Bound: After Dinner Conversation, #45

By Joanna Michal Hoyt

Synopsis: The "Lord Keeper" sets out to murder his successor in order to keep a community secret safe.

After Dinner Conversation is a growing series of short stories across genres to draw out deeper discussions with friends and family. Each story is an accessible example of an abstract ethical or philosophical idea and is accompanied by suggested discussion questions.

Podcast discussion of this short story, and others, is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Youtube.

• Language: English
• Publisher: After Dinner Conversation
• Release date: Apr 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393404248

Book preview

Bound

After Dinner Conversation Series

I CAME FULLY AWAKE as I sat up and cracked my head on the thwart of my upturned canoe. The pain cleared my head. I felt under my bedroll for my knife, hoping I hadn’t made enough noise to attract the attention of whatever—whoever? —had waked me. I didn’t hear footsteps. I was just starting to drift back down into sleep when I heard the voice speaking from the high ridge above the brushy bit of riverbank where I had camped, meaning to get a good night’s sleep before venturing into Sheneshe. The speaker must have been just about directly above me.

This is the third night, and the second asking, the voice said. A man’s voice, elderly, melodious, and exhausted. If I knew anything more to say to change your mind, I would say it.

And it would not change my mind. My answer is no. The answering voice was younger, harsher.

A sigh. Then all I can do is sit with you until dawn.

Until three nights ago, I might have thought that was kind of you.

Arlin, the old man said, the Law was given in kindness, but that kindness was meant for the people, not the Keepers—or the breakers either.

I could hear the capital in the old man’s voice as he said ‘the Law." I heard something else too, something I couldn’t put a name to, something that set my teeth on edge. Though perhaps that was only the fear that came from the rumors I had heard...

GOSSIPS IN THE TOWNS downriver had told me that no woman in her right mind would paddle on upstream past Sennipol to Sheneshe. When I observed that I could paddle as well as most men, they sighed and said no sane man would go that way either. When I inquired whether there were rapids, they explained that the problem was not in the river, but in Sheneshe itself—that its folk were unchancy.

Unchancy how? I asked. Lawless? Cruel? Some stared blankly at me or shrugged, plainly parroting