Chapter 3: Kin by Blood, not Choice

My heart is still pounding with exertion from the fight, when Balen removes his hand from shoulder. He turns and glares at the stunned group of scavengers. “Get your meat-sacks moving. We're wasting grains in the timeglass.” He stares at me for a long moment before he lumbers off. As his heavy steps recede into the distance the scavengers' voices rise, their eyes darting between me and the path Balen took.

I stand there, my chest heaving, trying to mask the pain that rips through me with each breath. Blood, warm and coppery, coats my tongue. Olly grips my shoulder, steadying me.

“That was reckless,” he says with a shake of his head. “But damn the Six if it wasn’t brave.”

I offer him a grin through the pull of bruised muscles, and quote the slums motto. “Bravery or stupidity, hard to tell out here.”

Olly groans, and then joins as I laugh.

The scavengers cast wary glances in my direction as they pack their gear. I must seem mad, covered in blood and fresh bruises, giggling my head off. Pinched-face sneers at me as he walks after balen. The scholar in robes follows him, silent, but she gives me a nod as she passes.

The twins look at us with a frown on their faces, and I brace for insults or worse. The knock of familiarity bangs at the door of my memory as they approach. I know their fox-like features and blond hair from somewhere, I just don’t know where. Maybe they’re famous scavengers that have been on endless hunts into the desert for artefacts with Balen, and I’ve heard them described in tavern tales.

The woman walks right up to me. Stands a little too close. I can smell her sweat and an underlying sweet smell that reminds me of the nobles in the inner city. “You stood up to Balen,” she says, shaking her head with disbelief and letting out a whistle.

Her brother nods. “No one does that.”

I shrug, awkward. “I just had a lot of stupid to meet his with. I’m Kormen, and this is Olly.”

Olly nods, a small smile playing on his lips.

The woman returns his smile. “Meli. My brother is Tomas.”

Tomas holds a hand out and I clasp it. “Fair warning Kormen. Balen has a grudge against the Vardos. Bit of history there. They have a camp close by. Is it yours?”

I shake my head, bring myself back into the present. “I’ve been told I’m half Vardos, but I grew up in the streets here. Never rode with their caravans. Can’t even speak their language.”

Tomas considers me for a moment, and then nods, and he and his sister turn and follow after Balen.

I raise an eyebrow at Olly. “What was that about?”

“Maybe they’re blown away by your fighting skills, and want you to lead an army of Vardos warriors?”

I mock-glare at him, and punch him softly on the shoulder. He pretends it knocks him to the ground, and I laugh, letting out a shaky breath I hadn’t realised I was holding. As we follow the others, my thoughts are a whirlwind. Can we really do this? Are we ready to risk breaking the Sovereign’s laws so we can afford access to the tower? Is getting magic worth it? Yes. A hundred times over.

We catch up to others by the wall. It looms skyward, a bastion of titanic blocks and fused stone. Smooth and sheer as a cliff face. The stories say the Sovereign formed the castes specifically to build it, and it makes me feel dwarfed, insignificant. I glance at Olly, his brows are furrowed in concentration, eyes tracing the ancient stonework. So much history, so many secrets.

"Reckon it’s possible to live on the other side?"

His response is quiet. "Every day." It's a shared dream, but what holds us back is a shared fear – what if what lies outside is worse than what we're leaving behind?

Balen stands at the front. "You all know your roles." His pitiless gaze sweeps over the group. "Anyone falls behind or betrays us to the guards, they'll wish for a quick death once I'm through with them."

His warning hangs over us. A part of me sneers at taking orders from this brute, but as much as I resent him, our goals are the same. For now. The others nod. Everyone here understands the risks we take, defying the Sovereign's laws. We’ve all seen the people taken to the labyrinth of cells beneath the tower and never return. And yet we’ll follow Balen into the wastelands without hesitation.

Balen turns. "Let’s move." We fall in behind Balen as he leads the way along the bottom of the wall, further into the outskirts. Our footfalls crunch softly through the trash strewn streets, and with no one here to watch us, we may as well be ghosts, gliding toward the city bounds.

We stick to a winding, obscure route that sees us ducking through crumbling arches and clambering over chunks of fallen masonry. More than once we're forced to squeeze single-file through narrow gaps between toppling buildings that lean like drunk lovers, threatening to bury us. We follow Balen further out into part of the city left to fall to pieces.

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"Why are we going so far out this way?" Tomas finally voices the question playing in my head.

Balen's perpetual scowl deepens, as if the mere sound of the man's voice offends him. But he stops. Behind his bulk is the glimpse of a hole in the base of the wall. Not much bigger than Olly, and far smaller than Balen.

"Ready?" Balen grunts, his gaze sweeping over us. There's a challenge in his eyes, as if he expects us to turn into cowards at the last moment.

Through the breach in the wall, strange scents float. Spices, herbs. There’s the beat of drums, and the strum of a stringed instrument I haven’t heard before. Balen gives me one last look, then squeezes his bulk through.

As we edge closer to the breach in the wall, Olly's voice drops to a whisper. "You know, they say it was the…” He glances at me. He means the Vardos. The people that have given me half my blood. Olly winces, but continues on. “Well, they say they tore the realms apart, giving this endless day... and created a twin, a realm of endless darkness. Imagine what life was like before that." His cranes his neck up to look at the sun, that never sleeping ball of fire.

I can’t picture not, not really. A world as dark as a tomb? How could anything live without light?

One after the other, the scavengers follow Balen into the gap, scraping and wriggling to fit through the tight space. This is it. The moment we've dreamed of. My heart beats a tattoo against my chest, and I take a deep breath and squeeze through the hole.

The cacophony of sound - drums pounding out a frenetic rhythm, voices raised in chaotic song - after the muffled quiet of the city outskirts is jarring. My eyes water against the riot of colours and then the smells hit me - rich, exotic, so many I can't identify them all. My knees go weak for a moment with the immensity of it.

Olly lets out a low whistle. "Did you ever imagine anything like this?"

Vibrant crimson tents clash with emerald green and sapphire blue, their canvas stretching taut over poles of polished wood. Gilded threads woven into the fabric shimmer in the harsh sunlight, catching fire like sunlight on polished metal armour. Laughter, high-pitched and melodic, rings on the air, blending with the rhythmic rattle of drums and the haunting strains of an unseen violin.

Spice-laden smoke curls from open fires, their flames sending playful shadows dancing across the canvas walls. Roasting meat, laced with exotic herbs I can't name, mingles with the earthy sweetness of fresh bread and the heady tang of fermenting fruit. Each breath is a sensory feast, my head spinning with the sheer overload of it all.

A gaggle of children, barefoot and adorned with paint stains as vivid as the tents, chases a runaway hen, their joyous shrieks intermingling with the guttural growl of a mangy dog basking in the sun. Above them, a hawk circles on lazy thermals, its shadow falling across the scene like a fleeting omen.

Everywhere I look, there's movement, colour, sound. Women in long, swirling skirts barter over trays of glittering bangles and woven tapestries. Men, bare-chested and tattooed with swirling sigils, mend fishing nets or sharpen blades under the shade of tattered awnings. Laughter spills from open doorways, punctuated by the clinking of tankards and the animated murmur of gossip.

I feel a pang of longing, a sense I’ve missed out on a life I should have but can never have. There’s anger too. Anger because they’ve caused me to live this half life, shunned by Amenions because the Vardos won’t assimilate themselves with the city dwellers.

A hand on my shoulder steadies me. Olly's gaze is worried, his brow furrowed. "You alright, Korm?"

“Why Olly? Why did Balen take us here?”

This ramshackle community, these people that so many in the city scorn as vagrants and thieves, calls to mind a part of myself I’ve struggled to bury for so long. I’m not Vardos. I didn’t grow up with them, don’t know their language, their customs, their rules. But I’m not Amenion either. That’s shown to me often enough. I fall in the chasm between the two.

I’m not sure where I grew up. My memory of my childhood is a haze. The first thing I remember is being on the run in the city, hiding under piles of rubbish in stinking alleyways, unable to sleep for more than minutes at a time.

Resentment curdles beneath the ache. These nomads, with their dyed fabrics and raucous songs, are a large reason why I've endured taunts and sneers my whole life. If they would live in the city, act more Amenion, perhaps the prejudice wouldn't be so raw. But they cling to their ways, outsiders wherever they roam. And I bear the brunt of the scorn aimed toward them, thanks to this damned brown skin marking me as one of them.

One of the scavengers in our group, a lean and bitter man with a permanently pinched face, flicks his fingers in disgust at the camp. “Watch your purses, folks. The thieves’ nest is open for business today.”

His words draw callous chuckles from a few others in our ragged crew, but I tune them out, keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead. The familiar heat of shame crawls up the back of my neck, and I clench my jaw against it. Don’t react. It’s nothing I haven’t heard a thousand times before.

As we weave deeper into the chaotic maze of tents and wagons, a little girl, a flash of scarlet ribbons against indigo cloth, darts out from behind a painted wagon, her eyes wide with curiosity. She stares at me, unblinking, her dark hair woven into intricate braids adorned with tiny bells that chime with each playful bounce of her head.

“They say they sell them young here. How many coppers do you think she’ll cost, Vardos?”

The words shake me out of my haze. It’s Pinched-face again, and he looks at me, mouth quirked, as if he’s seriously expecting me to reply. The blood roaring in my ears drowns out the raucous laughter and chattering that surrounds us. Every cell in my body screams at me to lash out, to break Pinched-face's face for spitting that vile filth. His words are a rancid odour against the sweet spice and roasting meat.

My fists clench so tight my nails bite into my palms, drawing tiny crescents of blood. The bruises from Balen's earlier blows flare to aching life, but it's smothered by a different kind of burn - a cold fire of fury stoked by years of whispered slurs and sideways glances.

I force myself to breathe, slow and measured, through the grinding grit of my teeth. Every instinct screams to roar like a threatened beast, to rise and make Pinched-face pay for his ugliness. But doing so would only confirm his prejudice, painting me as another savage Vardos lurking beneath the Amenion veneer I've so desperately tried to cultivate.

I repeat my mantra. Don’t react. Don’t make a scene.

I open my mouth anyway.