. Nobody runs. And if anything happens, *anything,* be quiet.”

”Every rule so far has been something you *do.* Stand. Sleep. It’s easier to die by doing than by not doing.”

Nobody argued.

The grass closed over our heads.

It was warm in there. For a long, strange stretch I forgot where I was and remembered the garden behind the keep in Bergis. Wren’s laugh. Nox sunning himself on the lawn.

”Valerian.”

I stopped.

It was Wren’s voice.

---

It wasn’t *like* her voice. It *was* her voice, close and warm, with the little rasp she gets when she’s been shouting at Nox.

”Valerian. You big idiot. I found you.”

My heart stopped. I put one foot forward and the rest of me went with it before my brain caught up.

*No,* Aurelix hissed, and bit my neck.

The pain cleared my head like a slap. I stood there with my mouth open, a breath from saying her name, and the grass went completely still.

Waiting.

”Valerian,” Wren said again, sweetly. ”Don’t you want to answer?”

I clamped my teeth together until I tasted blood.

”Don’t you *miss* me?”

I did. That was the awful part. Then the voice *changed.* Lyra’s, furious and wobbling: *Don’t die. I’m not done being furious at you.* Solene’s, crisp and a little shy: *That’s nine, by the way.* A girl’s voice, silver and kind, saying *I’ll find you, I promise.* Every one of them hurt in a different place.

*It’s learning you,* Aurelix whispered, barely a breath in my ear. *Every voice you love. It’s picking them out of your head like berries.*

The first scream came from the back of the line.

---

It was Harl.

”MARA!” he bawled. ”Mara, is that you? Mara, I’m here! I’M HERE!”

”*Don’t!*” I wheeled. ”Harl, *don’t answer*—”

Too late. He’d already stepped out of the line, scarred hands reaching, tears pouring down his face. Somewhere in the grass a woman’s voice laughed and sobbed at the same time.

The blades moved.

The grass wasn’t grass. It was *thread.* Thousands of silver-green strands whipped up out of the earth, fine as wire, and wrapped around him in a single wet *hiss.* They went in at his mouth. They went in at his eyes. His scream turned into a bubbling gargle, and then I watched the grass pull his tongue out through his own throat like a ribbon through a hem.

”*Harl!*”

He was still alive when they lifted him. He hung there kicking, six feet up, blood running down his chest in a long dark apron, and the field *hummed* with satisfaction. Then the threads pulled in opposite directions, and I turned my face away.

A wet pattering on the leaves. A tiny, polite voice from the grass, right where he’d been.

”*Thank you for answering.*”

I stood shaking with my hand clamped over Emmet’s mouth. I hadn’t felt myself grab him. A voice, small and sick and nine years old, had started calling his name from the grass, and he’d almost gone to meet her.

I got my mouth next to his ear.

”She isn’t there,” I breathed. ”She’s home. She’s alive. She’s *not* here.”

He sobbed once, silently, into my hand.

”Do you want to see her again?”

A nod.

”Then you don’t answer.”

---

We moved. God help us, we moved.

On our bellies, because I’d decided that if standing was death on the beach it might be the same here. Hands over mouths. Teeth in sleeves. Somebody to my left broke and ran, and the grass took him in fifteen heartbeats. Two more flinched when a voice called them, and that was enough. I stopped counting.

Forty minutes in, I heard the thing that nearly broke me. A voice, a few yards to my right, small and sick and cold.

”Papa? Papa, my hands are so cold.”

I turned my head.

Oswin was on his knees in his ruined silk coat, eyes shut, tears running down his lined face. His lips had begun to shape a word.

*Don’t,* I mouthed. *Oswin. Don’t.*

He opened his eyes. They were perfectly clear.

I knew that look. I’d worn it in a courtyard.

*She’s my daughter,* he mouthed back. *She’s six. She’s with my sister. That isn’t her.* He smiled, and it was gentle and wrecked and terrible. *But it sounds exactly like her.*

He put a hand on Tamsin’s shoulder and pointed. Then at Emmet. Then at me. *Go.*

*No,* I mouthed. *No, you don’t have to—*

”Forgers have steady hands,” Oswin whispered. It was barely a breath. ”I watched yours on the beach. Steadier than mine ever was.” He pulled off the silk coat, folded it once, and pressed it into Emmet’s arms. ”I wrote a false will to keep a family in their house. It was the only honest thing I ever did. Let me do one more.”

Then he stood up.

All the way, arms wide, a thin old man in his shirtsleeves in the middle of a green sea.

”*PAPA’S HERE!*” he roared. His voice cracked in half. ”*PAPA’S HERE, DARLING! HERE! COME AND GET ME!*”

Every blade in the valley turned toward him.

The field made a rushing, ravenous sigh, like a hundred thousand silk skirts. The threads rose in a wave, silver in the sunlight, and went for him.

”Go,” Tamsin hissed, hauling Emmet by the collar. ”*Go! Don’t waste it!*”

I went.

I crawled with my face in the dirt and I did not look back, and I heard every second of it. I heard him tell the voice that he loved her. I heard him say Papa was sorry about the winter. I heard the first wet tearing sound, and the second, and I kept crawling, because the last thing a man like that wants is for you to turn around.

The last thing he said was, ”Tell her to eat her *vegetables.*”

Then there was only the humming.

---

We came out of the grass at the far edge of the valley, three of us, on our elbows. Tamsin. Emmet, clutching a silk coat to his chest like a dead pet. Me.

Three. Out of thirty.

The boy cried with his whole body, without a sound. I put a hand on his back.

*Valerian,* Aurelix whispered, very gently. *Look up.*

I raised my head.

A long, black ridge rose above the end of the field, a wall of rock like a broken tooth. And on top of it, against the grey, stood a figure.

A girl, tall and broad-shouldered, in furs the color of a wet bear. A braid strung with bone beads. A huge, curved axe bound in dark horn, resting on her shoulder like it weighed nothing.

I knew that axe.

I’d last seen it on a snowy morning in the Frost Mountains, in the hands of a girl who had kissed me in front of her entire tribe and refused to wave goodbye, because waving was for people who weren’t coming back.

*Kaelen,* I thought. *No. It can’t be.*

She was already moving. She came down that ridge in great sliding leaps, furs flying, and hit the ground beside us so hard the rocks jumped. She dropped to one knee in front of me. Windburned. Fierce. Eyes red-rimmed and absolutely furious.

She slapped me.

Hard enough to snap my head sideways. Then she grabbed my shirt in both fists and pressed her forehead to mine, shaking.

”Idiot,” she breathed. Her accent was thick as snow. ”*Idiot.* You walked onto Hunger Shore. Alone.”

”How did you—”

”Hush. It listens.” Her eyes flicked to the valley. ”My scouts saw a black ship go north with chained men on deck. I knew your face. Father forbade the Shore, but I took a skiff anyway. Four days I’ve hidden on these rocks, waiting to see if you’d come out of that grass.”

”Kaelen...”

”I said I’d do it again when you came back,” she whispered, ”and you didn’t come back, so I came *here.*”

She kissed me. It was short, and salt-wet, and clumsy with relief, and it hurt my split lip. Behind me, Tamsin muttered, ”Oh, *good,* more people.”

Kaelen let go and hefted the axe, the girl gone and the warrior’s mask slotting down over her face.

”Up,” she said. ”Black stone. The grass can’t cross it. Run.”

I looked back.

The field poured toward us in a silver tide, silent and patient, picking through our heads for the next voice it could use.

We ran.

We hit the black stone at the foot of the ridge with the threads a heartbeat behind us. They slithered up to the line of rock and *stopped,* trembling, like dogs at the end of a chain. I fell against a boulder, lungs on fire. Kaelen put her back to the rock next to me, axe up, breathing hard.

Then, out of the grass, in a deep, warm, rumbling voice that I’d have known in my sleep, someone called:

”*Kaelen. Daughter.*”

She went white.

”*Kaelen. It’s Father. I’ve come to take you home.*”

Her hand shook. Her mouth opened, just a crack, and I saw the whole shape of her answer in it.

I clapped a hand over her mouth.

She stared at me over my fingers, eyes huge and wet, while the voice of her father went on calling her name from the dark.