Solace Arisen by Anna Steffl

slab of granite. Dirt filled the carved lettering. “These are the graves of our ancestors.”
    “The spirits will follow us,” Kieran cried.
    “They are already following you.” The Cumberlandian laughed again.
    Degarius glanced to the thieves. Why hadn’t they killed them? Why in all hell didn’t she use the relic? They weren’t going to chat all day. He looked to her and grimaced at her chest, but she did nothing. Damn it, if there was any time to use the Blue Eye, it was now.
    The Cumberlandian gave an order and two men lowered their bows and went to the horse rigged with the travois. They rummaged through the packs. One found the bag of hant markers and gave it to the headman who spoke Anglish. He then went to untie the travois. They led the horse, with its packs, down the path to the main road.
    Were they really going to leave with just one horse?
    The Cumberlandian headman took one of the hant markers from the bag, knelt beside Kieran, and put the blue glass eye on the brother’s chest. “The spirit money must be paid.”
    The hant marker rose and fell on Kieran’s heaving chest.
    “Lockanlo,” the Cumberlandian said to Miss Nazar, who was on the other side of Kieran. He then drew a knife and plunged it into the soft spot in Kieran’s neck. “May the thirst of the dead be satisfied with this blood.”
    Now, Nazar, now.
    Still, she sat on her heels next to Kieran’s bloody body and across from the Cumberlandian as he pulled out the knife. He could stab her in an instant.
    Now .
    The Cumberlandian leaned forward, but instead of aiming the knife at her, he simply rose. The bloody knife dangling in his hand, he headed down the path with the rest of his party.
    Miss Nazar reached into the apothecary’s box. The thieves had left it behind. She wadded a bandage and pressed it to Kieran’s neck.
    “Don’t bother.”
    “I have to. It’s making a noise. His breath is coming through the wound.”
    “What in all hell is lockanlo ?”
    “The thieves’ code to tell friend from foe. The woman told it to me.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “She made me promise to share it with no one. Anglish aren’t supposed to know it.”
    So that was what the woman had whispered to Miss Nazar after receiving the blue nightgown.
    Miss Nazar took her hand from the bandage. “He’s dead. We should bury him.”
    “We should leave.”
    “There’s no reason to fear the hant. The dead are everywhere.”
    “You should fear the living. And, we don’t a shovel.”
    She looked to her hands, as if considering using them to dig. For all love, why would she contemplate such a folly? As much as he hated leaving behind his dead, sometimes it was necessary. “It won’t work,” he said. “The ground here is too hard, full of stone.”
    “I know.”

TALISMAN
    Field Marshall Fassal’s house, Sarapost-Gheria battlefront
    F assal had dismissed the last of his advisors when Caspar went to the window and began to howl. Then came cheering. It could only be for one thing. His wife had arrived in the border hamlet now serving as the command for the troops. Though her presence must draw him away from duties, he now considered Jesquin, as the cheering suggested, might be a talisman. She’d spark enthusiasm, for who wouldn’t love her?
    He made a last moment’s appraisal of the co-opted house. The parlor was so small the dog could hardly turn about in it without unsetting the small tables. The windows were drafty and the walls shabby despite having been patched and painted. New linens, gold-rimmed plates, and two cartloads of furniture only served as foils to highlight the place’s rusticity. Still, the house was the best the hamlet had to offer Sarapost’s field marshal and his wife. As a consolation, Fassal thought that though the house might be rustic and uncomfortable, the bed upstairs wasn’t. Not that he thought about their sleeping in it.
    He did the obligatory hemming and hawing to his staff about preferring to stay in