Page 101 of Thorn Season
So much for quiet, I was about to say. The words dried on my tongue.
“Gracious gods,” Tari whispered.
I couldn’t respond.
Dark and hellish, with grime-encrusted metal bars and loose shackles snaking in the dirt, these prisons were unsuited to housing anyone remotely human.
Yet the vestiges of human life were everywhere.
Bare footmarks dimpled the floor of the empty cells, whileboot-treads pitted deeper grooves in the open space. A hunk of gray bread lay discarded, a crescent-shaped bite taken out of it. The tang of urine and feces mixed with the coppery stench of blood.
If Garret had described Hunting as a business, then this... this wassavagery.
Tari made a low sound of warning as I stepped into an empty cell. One corner of the tunnel had caved in, and its earth-spray had scattered outward, leaving the ground sharp and craggy underfoot. Something glimmered, and I squatted, tilting the light.
A sleek wooden cylinder sat on the dirt, half the size of my little finger and painted with a black stripe. A length of metal spiked one end, shorter and thinner than a dressmaker’s pin.
The memories flooded me: a cool cloth on my forehead; a prick behind my neck; Tari’s mother, Jala, telling her young daughter to make more ginger tea.
I lifted the instrument by its wooden end and held it to the light.
“A dispenser,” Tari said. Her mother had used them during my bout of blueneck fever. The cylinders contained medicines—or nightmilk, for sedation—and pressure on the needle head emptied their contents into the bloodstream.
I twitched my finger toward the metal. My specter lurched, twisting from the residue on the needle.“Dullroot.”
I flung the dispenser aside and stood. Xerylite mines had been used as strongholds during the Starling Rebellion, emblematic of Wielder resistance.
This site had been transformed into a Wielder slaughter ground.
“It’s like the Capewells’ hold,” I said. “The copycats must be bringing the Wielders here before killing them. Or”—I looked toward the disintegrating wall—“theywerebringing them here.” The collapse must have driven them to abandon this location.
“Why?” Tari’s voice trembled. “Why would anyone do this to innocent Wielders?”
My specter squirmed, my own rising horror mixed with outrage. I said bitterly, “There is no such thing as an innocent Wielder.”
Then I grabbed an unlit torch, touched it to my flames, and plonked it in Tari’s hand.
She startled. “Where are you going?”
“To look around.”
Her expression darkened. “You said—”
“That we’d leave once we found something.”
“I thinkthis”—she threw her arm wide—“qualifies asfinding something.”
“There might be a clue here as to where they went. We need to find them before they Hunt again.”
“Alissa, it’s too dangerous.”
“Then stay here if you’re afraid.” I turned. “I’ll be back.”
“Alissa—”
I stormed away.
I had slim odds of discovering anything else here. But how could I leave without trying when, all this time, the Hunted Wielders were being slaughtered under my province? Marge would’ve been among them, unaware that she was just a few miles from home when they’d run a final blade through her.
