Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 27 of 66

Rebecka came down the fissure with the three dolls in her jacket. She could feel them against her ribs. Small weight. Cloth and hair and bone-dust. Each one was her. Each one was a door someone else could open from far away. Makani was waiting in the front chamber with Katia. The old shaman had spread a square of hide on the floor. On it sat a black iron pot with a stir wand laid across the rim. Green runes ran around its belly. Katia stood beside it with her arms folded inside her sleeves. "Sit," Katia said. "Put them down." Rebecka knelt. She laid the three dolls on the hide in a row. They looked like her in the way a shadow looks like a person. Braided hair. A scrap of her old shirt. One had a chip of fingernail pressed into its chest. "Two students left," Rebecka said. "If I burn these, do they feel it?" "They feel the cut," Makani said. "Not the fire. The fire is for you." Katia crouched. Her knees cracked. She touched the doll with the fingernail. "This one is closest. This one has the most of you in it." "Can we do all three at once." "Yes," Katia said. "It will hurt." "I don't care." "You will." Katia met her eyes. "But you should still do it." Makani poured water from a skin into the pot. He added a pinch of ash from a pouch, then a curl of the leather strip Lark had brought back from the ford. The water went dark before it heated. He stirred once with the wand. The runes on the pot brightened. "Name what ties you to them," Makani said. "Same as before. Name it and drop it in." Rebecka looked at the dolls. "They want me afraid. They want me tired. They want me to bargain for my daughter." "Then?" "I don't bargain." She picked up the first doll and dropped it in the pot. "I'm not afraid of you." The second. "I'm not tired enough to stop." The third. "And she is not yours." The water hissed. A cord she had not seen tore loose from her sternum, then another, then another. Her breath went out. She put her palms flat on the stone to keep from falling. Somewhere far off, two people she had never met felt a hook rip out of their hands. She knew it the way she knew a shot was true. The pot went quiet. The dolls were gone. Only dark water remained. "Done," Makani said. Katia put a hand on Rebecka's shoulder. "They know your face now. And they know you cut them." A pause. "Sleep an hour. You've earned it." Rebecka stood. She did not sleep. Two students, unbound, still had her name. But no distant hand could kill her in her chair. The next one would have to come close.