House of Blood

I’d like to say I saved them.

I didn’t. Not most of them. I’ve done the sums a hundred times since, lying awake in the dark, and every time the answer comes out the same. There were two hundred and fourteen convicts on those three ships. By noon, there were seventy-nine fewer.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

”*LIE DOWN!*”

I hit the dunes at a dead sprint and went into a slide, belly-first, throwing up a wake of grey sand. Arms rose all around me like snakes. I felt one brush my back and I flattened myself against the beach and kept going. In front of me, a long line of prisoners staggered down the ramp, chained at the wrists, white-faced, some of them screaming, some of them frozen.

”*Everybody down! Flat on your faces! Don’t stand, don’t run, don’t fight it! Lie down!*”

”Who the hell are *you?*” a man shouted.

An arm folded him in half.

”I’m the one telling you the *rule!*”

”Valerian Sanguis!” a clear, carrying voice bellowed over the din. ”The Ghost! Governor of Bergis! He’s been on this island for a week and he’s alive, and he is telling you to lie *down!*” Castor had climbed up on the rail of the third ship, in rags, with chains on his wrists and a split lip, and he was shouting in the voice of a man delivering a lecture. ”I’m Castor Terza! I have never been wrong! Lie down or *die!*”

The effect was extraordinary.

A hundred heads swiveled. Seventy or so of them dropped to their bellies like felled trees. A wave of bodies rolled across the sand, and a long, thin, grey wave of arms swept over their heads and found nothing to hold.

It took the rest.

I heard them. Everybody in that part of the beach heard them. The ones who hadn’t understood, the ones who ran, the ones too frightened to hear. The arms went through them like a scythe through wheat.

---

”*Valen!*”

Something hit me from the side, hard enough to knock the wind out of me. A pair of chained fists wrapped around my neck, and a body about the size of a very strong cat buried its face in my chest.

”You’re alive! You’re *alive!* I *knew* it! Castor said you would be!” Pollux’s voice was muffled and wet and entirely delighted. ”I punched a man! I punched a *man* for you! His jaw went crunch!”

”Pollux—”

”It was the best day of my *life!*”

I put my arms around her. I was crying, and I didn’t mind. She smelled of salt and old chain and blood, and for the space of a heartbeat the whole horrible beach went quiet.

”I’m so glad you’re here,” I said. And I meant it, and I hated that I meant it.

”Lyra says she’s still *furious,*” Pollux announced, pulling back, her grin as wide as her face. ”And Solene’s got a list, it’s *huge,* and Casper’s *better,* and Mirain’s got a loaf, and it *points* at things—”

”A loaf?”

”We’ll explain,” said Castor, appearing at my elbow on his belly with an expression of faint, scholarly exhaustion. ”Briefly. We’ve a great deal to do.”

I stared at him. He looked back, calm, steady, and bruised, with his hair in his eyes.

”You volunteered,” I said. ”You *both* volunteered.”

”It was the only logical course.” A very small smile. ”The Doctor needs you here. We needed to be where you were. The rest is arithmetic.”

I couldn’t speak. I reached over and gripped his shoulder, hard, and he nodded once, as though I’d said something perfectly reasonable.

---

The song started up behind us.

I knew it before I turned. A thin, high, wavering voice, a tune with no words, rolling down the slope toward the beach. Linnet had followed us down. She walked across the dunes in her white shift, barefoot, with her silver eyes shining and the thing in her chest beating like a drum, and as she came, every arm in the sand turned toward her and *bowed.*

They flattened out. They went soft. The whole beach shuddered, like a great animal settling its head on its paws.

”It’s her,” someone whispered. ”Who *is* she?”

”Father?” Linnet called. ”It’s all right! It’s listening!”

I should have been grateful. I was, for about ten seconds.

Then I saw her face.

She’d gone white. Her lips had gone *blue.* The song wavered, and a thin dark line of blood ran from her left nostril, down over her upper lip, and dripped onto the sand. She didn’t seem to notice. She kept walking, one foot in front of the other, her small hands clenched at her sides.

”Linnet. *Linnet.*”

”It’s okay.”

”*Stop.*” I was on my feet. I was running. I didn’t care about the rule, because for a moment the rule was kneeling. ”Stop singing. You’re bleeding.”

”I can keep them quiet.”

”You’re *bleeding!*”

She stopped. She looked down at herself, the blood on her chin, the silver scar glowing between her ribs, as if she’d never seen it before.

”Oh,” she said, in a tiny voice.

Her knees folded. I caught her.

---

*It’s the heart,* Aurelix whispered, in my collar. *Every time she uses it, it burns something. The orchard. The tongue. The beach. She’s been paying for it with herself, Valerian, and she doesn’t* know.

”I know now,” I said.

I sat in the sand with the girl in my arms, wiping the blood off her face with my sleeve. She’d gone limp. Her breathing was shallow and quick. Around us, the arms had lost their grace. They twitched. They rose a little, uncertainly, and sank, and rose again, like a sleeper beginning to wake.

”We have to move them,” I said to Castor. ”All of them. Off the sand. Now.”

”Where?”

”The ridge. The black stone’s closest.”

”I’ll organize them.” He was already crawling. ”Pollux, take the left flank. Anyone who stands up, bite them.”

”Yes, *sir!*”

It took twenty minutes. I don’t remember most of it. I remember the belly-crawl, a hundred and thirty-five people inching across the sand in a long, ragged, terrified column, with Wren and Kaelen and Dunstan going up and down the line, hissing, dragging, pushing. I remember a woman with a broken arm who sobbed the whole way. I remember a boy who couldn’t stop laughing.

I remember the sound of a bolt.

It came from the sea.

---

It was a harpoon. A huge, black, iron-barbed thing as long as a man, with a rope trailing behind it, and it came whistling out of the fog from one of the ships in the ring and went through the chest of a man who’d got to his knees and was running for the water.

He’d been swimming for it. I saw it. A skinny man in rags, who’d lost his nerve and bolted for the nearest ship, shouting that he was *innocent,* that it was a mistake. He’d got thirty yards into the surf.

The harpoon hit him like a fist. It lifted him clean off his feet. The rope snapped taut, and I watched him go back out to sea, dragging, a small dark shape in the water, until the fog took him.

Nobody spoke.

”They’ll do that to anyone who leaves,” Wren said, in a flat, hard voice. ”I told you. They aren’t there to guard us. They’re there to *stop* us.”

”We’re not leaving,” I said. ”We’re going *up.*”

---

We reached the black stone just before dusk.

A hundred and thirty-five of them, lying in a long grey line on the rock, clutching one another and shaking. The air smelled of fear and sweat and blood. Somewhere among them, Dunstan’s two survivors were passing out water. Tamsin sat propped against a boulder, grey and furious, giving orders.

I stood up in front of them.

I hadn’t meant to. I’d only wanted to say something, anything, to make it less awful. But a hundred and thirty-five pairs of eyes turned toward me, and I opened my mouth, and nothing came out.

”That’s him,” somebody muttered. ”That’s the Ghost.”

”The one who killed the children.”

”I didn’t—”

”My *village,*” said a voice.

It was a broad, bearded man in his thirties, a farmer by his hands, with a face like a closed door. He’d pushed himself up on his elbows. He had a rock in one fist, a sharp one, and his knuckles had gone white around it.

”The Ghost cut my wife,” he said. ”Border road. Two months back. A midwife. They said she was a demon-follower, that she’d made a deal.” His voice shook. ”She was *expecting.* She was a *midwife.*”

”I never touched her.”

”They found the wound. Same cut. The Tribunal showed us.”

”They *planted* those.”

”*Liar.*” The man was on his knees. He was shaking. ”Liar. *Liar!*”

I looked at him, and I knew the face. I’d *worn* it. And the worst part was that I couldn’t even hate him for it.

”I know,” I said quietly. ”I know. You’ve got every right.”

He raised the rock.

And Pollux, from somewhere to my left, said in a bright, cheerful voice, ”Excuse me, sir, but if you throw that I’m going to eat your ear.”