I ignored the notification, because Erdinand started sniffling again.

“What happened?” I asked again, trying keep his mind on the story instead of his beating.

And his pain. He was still wheezing and weak, and half the cracks remained in his carapace. Apparently Intuit was right that gold beads didn’t work so fast on the ungemmed.

“The-the kids ran when you said,” he told me. “Ran for the trees. Alice carried Big Sid and helped me and--“

“Alice?” I interrupted.

“The ollie girl, young woman. The one in the yellow dress, who--“

“I know who you mean, but ... her name is Alice?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, sorry. Keep going.”

“We ran when you told us--“

“After you whistled the horses away.”

“That worked!” he said, with a bit of his regular humor in his voice. “I never been so happy to see horses bolt.”

“You saved them, Erdinand,” I told him. “You keep saying I did, but we did.”

“I guess I helped a little. Uh, anyway, at first the soldiers couldn’t reach us with you in the way, then half of them took off chasing you and others took off chasing Usim and--“

“The little lord ran for it?”

“He did!”

“Brave kid.”

“Yeah. Yes ...” He paused, like there was something he wasn’t telling me. “So we reached the forest and Alice led us away but I heard soldiers following and I--I’m not very good in the woods, I’m slow and clumsy--so I lagged behind the others then veered off and led the soldiers away and they found me.”

“You used yourself as bait,” I said.

“Nah, I just--“

“You’re a king,” I told him.

“It’s nothing.”

“A fucking king.”

“No, no, no,” he said. “At best I’m a prince.”

I laughed softly. “Prince Erdinand the First. How’re you feeling?”

“Much better,” he said. “I think one of my legs is hardly even broken anymore.”

“Ah, um ... and the other?”

“A golden bead! I bet I’ll be able to walk by tomorrow morning, at least a short way.”

“Tomorrow morning.”

His voice brightened. “I know, right? So fast. It’s amazing!”

“Yeah,” I said, hiding my dismay. So much for running away in the night.

“I know! And I’ll recover completely in two days! Like a miracle.” His uninjured eye peered at me. “Alex, how are you gemmed?”

“I guess it’s just one of those things.”

“One of what things?”

“Well, uh, the things I don’t how to talk about.”

“I don’t have that problem. I just open my mouth and talk.”

“Do you even have a mouth in there?”

He giggled. “I have two!”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking, but before I asked, I heard someone approaching so I hissed, “Ssssh! You’re hurt, almost dying. Stay still!”

Somewhat to my surprise, Erd immediately went limp and silent. I let my head loll backward and watched through one eye as the other white infenti twin--Jikap?--climbed the ladder, then crossed the wagon roof toward me

He took a bite of his meat-stuffed bun and kicked me in the side. I rolled over enough for him to check my hands were still tied. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure they were, so I touched my gem with my mind, in case I needed to act. Luckily, he just grunted then sat on a crate positioned to watch me.

“How’s your brother’s face?” I asked him.

He took another bite instead of answering.

“The good news,” I said, “is that now you’re the handsome one.”

He still didn’t answer.

“How come you’re so pale?” I asked. “Your dad fuck a seagull?”

He still didn’t say anything, though I caught a flicker of a reaction on his face. Good. Though, uh ... if you think that I was trying to provoke him as part of a cunning plan, you’re wrong. I wasn’t planning anything, I just wanted to piss him off.

I was bound and injured and out of my league. I should have been terrified of him. Of all of them. Of this entire situation.The old me would’ve been, but the new me was just pissed. The new me kept thinking about that brave teenaged ollie boy falling dead to the ground. Murdered so offhandedly, like his life hadn’t mattered, like his death hadn’t mattered.

My anger made me fearless and the mana swirling in my blood made me reckless. Maybe I felt more powerful than I was, but I didn’t give a shit. Recklessness felt good.

“Look at you,” I told the infenti. “If you were any more inbred you’d be a sandwich.”

He took another bite of his stuffed bun.

“Inbred. In bread. No? You’re not giving me a single thing, here? Damn, at least your dad gets a gel bead from the sailors down at the dock after he--”

“We’re taking you to Ryetown,” he snarled me. “Where we’ll extract your gem. The process is uncertain but there are certain steps you can take to increase success. Certain extremely painful steps.”

“Oh, no, I’m turning white with fear. That’s why I look like a maggot. How come they haven’t given you a gem yet?”

“Maybe they’ll give me yours. Summoning axes is a stupid power, but bonding with a gem makes you faster, stronger, tougher. That’s the only reason you’re still standing after fighting my brother.”

“I’m not standing, asshole,” I said. “If I were standing I’d shove your pasty head so far up your pasty ass you’d look like a powdered donut.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Which wasn’t much, as insults went, but he still rose from the crate and kicked me in the face.

* * *

Farms appeared on the sides of the road the next morning, and tended fields covered the rolling hills. I figured they were rye fields, but they just looked like regular wheat to me. Not that I knew the difference.

Scarecrows flapped over the rows every now and then, and weird-looking sheep grazed in fallow acreage. A knocking sounded in the distance as farmers chopped wood or sunk posts. Maybe I could get a job trimming hedges, if I survived the next few days.

The rumble of wheels and the jangle of gear almost blocked out the angry voices in the wagon below me. I couldn’t hear the words, but it sounded like the little lordship was not happy, and Miss Kathina was not sympathetic.

I nudged Erdinand again, so he could try eavesdropping along with me, but he still didn’t wake. He looked better than the previous night, though. Most of the cracks on his shell had knit together at least slightly. He seemed about half-healed, so I hoped that falling into a coma was just an effect of the gold bead’s healing properties.

Didn’t help us run away, though.

The wagon rattled past a checkpoint where soldiers monitored the traffic leaving the area--but not entering--and a few minutes later, the town itself came into view. I’d been expecting a sort of low village of thatched huts. Like, a couple thousand people in a hobbit-like hamlet? It was called ‘Ryetown,’ after all. That felt pretty tiny. But the buildings that appeared when we reached the hilltop were most three or four stories tall, made of stone and covered in ivy, with toppled towers and ... and they were ruins.

Ryetown was built in the middle of a ruined city.

Well, not in the middle. On the edge, actually, in the few ancient blocks that were closest to the farmland and the river. Soldiers were stationed in high places among the ruins: on reinforced exterior balconies and jutting promontories. Lookouts. Lower down, the streets and squares of the ruined city had been converted into cozy homes and gardens, parks and shops. Drying laundry flapped in windows of reclaimed buildings, and children chased each other around free-standing stone stairways that led nowhere. There were far more people than I’d expected. Most were incanti--of course--then the next largest group were ollies. Then humans and--oh! Looking down from the wagon roof, I spotted two sort of skinny goblins. Traguld! And yup, they seemed faintly crystalline or rocky. Faceted, like Miss Kathina. So traguld were ... mineral-goblins or, or stone-golem-goblins?

Most of the townspeople glanced at our wagons with sullen expressions. Some made unhappy gestures from upper windows, or spat on the ground as they slunk into side-streets. But a few groups--and they did seem to collect in groups--greeted the wagon with smiles and waves.

Yeah, not too hard to tell the natives from the invaders.

The wagon rattled through the ivy-covered ruins for a few minutes. As we rolled along, I realized that some buildings weren’t covered in ivy and shrubs. Some were covered in crops. Like vertical farms, with baskets on pulleys and ropes dangling to the ground. Flowers blossomed in reclaimed windowsills and spilled down the walls, bringing bright beauty to that ruined place.

A flock of blackbirds swirled overhead, then dove into an empty shell of a building, and I caught sight of a rabbit’s white tail flashing as it ran from the wagons and riders.

I revised my population estimate upward. Ryetown more of a small city than a town. Except immediately after I thought that, most of the signs of life dwindled. We travelled through largely-abandoned ruins for a short time, then reached what must’ve been the old city square, an open space surrounded by imposing stone buildings.

Columns marched along the intact entrance of one building, while soldiers lounged outside most of the others. Dozens of them. This was clearly the center of the Six Coves presence. A handful of trees grew through the stones of the square and a handful of vendors sold gear and food at carts and makeshift shops.

Also, a spike rose from the ground in the center of the square.

It was as thick as my waist, maybe fifteen feet tall, and it kind of looked like smooth black tree-trunk. Spiraling, though, like narwhal tusk or--well, or a unicorn horn.

“Hey,” I asked Erdinand’s sleeping form. “Have you ever see a unicorn?”

His sleeping form didn’t answer.

When I looked closer at the spike, I noticed it was growing from the center of a much wider circle of the same black material. Like a sapling growing from the middle of a tree stump

Huh.

A handful of the loitering soldiers called greetings to the wagons’ outriders as we pulled beside the building with the columns. I half-listened to servants emerging from the doors, grooms leading the horses away, and soldiers talking about meeting in a tavern later.

“The crachen still alive?” someone called up to my current guard.

The guard prodded Erdinand with her boot. “Yeah.”

“Get him down here, then the other one.”

She rolled Erd off the roof of the wagon. He hit the ground with a hard thunk, and I said, “I’ll remember you.”

The guard hesitated for the briefest moment, then kicked me off the roof too. The drop didn’t bother me, but the razor-rope scratched me pretty emphatically.

Still, I managed to squirm into a seated position. I found myself facing a side entrance of the big building. I looked at the hedges flanking the doorway and thought about escape. Except the basic problem hadn’t changed: I couldn’t run from mounted soldiers in an unfamiliar city while carrying an unconscious crachin over my shoulder.

So I’d keep waiting for an opportunity. Things weren’t looking great, but I couldn’t leave Erdinand behind. On the bright side, at least they didn’t know that I could turn to smoke--or that he was mostly healed, if still passed out.

The wagon door opened and Jikal exited, looking pretty beat-up. Ha. Lord Usim followed, dressed in a sort of uniform with a short sword at his hip, and Miss Kathina came last, wearing a purple dress with layers of ruffles.

Usim looked at the building, then turned to look down the block, apparently surprised at all the ruins. He craned his neck to check the skyline, which was five or six flights high here in the center of the ancient city, and a woman jogged from the building.

She was a middle-aged Infenti woman, with light red skin and dark red horns, wearing what looked like a more formal version of Usim’s uniform. Except she was barefoot as she ran toward us, and had a laughing light in her eyes.

“Usim!” she called. “You’re finally here!”

He lowered his head. “Mom!”

“Commander Wren!” a few of the soldiers said, saluting.

INTUIT: Infenti, Level 14

Damn. Commander Wren was about high-level as Kathina. She grabbed Usim and spun him fully around twice, hugging and kissing him before setting him back on the ground.

“Mo-om!” he said, at the display of affection.

I had to admit, I wasn’t expecting the invading ‘commander’ to be quite so maternal.

“How was your trip? Let me look at you.” She held him at arm’s length. “You’ve grown so much!

“That’s how children work, mom.”

She hugged him again. “And still a font of vital information! Come, I have lunch prepared. All your favorites.” She turned her smile to the side. “You, too, of course, Miss Kathina. Please join us, we--“

“She killed Lemmy,” Usim said.

His mother’s smile died, and my skin went cold. Kathina had killed the whipping boy? That little blue kid, the one I saw in the wagon? She’d killed him? Surely not. No. She hadn’t killed him, no way.

“What?” Commander Wren asked.

“Miss Kathina k-killed Lemmy,” Usim stammered, his voice thickening with grief.

“Is this true?” Wren asked Kathina.

“His lordship is glossing over certain facts, Commander Wren,” Kathina said, her expression still pleasant. “As well as his own responsibility for the unfortunate events.”

“That’s not ... I don’t ...” Usim’s face darkened. “You did it. You murdered him.”

“That gemmed criminal,” Kathina said, pointing to me, “encouraged his lordship to protect criminal runaways. His lordship did so. The blame, therefore, lies entirely with them.”

Commander Wren noticed me for the first time. “The human’s gemmed?”

“Yeah,” I told her, “I’ve got this cool gem that grants me the power to not murder children.”

“He is,” Kathina said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “He aided the escape of ten or fifteen ollie runaways. As did, I’m sorry to report, Lord Usim. Which led directly to young Lemmy’s death. If I failed in your son’s moral education, I will accept any punishment which you--“

“You killed him,” Usim snapped at her. “You--you struck him with your shield, he died in pain and ... “ He jaw clenched for a moment. “You killed him. Not me, not the human.“

Kathina looked to the commander as if waiting for a response.

“If you helped runaways, you gave her no choice, Usim,” Commander Wren said softly, fiddling with the dagger at her hip. “We cannot give aid to criminals. If you want to see who killed Lemmy, look at that human there. Look at yourself. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, my sweetest boy, but your actions killed him.”

“I may be weak, mother,” Usim said, his head lowering to look at the ground. “I may be soft. But one thing I am not is stupid.”

He walked silently past her into the building and she watched him go, looking heartbroken. Which would’ve made me feel for her, except she’d just tried to pin the kid’s friend’s murder on him.

So when her furious gaze switched to me, I said, “Teenagers! So sulky. It’s probably just a phase.”

For some reason, that didn’t seem to cheer her up. Still, I didn’t pay too much attention. I was too busy staring at Kathina, so I’d remember her angular face even if she wasn’t wearing one of those stupid gowns. I added her to my mental list: the two gemmed who’d murdered Oksar, and now her.

I wouldn’t mind putting a span of metal in Jikal’s chest, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for the chance.

For Kathina? Yeah, I’d make the effort. She killed a child. I’d cross town for the pleasure of stepping on her.

“What did you do to my son?” Commander Wren growled, stalking closer to me.

“You want to know the problem with your son?” I asked.

She pointed a dagger at me. “Don’t you even talk about him.”

“He’s better than you,” I told her. “He’s brave. That’s the problem.”