The Desert Spear

if I see Harl lying dead of a knife wound?” Jeph asked, knowing it was what they were both thinking.
    Ilain sighed deeply. “Then you mop the blood and build a pyre, and for all anyone ever need know, he slipped off the hay ladder and broke his neck.”
    “We can’t just lie,” Jeph said. “If she killed someone…”
    Ilain whirled angrily on him. “What in the Core do you think we ’ve been doing all these years?” she snapped. Jeph put up his hands to placate her, but she pressed on.
    “Have I been a good wife?” Ilain demanded. “Kept your house? Given you sons? Do you love me?”
    “Course I do,” Jeph said.
    “Then you’ll do this for me, Jeph Bales,” she said. “You’ll do it for all of us, an’ for Beni an’ her boys, too. There ent no need for anything what’s ever happened on that farm to reach the town’s ears. What they make up is bad enough, and to spare.”
    Jeph was quiet for a long time as they matched stares and wills. Finally, he nodded. “All right. I’ll leave after breakfast.”
    Jeph was up with the dawn, hurrying through his morning chores despite the tired ache in his bones. They had tried all night to get a response out of Renna, but she simply stared at the ceiling, neither sleeping nor eating. After breakfast, he saddled their best mare.
    “Reckon I’ll avoid the road myself,” he told Ilain. “Take a shortcut through the fields southeast.” Ilain nodded, throwing her arms around him and hugging him tightly. He returned the embrace, the pit of his stomach heavy with dread at what he might find. Finally, he let go. “Best to get going while there’s still time enough for a return trip.”
    He had just mounted his horse when the sound of hoofbeats reached his ears. He looked up to see a cart approaching, carrying the Herb Gatherer, Coline Trigg, wringing her hands with worry, and the Town Speaker, Selia the Barren, looking grim. Selia was nearing seventy now, tall and thin, but still tough as boiled leather and sharp as a Cutter’s axe.
    Beside the cart on one side rode Rusco Hog, and on the other Garric Fisher and Raddock Lawry, Garric’s great-uncle and the Speaker for Fishing Hole. On foot behind them were Tender Harral and what looked like half the men of Fishing Hole, armed with thin fishing spears.
    Garric kicked his horse ahead when the farm came in sight, galloping right up to the porch where Ilain stood and pulling up so short the beast reared before settling.
    “Where is she?” Garric demanded.
    “Where is who?” Ilain asked, meeting his wild glare.
    “Don’t play games with me, woman!” Garric snarled. “I’ve come for your whorin’, witchin’, murderin’ sister, and you well know it!” He got off his horse and strode up to her, shaking his fist.
    “You stop right there, Garric Fisher,” said Norine Cutter, coming out of the house holding Jeph’s axe. She had lived on Jeph’s farm since before his wife died, and was as much a part of the family as any. “This ent your property. You keep back an’ state your business, ’less you’re looking to take a coreling by the horns.”
    “My business is that Renna Tanner murdered her own da and my son, and I’ll see her cored for it!” Garric shouted. “Ent no point in hiding her!”
    Tender Harral caught up and interposed himself between Garric and the women. He was young and strong, a match for the older if just as bulky Garric. “There’s no proof of anything yet, Garric! We just need to ask her a few questions, is all,” he told Ilain. “And you, if she ’s said anything since Jeph left.”
    “We need to do more than that, Tender,” Raddock said, getting off his horse. He was born Raddock Fisher, but everyone in the Brook called him Raddock Lawry, because he was Speaker for the Hole on the town council, and legal arbitrator of disputes in his borough. A mass of grizzled hair from ears to chin, the crown of his head was bald as an egg. He was older than Selia but shorter-tempered, full of righteous passion with a knack for stirring it in others. “Girl needs to answer for her crimes.”
    Hog was the next to dismount. He was imposing as always, the man who owned half of Tibbet’s Brook outright and held debts from the rest. “Garric speaks honest word when he says your father and Cobie Fisher are dead,” Hog told Ilain. “My girls and I went to investigate some shouting we heard at the store last evening, and found them in the back room I rented Cobie, dead. Not just