The streets were quiet, with only a few early-morning farmers and shop-keeps going about their business. Well, them and bakers. The scent of fresh bread drifted from a corner shop where pushcart vendors bought bundles of what looked like baguettes.
My mouth watered. I considered crossing the street to mingle with vendors. Maybe buy a baguette or three. That way I wouldn’t stick out so much, because it’d look like I had business here, and was just bringing some bread home for breakfast. Except I might stick out even more, as the only human among the infenti and ollies.
And as the only person without a pushcart.
I needed to lose myself in the human quarter. The only problem was, I didn’t think there was one. Humans seemed to work mostly as craftspeople and servants--though apparent some were extremely high-end craftspeople, and often among the richest people around. Though not so much in Ryetown. From what I’d seen, we only made up five or so percent of the population here. Which wasn’t great for a human fugitive from justice.
I had to get my hornless forehead off the streets. I needed to slip into another abandoned shop, or a convenient ruined building, but I was in the middle of an inhabited section of town. Time to head closer to the center of the city, where the population dwindled.
I strolled past the bakery, raising a hand in greeting like a totally non-suspicious person. One of the ollies grunted a greeting. I ambled for a few blocks, my webtouched senses alert for pursuit, until I reached the end of the inhabited sections. Well, there wasn’t a sharp line, but the area looked like it had fallen into disuse. There were higher buildings, more ruined, covered with thicker foliage. Pretty cool, actually. I wandered along, not quite aimlessly, as more people appeared in the streets. I still hadn’t found a good place to hide, so I started looking for adequate places.
Then I turned a corner and my webtouch twanged like crazy.
Because a roadblock stretched across the street at the end of the block.
Guards checked everyone who passed them. They were looking for humans, judging from how they peered at infenti but ignored ollies. And how they made one guy take his hat off, because apparently his orange skin wasn’t enough of a clue.
They were mostly looking the other direction, thank god. They were facing the prison, instead of facing me. Which meant they had realized that I’d escaped, but thought I was still close. They hadn’t heard about the fire or the horses.
Not yet.
Still, if if any of them turned around, they’d spot me immediately. I already felt the eyes of the oncoming pedestrians wondering about me. So after taking five or six steps, playing it cool, I patted my belts and pouches, doing that dumb mime that meant, “Oh, no, I forgot something.”
Then I spun and hustled back around the corner.
My webtouched senses kept twanging, but I wasn’t thinking straight enough to decipher the message. And that’s why I hustled so fast around the corner that I knocked into a woman carrying an earthenware jug on her head.
The jug fell.
The jug crashed and the noise caught everyone’s attention.
Then world stank of brine, and pickled eggs flew everywhere. And I just want to say this: when you’re moments from being discovered by enemy soldiers after your clever, bloody prison break, the last thing you need is a few dozen pickled eggs bouncing around the street like the entire world finds your situation comical.
The eggs rolled and bobbled, the woman yelled at me, and I walked away fast. At least until a soldier at the roadblock yelled--then I started running. So much for playing it cool.
I’d raced halfway down the street when girl’s voice called to me. “Hey mister human! Up there!”
She was one of two young infenti girls bringing a chicken to or from market. Or so I guessed. I didn’t know what they were doing with the chicken, but they were holding it upside-down by its feet and walking along and I almost recognized them. They looked halfway familiar.
“Up there!” one of them repeated, and jerked her head toward a narrow, crumbling stone stairwell between two buildings. “Quickly quick!”
From where I was standing, it looked like the stairs rose a flight upward and then stopped. Still, the soldiers were shouting behind me, and I didn’t have any better ideas. Other than ‘running blindly,’ which, strictly speaking, wasn’t better.
Well, unless those two eleven-year-old girls were, like, in the human-organ-harvesting business. In which case running was definitely better.
But I didn’t even think that far ahead, at least not immediately. Instead, I did as I was told. I swerved between the buildings and started running up the stairs. And that was when the whole organ-harvesting business occurred to me. So I glanced backward nervously and saw the girls sitting on the bottom step, facing the street, prodding at the chicken like they’d been there all morning.
Covering my retreat. Making it seem like nobody could’ve rushed upstairs without disturbing them.
Huh.
The stairs actually did stop one story upward, where they’d clearly collapsed a long time ago. But what wasn’t visible from the street was an alcove, disguised by nothing more than a slight bulge in the wall, that was large enough for me to hide in. So I sidestepped in--and remembered why the infenti girls looked familiar.
They were the same girls I’d seen holding hands the previous day, after I’d left the cobbler shop.
So, what the hell did that mean?
Had someone told them to help me? Who? Why?
I checked my mana. I could turn to smoke, drift off the edge of the broken staircase, and run to ... to where? To hide until the heat died down a little. For as long as necessary, before I rescued Erdinand. Except I had a theory about my rescuers. Who’d use a couple of little girls to help a fugitive? Only locals. Who’d help someone running from the Sixers? The same. Most of the people here clearly hated the invaders, so if they saw a guy trying to avoid a roadblock, they’d step in.
Well, maybe.
On the other hand, they wouldn’t want to expose themselves to the Sixers. So that’s why they’d use kids. Maybe they already had assigned them to spy on me? Maybe that’s why the cobbler woman had taken so damn long in the back room, to call for someone to follow me? That made sense ... if I really had seen the girls before. I could’ve seen a couple of other pre-teen devil-looking girls. I wasn’t saying they all looked the same or anything, but a little.
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So I decided to wait there in the alcove, to see what happened. I didn’t want to waste my mana, and I didn’t want to meet those soldiers without a plan. Though a small, brutal part of me wondered how I would’ve done if I’d rushed that roadblock. With full mana and webtouch? I’d turn to smoke an instant before any blade touched me then reappear like a fucking threshing machine.
Maybe. I was level seven now, but level seven gemmed. Of course, every other ‘gifted’ I’d seen was at least twice that. So I was probably still weak compared to them because I was so new. However, I also had domain, and Princess. From what I’d heard, the gemmed gained basic physical traits when they bonded--increased speed, strength, and so on--but they were only gifted with a single power per gem.
My abilities seemed less specialized than that, more flexible. And I had more of them.
I thought about that until I heard footsteps on the stairs outside. Loud, scuffing footsteps. Didn’t sound like soldiers, somehow, but I wasn’t sure. Well, if this was trouble, I’d wait for them to peek into the alcove then put a blade into their throat or turn into smoke, as necessary. And if this wasn’t trouble, it didn’t matter.
Still, I watched warily as a shadow fell across the steps--and then a woman shuffled into sight, leaning on a cane.
“Ga!” the old cobbler lady said, glaring at me. “You in trouble already.”
“Uh,” I said.
“Why aren’t you wearing the shoes? I made you good shoes.”
“Uh,” I repeated.
“Surprised to see an old woman? Stupid boy. They send me because we already met. We talked. Old friends, you and me. Your name is Alec.”
“Alex,” I said.
She whacked my calf with her cane. “What I said! My name is Chettur.”
“Cheddar?” I asked. “Like the cheese?”
“You come now!” she said. “Stop asking stupid questions.”
I looked toward the street. “Is it safe?”
“Safe,” she cackled, then said, “Yes, yes, if you come now and stop barking like a frog.”
Barking like a frog?
But fine, I’d already wondered if she was involved somehow. So I escorted her down the stairs--she took my elbow in a vice-like grip--and past the girls, who were plucking the now-dead chicken. I gave them a little wave but they ignored me. The old woman Chettur pulled me along the street and into a shop with baskets of beans and dried peppers. An infenti man behind the counter ignored us just as completely as the little girls had. We pushed through a curtain into a back room, and from there ducked through a low archway into a cool stone space with shelves of preserved vegetables.
Chettur tapped her cane on the rickety plank floor. “You lift. There, the crack between boards.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“You lift! You lift!”
“Because we’re old friends, I trust you?”
“Ga! Because you stupid boy.”
I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I wiggled my fingernails into the crack and lifted. A trapdoor opened on silent hinges. Below the door, a hidden compartment was scattered with mismatched bits of shitty-looking jewelry and tarnished silverware and gel beads.
“All stolen,” the old woman crowed to me. “Like your pants and lantern.”
“Okay,” I said.
She tapped with her cane harder, and the compartment slid aside to reveal a square hole with a ladder leading downward. A hidden entrance beneath a cache of stolen goods. So if anyone found the trapdoor and saw the valuables, they’d figure they’d already uncovered the secret and would stop looking.
“Come, come, Alec,” Chettur said, lowering one foot unsteadily on the ladder.
“Can you climb down by yourself, grandmother?” I asked. “Or do I need to carry you?”
“Rude boy,” she said, and disappeared into the gloom.
I hesitated to join her, then realized I didn’t know why I was hesitating. I didn’t exactly trust Chettur, but I didn’t suspect her, either. She was just some cranky cobbler I’d randomly met, who happened to have some serious local ties. This was the local resistance, or at least the local opposition to the invaders, and while they definitely had their own agenda, they also definitely had hiding places.
Plus, the enemy of your enemy was your friend, right?
As I climbed down the ladder into the darkness, my webtouch felt a long space extending in one direction. An underground hallway. Chettur tugged on a rope and the trapdoor closed over our heads. The darkness was less complete than I’d expected, though. Either that, or my night vision was better than it used to be. Maybe both.
Either way, I got a dim sense of my surroundings from my special senses--until, a moment later, light filled the hallway from a jagged shape in the ceiling.
“Sunstone,” Chettur said, seeing my interest. “Plenty of them in the Old City. Feels mana and then ga! Turns light.”
“Cool,” I said.
“Of course no heat! Stupid boy. Come!”
She shuffled along the stone corridor, barely using her cane, to an auditorium-sized room that looked like an abandoned church or theatre. There was even a sort of a stage at one end. There was no sunstone in that room, though; instead, torches illuminated the cots and tables. I counted a dozen people, not including the ones sleeping the cots. Mostly infenti, and mostly in the middle of a meal: grabbing fruit from a table, and filling bowls from a vat of what looked like oatmeal.
Most of them seemed surprised when they spotted me. One of the few ollies, though, smiled broadly and started toward me.
“You wait!” Chettur snapped at the ollie. “First I take the boy to a room. Then you talk to him.”
“I just want to say--“ the ollie started.
“Ga! Oaf! You go!”
The ollie shot me a wry look, defeated by this hunched old cobbler. I nodded sympathetically, and Chettur harried me toward the opposite wall with annoying prods from her cane.
“For you, private room,” she said, bustling through a door. “There’s new hot water. You have questions?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact I do,” I said, entering behind her.
The room was small, with just a bed and a washbasin and a single chair. Still, the bed looked comfortable, and steam rose from the washbasin.
“Then you listen!” Chettur said, whacking the mattress. “Sit! You steal from Sixers. You kill them. You do other things. So we keep you safe. You sleep. Awake all last night. Bad for a growing boy. You--“
“I slept a little.”
“Ga! All night! You hungry?”
“Uh, no.”
“Good. You rest. Wash dirty face. They talk later.”
“They who?”
“Dirty face!” She gestured through the door. “I wait outside. Keep them from bothering you.”
“Uh,” I said. “You don’t have to--“
“Don’t have to anything but shit and die!” she announced, then dragged the chair outside and closed the door behind herself.
I ... didn’t know what to make of any of that. I knew, of course, that the whole thing could’ve been a trap. The gem in my head--or in my soul, whatever--was extremely valuable, just like Oksar had warned me. Even if there was only small chance that it would survive my death, people might still kill me for it. Just like the Sixers had planned. I wasn’t naive. I knew that this was possibly the same situation. It didn’t feel that way in my gut, though. Mostly because who’d try to trap me with a cranky old woman who called me stupid and bonked me with her cane? She was completely un-reassuring.
Uh, so maybe I was naive.
I scrubbed my face with a cloth and the hot water. I even used the lavender-scented soap, and I won’t lie: it really enjoyed it. Then I lay on my back on the bed, fully dressed. Resting, but alert for trouble.
I didn’t think that these rebels, if that’s what they were, would start anything. Did they really want to piss off a gemmed guy and make more trouble for themselves? Even if they managed to kill me, they probably wouldn’t get my gem. Oksar had told me here was only a one in five chance of successfully extracting a gem, than like a 50% chance of implanting it. Not high enough to risk me killing them. And also ... I just didn’t think this was a trap. These people didn’t strike me as hardened enough for cold-blooded murder. They were just some locals who’d banded together to fight the invaders. They weren’t about to slaughter quasi-innocent quasi-allies in the off chance that they’d get the power to retrieve hatchets.
Still, there was no reason to lower my guard. I’d laze around for a few minutes, then I’d waft a smokey arm through the gap under the door to scout the other room. I’d eavesdrop for twenty seconds at a time. Maybe longer. My duration was improving, either because raising my level or adding that point in Spirit had helped my mana-stamina. What would you call that? My mannima. My mastamina. My mastanina ...
With nonsense syllables echoing in my mind, I fell into a deep sleep.