Scriber by Ben S. Dobson

stayed and watched. It was sacrilege to burn a woman—the Children taught that women were to be buried, returned to the Mother in the Earth, while men were burned in order to free the spirit to rise to the Father. But I did not protest. Janelyn had died of battle wounds, and the Father was the patron of warriors. The girl had earned a warrior’s rest.
    It was a simple rite. Few words were said. Bryndine commended Janelyn’s soul to the Father and set the pyre aflame, and the gathered women all saluted in unison, then stood a silent vigil as the body burned. Through the flames I could see the girl’s face. She was young, barely twenty years old, and her hair was cut in a short, boyish style clearly modeled after her Captain’s. I wondered why these women were so devoted to Bryndine. This girl, at least, had died because of her.
    It was a long while before the body burned away, but eventually little was left of the pyre or the girl but smoke and ash. As the women began to slowly file back to camp, I pulled Tenille aside.
    “Tenille, did you tell Bryndine about me?” I needed to know before I spoke to Bryndine myself.
    She shook her head. “You know Dennon, not every Scriber hates you for the Old Garden. You couldn’t have known that wall would collapse.”
    “Maybe not every Scriber. But most. They don’t forget—it says so on the pin. Did you tell her?”
    Tenille smiled slightly. “You have a point. No, I didn’t tell her. I didn’t have to. Did you really think the King’s niece wouldn’t have heard of you?”
    “I had hoped.” So Bryndine had known me when we first met. Another thing she’d hidden from me. “How do you work with that woman, Tenille? Do you know she was in Waymark the day before the attack and didn’t say anything? She knew it was coming!” I gestured to the guttering remains of the pyre. “That girl would still be alive if she’d warned us!” I was speaking too loudly, I knew—several nearby women turned towards us curiously.
    Tenille’s smile faded, and her face went cold. Gripping me tightly by the arm, she dragged me away from the others. “You are twice the fool everyone thinks you are, do you know that?” she hissed. “Those women will break your legs if they hear that talk about Bryndine, and I’ll let them! You don’t have the first idea what really happened.”
    “She told me she was scouting—”
    “We were scouting. We are allowed to do little else. Ord told us the plan was to take the Burners by surprise before they attacked at all. We spread out across the area trying to find where they planned to strike. The Captain had to keep quiet because we didn’t want them to catch word of the ambush.
    “But the High Commander lied to us. His plan was always to let the Burners attack once we found their target—to get them all in one place. Then they could be surrounded and captured; they couldn’t disappear again, like they always do. Ord didn’t want us telling the villagers because he needed you there as bait .” She spat the last word through gritted teeth. “When the Captain found out, she tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t listen—he wanted to be the man who caught the uncatchable Burners. So she disobeyed his orders, and brought us to warn you.”
    “She should have warned us to begin with,” I insisted stubbornly. “I don’t care what the plan was; she put us all at risk.” Tenille’s story might have lessened Bryndine’s culpability in the attack on Waymark, but it did not entirely clean her hands.
    “Dennon, Ord was furious. After the battle, while he was still lucid, he blamed her for letting the Burners escape again. He is going to tell the King. Bryndine has fought to be recognized as a soldier her whole life, and they’re going to take it away. From her, from all of us. For saving you and the rest of those… ingrates.” Tenille gestured towards the main camp, where the villagers of Waymark mingled with the First Company. “Think