PodCastle

* Author : Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko
* Narrator : Tanja Milojevic 
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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PodCastle 683: Three for Hers is a PodCastle original.


Content warnings for gore and coercive violence.


Rated R.
Three For Hers
by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko
 
The second time one of Vida’s brothers came home with strips of flesh cut out of his back, she decided it was time for the Margrave’s rule to end.
‘Don’t go,’ her middle brother sobbed. His bandages had soaked through, blood clumping where it met the grimy floor. ‘I was brave and fierce, and it was not enough.’
‘Don’t go,’ her oldest brother pleaded. His back had scarred a long time ago. So had his spirit. ‘I was strong and stubborn, and it was not enough.’
‘Please don’t go.’ Her father’s face was the hardest to ignore. Vida bundled the last of her belongings. It did not take long: the Plemitschi allowed them only food and clothing.
‘We have served the rulers of this land since it was young.’ Vida looked down as she spoke. Her father remembered a time when their service had been freely given, one Yagichari to another. She did not wish to see that nostalgia on his face. ‘I will not stop now.’
‘I’ll go instead,’ her father said. ‘You cannot do this to your brothers. They rely on your good cheer. I cannot bear to see your heart harden in the Margrave’s service.’
Vida did not want to upset him. She did not say, My heart hardened the day the Plemitschi came. Or, My heart broke the day the plague broke out, and I have pretended ever since, for you and for my brothers, because I knew I was stronger. Or, There is no heart where the Plemitschi tread.
‘I will serve,’ Vida said, and left.

The shadow crept along the high street of Konj like a grasping hand. Two houses away, a body transport bobbed in front of a door marked with the red plague mosquito. A bad day. She could tell by how low in the air the transport lay. She hurried on. It was late—the Margrave’s castle-ship was positioned carefully to block the sun. The Plemitschi did not mind if their conquests woke to the play of sunlight through tattered curtains, so long as they went to bed in their masters’ shadow.
The castle-ship hung in the sky, tricking the eye like the painted backdrops Vida’s father made when she’d played at being an actor. There were turrets at each of its five corners. In direct sunlight, the eye was drawn to the nacre gleam sheathing their upper levels. On the day of the invasion, they’d unfurled delicate whorls, like leaves of bracken, and everything they touched died.
The mud was cold beneath Vida’s feet. Beauty was hard to find in Konj, but she knew where to look. She saw it in the yellow street-lamps, which had not yet been replaced with ones of Plemitschi make. She saw it in the battered sign that hung above the apothecary, the vine-wrapped pestle identifying the medical profession centuries after the tool itself had fallen out of use. She saw it in the mud. Mud persisted.
It took her ten minutes to walk the high street. The open patch of land beneath the castle-ship had been a graveyard—Vida remembered gravestones festooned with flowers and flickering candles on the day of remembrance. Now the gravestones were gone and directly beneath the castle-ship, at the point where an upwards glance was occluded entirely by its g...