EXCERPT FROM THE HIGH HOUSE MANIFESTO
It always starts the same: a deepening blue in the veins about the wrists. This much is common knowledge. What follows is shallowness of breath, coughing, fever, and muscle pain. Once contracted, one or two days may pass before the darkened veins spread throughout the body, at which point the sclera of the eye will become tinged and mottled. The coloration reaches the extremities next, turning the fingers and toes a dark, thundercloud blue. In the final stages, the veins become increasingly sensitive, pulsing and ready to explode.
In the most severe cases, they burst beneath the skin.
Eventually, the pain becomes unbearable, accompanied by varying degrees of delirium and paranoia. As one Bard famously reported, “They are even more afraid than we are.”
The current epoch has been irrevocably tainted by death and chaos; our streets, fields, and homes run thick with the foul, rotting stench of disease. A cloud of smoke rises above Montane from countless thousands of funeral pyres, from the homes we must burn to purge the affliction.
The means to end this tragedy lie in understanding its origins.
The disease, referred to as the “Indigo Death” or “Blot,” was first reported in a rural manor in the southwest. As if contracted by mere word of mouth, no sooner had word reached a village than the outbreak would claim it. It spread so efficiently that, in only a few days, outbreaks had been reported in every corner of Montane. Anyone displaying the telltale symptoms was immediately quarantined, but isolating the afflicted did nothing to stem the tide of death. Riots ensued. Pandemonium reigned. We were a nation consumed by pain, fear, and chaos.
There are those alive today who still remember the grim processions of masked doctors through the countryside, leading caravans of blue corpses to their final fire.
It was only after careful dissemination that the Bards of High House discovered the nature of the enemy:
Ink.
We had welcomed it willingly—in our stories, letters, and news. We had invited it into our homes, passed it along with our hands, and distributed it in our very warnings.
But together we shall rise above the ashes of our fallen and usher in a new era of peace in Montane. The time is come to join High House in ensuring this tragedy is never repeated. The tyranny of the Indigo Death can be overthrown.
Our history shows that vigilance and caution are tantamount to survival. Burn the ink from the page. Turn away from forbidden words, toxic tales, and deadly symbols. Cleanse the country of this malignant blight.
Join us.
* * *
Shae sat beneath the old tree outside the house where her brother lay dying.
Only the loudest, most keening wails of mourning could reach her there, and they had lessened as he grew weaker. He was not gone yet, but he would be soon.
Before her sat a basket of rags. She ran her fingers through them, tearing the fabric into long strands, grief seizing in her throat. Once Kieran’s death ribbons were hung from the tree, everyone would know the Blot had come for her family.
She thought about the blue veins crawling over her brother’s skin and shuddered. Her elders kept her from going near him, but she had seen the telltale signs of the plague worsening through a cracked bedroom door. She heard the sounds he made, mostly screams of pain and violent coughing.
He was only a child, younger than her by three years. It wasn’t fair.
A dark pull in the pit of her stomach swelled as she stood, preparing to ascend the tree, and another long, keening wail came from the house. The only sounds for miles were Kieran’s haunted cries and Ma’s soothing voice, carried away on the wind down the gray mountainside.
Shae shoved the ribbons she had darned in her pocket and began climbing. She found a spot to sit, and reached up, beginning to tie the dark blue ribbons to the branches. The bleached winter sun peeked out from the clouds, throwing the gnarled shadows of tree branches over her cottage.
Shae shuddered. The shadows looked like plague veins.
From her high perch, Shae saw three men riding horses in the distance, swiftly making their way up the path. She had never seen such beautiful horses, though she’d heard about such creatures, so different from those of her village. Everyone in Montane knew the story of the First Rider: long ago, centuries before the plague came, he tamed a wild horse, a beast, they say, who was born from the sun. On its back, he galloped through the empty darkness of the unborn world, bringing forth life with the words that flowed from his lips. Where he trod, the land sprang into being and color.
These horses’ manes and tails flowed like they were underwater and seemed to glisten, even in the fading light. The beautiful animals could only come from one place: High House.
The Bards were coming to burn her home.
Though their faces were hooded, Shae swore she saw the Bards’ lips moving steadily in the shadows. The wind blew harder as they approached, and the wails rose to match its fevered pitch. The tree branch lurched beneath her, and Shae lost her balance. She slid, the branch above slipping through her grasp.
All she could see as she fell was a frenzy of ribbons, furious and wild, snapping in the wind.
1
Snap. Snap-snap-snap. My eyes whip open, and I’m in my bed, its thin unpadded pallet stiff beneath my back. That same dream, as vivid as when it happened, five years ago.
A dark figure stands over me, snapping her fingers.
“Rise and shine!”
“Shh!” I whisper. “Keep it down, or you’ll wake Ma.” She needs her sleep worse than I do.
Fiona huffs, stepping back from the bed and into the line of gray dawn cast from the window. She is less fearsome in the light. Tall, willowy, and blond, with the highest cheekbones in all of Montane, she is like the dappled sunlight beneath a tree—beautiful in a way she herself cannot see. My parents were both brown-haired, short, and stocky. I never stood a chance of growing up tall and fair like Fiona. Neither of them were tormented by thousands of freckles on their faces, however—that seems to be my unique misfortune.
My friend shrugs. “Somehow I doubt that, if she sleeps as heavily as you.”
I glance at my mother. Tucked beneath her covers in the bed across the room, she is a frail form, her ribs gently rising and falling with every breath. Fiona might have a point. My mother sleeps like the dead.
“What are you doing here?” I pull the ragged quilt off my legs and begin massaging out the crick in my shoulder.
“It’s the first quarter moon, remember?”
Fiona’s father sells the wool from our sheep and repays us with food from his general store. They are one of the only families in town that will associate with mine since the Blot touched us. And so, every month at the first quarter moon, Fiona stops by and we exchange the meager goods that allow our families to survive.
“But why so early?” I stifle a yawn. My feet ache as they hit the cold floor, my legs trembling with exhaustion. I couldn’t sleep last night, even after a long day in the fields—dark dreams hovered at the edge of my mind, full of faint whispers and shadows. I sat up for hours, squinting at my needlework under the pale light of the crescent moon through the window, stitching to distract myself.
Fiona follows me to the other side of the room where my clothes hang. A simple white shirt, faded green skirt I embroidered with thread spun from wool, torn and muddied at the hem, and a matching vest lined in soft rabbit fur—far from fine, the opposite really, but the only apparel I own. I prefer pants for working the overgrown pastures, but after years of growing out of them just as soon as I’d finished their hemming, it became easier to wear a skirt, tying it in knots above my knees when it’s hot or the terrain is rough.