Hope and Red Read Free

face. Around her, others were stirring, their own faces etched in the same agony as her father.
    Then she saw her father’s sea glass necklace give an odd little jump. She looked closer. It happened again. Her father arched his back. His eyes and mouth opened wide, as if screaming, but only a wet gurgle came out. A white worm as thick as a finger burst from his neck. Blood streamed from him as other worms burrowed out of his chest and gut.
    Her mother woke with a gasp, her eyes staring around wildly. Her skin was already shifting. She reached out and called her daughter’s name.
    All around her, the other villagers thrashed against their chains as the worms ripped free. Before long, the ground was covered in a writhing mass of white.
    She wanted to run. Instead, she held her mother’s hand and watched her writhe and jerk as the worms ate her from the inside. She did not move, did not look away until her mother grew still. Only then did she stumble to her feet, slip under the tent wall, and run back into the tall grass.
    She watched from afar as the soldiers returned at dawn with large burlap sacks. The cloaked man went inside the tent for a while, then came back out and wrote more in his notebook. He did this two more times, then said something to one of the soldiers. The soldier nodded, gave a signal, and the group with sacks filed into the tent. When they came back out, their sacks were filled with writhing bulges that she guessed were the worms. They carried them to the ship while the remaining soldiers struck the tent, exposing the bodies that had been inside.
    The cloaked man watched as the soldiers unfastened the chains from the pile of corpses. As he stood there, the little girl fixed his face in her memory. Brown hair, weak chin, pointed ratlike face marked with a burn scar on his left cheek.
    At last they sailed off in their big boxy ship, leaving a strange sign driven into the dock. When they were no longer in sight, she crept back down into the village. It took her many days. Perhaps weeks. But she buried them all.
    *  *  *
    Captain Sin Toa stared down at the girl. During her tale, her expression had remained fixed in a look of wide-eyed horror. But now it settled back into the cold emptiness he’d seen when he first coaxed her out of the hold.
    “How long ago was that?” he asked.
    “Don’t know,” she said.
    “How did you get aboard?” he asked. “We never docked.”
    “I swam.”
    “Quite a distance.”
    “Yes.”
    “And what should I do with you now?”
    She shrugged.
    “A ship is no place for a little girl.”
    “I have to stay alive,” she said. “So I can find that man.”
    “Do you know who that was? What that sign meant?”
    She shook her head.
    “That was the crest of the emperor’s biomancers. You haven’t got a prayer of ever getting close to that man.”
    “I will,” she said quietly. “Someday. If it takes my whole life. I’ll find him. And kill him.”
    *  *  *
    Captain Sin Toa knew he couldn’t keep her aboard. It was said maidens, even eight-year-old ones, could draw the attention of the sea serpents in these waters as sure as a bucketful of blood. The crew might very well mutiny at the idea of keeping a girl on board. But he wasn’t about to throw her overboard or dump her on some empty piece of rock either. When they landed the next day at Galemoor, he approached the head of the Vinchen order, a wizened old monk named Hurlo.
    “Girl’s seen things nobody should have to see,” he said. The two of them stood in the stone courtyard of the monastery, the tall, black stone temple looming over them. “She’s a broken thing. Could be a monastic life is the only option left to her.”
    Hurlo slipped his hands into the sleeves of his black robe. “I sympathize, Captain. Truly, I do. But the Vinchen order is for men only.”
    “But surely you could use a servant around,” said Toa. “She’s a peasant, accustomed to hard work.”
    Hurlo nodded. “We could. But