Plague: After the Water
by M. Frost
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
The Falling River, they call it, cascading down from three mountain ranges. I’ve seen the root that rests in Purple Hills. You can cross it there, gray and clogged, barely kin to the slow black monster to my right.
We’re in a narrow, rocky zone between the wall and the water. I have to watch my step for fear of twisting my ankle on the uneven ground. I almost miss the turn he makes into what looks like a crack under the next bridge that turns out to be a man-made cleft and stairs that wind up into darkness. I go mostly by feel, the air thick with moisture. It dumps me into another alley. I hear a door shut to my left.
I’ve seen a hundred of these buildings in the Facing Cities: tall, wooden, ready to fall over anytime. The upper stories cut off most of the stars, but there is light from the upper windows. I can’t follow Jolic in. If he’s on courier duty, I could ruin his mission. But you know me, I’m can’t just sit around in this rank alley waiting for him. So I look around. Wall to ledge: I see my route up and take it.
I have to be careful because the ledge is narrow. I end up facing out toward the alley, legs dangling, hunched right next to the window where I can hear the conversation through the cracked and dirty panes. It’s tough to hear, but I’ve had a lot of practice. My ears open when I close my eyes.
A woman’s voice. “Did you deliver it?”
Jolic is as cocky as ever. “Of course.”
“No one saw you?”
“No one.”
A man, Jendarthi by the accent. “Their so-called plague should get worse shortly as we promised the mayor it would, yes, right in the middle of their trade season. They should cave quickly to our demands.”
The woman again. “Jolic, my sweet, you’ve done well.”
The sound of coins.
I can hear my breath and I concentrate on slowing down my lungs. What kind of stuff does the Wolflord have Jolic working on now? Some plot to blackmail the governor of the city? I never figured him to be mixed up in stuff like that.
The woman again. “Are you ready for the next phase?”
Jolic, still cocky. “Of course.”
The Jendarthi, with the sound of something moved from the table, something in a sack. “For your...” — he hesitates — “employer, if you will. We want them all eliminated.”
A pause.
The woman. “You are up to this, are you not? We’re paying you well.”
The sound of coins clinking. “Nothing until the job is done, not this time.”
Jolic, not as cocky. “The Wolflord and his brother? All of them?”
The Jendarthi, irritated. “How hard is it to slip this into the food, the wine? The well was easy enough, wasn’t it?”
The woman, like a serpent. “You do want this, do you not? I must have your complete loyalty.”
Something prickles in my skin and I know its not just nerves. Mage lady, I think.
Jolic. “No, I can do it.”
The woman, after another pause. “While we’re talking about them, what did you say they’re called? The Wolves, wasn’t it? Tell me, was there a woman with them, scarred all over? Her hair would be white, I think.”
Jolic sounds uncertain. “Sorrow?”
The woman replies. “Is that what she calls herself now? Interesting.”
I want to scream. I try to think of all the ways Jolic might not be betraying us: he is under some spell, he is working as a double agent to trap the mage lady for the Wolflord, he... My mind spins out, and I feel I am losing my balance. I grip the ledge.
I must have made some noise, because the woman stops, quiet as death, then the window slams open. The Jendarthi locks eyes with me. I scurry away, but he calls down to guards who appear out of doors below. A hand reaches out of the dark and drags me, kicking and biting, toward the door.
I am sure now the lady is a mage. No candles in this room. It glows softly with light, but I cannot see the source. The man behind me presses down, pinching my neck with his fingers. I sag to the floor, but he pulls my hair so that I look up at her. Black hair, yellow dress with points of jet. I’ve never seen fabric so rich.
She frowns. “Your name?”
I feel the weight of her words suffocating me. I open my mouth for air, but what comes out is an exhale. “Berkis.”
“He’s one of the Wolves,” Jolic offers flatly.
I want to punch him. I want to kick him. I want to wrap my fingers around his neck.
“You know him well?” The mage lady’s voice is sharp.
Jolic looks down. “Well enough.”
He doesn’t catch my eyes.
“You’d like me to spare him,” she says almost sweetly with genuine surprise. She raises a gloved hand to Jolic’s cheek. “You’d want me to turn him, convince him he should help us?”
He nods then, silent.
I’m so angry I don’t know what to do with myself. I bite the guard’s hand, but all I get is a cuff that sends me reeling.
She is there, her eyes turning me inside out, staring into my soul. “No. Jolic, I’m sorry. He would take too long to turn. Too much loyalty to his kind, wolf pup that he is.” She stands, smooths her dress. “You have a problem with this?”
Jolic does not meet her eyes or mine. “No.”
A cup. A pinch out of the bag. No plague, but poison designed to resemble it. I didn’t know magic could work that way. I didn’t know how easy it was to die.
I didn’t know a lot of things.
* * *
They dump my body inside the quarantine zone. I follow it dumbly, dazed by the way the pain stopped, the horrible bone-numbing shudders coming to sudden conclusion. I can see the dark welts on my own cheeks spreading like pooled blood. My own eyes frighten me, stare right at me, focused and narrow.
After a while, what they’re planning hits me again, and all I can think about is Sorrow.
Jolic is going to kill Sorrow. Jolic is going to kill the Wolflord and Vera and Piern, all the Wolves.
I want to cry or scream, but my body lies there, stiff as stone, and no one else can hear my words.
I don’t know why. I feel the call and can’t go. I stand there over my body, chewing fingernails that taste like nothing, scuffing shoes that aren’t shoes any more. Here I am, stupid with death. Some scout.
Just as the eastern sky begins to haze with the first thoughts of dawn, she finds me. I knew she would. I trusted she would, the way I trusted her when she shied away from the well and muttered that she’d prefer the wine. She knew even then.
I see her before she spots my body, her bow out, her cheeks drawn. She looks like she’s been searching all night. I feel so guilty. I should have told her I was leaving, that I had seen Jolic. Then she would know enough to suspect. For her, I’ll just be another soul dead of the plague, not the warning of treachery I should be.
She turns over my corpse, wrenches those staring eyes away from me. I’m almost relieved.
“Oh no. Berk.” Her voice is soft. I could wrap myself in that voice, repeating my name.
Then she does something I never expected. She drops her bow, sags down onto the dirty stone, cradles my head in her arms. I wish I wasn’t dead to be held by those arms.
“Berk, gods above, why did you drink the water? You knew not to drink it.”
“But I didn’t drink it,” I say, feeling oddly defensive. I don’t want that to be her last impression of me. “Not by choice,” I add, feeling absurd. A ghost talking to himself.
Her head snaps up. Her mouth sags open. She looks at me. Not at the blank eyes inside the body in her lap, but at me, who should be invisible to her.
“Berk?” I’ve never heard her sound afraid.
I stumble back, gasp her name. I don’t know what to say.
She closes her eyes, opens them again. She whispers. “This isn’t a dream.”
“You can see me?”
Sorrow won’t take her eyes off me now, as if she’s worried that if she closes her eyes again, she’ll lose me. “What happened?” she asks, her voice shaking.
I tell her. Stumbling through Jolic’s treachery, I tell her. Hissing about the mage lady, I tell her. Drowning in the poison, I tell her.
When I’m done, she sets my body down softly on the cobblestones, picks up her bow. Her haunted eyes meet mine. “Show me.”
I lose her a few times, walking through gates I can’t open for her. Slipping ahead like fog, I have to wait. But looking back, I think she’s faster than I expected, and quiet too, real quiet. I warn her as we get close to the leaning building. I’m the perfect scout. I point out each guard. Her bow is almost silent. They die more quickly than I did.
Inside the building, I worry. The light outside brightens, but the second floor seems darker than I remember. I walk through the unopened door. Jolic. The Jendarthi. The mage lady. Gone.
Sorrow searches, too, but I know they’ve left. It’s as if I can feel the curse of the poison pulling farther and farther away from me.
She’s half-mad, tearing the building apart, trying to find them. I come through a wall to see her hurl a chair into splinters. She turns and throws another. It sails right through me. Any other day, I would have been amazed. Now I just step towards her, defeated.
Finally, she stops, breathing hard. “They were here.” She curses, “May the gods give them a thousand deaths.” She turns from wall to wall, muttering to herself. “A thousand deaths, all of them at my hands.” She’s facing south now, toward Jendarth.
I think of the brown-haired traitor I thought was my friend riding in the opposite direction toward the Wolves’ camp. I say, “Sorrow, what about Jolic?”
Her shoulders sag. “The League. That mage, she’s one of the League, I know it.”
“Sorrow,” I implore. I’m getting desperate, thinking of the Wolflord and Vera, all of them.
“I know!” She almost shouts and I realize she’s close to tears. She picks up another chair. Her hands are shaking. She sets it down and takes a deep breath, leaning into the wood.
My understanding comes in a rush. Her scars, her magescars. Her hatred of the League. When I put them together, I hear the word vengeance.
“Can you guide me to Jolic?” Her voice is steadier now, her revenge belayed.
“I think so.”
Our mounts are in the quarantine zone, but she has silver. She has gold. She buys the fastest horse she can afford. The guards at the gate aren’t stopping travelers leaving the city. She hits a gallop as she passes the shadow of the wall.
I can fly, but I can’t feel the wind. The sun doesn’t warm me, but I can smell the metallic trail of my death. Wolf pup indeed, I can track the scent of the bag, the murderous bag. The horse she’s riding shies away from me, and Sorrow wrenches its head around, closes her legs into a shot straight as an arrow. She rides in my wake, her mount’s eyes pale with fear, sweat beading its flanks.
Too late, I understand what Vera meant. All I can see are the whites of Sorrow’s eyes. Her hood flies back, her scars burn with the dawn. The hooves of her horse are a war drum.
Jolic never stood a chance. She comes upon him like a whirlwind, pinning him off his horse’s saddle, riding fast at an angle through the trees. He’s stunned, but alive, leg twisted and broken beneath him. If I didn’t know Sorrow well enough, I would have said her aim was off. But she didn’t want him dead.
Her horse stops, kicking up clods, eyes rolling at my presence. She hits the ground. Her horse spooks away but she ignores it. Her hands catch Jolic’s collar.
“Where is it?”
He’s gasping. Her arrow twitches in his shoulder with each breath. “Sorrow! By the gods, what are you doing?”
“Berkis,” she says, twisting my name into a curse.
He pales. “Wh-what happened?”
Her hands tighten. “I am not amused.” She reaches into his jerkin, fishes for a second before pulling out the sack, triumphant.
“How did you know?” He is incredulous, as if he can’t believe what’s happening.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” her words hard, final.
She fumbles for her waterskin, empties the pouch into it.
His eyes turn dark with fear.
He tells her everything he knows: the gold, the deal, the location of the building where I died. She knows all of this already. What he can’t tell her are the names of the Jendarthi or the mage. What he can’t tell her is what she wants desperately to know: where to find them, how to hunt them.
How to bring me back, I think.
She pins him with her knee against his throat. His hands scrabble at her boots. He tries not to swallow.
I turn away.
* * *
They light a fire for me, say Pashtar’s prayer over my body, throw sweetweed onto the shell burning to ashes that once were me.
After she threw what remained of Jolic into the river, I showed Sorrow where to find Galwine and Piern. They helped her smuggle my body out of the city. They never asked how she found out about Jolic, and she never told them how she is able to see me, even now.
I see the sad eyes they lift to Sorrow as they slip away from the dying fire. Sorrow’s true. She stays until the fire sputters to coals. Finally, she drifts down to the creek underneath the trees. I wonder for a moment, then I see Vera haunting the shadows, almost a ghost herself.
I thought the conversation I overheard between Vera and the Wolflord was my secret. But then Sorrow looks away from the water to the mage lady like she’s got something to settle.
“You were right,” Sorrow says without preamble. “You should have gone, not me.”
Vera turns to her, all fatigue and regret. “I didn’t mean it this way.”
Sorrow didn’t even cry over my body. Now her eyes turn bright as she looks down. She whispers low, but I can hear her easily, the way I can hear almost anything now.
“I’ve seen them, Vera. I keep seeing them. In dreams, mostly, but now I see him, in waking day.”
“Berkis?”
I jump a little at hearing the mage lady say my name. Sorrow nods.
Vera — I thought I had her figured — but then she lets Sorrow cry until her shoulder’s damp as the creek.
She never calls Sorrow the ghost, not once after that.
I know. I’ve been counting.
Copyright © 2025 by M. Frost
