Lisette was named after a thing she didn’t believe in. Six, on her mother’s knee, she was told in a soothing voice “your name is a good name. It means God is your pledge. It is an oath. Do you know what that means, child? It means the same as promise.”


    She hadn’t understood much, but the word oath stuck in her craw like something jagged and bitter. She went to church, like they all did, but she didn’t feel particularly promised. Mostly she just admired the arches and colorful glass of the cathedral; enjoyed breathing the heady smell of incense and waxed wood.


    Church was warm and nice, but she never felt a particular connection to the deity worshipped therein. God was a distant concept, a cold surveyor far detached who spoke in looping, dizzying sentences like her grandfather had.


    The painting that hung near the doors to the nave, depicting the bloody death of a saint, fascinated her far more than the words of the clergy. She stared often at that canvas, at the garish splashes of oxblood red and the masterful strokes that the artist had used to bring faces to life. The pain in the features as blood dripped down a dirty brow. It was violent; a discordant note amid the quiet of worship.


    Often a smarting slap to the hand would bring her to turn back around to face forward. Her mother Katherine was not well-loved there, and with her child craning neck to stare at the martyred saint, other wandering eyes would sometimes find their small family in the pews. Eyes of disapproval.


    But by sixteen, Lisette couldn’t be bothered. She would stray on Sunday mornings to the edge of the wood, where there was a great tree with fat low branches fit for climbing. She would kick off her shoes and scramble up to the top where the view of the surrounding valley spilled out deliciously from the ridge on which their little town was settled.


    Mountains cut off the northeastern horizon, looking fake with their perfectly white snow-caps even in the hottest part of summer, and to the West there was nothing but trees and stony ridges til the sky and land met. On clear days, from her treetop, Lisette could just barely make out the winding path in the trees where a river lay.


    Lumber workers were well familiar with the woods, as were the Armsmen that served as guards of the church. She had watched squadrons of the latter marching into the woods on occasion, looking a bit like black-and-red ants. The kind that bit.


    “Stay far out of their way, Etta,” her mother had often repeated the advice over the years. Lisette would cringe at the nickname but nod obediently. “The Armsmen -God bless-” Here Katherine would draw a thumb to her chin and make the sign that was meant to ward off evil. “See our laws upheld and our Church safe... But they can be hard men. And best our little family keeps distance. They do not love us here.”


    Lisette would nod again. She had been hearing the same since she could remember, and though she had a stubborn streak fit to drive her mother to an early grave, she had never found reason to disagree with what she saw as objective truth. She had seen the stares, heard the whispers.


    For reasons she couldn’t understand, her mother’s acceptance into this village was a delicate thing. Everywhere the woman went there followed an air of disquiet. It was never quite hostility, but there was always the sense that it could become so in a moment if anything untoward happened.


    They were generally a little kinder to Lisette, especially as it became clear that she was not prone to troublemaking. But there were still sneers in the common village areas. Once, when she had been around ten, someone had spat at her in the street. She never did find out who, as they had disappeared before she even wiped the saliva from her cheek.


    By Lisette’s seventeenth birthday, her mother had long since given up dragging her to church. It wasn’t required at that age, after all. She needed only sign a paper stating that her young daughter was home working, and the Armsmen would hardly blink at the empty seat in the pew.


    The freedom of it was a fine thing. She sat in her tree on the edge of the woods like a queen bird, sometimes watching the boys who snuck out behind their school to smoke cigarettes. She was equally terrified and fascinated by those young men, by their puffs of blue-grey smoke that smelled terrible and left the youngest of them always coughing. They were a rare sight in town, where it was mostly adults and young women going about their business.


    Once, on a foggy midwinter Sunday after an Armsmen had shouted a gaggle of boys back inside, Lisette had crept down from her tree and picked up a still-burning cigarette with trembling fingers. She cautiously sniffed it, then took a long drag off the end as she had seen the boys do. Her eyes stung and she nearly gagged, dropping the burning thing and willing her spasming lungs to hold back the fit of coughs that threatened to give her transgression away.


    She scrambled back into the tree and breathed ragged gulps of damp air until the feeling subsided. Her heart felt quick and he mind a little bit sharp and strange, but it hardly seemed worth the acrid taste that lingered in her mouth.


    By eighteen, when she had joined the young women’s circle in town, her girlish flights of fancy had been mostly stamped out. Life and work had taken pounds off her body and put years on her face, and on Sundays when the bells rang for worship she went with the two girls closest to her age, Hannah and Adina, to ready the laundry in one of the workhouses.


    The old man who oversaw the place while everyone was at church leered at them and smelled strongly of tobacco. One morning he had grabbed Lisette’s arm while she walked by with arms full of soiled cloth, and she never forgot the hungry look in his eyes as his other hand traced down her waist to her hip and lingered there.


    “Disgusting,” Hannah had said when Lisette, enraged by the unwelcome touch, had hissed the story under her breath as they folded. “But you need to take him with a grain of salt. He’s old, he’s hardly allowed outside.”


    “Disgusting,” was all Lisette said back, fuming at the towel she had just finished.


    Months passed, and eventually she grew so used to the man’s pinches and gropes that she hardly registered them as she went about her work. Her mom had fallen ill by then, and between taking care of the house and the workhouse chores, Lisette had scarcely a free moment to think.


    Autumn of her nineteenth year, a fire raged through the village, stopping just short of the rectory but taking the front part of the church before the firemen were able to put it out. Whether or not it was caused by a lightning strike or an errant candle was a matter of debate in town for decades after.


    It didn’t affect the Northern half of town, where Lisette and her mother lived, but it did shut down the workhouse for a week to free up hands to help with rebuilding. With all the work halted, the women had nowhere to be, and so Lisette found herself one October morning wandering back to the wood, silently thanking a God she didn’t believe in for having spared her favorite old yew from the fire.


    She smiled at the tree as she would an old friend, reaching out to touch its bark with callused fingertips. Smaller, new trunks were growing in a few places where branches had grown heavy enough to touch the ground. Yew are opportunistic, and those lower limbs had taken root tp begin lives of their own.


    A handful of jackdaws that had been perching in the upper branches took flight at the sight of her. She remembered her mother once calling a group of those a clattering. It seemed like a good word for it now, as their squawking calls echoed back-and-forth through the trees.


    She found a familiar section of trunk and sat, listening to the fading jackdaws and the songbirds that sang all around with closed eyes. Far in the distance she heard laughter and knew that the rest of the women were likely in the square gossiping and taking an early lunch outdoors. Free time was a luxury for them all.


    A soothing daydream was just taking hold when a shadow fell across her, cutting off the warmth of the sunlight. She opened her eyes irritably. A man she only vaguely recognized - he was one of the cigarette boys, now grown - was looking down at her with a strange expression.


    “You’re the bastard girl, aren’t ya?” He asked her. His voice and his eyes both had a wicked turn to them.


    “Aye, sir. And how can I help you?” She hated the automatic fawning that had been trained into her voice, but a fear had started in her belly and she fell back on what little she knew of men. Appease them and avoid trouble. Head down and be polite, her mother’s voice echoed in her head. Her cheeks burned in shame even as her voice capitulated.


    “You’ve not to church recently. Or to your tree to stare at us outside the barracks.”


    “I work now,” Lisette responded, casting her eyes down and trying to look demure. Her pulse had quickened and her tongue felt heavy. It wasn’t the longest conversation she’d had with a man – far from it– but it was the only one that she had had with a man close to her own age. Something about it made her feel acutely aware of her entire body, from her uncovered tumble of dark hair to the left sock that had drooped a few inches down from the hem of her skirt.


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    His eyes seemed to follow her awareness, combing over her appraisingly. It was a look she had seen in hunting dogs and wild badgers both. A look of calculating before a killing strike. She jerked one hand to her sock to pull it up, and he chuckled, taking a cigarette out of his breast pocket and stepping towards her to strike a match on the tree.


    Her heart was pounding all-out now, making her feel a bit sick, but she remained where she was seated, head turned down but eyes up and watching as the man took a few drags off his smoke and tossed the match to the ground with a flick.


    “Are you scared, bastard child?” Smoke spilled out of his nose and mouth and coiled around her. She felt an odd thrill at the smell of it. It was the smell of her childhood rebelliousness, and the memory both bolstered her courage and terrified her simultaneously. She used the second of bravery to hitch the errant sock back up over the exposed skin of her leg.


    The man’s eyes, a light hazel, caught the movement and narrowed with a smile that forcibly reminded Lisette of a snake. One tooth flashed gold, and at the sight of it she felt her fear come to a head. This wasn’t some schoolboy playing games with her. This boy - no, man, she kept correcting herself mentally- was an Armsman. More likely an Armsman-in-training, sure, but it amounted to the same thing.


    She knew deeply in some recess of her mind where instinct still lived, that she was as caught as a rabbit in a trap. She balled her fists in her lap and lifted her head finally to look at him squarely, thinking for some reason again of her mother.


    “No,” she said firmly, dropping all semblance of dutiful respect.


    No sooner had her eyes met his than her head was smacked back down with an open palm, the force causing her teeth to snap the tip of her tongue painfully. Tears sprung in her eyes but she willed them back, not wanting him to think they were his doing.


    He put a knuckle under her chin and pushed her face back up to meet his. The smile on his face was indulgent, almost doting. It shown in the sunlight and Lisette thought angrily at the unfairness of him looking like that, of him being beautiful even in this moment. Most of his caste were like that, though. This she knew.


    He held up the burning cigarette to her face and traced one finger down her cheek, her throat, the collar of her blouse. There he stopped, letting her chin go for a moment to free the other hand. He unclasped the collar and unbuttoned it slowly, savoring it. Lisette stared straight ahead and tried to memorize his face.


    There would be no retribution, she knew. Not for her, not against him. She and her mother had lived a quiet life and had been thus lucky. They stayed out of the way, didn’t make waves. The town council was very willing to write off an unmarried pregnant woman so long as she was the right race. So long as she was churchgoing and worked. So long, Lisette often privately suspected, as she was possessed of beauty.


    She had never thought that they were entirely safe, but somehow she also never imagined it to come to something like this. The passing gropes, the higher-born women stealing her clothes away while she bathed, even the inevitable marrying off that she would face once her mother passed. All of those things she had come to terms with. But not this.


    Armsmen were never supposed to notice her. She hadn’tprepared for that. She realized suddenly that what she had thought she had been watching as a child – schoolboys ditching class– hadn’t been that at all. They had been cloistered, in training, and that fence was never meant to have a young girl’s eyes looking down into it. The reality of it hit her hysteric brain and she bit her tongue again to avoid laughing out loud.


    “Tsk tsk,” the man whispered, mistaking her suddenly clamped jaw as more defiance. “You should be afraid, sweetling.” He yanked her blouse down and drove the lit cigarette hard into her left breast, eyes bright as she yelped in pain and tried to pull away. He brought one hand behind her and held her fast, skin burning away til the ember was completely out.


    “Mmm,” he whispered, coming closer to her face. “Are you scared now?” His breathing was uneven. She realized in horror that he was excited. He tossed the stubbed out cigarette aside and cupped her chin, sliding one ashy finger into her mouth. Her jaw trembled and he looked appeased at the sign of fear.


    His mistake. Just as his other hand crept up her skirt like a foul spider, she made a split decision and bit down. Hard. Blood exploded in her mouth and she spit it directly into his surprised face, savoring the flash of wavering confidence that had flashed by before rage contorted his features. He pulled his injured hand back with an outraged scream.


    “Fuck you!” She screamed at him, reaching up to a familiar branch overhead and scrambling onto it. She climbed up as fast as she possibly could, still trying to keep an eye on him over one shoulder. The man grinned wider than ever and, forgetting his mutilated finger entirely, grabbed both her ankles just as her feet nearly disappeared above him. She kicked furiously, missing his head by inches, and held on so tight to the bark that her own hands began to bleed.


    It was no use, though, and she was slowly, painfully dragged from the safety of the tree. With a final yank he brought her back to the ground and laughed wildly. Her head smacked against a root and stars popped in her vision, but she was still thrashing about trying to defend in all directions at once.


    The Armsman descended on her all at once, pinning her between his knees and leveraging his weight to immobilize her. One of her arms was caught entirely beneath her, twisting painfully. The other she tried to strike him with, but he caught and held her wrist as if she had no strength at all. She screamed again as he tore the rest of her blouse off. A button popped and hit him in the cheek, and the scream suddenly dissolved into laughter.


    He smiled and yanked her skirt up. She tried to free her twisted arm, to no avail. He saw her trying and pulled her skirt intentionally hard, getting it free from under him and burning her skin in the process. She suddenly thought of that day in the street, and as he leaned into her face she spit as hard as she could. It got him right in the eye, a small triumph.


    “Well now,” he said, not even bothering to wipe it away. His voice was lower now, almost conspiratorial. “That probably wasn’t wise.” His cold hand grabbed her thigh, fingers digging in as if he intended to take a handful of her flesh.


    Sensing a nearing point of no return, Lisette moved like a thing on fire, calling upon muscles she hitherto hadn’t known existed. She twisted and writhed and tried with all her might to buck him off. He outweighed her grossly, though, and without her arms free there was little she could do. One final, wild thrash and she found herself out of energy entirely. She lay still then, panting, baring her bloody teeth at him in a way that promised another bite if he dared get close enough.


    For his part he looked calm. Unfazed, except for a frowning glance down at his bloodied finger. “Where did all this fight come from?” He mused. “Surely not from your whore mother?”


    She refused to take the bait. He could overpower her physically, but she wouldn’t allow him to best her in any way that counted. Brute strength was easy. He sighed at her exasperatedly, his fun clearly spoiled. “All for naught, I’m afraid.” He sounded hideously sincere. “I’ll still have you, bitch girl, and I think in recompense for my finger I’ll have your mother, too, once we’re finished.” He smiled warmly, tearing a strip of fabric from her skirt. She said nothing, did nothing but watch as he wrapped the cloth into a makeshift bandage for his finger and inspected it.


    “My good hand, too,” He muttered, using the non-injured one to pin her free arm while the other reached for something at his side. There was a small snick sound and a small, thin silver blade appeared. It glinted beautifully as he held it up, moving it back and forth as if to catch the reflections of green and early-fall-orange. Then, moving impossibly fast, he brought the blade to Lisette’s chest, just below the sternum. It was cold on her bare skin.


    She winced as he leaned forward, close to her face. “I don’t mind if you fight, girl. But if you take any more of me,” he jerked his chin towards the bandaged finger for emphasis. “Then this little sticker goes into your ribs. And trust me, that prick is a lot more painful than the other one. In fact, you might find you rather enjoy the other one.” The smile no longer looked warm. Or even sane.


    His strike was again unnervingly fast, and before she even registered his movement both Lisette’s arms were pins and needles and good as useless. He had hit a nerve on both of them, elbow-striking just below the shoulder. She whimpered in true terror then at last, kicking her legs as hard as she could. The church bell tolled in the distance and another group - no, clattering - of jackdaws startled at the sound and took to squawking their distress. The Armsman cocked his head towards the sound, looking human again for a brief moment.


    All at once sensation rushed back into Lisette’s free arm and she felt her knuckles resting on a rock about the size of tangerine. It was her last hope. She grabbed it awkwardly, straining her wrist, then bucked her hips forward as hard as she could so that the man on top of her had to rebalance. He pitched forward slightly, knees momentarily losing their pressure, and she brought the stone against his face as hard as she could. Blood flew. The birds overhead screamed.


    The force of the strike sent him crumpling to the side, and she got to her feet as fast as she could. Her body, especially the twisted shoulder, was aching and unsteady, but the relief of gaining her feet had given her second wind. She braced herself just in time for her attacker to fly at her. He tackled her hard, driving her off her feet for a moment, and she had barely enough time to think before grabbing onto him and throwing her weight around, using the momentum of her own fall to slam his back into the tree. He made a strangled sound upon impact.


    Lisette caught her breath and shoved hard against his chest, thinking only to maximize the distance between them. To get away, far away. But instead another odd gasp came from him, and a rivulet of blood bubbled out of his mouth. She glanced down, and he followed her gaze. His eyes widened.


    The tip of a broken-off branch of yew just barely poked out from the center of his chest. Blood pooled in a rapidly widening ring around it. He voiced a wordless scream of rage, attempting to push himself off the impaling branch, and the scream cut short in a wet cough. Blood splattered across Lisette’s face. His rage turned to desperation, then fear.


    She watched as his panicked, fading, gasps brought more and more blood pouring down his chin, messing the entire front of his shirt. He began to choke. Those hazel eyes rolled to look at her, and he managed a final grotesque bark of laughter before such things left him forever. At last he was still.


    Silence rolled across the edge of the wood, punctuated only by the occasional splattering of blood dripping to the ground. A light breeze blew the hair from the dead Armsman’s forehead and Lisette shivered.


    A number of feelings slammed into her all at once, vying for control. Disgust, remorse, and terror were the main three. She barely repressed a gag. Her entire body was trembling. Whether from cold or from shock, she didn’t know or care.


    She thought of her mom, at home in bed waiting for her. She thought of Hannah, and of the church and the large building where the Armsmen cloistered until they were shipped off. She looked at the body. The dead body, pinned against the tree and still bleeding. There would be no coming back from this. She would be tortured. She would be killed.


    A peal of laughter, far-off, sent her into a panic. All at once she became aware of how perilously close to town she was. Had anyone heard the struggle? Or his scream? Could she somehow escape? Where would she go? Why had she fought back? Why, why, why? She knew if she had just let it happen then she would likely be on her way home now. Disheveled and shaken but alive. Alive, and safe.


    She had fought back instinctively. It was self-defense. It was automatic, and against everything she had been raised to do. Where was that obeisance her mother had so often drilled into her?


    “Shit,” she whispered to herself. There were two options now, so far as she could see: Either accept her fate and let all that struggle have been for naught, or keep fighting. She wiped the blood and tears and dirt from her mouth with the back of one bare arm, walked shakily back to the tree, and grabbed the bleeding corpse around the waist.


    Blood, warm and sticky, soaked her back and dripped unpleasantly down her chest. The urge to gag came again and she pushed it back. She could give in to that disgust later, after she took care of this. It was a marvel what the mind could ignore to protect itself during crisis. Squatting for leverage, Lisette gritted her teeth and pulled.


    He came away easier than she had expected. For the second time they were carried into each other by momentum, this time the dead weight of him narrowly missing pinning her once more as she toppled over.


    The Armsman’s body landed just beside her, grotesquely bloody. His head lolled and a fresh puddle began to expand in the dirt beneath him. Those hazel eyes, so jarringly beautiful, looked like they would blink at any moment.


    “What am I doing,” she whispered to herself, pushing up to her knees. The shock must have worn off, because suddenly the full horror of it all sank in and Lisette came apart entirely. She hugged her knees and sobbed, crying like she had never cried before. Alone in the woods and surrounded by the tangy smell of blood, she felt impossibly small. Impossibly alone.


    After awhile a jackdaw, possibly one of the same from before, landed on the ground beside her. She had cried herself mostly out by then, and the tears that still streamed were silent. The bird cocked its head at her and she stared at it in return.


    A strange, dreamy feeling like a memory of a memory overtook her. She tried hazily to recall what it was and suddenly found herself face to face with a small boy. He was dressed oddly, and looking at her even more oddly. The dreamy feeling intensified when she made eye contact. Were his eyes black?


    “Sleep?” He asked. Nausea gripped Lisette. She wondered if the strange child was asking about the Armsmen. An irrational thought: What if this boy was family to the dead man? Flared briefly in her exhausted brain. Was she going mad? She heard squawking in the branches above her, looked up to find the source, and instead found her vision tunneling. Darkness wrapped around her, the promise of unconsciousness so sweet that she ran to it.