Beneath the reeds, dusk rose up. It spread wide, then slowly grew upward. Its crouched back unfolded and its neck rose. It looked like a shadow standing up and turning into a beast. At last, taking human form, it stared into the reed bed. Then it left the reeds behind and began moving in another direction.
Blue-black patches covered the sky. Drops of rain fell, stopped, and fell again. There was no light. As a shadow fell over the place where the woods began, a voice spoke.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ll die too. Even if there’s no evidence, even if no one accuses you, you’ll become the criminal, General.”
“Remarkable. Did you read that in the stars last night?”
Tina shook her head.
“I mean that’s the only way it can happen. His Majesty will suspect the queen, and the queen knows it. That’s why. I’ll tell you the reason.”
Livolla gave a low, derisive laugh. However long she had lived in the palace, this woman was ignorant and lowborn by birth. The idea that she could persuade a general with a few words was absurd. But Tina was desperate. Her voice shook, yet every word was clear.
“This happened when I was with the troupe. One day, all the money we had earned vanished. They searched everywhere and couldn’t find it. Then the owner suddenly said a jester had stolen it, dragged him away, and beat him. There was no evidence. Later, someone explained it to me. If money disappears, there has to be a culprit. Otherwise, people will laugh at the owner, and someone will steal again.”
“So what?”
“The prince has disappeared. There has to be a criminal. With evidence or without it. Someone.”
“Oh, I see. So they’ll seize just anyone and blame him? And that someone will happen to be me? Very convincing. Thank you for your concern. Is that the end of your story?”
Tina shook her head. No one could have known what a superhuman effort she was making at that moment. She had to persuade this man. The queen’s trusted servant, who had pursued them from the beginning to kill them. However impossible it seemed, it was the only way to save her baby.
“No. There was a reason they chose the jester.”
Livolla looked annoyed.
“You said there was no evidence.”
“There wasn’t. He was only the younger brother of an acrobat who behaved arrogantly because he was popular. The owner beat the jester as a warning. Evidence or no evidence, I can punish anyone. Keep being insolent, and you’ll be next. Everyone knows that the queen wants us gone more than anyone. His Majesty knows it too. He can’t punish the queen without evidence, so he’ll punish someone close to her as a warning. The queen knows that as well. She knows she has to give someone up. And because you’re the person who actually did it, you’re the one she’ll want gone most. If you’re gone, all the evidence disappears.”
Livolla looked incredulous.
“Enough of your nonsense.”
“Do you trust the queen? Do you think she’ll protect you whatever happens? Someone you care for that much isn’t someone you send to do something so dangerous.”
“You… I told you to keep it short…”
Despite his words, doubt had begun to shadow Livolla’s heart. Tina put strength into her voice.
“I will repay your kindness. I promise.”
“Kindness? In the state you’re in? Is this supposed to persuade me?”
“It will be good for both of us. And I’m a dancer. Do you think there’s anything more important to a dancer than a promise she can’t keep?”
Tina even managed a faint smile. Livolla spoke.
“You talk your way around very well. What if I let you live and you suddenly appear at court and confess everything that happened today? Only the dead matter, you know.”
“I have no intention of returning to the palace.”
“What?”
“Because my baby would be in danger. If I stay there, the queen will try this a second time, a third time, again and again, until she finally kills my baby and me. Won’t she?”
“How would you know?”
“I’m a foolish woman, but I’m a mother. No one understands her child’s danger better than its mother.”
“So?”
“I’ll go and live in another country. Choose a place, and I’ll go there. I’ll send you letters under a false name. You’ll always know where I am and how I’m living.”
“What’s to stop you from disappearing and never sending a letter?”
“I won’t. Sending the letters will help me too.”
“How will it help you?”
“I’m a woman with no money, no one to help me, and a baby to raise. If not you, who will see that I have enough to live on?”
The longer he listened, the more plausible it became. Keep her in a distant country, provide for her, and visit now and then to enjoy her company. It was not a bad arrangement. Perhaps it sounded still better because, deep down, he disliked the idea of enjoying her once and killing her.
“Please let us live. That way, you won’t fall victim to the queen when she tries to make you her scapegoat. But once my baby and I are dead, we won’t come back.”
While Tina spoke those last words, Livolla made up his mind. He approached her.
“All right. Then show me proof of your promise.”
Tina turned as though to put the baby down behind her. The outline of the dagger in her cloth bundle showed. She was just about to move when she suddenly noticed a shadow covering the ground. It was not the shade of trees or rainclouds. It was night.
Thinking it was too early for darkness, she looked up without meaning to. Above the rainclouds was a black boundary. It was moving. Before Tina could say anything, it fell upon Livolla’s back.
Rain began to fall.
Trembling, Tina looked down at her hands. They were drenched in blood. So were the baby’s swaddling clothes. Red blood mixed with rainwater ran down her elbows. Its lukewarm heat pulled her away from the thought that this might all be a hallucination.
She looked ahead. She saw a black shadow rearing as high as a mountain, and a mouth burning like fire in the rain. The long horizontal slit gaped where a human’s chest would be, like an entrance to hell.
She would rather close her eyes. She wanted to yield to the terror, lose consciousness, and never feel the final moment. But the baby inside his bundle was moving. Giving up meant giving up his life. This blood was neither hers nor the baby’s. Livolla, whose left arm had been torn away, lay caught in the brush and did not move. Was he dead?
She remembered stories the old women told to frighten crying children. They called it an evil spirit. They said it lived underground and did not emerge until someone summoned it, but once it came out, it devoured anyone in its path. You could not speak to it. Begging was useless. Its head and limbs looked like a human shadow, but it had no eyes or nose, only a burning mouth. That mouth was not on its face as a human’s was. It might be anywhere on its body: a leg, the top of a foot, a shoulder, the back, or the chest.
The being before her was exactly as they had described. Had those old women seen an evil spirit?
Suddenly, Tina thought: if people knew what one looked like, did that not mean someone had faced one and survived?
“P-please spare us.”
She must not give up while there was any hope of living. How hard had she fought for this life? But the spirit did not stir. It merely stood there. If it wished to kill her, it could tear her apart in an instant, just as it had Livolla.
“Please…”
Tina tried to step back. The instant she moved a foot, the spirit moved too. She gave a start and stopped. So did it. Gathering her breath, she saw that it had advanced exactly as far as she had retreated. What did that mean?
“W-what do you want?”
The spirit raised one arm. Tina’s whole body stiffened with terror. Instinctively, she turned to conceal her baby. The arm seemed to approach, but stopped a little way from her. Tina realized that it was pointing at something.
Looking down beneath her chin, she saw the rose tattoo on her upper arm. Because she was naked, it was exposed, and because she had turned, it faced the spirit.
It is the promise of Aragis.
The voice sounded as though it rose from an abyss. Tina had never imagined that an evil spirit might have a voice. Perhaps she was the only person in the world who had ever heard one. Even the evil-spirit sorcerers believed the creatures could not be reasoned with, unaware that they simply chose not to answer. If they had no intelligence, how could they keep the promise not to kill those who bore the Mark of Aragis?
But at that moment, Tina merely trembled without understanding. She did not know what the promise of Aragis was.
The rose tattoo had begun with a single petal an old woman engraved when Tina was a child. Seeing other women’s tattoos, she had pestered childishly until the woman began adding one leaf at a time. By the time Tina came of age, it had grown into a splendid rose vine. Even when she entered the royal household, Roandros merely remarked that whoever had done it was very skilled. He had not insisted on having it removed. She had never thought the tattoo might mean anything else.
Tina looked down at it again. Then her eyes widened. Something strange was hidden in the tattoo she had seen so often, the one engraved on her own body. Within the vine, among the flowers, a small centipede writhed, cunningly concealed. She was seeing it for the first time.
King Aragis commands that I do not harm you. But the one in your arms is my prey. Until I drink your blood, I cannot return beneath the earth. I can neither kill you nor spare you. So give it to me.
“What?”
Give me the centipede.
Even if she wanted to, Tina could not imagine how to give it away. But the thought that the spirit might leave if she did brought a slender hope. She looked at her tattoo once more and tried to make certain.
“If I give you this… you’ll spare my baby and me?”
The centipede’s power overturns the command of the one who summoned me. Then I may return to the earth without killing you.
Tina thought of all the stories the old women had told her about spirits. Only when she remembered that evil spirits never lied did she resolve to act. In truth, there was no other way.
But how could she give it to him? She felt inside the baby’s swaddling cloth and drew the dagger. The thought of what she was about to do sent a tingling dread through her whole body. Looking down at her baby’s face, she bit her lip until it bled and finally found her courage.
Tina sat on the ground, laid the baby across her knees, and turned her arm with one hand to expose the place where the centipede was engraved.
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