Hurley's Heroes Collection 2015-2020, page 5
“Give over the objects,” Bet said, “and we can talk about this.” “Have you met my lover?” Mekdas asked. “This is Saba.”
Saba was a short waif of a woman, a little older than Mekdas. As much as Bet wanted to blame this all on some older Plague Giver, she knew better. She had done her best with Mekdas, but it was all too late.
Bet held out her hand. “The cloak, Mekdas.”
“You’re an old woman,” Mekdas said. “Completely useless out here. Go back to your swamp. We are remaking the world. You don’t have the stomach for it.”
“You’re right,” Bet said. She didn’t know what to say to him. She had never been good with children, and with Hanere dead, she had wanted even less to do with this particular child. He reminded her too much of Hanere. “I don’t have the stomach for many things, but I know a plague village when I see one. I know where this goes, and I know how it ends. You think you can take this plague all the way to the city?”
Saba raised the sword. “With the relics, we will,” she said, and smirked.
“Hanere tell you how they work, did she?” Bet said. “The trou- ble is Hanere doesn’t know. There is one person alive who knows, and it’s me.”
“Hanere will show us,” Saba said.
“You shut the seven fucking hells up,” Bet said. “I’m not talking to you. Mekdas—”
“Why are you even here?” he said. “Because Hanere invited me,” Bet said.
That got a reaction from him. Surprise. Shock, even.
Bet already had a handful of salt ready, but so did they. The shock was all the advantage she had. Bet flicked the salt in their faces and charged toward them. She bowled over Saba and snatched the sword from her. They were Plague Givers, not warriors, and it showed.
Mekdas had the sense to run, but Bet stabbed the sword through his cloak and twisted. He fell hard onto a body, casting spores into the air.
Bet yelled for Lealez.
Lealez bolted across the sea of bodies, hand already raised to cast.
“Circle and hold them,” Bet said.
Lealez’s hands trembled as per made the cast to neutralize the two hunters.
Bet tore the cloak from Mekdas’s shoulders and wrapped it around her own. She dragged the sword in one hand and crossed to the other side of the village. Bet found the tree she had nested her prize in decades before and hacked it open to reveal the shield, now buried in the heart of the tree. Sweat ran down her face so heavily she had to squint to see. She picked up the shield and marched back to where Saba and Mekdas lay prone inside the salt circle.
“Now you’ll see all you wanted to see,” Bet said to Mekdas. “You will see the world can be made as well as unmade, but there are sacrifices.” She raised the sword over her head.
“No!” Lealez said.
“Please!” Mekdas said.
Bet plunged the blade into Saba’s heart and spit the words of power that released the objects’ essence. A cloud of brilliant purple dust burst from Saba’s body and filled the air. Lealez stumbled back, coughing.
Bet quickly removed the cloak and draped it over Saba. All around the village, the bodies began to convulse. White spores ex- ploded from their mouths and noses and spiraled toward the cloak, a great spinning vortex of contagion.
Lealez watched the cloak absorb the great gouts of plague, feeding on it like some hungry beast. A great keening shuddered through the air. It took Lealez a moment to realize it was Saba, screaming. And screaming. Lealez covered per ears.
Then it was over.
Bet stepped away from Saba’s body, but tripped and stumbled back, fell hard on her ass. She heaved a great sigh and rested her forehead on the hilt of the sword.
“What did you do?” Mekdas said. His voice broke. He was weeping.
Bet raised her head.
All around them, the plague-ridden people of the village began to stir. Their blackened flesh warmed to a healthy brown. Their plague-clotted eyes cleared and opened. Soon, their questioning voices could be heard, and Bet got to her feet, because she was not ready for questions.
“They’re alive!” Lealez said, gaping. “You saved them.”
Bet pulled the cloak from Saba’s body. Saba’s face was a bitter rictus, frozen in agony. “They only save life by taking life,” Bet said. “Now you know why I separated them. Why I never kept them together. Yes, they can give life. But they can take it, too. It’s the intent that matters.”
“We have one of them, at least,” Lealez said. “We can take him to the Contagion College.”
“No,” Bet said. She raised her head to the sky. “This is not done.” While the people of the village stirred, the insects in the swamp- land around them had gone disturbingly quiet.
“What is—” Lealez began.
“Let’s get to the water,” Bet said. “Take Mekdas. We need to get away from the village.”
“But—”
“Listen to me in this, you fool.”
Lealez bound Mekdas with hemp rope rubbed in salt and pushed him out ahead of them. Lealez had to hurry to keep up with Bet. Carrying the objects seemed to have given her some greater strength, or maybe just a sense of purpose. She forged out ahead of them, cutting through swaths of swampland, cutting a way for them all the way back down to the water on the other side of the river.
Lealez stared out at the water and saw two pirogues attached to a cypress tree another hundred steps up the canal. “There!”
“Take my machete,” Bet said. “You’ll take one boat on your own. Follow after Mekdas and I.”
Lealez took the machete. “You’re really going to turn him in?” Bet glared at per so fiercely Lealez wanted to melt into the water. “All right,” Lealez said, “I wasn’t sure what I was thinking.” Le- alez waded out toward the pirogue. Lealez noticed the ripple in the water out of the corner of per eye and turned.
Bet saw the ripple a half moment before. She yelled and raised her sword, but she was too slow.
A massive alligator snatched Lealez by the leg and dragged per under the water. Bet saw Lealez’s upraised arms, a rush of brown water, and then nothing.
Mekdas ran.
Bet swore and scrambled after him. She fell in along the muddy bank, and then something else came up from the water for her.
Hanere emerged from the depths of the swamp like a creature born there. She head-butted Bet so hard Bet’s nose burst. Pain shat- tered across her face. Bet fell in the mud.
Muddy water and tangles of watercress streamed off Hanere’s body. Her hair was knotted, and her beard was shot through with white. She grabbed hold of Bet’s boot and dragged Bet toward her. Bet held up the sword. “Revenge will get you nothing, Hanere!” “It got me you,” Hanere said, and wrenched the shield from
Bet’s hand and threw it behind her.
“You feel better with me here?” Bet said, gasping. “A bit, yes.”
“And when your son is dead? If I don’t kill him, someone else will.”
“They were in love, like we were,” Hanere said. “It was easy to convince them to burn down a world that condemned them, and me. Even you. This world cast even you out, after all you did.”
“Not like us. They’re both criminals.”
“You became a criminal when you fucked me, and kept fucking me, even when you told them you were hunting me. You and your soft heart.”
Bet kicked herself farther down the bank, holding the sword ahead of her. “I thought you dead,” Bet said. “For thirty years—”
“That’s a bunch of shit,” Hanere said. “You know they’d never kill someone like me. You know what they did to me for thirty years? Put me up in a saltbox and tortured me. Me, the greatest sorcerer that ever lived.”
“How did you—”
“Does it matter?” Hanere said, and her tone softened. She crawled toward Bet and took hold of the end of the sword. She pressed it to her chest and said, “Is this what you wanted? To do it yourself? Or did you wait always for this day, when we could take the world together?”
Tears came, unbidden. Bet gritted her teeth in anger. Her own soft heart, betraying her. “You know I can’t.”
“Even now?” Hanere said softly. “After all this time?” Bet shook her head.
Hanere reached out for Bet’s cheek, and though it was mud on Hanere’s fingers and not blood, the memory of Hanere’s bloody hands was still so strong after all these years that Bet flinched.
“We are done,” Bet said, and pressed the sword into Hanere’s heart.
Hanere did not fight her. Instead, she pulled herself forward along the length of the blade, closer and closer, until she could kiss Bet with her bloody mouth.
“I will die in your arms,” Hanere said, “as I should have done.” Mekdas screamed, long and high, behind them.
Bet sagged under Hanere’s weight.
Mekdas bolted past her and ran toward the two pirogues.
Bet turned her eyes upward. Soft white clouds moved across the purple-blue sky. She wanted to be a bird, untethered from all this filth and sweat, all these tears. Thirty years she had hidden, thirty years she had tried to avoid this day. But here it was. And she had done it, hadn’t she? Done everything she hoped she would not do. She heard a splashing from the water, and heaved a sigh. The lizard would take her. Gods, let the lizard take her, and the relics, and drown them for all time.
When she opened her eyes, though, it was Lealez who stood above her, dripping water onto her face. The pan was covered in gore, and stank like rotten meat. Lealez held up the machete. “Told you I was the best in my class,” Lealez said.
“Didn’t know you learned how to kill lizards,” Bet said. Lealez gazed at Hanere’s body. “Is she really dead?”
“I don’t know that I care,” Bet said. “Is that strange?”
Lealez helped her up. “The boy is trying to figure out the pirogue,” Lealez said. “We aren’t done.”
“You take him.”
“He’s your family,” Lealez said.
“My responsibility?”
“I just thought . . . you would want to take the credit.”
Bet huffed out a laugh. “The credit? The credit.” She heaved herself forward, slogging toward the pirogue.
Mekdas saw her coming and pushed off. As she approached he stood up in the little boat, unsteady already on the water.
Behind him, Bet could just see the lights of the city in the dis- tance. Did they all know what was coming for them? Did any realize that there were Plague Givers out here who wanted to deci- mate the world and start over? Would they care, or would they be like Hanere, and wish for an end?
“You must kill me to save that city, then, mother,” Mekdas said. “Will you kill me like you did Hanere? You won’t bring me in alive. You must make the—”
Bet threw her sword. It thunked into her son’s belly. He gagged and bowled over.
Lealez gaped.
Bet waded out to the pirogue and pulled it back to shore. “You killed him,” Lealez said. “I thought—”
“He’s not dead yet,” Bet said, but the words were only temp- orarily truth. He was gasping his last, drowning in his own blood. “I’ve heard ultimatums like that before,” Bet said. “Hanere gave me one, and when I hesitated, I lost her. You only make a mistake like that, the heart over reason, once. Then you take yourself away from the world, so you don’t have to make decisions like that again.”
“But—”
“Blood means little when there’s a city at stake,” Bet said. She gazed back out at the city. “Let’s give them to the swamp.”
“But we have to take the bodies back to—”
Bet raised the sword and pointed it at Lealez. It was only then that she realized Lealez was favoring per right leg; the lizard had gotten its teeth in per, and Lealez would get infected badly, soon, if they didn’t get per help in the city.
“We do the bodies my way,” Bet said, “then we get you back to the city.”
When they came back to Hanere’s body, it was encircled by a great mushroom ring. Green spores floated through the air.
“Is she dangerous?” Lealez said. “Not anymore,” Bet said.
Together, they hauled the body through the undergrowth, avoiding the snapping jaws of swamp dogs and startling a pack of rats as big as Bet’s head. Bet was aware of Hanere’s stinking body, the slightly swelling flesh. When they dumped her into the hill of ants, Bet stood and watched them devour the woman she had spent half her life either chasing or romancing.
“Are you all right?” Lealez said. “No,” Bet said. “Never have been.” Mekdas was next.
While they stood watching the ants devour him, Lealez glanced over at Bet and said, “I know this is a hard profession, but there’s honor in it. It does a public good.”
“No, we just murder people.” “We eliminate threats to—”
“Can you even say it? Can you say, ‘We murder people’?” “This is a ridiculous conversation.”
“On that, we can agree,” Bet said. She glanced over at Lealez. “Something I noticed back there, in the Copse of Screaming Corpses. You never showed me your credentials.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Bet grabbed per arm and yanked back per sleeve before Lealez could pull away. There was the double ivy circle of the order, but no triangles.
Bet released her, disgusted. “What happened to being best in your class? Apprehending three Plague Givers? That’s what your duplicitous friend Abrimet said, wasn’t it?”
“I came out here to make a name for myself.”
Bet stared down at the little pan, and though she wanted to hate Lealez more than anything, she had to admit, “I suspect you have indeed done that.”
VIII.
Lealez smoothed per coat and mopped the sweat from per brow. The great Summoning Circle of the Contagion College was stuffed to bursting with fellow Plague Hunters. The map case Lealez carried over per shoulder felt heavier and heavier as the afternoon wore on to dusk. The initial round of questions had worn down into a second and then third round where Lealez felt per was simply repeating perself. Not a single apprentice or hunter with fewer than three triangles was allowed into the space. By that measure, Lealez wouldn’t have been able to come to per own trial just a few days ago. Lealez swallowed hard. In front of per lay the relics per and Bet had spent so much effort retrieving.
Lealez knew it was a betrayal, but per also knew there was no triangle on per arm yet, and this was the only way.
The coven of judges peered down at Lealez from the towering amber dais. The air above them swarmed with various plagues and contagions, all of them meant to counteract any assaults coming from outside the theater. But the swarm still made Lealez’s nose run and eyes water. Lealez felt like a leaky sponge.
“Where are the bodies?” Judge Horven asked, waggling her large mustache.
“We disposed of them,” Lealez said. “Elzabet was . . . under- standably concerned that Hanere Gozene could rise again. As she had risen once before.”
“Then you have no proof,” Judge Horven said.
Lealez gestured expansively to the relics. “I have brought back the relics that Elzabet Addisalam and Keleb Ozdanam used to defeat Hanere Gozene,” Lealez said. “And you have the testimony of the two of us, of course.”
Judge Rosteb, the eldest judge, held up their long-fingered hands and barked out a long laugh. “We are former Plague Hun- ters, all,” they said. “We know that testimony between partners can be . . . suspect.”
“I stand before you with all I have learned,” Lealez said. “Abri- met was unfortunately lost to us along the way, through no fault of either Elzabet or myself. Their death was necessary to our goal. I regret it. You all know that Abrimet was my mentor. But we did as we were instructed. We stopped Hanere and the other two Plague Givers. I retrieved the relics. Both of those things cannot be con- tested. Because even if, as you say, you see no body, I can tell you this—you will never see Hanere again upon this soil. That will be proof enough of my accomplishments.”
The judges conferred while Lealez sweated it out below them. Not for the first time, Lealez wished they had let Bet inside, but that was impossible, of course. Bet had murdered Abrimet, and done a hundred other things that were highly unorthodox in the apprehension of a Plague Giver. The judges would already worry that Bet had been a terrible influence on Lealez. Lealez would be lucky to get through this with per own head intact. At least Lealez would die in clean clothes, after a nice cold bath, which was the first thing per had done on entering the city.
Finally, the judges called Lealez forward. “Hold out your arm,” Judge Rosteb said.
IX.
Bet waited for Lealez outside the great double doors of the theater. Plague Hunters streamed past Bet as they were released from the meeting, all pointedly ignoring her. No one liked a woman who could kill her own family, no matter how great a sorcerer she was. The better she was, the more they hated her.
And there was Lealez. Lealez walked out looking dazed. Bet frowned at per empty hands. Lealez had gone in with the relics to make per case for destroying them, but Bet had a good idea of what had happened to them.
“Let’s see them,” Bet said, and snatched Lealez’s arm. They had tattooed the mark of three successful hunts there. Bet snorted in disgust. “All three, then. You really learned nothing at all, did you? I could kill you, too, but there are hundreds, thousands, just like you, crawling all over each other to do the bidding of the City Founders. You’re like a hydra, spitting up three more scaly heads for every one I hack off.”
“You don’t know how difficult it is to rise up through the col- lege now,” Lealez said.
“You kids talk like it was any easier. It wasn’t. We got asked to tumake the same stupid choices. They wanted the relics when Keleb and I came back, too. But we held out.”
“You were already famous! Your reputation was secured!”
“Shit talk,” Bet said. “You’re just not tough enough to give up your career so young. I get that. But think on this. It’s easy to de- stroy a country with plague, but how do you save your own from it? You’ll all unleash something in the far empires and think we’re safe, but we aren’t, not with a thousand relics. All killing gets you is more killing. You pick up a machete, kid, and you’ll be picking it up your whole life.”
