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  Delila’s reserved energy had retreated by the time Monty had finished speaking. “When did you talk to Judge Mullen about this?” she asked him, after remaining silent for few moments.

  “At the sending,” Monty told her, holding the reins of their horse a little tighter than he needed to. “He was really serious, mother. This is a huge opportunity. A rare one.”

  “What’s it an opportunity for, exactly?”

  “To...” Monty searched for the words. “To get in. In the town, in the Commons. To get to a place where I can do more for the family.”

  Monty watched his mother look straight ahead, unspeaking. Was she considering it? Understanding his point of view? Or just thinking of a new way to say no? The silence stretched out as they moved. Terra slept in the cart, exhausted from the day’s work and talking to two dozen travelers.

  Finally, Delila said, “I don’t know why the farm isn’t enough for you, Monty. It’s enough for me. It was enough for your father.”

  Monty said, “He wanted more, too. You know he did. He was too...he had to be there, to carry us along. I’m grateful for it,” he added. “But even today, we sold our harvest quickly. From the sounds of it, the rest should go just as fast. This is a good year for us, even without him. Without dad.”

  His mother didn’t have a response. He wanted her to be supportive, or at least all right with the idea, but he realized now that all his logic couldn’t change what his mother was feeling.

  “I’m going to start next week,” Monty told her. “I’ve already talked to Judge Mullen about it. It won’t be till after we’ve sold our harvest and the shed is cleaned out. He understands.”

  “I am sure that he does,” Delila said, her words measured.

  She was angry; maybe a little hurt. Monty resisted the urge to apologize. It wasn’t her place to dictate his life anymore. He was nineteen, and he’d be twenty when the winter was over. It was time for him to be the one telling his mother what he was doing. It wasn’t as though he were abandoning the family forever.

  There was no more talk of the job, the harvest, or anything else before they got back home. Delila took Terra out of the cart, carrying her back to the house in her arms while the girl slept, undisturbed.

  Monty loaded the cart for the next day and tried not to think about the look on his mother’s face.

  13

  The more complex the plan, the more steps involved in its execution, and the more ways it could go wrong. That was what ultimately made it most satisfying as things clicked into place.

  Elrich slid Monty’s paperwork into one of the many drawers on his desk after the boy had left. That was one thing taken care of.

  He was fairly certain that the Bellamy boy would have done the job for free, but the pittance of coin he’d be getting would ensure his loyalty, and his effort. All else aside, the Judge was in need of a competent courier.

  Which brought up the next matter, and it was only a few minutes before said issue was knocking at his door. This time, when he drew himself out of his chair and around his desk, he did it with a smile.

  “Remind me,” he said as he opened the door and greeted the young courier with a toothy smile, “what was your name again?”

  “Rod—Rodney, your Honor.” The twig-skinny, brown-haired recruit courier had his head lowered, like he was afraid to look up and see the Judge’s face.

  “Rod Rodney,” Elrich repeated, and before the boy could correct him, he said, “if you’re not too busy, I’d like you to come in to my office for a spell, please. Have a seat, right there before the desk.”

  There was no option for refusal. Elrich simply stood aside the door until the squire shuffled his way inside, and then he closed the door and watched him approach the chair. The boy was so skinny and ungainly that Elrich half-expected to hear the child’s bones knocking together as he walked.

  Elrich waited, back to the closed door, until his guest was seated. He stood silent and stared at the back of the lad’s head. How long would he sit there, waiting for the Judge, before he got up the nerve in his air-filled head to turn around and wonder where his master was, why he was making him wait? It would be terribly rude, to turn around and stare as if to hurry along the Judge of Irisa. He would never have the heart. No, the boy would sit there, fidgeting, until he pissed himself in his chair.

  Elrich might have waited for that if he didn’t have other things to do today. As it was, he was content to watch the boy squirm for half a minute before he took measured, deliberate steps toward the desk.

  Before sitting, Elrich narrowed the window slats, casting the room in a dim pallor. The dark wood soaked up the light, and Elrich was framed by the shuttered window, short but broad, his silver hair blackened.

  He sat down and did his best to prevent a smile from curling up the corners of his lips. He managed it, but it was a close thing.

  “Rodney,” he began. “Now that I recall your name, I remember the reason you were brought on. You’re the son of Rodney Talhauer, the chief builder. Which makes you Rodney, Junior—am I right about that?”

  “Yes. Yes sir, Judge Mullen.” Rodney’s voice was tiny like his arms, but shakier. Elrich though the boy might be absorbed into the chair.

  “And here I’d thought my judgment was slipping,” Elrich said, and now the grin was coming out. “But that’s not it at all. It’s just good, old-fashioned nepotism.”

  The courier clearly didn’t know what to say to that; his mouth just hung open slightly, his eyes darting around the Judge’s, waiting for what he had to say next.

  “It would have been nice for your father to let me know you were close to useless before I went ahead and signed you on,” Elrich said to the boy. “Lesson learned, there. I’ll have to be having a talk with him, too.”

  “Sir—Judge—what do you mean?”

  “Quiet.” Elrich learned forward, resting his arms on the desk. This wasn’t as fun with someone who didn’t understand. What exactly was happening in this child’s head? The wonder was fleeting, for he didn’t truly care to know.

  “As of today, your duties as courier have been absolved. You have been replaced.” He leaned further across the desk, getting as close as he could to the boy without standing from his chair. “And while this does serve to benefit me regardless, believe me when I say that you will not be missed. Every half-second I’ve seen you dawdle at my doorway has been hell. You’ve made my life much harder than it needs to be in just the few weeks I’ve suffered your employ, and the fleeting relief of this conversation is diminished by the need for me to do even more paperwork to make it final. The fact that this will be the last time I ever write your name brings me joy so grand that I can’t properly express it to you. Not due to any pitfall of my own, but rather your inability to comprehend even the simplest subject or command that involves anything beyond putting a sheet of paper under someone’s...fucking...door.”

  Elrich reclined. By the end of his tirade, the tear-streaked boy was so small in the chair that he might have been trying to escape through back of it.

  “Get out,” he said, intertwining his fingers and resting them on the small paunch that was usually hidden by his robes.

  The former squire was quick to stand, jerking out of the chair and tumbling to his knees before the desk. Elrich suppressed a laugh as the gangly boy stumbled to his feet, then made quick paces across the sleek floor of the office, grabbing at the door handle like he was drowning.

  As he opened the door a narrow crack to slip through, Elrich said, “Wait, boy.”

  Rodney stopped, halfway out of the room. He slipped back in, still looking stricken, but with a tiny glimmer of hope lighting his eyes. “Yes, sir?”

  “I’d almost forgotten.” Elrich rapped his knuckles on his desk. “You came here to deliver a message, didn’t you?”

  Fitting, of course, that the boy would forget his duty in the first place. He’d like berate him further, but he needed whatever information the boy had managed to carry here.
>
  “Oh. Oh, right.” Rodney frowned. “Doctor Tobias, he—he wants to come and see you. He said he wants to talk to you about Mrs—er, Audrey Kettle. I told him he could come to your office once I got back to him.”

  “Then get back to him,” Elrich said, annoyed at the prospect of the future interruption. “And close the door on your way out.”

  Elrich watched that small glimmer leave the boy; his posture slumped again; his head went down. Then he was gone, and the door was shut good and tight.

  Dr. Tobias. Elrich had at first respected the doctor, when he first arrived in Irisa as the new town Judge. Dr. Tobias was old, and he was fairly short, himself, especially because he suffered from a bad back that kept him bowed over most of the time. Still, the man tottered about town at a good pace, visiting people and carrying his worn, scuffed brown leather bag that he claimed was older than he was.

  Over the years, however, the man had become a nuisance, at first shaking the boat by recommending a remedy for Elrich’s gray hair, and then insisting that the Judge be along for most of his home visits. Why the hell would people want the Judge at their home when they were lying in bed, sick? They’d think they were about to be delivered their rites.

  Elrich had shouted as much at the doctor when he’d pestered him for the third or fourth time about coming on a home visit, but frustratingly enough, the anger seemed to slide right off of him. That was the worst of it all. Dr. Tobias was a generally cheery fellow. Just the sight of him made Elrich’s stomach give a twinge.

  Knock, knock, knock-knock-knock-knock.

  Even the man’s knock chafed at Elrich’s nerves. Luckily for the doctor, Elrich had just had a chance to release a bit of his frustration. Once again, he stood from his desk and walked over to the door. Paused to take a breath. Closed his eyes. Then opened them and grasped the handle.

  “Doctor,” Elrich said with a smile, pulling the door open wide. Tobias was hunched over, per usual. His hair was wispy on the top and gray on the sides, with wrinkles pitting his face and a stringy beard dangling from his chin and cheeks. His clothes, as always, were clean and tidy, if loose-fitting.

  “Good afternoon, Judge Mullen,” Doctor Tobias said. “May I come in and sit with you?”

  “Certainly.” If you must.

  Elrich withdrew, letting the man pass and shutting the door, wishing briefly that his office were only accessible via a hatch in the floor. He moved swiftly to his desk and sat down. “Rodney, the courier—he tells me you have news about Audrey Mullen?”

  Tobias nodded, his wispy beard moving in delayed fashion. His body may have been bowed, but his voice was strong and quick. “I visited her today. The woman’s been in bed since her mother died, saints save her soul. The family thought it was unusual. I told Henry that it’s likely just the grief of—”

  “Right,” Elrich cut in. “She needs time.”

  “Aye.” Tobias cleared his throat, a wet and appalling sound. “So I thought. But Henry insisted that I come have a look. The children are in tatters about the whole affair. So I did.” Tobias’s mouth tightened, his eyes growing more misty than usual. “I did not have the chance to see Dorella’s corpse. She died quickly and she was sent quickly. Henry told me what he saw, something you can corroborate, I’m sure, Judge. That she was shriveled and blackened, like she’d been burned over a spit. All the meat was gone from her bones. Her body was unnaturally positioned. Yes?”

  The memory of that morning came to Elrich easily; it was still fresh, and it was not an image that disappeared on its own. Ma Kettle uncovered and naked. Audrey screaming that her soul was gone. Her body nothing but a husk, the hair all fallen from her scalp.

  “Yes,” he said. “That is accurate.”

  Tobias chewed on his lip, another unsightly habit the man presented regardless of his company. “I’ve never seen something like that, in all my years. Even when that fungus swept up on Gerrich’s farm and family.”

  That was not a family Elrich knew of. He assumed they had died. “What of Audrey?” Elrich inquired, moving the old man along to the point.

  “Mm. She’s certainly unwell. Awake, but lethargic. She spoke to me, but she sounded as though she had just woken up, or was speaking in her sleep. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t looking at me or anything in particular.”

  Enrich waited with thinning patience for Tobias to get to the point.

  “At first glance I would assume one of the winter illnesses, but she hasn’t vomited or been in other distress...”

  Elrich folded his hands on the desk, wondering if the doctor could see the fury behind his eyes while the mad rambled about a myriad of symptoms that Audrey Kettle was not exhibiting. Tobias’s insistence on departing his entire knowledge of human illness on Elrich showed no signs of stopping, so he interrupted.

  “Tobias.” He let his fingers relax, the blood flowing back into them. “I’ve got...I have some other appointments. What are you trying to tell me about the woman?”

  “Yes, right...well, Judge, I fear that she may have caught the same sickness her mother came down with,” Tobias said.

  “Do you.”

  “Most of her symptoms are not uncommon, but they don’t lead me to any diagnosis. This lack of energy could be caused by many things. But she also has graying of the hair, and sometimes she is short in breath.”

  Elrich could have pointed out that Dr. Tobias himself exhibited those things, but instead he said, “And your concern is...?”

  “That it may spread!”

  “There are six other family members in that house. I was there, myself. Have any of them been acting this way?”

  “No, they have not,” Tobias said, shifting in his chair, “but it could only be a matter of time.”

  “I’m no doctor,” Elrich continued, “but if this were some dangerously contagious illness, I would think it would have spread to the rest of the family if it were going to spread at all. Spare your concern of that matter. Focus on treating the woman, and whomever else needs your care. And to be clear—I do not want anyone in my village thinking they’re going to fall ill just because the oldest woman here has passed. Do you understand?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to incite any sort of panic among the people,” Tobias agreed, needling Elrich with his upbeat tone. “I will keep an eye on how Audrey does and I’ll let you be the first to know if there are further developments with any...contagion.”

  “Please do,” Elrich said dryly. He relaxed his fingers and pulled his arms back to his lap. “Is that all, doctor?”

  Tobias thanked the Judge for seeing him on such short notice (You mean no notice, Elrich thought) and started to stand from his chair, but stopped short.

  “Oh, I’d almost forgotten, Judge,” Tobias said, chuckling to himself. “One last thing...”

  Thunder roared inside Elrich as the doctor reached inside of his jacket. If Tobias was about to tell him of another sick villager, he would force the old man through the small opening beneath the door.

  “Young Rodney gave this to me when he returned from your office.” Tobias pulled a wax-sealed scroll from his cloak and set it down on the desk. “He told me he was too busy to run it back, but truth be told, he looked an awful mess, scared and maybe a bit tear-wet, if I saw it right...”

  The scroll on the desk was sealed with the kingdom’s crest. Tobias’s words fell dead on Elrich’s ears as he looked at the small document. For what reason would the kingdom send a missive? Was it orders? A request to move to another town? The latter had never sounded sweeter, Dromm farms and Delila Bellamy be damned.

  “...talk to him for you, you Honor?”

  Elrich blinked, bringing his eyes back to Tobias, who, for some reason, was still there. “What?”

  “I said, do you want me to talk to him for you? Rodney?”

  “I have talked to Rodney plenty.” Elrich grabbed the scroll from the glossy wood of the desk, running his thumb over the wax seal. “That is all. I really must attend to this message, now.�
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  “Of course.” A nod, a few steps; at last, the doctor was gone.

  The moment his door was closed, Elrich broke the scroll’s seal and unfurled it. The red wax crumbled and tumbled down the desk, where he swept it to the floor with his forearm before laying the paper down on the surface.

  Elrich read it fast, his excitement running from a boil down to a simmer, and then souring inside him as he reached the end.

  “Absolutely not,” he muttered, reading it over once more. “Absolutely not. Absolutely not.” He repeated the words to himself even as he cast the letter aside and pulled out parchment of his own. The first pen he grabbed from his desk drawer, he flung across the room. The nib had broken off, probably from the last time he had tossed it in there. He took a second pen and dipped it in the inkwell, tapping it on the side. Clink-clink-clink.

  The words he let spill aloud didn’t exactly match his writing, but they were in the spirit of the return message. “I do not...need...a gods-be-damned...assistant...Judge...in MY town!” His pen blackened the page, furious in execution but courteous in result. “No...no, no, no...I refuse your...very kind...offer...of assistance...you arrogant, squirmy little ferret...”

  The unwritten insult was directed toward the king’s residential advisor, the writer of the scroll, and a man who outranked Elrich Mullen by about four degrees and many thousands of constituents. Elrich set his own page aside to dry, his wet signature blanketing the bottom of the sheet.

  The advisor’s message was not a mandate—not yet. It was an offer to allow him to appoint an assistant Judge in the town from the list of candidates the advisor had been so kind to include. A list of people he owed favors to for pushing him this far up the ladder, Elrich surmised, because none of the names he recognized on the list carried any merit with them.

  If they were trying to push an assistant Judge on him, it wouldn’t be long before he didn’t have a choice in the matter. But once he owned most of the land here, once Irisa was, in fact, his...well, then the kingdom couldn’t do anything short of starting a war to get their own men sitting in the town’s official chairs.