Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell
Date: 2013-12-03 01:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Fiction; Short Stories; Novella; High Fantasy; Horror; Epic Fantasy; Adult; Audiobook; Science Fiction Fantasy
Description: Originally appearing in the Dangerous Women anthology and now available as a solo ebook, Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell is a chilling novella of the Cosmere, the universe shared by Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series and the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive. When the familiar and seemingly safe turns lethal, therein danger lies. Amid a forest where the shades of the dead linger all around, every homesteader knows to follow the Simple Rules: "Don't kindle flame, don't shed the blood of another, don't run at night. These things draw shades." Silence Montane has broken
Publisher: Subterranean Press

Originally appearing in the Dangerous Women anthology, Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell is a chilling novella of the Cosmere.

When the familiar and seemingly safe turns lethal, therein danger lies. Amid a forest where the shades of the dead linger all around, every homesteader knows to follow the Simple Rules: “Don’t kindle flame, don’t shed the blood of another, don’t run at night. These things draw shades.”

Silence Montane has broken all three rules on more than one occasion. And to protect her family from a murderous gang with high bounties on their heads, Silence will break every rule again, at the risk of becoming a shade herself.

Brandon Sanderson

Shadows for Silence
in the Forests of Hell

A Cosmere Novella
ePub r1.1

Titivillus 25.07.2022

Brandon Sanderson, 2015

- First appeared in Dangerous Women edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (2013)

Illustrations: Isaac Stewart, Ben McSweeney

Cover art: Miranda Meeks

Digital editor: Titivillus
ePub base r2.1

BRANDON
SANDERSON

a Cosmere Novella

CONTENTS
Preface
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author

PREFACE

WHEN GEORGE R. R. Martin approached me to ask if I’d be willing to contribute a story to Dangerous Women, I was ecstatic. George is known best for his Westeros books, but he is also an excellent editor, having put together many anthologies. His recent themed anthologies with Gardner Dozois have become something of a “Who’s Who” in the fantasy and science fiction world. It was a real honor to be invited.

After he told me the theme was “dangerous women,” I at first thought of Perfect State, another novella of mine. I had a very rough draft of that done, but hadn’t yet submitted it anywhere for publication. I sent that to George and Gardner, and they felt it wasn’t on theme enough, and asked if I had anything else.

I didn’t, not yet, but something had happened recently that had planted a seed in my mind. I had been involved in some genealogy work, and had run across the name of a Puritan woman named Silence.

That intrigued me. Who would name their daughter Silence, and for what reason? Charity I can get. Faith totally makes sense. But Silence? Perhaps she was late in the birth order, and her parents were really hoping to sleep through the nights this time.

In any case, the name stuck with me.

I’d had the idea for Threnody, the Cosmere world where a group of pilgrimesque people fled the Old World because it was overrun by a terrible evil long ago. It was actually a very early Cosmere world, developed somewhere around 1999 or 2000. (Though the name didn’t get assigned to it until Isaac gave a suggestion upon reading this novella.) Having an intriguing Puritan name and a world that took inspiration from early American history seemed a ready-made match, but then I had to ask myself, how was Silence going to be dangerous?

I was worried that the anthology was going to be stuffed full of women either in the “femme fatale” vein or the “I wear black leather and kick demon butt” vein. I’ve often felt that we, in fantasy, sometimes do a poor job of representing people (both male and female) who are powerful and capable in ways other than their ability to stand in a fight. Yes, giving a woman a sword is one way to make her dangerous, but I resist making every powerful woman into one who has become so by forcing her way into a traditionally male-dominated realm of face-to-face combat.

The world was mostly formed in my head, though over the years I’d added the idea of the shades for various reasons. One was to show off a few hints regarding the Cosmere afterlife, and another came during my initial research for the Stormlight Archive, where I read a lot about classical Hebrew life and philosophy. The original idea for Threnody was to make a system of magical rules with their roots in the Law of Moses and Jewish tradition. (Not mixing meat with milk, not kindling flames after nightfall on the Sabbath, etc.) Many of those rules transformed over the years, leaving their roots behind in the same way that the Stormlight magic system left behind its roots in the fundamental forces of physics. But you can see those hints still having an influence on the tone and setting of this story.

The intersection of these ideas developed into this story, one that soon became one of my favorite Cosmere tales. I hope you enjoy it! (And no, for those searching, Hoid does not make an appearance. Unfortunately, he needed to be somewhere else in the timeline at this point.)

BRANDON SANDERSON

PROLOGUE

“THE ONE you have to watch for is the White Fox,” Daggon said, sipping his beer. “They say he shook hands with the Evil itself, that he visited the Fallen World and came back with strange powers. He can kindle fire on even the deepest of nights, and no shade will dare come for his soul. Yes, the White Fox. Meanest bastard in these parts for sure. Pray he doesn’t set his eyes on you, friend. If he does, you’re dead.”

Daggon’s drinking companion had a neck like a slender wine bottle and a head like a potato stuck sideways on the top. He squeaked as he spoke, a Lastport accent, voice echoing in the eaves of the waystop’s common room. “Why… why would he set his eyes on me?”

“That depends, friend,” Daggon said, looking about as a few overdressed merchants sauntered in. They wore black coats, ruffled lace poking out the front, and the tall-topped, wide-brimmed hats of fortfolk. They wouldn’t last two weeks out here in the Forests.

“It depends?” Daggon’s dining companion prompted. “It depends on what?”

“On a lot of things, friend. The White Fox is a bounty hunter, you know. What crimes have you committed? What have you done?”

“Nothing.” That squeak was like a rusty wheel.

“Nothing? Men don’t come out into the Forests to do ‘nothing,’ friend.”

His companion glanced from side to side. He’d given his name as Earnest. But then, Daggon had given his name as Amity. Names didn’t mean a whole lot in the Forests. Or maybe they meant everything. The right ones, that was.

Earnest leaned back, scrunching down that fishing-pole neck of his as if trying to disappear into his beer. He’d bite. People liked hearing about the White Fox, and Daggon considered himself an expert. At least, he was an expert at telling stories to get ratty men like Earnest to pay for his drinks.

I’ll give him some time to stew, Daggon thought, smiling to himself. Let him worry. Earnest would ply him for more information in a bit.

While he waited, Daggon leaned back, surveying the room. The merchants were making a nuisance of themselves, calling for food, saying they meant to be on their way in an hour. That proved them to be fools. Traveling at night in the Forests? Good homesteader stock would do it. Men like these, though… they’d probably take less than an hour to violate one of the Simple Rules and bring the shades upon them. Daggon put the idiots out of his mind.

That fellow in the corner, though… dressed all in brown, still wearing his hat despite being indoors. That fellow looked truly dangerous. I wonder if it’s him, Daggon thought. So far as he knew, nobody had ever seen the White Fox and lived. Ten years, over a hundred bounties turned in. Surely someone knew his name. The authorities in the forts paid him the bounties, after all.

The waystop’s owner, Madam Silence, passed by the table and deposited Daggon’s meal with an unceremonious thump. Scowling, she topped off his beer, spilling a sudsy dribble onto his hand, before limping off. She was a stout woman. Tough. Everyone in the Forests was tough. The ones that survived, at least.

He’d learned that a scowl from Silence was just her way of saying hello. She’d given him an extra helping of venison; she often did that. He liked to think that she had a fondness for him. Maybe someday…

Don’t be a fool, he thought to himself as he dug into the heavily gravied food and took a few gulps of his beer. Better to marry a stone than Silence Montane. A stone showed more affection. Likely she gave him the extra slice because she recognized the value of a repeat customer. Fewer and fewer people came this way lately. Too many shades. And then there was Chesterton. Nasty business, that.

“So… he’s a bounty hunter, this Fox?” The man who called himself Earnest seemed to be sweating.

Daggon smiled. Hooked right good, this one was. “He’s not just a bounty hunter. He’s the bounty hunter. Though the White Fox doesn’t go for the small-timers—and no offense, friend, but you seem pretty small-time.”

His friend grew more nervous. What had he done? “But,” the man stammered, “he wouldn’t come for me—er, pretending I’d done something, of course—anyway, he wouldn’t come in here, would he? I mean, Madam Silence’s waystop, it’s protected. Everyone knows that. Shade of her dead husband lurks here. I had a cousin who saw it, I did.”

“The White Fox doesn’t fear shades,” Daggon said, leaning in. “Now, mind you, I don’t think he’d risk coming in here—but not because of some shade. Everyone knows this is neutral ground. You’ve got to have some safe places, even in the Forests. But…”

Daggon smiled at Silence as she passed him by, on the way to the kitchens again. This time she didn’t scowl at him. He was getting through to her for certain.

“But?” Earnest squeaked.

“Well…” Daggon said. “I could tell you a few things about how the White Fox takes men, but you see, my beer is nearly empty. A shame. I think you’d be very interested in how the White Fox caught Makepeace Hapshire. Great story, that.”

Earnest squeaked for Silence to bring another beer, though she bustled into the kitchen and didn’t hear. Daggon frowned, but Earnest put a coin on the side of the table, indicating he’d like a refill when Silence or her daughter returned. That would do. Daggon smiled to himself and launched into the story.

1

SILENCE MONTANE closed the door to the common room, then turned and pressed her back against it. She tried to still her racing heart by breathing in and out. Had she made any obvious signs? Did they know she’d recognized them?

William Ann passed by, wiping her hands on a cloth. “Mother?” the young woman asked, pausing. “Mother, are you—”

“Fetch the book. Quickly, child!”

William Ann’s face went pale, then she hurried into the back pantry. Silence clutched her apron to still her nerves, then joined William Ann as the girl came out of the pantry with a thick, leather satchel. White flour dusted its cover and spine from the hiding place.

Silence took the satchel and opened it on the high kitchen counter, revealing a collection of loose-leaf papers. Most had faces drawn on them. As Silence rifled through the pages, William Ann moved to the peephole for spying into the common room.

For a few moments, the only sound to accompany Silence’s thumping heart was that of hastily turned pages.

“It’s the man with the long neck, isn’t it?” William Ann asked. “I remember his face from one of the bounties.”

“That’s just Lamentation Winebare, a petty horse thief. He’s barely worth two measures of silver.”

“Who, then? The man in the back, with the hat?”

Silence shook her head, finding a sequence of pages at the bottom of her pile. She inspected the drawings. God Beyond, she thought. I can’t decide if I want it to be them or not. At least her hands had stopped shaking.

William Ann scurried back and craned her neck over Silence’s shoulder. At fourteen, the girl was already taller than her mother. A fine thing to suffer, a child taller than you. Though William Ann grumbled about being awkward and lanky, her slender build foreshadowed a beauty to come. She took after her father.

“Oh, God Beyond,” William Ann said, raising a hand to her mouth. “You mean—”

“Chesterton Divide,” Silence said. The shape of the chin, the look in the eyes… they were the same. “He walked right into our hands, with four of his men.” The bounty on those five would be enough to pay her supply needs for a year. Maybe two.

Her eyes flickered to the words below the pictures, printed in harsh, bold letters. Extremely dangerous. Wanted for murder, rape, extortion. And, of course, there was the big one at the end: And assassination.

Silence had always wondered if Chesterton and his men had intended to kill the governor of the most powerful fort city on this continent, or if it had been an accident. A simple robbery gone wrong. Either way, Chesterton understood what he’d done. Before the incident, he had been a common—if accomplished—highway bandit.

Now he was something greater, something far more dangerous. Chesterton knew that if he were captured, there would be no mercy, no quarter. Lastport had painted Chesterton as an anarchist, a menace, and a psychopath.

Chesterton had no reason to hold back. So he didn’t.

Oh, God Beyond, Silence thought, looking at the continuing list of his crimes on the next page.

Beside her, William Ann whispered the words to herself. “He’s out there?” she asked. “But where?”

“The merchants,” Silence said.

“What?” William Ann rushed back to the peephole. The wood there—indeed, all around the kitchen—had been scrubbed so hard that it had been bleached white. Sebruki had been cleaning again.

“I can’t see it,” William Ann said.

“Look closer.” Silence hadn’t seen it at first either, even though she spent each night with the book, memorizing its faces.

A few moments later William Ann gasped, raising her hand to her mouth. “That seems so foolish of him. Why is he going about perfectly visible like this? Even in disguise.”

“Everyone will remember just another band of fool merchants from the fort who thought they could brave the Forests. It’s a clever ruse. When they vanish from the paths in a few days, it will be assumed—if anyone cares to wonder—that the shades got them. Besides, this way Chesterton can travel quickly and in the open, visiting waystops and listening for information.”

Was this how Chesterton discovered good targets to hit? Had they come through her waystop before? The thought made her stomach turn. She had fed criminals many times; some were regulars. Every man was probably a criminal out in the Forests, if only for ignoring taxes imposed by the fortfolk.

Chesterton and his men were different. She didn’t need the list of crimes to know what they were capable of doing.

“Where’s Sebruki?” Silence said.

William Ann shook herself, as if coming out of a stupor. “She’s feeding the pigs. Shadows! You don’t think they’d recognize her, do you?”

“No,” Silence said. “I’m worried she’ll recognize them.” Sebruki might only be eight, but she could be shockingly—disturbingly—observant.

Silence closed the book of bounties. She rested her fingers on the satchel’s leather.

“We’re going to kill them, aren’t we?” William Ann asked.

“Yes.”

“How much are they worth?”

“Sometimes, child, it’s not about what a man is worth.” Silence heard the faint lie in her voice. Times were increasingly tight, with the price of silver from both Bastion Hill and Lastport on the rise.

Sometimes it wasn’t about what a man was worth. But this wasn’t one of those times.

“I’ll get the poison.” William Ann left the peephole and crossed the room.

“Something light, child,” Silence cautioned. “These are dangerous men. They’ll notice if things are out of the ordinary.”

“I’m not a fool, Mother,” William Ann said dryly. “I’ll use fenweed. They won’t taste it in the beer.”

“Half dose. I don’t want them collapsing at the table.”

William Ann nodded, entering the old storage room, where she closed the door and began prying up floorboards to get to the poisons. Fenweed would leave the men cloudy-headed and dizzy, but wouldn’t kill them.

Silence didn’t dare risk something more deadly. If suspicion ever came back to her waystop, her career—and likely her life—would end. She needed to remain, in the minds of travelers, the crotchety but fair innkeeper who didn’t ask too many questions. Her waystop was a place of perceived safety, even for the roughest of criminals. She bedded down each night with a heart full of fear that someone would realize a suspicious number of the White Fox’s bounties stayed at Silence’s waystop in the days preceding their demise.

She went into the pantry to put away the bounty book. Here, too, the walls had been scrubbed clean, the shelves freshly sanded and dusted. That child. Who had heard of a child who would rather clean than play? Of course, given what Sebruki had been through…

Silence could not help reaching onto the top shelf and feeling the crossbow she kept there. Silver boltheads. She kept it for shades, and hadn’t yet turned it against a man. Drawing blood was too dangerous in the Forests. It still comforted her to know that in case of a true emergency, she had the weapon at hand.

Bounty book stowed, she went to check on Sebruki. The child was indeed caring for the pigs. Silence liked to keep a healthy stock, though of course not for eating. Pigs were said to ward away shades. She used any tool she could to make the waystop seem more safe.

Sebruki knelt inside the pig shack. The short girl had dark skin and long, black hair. Nobody would have taken her for Silence’s daughter, even if they hadn’t heard of Sebruki’s unfortunate history. The child hummed to herself, scrubbing at the wall of the enclosure.

“Child?” Silence asked.

Sebruki turned to her and smiled. What a difference one year could make. Once, Silence would have sworn that this child would never smile again. Sebruki had spent her first three months at the waystop staring at walls. No matter where Silence had put her, the child had moved to the nearest wall, sat down, and stared at it all day. Never speaking a word. Eyes dead as those of a shade…

“Aunt Silence?” Sebruki asked. “Are you well?”

“I’m fine, child. Just plagued by memories. You’re… cleaning the pig shack now?”

“The walls need a good scrubbing,” Sebruki said. “The pigs do so like it to be clean. Well, Jarom and Ezekiel prefer it that way. The others don’t seem to care.”

“You don’t need to clean so hard, child.”

“I like doing it,” Sebruki said. “It feels good. It’s something I can do. To help.”

Well, it was better to clean the walls than stare blankly at them all day. Today, Silence was happy for anything that kept the child busy. Anything, so long as she didn’t enter the common room.

“I think the pigs will like it,” Silence said. “Why don’t you keep at it in here for a while?”

Sebruki eyed her. “What’s wrong?”

Shadows. She was so observant. “There are some men with rough tongues in the common room,” Silence said. “I won’t have you picking up their cussing.”

“I’m not a child, Aunt Silence.”

“Yes you are,” Silence said firmly. “And you’ll obey. Don’t think I won’t take a switch to your backside.”

Sebruki rolled her eyes, but went back to work and began humming to herself. Silence let a little of her grandmother’s ways out when she spoke with Sebruki. The child responded well to sternness. She seemed to crave it, perhaps as a symbol that someone was in control.

Silence wished she actually were in control. But she was a Forescout—the surname taken by her grandparents and the others who had left Homeland first and explored this continent. Yes, she was a Forescout, and she’d be damned before she’d let anyone know how absolutely powerless she felt much of the time.

Silence crossed the backyard of the large inn, noting William Ann inside the kitchen mixing a paste to dissolve in the beer. Silence passed her by and looked in on the stable. Unsurprisingly, Chesterton had said they’d be leaving after their meal. While a lot of folk sought the relative safety of a waystop at night, Chesterton and his men would be accustomed to sleeping in the Forests. Even with the shades about, they would feel more comfortable in a camp of their own devising than they would in a waystop bed.

Inside the stable, Dob—the old stable hand—had just finished brushing down the horses. He wouldn’t have watered them. Silence had a standing order to not do that until last.

“This is well done, Dob,” Silence said. “Why don’t you take your break now?”

He nodded to her with a mumbled, “Thank’ya, mam.” He’d find the front porch and his pipe, as always. Dob hadn’t two wits to rub together, and he hadn’t a clue about what she really did at the waystop, but he’d been with her since before William’s death. He was as loyal a man as she’d ever found.

Silence shut the door after him, then fetched some pouches from the locked cabinet at the rear of the stable. She checked each one in the dim light, then set them on the grooming table and heaved the first saddle onto its owner’s back.

She was near finished with the saddling when the door eased open. She froze, immediately thinking of the pouches on the table. Why hadn’t she stuffed them in her apron? Sloppy!

“Silence Forescout,” a smooth voice said from the doorway.

Silence stifled a groan and turned to confront her visitor. “Theopolis,” she said. “It’s not polite to sneak about on a woman’s property. I should have you thrown out for trespassing.”

“Now, now. That would be rather like… the horse kicking at the man who feeds him, hmmm?” Theopolis leaned his gangly frame against the doorway, folding his arms. He wore simple clothing, no markings of his station. A fort tax collector often didn’t want random passers to know of his profession. Clean-shaven, his face always had that same patronizing smile on it. His clothing was too clean, too new to be that of one who lived out in the Forests. Not that he was a dandy, nor was he a fool. Theopolis was dangerous, just a different kind of dangerous from most.

“Why are you here, Theopolis?” she said, hefting the last saddle onto the back of a snorting roan gelding.

“Why do I always come to you, Silence? It’s not because of your cheerful countenance, hmmm?”

“I’m paid up on taxes.”

“That’s because you’re mostly exempt from taxes,” Theopolis said. “But you haven’t paid me for last month’s shipment of silver.”

“Things have been a little dry lately. It’s coming.”

“And the bolts for your crossbow?” Theopolis asked. “One wonders if you’re trying to forget about the price of those silver boltheads, hmmm? And the shipment of replacement sections for your protection rings?”

His whining accent made her wince as she buckled the saddle on. Theopolis. Shadows, what a day!

“Oh my,” Theopolis said, walking over to the grooming table. He picked up one of the pouches. “What are these, now? That looks like wetleek sap. I’ve heard that it glows at night if you shine the right kind of light upon it. Is this one of the White Fox’s mysterious secrets?”

She snatched the pouch away. “Don’t say that name,” she hissed.

He grinned. “You have a bounty! Delightful. I have always wondered how you tracked them. Poke a pinhole in that, attach it to the underside of the saddle, then follow the dripping trail it leaves? Hmmm? You could probably track them a long way, kill them far from here. Keep suspicion off the little waystop?”

Yes, Theopolis was dangerous, but she needed someone to turn in her bounties for her. Theopolis was a rat, and like all rats he knew the best holes, troughs, and crannies. He had connections in Lastport, and had managed to get her the money in the name of the White Fox without revealing her.

“I’ve been tempted to turn you in lately, you know,” Theopolis said. “Many a group keeps a betting pool on the identity of the infamous Fox. I could be a rich man with this knowledge, hmmm?”

“You’re already a rich man,” she snapped. “And though you’re many things, you are not an idiot. This has worked just fine for a decade. Don’t tell me you’d trade wealth for a little notoriety?”

He smiled, but did not contradict her. He kept half of what she earned from each bounty. It was a fine arrangement for Theopolis. No danger to him, which was how she knew he liked it. He was a civil servant, not a bounty hunter. The only time she’d seen him kill, the man he’d murdered couldn’t fight back.

“You know me too well, Silence,” Theopolis said with a laugh. “Too well indeed. My, my. A bounty! I wonder who it is. I’ll have to go look in the common room.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. Shadows! You think the face of a tax collector won’t spook them? Don’t you go walking in and spoiling things.”

“Peace, Silence,” he said, still grinning. “I obey your rules. I am careful not to show myself around here often, and I don’t bring suspicion to you. I couldn’t stay today anyway; I merely came to give you an offer. Only now you probably won’t need it! Ah, such a pity. After all the trouble I went to in your name, hmmm?”

She felt cold. “What help could you possibly give me?”

He took a sheet of paper from his satchel, then carefully unfolded it with too-long fingers. He moved to hold it up, but she snatched it from him.

“What is this?”

“A way to relieve you of your debt, Silence! A way to prevent you from ever having to worry again.”

The paper was a writ of seizure, an authorization for Silence’s creditors—Theopolis—to claim her property as payment. The forts claimed jurisdiction over the roadways and the land to either side of them. They did send soldiers out to patrol them. Occasionally.

“I take it back, Theopolis,” she spat. “You most certainly are a fool. You’d give up everything we have for a greedy land snatch?”

“Of course not, Silence. This wouldn’t be giving up anything at all! Why, I do so feel bad seeing you constantly in my debt. Wouldn’t it be more efficient if I took over the finances of the waystop? You would remain working here, and hunting bounties, as you always have. Only, you would no longer have to worry about your debts, hmmm?”

She crumpled the paper in her hand. “You’d turn me and mine into slaves, Theopolis.”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. Those in Lastport have begun to worry that such an important waypoint as this is owned by an unknown element. You are drawing attention, Silence. I should think that is the last thing you want.”

Silence crumpled the paper further in her hand, fist tight. Horses shuffled in their stalls. Theopolis grinned.

“Well,” he said. “Perhaps it won’t be needed. Perhaps this bounty of yours is a big one, hmmm? Any clues to give me, so I don’t sit wondering all day?”

“Get out,” she whispered.

“Dear Silence,” he said. “Forescout blood, stubborn to the last breath. They say your grandparents were the first of the first. The first people to come scout this continent, the first to homestead the Forests… the first to stake a claim on hell itself.”

“Don’t call the Forests that. This is my home.”

“But it is how men saw this land, before the Evil. Doesn’t that make you curious? Hell, land of the damned, where the shadows of the dead made their home. I keep wondering: Is there really a shade of your departed husband guarding this place, or is it just another story you tell people? To make them feel safe, hmmm? You spend a fortune in silver. That offers the real protection, and I never have been able to find a record of your marriage. Of course, if there wasn’t one, that would make dear William Ann a—”

“Go.”

He grinned, but tipped his hat to her and stepped out. She heard him climb into the saddle, then ride off. Night would soon fall; it was probably too much to hope that the shades would take Theopolis. She’d long suspected that he had a hiding hole somewhere near, probably a cavern he kept lined with silver.

She breathed in and out, trying to calm herself. Theopolis was frustrating, but he didn’t know everything. She forced her attention back to the horses and got out a bucket of water. She dumped the contents of the pouches into it, then gave a hearty dose to the horses, who each drank thirstily.

Pouches that dripped sap in the way Theopolis indicated would be too easy to spot. What would happen when her bounties removed their saddles at night and found the pouches? They’d know someone was coming for them. No, she needed something less obvious.

“How am I going to manage this?” she whispered as a horse drank from her bucket. “Shadows. They’re reaching for me on all sides.”

Kill Theopolis. That was probably what Grandmother would have done. She considered it.

No, she thought. I won’t become that. I won’t become her. Theopolis was a thug and a scoundrel, but he had not broken any laws, nor had he done anyone direct harm that she knew. There had to be rules, even out here. There had to be lines. Perhaps in that respect, she wasn’t so different from the fortfolk.

She’d find another way. Theopolis only had a writ of debt; he had been required to show it to her. That meant she had a day or two to come up with his money. All neat and orderly. In the fort cities, they claimed to have civilization. Those rules gave her a chance.

She left the stable. A glance through the window into the common room showed her William Ann delivering drinks to the “merchants” of Chesterton’s gang. Silence stopped to watch.

Behind her, the Forests shivered in the wind.

Silence listened, then turned to face them. You could tell fortfolk by the way they refused to face the Forests. They averted their eyes, never looking into the depths. Those solemn trees covered almost every inch of this continent, those leaves shading the ground. Still. Silent. Animals lived out there, but fort surveyors declared that there were no predators. The shades had gotten those long ago, drawn by the shedding of blood.

Staring into the Forests seemed to make them… retreat. The darkness of their depths withdrew, the stillness gave way to the sound of rodents picking through fallen leaves. A Forescout knew to look the Forests straight on. A Forescout knew that the surveyors were wrong. There was a predator out there. The Forest itself was one.

Silence turned and walked to the door into the kitchen. Keeping the waystop had to be her first goal, so she was committed to collecting Chesterton’s bounty now. If she couldn’t pay Theopolis, she had little faith that everything would stay the same. He’d have a hand around her throat, as she couldn’t leave the waystop. She had no fort citizenship, and times were too tight for the local homesteaders to take her in. No, she’d have to stay and work the waystop for Theopolis, and he would squeeze her dry, taking larger and larger percentages of the bounties.

She pushed open the door to the kitchen. It—

Sebruki sat at the kitchen table holding the crossbow in her lap.

“God Beyond!” Silence gasped, pulling the door closed as she stepped inside. “Child, what are you—”

Sebruki looked up at her. Those haunted eyes were back, eyes void of life and emotion. Eyes like a shade’s.

“We have visitors, Aunt Silence,” Sebruki said in a cold, monotone voice. The crossbow’s winding crank sat next to her. She had managed to load the thing and cock it, all on her own. “I coated the bolt’s tip with blackblood. I did that right, didn’t I? That way, the poison will kill him for sure.”

“Child…” Silence stepped forward.

Sebruki turned the crossbow in her lap, holding it at an angle to support it, one small hand on the trigger. The point turned toward Silence.

Sebruki stared ahead, eyes blank.

“This won’t work, Sebruki,” Silence said, stern. “Even if you were able to lift that thing into the common room, you wouldn’t hit him—and even if you did, his men would kill us all in retribution!”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Sebruki said softly. “So long as I got to kill him. So long as I pulled the trigger.”

“You care nothing for us?” Silence snapped. “I take you in, give you a home, and this is your payment? You steal a weapon? You threaten me?”

Sebruki blinked.

“What is wrong with you?” Silence said. “You’d shed blood in this place of sanctuary? Bring the shades down upon us, beating at our protections? If they got through, they’d kill everyone under my roof! People I’ve promised safety. How dare you!”

Sebruki shook, as if coming awake. Her mask broke and she dropped the crossbow. Silence heard a snap, and the catch released. She felt the bolt pass within an inch of her cheek, then break the window behind.

Shadows! Had the bolt grazed Silence? Had Sebruki drawn blood? Silence reached up with a shaking hand, but blessedly felt no blood. The bolt hadn’t hit her.

A moment later Sebruki was in her arms, sobbing. Silence knelt down, holding the child close. “Hush, dear one. It’s all right. It’s all right.”

“I heard it all,” Sebruki whispered. “Mother never cried out. She knew I was there. She was strong, Aunt Silence. That was why I could be strong, even when the blood came down. Soaking my hair. I heard it. I heard it all.”

Silence closed her eyes, holding Sebruki tight. She herself had been the only one willing to investigate the smoking homestead. Sebruki’s father had stayed at the waystop on occasion. A good man. As good a man as was left after the Evil took Homeland, that was.

In the smoldering remains of the homestead, Silence had found the corpses of a dozen people. Each family member had been slaughtered by Chesterton and his men, right down to the children. The only one left had been Sebruki, the youngest, who had been shoved into the crawl space under the floorboards in the bedroom.

She’d lain there, soaked in her mother’s blood, soundless even as Silence found her. She’d only discovered the girl because Chesterton had been careful, lining the room with silver dust to protect against shades as he prepared to kill. Silence had tried to recover some of the dust that had trickled between the floorboards, and had run across eyes staring up at her through the slits.

Chesterton had burned thirteen different homesteads over the last year. Over fifty people murdered. Sebruki was the only one who had escaped him.

The girl trembled as she heaved with sobs. “Why… Why?”

“There is no reason. I’m sorry.” What else could she do? Offer some foolish platitude or comfort about the God Beyond? These were the Forests. You didn’t survive on platitudes.

Silence did hold the girl until her crying began to subside. William Ann entered, then stilled beside the kitchen table, holding a tray of empty mugs. Her eyes flickered toward the fallen crossbow, then at the broken window.

“You’ll kill him?” Sebruki whispered. “You’ll bring him to justice?”

“Justice died in Homeland,” Silence said. “But yes, I’ll kill him. I promise it to you, child.”

Stepping timidly, William Ann picked up the crossbow, then turned it, displaying its now broken bow. Silence breathed out. She should never have left the thing where Sebruki could get to it.

“Care for the patrons, William Ann,” Silence said. “I’ll take Sebruki upstairs.”

William Ann nodded, glancing at the broken window.

“No blood was shed,” Silence said. “We will be fine. Though if you get a moment, see if you can find the bolt. The head is silver.” This was hardly a time when they could afford to waste money.

William Ann stowed the crossbow in the pantry as Silence carefully set Sebruki on a kitchen stool. The girl clung to her, refusing to let go, so Silence relented and held her for a time longer.

William Ann took a few deep breaths, as if to calm herself, then pushed back out into the common room to distribute drinks.

Eventually, Sebruki let go long enough for Silence to mix a draught. She carried the girl up the stairs to the loft above the common room, where the three of them made their beds. Dob slept in the stable and the guests in the nicer rooms on the second floor.

“You’re going to make me sleep,” Sebruki said, regarding the cup with reddened eyes.

“The world will seem a brighter place in the morning,” Silence said. And I can’t risk you sneaking out after me tonight.

The girl reluctantly took the draught, then drank it down. “I’m sorry. About the crossbow.”

“We will find a way for you to work off the cost of fixing it.”

That seemed to comfort Sebruki. She was a homesteader, Forests born. “You used to sing to me at night,” Sebruki said softly, closing her eyes, lying back. “When you first brought me here. After… After…” She swallowed.

“I wasn’t certain you noticed.” Silence hadn’t been certain Sebruki noticed anything, during those times.

“I did.”

Silence sat down on the stool beside Sebruki’s cot. She didn’t feel like singing, so she began humming. It was the lullaby she’d sung to William Ann during the hard times right after her birth.

Before long, the words came out, unbidden:

“Hush now, my dear one… be not afraid. Night comes upon us, but sunlight will break. Sleep now, my dear one… let your tears fade. Darkness surrounds us, but someday we’ll wake…”

She held Sebruki’s hand until the child fell asleep. The window by the bed overlooked the courtyard, so Silence could see as Dob brought out Chesterton’s horses. The five men in their fancy merchant clothing stomped down off the porch and climbed into their saddles.

They rode in a file out onto the roadway; then the Forests enveloped them.

2

ONE HOUR after nightfall, Silence packed her rucksack by the light of the hearth.

Her grandmother had kindled that hearth’s flame, and it had been burning ever since. She’d nearly lost her life lighting the fire, but she hadn’t been willing to pay any of the fire merchants for a start. Silence shook her head. Grandmother always had bucked convention. But then, was Silence any better?

Don’t kindle flame, don’t shed the blood of another, don’t run at night. These things draw shades. The Simple Rules, by which every homesteader lived. She’d broken all three on more than one occasion. It was a wonder she hadn’t been withered away into a shade by now.

The fire’s warmth seemed a distant thing as she prepared to kill. Silence glanced at the old shrine, really just a closet, that she kept locked. The flames reminded her of her grandmother. At times, she thought of the fire as her grandmother. Defiant of both the shades and the forts, right until the end. She’d purged the waystop of other reminders of Grandmother, all save the shrine to the God Beyond. That was set behind a locked door beside the pantry, and next to the door had once hung her grandmother’s silver dagger, symbol of the old religion.

That dagger was etched with the symbols of divinity as a warding. Silence now carried it in a sheath at her side, not for its wardings, but because it was silver. One could never have too much silver in the Forests.

She packed the sack carefully, first putting in her medicine kit and then a good-sized pouch of silver dust to heal withering. She followed that with ten empty sacks of thick burlap, tarred on the inside to prevent their contents from leaking. Finally, she added an oil lamp. She wouldn’t want to use it, as she didn’t trust fire. Fire could draw shades. However, she’d found it useful to have on prior outings, so she brought it. She’d only light it if she ran across someone who already had a fire started.

Once done, she hesitated, then went to the old storage room. She removed the floorboards and took out the small, dry-packed keg that lay beside the poisons.

Gunpowder.

“Mother?” William Ann asked, causing her to jump. She hadn’t heard the girl enter the kitchen.

Silence nearly dropped the keg in her startlement, and that nearly stopped her heart. She cursed herself for a fool, tucking the keg under her arm. It couldn’t explode without fire. She knew that much.

“Mother!” William Ann said, looking at the keg.

“I probably won’t need it.”

“But—”

“I know. Hush.” She walked over and placed the keg into her sack. Attached to the side of the keg, with cloth stuffed between the metal arms, was her grandmother’s firestarter. Igniting gunpowder counted as kindling flames, at least in the eyes of the shades. It drew them almost as quickly as blood did, day or night. The early refugees from Homeland had discovered that in short order.

In some ways, blood was easier to avoid. A simple nosebleed or issue of blood wouldn’t draw the shades; they wouldn’t even notice. It had to be the blood of another, shed by your hands—and they would go for the one who shed the blood first. Of course, after that person was dead, they often didn’t care who they killed next. Once enraged, shades were dangerous to all nearby.

Only after Silence had the gunpowder packed did she notice that William Ann was dressed for traveling in trousers and boots. She carried a sack like Silence’s.

“What do you think you’re about, William Ann?” Silence asked.

“You intend to kill five men who had only half a dose of fenweed by yourself, Mother?”

“I’ve done similar before. I’ve learned to work on my own.”

“Only because you didn’t have anyone else to help.” William Ann slung her sack onto her shoulder. “That’s no longer the case.”

“You’re too young. Go back to bed; watch the waystop until I return.”

William Ann showed no signs of budging.

“Child, I told you—”

“Mother,” William Ann said, taking her arm firmly, “you aren’t a youth anymore! You think I don’t see your limp getting worse? You can’t do everything by yourself! You’re going to have to start letting me help you sometime, dammit!”

Silence regarded her daughter. Where had that fierceness come from? It was hard to remember that William Ann, too, was Forescout stock. Grandmother would have been disgusted by her, and that made Silence proud. William Ann had actually had a childhood. She wasn’t weak, she was just… normal. A woman could be strong without having the emotions of a brick.

“Don’t you cuss at your mother,” Silence finally told the girl.

William Ann raised an eyebrow.

“You may come,” Silence said, prying her arm out of her daughter’s grip. “But you will do as you are told.”

William Ann let out a deep breath, then nodded eagerly. “I’ll warn Dob we’re going.” She walked out, adopting the natural slow step of a homesteader as she entered the darkness. Even though she was within the protection of the waystop’s silver rings, she knew to follow the Simple Rules. Ignoring them when you were safe led to lapses when you weren’t.

Silence got out two bowls, then mixed two different types of glowpaste. When finished, she poured them into separate jars, which she packed into her sack.

She stepped outside into the night. The air was crisp, chill. The Forests had gone silent.

The shades were out, of course.

A few of them moved across the grassy ground, visible by their own soft glow. Ethereal, translucent, the ones nearby right now were old shades; they barely had human forms any longer. The heads rippled, faces shifting like smoke rings. They trailed waves of whiteness about an arm’s length behind them. Silence had always imagined that as the tattered remains of their clothing.

No woman, not even a Forescout, looked upon shades without feeling a coldness inside of her. The shades were about during the day, of course; you just couldn’t see them. Kindle fire, draw blood, and they’d come for you even then. At night, though, they were different. Quicker to respond to infractions. At night they also responded to rapid motions, which they never did during the day.

Silence took out one of the glowpaste jars, bathing the area around her in a pale green light. The light was dim, but was even and steady, unlike torchlight. Torches were unreliable, since you couldn’t relight them if they went out.

William Ann waited at the front with the lantern poles. “We will need to move quietly,” Silence told her while affixing the jars to the poles. “You may speak, but do so in a whisper. I said you will obey me. You will, in all things, immediately. These men we’re after… they will kill you, or worse, without giving the deed a passing thought.”

William Ann nodded.

“You’re not scared enough,” Silence said, slipping a black covering around the jar with the brighter glowpaste. That plunged them into darkness, but the Starbelt was high in the sky today. Some of that light would filter down through the leaves, particularly if they stayed near the road.

“I—” William Ann began.

“You remember when Harold’s hound went mad last spring?” Silence asked. “Do you remember that look in the hound’s eyes? No recognition? Eyes that lusted for the kill? Well, that’s what these men are, William Ann. Rabid. They need to be put down, same as that hound. They won’t see you as a person. They’ll see you as meat. Do you understand?”

William Ann nodded. Silence could see that she was still more excited than afraid, but there was no helping that. Silence handed William Ann the pole with the darker glowpaste. It had a faint blue light to it but didn’t illuminate much. Silence put the other pole to her right shoulder, sack over her left, then nodded toward the roadway.

Nearby, a shade drifted toward the boundary of the waystop. When it touched the thin barrier of silver on the ground, the silver crackled like sparks and drove the thing backward with a sudden jerk. The shade floated the other way.

Each touch like that cost Silence money. The touch of a shade ruined silver. That was what her patrons paid for: a waystop whose boundary had not been broken in over a hundred years, with a long-standing tradition that no unwanted shades were trapped within. Peace, of a sort. The best the Forests offered.

William Ann stepped across the boundary, which was marked by the curve of the large silver hoops jutting from the ground. They were anchored below by concrete so you couldn’t just pull one up. Replacing an overlapping section from one of the rings—she had three concentric ones surrounding her waystop—required digging down and unchaining the section. It was a lot of work, which Silence knew intimately. A week didn’t pass that they didn’t rotate or replace one section or another.

The shade nearby drifted away. It didn’t acknowledge them. Silence didn’t know if regular people were invisible to them unless the rules were broken, or if the people just weren’t worthy of attention until then.

She and William Ann moved out onto the dark roadway, which was somewhat overgrown. No road in the Forests was well maintained. Perhaps if the forts ever made good on their promises, that would change. Still, there was travel. Homesteaders traveling to one fort or another to trade food. The grains grown out in Forest clearings were richer, tastier than what could be produced up in the mountains. Rabbits and turkeys caught in snares or raised in hutches could be sold for good silver.

Not hogs. Only someone in one of the forts would be so crass as to eat a pig.

Anyway, there was trade, and that kept the roadway worn, even if the trees around did have a tendency to reach down their boughs—like grasping arms—to try to cover up the pathway. Reclaim it. The Forests did not like that people had infested them.

The two women walked carefully and deliberately. No quick motions. Walking so, it seemed an eternity before something appeared on the road in front of them.

“There!” William Ann whispered.

Silence released her tension in a breath. Something glowing blue marked the roadway in the light of the glowpaste. Theopolis’s guess at how she tracked her quarries had been a good one, but incomplete. Yes, the light of the paste also known as Abraham’s Fire did make drops of wetleek sap glow. By coincidence, wetleek sap also caused a horse’s bladder to loosen.

Silence inspected the line of glowing sap and urine on the ground. She’d been worried that Chesterton and his men would set off into the Forests soon after leaving the waystop. That hadn’t been likely, but still she’d worried.

Now she was sure she had the trail. If Chesterton cut into the Forests, he’d do it a few hours after leaving the waystop, to be more certain their cover was safe. She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief, then found herself offering a prayer of thanks by rote. She hesitated. Where had that come from? It had been a long time.

She shook her head, rising and continuing down the road. By drugging all five horses, she got a steady sequence of markings to follow.

The Forests felt… dark this night. The light of the Starbelt above didn’t seem to filter through the branches as well as it should. And there seemed to be more shades than normal, prowling between the trunks of trees, glowing just faintly.

William Ann clung to her lantern pole. The child had been out in the night before, of course. No homesteader looked forward to doing so, but none shied away from it either. You couldn’t spend your life trapped inside, frozen by fear of the darkness. Live like that, and… well, you were no better off than the people in the forts. Life in the Forests was hard, often deadly. But it was also free.

“Mother,” William Ann whispered as they walked. “Why don’t you believe in God anymore?”

“Is this really the time, girl?”

William Ann looked down as they passed another line of urine, glowing blue on the roadway. “You always say something like that.”

“And I’m usually trying to avoid the question when you ask it,” Silence said. “But I’m also not usually walking the Forests at night.”

“It just seems important to me now. You’re wrong about me not being afraid enough. I can hardly breathe, but I do know how much trouble the waystop is in. You’re always so angry after Master Theopolis visits. You don’t change our border silver as often as you used to. One out of two days, you don’t eat anything but bread.”

“And you think this has to do with God… why?”

William Ann kept looking down.

Oh, shadows, Silence thought. She thinks we’re being punished. Fool girl. Foolish as her father.

They passed the Old Bridge, walking its rickety wooden planks. When the light was better, you could still pick out timbers from the New Bridge down in the chasm below, representing the promises of the forts and their gifts, which always looked pretty but frayed before long. Sebruki’s father had been one of those who had come put the Old Bridge back up.

“I believe in the God Beyond,” Silence said, after they reached the other side.

“But—”

“I don’t worship,” Silence said, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe. The old books, they called this land the home of the damned. I doubt that worshiping does any good if you’re already damned. That’s all.”

William Ann didn’t reply.

They walked another good two hours. Silence considered taking a shortcut through the woods, but the risk of losing the trail and having to double back felt too dangerous. Besides. Those markings, glowing a soft blue-white in the unseen light of the glowpaste… those were something real. A lifeline of light in the shadows all around. Those lines represented safety for her and her children.

With both of them counting the moments between urine markings, they didn’t miss the turnoff by much. A few minutes walking without seeing a mark, and they turned back without a word, searching the sides of the path. Silence had worried this would be the most difficult part of the hunt, but they easily found where the men had turned into the Forests. A glowing hoofprint formed the sign; one of the horses had stepped in another’s urine on the roadway, then tracked it into the Forests.

Silence set down her pack and opened it to retrieve her garrote, then held a finger to her lips and motioned for William Ann to wait by the road. The girl nodded. Silence couldn’t make out much of her features in the darkness, but she did hear the girl’s breathing grow more rapid. Being a homesteader and accustomed to going out at night was one thing. Being alone in the Forests…

Silence took the blue glowpaste jar and covered it with her handkerchief. Then she took off her shoes and stockings and crept out into the night. Each time she did this, she felt like a child again, going into the Forests with her grandfather. Toes in the dirt, testing for crackling leaves or twigs that would snap and give her away.

She could almost hear his voice giving instructions, telling her how to judge the wind and use the sound of rustling leaves to mask her as she crossed noisy patches. He’d loved the Forests until the day they’d claimed him. Never call this land hell, he had said. Respect the land as you would a dangerous beast, but do not hate it.

Shades slid through the trees nearby, almost invisible with nothing to illuminate them. She kept her distance, but even so, she occasionally turned to see one of the things drifting past her. Stumbling into a shade could kill you, but that kind of accident was uncommon. Unless enraged, shades moved away from people who got too close, as if blown by a soft breeze. So long as you were moving slowly—and you should be—you would be all right.

She kept the handkerchief around the jar except when she wanted to check specifically for any markings. Glowpaste illuminated shades, and shades that glowed too brightly might give warning of her approach.

A groan sounded nearby. Silence froze, heart practically bursting from her chest. Shades made no sound; that had been a man. Tense, silent, she searched until she caught sight of him, well hidden in the hollow of a tree. He moved, massaging his temples. The headaches from William Ann’s poison were upon him.

Silence considered, then crept around the back of the tree. She crouched down, then waited a painful five minutes for him to move. He reached up again, rustling the leaves.

Silence snapped forward and looped her garrote around his neck, then pulled tight. Strangling wasn’t the best way to kill a man in the Forests. It was so slow.

The guard started to thrash, clawing at his throat. Shades nearby halted.

Silence pulled tighter. The guard, weakened by the poison, tried to kick at her with his legs. She shuffled backward, still holding tightly, watching those shades. They looked around like animals sniffing the air. A few of them started to dim, their own faint natural luminescence fading, their forms bleeding from white to black.

Not a good sign. Silence felt her heartbeat like thunder inside. Die, damn you!

The man finally stopped jerking, motions growing more lethargic. After he trembled one final time and fell still, Silence waited there for a painful eternity, holding her breath. Finally the shades nearby faded back to white, then drifted off in their meandering directions.

She unwound the garrote, breathing out in relief. After a moment to get her bearings, she left the corpse and crept back to William Ann.

The girl did her proud; she’d hidden herself so well that Silence didn’t see her until she whispered, “Mother?”

“Yes,” Silence said.

“Thank the God Beyond,” William Ann said, crawling out of the hollow where she’d covered herself in leaves. She took Silence by the arm, trembling. “You found them?”

“Killed the man on watch,” Silence said with a nod. “The other four should be sleeping. This is where I’ll need you.”

“I’m ready.”

“Follow.”

They moved back along the path Silence had taken. They passed the heap of the lookout’s corpse, and William Ann inspected it, showing no pity. “It’s one of them,” she whispered. “I recognize him.”

“Of course it’s one of them.”

“I just wanted to be sure. Since we’re… you know.”

Not far beyond the guard post, they found the camp. Four men in bedrolls slept amid the shades as only true Forestborn would ever try. They had set a small jar of glowpaste at the center of the camp, inside a pit so it wouldn’t glow too brightly and give them away, but it was enough light to show the horses tethered a few feet away on the other side of the camp. The green light also showed William Ann’s face, and Silence was shocked to see not fear but intense anger in the girl’s expression. She had taken quickly to being a protective older sister to Sebruki. She was ready to kill after all.

Silence gestured toward the rightmost man, and William Ann nodded. This was the dangerous part. On only a half dose, any of these men could still wake to the noise of their partners dying.

Silence took one of the burlap sacks from her pack and handed it to William Ann, then removed her hammer. It wasn’t some war weapon, like her grandfather had spoken of. Just a simple tool for pounding nails. Or other things.

Silence stooped over the first man. Seeing his sleeping face sent a shiver through her. A primal piece of her waited, tense, for those eyes to snap open.

She held up three fingers to William Ann, then lowered them one at a time. When the third finger went down, William Ann shoved the sack over the man’s head. As he jerked, Silence pounded him hard on the side of the temple with the hammer. The skull cracked and the head sank in a little. The man thrashed once, then grew limp.

Silence looked up, tense, watching the other men as William Ann pulled the sack tight. The shades nearby paused, but this didn’t draw their attention as much as the strangling had. So long as the sack’s lining of tar kept the blood from leaking out, they should be safe. Silence hit the man’s head twice more, then checked for a pulse. There was none.

They carefully did the next man in the row. It was brutal work, like slaughtering animals. It helped to think of these men as rabid, as she’d told William Ann earlier. It did not help to think of what the men had done to Sebruki. That would make her angry, and she couldn’t afford to be angry. She needed to be cold, quiet, and efficient.

The second man took a few more knocks to the head to kill, but he woke more slowly than his friend. Fenweed made men groggy. It was an excellent drug for her purposes. She just needed them sleepy, a little disoriented. And—

The next man sat up in his bedroll. “What…?” he asked in a slurred voice.

Silence leaped for him, grabbing him by the shoulders and slamming him to the ground. Nearby shades spun about as if at a loud noise. Silence pulled her garrote out as the man heaved at her, trying to push her aside, and William Ann gasped in shock.

Silence rolled around, wrapping the man’s neck. She pulled tight, straining while the man thrashed, agitating the shades. She almost had him dead when the last man leaped from his bedroll. In his dazed alarm, he chose to dash away.

Shadows! That last one was Chesterton himself. If he drew the shades…

Silence left the third man gasping and threw caution aside, racing after Chesterton. If the shades withered him to dust, she’d have nothing. No corpse to turn in meant no bounty.

The shades around the campsite faded from view as Silence reached Chesterton, catching him at the perimeter of the camp by the horses. She desperately tackled him by the legs, throwing the groggy man to the ground.

“You bitch,” he said in a slurred voice, kicking at her. “You’re the innkeeper. You poisoned me, you bitch!”

In the forest, the shades had gone completely black. Green eyes burst alight as they opened their earthsight. The eyes trailed a misty light.

Silence battered aside Chesterton’s hands as he struggled.

“I’ll pay you,” he said, clawing at her. “I’ll pay you—”

Silence slammed her hammer into his arm, causing him to scream. Then she brought it down on his face with a crunch. She ripped off her sweater as he groaned and thrashed, somehow wrapping it around his head and the hammer.

“William Ann!” she screamed. “I need a bag. A bag, girl! Give me—”

William Ann knelt beside her, pulling a sack over Chesterton’s head as the blood soaked through the sweater. Silence reached to the side with a frantic hand and grabbed a stone, then smashed it into the sack-covered head. The sweater muffled Chesterton’s screams, but also muffled the rock. She had to beat again and again.

He finally fell still. William Ann held the sack against his neck to keep the blood from flowing out, her breath coming in quick gasps. “Oh, God Beyond. Oh, God…”

Silence dared look up. Dozens of green eyes hung in the forest, glowing like little fires in the blackness. William Ann squeezed her eyes shut and whispered a prayer, tears leaking down her cheeks.

Silence reached slowly to her side and took out her silver dagger. She remembered another night, another sea of glowing green eyes. Her grandmother’s last night. Run, girl! RUN!

That night, running had been an option. They’d been close to safety. Even then, Grandmother hadn’t made it. She might have, but she hadn’t.

That night horrified Silence. What Grandmother had done. What Silence had done… Well, tonight she had only one hope. Running would not save them. Safety was too far away.

Slowly, blessedly, the eyes started to fade away. Silence sat back and let the silver knife slip out of her fingers to the ground.

William Ann opened her eyes. “Oh, God Beyond!” she said as the shades faded back into view. “A miracle!”

“Not a miracle,” Silence said. “Just luck. We killed him in time. Another second, and they’d have enraged.”

William Ann wrapped her arms around herself. “Oh, shadows. Oh, shadows. I thought we were dead. Oh, shadows.”

Suddenly, Silence remembered something. The third man. She hadn’t finished strangling him before Chesterton ran. She stumbled to her feet, turning.

He lay there, immobile.

“I finished him off,” William Ann said. “Had to strangle him with my hands. My hands…”

Silence glanced back at her. “You did well, girl. You probably saved our lives. If you hadn’t been here, I’d never have killed Chesterton without enraging the shades.”

The girl still stared out into the woods, watching the placid shades. “What would it take?” she asked. “For you to see a miracle instead of a coincidence?”

“It would take a miracle, obviously,” Silence said, picking up her knife. “Instead of just a coincidence. Come on. Let’s put a second sack on these fellows.”

William Ann joined her, lethargic as she helped put sacks on the heads of the bandits. Two sacks each, just in case. Blood was the most dangerous. Running drew shades, but slowly. Fire enraged them immediately, but it also blinded and confused them.

Blood, though… blood shed in anger, exposed to the open air… a single drop could make the shades slaughter you, and then everything else within their sight.

Silence checked each man for a heartbeat, just in case, and found none. They saddled the horses and heaved the corpses, including the lookout, into the saddles and tied them in place. They took the bedrolls and other equipment too. Hopefully the men would have some silver on them. Bounty laws let Silence keep what she found unless there was specific mention of something stolen. In this case, the forts just wanted Chesterton dead. Pretty much everyone did.

Silence pulled a rope tight, then paused.

“Mother!” William Ann said, noticing the same thing. Leaves rustling out in the Forests. They’d uncovered their jar of green glowpaste to join that of the bandits, so the small campsite was well illuminated as a gang of eight men and women on horseback rode in through the Forests.

They were from the forts. The nice clothing, the way they kept looking into the Forests at the shades… Fortfolk for certain. Silence stepped forward, wishing she had her hammer to look at least a little threatening. That was still tied in the sack around Chesterton’s head. It would have blood on it, so she couldn’t get it out until that dried or she was in someplace very, very safe.

“Now, look at this,” said the man at the front of the newcomers. “I couldn’t believe what Tobias told me when he came back from scouting, but it appears to be true. All five men in Chesterton’s gang, killed by a couple of Forest homesteaders?”

“Who are you?” Silence asked.

“Red Young,” the man said with a tip of the hat. “I’ve been tracking this lot for the last four months. I can’t thank you enough for taking care of them for me.” He waved to a few of his people, who dismounted.

“Mother!” William Ann hissed.

Silence studied Red’s eyes. He was armed with a cudgel, and one of the women behind him had one of those new crossbows with the blunt tips. They cranked fast and hit hard, but didn’t draw blood.

“Step away from the horses, child,” Silence said.

“But—”

“Step away.” Silence dropped the rope of the horse she was leading. Three fort city people gathered up the ropes, one of the men leering at William Ann.

“You’re a smart one,” Red said, leaning down and studying Silence. One of his women walked past, towing Chesterton’s horse with the man’s corpse slumped over the saddle.

Silence stepped up, resting a hand on Chesterton’s saddle. The woman towing it paused, then looked at her boss. Silence slipped her knife from its sheath.

“You’ll give us something,” Silence said to Red, knife hand hidden. “After what we did. One quarter, and I don’t say a word.”

“Sure,” he said, tipping his hat to her. He had a fake kind of grin, like one in a painting. “One quarter it is.”

Silence nodded. She slipped the knife against one of the thin ropes that held Chesterton in the saddle. That gave her a good cut on it as the woman pulled the horse away. Silence stepped back, resting her hand on William Ann’s shoulder while covertly moving the knife back into its sheath.

Red tipped his hat to her again. In moments, the bounty hunters had retreated back through the trees toward the roadway.

“One quarter?” William Ann hissed. “You think he’ll pay it?”

“Hardly,” Silence said, picking up her pack. “We’re lucky he didn’t just kill us. Come on.” She moved out into the Forests. William Ann walked with her, both moving with the careful steps the Forests demanded. “It might be time for you to return to the waystop, William Ann.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Get our bounty back.” She was a Forescout, dammit. No prim fort man was going to steal from her.

“You mean to cut them off at the white span, I assume. But what will you do? We can’t fight so many, Mother.”

“I’ll find a way.” That corpse meant freedom—life—for her daughters. She would not let it slip away like smoke between the fingers. They entered the darkness, passing shades that had, just a short time before, been almost ready to wither them. Now the shades drifted away, completely indifferent toward their flesh.

Think, Silence. Something is very wrong here. How had those men found the camp? The light? Had they overheard her and William Ann talking? They’d claimed to have been chasing Chesterton for months. Shouldn’t she have caught wind of them before now? These men and women looked too crisp to have been out in the Forests for months trailing killers.

It led to a conclusion she did not want to admit. One man had known she was hunting a bounty today and had seen how she was planning to track that bounty. One man had cause to see that bounty stolen from her.

Theopolis, I hope I’m wrong, she thought. Because if you’re behind this…

Silence and William Ann trudged through the guts of the Forest, a place where the gluttonous canopy above drank in all of the light, leaving the ground below barren. Shades patrolled these wooden halls like blind sentries. Red and his bounty hunters were of the forts. They would keep to the roadways, and that was her advantage. The Forests were no friend to a homesteader, no more than a familiar chasm was any less dangerous a drop.

But Silence was a sailor on this abyss. She could ride its winds better than any fortdweller. Perhaps it was time to make a storm.

What homesteaders called the “white span” was a section of roadway lined by mushroom fields. It took about an hour through the Forests to reach the span, and Silence was feeling the price of a night without sleep by the time she arrived. She ignored the fatigue, tromping through the field of mushrooms, holding her jar of green light and giving an ill cast to trees and furrows in the land.

The roadway bent around through the Forests, then came back this way. If the men were heading toward Lastport or any of the other nearby forts, they would come this direction. “You continue on,” Silence said to William Ann. “It’s only another hour’s hike back to the waystop. Check on things there.”

“I’m not leaving you, Mother.”

“You promised to obey. Would you break your word?”

“And you promised to let me help you. Would you break yours?”

“I don’t need you for this,” Silence said. “And it will be dangerous.”

“What are you going to do?”

Silence stopped beside the roadway, then knelt, fishing in her pack. She came out with the small keg of gunpowder. William Ann went as white as the mushrooms.

“Mother!”

Silence untied her grandmother’s firestarter. She didn’t know for certain if it still worked. She’d never dared compress the two metal arms, which looked like tongs. Squeezing them together would grind the ends against one another, making sparks, and a spring at the joint would make them come back apart.

Silence looked up at her daughter, then held the firestarter up beside her head. William Ann stepped back, then glanced to the sides, toward nearby shades.

“Are things really that bad?” the girl whispered. “For us, I mean?”

Silence nodded.

“All right then.”

Fool girl. Well, Silence wouldn’t send her away. The truth was, she probably would need help. She intended to get that corpse. Bodies were heavy, and there wasn’t any way she’d be able to cut off just the head. Not out in the Forests, with shades about.

She dug into her pack, pulling out her medical supplies. They were tied between two small boards, intended to be used as splints. It was not difficult to tie the two boards to either side of the firestarter. With her hand trowel, she dug a small hole in the roadway’s soft earth, about the size of the powder keg.

She then opened the plug to the keg and set it into the hole. She soaked her handkerchief in the lamp oil, stuck one end in the keg, then positioned the firestarter boards on the road with the end of the kerchief next to the spark-making heads. After covering the contraption with some leaves, she had a rudimentary trap. If someone stepped on the top board, that would press it down and grind out sparks to light the kerchief. Hopefully.

She couldn’t afford to light the fire herself. The shades would come first for the one who made the fire.

“What happens if they don’t step on it?” William Ann asked.

“Then we move it to another place on the road and try again,” Silence said.

“That could shed blood, you realize.”

Silence didn’t reply. If the trap was triggered by a footfall, the shades wouldn’t see Silence as the one causing it. They’d come first for the one who triggered the trap. But if blood was drawn, they would enrage. Soon after, it wouldn’t matter who had caused it. All would be in danger.

“We have hours of darkness left,” Silence said. “Cover your glowpaste.”

William Ann nodded, hastily putting the cover on her jar. Silence inspected her trap again, then took William Ann by the shoulder and pulled her to the side of the roadway. The underbrush was thicker there, as the road tended to wind through breaks in the canopy. People sought out places in the Forests where they could see the sky.

The bounty hunters came along eventually. Silent, illuminated by a jar of glowpaste each. Fortfolk didn’t talk at night. They passed the trap, which Silence had placed on the narrowest section of roadway. She held her breath, watching the horses pass, step after step missing the lump that marked the board. William Ann covered her ears, hunkering down.

A hoof hit the trap. Nothing happened. Silence released an annoyed breath. What would she do if the firestarter was broken? Could she find another way to—

The explosion struck her, the wave of force shaking her body. Shades vanished in a blink, green eyes snapping open. Horses reared and whinnied, men and women yelling.

Silence shook off her stupefaction, grabbing William Ann by the shoulder and pulling her out of hiding. Her trap had worked better than she’d assumed; the burning rag had allowed the horse who had triggered the trap to take a few steps before the blast hit. No blood, just a lot of surprised horses and confused people. The little keg of gunpowder hadn’t done as much damage as she’d anticipated—the stories of what gunpowder could do were often as fanciful as stories of the Homeland—but the sound had been incredible.

Silence’s ears rang as she fought through the confused fortfolk, finding what she’d hoped to see. Chesterton’s corpse lay on the ground, dumped from saddleback by a bucking horse and a frayed rope. She grabbed the corpse under the arms and William Ann took the legs. They moved sideways into the Forests.

“Idiots!” Red bellowed from amid the confusion. “Stop her! It—”

He cut off as shades swarmed the roadway, descending upon the men. Red had managed to keep his horse under control, but now he had to dance it back from the shades. Enraged, they had turned pure black, though the blast of light and fire had obviously left them dazed. They fluttered about, like moths at a flame. Green eyes. A small blessing. If those turned red…

One bounty hunter, standing on the road and spinning about, was struck. His back arched, black-veined tendrils crisscrossing his skin. He dropped to his knees, screaming as the flesh of his face shrank around his skull.

Silence turned away. William Ann watched the fallen man with a horrified expression.

“Slowly, child,” Silence said in what she hoped was a comforting voice. She hardly felt comforting. “Carefully. We can move away from them. William Ann. Look at me.”

The girl turned to look at her.

“Hold my eyes. Move. That’s right. Remember, the shades will go to the source of the fire first. They are confused, stunned. They can’t smell fire like they do blood, and they’ll look from it to the nearest rapid motion. Slowly, easily. Let the scrambling fortfolk distract them.”

The two of them eased into the Forests with excruciating deliberateness. In the face of so much chaos, so much danger, their pace felt like a crawl. Red organized a resistance. Fire-crazed shades could be fought, destroyed, with silver. More and more would come, but if the bounty hunters were clever and lucky, they’d be able to destroy those nearby and then move slowly away from the source of the fire. They could hide, survive. Maybe.

Unless one of them accidentally drew blood.

Silence and William Ann stepped through a field of mushrooms that glowed like the skulls of rats and broke silently beneath their feet. Luck was not completely with them, for as the shades shook off their disorientation from the explosion, a pair of them on the outskirts turned and struck out toward the fleeing women.

William Ann gasped. Silence deliberately set down Chesterton’s shoulders, then took out her knife. “Keep going,” she whispered. “Pull him away. Slowly, girl. Slowly.”

“I won’t leave you!”

“I will catch up,” Silence said. “You aren’t ready for this.”

She didn’t look to see if William Ann obeyed, for the shades—figures of jet black streaking across the white-knobbed ground—were upon her. Strength was meaningless against shades. They had no real substance. Only two things mattered: your speed and not letting yourself be frightened.

Shades were dangerous, but so long as you had silver, you could fight. Many a man died because he ran, drawing even more shades, rather than standing his ground.

Silence swung at the shades as they reached her. You want my daughter, hellbound? she thought with a snarl. You should have tried for the fortfolk instead.

She swept her knife through the first shade, as Grandmother had taught. Never creep back and cower before shades. You’re Forescout blood. You claim the Forests. You are their creature as much as any other. As am I…

Her knife passed through the shade with a slight tugging feeling, creating a shower of bright white sparks that sprayed out of the shade. The shade pulled back, its black tendrils writhing about one another.

Silence spun on the other. The pitch sky let her see only the thing’s eyes, a horrid green, as it reached for her. She lunged.

Its spectral hands were upon her, the icy cold of its fingers gripping her arm below the elbow. She could feel it. Shade fingers had substance; they could grab you, hold you back. Only silver warded them away. Only with silver could you fight.

She rammed her arm in farther. Sparks shot out its back, spraying like a bucket of washwater. Silence gasped at the horrid, icy pain. Her knife slipped from fingers she could no longer feel. She lurched forward, falling to her knees as the second shade fell backward, then began spinning about in a mad spiral. The first one flopped on the ground like a dying fish, trying to rise, its top half falling over.

The cold of her arm was so bitter. She stared at the wounded arm, watching the flesh of her hand wither upon itself, pulling in toward the bone.

She heard weeping.

You stand there, Silence. Grandmother’s voice. Memories of the first time she’d killed a shade. You do as I say. No tears! Forescouts don’t cry. Forescouts DON’T CRY.

She had learned to hate her that day. Ten years old, with her little knife, shivering and weeping in the night as her grandmother had enclosed her and a drifting shade in a ring of silver dust.

Grandmother had run around the perimeter, enraging it with motion. While Silence was trapped in there. With death.

The only way to learn is to do, Silence. And you’ll learn, one way or another!

“Mother!” William Ann said.

Silence blinked, coming out of the memory as her daughter dumped silver dust on the exposed arm. The withering stopped as William Ann, choking against her thick tears, dumped the entire pouch of emergency silver over the hand. The metal reversed the withering, and the skin turned pink again, the blackness melting away in sparks of white.

Too much, Silence thought. William Ann had used all of the silver dust in her haste, far more than one wound needed. It was difficult to summon any anger, for feeling flooded back into her hand and the icy cold retreated.

“Mother?” William Ann asked. “I left you, as you said. But he was so heavy, I didn’t get far. I came back for you. I’m sorry. I came back for you!”

“Thank you,” Silence said, breathing in. “You did well.” She reached up and took her daughter by the shoulder, then used the once-withered hand to search in the grass for Grandmother’s knife. When she brought it up, the blade was blackened in several places, but still good.

Back on the road, the fortfolk had made a circle and were holding off the shades with silver-tipped spears. The horses had all fled or been consumed. Silence fished on the ground, coming up with a small handful of silver dust. The rest had been expended in the healing. Too much.

No use worrying about that now, she thought, stuffing the handful of dust in her pocket. “Come,” she said, hauling herself to her feet. “I’m sorry I never taught you to fight them.”

“Yes you did,” William Ann said, wiping her tears. “You’ve told me all about it.”

Told. Never shown. Shadows, Grandmother. I know I disappoint you, but I won’t do it to her. I can’t. But I am a good mother. I will protect them.

The two left the mushrooms, taking up their grisly prize again and tromping through the Forests. They passed more darkened shades floating toward the fight. All of those sparks would draw them. The fortfolk were dead. Too much attention, too much struggle. They’d have a thousand shades upon them before the hour was out.

Silence and William Ann moved slowly. Though the cold had mostly retreated from Silence’s hand, there was a lingering… something. A deep shiver. A limb touched by the shades wouldn’t feel right for months.

That was far better than what could have happened. Without William Ann’s quick thinking, Silence could have become a cripple. Once the withering settled in—that took a little time, though it varied—it was irreversible.

Something rustled in the woods. Silence froze, causing William Ann to stop and glance about.

“Mother?” William Ann whispered.

Silence frowned. The night was so black, and they’d been forced to leave their lights. Something’s out there, she thought, trying to pierce the darkness. What are you? God Beyond protect them if the fighting had drawn one of the Deepest Ones.

The sound did not repeat. Reluctantly, Silence continued on. They walked for a good hour, and in the darkness Silence hadn’t realized they’d neared the roadway again until they stepped onto it.

Silence heaved out a breath, setting down their burden and rolling her tired arms in their joints. Some light from the Starbelt filtered down upon them, illuminating something like a large jawbone to their left. The Old Bridge. They were almost home. The shades here weren’t even agitated; they moved with their lazy, almost butterfly, gaits.

Her arms felt so sore. That body felt as if it were getting heavier every moment. People often didn’t realize how heavy a corpse was. Silence sat down. They’d rest for a time before continuing on. “William Ann, do you have any water left in your canteen?”

William Ann whimpered.

Silence started, then scrambled to her feet. Her daughter stood beside the bridge, and something dark stood behind her. A green glow suddenly illuminated the night as the figure took out a small vial of glowpaste. By that sickly light, Silence could see that the figure was Red.

He held a dagger to William Ann’s neck. The fort man had not fared well in the fighting. One eye was now a milky white, half his face blackened, his lips pulled back from his teeth. A shade had gotten him across the face. He was lucky to be alive.

“I figured you’d come back this way,” he said, the words slurred by his shriveled lips. Spittle dripped from his chin. “Silver. Give me your silver.”

His knife… it was common steel.

“Now!” he roared, pulling the knife closer to William Ann’s neck. If he so much as nicked her, the shades would be upon them in heartbeats.

“I only have the knife,” Silence lied, taking it out and tossing it to the ground before him. “It’s too late for your face, Red. That withering has set in.”

“I don’t care,” he hissed. “Now the body. Step away from it, woman. Away!”

Silence stepped to the side. Could she get to him before he killed William Ann? He’d have to grab that knife. If she sprang just right…

“You killed my crew,” Red growled. “They’re dead, all of them. God, if I hadn’t rolled into the hollow… I had to listen to it. Listen to them being slaughtered!”

“You were the only smart one,” she said. “You couldn’t have saved them, Red.”

“Bitch! You killed them.”

“They killed themselves,” she whispered. “You come to my Forests, take what is mine? It was your crew or my children, Red.”

“Well, if you want your child to live through this, you’ll stay very still. Girl, pick up that knife.”

Whimpering, William Ann knelt. Red mimicked her, staying just behind her, watching Silence, holding the knife steady. William Ann picked up the knife in trembling hands.

Red pulled the silver knife from William Ann, then held it in one hand, the common knife at her neck in the other. “Now, the girl is going to carry the corpse, and you’re going to wait right there. I don’t want you coming near.”

“Of course,” Silence said, already planning. She couldn’t afford to strike right now. He was too careful. She would follow through the Forests, along the road, and wait for a moment of weakness. Then she’d strike.

Red spat to the side.

Then a padded crossbow bolt shot from the night and took him in the shoulder, jolting him. His blade slid across William Ann’s neck, and a dribble of blood ran down it. The girl’s eyes widened in horror, though it was little more than a nick. The danger to her throat wasn’t important.

The blood was.

Red tumbled back, gasping, hand to his shoulder. A few drops of blood glistened on his knife. The shades in the Forests around them went black. Glowing green eyes burst alight, then deepened to crimson.

Red eyes in the night. Blood in the air.

“Oh, hell!” Red screamed. “Oh, hell.” Red eyes swarmed around him. There was no hesitation here, no confusion. They went straight for the one who had drawn blood.

Silence reached for William Ann as the shades descended. Red grabbed the girl and shoved her through a shade, trying to stop it. He spun and dashed the other direction.

William Ann passed through the shade, her face withering, skin pulling in at the chin and around the eyes. She stumbled through the shade and into Silence’s arms.

Silence felt an immediate, overwhelming panic.

“No! Child, no. No. No…”

William Ann worked her mouth, making a choking sound, her lips pulling back toward her teeth, her eyes open wide as her skin tightened and her eyelids shriveled.

Silver. I need silver. I can save her. Silence snapped her head up, clutching William Ann. Red ran down the roadway, slashing the silver dagger all about, spraying light and sparks. Shades surrounded him. Hundreds, like ravens flocking to a roost.

Not that way. The shades would finish with him soon and would look for flesh—any flesh. William Ann still had blood on her neck. They’d come for her next. Even without that, the girl was withering fast.

The dagger wouldn’t be enough to save William Ann. Silence needed dust, silver dust, to force down her daughter’s throat. Silence fumbled in her pocket, coming out with the small bit of silver dust there.

Too little. She knew that would be too little. Her grandmother’s training calmed her mind, and everything became immediately clear.

The waystop was close. She had more silver there.

“M… Mother…”

Silence heaved William Ann into her arms. Too light, the flesh drying. Then she turned and ran with everything she had across the bridge.

Her arms stung, weakened from having hauled the corpse so far. The corpse… she couldn’t lose it!

No. She couldn’t think on that. The shades would have it, as warm enough flesh, soon after Red was gone. There would be no bounty. She had to focus on William Ann.

Silence’s tears felt cold on her face as she ran, wind blowing her. Her daughter trembled and shook in her arms, spasming as she died. She’d become a shade if she died like this.

“I won’t lose you!” Silence said into the night. “Please. I won’t lose you…”

Behind her, Red screamed a long, wailing screech of agony that cut off at the end as the shades feasted. Near her, other shades stopped, eyes deepening to red.

Blood in the air. Eyes of crimson.

“I hate you,” Silence whispered into the air as she ran. Each step was agony. She was growing old. “I hate you! What you did to me. What you did to us.”

She didn’t know if she was speaking to Grandmother or the God Beyond. So often, they were the same in her mind. Had she ever realized that before?

Branches lashed at her as she pushed forward. Was that light ahead? The waystop?

Hundreds upon hundreds of red eyes opened in front of her. She stumbled to the ground, spent, William Ann like a heavy bundle of branches in her arms. The girl trembled, her eyes rolled back in her head.

Silence held out the small bit of silver dust she’d recovered earlier. She longed to pour it on William Ann, save her a little pain, but she knew with clarity that was a waste. She looked down, crying, then took the dust and made a small circle around the two of them. What else could she do?

William Ann shook with a seizure as she rasped, drawing in breaths and clawing at Silence’s arms. The shades came by the dozens, huddling around the two of them, smelling the blood. The flesh.

Silence pulled her daughter close. She should have gone for the knife after all; it wouldn’t heal William Ann, but she could have at least fought with it.

Without that, without anything, she failed. Grandmother had been right all along.

“Hush now, my dear one…” Silence whispered, squeezing her eyes shut. “Be not afraid.”

Shades came at her frail barrier, throwing up sparks, making Silence open her eyes. They backed away, then others came, beating against the silver, their red eyes illuminating writhing black forms.

“Night comes upon us…” Silence whispered, choking at the words, “… but sunlight will break.”

William Ann arched her back, then fell still.

“Sleep now… my… my dear one… let your tears fade. Darkness surrounds us, but someday… we’ll wake…”

So tired. I shouldn’t have let her come.

If she hadn’t, Chesterton would have gotten away from her, and she’d have probably fallen to the shades then. William Ann and Sebruki would have become slaves to Theopolis, or worse.

No choices. No way out.

“Why did you send us here?” she screamed, looking up past hundreds of glowing red eyes. “What is the point?”

There was no answer. There was never an answer.

Yes, that was light ahead; she could see it through the low tree branches in front of her. She was only a few yards from the waystop. She would die, like Grandmother had, mere paces from her home.

She blinked, cradling William Ann as the tiny silver barrier failed.

That… that branch just in front of her. It had such a very odd shape. Long, thin, no leaves. Not like a branch at all. Instead, like…

Like a crossbow bolt.

It had lodged into the tree after being fired from the waystop earlier in the day. She remembered facing down that bolt earlier, staring at its reflective end.

Silver.

3

SILENCE MONTANE crashed through the back door of the waystop, hauling a desiccated body behind her. She stumbled into the kitchen, barely able to walk, and dropped the silver-tipped bolt from a withered hand.

Her skin continued to pull tight, her body shriveling. She had not been able to avoid withering, not when fighting so many shades. The crossbow bolt had merely cleared a path, allowing her to push forward in a last, frantic charge.

She could barely see. Tears streamed from her clouded eyes. Even with the tears, her eyes felt as dry as if she had been standing in the wind for an hour while holding them wide open. Her lids refused to blink, and she couldn’t move her lips.

She had… powder. Didn’t she?

Thought. Mind. What?

She moved without thought. Jar on the windowsill. In case of broken circle. She unscrewed the lid with fingers like sticks. Seeing them horrified a distant part of her mind.

Dying. I’m dying.

She dunked the jar of silver powder in the water cistern and pulled it out, then stumbled to William Ann. She fell to her knees beside the girl, spilling much of the water. The rest she dumped on her daughter’s face with a shaking arm.

Please. Please.

Darkness.

4

“WE WERE sent here to be strong,” Grandmother said, standing on the cliff edge overlooking the waters. Her whited hair curled in the wind, writhing like the wisps of a shade.

She turned back to Silence, and her weathered face was covered in droplets of water from the crashing surf below. “The God Beyond sent us. It’s part of the plan.”

“It’s so easy for you to say that, isn’t it?” Silence spat. “You can fit anything into that nebulous plan. Even the destruction of the world itself.”

“I won’t hear blasphemy from you, child.” A voice like boots stepping in gravel. She walked toward Silence. “You can rail against the God Beyond, but it will change nothing. William was a fool and an idiot. You are better off. We are Forescouts. We survive. We will be the ones to defeat the Evil, someday.” She passed Silence by.

Silence had never seen a smile from Grandmother, not since her husband’s death. Smiling was wasted energy. And love… love was for the people back in Homeland. The people who’d perished from the Evil.

“I’m with child,” Silence said.

Grandmother stopped. “William?”

“Who else?”

Grandmother continued on.

“No condemnations?” Silence asked, turning, folding her arms.

“It’s done,” Grandmother said. “We are Forescouts. If this is how we must continue, so be it. I’m more worried about the waystop, and meeting our payments to those damn forts.”

I have an idea for that, Silence thought, considering the lists of bounties she’d begun collecting. Something even you wouldn’t dare. Something dangerous. Something unthinkable.

Grandmother reached the woods and looked at Silence, scowled, then pulled on her hat and stepped into the trees.

“I will not have you interfering with my child,” Silence called after her. “I will raise my own as I will!”

Grandmother vanished into the shadows.

Please. Please.

“I will!”

I won’t lose you. I won’t…

5

SILENCE GASPED, coming awake and clawing at the floorboards, staring upward.

Alive. She was alive!

Dob the stableman knelt beside her, holding the jar of powdered silver. She coughed, lifting fingers—plump, the flesh restored—to her neck. It was hale, though ragged from the flakes of silver that had been forced down her throat. Her skin was dusted with black bits of ruined silver.

“William Ann!” she said, turning.

The child lay on the floor beside the door. William Ann’s left side, where she’d first touched the shade, was blackened. Her face wasn’t too bad, but her hand was a withered skeleton. They’d have to cut that off. Her leg looked bad too. Silence couldn’t tell how bad without tending the wounds.

“Oh, child…” Silence knelt beside her.

But the girl breathed in and out. That was enough, all things considered.

“I tried,” Dob said. “But you’d already done what could be done.”

“Thank you,” Silence said. She turned to the aged man, with his high forehead and dull eyes.

“Did you get him?” Dob asked.

“Who?”

“The bounty.”

“I… yes, I did. But I had to leave him.”

“You’ll find another,” Dob said in his monotone, climbing to his feet. “The Fox always does.”

“How long have you known?”

“I’m an idiot, mam,” he said. “Not a fool.” He bowed his head to her, then walked away, slump-backed as always.

Silence climbed to her feet, then groaned, picking up William Ann. She lifted her daughter to the rooms above and saw to her.

The leg wasn’t as bad as Silence had feared. A few of the toes would be lost, but the foot itself was hale enough. The entire left side of William Ann’s body was blackened, as if burned. That would fade, with time, to grey.

Everyone who saw her would know exactly what had happened. Many men would never touch her, fearing her taint. This might just doom her to a life alone.

I know a little about such a life, Silence thought, dipping a cloth into the water bin and washing William Ann’s face. The youth would sleep through the day. She had come very close to death, to becoming a shade herself. The body did not recover quickly from that.

Of course, Silence had been close to that too. She, however, had been there before. Another of Grandmother’s preparations. Oh, how she hated that woman. Silence owed who she was to how that training had toughened her. Could she be thankful for Grandmother and hateful, both at once?

Silence finished washing William Ann, then dressed her in a soft nightgown and left her in her bunk. Sebruki still slept off the draught Silence had given her.

So she went downstairs to the kitchen to think difficult thoughts. She’d lost the bounty. The shades would have had at that body; the skin would be dust, the skull blackened and ruined. She had no way to prove that she’d taken Chesterton.

She settled against the kitchen table and laced her hands before her. She wanted to have at the whiskey instead, to dull the horror of the night.

She thought for hours. Could she pay Theopolis off some way? Borrow from someone else? Who? Maybe find another bounty. But so few people came through the waystop these days. Theopolis had already given her warning, with his writ. He wouldn’t wait more than a day or two for payment before claiming the waystop as his own.

Had she really gone through so much, still to lose?

Sunlight fell on her face and a breeze from the broken window tickled her cheek, waking her from her slumber at the table. Silence blinked, stretching, limbs complaining. Then she sighed, moving to the kitchen counter. She’d left out all of the materials from the preparations last night, her clay bowls thick with glowpaste that still shone faintly. The silver-tipped crossbow bolt lay by the back door where she’d dropped it. She’d need to clean up and get breakfast ready for her few guests. Then, think of some way to…

The back door opened and someone stepped in.

… to deal with Theopolis. She exhaled softly, looking at him in his clean clothing and condescending smile. He tracked mud onto her floor as he entered. “Silence Montane. Nice morning, hmmm?”

Shadows, she thought. I don’t have the mental strength to deal with him right now.

He moved to close the window shutters.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Hmmm? Haven’t you warned me before that you loathe that people might see us together? That they might get a hint that you are turning in bounties to me? I’m just trying to protect you. Has something happened? You look awful, hmmm?”

“I know what you did.”

“You do? But, see, I do many things. About what do you speak?”

Oh, how she’d like to cut that grin from his lips and cut out his throat, stomp out that annoying Lastport accent. She couldn’t. He was just so blasted good at acting. She had guesses, probably good ones. But no proof.

Grandmother would have killed him right then. Was she so desperate to prove him wrong that she’d lose everything?

“You were in the Forests,” Silence said. “When Red surprised me at the bridge, I assumed that the thing I’d heard—rustling in the darkness—had been him. It wasn’t. He implied he’d been waiting for us at the bridge. That thing in the darkness, it was you. You shot him with the crossbow to jostle him, make him draw blood. Why, Theopolis?”

“Blood?” Theopolis said. “In the night? And you survived? You’re quite fortunate, I should say. Remarkable. What else happened?”

She said nothing.

“I have come for payment of debt,” Theopolis said. “You have no bounty to turn in then, hmmm? Perhaps we will need my document after all. So kind of me to bring another copy. This really will be wonderful for us both. Do you not agree?”

“Your feet are glowing.”

Theopolis hesitated, then looked down. There, the mud he’d tracked in shone very faintly blue in the light of the glowpaste remnants.

“You followed me,” she said. “You were there last night.”

He looked up at her with a slow, unconcerned expression. “And?” He took a step forward.

Silence backed away, her heel hitting the wall behind her. She reached around, taking out the key and unlocking the door behind her. Theopolis grabbed her arm, yanking her away as she pulled open the door.

“Going for one of your hidden weapons?” he asked with a sneer. “The crossbow you keep on the pantry shelf? Yes, I know of that. I’m disappointed, Silence. Can’t we be civil?”

“I will never sign your document, Theopolis,” she said, then spat at his feet. “I would sooner die, I would sooner be put out of house and home. You can take the waystop by force, but I will not serve you. You can be damned, for all I care, you bastard. You—”

He slapped her across the face. A quick but unemotional gesture. “Oh, do shut up.”

She stumbled back.

“Such dramatics, Silence. I can’t be the only one to wish you lived up to your name, hmmm?”

She licked her lip, feeling the pain of his slap. She lifted her hand to her face. A single drop of blood colored her fingertip when she pulled it away.

“You expect me to be frightened?” Theopolis asked. “I know we’re safe in here.”

“Fort city fool,” she whispered, then flipped the drop of blood at him. It hit him on the cheek. “Always follow the Simple Rules. Even when you think you don’t have to. And I wasn’t opening the pantry, as you thought.”

Theopolis frowned, then glanced over at the door she had opened. The door into the small old shrine. Her grandmother’s shrine to the God Beyond.

The bottom of the door was rimmed in silver.

Red eyes opened in the air behind Theopolis, a jet-black form coalescing in the shadowed room. Theopolis hesitated, then turned.

He didn’t get to scream as the shade took his head in its hands and drew his life away. It was a newer shade, its form still strong despite the writhing blackness of its clothing. A tall woman, hard of features, with curling hair. Theopolis opened his mouth, then his face withered away, eyes sinking into his head.

“You should have run, Theopolis,” Silence said.

His head began to crumble. His body collapsed to the floor.

“Hide from the green eyes, run from the red,” Silence said, retrieving the silver-tipped crossbow bolt from where it lay by the back door. “Your rules, Grandmother.”

The shade turned to her. Silence shivered, looking into those dead, glassy eyes of a matriarch she loathed and loved.

“I hate you,” Silence said. “Thank you for making me hate you.” She held the crossbow bolt before her, but the shade did not strike. Silence edged around, forcing the shade back. It floated away from her, back into the shrine lined with silver at the bottom of its three walls, where Silence had trapped it years ago.

Her heart pounding, Silence closed the door, completing the barrier, and locked it again. No matter what happened, that shade left Silence alone. Almost, she thought it remembered. And almost, Silence felt guilty for trapping that soul inside the small closet for all these years.

6

SILENCE FOUND Theopolis’s hidden cave after six hours of hunting.

It was about where she’d expected it to be, in the hills not far from the Old Bridge. It included a silver barrier. She could harvest that. Good money there.

Inside the small cavern, she found Chesterton’s corpse, which Theopolis had dragged to the cave while the shades killed Red and then hunted Silence. I’m so glad, for once, you were a greedy man, Theopolis.

She would have to find someone else to start turning in bounties for her. That would be difficult, particularly on short notice. She dragged the corpse out and threw it over the back of Theopolis’s horse. A short hike took her back to the road, where she paused, then walked up and located Red’s fallen corpse, withered down to just bones and clothing.

She fished out her grandmother’s dagger, scored and blackened from the fight. It fit back into the sheath at her side. She trudged, exhausted, back to the waystop and hid Chesterton’s corpse in the cold cellar out behind the stable, beside where she’d put Theopolis’s remains. She hiked back into the kitchen. Beside the shrine’s door where her grandmother’s dagger had once hung, she had placed the silver crossbow bolt that Sebruki had unknowingly sent her.

What would the fort authorities say when she explained Theopolis’s death to them? Perhaps she could claim to have found him like that…

She paused, then smiled.

EPILOGUE

“LOOKS LIKE you’re lucky, friend,” Daggon said, sipping at his beer. “The White Fox won’t be looking for you anytime soon.”

The spindly man, who still insisted his name was Earnest, hunkered down a little farther in his seat.

“How is it you’re still here?” Daggon asked. “I traveled all the way to Lastport. I hardly expected to find you here on my path back.”

“I hired on at a homestead nearby,” said the slender-necked man. “Good work, mind you. Solid work.”

“And you pay each night to stay here?”

“I like it. It feels peaceful. The homesteads don’t have good silver protection. They just… let the shades move about. Even inside.” The man shuddered.

Daggon shrugged, lifting his drink as Silence Montane limped by. Yes, she was a healthy-looking woman. He really should court her, one of these days. She scowled at his smile and dumped his plate in front of him.

“I think I’m wearing her down,” Daggon said, mostly to himself, as she left.

“You will have to work hard,” Earnest said. “Seven men have proposed to her during the last month.”

“What!”

“The reward!” the spindly man said. “The one for bringing in Chesterton. Lucky woman, Silence Montane, finding the White Fox’s lair like that.”

Daggon dug into his meal. He didn’t much like how things had turned out. That dandy Theopolis had been the White Fox all along? Poor Silence. How had it been, stumbling upon his cave and finding him inside, all withered away?

“They say that this Theopolis spent his last strength killing Chesterton,” Earnest said, “then dragging him into the hole. Theopolis withered before he could get to his silver powder. Very like the White Fox, always determined to get the bounty, no matter what. We won’t soon see a hunter like him again.”

“I suppose not,” Daggon said, though he’d much rather that the man had kept his skin. Now who would Daggon tell his tales about? He didn’t fancy paying for his own beer.

Nearby, a greasy-looking fellow rose from his meal and shuffled out of the front door, looking half drunk already, though it was only noon.

Some people. Daggon shook his head. “To the White Fox,” he said, raising his drink.

Earnest clinked his mug to Daggon’s. “The White Fox, meanest bastard the Forests have ever known.”

“May his soul know peace,” Daggon said, “and may the God Beyond be thanked that he never decided we were worth his time.”

“Amen,” Earnest said.

“Of course,” Daggon said, “there is still Bloody Kent. Now he’s a right nasty fellow. You’d better hope he doesn’t get your number, friend. And don’t you give me that innocent look. These are the Forests. Everybody here has done something, now and then, that you don’t want others to know about…”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WITH EVERY project, there are many hands working behind the scenes. I want to thank everyone involved.

Thanks go out to Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin, on whose prompting I wrote the novella. My agent Joshua Bilmes gave early feedback. Isaac St€wart is responsible for the look of the finished product. The Ineffable Peter Ahlstrom did his usual marvelous editing job. Miranda Meeks provided the awesome cover art. Emily Sanderson supported me as always.

Community proofreaders for this volume include Alice Arneson, Aaron Biggs, Jakob Remick, Corby Campbell, Kelly Neumann, Megan Kanne, Maren Menke, Bob Kluttz, Lyndsey Luther, Kalyani Poluri, Rahul Pantula, Aaron Ford, Ruchita Dhawan, Gary Singer, and Bart Butler. Thank you for all of your input!

BRANDON SANDERSON

About the Author

BRANDON SANDERSON (Lincoln, Nebraska, December 19, 1975) is an American fantasy and science fiction writer. He lives in Utah with his wife and children and teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University.

In addition to completing Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, he is the author of such bestsellers as the Mistborn saga, Warbreaker, The Stormlight Archive series beginning with The Way of Kings, The Rithmatist, the Skyward series, Legion, The Reckoners series beginning with Steelheart, and the Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series.

He won the 2013 Hugo Award for The Emperor’s Soul, a novella set in the world of his acclaimed first novel, Elantris. For behind-the-scenes information on all his books, visit brandonsanderson.com.