Farewell to the Liar Read online

  FAREWELL

  TO THE LIAR

  TALES OF FENEST

  Widow’s Welcome

  The Stitcher and the Mute

  FAREWELL

  TO THE LIAR

  Book Three of the Tales of Fenest

  D.K. FIELDS

  AN AD ASTRA BOOK

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2021 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  An Ad Astra Book

  Copyright © D.K. Fields, 2021

  The moral right of D.K. Fields to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781789542561

  ISBN (XTPB): 9781789542578

  ISBN (E): 9781789542554

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  For our mums, Sheila and Veronica

  Contents

  Tales of Fenest

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  The Swaying Audience

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  The Rustan Story

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  The Wayward story

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Map

  The Swaying Audience

  Abject Reveller, god of: loneliness, old age, fish

  Affable Old Hand, god of: order, nostalgia, punctuality

  Beguiled Picknicker, god of: festivals, incense, insect bites

  Blind Devotee, god of: mothers, love, the sun

  Bloated Professional, god of: wealth, debt, shined shoes

  Calm Luminary, god of: peace, light, the forest

  Courageous Rogue, god of: hunting, charity, thin swords

  Curious Stowaway, god of: rites of passage, secrets, summer and the longest day

  Deaf Relative, god of: hospitality

  Delicate Tout, god of: herbs, prudence, drought

  Engaged Matron, god of: childbirth

  Exiled Washerwoman, god of: sanitation, rivers, obstacles

  Faithful Companion, god of: marriage, loyalty, dancing

  Filthy Builder, god of: clay, walls, buckets

  Frail Beholder, god of: beauty, spectacles, masks

  Generous Neighbour, god of: harvest, fertility, the first day of the month

  Gilded Keeper, god of: justice, fairness, cages

  Grateful Latecomer, god of: good fortune, spontaneity, autumn

  Heckling Drunkard, god of: jokes, drink, fools

  Honoured Bailiff, god of: thieves, the dark, bruises

  Insolent Bore, god of: wind, bindleleaf, borders

  Inspired Whisperer, god of: truth, wisdom, silk

  Jittery Wit, god of: madness, lamps, volcanoes

  Keen Musician, god of: destiny, wine and oil

  Lazy Painter, god of: rain, noon, hair

  Missing Lover, god of: forbidden love, youth, thunder

  Moral Student, god of: the horizon, knowledge, mountains

  Needled Critic , god of: criticism, bad weather, insincerity

  Nodding Child, god of: sleep and dreams, innocence

  Overdressed Liar, god of: butlers, beards, mischief

  Overlooked Amateur, god of: jilted lovers, the wronged, apprentices

  Pale Widow, god of: death and renewal, winter, burrowing animals, the moon

  Penniless Poet, god of: song, poetry, money by nefarious means

  Prized Dandy, god of: clothes, virility, bouquets

  Querulous Weaver, god of: revenge, plots, pipes

  Reformed Trumpeter, god of: earthquakes, the spoken word

  Restless Patron, god of: employment, contracts and bonds, spring

  Scandalous Dissenter, god of: protest, petition, dangerous animals

  Senseless Brawler, god of: war, chequers, fire

  Stalled Commoner, god of: home and hearth, decisions, crowds

  The Mute, god of: Silence

  Travelling Partner, god of: journeys, danger and misfortune, knives

  Ugly Messenger, god of: pennysheets, handicrafts, dogs

  Valiant Glutton, god of: cooking, trade, cattle

  Vicious Beginner, god of: milk and nursing, midnight, ignorance

  Weary Governess, god of: schooling, cats

  Wide-eyed Inker, god of: tattoos, colour, sunsets

  Withering Fishwife, god of: dusk, chastity, flooding

  Yawning Hawker, god of: dawn, comfort, grain

  Zealous Stitcher, god of: healing and mending

  One

  The man’s story took him through the woods. Cora followed.

  There was no path, but he walked in a straight line, as much as was possible between the densely packed trees. He looked as if he knew where he was going. The shadows cast by the canopy dappled his back and gave his certainty a kind of calming quality – Cora hadn’t felt anything close to calm in a long time. The man stopped in front of the largest tree in the wood. Cora had been following him for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, keeping her distance but keeping him in sight. This was looking like a story for the Liar, thick with mischief.

  Now that the man had stopped, Cora could see that he was heavy-set, and his hair was a curly brown. He looked young, twenty-five if she had to guess, and he seemed to be wearing Seeder clothes. Cora corrected herself: Lowlander, not Seeder. Though did that matter, now, getting the name of that southern realm right and avoiding what the Lowlanders said was a slur? Death was death, and the Widow heard that story, whatever you were called. Constable Jenkins would say it mattered. But Jenkins wasn’t here. Cora had left the police. She was on her own now. That was the way it had to be.

  The cloth of this Lowlander’s shirt was so tattered, what remained of it so filthy, she assumed he was from the camp that lay between the wood and the southern wall of Fenest. As she watched him, wondering what he might do, Cora became aware of a new smell cutting through the damp earthiness of the wood. Something sharp, but sweet too. Something bad. The wood was silent. Silence that felt thick, somehow, like a fog that Cora couldn’t see. But that couldn’t be right. Shouldn’t a place of trees be full of birds and their song? But there were no birds here. Nothing but trees, and a Seeder man staring at one like this was the first he’d seen in his life. />
  He’d been purposeful the whole time she’d been following him, and it was this sense of a purpose that had drawn Cora to him in the first place, while she waited for Ruth to finish her meeting – the meeting Cora wasn’t allowed to attend, despite the fact she was trying to keep Ruth safe. The woods had seemed empty when they first arrived, but then Cora had caught sight of this man. A man walking like he had somewhere to be.

  As she watched him now, he started fishing in the grass and leaves beneath the tree, then expressed no surprise when he found some metal spikes. Weapons? Maybe he was here to harm Ruth after all. Cora glanced over her shoulder. She had no idea where Ruth was at this moment, who she was meeting, or why. And all of that was Ruth’s fault: she’d said it was better that Cora didn’t have all the details of the meeting, that Cora would be safer not knowing… All of it foolish talk, but Ruth was hard to argue with. Always had been. That was older sisters for you.

  The Seeder was fitting two of the metal spikes to his boots. Then he took two more spikes, one in each hand. To Cora’s amazement, he began to climb the tree, using the metal spikes like claws.

  A sound drifted to her. Sobs. The Seeder was sobbing as he climbed.

  She edged closer. The strange smell was even worse here, and she had to fight not to purge the contents of her stomach over her boots. In no time at all the Seeder had reached the first branch. He threw the spikes to the ground where they settled in the same place that he had found them, and the loop of actions chilled her. He was leaving the climbing spikes ready for the next visitor to this place.

  She looked up. There was something on the branch. The Seeder was uncoiling it. A rope. Left ready, like the spikes. It was tied around the branch, and at its end… She knew then what it would be. And there it was, in his hands.

  A noose.

  Cora broke cover and raced to the tree. ‘No, what are you— Stop!’

  He looked down at her, and she saw that he was younger than she’d thought, more like eighteen. His face was round, his mouth full. Tears coursed down his cheeks. He was surprised that she should be there – she could see that. Could see, too, that he wasn’t going to stop. She shouted anyway, all the time he was putting the noose over his head, getting to his feet, and right up to the second he closed his eyes and stepped into the air.

  *

  The Seeder jerked in the air above Cora. She could see the holes in his boot soles, was grateful for them to focus on as the boots themselves bucked and kicked. Then stopped.

  That was the moment she started moving herself, as if she’d woken from a dream. Cut the rope. For Audience sake, cut the rope. This didn’t have to be a story for the Widow. Cora dropped to her knees in the grass and searched frantically for the metal spikes the man had used to climb the tree and then thrown to the ground. Her hands seemed to have stopped working, her fingers useless. Without looking up, she was aware of the body hanging in the air above her. Was he even still alive? She couldn’t see his face from down here. Couldn’t hear any wet, tortured breaths. Where were the blasted spikes?

  Her hand grazed something cool and sharp. She ransacked the grass nearby to find the others. Somehow, she attached two to her boots and then gripped one in each hand. She took a deep breath of air that was sharp and sweet and terrible, then sank one of the spikes into the trunk above her head, ready to haul herself up.

  ‘It’s too late.’

  Cora spun round. A short, slight woman stood a little way off. Her face was all but hidden beneath a cowl, but Cora knew it anyway. Knew the woman’s arms and chest beneath her woollen sleeves were richly inked too, tattooed like all Caskers. This woman might lack the Caskers’ usual brawn, but she made up for it with ink and piercings. Nullan, the Casker storyteller and Ruth’s most trusted companion.

  Cora couldn’t meet her eye. ‘I should have stopped him, Nullan. I should have tried to—’

  ‘And would he have thanked you?’ Nullan came towards Cora. She pushed back her cowl to reveal her tanned face.

  Since telling her election story, Nullan had gained some new piercings. The rings and ball-bearings in her brows and the left side of her mouth had no gleam in the poor light of the wood, and the tattoos creeping up her neck looked blacker than Cora knew them to be. Nullan was half Cora’s age, but the events of the last few weeks had aged her. In the short time that Cora had known Nullan, Cora had associated her with death: her election tale had been one of plague, and she had been the lover of Nicholas Ento, Ruth’s murdered son. And now here she was at the site of suicide.

  ‘He wanted to do this, Cora,’ Nullan said softly. ‘Needed to. They all do.’

  ‘All? You mean there are others here?’

  ‘Follow me. You need to see this.’ Nullan headed deeper into the trees.

  ‘We should cut him down,’ Cora called to her. ‘Take him back to the camp, to his people.’

  Nullan turned, held out her palms. ‘And what will his people do with him there? They have no land to bury their dead.’

  Nullan was right. The Seeders who’d come north to the camp had given up so much to survive. The cost was high, but not as high as staying in the far south. Not if Lowlander Chambers Morton built her walls and kept her own people on the southern side. The burning side.

  Cora followed Nullan, and at once the sharp–sweet smell was worse. She understood what it was now: the smell of decay. She took a handkerchief from her coat and pressed it to her face, but that didn’t seem to help. The smell was in every blade of grass, every leaf. Even the gloomy light seemed cut with it.

  Nullan stopped and pointed ahead. Cora looked, and wished she hadn’t.

  ‘Widow welcome them,’ she tried to say, but no words came out.

  In the trees before her, bodies hung. Two, three, four. She stopped counting. They were in sight of one another but not what could be called close. Men and women. No children, thank the Audience, but who knew what horrors lay deeper in the trees? From the state of the skin, the flashes of bone, the hangings had been at different times. And there would be more to come, of that Cora had no doubt.

  ‘The bodies last longer than they should,’ Nullan said. ‘The animals, the birds – they won’t come in here. Nothing eats them.’

  ‘But that’s…’

  ‘Unnatural? Of course it is.’ Nullan pulled up her cowl. ‘There’s nothing natural about this place. Don’t tell me you can’t feel it, Cora. I know most police have as much feeling in them as a wooden barge, but I thought you were different.’

  ‘I’m not with the police anymore, remember? But I can’t imagine many people wouldn’t feel the strangeness of this place.’ She gestured towards the bodies hanging in the air. ‘Do you know who they are?’

  ‘Only that they’re likely to be the ones who’ve spent the longest in the camp,’ Nullan said. ‘After a few weeks the despair becomes too much. From what I’ve heard, a look comes over them. A glassiness in the eyes. They stop talking, and then within an hour or two, they get up and walk into the trees. As if they’re drawn here by some call they can’t fight.’

  ‘Doesn’t anyone try to stop them?’ Cora said, and as she spoke the smell crept inside her mouth. She spat, but it wouldn’t go.

  Nullan shook her head. ‘Think about it, Cora. If your purpose in life is to be a good custodian of the land, and everything on that land dries to a husk, dies, and then the very fields themselves get eaten by Wit’s Blood—’

  ‘—then you’ve got nothing left to live for,’ Cora said. ‘If Chambers Morton stops people moving about the Union, it will only get worse. She’s condemning her own people to this.’ Cora gestured towards the trees and their terrible burden.

  ‘Morton’s a pragmatist,’ Nullan said, closing her eyes as if she couldn’t bear to look at the bodies any longer, but couldn’t turn away either. ‘She knows much of the southern Lowlands have already been destroyed by the Tear widening, and that more still will be lost as it opens further. She wants to save the parts of the Union she can, and keep the peo
ple she favours safe inside it. If that means condemning some Lowlanders to take their own lives in despair, so be it.’

  ‘You almost sound like you agree with her.’ Cora reached into her coat for her bindle tin but found her hands were shaking too much.

  Now it was Nullan’s turn to spit. ‘This is a disaster for the whole Union. If the Wayward can win the election, help the Union understand what’s happening and make the right choice for the future then we might stand a chance.’

  ‘The Wayward storyteller needs to stay alive to tell that story,’ Cora said. ‘That’s the first step.’

  ‘And we’ve already failed at that once.’ Nullan looked at Cora, and her face was set with grim determination. ‘Nicholas’s sacrifice can’t be for nothing, Cora.’

  ‘We’re doing our best to make sure it isn’t. Not that my sister makes it easy.’

  ‘You’re more alike than you think,’ Nullan said.

  ‘Now, Storyteller Nullan, why did you have to say that? I was just beginning to like you.’

  Nullan gave a grim laugh. ‘We should get back.’

  ‘Has Ruth done what she needs to?’

  ‘For now. The message she’s been waiting for – it’s come.’

  ‘What a place to meet someone,’ Cora said.

  ‘You’re the one who keeps saying Fenest isn’t safe,’ Nullan said.

  ‘Nowhere’s safe for Ruth until she’s told the Wayward story.’ She glanced at the trees around them, ready to hear the crunch of leaves, hurried breaths – signs of Morton’s people hunting Ruth. But there was nothing. The wood was silent as the Mute. ‘And we’ve got to make it back through the camp,’ Cora muttered.

  They turned away from the men and women who had decided it was better to join the Audience than face what the future held, and retraced their steps. When they came to the curly-haired Seeder who had taken his life in front of Cora, she made a point of looking at him. She didn’t turn away from his darkening face, from the blood on his chin, on his shirt front, caused by him biting his tongue in his final moments. She would not turn away from this, as Chambers Morton wanted to.