Cutter trudged through the snow, toward his house on the outskirts of the village. Some of the doors of the houses he passed had been latched tight, as if to keep what was coming out. Others had been thrown wide, as if by inviting him in, Death might be swayed to let them pass. But there was no lock strong enough to keep death out, and he was never swayed. That much, Cutter knew. That much, he had learned long ago.
At the base of many of the houses, offerings had been lain. Fruits and vegetables—poor, wretched looking things compared to their counterparts in the warmer climates of the south. Food that, the day before, the people of the village would have desperately needed, but tomorrow their thoughts would not be on food or the lack, for the dead had no thoughts or, if they did, they were dark ones. Still, he understood.
Each dealt with his coming death in his own way, the only way he knew how. One was not any better than the other, was only a way of making it to the end. True, the Fey had responded to such offerings once—the sprites and pixies mostly, but sometimes their greater kin. Yet, that had been a long ago, before the war. And even before that, the creatures had always been fickle things, as liable to be offended as grateful, and in either case largely irrelevant. Not that it mattered. The Fey would not show up to accept such offerings, even if they’d had a mind.
They had been driven back, back to the heart of their territory, the Black Wood, and even this close, even on this snow-swept wilderness of a village, they would not risk showing themselves. They had once, had come to greet Cutter and his people with open hands, open talons, and they had not been welcomed kindly. Cutter knew that better than most, for he had been one of those in charge of that welcome, one of blood and steel and death. And betrayal.
Finally, he reached his house. Here, there were no desperate shouts of men and women making what preparations they could, preparations that would, in the end, be pointless. No horses neighed, no children cried for reasons they did not know, only because their parents were afraid. It was only him, and his house, far enough away from the village, far enough away from life that he never had to live it.
It was cold inside. He had not bothered to set a fire when he returned, knowing that he would not be staying. Fifteen years he had lived here, yet now, looking around the small room with the simple, coarse mattress, and a table at which sat a single chair, the chest in the corner, it looked like a stranger’s home. It could have belonged to anyone or no one, a place that might have been abandoned years ago, the only proof of life a tin bowl sitting on the table where he’d yet to clean it. It would go uncleaned, that bowl, and he thought that was a shame. A small shame, really, in a day of great ones, but a shame nonetheless.
He realized, gazing at that emptiness, that he was not even sure why he had come back. There was nothing here for him, not in this house and not in this village. There never had been. Nothing in life, either, as far as that went. Just emptiness and more of the same. But he could escape that emptiness easily enough. He could walk to the chair, could sit, perhaps clean the bowl. He could not fix the things he had done in his past, but the bowl he could fix. It was tempting, that thought, to sit and be at ease, to wait for the fate which had stalked him for fifteen years, the fate which he had earned many times over, to find him.
Tempting, yes, but it, like the knife, was no more than a game. For as much as he might like the idea of having it all over, of letting it end, he knew he would not. There was still one reason to carry on, to fight. The boy. The same reason which had kept the knife’s edge at bay for the last fifteen years. Cutter let out a heavy sigh and moved toward the chest, kneeling before it. He reached for the latch then hesitated.
He had reached for the latch many times over the years, had hesitated many times. But each time, he had taken his hand away, deciding that what secrets the chest held were best left locked away, hoping that by remaining so, they would also keep, hidden in the confines of the chest, the past from which they came. They hadn’t, though. Some pasts, some scars, never healed, not truly. But if he did not open it this time, there would be no other. For whatever happened, he knew that he would never see Brighton again. If, that was, it existed at all after the night’s work was done, and he doubted that very much.
With a slowness borne not out of reverence but of nervousness, he removed the key he kept on a leather thong around his neck, fitting it into the lock. As he did, he entertained a brief hope that, after so many years, it would not fit, that the key or the lock or both would have degraded, rendering them unusable. But they had not, and the key fit as smoothly as
