Her drinking partner, a lady candlemaker with waxy hair named Inna, smirked and called for wine. “Now that makes no sense, not with how many terrible things have gone on within and without the walls.”
”But not a single new grave.”
”Yet there have been bodies, haven’t there?”
”Always bodies,” Portia said. “Men and women and wee children dying from starvation, from malnourishment, from famine. Burel’s men brought it upon the capital, after all -– with their fierce spellcraft. So Wrexham lay at siege for what, six years?”
”Five, at this point,” Inna said.
”Five, at this point,” Portia repeated. “So what do you think happened with the bodies of those who could not flee, who could not escape the city?”
”The dead? They burn them, perhaps. Burn them like they do here in Myrken Wood.”
”You don’t burn bodies within capital walls, Inna. That smoke causes sickness and plague; no, out with that thought entirely!”
”So they dug holes and tossed them in,” Inna said. “As is tradition.”
”You can’t expect to keep a city alive atop a growing grave. And to bust through those Derry stones, you would need a thousand men with cords of wood for muscles. No, use your head and think, Inna. What do you think came of those bodies inside the walls, if they could not burn them and did not inter them?”
The candlemaker’s paraffin-cracked fingers drummed on the side of the table. She took her wine and gave a few precious shillings to the Dagger’s barmaid for it, then sipped and thought how romantic, how splendid it would be to drink all day long and just talk and talk and talk about other cities in other places, where wars were so far away, and where it all seemed so valiant, so unreal. ”I haven’t a clue, Portia. Not a clue about it,” she said.
”Well,” Portia said, leaning back and sipping her honeyed ale, her decaying grin spreading as if for the punchline to a joke. “Even those within Wrexham’s walls must eat, Inna. And don’t you think we might do the same thing? If it came down to it it,” she said. “If we must.”
Inna did not finish her wine. Portia ordered another ale. Sometimes war was too terrible to think about for the candlemaker.
And that was the rumor that day at the Broken Dagger Inn, spread amongst the patrons: Wrexham’s people starved, withered, and grew desperate, and the stores of food within the city walls were not enough. Not enough for a five-year siege. Never enough. Sometimes, a man must eat a man.
* * * *
In the streets of Myrkentown, with his legs half-consumed in an icy patch of mud, a man with a dry-rotted cloak shook dirty papers at passers-by. Most of them ignored him as he breathed warm, sour breath against their ears, or shouted trills of repeated words into the wintry air. Mothers off to market clutched their children against their skirts; men hauling bags of feed and bundles of firewood watched the madman with a wary eye.
But they listened. They listened, because that was why he spoke.
”You think this war will not touch us,” he shouted, waggling a thick-boned knuckle at any and all commoners he could find, sometimes grabbing their sleeves, only to get pushed away as if he were a leper. “You think this war in Derry will stop at borders? Myrken Wood is a damned place, a damned place! One by one, terrors have grown within it, yet you have survived. Do you recognize how fortunate you are, to still be breathing, to still be walking, and forgetting what has come in the past?”
”Someone should hang that old man,” said one person in the street.
“He will be dead soon enough. I will be glad to be free of his constant ranting,” said an old woman.
A boy said, “He really brings it down. He really brings us all down. What a pain.”
”Do you know where I can buy a bit of venison,” said someone else. “A good hunk of it?”
But the filthy wretch spun away from them, ambled like a drunk through the streets, and stumbled into a group of Myrkener women with stones lugged in their skirts, preparing to warm their husbands’ sheets for the nights.
”Ladies. Ladies,” he said, clutching to their sleeves, laughing. “Where else, when this war is done, will those displaced Derrine go? Here –- through the mountain range and here. They will—“
”Unahnd me, you pig!”
”—spill across the hills, and will pour into Myrken Wood like lemmings, like so many diminished creatures! They will huddle in your stables, in your basements; they will ask to drink your whiskey and eat your bread, because their Derry is lost, lost, and there will be nothing left. Refugees! Squatting in your homes, making your temples into hospitals, bringing their diseases—“
”Be off with you,” shouted another of the women, striking him with the palm of her hand.
From the mud, with a bloody bulge on his lip, he continued. "They will house themselves in your cupboards, sleep in yours beds for want of their own, find warmth in your bodices if they must, or swaddle their children in your babies’ diaper-cloth if it is the only option. All of Derry’s lost people will become Myrkeners, and they will lower us –- and Burnie, gods-damned Glenn Burnie, he will let them! He will let Derry bring us their war-exiled masses, and—“
From across the square, a hurled rock buzzed through the air like a daring insect and cracked the old man across the skull. He crumpled unconscious into the slush, his fingers still holding onto one woman’s hems.
”I am so tired of hearing him talk. Every day, in and out,” complained the thrower, the man who had just wanted a bit of deer-meat. “You ladies wouldn’t happen to know where I could purchase a fist of venison, do you?”
And from that day in the town’s square, a quiet whisper rolled through Myrken Wood: Refugees of Derry were coming over the mountains, driven away by the war, looking for safe-haven. Perhaps the Governor was allowing it; perhaps the Council was, for peace, for prosperity –- or for profit.
