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Chapter 5: The Price of Memory

Chapter 5: The Price of Memory

Rook’s head turned. "Don’t."

The shopkeeper ignored him. "The Brand holds the final imprint. Pain, fear, circumstance. When someone learns to reach into that imprint, they can force a little of their death back into the world."

Mara looked at her wrist. Her Brand was still pale and narrow, little more than a line left by the contract. "So everyone has an ability?"

"Potentially," the shopkeeper said. "Actually using it is another matter. Most people never become Reapers, so the ability remains buried."

"And the frost Reaper?"

"Officer Veyr. Slightly famous, mostly because he talks about himself to anyone trapped within hearing distance. Froze to death near the summit of a mountain. His climbing party abandoned him during a storm. Now he can draw heat from whatever he touches."

Mara remembered frost spreading through the Abomination’s body. "He died from freezing, so he controls cold."

"More or less. Death leaves an impression. Reapers learn to turn that impression into a weapon."

Her fingers moved toward her chest before she could stop them.

The memory waited there.

She could still feel the place where the pain had begun. The last moments returned in broken sensations, pressure, heat, the desperate failure of her breath. Her hand pressed lightly against the fabric covering her chest, and the reluctance to speak must have shown on her face.

The shopkeeper’s expression softened.

Rook noticed as well.

"Don’t bother," he said.

Mara lowered her hand. "I didn’t ask you."

"You were going to."

"I was thinking."

"Try not to strain anything."

She glared at him. "If abilities come from how we died, then mine might help us."

"It won’t."

"How would you know?"

"Because remembering your death isn’t enough." Rook secured the iron case to the side of his coffin. "The dead aren’t trained to use their abilities. Reapers are. Once someone joins the Corps, they enter a training program and learn how to draw power from their Death Imprint without tearing their own soul apart."

"So teach me."

"No."

"You know how it works."

"I know that untrained dead who attempt it tend to scream, leak memories from their eyes and forget how their limbs are arranged."

The shopkeeper raised one finger. "Sometimes the limbs forget first."

Mara looked between them. "You’re both lying."

"Try it," Rook said. "Perhaps your legs will decide they belonged to someone else. Then I can carry you without breaking them."

She folded her arms. "You just don’t want me to be useful."

"I would treasure the novelty."

"About payment," the shopkeeper asked.

"As usual, I’m bound by contract, bill the office, and make them give extra, I hate being forced to work."

The shopkeeper considered it and smiled. "Fine," he then placed something on the counter.

"What’s that?" Mara asked.

"Emergency whistle," the shopkeeper said. "Blow it if an Abomination gets close."

"What does it do?"

"Makes a loud noise."

She waited for the rest.

There was no rest.

"Wouldn’t that attract more of them?"

"Yes."

"Then why would I use it?"

"Well, abominations are very competitive."

Mara looked at Rook. "Meaning?"

"Might give you a chance to run away while they’re tearing at each other."

Rook took the whistle away before she could reach it. "She doesn’t need this."

"It’s complimentary."

"That makes it worse."

He stuffed the whistle into his coat, gathered the remaining supplies and secured them around the coffin. By the time he finished, packs, hooks and sealed cases hung from its sides, making the already enormous burden look like a travelling merchant’s stall strapped vertically to his back.

Mara looked him over. "Can you carry all of that?"

Rook walked toward the door.

The shopkeeper leaned across the counter and lowered his voice. "If he falls backward, don’t help him."

"Why?"

"He bites."

"I heard that," Rook said.

"You were meant to."

Outside, the crowds had grown denser. Mara stayed close while Rook moved toward the city gates, his newly purchased supplies rattling with every step.

She spotted Officer Veyr before he noticed them.

He stood near a fountain filled with pale green water, speaking to a tall woman wearing a dark red coat. A sabre hung at his waist, its sheath covered in a thin layer of frost. He leaned one hand against the fountain and smiled with the polished confidence of a man who had practised the posture extensively.

The woman appeared moderately interested.

Then Veyr saw Rook.

The color drained from his face.

He straightened so quickly that his elbow slipped from the edge of the fountain. "Rook! Good to see you again."

Rook continued toward him.

Veyr raised both hands. "Now, remember, no fighting inside the city."

Rook’s face twisted.

His right hand opened and closed once beside the coffin, close enough to the handle of a heavy mace that Veyr took a cautious step behind the woman.

Rook stopped himself.

Barely.

Mara pointed at Veyr. "You’re the asshole who stole his kill."

The woman in the red coat looked between them. "You stole a kill?"

"Stole is a terribly ugly word," Veyr said. "I completed a Cull already in progress."

"You waited until Rook did everything and struck the core once."

"That is generally how Culling works."

Veyr’s attention shifted fully to Mara. His nervousness eased, replaced by immediate interest. He looked her over, smiled and stepped out from behind the woman.

"Although, looking at you, I must say you’re remarkably pleasant for someone moving around with this piece of, " His eyes flicked toward Rook. "With Rook."

The woman’s moderate interest vanished.

"None of your business, thief," Mara said.

Veyr pressed a hand to his chest. "That wound was entirely undeserved. He could have stayed out there beating that creature for days and it still wouldn’t have died. Rook doesn’t possess the ability to Cull."

"You mean he has no power like yours."

"Exactly." Veyr’s smile sharpened as he looked at Rook. "A terrible shame. If only he remembered how he died. With all that skill, he might have become something impressive."

The air around them seemed to tighten.

Rook’s expression did not change, but Mara heard the leather around one of his weapon handles creak beneath his grip.

"Let’s leave," he said.

Veyr blinked. "Hold on. She doesn’t know?"

Rook walked past him. "I’m not going to discuss it. Third, move."

The pale chain pulled at Mara’s wrist, but she resisted long enough to face Veyr. "How is remembering his death relevant? And why do his arms look like that?"

Veyr’s amusement faltered.

His gaze dropped toward the darkness stretching over Rook’s hands and forearms. Even surrounded by the dead, the sight made him visibly uncomfortable.

"The Brand becomes darker the more lives you’ve taken," he explained. "It records responsibility. Intention matters somewhat, but consequence matters more."

Mara looked at the other Reapers in the street. Most possessed narrow black marks around their wrists. A few had darkness reaching halfway toward the elbow.

Rook’s arms were black almost to the shoulders.

Veyr rubbed the back of his neck. "The worst serial killer you could imagine wouldn’t possess a fraction of that darkness. His Brand looks as if he slaughtered an entire world."

"That isn’t possible."

"No," Veyr agreed. "It isn’t."

Rook had stopped several paces away. He did not turn around.

"And since he can’t remember how he died," Veyr continued, "he can’t reach his Death Imprint. No imprint means no ability. No ability means no Cull. Quite a waste, really. He could have been a proper Reaper."

Rook looked over his shoulder.

Veyr immediately remembered the city’s prohibition against violence and took another step behind the woman in red.

Mara followed Rook before the contract could burn him again.

Behind them, Veyr attempted to return to his conversation.

"As I was saying, "

The woman seized him by the ear.

"Remarkably pleasant?" she asked.

Veyr bent sideways as she twisted. "It was a professional observation."

"Go make professional observations somewhere else."

"I was being polite."

"You were hiding behind me ten seconds ago."

"That was tactical positioning."

She dragged him away by the ear while he protested that rank should provide protection from this kind of treatment.

Mara looked back once, almost smiling.

Rook did not.

They moved through the crowd in silence. The gates rose ahead of them, open upon the same dark grass where Mara had nearly lost what remained of herself. Beyond the walls waited the road to Yama, along with creatures Rook considered far worse than the Abomination that had almost consumed her.

She studied his back as they walked.

The coffin concealed most of him, but she could still see portions of the darkness covering his arms. The marks did not resemble ink. They seemed to drink in the pale light around them.

"What happened to your memories?" she asked.

"Nothing you need to know."

"You don’t remember your death at all?"

"No."

"How much do you remember?"

"Enough."

"That could mean anything."

"It was intended to."

Mara quickened her pace until she walked beside him. "Is there really no way for you to remember?"

Rook stopped.

The crowd flowed around them. A cart driver cursed as he was forced to steer around the coffin, then took one look at Rook’s face and apologised for having been in the same street.

Rook slowly pulled both arms forward.

"Do you see this?"

Mara looked at the blackened skin. Up close, she could make out faint lines within the darkness, countless marks layered over one another until none could be distinguished from the whole.

"Would you want to know how this happened if you were me?" he asked.

She did not answer.

His voice remained calm, but the anger had gone out of it.

"Isn’t forgetting a blessing?" He turned his hands over, studying them as though they belonged to someone else. "If I killed enough people to earn this, what exactly do you expect me to find inside my memories?"

"There might be an explanation."

"There might."

"You might not have meant to do it."

"The Brand does not become this dark because a man had a difficult afternoon."

Mara looked up at him.

Rook lowered his arms. "If I killed that many people in my last life, would you want me to remember? Would you want me to become whatever monster I was?"

For the first time since meeting him, Mara had no immediate answer.

Rook waited only a moment before turning toward the gate.

"Come on, Third. You’re the one in a hurry to die."

Mara watched him walk away, the coffin swaying behind him beneath the weight of enough weapons to arm a small company.

Then she followed.

The contract between them remained invisible, but she could feel it around her wrist.

For the first time, it no longer felt as though she were the only one chained to something she did not understand.