Boneset & Feathers by Gwendolyn Kiste

Author:Gwendolyn Kiste [Kiste, Gwendolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Broken Eye Books
Published: 2021-07-22T23:28:45+00:00

chapter eight

Backed against the stone wall, I can’t run from him. He’ll catch me no matter which way I turn. Besides, the crowd is still pushing closer at the edges, their faces lined and gray, the color of faded pewter. There’s no chance I could cut through all of them and make it to the other side, all the way to the road that leads out of the capital.

I’m trapped in this city I never wanted to see with a man I’ve seen too well. Everything about him is the same as I remember it, luxurious and cruel as though life is merely a passing diversion to him. He certainly makes sure that’s what it is for others. So fleeting they might blink and miss their own existence, burned to cinders on his command.

Samuel and the little girl stand among the scared faces, frozen there in this bustling marketplace, only a few yards from me and a universe away too.

I wish they’d run. They could still get back to the village by nightfall, just the two of them. They don’t need to stay and watch me die, and they certainly don’t need to risk dying themselves.

I look to them, sharpening my mind, my thoughts, trying to speak or scream without ever making a sound, but the doyen draws nearer to me, his cloak billowing, enveloping us in an almost-embrace.

“So,” he says, rolling the word off his tongue like he’s savoring a fine wine, “what brings you to my city?”

I tip up my chin and steel myself to him. “Not you,” I say.

His smile never fading, he runs one steady hand through a wisp of my hair, his fingertips smoldering, his gaze all over me as though I already belong to him.

Near us, the girl from the locket has collapsed into herself, weeping, her body in a heap. The doyen glances at her as though she’s a gadfly, invading his picnic, before he turns back to me.

“So you’re the one who took care of her brother, that hopeful little witchfinder?” he asks. “We wondered where he went. The men missed having their boots shined.”

He rasps out a laugh that sets my flesh crawling. For the first time, I imagine the man I murdered as he must have been among these privileged few in the capital. A grunt, a joke, a figure as insubstantial as mist to them. Although he hadn’t figured it out yet, he never would have been one of them. They couldn’t have allowed that.

That’s how he ended up the way he was, angry at being invisible, looking for someone to blame. Their boots in his back, his hand on Anna’s throat. This cycle that never ends.

The horses rear up, and the little girl inches forward, her back arched. She wants to help, maybe Samuel does too if only because the waxed bottle from the apothecary is still inside my jacket. I exhale to call them off, to scream at them to run, but no sound comes out as the doyen leans in a little closer, nearly smothering the life from my body.

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