Chapter One
The Weight of Wakening

If you wish history to be kind to you, be kind to the historians who will write your story.

—From Intedelêu (The Principles)
Neludêsus the Younger

Rope cinched with pricks of tightening hemp as she fell, skull twisting and lifting with a crunching snap; light flashed before darkness consumed her, and all senses relating to reality disappeared. No pain, no fear. No breaths, no blinks. Had she been in this void a flicker or a lifetime? A gentle sense of levitation lifted her consciousness, and warmth rose from toes to ears with soothing, soulful peace. It wasn’t a serenity gifted upon the living.

The universe of her vision was empty, a vast nothingness that began with her and stretched into eternity, but the universe of her hearing was anything but. Whispers snaked from the eternal, side-winding in highs and lows to streak past or through her. First one, then a handful, then a dozen. The voices remained nonsensical until slithering past her ear or tingling her essence as they stroked her soul, and it was in those flickers of reality she heard the questions.

Who are you?

What is your name?

Why are you here?

Go home.

Are you one of us?

Fade to nothing.

Terror. She wanted to flee. To run, to hide, to bury her face in down-stuffed pillows and cry until mother came to soothe her fears.

Anger. She wanted to fight. To punch, to kick, to rip into the empty universe and shred the voices until their dying sounds soothed her spite.

Understanding. Neither remained a possibility. The remnants of the mortal form haunting her held no hope. She needed to answer the questions or fade into the emptiness as a withering wraith.

My name is Poleen Juvukis, and I am dead.

Ritualized words, preached to her since the Reagent’s Blessing, alerted the Listening Gods so they could pass judgment and enable the Saints to lead her to Bliss. Scattered energy tingled through her essence, but there were voids, faded gashes as if her soul lacked slivers of herself. A second voice rippled the cosmos and sounded much the same as her own.

I know my name not, and I refuse to die.

It confounded her wits, but the flow of tingles surged to fill the emptiness in her haunting sensation of self.

Her certainty of identity quivered and faded, and if she had hands and arms, she’d strain and reach to recapture the memory, but she hovered without form.

Panic.

If she forgot her name, couldn’t answer the whispers, she’d never reach Bliss. Who am I? I must remember. She lacked a heartbeat to count time. My name is Poleen Juvikus, and I am dead.

Her other voice said, Coward.

The word pricked her mortal pride, and Poleen’s vision stared into herself; a vague reflection stared back with predatory eyes. Who are I?

You are the doe wide-eyed and done running; I am the you who feigns fear to feast.

A reverberation shook this universe, a distant but powerful rumble—the beat of a heart. Impossible to tell if it was the seminal beat of birth or the final rumble of mortality; her eyes followed the echoes, and her soul followed.

Her first sense of consciousness was hearing, the voice of a man and the patter of rain on leaves, followed by odor: mildew and loam. The scent of forest floor invaded her nostrils, but there too was acrid sweat and a whiff of whiskey. At first, the words made no sense, garbled and foreign, but as her mind cleared, they faded into understanding.

“The Berjer ain’t payin’ neither of us to shank the lady. We got two to bury.”

“We done hanged her all legal like, what the hell do you care what I do to a dead’un? Take the boy if you like.” Mocking laughter followed, and fabric ripped nearby. “Nice tits, this one. Too bad she’s dead, eh?”

Steps moved away, and a man spat. “Blind the Saints to your soul as you like. I ain’t having no part of it.”

The closer man grunted, and threads split again, but this time her body lifted and dropped to the ground. The girl they spoke of was her; only she wasn’t dead. Sensations of flesh returned, drips of rain on her naked skin, the peculiar position of her head; the noose broke her neck, paralyzed her, and they assumed her dead.

Pain erupted through her vertebrae, and a crunch crackled ear to ear, resounding through her skull and shivering her spine. The agony dissipated into relief, a sense of reconstruction. A finger twitched, and her heart beat for the first time she remembered. She couldn’t even recall her name, but such questions would wait. Her eyes fluttered open to a lantern hanging from a swaying branch, lighting a glade surrounded by a dense growth of trees with waves of light and darkness.

She wiggled her fingers while clenching the muscles in her arms and shoulders. Strength returned, and despite not having claws, she had nails.

The man shifted her feet, spread her legs, and his heavy breaths huffed as he lowered himself over her. The stink of his breath warmed her cheek, and she turned to stare into the shadowed face of her would-be murderer and raper. “I am no doe.” She couldn’t see his eyes in the dark as he lurched back, but she smelled the man’s terror before her fingers struck, popping gelatin and curling inside his skull to grab his cheekbones.

The raper screamed, and she heaved her body, rolling him to the side and throwing herself to straddle him. Her shoulders wrenched with a strength given by the will to survive, twisting and lifting the head with a pop that echoed through her humanity. Resistance disappeared in an instant; only twitching limbs remained to prove he’d once been alive. Her fingers slid from his skull, and she gazed at his bearded face in the lantern’s light. She didn’t recognize him. Either her empty memory forgot him, or a man she'd never met tried to kill her.

Her fingers twitched with the rush of adrenaline, her breath sucked a dribble of saliva from her lips, and her muscles bunched, ready to fight with huffing breaths. She’d killed a man, and staring into his dead, bloodied eyes brought no remorse. She should feel something other than a sweaty chill of excitement as the last trembles left his body, but she didn’t. She jerked straight, horrified more by the nothingness inside her than by the life she’d taken. Snapping the man’s neck was easy, second nature. Maybe she’d killed a hundred men.

Maybe she deserved to die in these woods.

“Coward.” The word came from her lips unbidden, but its utterance washed away the stains of guilt and regret. She stood, stumbling a step on wobbly legs before shedding the remnants of her torn dress, then gazed at her blood-streaked nakedness, her breasts and legs, calf-high leather boots drawn tight with crisscrossing strings. Everything was so alien. How could she be unknown to herself? Who am I? I need to know. A name. A history. A sense of self more than the swirling emptiness of questions.

She saw him then, a lump of darkness that might have been a hollowed-out, rotten log for all her eyes discerned in the gloom, but her heart wrenched, and bile rose. Numb steps carried her strides before her knees gave, collapsing her to the soggy turf to crawl the final feet. She threw her arms over him, clutching and shaking. “Benê! No, no, no. I’m not dead, Benê. You can’t be dead, either. You can’t be. Saints, no! Come back, Be—“

Leaves scattered with a rustle as a man trotted into the clearing and slid to a stop. His eyes locked with hers, and he blanched. “Unholy mercies.” He bolted into the dark woods, and she stared at his trail with tear-blurred eyes. Fists clenched, tears dried and disappeared with a swipe, and rushing breaths puffed through her nose as her lips curled into a snarl. A scream ripped from her lungs, given the strength of every tensioned muscle in her body and the blood fever of her soul, and with a predator’s instinct, she scrambled to her feet and gave chase. Her first steps came unsteady and weak, but within flickers, she raced with heat surging through her thighs, muscles in perfect harmony, strides light, her toes rustling the leaves where the man’s feet thundered the turf.

Her body carried her into the soothing immediacy of the now, of the hunt, of the game between predator and prey, where senses heightened and the mind trained on the singularity of the next kill. She tore through underbrush and any branch daring a swipe at her face, a creature, a beast, a monster, a human with a single thought echoing in her consciousness: You killed my brother.

The light of the half moon through trees left her prey hidden except for glimpses, but she could hear his pounding feet, and his heavy breaths gasped louder as she closed on her target. Within strides she spotted him, flashing in the moon’s light where the trees thinned, and she sped until driving her hands into his back, sprawling him into underbrush and a tree with a crunching crack.

She leaped onto the man’s back and dug a finger into each eye, yanking his head back hard enough to make him scream. She took three controlled breaths and spoke. “Why did you try to kill me? Why did you kill Benê!”

“You were dead!”

“And my brother still is! Why?”

“The Berjer tê Aprelêu. It was his man who hired us. Hang the thieving witch, all he said.”

If she'd indeed been dead, maybe she was a witch. “Who is this Berjer, and why’d he want us dead?” She pressed her fingers deeper against his eyes. “Who am I?”

“Poleen, that’s your name.” The name perplexed her, familiar as if from a dream. How much silver had Poleen’s life been worth? The man’s blubbering went on. “But I don’t know you nor yer brother. He didn’t say nothin’. His footman slipped us a handful of coins. But I didn’t do no hangin’! I wouldn’t a hanged no boy, neither. Nor a pretty miss, I swear it.”

She wanted to believe his professed innocence, a part of her wanting to spare the man while clutching fingers wanted nothing less than to shred his throat. “Where’re the coins?”

“M’ pouch. On my belt.”

“You'd best hope he paid you enough to make me believe you.”

The man’s breaths labored as her nails scratched his lids. “But yer alive, miss.”

“And my brother isn’t.” She crossed her arms, gripping his head by back and face, then twisted with cracks of bone and sinew until he looked her in the eyes a second time. She blinked into his dimming eyes, unnerved but unsurprised by this thing she had done. Her head cocked, breathing easier with every rise and fall of her chest until she no longer cared for the life taken and only admired the deftness of the kill. “I never imagined killing a man so easy.” She patted him on the head, worked the knot of the pouch free from his belt, and stood, hefting his earnings with a shake. It was light, but if pure silver, she figured the Berjer wanted her dead in a valuable way.

She huffed, upset at herself for killing him without more answers, and regretted her burst of temper. She didn’t even know if the two men were alone. Still, she had two names, her own and that of the man who wanted her dead.

She backtracked the chase through the woods, found the raper’s body, and rummaged his gear. She claimed a dagger and another pouch, then tried on the man’s coat, but it reeked of liquor-sweat and onions. Her dress lay tattered and soaked in the mud, but she couldn’t bring herself to wear the filthy jacket.

She leaned to stare into the sky to keep her eyes from her brother. If these men intended to bury them, they might have a shovel nearby. If these men had friends, she had no time to dig. She fought tears and plunged the heels of her palms into her eyes, pressing hard. Benê’s coat would be clean…

She sobbed and stumbled forward, flailing her arms as a raspy breath escaped her lips instead of a scream. “I can’t. I won’t.” She stared at the forest’s canopy and breathed.

A mist cooled her naked skin into pimples, and a light breeze blew, but it was comfortable enough. Naked felt natural anyhow; it was the boots that felt awkward. What do I care for warmth? Get a hold of yourself. She turned her back on her brother and, a dozen controlled breaths later, opened the raper’s pouch beneath the lantern’s light and groaned. The man was a lousy assassin and worked for a pittance. Dull bronze coins shone in the light, little more than enough to replace her dress if she guessed right. If their lives were worth so little, why want them dead at all? Because she was a witch or a thief?

She lifted the lantern from the branch and turned a circle, looking past the bodies for a familiar landmark to guide her from this place. “Tree, tree, tree, and another, very helpful.”

The distant howl of wolves reminded her of how alone she was and how vulnerable. She’d taken these men with surprise as her ally, but a pack of wolves or a lone bear would make a meal of her if their bellies were empty. Lost in dark woods, wandering might be the death of her, but two men wouldn’t have carried a body far without a horse or pack animal. She glanced at the raper’s corpse. Blood would attract predators big and small, so sitting until dawn didn’t make much sense either. Did they carry or drag us? The answer might save her life.

Two side-by-side trails led east, and she imagined the men with their arms under her shoulders, pulling her like a wheelless cart with toes or heels dragging. A second trail overlapped in an uneven pattern, and she snarled when she passed the light over the ground. Two sets of prints in the soft soil bore heels; they belonged to men other than those she killed. I will kill them too.

A gasp and she castigated the wickedness in her thoughts. “I’m no murderer.” But I am a killer. She breathed deep, wishing for tears to wet her cheeks, to prove her humanity, but her eyes remained dry. She licked her lips, calmed the sobbing rhythm of her heart, and ordered her instincts into cohesion. “Dead are dead. I’ve no time to fret like a mewling cub.” Speaking aloud eased her fears and reclaimed her wits. She glanced at the path her dragging feet had made. “I’m not lost, even if I don’t know where I am.”

The trail was her road from here, but it was as apt to lead to danger as refuge. Without memories of herself, let alone these men or more enemies she might have, she needed caution and clothes lest she hand herself naked to the Berjer who wanted her dead.

She exhaled and held chilled, bloody fingers close to the lantern, grateful for its meager warmth, clenching and releasing her fist. It’s good to be alive again. She tied the sash from her dress around her waist; it was enough to cover her hips and adequate to hang a dagger and two pouches from. Satisfied, she took her first steps toward what she hoped was home.