Seeker

Quin’s legs were going to give out. She’d done more running in the past two days than she had in all of the previous year, and her muscles were not going to put up with too much more. Also, she was running out of woods. The trees were thinning ahead, with blue sky now visible through their branches.

The Young Dread had killed one of John’s men, but the last time Quin had dared to look over her shoulder, the other man was still chasing her. And John, of course—he wasn’t far behind.

The sight of that man flying forward, a knife buried in his neck, had not affected her as much as it should have. So I am used to death? she asked herself, immediately knowing the answer: Yes, I am much too used to death. There were still gray areas in her mind, but more and more was becoming clear.

A few moments later, she came out into the open. A hundred yards ahead of her was the edge of a cliff, and below that was a river. She could hear the water from where she stood. Near the cliff’s edge was an old stone barn. And to the left of that barn was another path, leading back into the woods. The memory came to her—that way would take her to the castle ruins.

She hesitated. If she took that path, they would follow, and she needed a rest before running again. And what was her plan? John had the lightning rod. Without it, her athame was useless. She must get it from him. The only other choice was to give him the athame, teach him to use it, and be done with running.

She found herself walking toward the barn.

“Quin, stop.”

It was John’s voice. Without stopping, she turned her head and saw him at the edge of the woods, alone. He glanced back into the trees, searching for his remaining man.

“Maybe the Young Dread got both of them,” she told him as she reached the barn doorway. She was close to the cliff now—the far side of the barn was nestled against the verge—and she could hear the river more loudly.

“Quin, just stop. Come on.” He had pulled the gun from his pocket and was going through the motions of cocking it. The lightning rod wasn’t in his hands. He must have it hidden in his clothes.

“Are you really going to shoot me?” she asked. “I don’t believe it.”

Without waiting for his answer, she crossed into the shadows of the barn. It smelled just as she had known it would, of damp soil and old straw. She moved through its cool interior to the ladder on the far side and climbed quickly up to the sleeping loft. From there she could see out the huge circular windows beneath the roof, giving a view down the cliff and along the river, to the distant hills beyond.

“I wanted you to help me back then,” John said, calling up to her from the doorway below. “That day in this barn.”

Quin was silent.

“What’s the symbol of your family?” he asked.

“A ram,” she answered.

“There’s a fox carved into the pommel of that athame—the symbol of my family.” When she didn’t respond, he said, “You don’t even want it, Quin. Why would you stop me from having it?”

It was true, she hadn’t wanted it. She’d wanted to forget the athame and everything else. And she’d been a pawn. But now?

She peered over the edge of the loft to see him standing beneath her. He was holding the gun, but it was hanging at his side, like he was embarrassed about its presence.

“I’m coming up there,” he said, taking hold of the ladder.

Quin braced herself, forming a simple plan. She took a deep breath, in and out.

All at once, he was up the ladder and stepping onto the loft. Instead of moving away, as he would be expecting, Quin moved forward and grabbed hold of him. Stepping back, she twisted around and threw them both off balance, sending John stumbling over the edge of the platform. He saved himself by clutching a rafter, but his gun fell, clattering to the barn floor.

For a moment, his legs dangled over the brink and he fought to get back onto the loft. Quin reached over and felt along his back as he struggled, around his waist, her hand searching for the lightning rod. It wasn’t there. She brushed something hard inside his jacket, a solid object, but much too small. Had he given the rod to his men? Had he left it in the woods?

She ducked away from him. There was a long, narrow board connecting the sleeping loft at one end to a group of rafters at the other, beneath the second window. She was halfway across it when John spoke.

“I don’t want to force you, Quin,” he said. As she glanced back, she saw that he’d regained his solid footing on the loft and was stepping onto the plank behind her. “Wouldn’t it be better to be together? I want you to choose to be with me.”

“What about what I want?” she asked him as she crawled through the rafters toward the second window. “I want you to be the John I knew before. The one who wanted to do honorable things, to help people.”

“I am him, Quin.” He was moving across the board toward her.

She climbed onto the sill of the window. It was just an opening, without glass. From the sill, she reached out, grabbed the ridge beam beneath the eaves of the roof, and swung herself out of the barn.

She looked to her right, expecting to see the branches of a large elm tree. She and Shinobu had climbed that tree dozens of times as children. She had hoped to be down its trunk and into the woods before John recovered his gun and followed her.

But the elm wasn’t there. There must have been a storm sometime in the last year and a half, for the tree had fallen over, tearing out a large chunk of soil with it. Now, with a jolt to her stomach, she saw that it was a straight drop out the barn window, past the remnants of the tree trunk, and down the face of the precipice to the water. A cold breeze was whistling up the cliff, and her feet were flailing in the open air.

She swung her legs frantically to the beam overhead, and as she did, she was given a view of the barn from a new angle. There was a carving next to the window, which until now had been hidden by the elm tree: three interlocking ovals were chiseled deeply into the stone of the barn, making a simple diagram of … It looked like an atom.

She didn’t have time to study it. John was climbing among the rafters, only yards away from the window, and she was hanging over a cliff. She wrestled her way up onto the roof.

Picking a path across cracked slate tiles to the other side, Quin peered over the roof’s edge and found that it was too far to jump to the ground. She might be able to lower herself down and drop—but there was no time. John was already climbing up onto the slate behind her. On one side, it was too far to jump, and on the other was the sheer cliff drop to the river below.

She turned to face him. The idea of fighting John, when she hadn’t trained in a year and a half, was almost laughable. Even so, she drew her whipsword and cracked it out. Maybe because she was thinking of Shinobu, she chose the shape of a katana, a Japanese samurai sword. As she swung it up above her head, it felt like Shinobu was behind her, encouraging her. She would be no one’s pawn.

“You’re out of practice, and I’m not,” John said from the other end of the roof, his whipsword still curled at his side. Almost gently, he added, “I don’t think you can beat me, Quin.”

“You’re a good person, John. Despite what you’ve done so far. If I give you the athame, you won’t be, and neither will I.”

“The athame doesn’t make us bad. It only gives us the freedom to choose. That’s all.”

She shook her head, gripping her whipsword more tightly. “Really? Think about what you’ve done already, trying to get it. You shot me, you shot at Shinobu, you cut my mother’s throat! You cut her, John!”

“I tried very hard not to hurt any of you! Why don’t you see that, Quin? And why do you only care what I’ve done?” His face was changing. She could see him trying to fight his anger, but he was losing. “What about your father?” he asked, the words full of malice as he moved carefully across the roof toward her. “What’s he done to get the athame? What have those others done?” John’s whipsword was in his hand now, like it had a mind of its own.

She knew she was not yet in full possession of her mind. And yet, there was something more here—she sensed he was saying something more than she had ever known. He was about to tell her things she didn’t want to learn.

“That’s the point,” she answered, checking her footing, bracing herself. “Whatever he’s done, I don’t want you to be like Briac.”

“I am not a torturer,” he told her, the words bursting from him as though he had no control. “I am not a beast!” John’s whipsword cracked out, and he struck at her, his temper taking over. “I’m not like Briac!”

Quin’s muscles reacted automatically, blocking. She might be a year out of practice, but her body had not forgotten. She threw his whipsword off with her own, sending both of them stumbling on the steep roof.

“You’re not like Briac,” she agreed, righting herself. “And I hope you’ll stay as you are.”

“You hope I’ll stay as I am?” The words seemed to make him angrier. “You like me helpless, is that it? Beaten by Briac! My mother murdered, everyone murdered. My house in ruins!” He slashed at her, and she blocked him again. She didn’t know what he was talking about. What had happened to John’s mother? What had Briac done? “They’ve been deciding my family’s fate for centuries. Centuries. But my house will rise again. Do you understand? It’s time.”

“Do you want a house of killers, John?”

“Are you a killer, Quin?”

At that moment, she saw a flash in the corner of her vision. It was the Young Dread at the edge of the woods, approaching the barn, but Quin didn’t dare turn her head.

John struck at her harder. Just barely, she managed to throw off the blow, and as she did, she could see that he was favoring his left arm.

“You were going to kill Briac,” he said. “I saw you.” His sword landed another heavy strike against hers. Her left shoulder, the one with the old wound, was aching.

“Will you help me?” Quin called to the Dread, who was silently getting closer.

“You’re passing judgment on me, Quin. But what about the things you’ve done?” John asked. He continued to swing at her, moving her backward.

How did he know what she’d done? How did he know when she didn’t know herself, didn’t want to know? He was pushing her toward the end of the roof. And in her mind, he was pushing her to another sort of cliff, one that separated the Quin of now from the Quin of a year and a half ago.

With two more steps, he drove her to the edge. There was nowhere for her to go.

“Please!” Quin called to the Dread. The girl was standing below them, motionless.

John raised his sword, but did not strike. “Tell me, Quin. What did you and Briac do?”

All at once, she knew the answer. The last curtain of gray was gone from her mind, and she could clearly see the events she had most wanted to forget.

She had done the things she was accusing John of wanting to do. She’d done those things with her own hands. The weight of them hit her like a physical force, and she almost fell to her knees. Of course she had forgotten. Of course she’d started her life over. Ignorance had been wonderful.

“We killed them,” she whispered, letting the words hang in the air. She struck at John weakly, trying to step away from the edge. “If Briac’s a beast, so am I.”

“Who did you kill?” he asked, retreating a pace, giving her room.

“Lots of people, John, lots of times.” Now that she was admitting it, she could not stop the words from tumbling out. There was a relief in saying them aloud. Finally. “Those children—I tried to run away. He stopped me. He said I had to. We’d already done so much. Their parents, the nurse … There was no escape …” She could see Briac as he was that night, at the base of the big staircase in the manor house. The children were hiding behind her. “I told them it would be all right, and I brought them back to Briac.”

“He forced you,” he said, his voice softer now, as though she could be forgiven for what she’d done. As though he understood and didn’t blame her. “It wasn’t your choice. Those deaths don’t make you a killer.”

“They thought I was helping them, John! I dream about those children. I tried to get away with them, but Briac caught me. He kicked the gun from my hands when he saw me faltering. And then he …” She couldn’t say the words. Briac had taken those children and done what they did to everyone on those late-night assignments. Even if she hadn’t … finished things with the children herself, there were all those others her own whipsword had cut and killed. On later assignments with Briac, there’d been no children involved, and this had been such a relief that she … she hadn’t needed quite as much pressure to do what her father demanded. I’m already damned, she’d thought. What does it matter now?

“Briac’s a monster,” he told her. “He could have picked easier assignments, something more fair. He was trying to break you, hurt you.”

“I wanted to be a Seeker—”

“Quin—you aren’t the first Seeker to kill to survive. Where do you think my grandfather’s wealth comes from? Where does your estate come from?”

“That’s what Briac said!”© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

“But it’s not what Briac did!” John yelled. “Killing for money, restoring your fortunes—that’s surviving. Every house must do it from time to time. My mother did, when she had to. She picked assignments she could live with, killed … as fairly as she could, people who deserved what she did. But your father, those others—they kill anyone. And they killed us. Do you understand? Whole families of Seekers. Children, mothers, fathers. For no reason but jealousy, they’ve tried to stamp my house to nothing. And for that … can’t you see I have to make that right?”

They were not striking each other anymore. They had both allowed their swords to fall to their sides, and they were both breathing hard. She didn’t know the history John seemed to know. Briac had shared none of it with her.

“So … it’s all right to kill?” she asked him, hearing the disbelief in her own voice. “As long as you select an acceptable victim? Or as long as you’re killing for revenge? It’s all right if the swords aren’t turned against you?”

“I—I didn’t choose this life, Quin. It was chosen for me. I will make the best decisions I can. I will try to be fair. But I’ve promised—”

“John, do you hear yourself? Do you think you can kill people and it won’t change you? You think you can pick someone who deserves to die and that will make it all right? It doesn’t work like that.”

“I know our lives are harsh—”

“I wanted to do something good,” she said, cutting him off. She was exhausted. “It was so simple when I was a little girl.”

“You can do something good. The athame lets us decide—where we go, what we do. It is good.”

The sun was behind John, casting him into shadow, but for the first time, Quin was seeing him clearly. She had been training with her father in the hope of doing something honorable with her life. It was all she’d wanted, even if the hope had been false. John thought he wanted the same thing—a noble purpose, justice—but he’d already seen Briac’s path, and he was willing to set his feet upon it. He was like a sword that had been bent at the moment it was forged. Such a blade will always be bent, as John’s heart was bent by the life and the death of the mother he’d never wanted to speak about. At this moment, he was still the John she had known, but he wouldn’t stay that way if she helped him now.

“No,” she told him, shaking her head. “It’s not good.”

Using the last of her strength, Quin struck at him suddenly with her whipsword, aiming for his injured side. He was caught by surprise and blocked the blow poorly, his left arm weak. She pressed her advantage, grabbing both ends of her sword and pushing at his blade. John lost his balance for a moment, and on reflex, Quin hooked one of his feet with her own and sent him sprawling. He slid down the roof toward its edge, dislodging a huge sheet of slate as he went. By the time he got a solid hold on the roof and stopped his descent, half his body hung out over the cliff.

Quin moved to grab him, worried he would fall, but she saw his grip on the roof was firm, and he was already pulling himself up.

Quin!

She turned in time to see an object arcing through the air. It was the lightning rod, the one John had taken from her. The Young Dread was throwing her the lightning rod. Only after Quin caught it did she realize the Young had not actually called her name aloud. It had been shouted directly into her head, and she had heard it.

She drew her athame from her waistband. She now recognized all of the symbols on the haft, and she made a quick adjustment to the dials.

Below her, John was clawing his way to a safer part of the roof, away from the cliff. In a moment, he’d be back on his feet.

She struck the athame and lightning rod together, and a vibration washed over her. She ran to the edge, just above the cliff, and looked all the way to the river below. Then she reached down with the athame and drew a circle in the air. The dagger cut an opening, hovering below her, the black-and-white fabric of its edges pulsing and growing solid as she watched.

John was pulling himself to the peak of the roof as Quin leapt off the far end of the building. Her stomach lurched as she began to fall, her hair whipped by the cold breeze coming up the cliff. Far below her, she could see the swiftly flowing river pressed up against the steep rock face. Her body told her she had just jumped to her death. But she was falling into the anomaly, and a moment later, she had crossed its threshold and was not falling at all.

She turned. Above her was the opening she’d cut in space, and through it she could see the barn roof against the sky. At the edge of that roof stood John, looking devastated. He moved a few steps back, preparing to leap, but the circle was already starting to unravel, the threads hissing back together. John stopped himself at the edge, as the doorway closed above Quin, plunging her into darkness.