Chapter 256: North with the Reaper (2)

"Can I ask you a question, young lord?"

The Reaper asked it on the fourth night of their journey. They had stopped at a shepherd’s hut on the side of a bare hill. It had one room, a stone hearth, and a roof that let in the stars through two holes. The Reaper had built a small fire and set a pot of barley over it. Outside, Brindle stood under the lee of the wall, chewing a sack of oats with great seriousness.

"I think we’re close enough for you to ask without permission now."

Encrid sat on his folded blanket with his back against the stones. He had walked for an hour that afternoon, and his legs were still shaking.

The Reaper nodded.

"Why are you going to the ridge instead of the capital?"

Encrid smiled, then thought about the question properly.

"If I went to Caelmar, I’d arrive as a dead man walking into a court. Alone, with a sick body and a story nobody can verify. The Crown has already decided what happened. The rebels opened a gate. The Strategist built engines he shouldn’t have. The garrison deserted. If I stand before them and say otherwise, it’s my word against a royal proclamation."

He looked at the fire.

"But at the Maren Ridge, there are eight thousand people who were there. There are the Wall Council’s records, if Vess saved them, and I’d bet my life he did. There’s Corr, who counted every name. There’s Gareth, who carries my father’s seal. There’s the Grand Magus, who saw the bridge with his own eyes. Nobody in the capital can dismiss all of them as easily as they can dismiss me."

"So you want your witnesses first."

"I want my people first," Encrid corrected. "When I go to the Crown, I want to walk in with all of them behind me. Not stand alone and hope someone believes me."

The Reaper stirred the pot slowly.

Encrid wasn’t sure what answer he had expected, but the Reaper seemed to have thought he would consider only the practical side of things.

"There’s something else," Encrid added after a while. "Those people left the north because I told them to. They abandoned the stone their fathers died defending. Some of them hate me for it. Most think I’m dead. I owe them the chance to look me in the face and decide for themselves whether I was right."

The Reaper nodded once.

"You could have given me the practical answer and left it at that."

"Would you have believed me?"

"I would have believed that you had thought it through."

"Then you should be satisfied."

"I’m not so easily satisfied, young lord."

Encrid laughed quietly.

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They ate the barley straight from the pot with wooden spoons. It was plain and hot, and the best thing Encrid had eaten in days.

When they were done, the Reaper took a thin strip of paper from inside his coat and held it near the fire so Encrid could read it.

It was another Blue Moon report. Small, cramped writing. Only what had been seen.

Two riders in dark coats bearing the Inquisition’s seal were received at the Gannon house. They left the same day, riding north on the Maren road.

Encrid read it twice.

"The Inquisition went to my father."

"Yes."

"And now they’re going to the ridge."

"They are a week ahead of us, perhaps more. They have good horses and a straight road." The Reaper folded the paper and dropped it into the fire. It curled and blackened. "They will ask your people what they saw. Whatever they say will be written down and carried to the Regent Queen."

Encrid watched the paper burn.

He could imagine the answers. Eight thousand people, telling the same story in eight thousand different ways. Some would speak of the Wall. Others would speak of the bridge, the machines, or the men who had never returned.

He wondered what the Inquisitors had asked his father, and what the Duke had told them.

He couldn’t even begin to guess.

His father had ordered him to leave by morning. He had received nine letters from Encrid and, as far as Encrid knew, had never answered a single one. Yet when Encrid had needed help, he had sent a legion north faster than the Empire could send its support.

The man had always been difficult to understand.

"We need to be faster," Encrid said.

"We are as fast as Brindle."

"Then we need to stop less."

The Reaper looked at him with an expression that was almost amused.

"The Sage clearly instructed us to rest every hour."

"The Sage isn’t here."

"No," the Reaper agreed. "But I am, and I promised him I would bring you back alive." He moved the pot away from the fire. "We will not stop less. We will start earlier. An hour before dawn, every day. That is the most I will allow."

Encrid wanted to argue, but he couldn’t find the strength.

"An hour before dawn, then."

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Later, when the fire had burned down to a red glow, Encrid asked the question he had been holding since the garden.

"What kind of man were you before Sera got sick?"

The Reaper remained silent for so long that Encrid thought he would not answer.

"A tidier one," he said at last.

"Tidier?"

"I did my work. I went home. The two never touched." He stared into the coals. "Then my daughter began sleeping through the winters, and I discovered that every door I had ever closed on someone else could be closed on her. After that, nothing was tidy again."

Encrid waited. The Reaper had not finished speaking, though he seemed reluctant to continue.

"I prayed to Lord Vessa for eleven years," he said. "Every night, in his cathedral. I knelt until the stone dust soaked through my trousers. I gave his temples more gold than some counts will see in their lifetimes."

He paused.

"I asked for one thing. I wanted my daughter to be well again. I wanted her body to stop failing her."

The Reaper’s eyes remained on the fire.

"Nothing happened. Eleven years of prayers, and not a single answer."

Encrid said nothing.

"I have killed men who were praying, benefactor. Many of them. Some prayed to Lord Vessa. Some worshipped other gods. Their prayers did not stop my hand, and their gods did not stop me."

He rubbed his thumb against the side of his finger, as if remembering something that had long since worn away.

"And still, I kept praying for my daughter."

The fire cracked between them.

"Then, one day, a disgraced boy on a frozen drill ground handed me three sheets of paper, which contained the cure for my daughter."

He looked at Encrid.

"You had no reason to trust me. I had no reason to help you. Yet somehow, we ended up here."

Encrid shifted against the wall, because only half of that was true - he knew what kind of man the reaper was from the novel - that was the reason he had trusted him.

"Do you think Lord Vessa sent me?"

"I don’t know." The Reaper gave a small shake of his head. "I’ve wondered about it. Perhaps the gods work through people in ways we cannot understand. Perhaps they answer too late for us to recognise the answer. Or perhaps we are simply desperate enough to find meaning in the things that happen to us."

He looked back at the fire.

"If Lord Vessa sent you to me, then he owes me eleven years. If he didn’t, then I owe you everything."

His voice remained steady.

"And I’ve never failed to pay a debt."

For once, Encrid had no clever answer.

He had seen things that should not exist. He had heard a dragon speak inside his head. He had watched people survive what should have killed them and die despite everything done to save them.

He wasn’t sure where the gods ended and the inexplicable began.

"I don’t know if the gods are responsible," he said. "But I know you helped me when you didn’t have to. Whatever brought us together, that part was your choice."

The Reaper watched him for a moment.

"Perhaps," he said.

Then he rose and went to the door.

"Sleep, benefactor. We’ll move an hour before dawn."

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