When she rode past Miguel, still on his knees and praying to the bright sky with his hands upraised, she saw him no more than any other rider had before her.

2

She rode straight down the High Street, thumping her spurless heels at Pylon’s sides until the big horse was fairly flying. Thoughts, questions, possible plans of action… none of those had a place in her head as she rode. She was but vaguely aware of the people milling in the street, allowing Pylon to weave his own path through them. The only thing she was aware of was his name-Roland, Roland, Roland!-ringing in her head like a scream. Everything had gone upside down. The brave little ka-tet they had made that night at the graveyard was broken, three of its members jailed and with not long to live (if they even were still alive), the last member lost and confused, as crazy with terror as a bird in a barn.

If her panic had held, things might have turned out in a much different fashion. But as she rode through the center of town and out the other side, her way took her toward the house she had shared with her father and her aunt. That lady had been watching for the very rider who now approached.

As Susan neared, the door flew open and Cordelia, dressed in black from throat to toe, rushed down the front walk to the street, shrieking with either horror or laughter. Perhaps both. The sight of her cut through the foreground haze of panic in Susan’s mind… but not because she recognized her aunt.

“Rhea!” she cried, and drew back on the reins so violently that the horse skidded, reared, and almost tilted them over backward. That would likely have crushed the life out of his mistress, but Pylon managed to keep at least his back feet, pawing at the sky with his front ones and whinnying loudly. Susan slung an arm around his neck and hung on for dear life.

Cordelia Delgado, wearing her best black dress and a lace mantilla over her hair, stood in front of the horse as if in her own parlor, taking no notice of the hooves cutting the air less than two feet in front other nose. In one gloved hand she held a wooden box.

Susan belatedly realized that this wasn’t Rhea, but the mistake really wasn’t that odd. Aunt Cord wasn’t as thin as Rhea (not yet, anyway), and more neatly dressed (except for her dirty gloves-why her aunt was wearing gloves in the first place Susan didn’t know, let alone why they looked so smudged), but the mad look in her eyes was horribly similar.

“Good day t'ye, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty!” Aunt Cord greeted her in a cracked, vivacious voice that made Susan’s heart tremble. Aunt Cord curtseyed one-handed, holding the little box curled against her chest with the other. “Where go ye on this fine autumn day? Where go ye so speedy? To no lover’s arms, that seems sure, for one’s dead and the other ta'en!”

Cordelia laughed again, thin lips drawing back from big white teeth. Horse teeth, almost. Her eyes glared in the sunlight.

Her mind’s broken, Susan thought. Poor thing. Poor old thing.

“Did thee put Dearborn up to it?” Aunt Cord asked. She crept to Pylon’s side and looked up at Susan with luminous, liquid eyes. “Thee did, didn’t thee? Aye! Perhaps thee even gave him the knife he used, after runnin yer lips o’er it for good luck. Ye’re in it together-why not admit it? At least admit thee’s lain with that boy, for I know it’s true. I saw the way he looked at ye the day ye were sitting in the window, and the way ye looked back at him!”

Susan said, “If ye’ll have truth, I’ll give it to ye. We’re lovers. And we’ll be man and wife ere Year’s End.”

Cordelia raised one dirty glove to the blue sky and waved it as if saying hello to the gods. She screamed with mingled triumph and laughter as she waved. “And t'be wed, she thinks! Ooooo! Ye’d no doubt drink the blood of your victims on the marriage altar, too, would ye not? Oh, wicked! It makes me weep!” But instead of weeping she laughed again, a howl of mirth into the blind blue face of the sky.

“We planned no murders,” Susan said, drawing-if only in her own mind-a line of difference between the killings at Mayor’s House and the trap they had hoped to spring on Parson’s soldiers. “And he did no murders. No, this is the business of your friend Jonas, I wot. His plan, his filthy work.”

Cordelia plunged her hand into the box she held, and Susan understood at once why the gloves she wore were dirty: she had been grubbing in the stove.

“I curse thee with the ashes!” Cordelia cried, flinging a black and gritty cloud of them at Susan’s leg and the hand which held Pylon’s reins. “I curse thee to darkness, both of thee! Be ye happy together, ye faithless! Ye murderers! Ye cozeners! Ye liars! Ye fornicators! Ye lost and renounced!”

With each cry, Cordelia Delgado threw another handful of ashes. And with each cry, Susan’s mind grew clearer, colder. She held fast and allowed her aunt to pelt her; in fact, when Pylon, feeling the gritty rain against his side, attempted to pull away, Susan gigged him set. There were spectators now, avidly watching this old ritual of renunciation (Sheemie was among them, eyes wide and mouth quivering), but Susan barely noticed. Her mind was her own again, she had an idea of what to do, and for that alone she supposed she owed her aunt some sort of thanks.

“I forgive ye, Aunt,” she said.

The box of stove-ashes, now almost empty, tumbled from Cordelia’s hands as if Susan had slapped her. “What?” she whispered. “What does thee say?”

“For what ye did to yer brother and my father,” Susan said. “For what ye were a part of.”

She rubbed a hand on her leg and bent with the hand held out before her. Before her aunt could pull away, Susan had wiped ashes down one of her cheeks. The smudge stood out there like a wide, dark scar. “But wear that, all the same,” she said. “Wash it off if ye like, but I think ye’ll wear it in yer heart yet awhile.” She paused. “I think ye already do. Goodbye.”

“Where does thee think thee’s going?” Aunt Cord was pawing at the soot-mark on her face with one gloved hand, and when she lunged forward in an attempt to grasp Pylon’s reins, she stumbled over the box and almost fell. It was Susan, still bent over to her aunt’s side, who grasped her shoulder and held her up. Cordelia pulled back as if from the touch of an adder. “Not to him! Ye’ll not go to him now, ye mad goose!”

Susan turned her horse away. “None of yer business. Aunt. This is the end between us. But mark what I say: we’ll be married by Year’s End. Our firstborn is already conceived.”

“Thee’ll be married tomorrow night if thee goes nigh him' Joined in smoke, wedded in fire, bedded in the ashes! Bedded in the ashes, do ye hear me?”

The madwoman advanced on her, railing, but Susan had no more time to listen. The day was fleeting. There would be time to do the things that needed doing, but only if she moved at speed.

“Goodbye,” she said again, and then galloped away. Her aunt’s last words followed her: In the ashes, do ye hear me?