What Moves the Dead (6)

They were but a moment gone when Denton said, quietly, “Shocking, isn’t it?”

I looked at him sharply. “It’s all right,” he said, leaning forward. “Her rooms are a long way. We have a little time.”

“I wish that they were closer, that she not have to walk so far,” I said. “She is not well.”

“Neither of them are,” said Denton. “But there are only so many rooms in this great hulk that can be heated.”

This I understood. My mind flashed back to my childhood home, to my mother wringing her hands over the price of coal, to rooms half-closed with sheets to save warmth.

“I have not seen Roderick in—oh, four or five years, I should think,” said Denton. “I do not know how long it has been for you.…”

“Longer,” I said, staring into my drink. Amber swirled in the firelight, and I fought down the urge to go and bank the fire to save wood. It would only hurt Roderick’s pride.

It had been far too long since I had seen either of them. In Gallacia, they had lived nearby with their mother, who had always refused to live in the ancestral home. Having seen the place now, I was impressed she stayed here long enough to catch pregnant, or perhaps she did that during the honeymoon and took one look at the house and fled. Since Roderick had inherited, I had not seen them at all.

“So I will tell you, then, this is a recent dissolution,” said Denton. “He has always been thin, but not like this.”

“His hair,” I murmured. “I remember him being fair, like his sister, but…”

Denton shook his head. “Not like this,” he said again. “I thought perhaps some nutritional malady, but I have seen the meals he eats, and they are sparse but not unhealthful.”

“Something environmental, perhaps? This place…” I gestured vaguely with my free hand, but it was the tarn that I was thinking of, the dark water and the stinking fungus. “I think it might be enough to make anyone ill.”

Denton nodded. “I’ve suggested he leave, but Miss Usher cannot travel. And he will not leave while she lives.”

I sat up straighter in the chair. “Her letter said that Roderick thinks she is dying.”

“Don’t you?”

I drained the glass and Denton refilled it. “I’ve been here hardly above an hour. I hardly know what I think yet.” And yet, the sight of Madeline had shocked me. Dying. Yes. It looked like death.

I did not know how to deal with this sort of death, the one that comes slow and inevitable and does not let go. I am a soldier, I deal in cannonballs and rifle shots. I understand how a wound can fester and kill a soldier, but there is still the initial wound, something that can be avoided with a little skill and a great deal of luck. Death that simply comes and settles is not a thing I had any experience with. I shook my head. “He’d mentioned something about the estate being in poor shape, but…” I lifted my hands helplessly. Probably there’s a country where people aren’t embarrassed to be poor, but I’ve yet to travel there. Of course Roderick would not have mentioned the shocking state of the house. “I assume the place is entailed and can’t be sold?”

“He can’t sell it, but I’ve begged him to leave it. Offered to let him stay with me, even. But he kept saying his sister could not travel.”

I exhaled. That was probably true. Madeline looked as if a strong breeze might shatter her. I stared into my brandy, wondering what the hell to do.

“Forgive me if I was rude earlier,” said Denton. “I’ve never met a sworn soldier before.”

“That you know of,” I said, sipping the brandy. “We don’t all wear the pin.”

That set him back for a moment. “I … no. I suppose not. May I ask—I’m sorry—why did you swear?”

There are two kinds of people, I have discovered, who will ask you these questions. The rarer, and by far the more tolerable, are seized with an intense curiosity about everyone and everything. “A sworn soldier! Really!” they will say. “What does that involve?” And five minutes later, someone will mention that their cousin is a vintner, and they will transfer all their attention to that person and begin interrogating them about the minutiae of winemaking.

I served with a man like this, Will Zellas, who was equally fascinated by the stars, herbs, shoemaking, and battlefield surgery. I have always regretted that he was not with me to hear the remarkable maggots-and-piss speech from the shepherd. By then, alas, Will had taken a bullet to his shin, and had been in hospital. The last time I saw him, he walked with a cane and told me at extraordinary length about wood carving, the decline of the turnspit terrier as a breed, and how they harvest water lilies in India. His wife would interrupt occasionally to say, “Eat, dear,” and he would manage about three bites before he was off again.

And then, of course, there are the other sort. They ask questions, but what they really want to know is what’s in your pants and, by extension, who’s in your bed.

I shall assume, gentle reader, that you are of the former sort and explain, in the event that you have not encountered Gallacia’s sworn soldiers, or have only read of us in the more lurid periodicals.

As I mentioned before, Gallacia’s language is … idiosyncratic. Most languages you encounter in Europe have words like he and she and his and hers. Ours has those, too, although we use ta and tha and tan and than. But we also have va and var, ka and kan, and a few others specifically for rocks and God.