Retaliation begins in the shallows of the forest. If the last explosion was uncharted depths, this is where the minnows swim, and people aren’t afraid to dip their toes in. Indeed, this is where people gather, planting and harvesting trees under carefully ordained contracts. In a copse of plantation trees, a small crew of loggers work, they know nothing of the last night’s explosion, or the one that happened minutes prior. They show the appropriate reverence towards their work, but when the first axe falls, the tree it hits explodes in a burst of sap. It hardens immediately, trapping the Singers in amber prisons.
Two workers are protected, standing behind their colleagues, and they share a frightened look, before turning and fleeing back towards the edge of the forest. As they run vines and branches strike at them, entangling feet and scratching faces. One falls with a strangled yelp, and does not rise. The other glances back, seeing only one arm upraised from a roiling mass of roots like tentacles. Something grasps at his foot, and he wrenches free, sprinting out from between the trees to the relative safety of a field of stumps, trees recently harvested. The stumps seem to glare at him in silent accusation as he leaps over their dead roots, heart pounding in his chest.
A great beating of wings like thunder in the air sounds behind him, and he tumbles forward as a great owl tears a ragged strip of flesh from his shoulder. Stinging and bloody, he cries out, scrabbling away from the rushing wind. He doesn’t have the energy or the courage to look back, as the bird blocks the light and leaves him crawling in the shadows. He prays to long dead Gods, and to his surprise, hears an angry voice in response.
* * *
Mudge sits in a cell watching the stars spin out through a tiny window set high in the wall. He remembers other cells, other stars, and he smiles bitterly. Finally Perspicacious returns with a meal and a signed note. He hands the latter through the bars to Mudge, and then unlocks the cell and steps inside, placing the food on the table and pulling a second chair in. The note shifts dust on the table, this room having seen little use recently.
“Signed and delivered as of an hour ago,” Percy says, “now, lets talk.”
“You don’t mess around, do you?” Mudge says around a mouthful of rice.
“I don’t see the point,” Percy replies flatly. “And, frankly, your ship is in such a pitiable state that even if you were criminals, I don’t think you’d be able to do much with the supplies.”
“You’re lucky you’ve got me in here listening to your nonsense and not my captain.”
Percy slams his fist down on the hardwood table, he twitches with an inner anger. “You clearly don’t understand the situation here, Mister Mudge, so I’m going to speak very slowly, and very carefully. We live on the precipice, between the Table of Fifteen and the Faerie Folk. The new and the old. We take from one and trade with the other, and it is a precarious balance. Something, or someone is threatening that balance, and I need to stop it before people start dying. You’ve seen the Shards, you know what the Fey folk are capable of. So, call it cliché, call it whatever you want, standing out there, you see her, is my lieutenant, Mercuria.” Perspicacious’s voice drops to a whisper. “Seems a few of the more creative members of the squad call us Mercy and Percy, which is a bit funny. Even I have to admit, but not for the obvious reason. Does she look merciful to you?”
Mudge prides himself on his ability to judge people with a glance. Mercy- No, Mercuria, glowers at him from the other side of the door.
“Who would you rather talk to, Mudge?”
Mudge starts talking.
He tells him everything his Captain relayed about the meeting location. The bodies behind the waterfall, the ransacked chest. He keeps to himself the reason for the Kingfisher being there, spinning a half-truth about coming down hot and running out of fuel, necessitating an emergency landing in the pool of the waterfall. Shrew nods without saying anything, before the tale comes to an abrupt end.
“You know, Zachary, you’re very confident for a man in a jail cell,” Shrew says, tapping his fingers on the table.
“Not my first time, and if you’ve seen one wall, generally, you’ve seen em all,” Mudge says, then pauses, finishing off his plain meal. “Though, this is a palace compared to the Forge. Spent two weeks there a few years back hanging by my ankles. This is better.” He holds up the bowl. “Needs more cumin though.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Shrew says with a glint in his eyes, before standing to leave.
“Hey, at least tell me when I’ll be out of here!” Mudge says, letting a carefully calibrated hint of desperation enter his voice.
Shrew turns back to face him. Then crosses his arms over his chest. He glances around the cell, muttering slightly under his breath. “We’re being set up. I think. You seem a good enough sort, but I need to verify your story. Still, maybe you can help,” he pauses, considering. “Grown emeralds turned up in a raid a few days ago. Shipyard, there was also evidence that they’d been making more than just ships. The Builder in charge had either gone to ground, or been put in the ground, but from what we could tell, they’d been making weapons. Taking payment in the gemstones.”
“How do you know they’re grown? Don’t all of them just grow in the dirt over a thousand years?”
“Before the Shattering, yes, essentially, but when Arden broke, elements melted, liquefied, and congealed in ways that had never really been seen before. The interstition of the Planes caused the natural stones to become imbued with that same energy that spread through the survivors, when the Gods died. After the Shattering, they were used as weapons. Powerful, and unstable.”
“The Gemheart Wars.”
“Yes. Stupid name. In the end, most were broken down, their power wasted, and the few dangerous ones that remain are carefully protected by the Table. It’s not important,” Shrew says with a sigh, “I’ve just been reading up on them for way too long. Anyway, most gems are cut, oiled and polished to shine. But we’ve been treating with the Folk for near on seven hundred years now, and they don’t subscribe to the normal rules of things. I’ve seen flowers with solid gold petals used as bartering chips, I’ve seen gifts bestowed on beautiful maidens who get lost in the woods and come out subtly changed and wearing rubies that look like they’ve got fires inside them. Strange things. Strange and beautiful. This emerald, it hasn’t seen a jewellers tools. It hasn’t been cut to look this good, it’s been magicked. Grown.”
“So the Faeries are involved?”
“You live on Evergreen long enough, you realize the faeries are always involved. But, it’s not like them to use explosives, and now there’s smoke rising from the forest.” Mudge can see the exhaustion breaking through the tired lines of Shrew’s face. “The fey folk are tricksy by nature, so it’s impossible to say what they will and won’t do, when they’re playing their games. I feel like I’m trying to play a game of Two-Hand Jack against someone, only they’ve got four hands and I’m wearing a blindfold.”
“So you’re left wondering whether they supplied these emeralds to try to trick you? Like a double-cross, you suspect it’s them but it’s so far out of their usual style that you give them the benefit of the doubt, and then they hit you?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Shrew sighs, “except now you’re here, and you’ve got one of these bloody emeralds.”
“Which did come from Faerie Country.”
“Yeah, but not from faerie folk. So where did your dead military kids get it, or was it already there in that cave? How’d they get there, and how long were they there before they died? And what killed them? Every wound different, has an odd feel to it. I’ll tell you, it’s a confusing bloody nightmare.”
“Tell me about it, at least you’re not locked up in a cell.”
“Yeah yeah, look, about that. I’ll do what I can, but if I don’t get a solid lead pretty soon this is going to be taken out of my-”
Shrew is cut off by a terrible groaning. A thunderous tremor shakes the ground beneath him and Mudge throws himself as far forward under the table in the center of the room as he can. The earth quakes, rattling the building as if Evergreen itself was nothing more than a toy being shaken by a boisterous child. Shrew jumps back out of the room, seconds before the floor is cracked open like a biscuit by an inky black tree root, as thick around as Mudge’s torso. The shaking subsides gradually as the world seems to settle. Mudge steps back, bracing himself as he stares at the stygian root. He notices the way the crack in the floor has slightly skewed the back wall of his cell, a possible escape path.
Before he can commit more than a stray thought to it, a band of shimmering light pulses along the root, a ring of greenish brightness that travels up the length, before stopping in the center. It flashes, filling the corners of room with light, and then moves on down the root. Mudge presses himself back against the wall as the root in front of him splits open, a tiny hole in the darkness only just visible as a white Mournflower grows in front of him at stunning speed, the long skeletal stalk raising out of the hole, before blossoming in a delicate puff of purest ivory.
We see Lincoln itself now, the city rent with shrieks and screams as roots grow through the streets, worming their way between cracks in buildings, rending the cobbled streets upward. That same pulsing light flickers along each of these roots, reflecting off every person in each room, each bystander in the street. Then the roots open, and pale white flowers bloom. The kinds of flowers reserved for last rites, because of their beauty and danger. In each room, it is easier to notice, but across the streets, we would be forgiven for not realizing it, since there are so many. But for every person within the sight of that initial pulse of light, a flower blooms. One for each person in the city.
“Shrew!” Mudge yells from within his now slightly dented prison cell. “You gotta let me out man.”
There’s hectic footsteps, as Shrew returns, rushing past the cell with a sword strapped to his belt and attendants following close behind.
“This is out of my hands now, Mudge. I’ll be back later. Stay put,” he glances at the root running through the prison cell, “and if you value that pretty face of yours, DO NOT TOUCH THAT FLOWER.”
And then he’s gone. Leaving Mudge quiet and contemplative in the cell, staring at the beautiful toxic blossom in front of him, thinking hard.
* * *
Situated on the lower docks, a luxury sky-yacht bobs merrily in the water. The Silver Linings, as she is called, is being prepared for her debut voyage. Preparations have stalled however, as chaos unfolds in the town proper. Her purchaser, an eccentric man of considerable means and inscrutable motive, watches on crestfallen as panic overtakes the city, and knows that his departure will be considerably delayed.
Others watch the chaos unfold, including Jonas, who stands on the deck of the Kingfisher, as the officers argue around him. He had spent some time walking the decks after his meeting with the Commander of the Wrathhowl, before returning to the Kingfisher with one lonely idea scraping against the sides of his mind.
The vagabond crew of the Kingfisher are no strangers to a little under the table work, and with all the officers reporting the same thing, namely, that the city is completely dry of cheap ‘gas, there aren’t really any other options.
“We’ll have to steal it.”