Chapter 1: Trust
“I choose execution.” The pretty redhead said it confidently, despite the tears in her eyes.
“So be it, Ergosi spy! You will be collected in the morning with the others. Rot there!” The ugly fourth son of a Lord pointed to a jail cell pit that looked as cold and deep as it was dark. The woman ducked her head to avoid the top bar and climbed down the splintery ladder.
When sounds above her head clanged with closure and locking, she pressed against a dirt wall and finally sobbed her heart out. The afternoon light turned to night, the pit growing even darker with only a corner illuminated by some far away torch. She ran fingers over her new bandage, covering a zigzagged W scar below her elbow.
She was now branded Wylish. An old word for unwanted, it was a life curse that ended with only two courses if you weren’t nobility or of respected status. As a poor wife of an exiled Wylish merchant, her only options were either a lifetime of unpaid servitude or death.
Sanctioned suicide where her soul could still go to Mother Hemma was favourable to serving the scum of the Wexler city she’d spent her life in, or bowing to soldiers in the neighbouring Ballum’s Fist military camp. But it was her beautiful daughter that had made any decision difficult. If it wasn’t for her husband’s last letter instructing otherwise, she would have stayed and served in order to protect her. Or she wouldn’t have bloody well left their hidden home on market day to begin with!
Alone in the mostly underground cell, she sat in the lightest corner and pulled out a crinkled parchment paper she had read thousands of times. She unfolded it and tilted it to read the ink by the fading light.
***
Dearest Alanna,
This will be my final letter. I hope you can forgive me for that.
On my next trip into Yirdon for supplies, a few of us Wylish men will escape. The positions we have secured these last months as pack mules and porters for the glory-seeking mana beast hunters have given us secret opportunities to connect with a group who will help us.
My love, we will be together again!
While the risk is high, my need for you both and our freedom is higher. Only the fields and forests of Tuco buried in the Iron Steppe will stand between me and your Wexler city walls. It is there among the fearsome mana beasts that I will wait for you.
Alanna, in one year from now, I beg of you to trust me, and pray our daughter forgives me…
***
She inhaled a deep shaky breath, but regretted it when the sting of urine and mold smell burned. Out loud she whispered, “Ok. I’ve trusted you Remy.” She flipped the letter and continued.
***
In one year, go into town and sell my books. There are a couple titles there sure to catch the opinion of a certain Lord Devlin lineage who marked my arm with the same W branding he will force onto you. We are of course innocent like all the others, but he must hide his treason.
I would not ask this of you if I did not know it safe, but my love, choose death instead of service. You will be saved from the noose, I promise you. I have seen their W scars to prove it!
Amy is too young to be branded and will likely fall under orphan care. With any luck she escapes the Wylish curse, and we will write later to call her home. If she is blamed and chooses death, we will be here to receive her.
Until you are in my arms, do not give away our secret as lives beyond our own depend on it.
I will be waiting my Alanna. Be brave.
Forever faithful, your Remy
***
She kissed the paper and refolded it back into her inner dress pocket. She should have burned it with his other letters, but she knew she would need to see the words again to strengthen her slipping resolve.
She thought about their 17 year old daughter Amy, who by now would have been shuffled to live at the orphan house. She would escape an immediate scarred arm by only a couple months, and hopefully would find lodging and work that kept her from the same fate of her parents once she was 18. Away from that scumbag nobody son of Lord Devlin who was the true spy for Ergos.
While Remy hoped she wouldn’t bear the Wylish mark, Alanna knew most kin related by blood to cursed folk were eventually rounded up and shunned from society, through no fault of their own. The thought of her daughter being scarred and having to choose service or execution made her lost to tears for the remainder of the long night. Remy had better be right. And he had better be alive too so she could both kiss and slap him for being right.
In the early morning, she stood with two men in the town courtyard, all together newly carved with their spurned status and tied hands linked together with twine in a chain. She frowned looking at their bandaged forearms, like her own. As she had witnessed at former humiliations, they would all be offered a last chance to wear invisible collars and spend the rest of their days sweeping streets and dodging kicks, instead of following through with death now.
She vowed to remain firm with her husband’s instructions.
As the sunrise started on a faraway hill, she was grateful that there were only a couple spectators to the signing of her death warrant. Then, as sounds of hoofbeats on cobblestone approached, she turned and felt her legs may immediately buckle as a man with a great black beast under him thundered into the courtyard.
Death had arrived.
