Courier Jessle, messenger of the word of Gelmorre, stood at the prow of the ship as the dinghies were made ready, eyes hunting through the deep-breathing mists that ate up the land in front of her.
For a small moment it heaved itself aside, and there it was: Threshold, the edge of the tip of the final stretched finger of civilization, separated from its trunk by a long, blue arm of waves and wind you could lose continents in.
Well, this one had been lost long enough, said Her Worship. And so the ships were masted and crewed and loaded and voyaged and after near-three-years this was what had been made. The virtues of human intellect, itself the virtue of human cooperation, because why bother being smart if you can’t show other people it. Jessle had heard many scholars rhapsodize on the intertwining of the two. Personally, she considered both overrated.
There it lay. No name for it but what it was: Afar.
Courier Jessle was a professional, which was to say that she was meticulous about her profession. And at the very core of the profession of Courier of Gelmorre was this: the will of Her Worship is to be heard, and it is to be fulfilled.
Nevertheless, that brief eyeful of Afar had led her to suspect that the cleverest thing Gelmorre could do would be to lose the damned place again, and more thoroughly this time.
A quiet man who called himself the commander of the outpost here explained himself, poorly, as Jessle pretended to listen. Nothing new was being said, nothing interesting. That would be for later, for the requests that would only be made of a Courier, that only a Courier would dare do. For now it was formalities pretending to be practicalities, an endless list of progress updates. So instead, she concerned herself with her bench.
The seat was made from local wood. As it should be. Gelmorre was what it was wherever it was, it needed no links to home because home was wherever it chose to be. This small bench – hewn together in three rough pieces by one rough man in less than an hour, by her guess – was a flag grander than any an embassy could fly.
Jessle had sat on more comfortable stones. The trees of this place did not appear to grow so much as elongate themselves into larger and larger splinters, and she dared not imagine the plane that could tame them, let alone the carpenter that would dare wield it.
“…and they did not return.”
Oh, a new part of the conversation. “What did the voyageurs report?”
The man managed to make his face grow blanker – an easy feat in the dim, foggy air of the building. Nothing seemed to keep the mist out here. “Courier?”
“You sent out voyageurs after that, yes? What did they report?”
“Commander, you may have misheard me. Our voyageurs did not return.”
Jessle’s aunt had been a voyageur. She’d lasted almost a decade before retiring with her three teeth and one arm and thirty-six years of age. She faded fast after that. They always claimed that sitting around caused the greatest fatality rate of any action Her Worship could request of them. It tore their nerves to pieces.
Sometimes she wondered if that was the real reason that Gelmorre’s voyageurs were the most glorified of all her forces. Whatever benefit they provided in deeds – and oh there were many, and oh they’d never shut up about them – they exceeded tenfold in morale. A woman could find all kinds of courage if the soldier beside her saw a battle coming on and started singing. Especially if the song was dirty enough, and they knew them all. Mostly because they invented them.
Jessle had been given one for her fifteenth birthday by that selfsame aunt, just a few months before she lay down with half a cabinet of Clearwater liquor and didn’t move at morning. After that, sharing it would’ve been wrong, so she hadn’t.
She was humming it now, she realized. That was not a good sign. She needed her mind on her task, even if right now that involved noticing just how much swampwater was seeping over the tops of her boots, or the number, kind, and disposition of the various small organisms she could feel fighting for survival over the surface of her stockings.
She hated the land here. Fog, trees, and mud, and the most solid surface you could find never stayed that way for more than an hour. She’d have given her grandmother’s old siege-gauntlet for a single dry stone, or a hillock that wasn’t coated in weeping ferns. And she would have traded the old bitch herself in for a bigger escort than a single scout.
Not like the gauntlet would do her much good now anyways.
“No iron,” the commander had told her. “If it’s iron, it stays inside the palisade.”
“Why? The perfect tool for a game hunt here, I’d suppose. The first logs said you so much as flashed it and it turned wolves into rabbits.”
He sighed, and Jessle saw that he was probably younger than she was, under the lines carved into his face by too much worry and too little sleep. “I’d almost wish for wolves here, to say nothing of rabbits. But yes, yes it did. We never went out without it until a week after landfall. Then people started blowing up. Took the voyageurs three days to track down the culprit, three days of walking around hunting imaginary monsters while the rest of us hid indoors. Then one of them – Ysko, I believe his name was – sat down on a patch of moss wearing iron-shoed boots and, well…”
“Iron makes the plants explode?”
“The mosses,” he corrected. “Well, at least one variety. It’s rather common, and more importantly it’s more common than the beasts out there. There might be others, and we haven’t been so lacking in work around here that we can afford time to experiment. For the time being, the iron stays in this building’s cellar.
“Here.”
Jessle glanced behind her. It was already invisible in the mist, but by her reckoning she’d still be within sight of Threshold’s walls if it were a clear day.
Her guide shook her head. “No, not where they vanished. This is where they started. They came here first. Look.”
Jessle followed the scout’s fingertip and wished she hadn’t. The corpse was still quite fresh, not more than a few days in age, but something was already attempting to nest in its open mouth. Any land is dry land enough.
More out of professional thoroughness than actual doubt, she checked the body. Yes, a clean kill. A single arrow right through the forehead. No other wounds, no trace of damage that hadn’t happened long after he’d been in any condition to care about it. “Where did he come from?”
“The south pools. Good fish there, if you’re careful not to get too close to the water’s edge. Lost a few legs at first. Now we just lose rods. And one hand.”
Poor luck to the slow of reflex. “A fisherman, then?”
“Day-laborer. Fisherman. Carpenter. Odd jobs. Lot of folk like that here.”
Jessle peered into the body’s eyes. “How did you say the man acted?”
“Regular-like or at the end?”
“Both.”
The scout shrugged. “Before, he was nothing special. His friends liked him and he had a few that hated him. Got a bit too surly after his drinks. Lazy without a goal, busy with. Could’ve come from a mould.”
“Her Worship’s barracks produce fine philosophers.”
The scout tensed, then saw the smile. “After… after it’s hard to say. Second person he met was in no state to say much for hours, and she’s still shaky from it. The closest anyone else got was enough to see she wasn’t lying. Then came the shot.”
“Tell me.”
“She said he was blank. Moved like a sleepwalker. Came out of the fog without so much as a splash, grabbed her head, and yanked. Didn’t pay any mind to what she yelled at him, didn’t blink until her finger went in the left eye. Didn’t pay any mind to that either – she got away when she stabbed him in the arm.”
Jessle glanced at the limb in question. “She got the muscle, that’s why. Pain wasn’t going to work: our man was higher than a snowcrasher on a scaffold.”
“Courier?”
She straightened up and wiped her hands on the most tattered part of her jacket. “His pupils are pinpricks. Anything around here that’ll do the job?”
“No. Not unless the rotgut’s stronger than they say, which it isn’t, and some fools have been trying to booze it up outside the walls, which they don’t.”
“And our man would scarcely be walking smooth after that.” Jessle shook her head. “How far are the south pools?”
“Twenty-minute walk, if you’re quick.”
“Get me there half-time,” she ordered, and wiped her hands again. “Second person he met?”
“At least.”
“Let’s find the first.”
As they left, she took one last look at the corpse before the fog swallowed it. Its hands were swollen from the beginnings of rot, but the rusty-red spackle that coated them still remained.
This body was less pleasant than the first, although there wasn’t as much of it.
“Thorough.” And colorful. It contrasted nicely with the roiling pale-white murk of the bubbling pools it lay next to. Just standing near them made her skin crawl; she wondered how anyone had worked up the nerve to fish there in the first place.
The scout settled for a nod in lieu of commentary.
“Matter of fact, downright meticulous. All it’s missing are labels – you’re sure he wasn’t a doctor? This looks downright surgical. For something that was done with nails and teeth.”
Jessle stepped back. “Still pretty, too. Not how I’d look after days in this murk, with my torso turned into seventeen different kinds of bait. There should be teeth-marks up one side and down the other of what’s left, and THAT shouldn’t be more than a rib and a half.” She shook her head. “Do your little rod-snatchers venture onto land here?”
Shake shake.
“Huh. Well, maybe the wildlife doesn’t bother coming here if there’s nothing to drink.”
Shrug.
“Plenty to see, though. Voyageur bootprint on the ground. Crushed undergrowth to the east. They weren’t too quiet when they came through here. Auntie always said they talked that more than they walked it, and well, maybe they’re right to do that. Just not this time.” She hissed between her teeth. “Confidence, overconfidence. It’s a fine line. East… you know the terrain?”
A slow, hesitant nod.
“Get going. And remember: I’m one step behind you.”
And she was, she really was. Exactly one step, almost unnaturally. Steady, firm, and careful. Because the fog was clotting thicker by the minute, and all she had to do was lose track of the bobbing, wavering boot in front of hers for a single stride and…
…she’d be lost. But not really, because she could just take her next step twice as quickly and…
…find nothing.
Jessle broke into a sprint that took her through three small streams and enough mud to build a small pyramid. Nothing.
Well. This was interesting.
She considered shouting and quickly dismissed the idea. Not only might she end up drawing the attention of animals, there was a not-insignificant chance that the scout had left her on purpose. Couriers were authority second only to Her Worship, yes, but authority was always tested by the desperate and deluded. Maybe the commander had done away with his voyageurs through ineptitude or malice and now he was hoping the courier’s death could be pinned on something big and ravenous enough that the outpost would be dismantled through no fault of his own, oh well, nothing he could do, everyone had best cease investigating and go home.
An idiot’s fantasy, but those were not uncommon.
At least backtracking was simple. Even in the fog, even in the endless mire, Jessle had left trail-marks. Out of habit, because the best habits were the ones that would keep you alive, and she tried to cultivate those. Bent grass, twisted reeds, stones turned over with a boot… she had made herself no highway, but it would suffice. Soon enough she would be back at the south pools, this time with her only company being a –
Something heavy and soft smacked into her boot, and she caught herself with half a curse between her and the ground.
Oh. There it was. And it hadn’t been improved when her foot entered its chest.
At least now she knew where she was. Or she would’ve, if this had been where they’d found the body. The pools were missing, she stood at the border of a small fen and a patch of unnaturally thick and glistening ferns.
She eyed them suspiciously. No, there was nothing there. No noise. Not even breathing. She could barely hear herself breathing.
So. The dead did not get up and walk. Or at least not the dead here. Probably.
Well, even if they did, they’d require functioning legs to do that, and this particular corpse was missing one. And there were no drag marks.
Experimentally, Jessle reached down and yanked at the corpse’s arms. Yes, quite heavy. And if her memory told her right, she was not particularly near to the pools.
So. Something had done this. Presumably it was not the scout unless she was secretly a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than she’d let on. Jessle allotted herself enough pride to admit she’d have spotted any human short of a voyageur on their trail.
So, an animal or animals. Potentially the same one that could kill a company of voyageurs together. Something quiet and quick and strong, with enough canniness in it to leave no footprints. An animal clever enough to try and frighten and confuse her, which meant it was probably at least sapient.
Well, confusion worked both ways. Now, if she’d laid a trap like this, what would she have expected? Horror. Shock. Panic. Headlong flight into the unknown.
Calmly and quietly, she picked up the largest, least-decomposed branch she could find, screamed once, and threw it into the bushes as far as she could, then dropped into the mud and froze for two minutes.
And that, decided Jessle, as she began to belly-crawl through the moss, an anonymous hummock among many others, was the saving grace of being hunted by things that could plan. They could plan poorly. She hoped it spent half the night out there looking for her.
After half an hour of perfectly-quiet, furious crawling she reached the pools, which was where she got up and ran. Her pursuer would be somewhere behind her, her run home was a simple one along a solid path, and she had the motivation. In no time at all, the fogs spread out to reveal the clearing around…
…the pools.
Jessle allowed herself four full seconds of silent inner fury before she resumed observations. That was when she saw that the corpse was there again. Only someone had propped it up. If there’d been eyes, she was sure they’d be gazing right at her.
She turned her back and walked again. North. North. The direction on her compass, she made sure of it. This time she went slow and low, took her time.
The pools again. Though this time there were two huddled forms at the water’s edge. The murderer and the victim, reunited. Someone had even taken the trouble to put their hands together. Resting lovers.
This time Jessle did not put her compass away. This time she crawled, one eye on the needle, one eye on her surroundings, her ears as strained as a new mother’s pelvis.
It was quiet, so quiet. Even her heartbeat seemed stifled. How anything could’ve been out there she had no idea.
But it was, because before long she was at the pools again.
Once, twice, thrice. Enemy action. And the corpses were gone now.
Arms closed around her, and it was only as she swore and elbowed simultaneously that she realized that she made no sound at all.
It was the scout, of course. Her elbow scraped along the bottom of the woman’s ribcage before skating smoothly into her solar plexus, and she convulsed onto her back. Jessle followed her down and assisted with the process, knee on her throat. She opened her mouth to ask why, how, what, and nothing came out. She was mute, the world was mute. Her aunt’s song rose to the back of her mind, but the tune was blank.
The other woman’s pupils were pinpricks, she saw faintly.
The scout’s hands were already grasping again, straining against the constraints of a body that wanted to remain still. Jessle considered her options, picked the least-jagged stone at hand, and forcibly placed her consciousness into recess.
No monster then, just marsh-madness? No. No, the scout hadn’t been the one that moved those bodies all those distances without so much as a mark. There was something else out there. There was something that was making her lose her way, making others lose their minds, cloaking itself in a silence that shouldn’t be and a mist that-
The mist. The mist was changing.
Jessle dropped the scout and looked around. Nowhere near but reeds and shrubs.
Well hell. Maybe the fishies would’ve given up after the last few days of quiet.
She rolled into the shallows of the pools and felt the squelching sensation of a half-dozen mud-dwelling little animals getting to know her better.
It should’ve come with fanfare, with dread. The ground should have quivered at its footfall, the stagnant swampwater should have surged against its body, and the air should have been filled with the deep ever-hissing endlessness of its breath.
But instead it was quiet, endlessly quiet, and with this it was almost not there at all. The fog wrapped around it so thoroughly that the only things that screamed of its presence to Jessle were the hairs at the back of her neck – though that might have been the squirming in the muck beneath her – and the slightest whorls in the mist at her left.
Something was in the bank of mist that swept over the clearing of the south pools, something big enough to make a team of hardened voyageurs vanish in the space of four hours. It was close enough for her to touch at a lunge, and she had no idea where – or what – it was.
The persistent tickling at her belly ceased. Then it swelled; up, up, up, turning into a flex that tipped her from the water to the land, a writhing, muscled force that curled at her sides and dropped her without effort. Cold scales touched her cheek.
And Jessle looked up into a pair of eyes the size of her head. Apart from the tiny ring of milk-white sclera that separated them from grey scales, they were purest black.
She held that gaze for a moment, just a moment, and she peered through those engorged pupils and into clarity. She saw sound torn away and shredded into nothingness. She saw mist exhaled like breath and breeding like roaches. She saw eyes drain away into empty dots and mouths close on tongues that had been robbed of speech. She saw bodies picked apart by proxy fingers placed as warning signs. She saw thoughts turned in circles for the sake of amusement. And she saw the sort of mind that would do those things. An intellect that had grown all out of proportion, not to show others how to do things, but to make them.
Courier Jessle did not hesitate, Courier Jessle did not scream. Instead, as she bit the inside of her cheek, Courier Jessle reached into the deepest pocket of her jacket and when her hand came out it was coated in her grandmother’s iron, and she struck at those eyes as hard as she ever had in her life.
The mist fell. The world poured back into her ears. And Courier Jessle ran, ran, ran as fast as her legs would carry her. And then she started screaming, but only a little. Because she needed her breath to move herself, and the silence was already starting to creep up her neck again, seething on the tendrils of onrushing fog.
The gates were in sight already, somehow. Twenty minutes covered in ten had been covered in… three? Panic always made her internal clock fall apart. The gate was closed. Of course it was closed. She yelled and she screamed and whispers came out. Not that it mattered, because the guards on the gate stood silent and watching, eyes unblinking as she pounded on the door.
The thudding of her fists grew fainter, and she risked a glance over her shoulder. The mist was pouring into the clearing.
She drew back her gauntlet-clad fist, triggered a very, very small switch in the base of the palm, and reminded herself to leave another flower on her family’s stone this year. Maybe three. Auntie may have been a voyageur, but grandmother had been a siegebreaker captain, and although the regulations prohibited company equipment from being used as hand-me-downs, the old woman had never put any stock in them.
Even the numbness eating her ears couldn’t silence the roaring thunder of the siege-gauntlet’s impact. It had been meant to tear through reinforced doors of fortresses, a waterlogged and moss-laden wooden palisade presented it with as much trouble as paper.
Jessle moved at a sprint through the town, dodging from building to building. Splinters rained down on her head as alleyways were bulldozed to nothing behind her, crushed under a living battering-ram. The fog was outrunning her, and its master was only feet behind.
That was fine. Jessle was where she needed to be. She kicked the door of the garrison open and felt something in her heel give way at the force, but she was in a hurry and felt no mind. Stumbled inside over the weight that was her foot, slammed the door with both hands.
The roof groaned noiselessly over her head and vanished in a spray of mould and dust, vaporizing under a skull that outmassed a warhorse in full battle harness. Jessle looked up into those eyes, those eyes whose pupils had swallowed them whole, framed by a beak of bone that seemed to laugh at her as it worked itself.
That was fine. Jessle was doing what she planned. She held up her hand and made the simplest gesture she knew.
The eye twitched, the maw descended, and Jessle leapt backwards as it slammed into the planks of the floor…and down,
and farther,
all the way down into the cellar.
Confidence, overconfidence. It was such a fine line, as fine as a crack in a cellar’s floor-boards. As fine as the edges of the iron blades that lined the garrison’s cellar, where all the iron of Threshold lay that wasn’t decorating Jessle’s fist.
She knew it when it hit, she couldn’t have missed it. It was a roar without sound, and she felt it claw at the back of her head. For a moment, just an instant, just a second, she felt her body fight against her…
…and then there was noise, blissful, all-consuming noise as the walls collapsed and her siege-gauntlet hissed to itself and the screaming began outside.
Courier Jessle hugged herself and her broken foot and laughed until her stomach hurt for joy of the sound. And all the while, in the back of her head, a song was singing.