House of Blood

”Pollux,” I said. ”Not the ear.”

”He’s *going* to throw it.”

”I know.”

”Then why—”

”Because he’s got every right.” I kept my eyes on the farmer. ”Put your hands down. All of you. Let him.”

The farmer’s arm was shaking. The rock was the size of a loaf of bread, with a sharp, ugly edge, and he held it over his head with both hands as if he’d forgotten how to lower it. He was crying. Tears ran down into his beard. A hundred and thirty-five convicts lay on the black stone around us in the dusk and watched, and nobody said a word.

”What was her name?” I asked.

”Don’t you *say* her name.”

”I wasn’t going to.”

He stared at me.

”I wanted to ask what she was like,” I said quietly. ”Your wife. If you wanted to tell me. I’d like to know who I’m supposed to have killed.”

The rock wobbled.

”She sang,” he said hoarsely. ”Off-key. Always. To the babies, when they came. She had a voice like a goose and she never *stopped.*” His mouth twisted. ”The neighbors used to complain.”

”I’m sorry.”

”Don’t you *dare* be sorry!”

”Then I’ll be useful,” I said. ”Tell me where they found her.”

---

It was a bad question. I knew it as I asked it.

But he answered. He answered because a man who’s been carrying a grief for two months will tell anyone who asks, and because, God help him, he wanted to be wrong. He told me the border road. He told me the oak tree. He told me the Tribunal had come in the morning with a cart and a box, and shown the villagers the cut.

”Where was the wound?” I said.

”What?”

”On her body. Where was it? Left side, right side? Which way did it go?”

”I don’t—” He swallowed. ”Under the ribs. On the right. It went *down.*”

I let out a breath.

”Down,” I said. ”That’s good. That’s what I wanted to hear.”

”*Good?*”

”I’m left-handed.” I held up my left hand, the one that wasn’t black. ”When I cut, I cut up. From the left, under the ribs, rising. Every time. My teacher used to say it was ugly, but it’s fast.” I met his eyes. ”Whoever killed your wife stood *over* her, and cut *down.* The Doctor copied the shape of my wound, but he couldn’t copy the angle. He wasn’t studying how I fight. He was studying the *bodies.*”

Silence.

The rock came down, slowly, an inch.

”You’re lying,” the farmer said. But it was a thin, cracked, uncertain voice.

”I’m not.”

”Prove it.”

”I can’t. Not here.” I took a breath. ”But I will. I’ll find the man who did it. And I’ll tell you his name, and you can throw the rock at him.”

---

Aurelix spoke very softly.

*Valerian. Sundown.*

I looked up. The last red light was draining out of the sky, and a deep, wet, familiar *thrum* had begun to creep through the stone beneath my knees. It was the same note I’d felt in my teeth in the belly. It rolled along the spine of the ridge like the first low note of a church bell.

”Oh, no,” Kaelen said.

”Everybody *UP!*”

I was on my feet before I’d finished. A hundred and thirty-five convicts blinked at me, dazed, exhausted, half asleep. They’d been lying on the black stone for an hour, in the dusk, in the warm, the soft, the *safe,* and not one of them had moved.

”Get up! *Move!* The ridge takes what rests! Get *off* it!”

”What?”

”*One,*” said the stone.

It was a thousand voices, soft and reverent. The rock beneath the lines of prisoners shivered. Somewhere to my left, a woman cried out as the black stone turned to wax and began to flow up over her legs.

”*RUN!*”

---

I’ve heard a lot of screaming in my life. I’d never heard a hundred and thirty-five people try to get up at once.

They did it in a wave, stumbling, clawing, tripping over each other, a nightmare tide of rags and chains, and the black stone rippled under them as though a great animal had flexed its back. Dunstan had a woman under each arm. Wren was in the air, pulling people free by the collar with all four wings spread. Kaelen hacked at the soft rock with her cracked axe like a woman chopping ice.

”Not that way! North! Keep *moving!*”

”My *leg!*”

”I’ve got you!” That was the farmer. I don’t know when he’d moved. He’d dropped the rock and thrown himself flat to haul a gasping boy out of the stone by the arms, bellowing at him to *run,* and I felt something in my chest give a small, ragged lurch.

”*Where’s the boy?*” Castor screamed. ”The laughing one! Has anyone *seen the laughing—*”

I saw him.

He’d been lying at the very edge of the group, on the lip of the ridge, with his knees drawn up and a glazed, dreamy smile on his face. He was perhaps seventeen. He hadn’t spoken since the beach. He’d only laughed, softly, to himself, the way a person laughs when they’ve forgotten how to cry.

He hadn’t moved. Not once.

The stone had closed over his legs to the waist.

”*Hold on!*” I was already running. ”*Hold on, I’ve got you—*”

He looked up. His face was perfectly calm.

”It’s all right,” he said. ”It’s warm.”

I got both hands under his arms. I pulled with everything I had. The stone *held.* He laughed again, small and strange and wondering, and said, ”Oh. It’s so soft,” and the black rock flowed up over his ribs, and his shoulders, and I felt his weight go out of my hands like water through a net.

He was gone.

I stood there with my arms still locked around nothing.

A hundred and thirty-four.

---

We didn’t stop running until it was full dark.

There was a long hollow, a mile north, where the ridge flattened out into scrub, and the ground there was only dirt and thorn. Nobody dared lie down. We stood in a great ragged ring in the starlight, panting, sobbing, shaking, and the farmer stood at the center of it with his hands hanging empty at his sides.

He walked up to me.

I didn’t move. I thought he’d hit me. I thought I’d let him.

”Hale,” he said, in a rough, flat voice. ”My name’s Tobias Hale.”

”Valerian.”

”I know.” He looked at his hands. ”You tried to pull that boy out.”

”I wasn’t fast enough.”

”*No.*” His jaw worked. ”No, you weren’t. But you tried.” He swallowed, and the next words came out like a thing being pulled up from the bottom of a well. ”If you find him. The man who cut my wife. I want to be there.”

”You will be.”

”Then I’m with you.” He held out a callused hand. ”I don’t forgive you. I don’t know what you are. But I’ll walk behind you until I know.”

I took it.

It was the nicest thing anyone had said to me in a week.

---

It was Castor who organized the march.

I’d have laughed, if I’d had the strength. He stood on a rock in the moonlight, in rags and chains, with Tamsin hissing corrections in his ear, and in nine minutes he’d divided a hundred and thirty-four terrified strangers into twelve squads, each with a leader, each with a route, each rotating through the same long, slow, endless loop of moving feet. A walking camp. No one stopped. No one slept for more than ten minutes at a time. The line never broke.

”It is,” he said, adjusting his chains, ”the only possible solution.”

”It’s *insane,*” Dunstan said.

”It is also *logical.*”

*I do like him,* Aurelix murmured.

---

Linnet woke near midnight.

I’d been carrying her. She hadn’t stirred for hours, a small, light, shivering weight against my shoulder, her face pale and damp, her breath coming in little hitches. Then, without warning, her eyes opened, wide and silver and utterly clear.

”Father,” she whispered.

”I’m here. I’m here, you’re all right—”

”There’s someone singing.”

I frowned. The night was quiet. The scrub rustled. Somewhere in the long line behind us a boy was humming through his teeth to stay awake. But Linnet had gone rigid in my arms, her head tilted, her small hand pressed flat against the scar on her chest.

”It’s the same song,” she said. ”The one the Eighth gave me. But it’s not *me.* It’s not any of us.” Her voice cracked. ”It’s coming from *inside* the island. From the mountain. Someone’s singing it *back.*”

I listened.

And very faintly, under the wind, under the rustle of the thorns, under the soft crunch of a hundred and thirty-four pairs of feet, I heard it too.

A deep, low, wordless hum, far away. Slow as a tide. It was the same tune, note for note, in a voice that wasn’t human, that had never been human, that sounded like something ten thousand years old, and very, very pleased.