A long cut sliced through Cerise’s shirt, swelling with red across her shoulder over her breast. A narrow smile bent Lagar’s lips.
If Lagar won, William would kill him.
The Sheerile took a step forward and fell, as if his legs were cut out from under him. Slowly Cerise slumped next to him in the grass. Lagar gasped, sucking in the air in small shallow bites.
A dark stain, deep red, almost black, spread through Lagar’s robe. Liver blood, tainted with the stench of bile.
“Gods, it hurts,” Lagar whispered.
Cerise picked up his hand and held it.
Lagar’s gut distended, growing like an inflating water balloon. A cut to the aorta or an iliac vessel. Lagar’s stomach was filling with his own blood.
“We … would’ve been good …” Lagar coughed out blood.
Cerise rubbed his hand. “In another time in another life maybe. You hated my father more than you could ever love me.”
“Lucky for you,” Lagar said softly. A convulsion rocked him and he clenched her hand.
“You should’ve left,” she told him. “You always wanted to.”
“False diamonds,” Lagar whispered. “Like swamp lights.”
Another convulsion shook him. He screamed. His eyes rolled back in his skull. Blood poured from his mouth.
His pulse stopped.
Cerise untangled her hand from his. Her face turned flat and cold. “String him up.”
“You’re bleeding,” Richard said. “And grandmother isn’t here to help you.”
“She’s right,” Ignata walked up to them. “Tomorrow will be too late. String him up, Richard.”
He shook his head and walked off.
“What’s going on?” William glanced at Kaldar.
Kaldar grimaced and spat into the grass. “Magic. Old swamp magic.”
TWENTY-TWO
CERISE sat in the grass. The cut on her breast had stopped bleeding. Strangely, it didn’t hurt, not as much as she thought it would have. Her blood always clotted quickly, and she usually got away with a bandage where other people needed stitches.
A few yards away Erian dragged a corpse by its feet onto the growing pile of the dead. He should’ve nursed his wounds, instead of pulling corpses around. Erian turned toward her, flipping the corpse. Excitement lit his eyes, his teeth bared in a rigid grin. He looked deranged, lost in a maniacal glee.
Blood poured from the corpse’s mouth. Erian laughed, his voice bubbling up from his throat.
The delight on his face disturbed her to her core. This wasn’t Erian. Erian was calm and quiet. He didn’t laugh at death. Didn’t revel in it.
The feud was over, Cerise told herself. He’d waited for his revenge for so long it might have driven him a bit unhinged. The Sheeriles were done, and once they cleared the field, Erian would return to his normal self. But she would remember that rigor mortis smile forever.
She sighed and looked at the body he was dragging. The cadaver’s pale head bounced on the ground, and more blood escaped from its mouth. The face seemed familiar … Arig. She almost didn’t recognize him without that leer. Death wiped all expression off his face, and now he seemed just another boy, cut down too early.
Cerise wished she felt something, something other than regret. The Sheerile brothers were dead. The feud was over. She should’ve been celebrating, but instead she felt empty, scraped clean of all emotion. Only regret remained. So many people dead. Such a waste. A waste of people, a waste of life.
If a rock fell from the sky and hit her head, killing her, she wouldn’t care. She was spent anyway.
William dropped on the grass next to her. “It was a good fight.”
“Yes. You slaughtered thirty people single-handedly.”
“I meant you and Lagar.”
Cerise sighed. “If I was my father, the family would follow me anywhere, but I’m not. I had to prove that I was good enough. The next time I may have to lead them against the Hand, and I need them to follow.”
In the center of the clearing the men had strung up Lagar’s body. He hung upright, off a wooden pole, and people piled peat and mud around the base. Three buckets full of mud already waited next to the body. Richard and Kaldar brought a large plastic bin over and set it by the buckets.
William looked at the body. “Why?”
“We’re going to invite a swamp spirit into his body. There are many spirits in the swamp. They used to be Gods, the Old Gods of the Old Tribes who fled into the swamp centuries ago. But the tribes are long gone, and now their Gods are just spirits. There is Gospo Adir, he’s the spirit of life and death. There is Vodar Adir, he’s the spirit of water. I’ll be calling Raste Adir, the spirit of plants.”
“To what end?”
She sighed. “We don’t know where the Hand took my parents or why. We need to find out where they are and what they want. Plants have a lot of vitality. Enough to revive a dead body. The things I’m looking for are locked in Lagar’s brain. He was a careful man. He would have to know what Spider planned to do with my parents, or he would’ve never made a deal with the Hand. Raste Adir will meld with the body and find that knowledge for me.”
“Fusion.” William spat the word as if it were rotten.
“Not exactly. Fusion melds a living human with the plant tissue, smothering the person’s will. Lagar is dead. There is no will left. We just need the information stored in his mind. Don’t look at me like that, William. I’m trying to save my family.”
The disgust slid off his face. “Is it dangerous?”
“Yes. The old magic is starving. If I’m not careful, it will devour me.”
He opened his mouth.
“I have to go now.” Cerise pushed off the ground and strode to Lagar’s body, where Ignata and Catherine waited.
Ignata dumped a bucket of mud over herself. Catherine joined her, holding the bucket, awkward and uneasy. Cerise picked up the third one and emptied it over her head. The cool mud slid over her hair, smelling faintly of rot and water.
“I wish Grandmother was here,” Catherine murmured.
“She can’t,” Ignata said.
“I know, I know. I just … I wish it was over.”
“Me, too,” Cerise murmured.
Catherine stopped. “Why, do you think something will go wrong?”
Cerise almost cursed. “No,” she lied. “Nothing will go wrong. I’m just tired, bloody, and covered in mud. I’d like to get home and sleep, Cath.”
“I think we all would,” Ignata said.
Catherine sighed and poured the mud over herself.
“Let’s just get this over with.”
Cerise popped the lid off the plastic bin. Three bags filled with ash sat inside. She passed two of them to Ignata and Catherine, and kept the third. Fear cringed deep inside her.
Cerise pulled the bag apart and began pouring ash in an even line, drawing a circle around Lagar’s body.
It would’ve been so much easier if Grandma were here, but she wasn’t.
GRANDMOTHER Az took Emily’s face into her hands and held her gently, like she used to do when she was a
