Si glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]

The afternoon bell rang. Simon paused his account while the four Wardens on duty in the hearing room filed out, to be replaced by a fresh shift indistinguishable from the first. Opposite him, the commander sipped a cup of water.

Simon stared at the cup. He’d talked for hours, spinning out the story from his exile to Sark, to his return to Athanor and his first weeks in the city. His mouth was so dry it hurt, and there was a good deal yet to say. The most painful parts of the ill-fated expedition to Sark still had to be covered.

Neither Vikki or Danta had appeared; any faint lingering hope from that quarter had died.

Commander Quinn—who had listened patiently, occasionally asking a question to clarify some detail—set his cup down. ‘Certainly a remarkable story. Is there more?’

Riga exploded from her seat. ‘How long do you mean to listen to this whining idiot? He’s wasting your time and ours.’

‘If you have urgent duties elsewhere I’m sure we can manage without you,’ Quinn said mildly.

She scowled. ‘Nothing he has to say matters, and you know it. Guilty or not, with or without evidence, Oryche have the right to arrest any person accused of crimes against them.’

‘Not so.’ Grace stood. ‘No House can seize a member of another House, or any person under their protection. Simon is under the protection of House Numisma. He can only be tried by the city council.’

Riga sneered. ‘Numisma is dead and the council no longer exists. None of your polite little rules and agreements matter to anyone. Neither do you or this irrelevant bunch of bell-ringers.’

Quinn cleared his throat. ‘Us irrelevant bell-ringers, as you so charmingly put it, do not involve ourselves in House disputes. Equally, the Houses have no say in our activities. If we choose to offer sanctuary to someone, for whatever reason, Oryche can do nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ Riga said. ‘We can wall you up in your rathole and let you rot.’

Simon smiled to himself. The Refuge was a fortress, and no one, surely, was so dumb as to try imprisoning an Earth Adept underground.

Quinn didn’t looked amused. He stood. ‘It may surprise you, but the Wardens have a duty to Athanor and the world.

‘Who rules the city is not our concern. Still, the prophecies we hold as our especial charge warn us of times of danger and turmoil, when the tides of men run full. In these times, we help where we can. We offer refuge to the innocent.

‘We don’t seek a fight, but don’t mistake our civility for weakness. The Wardens train to fight demons. And in the last resort, we will uphold the Light as darkness falls, because that is our oath.’ The commander stood a hand shorter than Riga, but such was the controlled fury in his voice, even she took a step back. ‘Let it be entered in the record that Simon vai Oryche and his family are granted indefinite sanctuary.’

Simon sagged in his chair. He was safe and free — within the walls of the Refuge. So in truth, he had only exchanged a small prison for a larger one, but when the alternative was death he wasn’t about to complain.

‘You can’t do this,’ Riga snarled. ‘He’s mine.’

Quinn gestured. The four Wardens standing guard advanced on Riga. ‘My house, my rules.’

Riga’s hand lashed out. She seized Grace by the neck. ‘I’ll kill her.’

Simon lurched to his feet. The Wardens surrounded Riga and more Wardens appeared in the doorway, blocking the exit. Nana scrambled away from her, knocking over a chair in the process. His mother still sat with her eyes closed, smiling gently to herself as if this was all someone else’s bad dream.

‘If I can’t take Simon,’ Riga said. ‘I’ll have this Numisma bitch. She can join the rest of her family.’

‘Harm her and you’ll be dead in a heartbeat,’ Quinn said. The Wardens drew their swords.

Riga laughed. In her grip, Grace struggled for breath. ‘Perhaps. What do you think, Simon? I could snap her neck like a rabbit’s. Like a little bird in a snare.’

‘Don’t.’ All Simon could think of was the broken wooden bar in his cell window. ‘Light’s sake, Riga, you don’t want either of us enough to die for it. Let her go.’

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Moving slowly, Riga pulled something small from her pocket. She held it up. It glinted in the lamplight, a silver pea-sized ball pinched between her thumb and forefinger. She eyed Quinn. ‘You know what a signal bead is? The paired bead is held by the leader of the Phylaxes troop currently outside your door. If I squeeze this one just so, the other instantly breaks with a loud pop. Then their orders are to start shooting. So let’s think… your people, your bell-ringing demon-killers, how good are they against bullets?’

A troop of Phylaxes on the doorstep… Well, that explained why neither Vikki or Danta had arrived.

‘Bluff,’ Quinn said. ‘By all means fire bullets into our doors. You’ll find them quite sturdy.’

‘If needed, we have enough blasting powder to take out the doors.’ Riga kicked over the chairs in front of her. She stepped through the gap, dragging Grace with her. ‘My Lord wishes it understood that no one in the city is beyond his reach, not even in this obsolete mausoleum. Give me Simon, or I’ll take the Numisma bitch instead. Your choice.’

The Wardens didn’t stop Riga as she moved toward the doorway. Quinn glanced at Simon, apology in his eyes, and he knew, then, there was no way out, no miracle, no clever escape. Quinn wouldn’t risk his men’s lives to save them.

In the end, the decision was easy: Grace’s life was by any measure more valuable than his own. ‘Riga, let her go,’ he said. ‘I’ll go with you.’

A glyph [https://i.imgur.com/ZLENX3y.png]

Andra sat in the centre of her cage, tense and calm and thinking of nothing, only waiting. Then came the trudge of boots on stone. Men were coming.

If they gave her one chance, one opening, it would be their last mistake. She licked her lips.

There were two of them, two men carrying a weight between them. A familiar scent drifted on the dead air. She stiffened. Impossible. Not here. Not him. But when the two rounded the corner and started down the passage toward her cage, she saw, and knew her nose had not misled her.

It was Sam. They were carrying Sam. His head lolled — asleep, unconscious, or dead — but he didn’t smell dead. He lived.

She pressed against the bars. The men stopped outside her cage and dropped Sam on the floor. His eyes twitched beneath closed lids. Asleep, she thought, but too pale, deathlike.

One man opened the empty cage that had housed the wolf, and they dropped the boy on the bare floor, and closed the door, and walked away. Sam didn’t move. He lay still, arms and legs bent in awkward positions, and he didn’t wake.

He was wearing a green robe.

The young man she had fought and killed had worn the rags of clothing, the remains of just such a green robe. Her heart stuttered. Oh, Sam. Oh, Sam, my friend, my friend.

The two men had gone. She reached through the bars of her cage, through the bars of his cage. The tips of her long claws touched his leg. ‘Sam. Sam, wake up.’ He didn’t move. She pressed with the claws and blood beaded on his ankle, but he didn’t stir. ‘Sam, it’s Andra. Wake up.’

And then it came to her, that if he woke, he would see the claws— She drew her hand back and hid the claws in her lap. Though why hide? Why did she care if he saw the monster she’d become? They were all dead already, him too.

But it did matter. Sam had been her friend, and he had never feared her, never seen her as less than human. Among all the teeming uncountable people of the city, he was the only one she cared for, the only one who mattered.

That he was here was incomprehensible. The cages were for animals and monsters, not human boys.

Sam slept on and didn’t stir. Andra leaned against the bars. Her sister rocked silently: back and forth, back and forth.

‘Cara.’ It was the first time she had spoken her sister’s name out loud, since— ‘Why did you do it?’

Cara froze. She didn’t meet Andra’s gaze; she stared at the floor, at the place the bars met in the corner of the cage. ‘The dead do not speak,’ she said, as if to herself.

‘Why?’ Andra repeated. ‘He was mine, Cara. My child.’

Cara hugged herself, and shivered. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘But you did.’

‘I only wanted to look. Only to hold him for a while. You never let me hold him.’

‘So you stole him from me. What had I ever done to you, that you should hurt me so? I loved you. You were my sister.’

Cara crawled toward her and grasped the bars with her hands, her ordinary hands without claws. She had not dared come so close before. ‘Andra, I swear I never meant to hurt him. I took care of him. I would have brought him back.’

‘But you didn’t.’ The new claws were long. Cara pressed close against the bars. A quick thrust into her throat, and it would be over.

‘The baby cried and then he stopped breathing and he was cold, so cold. I didn’t know what to do, and I knew— I was scared, Andra. I left him and I ran. I ran for days and days, until I met Terec.’

‘Terec was the one the human killed?’

Cara nodded. ‘They said they wanted to trade. Terec had furs, but it was me they wanted to buy. When he refused… They had a weapon, a stick that made thunder.’

‘I killed them,’ Andra said. ‘Both of them, with Terec’s knife.’

‘Good.’

‘It were better for you to have faced me and died by my hand, than to end like this.’

Cara rested her head against the bars of her cage. ‘I wish I had.’

Andra watched Sam sleep. His eyes twitched under closed lids and his chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm.

The young man she had fought — had been a monster, surely. She remembered how muscles had bulked beneath its skin, how she had gouged out its eye and it hadn’t flinched. How was that possible? Had he been changed, as she’d been changed?

Though she had the claws, though she felt different inside, she still felt pain. She still felt sorrow, and when she looked at Sam she felt the heaviness of caring. Her soul was still her own.

The boy in the green robe, the one she had killed, had no soul. He had truly been a monster. Whatever they had done to Sam, she had to hope it wasn’t that. That she wouldn’t have to meet him in the pit and kill a monster with the face of her friend.