The watchwalls on the Empty Houses’ Eastern wing took turns standing guard for the rest of the early morning. They matched gazes with their Freeman counterparts in the Larun camp, where the banging of hammers and shouting spoke to some new, foul project of theirs. The greycoatted sentries’ countenance remained as fresh, still, and alert as ever. The watchwalls, on the other hand, could keep awake only by their shiverring, the chattering of their teeth, and the hatred that filled up their hearts when they looked into the eyes of the drymen.
It was only after the shell-dwellers had fully dispersed to their huts and enclosures, and after the morning star had set fire to the horizon, that the eyes of the duty watchwall began to fall to the suffocating weight of sleep. Just as he had begun to dream on his feet, he was shocked awake by what he saw.
A small speck was coming down from the East. As it grew larger, he saw it to be a man, tall of stature and regal of feature. It wasn’t until its every facet was made clear that he could see the details of her face.
The speck – a warrior, from cursory examination – guided a mournful-looking beast of burden up to the shell. She was tall of stature, and she was regal of feature. Short, almond-brown hair flowed out from under a leather hat that left her head and eyes cloaked in shadow. She, and the stronghoof that accompanied her, carried the accoutrements of a gift-fighter: a roughly-hewn set of metal armor hanging off the animal’s side, tinted the color of grass; a long blade over her shoulder, which was itself clothed in a brown leather sheathe; a second, shorter blade that clung to her hip. She wore a foreign garment, a charcoal mantle woven from a smooth and tough material uncommon in Josmee. Beneath this covering was skin etched, from the neck down, in the circular script of hesign. The stark white color of the characters could only just be discerned by the morning’s light.
As she passed through the plains and their patches of foliage, the figure passed by the Larun camp. The Freemen there, seeing that she was not of the Houses, did not molest her; they only did as was their wont, and continued working dutifully: washing clothes, sharpening weapons, and raising additional poles and ropes in the center of their tents. But they did take note of her when she met the banner of their camp – admiring its device for a moment, with a set jaw and tightened grip, before urging her animal on and out of their company.
The watchwalls, roused by their comrade out of panic, regarded her with snarling when they saw the symbols on her arms, but didn’t move to inquire her purpose or stop her. She stood half a head higher than their strongest, and she looked down on them at them with disdain. Scared, scared! echoed her Bell. The men with nivs – fighters! They’ve seen it happen! They think you one!
There are always men with knives, replied the warrior. They always think me one.
She walked past the Walls, unmolested but for the piercing glares of onlookers.
Screaming! shouted the Bell. Frozen people! Lives in danger! Fighters!
-
That morning, Key rose from the Lodge’s house, and he walked through the shell to his father’s Table. He was haunted by the stares of the few shell-dwellers he saw; most were hollow-eyed, and either looked around or through him.
When he reached their roundseat, he found it deserted. The daily supply of itinerants were absent. He walked inside and examined a few of their instruments, the door to the dig, the Table itself, and Peak’s knives.
There they were, laid out neatly in a line beside the Fire Table just as they were the day before. He spotted the littlecane Peak had given him to cut Lastfarmer. He picked it up.
Like its kin, it was small, although sufficient for a devious purpose. He was surprised not to see any blood glistening on its edge. It had been wiped down – by Peak, Key concluded, sometime after they had left. He had gone out of his way to scrub it off.
Seeing the knife churned Key up inside, and he felt sick just looking at it. It felt wrong, in a way, a confusing part of the world. He couldn’t bear to let go of it, so he stuffed it into his bag and tried not to think about it.
As he walked outside to take a breath, and maybe vomit, he was surprised by Young Wall, who grabbed him by the arm.
“Aie,” Young Wall said. “What are you doing?”
“I-”
“Where have you been?”
“I was just- I was here.”
“I mean, where have you been?”
“I was here.”
Young Wall’s face was even more bruised and haggard than usual. He looked around at Key’s home. “There’s nobody here,” he assessed.
“I know.”
“Come on,” he said. “There’s work to be done.”
“…I shouldn’t leave the Table.”
“There’s nobody here,” Young Wall repeated. “You have to work with us. You’re not going anywhere soon. They need you to be with them. You’re our fireworker now.”
Young Wall’s cracked upper lip, chapped and red with frozen blood, quivered. His hand was still clutching Key’s arm, a bit too tightly. He was behaving as though he were wounded, although Key could see that he had suffered no serious harm. It would surely be prudent to see about his condition. It was one like his own.
“Okay,” Key said. “Okay.”
Young Wall let go of his arm.
They returned to the Speaking Place together, and submitted themselves to the possession of Old Wall. Key, Young Wall, and an assortment of other youths were briefly returned to the hearthouse in order to finish the work that had been interrupted the day prior. Their late arrival to this appointment meant that they found their way to the hearthouse after it had been fully staffed by the others. Key shuffled himself into a space where he would bother no-one, and Young Wall threw himself into his chores.
The Wall first set about to shovelling soiled dirt from a stonehoof’s stall. The veins of his bulging arms could’ve exploded with the force he was sending through them, launching shovelful after shovelful over his shoulder into a cart waiting outside. Where he had been joined by his regular proud and sweaty ferocity just a day before, today his energy was obsessive and manic, and he appeared to work with the intention of breaking himself. Time after time he stripped the skin from his fingers in wielding his device, or skewered the roof of his hand on a sharp wooden panel; he bit the splinters from his wound, and continued to work. His behavior unsettled Key, who continued to shadow him.
This continued for a time, until the shell’s itinerant visitor came down from the hills and over the river. Even Young Wall paused his shovelling to watch the oddly dressed figure saunter through the gaps in their houses, beholden to no one.
As she neared their post, Key’s colleagues began to examine the question of their visitor.
“Perhaps we should approach her,” the Sixbraids whispered among themselves. “Snow is coming. If half our hands must go, we’re going to need city gifts.”
“We’ve been scouring this place since sunrise,” said one. “I’d prefer to avoid any more drymen. Who knows what may anger or displease her? Just let her pass.”
“Send the Fragile Thing,” offered another. “The fireworker. He’s hardly done a day’s work himself. Doubt he’ll be much help later; we should use him while we can.”
Young Wall looked at the proposer in disgust, before he realized the proposee was already moving. Key had long been oblivious to most things, and he had already spent much of the day in a skittish daze. So, hearing his name, he finished refilling a cart with hay and began to walk over to their customer.
“Key!” Young Wall hissed. “Get back! Get back here! Key!”
It was far too late. Key had already made his way up to the warrior and made to tap her on the shoulder. In a heartsbeat, a hand seized his wrist and another gripped tight the handle of the blade on her side. Key squeaked and his heart raced. If she could match gazes with the Walls, she dwindled Key.
In spite of her sudden, explosive movement, the warrior’s expression remained placid. Her blue eyes fell upon his figure, hastily evaluating him for a weapon or threat.
“I-” Key stuttered in nasally Larun. “I can… I can… water your beast, for you. Firstpoint.”
He said this, as he said everything, just quiet enough that nobody could really grab ahold of it. The warrior’s sensitive ears caught his words with ease.
She looked up at the stable behind him, where the other animals sat in the shade, munching on feed.
The warrior said nothing – only pressed her gaze against his for a moment.
Trembling thing! the Bell shouted. Little thing! Weak thing! Hold! Touch! Embrace! Hold!
She pushed him away and released her instrument.
“I’m sorry,” she said in Goalish. “You have quiet feet.”
“Y-yes,” he stuttered. He glanced down to her own – grimy metal boots, whose spurs sounded an airy chime with each step, smeared and scratched as they were by however many days she’d spent on the road. “If it please you, we might also wash your shoes,” he said. “They are so muddy and rough.”
“That’s attentive of you,” she said. Her voice was deeper than he expected, and just under her breath, a bit like distant summer thunder. She spoke in Goalish; it was heavily accented, as though as she had just learned it recently. “But I’m not here to stay."
“Ih,” Key said. “We can still work with him. Our work is fast. If you have business here, you can attend to it while he’s fed.”
The warrior reached to the back of her belt, where a knife loomed. She retrieved a thin, nearly deplete coin purse adjacent to it, its top tied off by a small bit of twine that she slipped off. “How much?” She asked.
“Two Lofte.”
The warrior dropped four Larun coins into his palm and handed him the stronghoof’s lead. “The drink in your skin is splashing,” he said. “If you want, I can fill that too.” She unhooked it from her belt and passed it to his free hand. When he took hold of the leash, the stronghoof nudged him with its nose and he let out a rattled giggle. “He’s very well-mannered. What’ve you named him?”
“I haven’t. If you need to call it, I’d whistle.”
Key stroked his neck. “Is he injured in some way? I’ve never known a warrior to walk alongside his charge.”
“It’s unharmed. We both have legs to walk.”
Key looked at her with his eyes gleaming and his mouth open. When he realized this, he shut it, blinked, and stroked the stronghoof’s nose. “I always thought it cruel to name a thing you couldn’t know.”
The warrior raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
He nodded. “Since I was a boy, I wanted to ride a stonehoof, but I was cowed by the pain I would be forced to put upon him. I dreamed of earning a boon from a wise man and learning to speak his words, so that I wouldn’t need to drive or break him.”
“I thought much the same, when we met,” the warrior said. “It already carries me and my weight. I need not put a tongue on it, too.”
“It seems virtuous,” he said. “Isn’t it true? It’d be best to really speak to one other. That way, there would be no doubting your friendship.”
A strange silence broke between them. Neither seemed inclined to move, until the warrior did, taking a sharp turn toward the river. The metal in her boots clinked gently with each step.
Key watched her leave. He scratched the stronghoof’s ear and tugged on its lead, guiding it into the stables.
Once he had returned, Young Wall yanked the rope from his hand, pulled him aside, boxed one of his ears and slapped him across the face. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “What is wrong with you? You could’ve gotten yourself cut, you know that? You could’ve gotten us cut. What are you thinking?”
Key’s nose had begun to bleed. He held it in pain. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“She wears the words of Athad, Key,” he blustered, running a hand up and down his arm. He shook two fingers at him. “Only two kinds wear words: the old drymen, and the new ones. All of them wish we would disappear.”
“I didn’t know.”
He boxed his ears again. “You know now, Fragile Thing. Remember. Remember!” He tapped Key’s skull.
The other workers stared slackjawed at the violence. He glared at them. “Filth,” he shouted. “Impotent filth. Gawk somewhere else!” He threw a wad of mud in their direction and they backed off.
Young Wall left Key for a moment to wipe his brow, and then brought him water, and a towel for his nose. Key sat down, holding it up and pinching it to stanche the bleeding.
“I was sure she would strike you down,” he said. “She raised her hand with such confidence.”
“I snuck upon her. It was an accident.”
“How did you make peace? What did you say to her?”
Key handed him the money the warrior had given him. “I said that I would feed her heart,” he said. “And fill her skin.”
Young Wall looked at the coins and then at the stronghoof, which brayed expectantly. “I’ll feed it. Once that’s stopped running, go home.”
“But I-”
“Go home. Go to the Lodge. Take care of yourself.”
-
The warrior moved deeper into the shell, which grew denser and more developed as she approached the dried-up river, and the fields beside it, cut and set some months ago. The various huts, stalls and houses circled around a spot by its former banks, where rested a great wooden bedplace.
The shell’s inhabitants were a skittish lot, watching her from doorways and remote corners. When she turned, a fleet of shadows scattered, and a group of passers-by carrying baskets ducked their heads. There was one notable exception in an older woman who watched her from the light, her eyes narrowed and her massive arms crossed.
Crisscrossing the walls of the estate was a series of Goalish letters, whose configuration frustrated her; beneath its covering she found an old man, eyes half shut, muttering to himself on a three-legged stool. The jingling of her approach stirred the Lodge from his slumber, and he squinted up at her.
“Another dryman,” he said. “Have you come to cut us, too?”
“‘Dryman,’ eldman?” the warrior asked. “Are the words I speak a Larun’s?”
“They are not ours. Your mouth is a stranger to them.”
“My mouth reveals what I am. It has always been so.”
He snorted.
“Is it you who sits in this shell?” she asked.
The Lodge frowned. “Am I standing, child?”
The warrior continued. “I’m unfamiliar with this country. I would supply gifts for a route back to the Ash road; I was curious if you might provide it.”
He indicated her hesigns. “What good are these injuries, if not for moving and looking? I’m sure they can find you your own way forward.”
“This is true,” she replied, “But I have business, and am obliged to arrive there at my best possible speed. To go more slowly in this or any place is a less correct gesture. I am so commanded.”
“And what type of business asks this of you?”
“The business of my commanders.”
He sniffed and looked away. She came across the creases in his eyes, the slight dilation of his pupils, and the incessant jittering of his right hand. “You seem troubled,” she said. “This shell smells of ruin.”
The Lodge sighed. He pointed to the Speaking Place. “Look around you, at the soil, Water-Fighting Woman. What do you see?”
The warrior looked at it. The mud had been filled with bootprints. Many of them were wider than those of the Sixbraids she’d already seen – potentially, they had been made by Freemen. There was a patch of blood and viscera she could smell thirty feet away.
Most conspicuous were the remains of a Larun punisher, smashed to pieces by the shell-dwellers.
“There is struggle,” she said.
The Lodge waved his hand. “Struggle is all,” he said. “Trial is the whole of the thing. And ours is now ending.”
A shout came up from behind them and they turned. The Sixbraids had scattered from the Speaking Place. The only ones remaining were a group of armed men, lead by a thin and irate elder. They stormed up to the Entrance Chair, waving branches tied to sharp stone.
“Is this the lightning we were promised?” he raged. “A girl dressed in drynames?”
“It’s an insult!” one shouted. “A punishment!”
“Perhaps she is a gift,” cried out another. “Perhaps we must destroy her in their stead, and be relieved by it.”
A fever was catching hold of them, and they began to discuss such things seriously. The warrior put a hand on her blade. “I wish you would look past my friends,” The Lodge murmured to her, struggling to his feet. “They do not look well upon water-fighting words, regardless of their shape or creator.”
He jabbed a finger at the Walls. “As long as I breathe, I am still the keeper of names,” he shouted, thrusting his hand at the warrior. “This one is named ‘friend.’” He let out a huff. “Look at yourselves, half-men. Shaken apart by a little wind. Who among you is gone yet? Go to your own work! Or the day may end without you in it.”
The shell-dwellers reluctantly dispersed. Their ringleader threw a vile glare in the warrior’s direction before he followed suit. “I’ve known my share of shapefear,” she said. “But little as brave as this.”
“Little is brave as this kind. Where sits your own?”
“My birthplace is Shaminkat.”
“Shaminkat? I can see the Sailor’s heart in you.” The Lodge coughed and coughed, collapsing back into his chair. She removed a white cloth from her breast pocket, into the face of which was woven a black insignia. Its winding vines and hammers were similar to but distinct from the standard that covered the Laruns' host. He snatched the thing from her hand and proceeded to wheeze into it. He held a hand up to his face and shut his eyes. “Ih. What a dreadful prank is the rulers’ house,” he moaned. “Or perhaps they are all really gone.”
“A prank?”
“I have turned words,” he said. He handed her back her cloth. “In doing so, perhaps I have accelerated our destruction. I wish you would depart, yonwoman, so that you won’t be devoured for my crime.”
“Before I do, I wish you would tell me the source of your grief.”
He scoffed. “What other source exists? Grief is men and our contest.”
“Those encamped beyond your walls?”
The Lodge nodded. “The heartless things, the man who commands them, the one that commands him.” He pointed to the river and the pyre. “Twenty seasons before, we could have passed them down the water, given them a good ending.” He flicked his hand in disgust. “The Laruns have taken everything. Fire is all we have left.”
The warrior noticed now the downcast eyes of the Goals, the spots of blood in the dirt, the ways being performed from door to door by the shell’s wise men. It was routine. Dread was a pollutant, infesting the places where lives begin. It was the element the Laruns exuded.
The Lodge tilted his head as the warrior surveyed the shell’s central yard. “Shaminkat?”
“Yes?”
“You have a quiet face,” the Lodge rumbled. “A quiet voice. I can’t say what they say.”
“They say nothing. What do they want from you?”
“Nothing itself,” he spat. “Once they asked for skin. Now they ask for bodies. It is always thus with drymen.”
“And how have you injured them?”
“Our brothers’ brothers fight them in a land away from the sun,” he said. “So they cut those of us nearer to it.”
“That is not the reason,” the warrior said.
“Hm?”
“That is not the reason,” she insisted. “It is their wordless statement. A bendrock saying. Such hearts cut to cut. It brings them joy.”
The Lodge tilted his head. “So you do speak our words.”
“They were taught to me.”
“To us all.”
The Lodge smiled, and then his face sagged in anguish. He looked away. “Trial is good. They will survive.”
He raised a finger to Yawn, flanking him patiently in the shadows. “Show this water-fighter our images. Give her what she likes.” He shut his eyes.
Taking the casual insult in stride, the warrior moved inside with Yawn. With a hint of remorse, the Lodge continued. “Perhaps you would like to stay the night. Eat with us. I could have a wallwoman make room.”
“Thank you,” the warrior said. “But I have a long way ahead of me. My purse is empty; my head adores the ground.”
“Then begone, Shaminkat,” the Lodge muttered. On a whim, he clasped his hands together and shook them at her, and sent off a dismissive wave as he drifted into sleep. “Fly yourself away. To a clearer sky. To one more fine.”
-
The shell had become desolate and dispopulate in the time between her visit to the stables and the Lodge; perhaps the youngers had fled, or perhaps they had been ordered home by their parents, fearing additional assault by something heartless, and to spend the last steps of their sun with their loved ones.
After memorizing the Sixbraids’ charts, the warrior came back to the Houses’ stables to retrieve her animal. When she did, it too was quiet, and the awkward, mumblesome, green-eyed thing that had taken it from her was nowhere to be seen. Still had he apparently kept his word before he left; her skin was full of water, and her stronghoof’s belly full of hay. She took its lead and guided it along the path, out from the roundseats and other ramshackle tenements, into the hilly hinterland that attached the Empty Houses to the rest of Goal.
A creature followed the warrior out of town, spying on her from corners and the tall grass. She decided to encamp next to the wood that began to spring up along her path; it followed her there too, shuffling from tree to tree, and snapping the occasional twig. It was adequately surreptitious beside this. If her ears were not keen enough to discern the heartbeat of birds nesting in the thicktrees high above, he might’ve escaped her notice, as he nearly had amidst the clamor of the shell.
Of course, there was also the Bell, but it was of limited help.
Weak thing! In the shadows! Behind door! Behind dirt! Behind, behind, behind! Go to him now, before it’s too late!
What does he want?
Following. Not chasing. Bereft! Bereaved! Uncoupled! Demands recoupling!
But what does he want?
Too many questions! it shouted. Touch! Embrace! Hold! Nothing else matters!
The warrior lifted her waterskin from her belt. She uncorked it, brought it to her lips, and immediately spit up its contents. Out of curiosity, she tilted it over and let a small amount fall to the ground, revealing the liquid’s sickly color. She sighed.
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Having put some distance between herself and the shell, the warrior brought her beast into a shady grove on the edge of the Goalish rounds, where the highest trails of smoke generated by the Sixbraid’s home could still be detected by his eyes. She detached her bags from the stronghoof and pushed gently on its mane; it dutifully folded up its legs and dropped to the ground with a snort.
She unclasped her cloak from her shoulders and threw it over the stronghoof’s back. Then, she approached and addressed the treeline.
“I can hear you, Quiet Feet,” the warrior said. “Come out now.”
There was no response. The warrior picked up a pebble, aimed it at a nearby boulder, reached back, and then launched it at gale force. It rebounded off eight different tree stumps before perforating its target: the trunk of a fallen spottree some distance away, large enough to conceal a body. Something behind it flinched as the rock exploded the rotten bark, and fell away from it in shock. After a moment’s hesitation, the slight figure of Key emerged from his hiding place, looking sheepish.
“Why did you follow me?” she asked.
He shook. His gaze flickered between her various sizeable armaments. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m sorry, eldsister.”
“I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to know.”
He hesitated. “I couldn’t believe you would really leave. You’re our sign of lightning. You must be.”
“Sign of lightning?”
“Our Lodge read the skins,” Key said. “Tusks, storms, and lightning. He said someone might come and help us. Fight the Laruns. Keep us safe.”
“He can see the future?”
“It is told to him,” Key said.
The warrior said nothing. Instead, she slid her sword off her shoulder and threw it on the ground. She sat on a bag of grain and took out a wooden pipe, along with a wad of dark green resin. While she ground it into the pipe, Key dragged a stone over to her beast, huffing and sweating as he hauled it. The air grew noticeably hotter and drier as he drew near the warrior, purging the evening chill from his bones. He sat on the rock, put his arms over his legs, and waited for her to speak.
A slight upward flick of her eyes was all he had to count as acknowledgement. But she did speak again. “You don’t fear me,” she said.
“No.” Realizing it was a lie, he corrected himself. “I fear most others. You less than most.”
“Didn’t your brothers tell you what I am?”
“You’re nice.”
She stopped pressing for a moment. Then, she continued. “I’m a fighter.”
“Who do you fight?”
“Things that need fighting,” she said, “and men.”
“Is that what you’re here to do?”
She shook her head. “Your Lodge is feurkun,” she said. “The speaking of signs is a false and ineffective craft.”
There was a marked silence before Key eventually said, “I know.”
From a pouch on her belt, the warrior took out a small clay bottle stoppered with cork. She held it up to an image on the tip of the pipe, whereby a bit of white fluid leapt out from the bottom and onto the tiny wooden sign. A warm flame curled out of its bowl, and she put it in her mouth. While she puffed, Key spoke.
“He was just trying to keep them calm. They were talking about flight. But there can be no flight. The Laruns are too fast, too close. And we are only riverborn. I think he plans to give himself when we choose, tonight.”
The warrior didn’t respond. “Can I know your name?” Key asked.
“We’re not like to meet again. There’s not much sense in exchanging names.”
“Okay.”
The warrior puffed on her pipe and blew a fine smoke that got in his eyes. He coughed. Seeing its effect, she adjusted herself to blow away from him.
“They…” Key couldn’t bring himself to say it. His chest tightened up and his eyes watered. He forced them shut and squeezed his legs. “The bodies we burned. One of them is my birthman.”
The warrior stopped mid-puff and took the pipe out of her mouth.
“They took away his preference, ten colds past,” Key continued. “And now they’ve taken him. And now I’m… there’s…” He stopped. The body had nothing else to say.
The warrior extinguished her pipe and replaced it in her belt. She picked up her sword, putting one hand on the sheath and another on its handle, and rested her head against the stronghoof. She crossed one leg over another in a position of repose.
“I just can’t sit by while another one goes.” he continued. He looked away. “And… I don’t want to go. But…” Key reached around his neck.
“You should return to your shell, Quiet Feet,” the warrior responded. “There is comfort in that which is still alive. Find solace in it. Don’t leave behind what…”
She sat up. “What are you doing?”
Key had gotten on his knees and held something out toward her. “I have little to give,” he said. “I have no city gifts. But there is this.”
In Key’s hands was what appeared to be some manner of necklace. The warrior picked it up to inspect it. Its ornament, which dangled from scarlet cord, was a kind of thin, ribbed stone or eggshell.
“It belonged to my bata. He said it was very valuable,” Key said. “A gift from his man. He always kept it with him. It’s the only precious thing I have.”
She handed it back to him.
“Please, you… I…”
Her hand remained outstretched, and so he took it.
“I am not to work here,” she said. She laid back down. “This is not my assigned territory. I am so commanded.”
Key bowed his head. “Forgive me, eldsister,” he said. “T-this was… isn’t your burden to bear.” He opened his mouth to say more and then shut it.
As he began to walk away, she spoke again: “You shouldn’t worry. It’s not like your kind to sacrifice their weakest.”
“My kind, eldsister?”
“Men.”
Key departed. She replaced her sword on her chest and tilted her hat back over her eyes.
You’re just going to let him leave?! the Bell raged. You are starving!
Be quiet.
Breath cannot be holy like this! I will not abide an empty house!
Just be quiet, won’t you?
The Bell would not be quiet. It continued to chitter on as the warrior drifted off regardless, slipping into a deep, practiced slumber. But just as it was about to swallow her completely, her eyes snapped open.
What is it? the Bell asked. The warrior tipped her hat up.
I’m not sure. I… missed something.
There is nothing near us that can hurt us.
The warrior briefly scanned the area. The stronghoof let out a short, drowsy grunt.
She went back to sleep.
-
The draw came after Key returned to the shell. As the Sixbraid men filed out of their homes, toward the house of the River Lodge, and around the Thought Table, the sense of sheer inevitability that the Lodge had stayed from their minds the night before was finally making itself known to them. As that inevitability welded itself to their hatred, many gave the hollow-eyed fireworker, whose position rendered him apart from the draw, a passing, envious glance. And so it was to their surprise that not two, but three straws were revealed to be set aside by the Thought Table.
“Three,” the Lodge rasped. “Three straws?” He looked at Key.
“Yes,” Key whispered, his throat already hoarse. “Three.”
“What?”
“Three straws,” Key said, a bit louder.
“No,” the Lodge said. “Absolutely not.”
“I-”
“You’re the fireworker. You are not a part of this.”
“My birthman was-”
“Your birthman was my friend.”
Key did not say anything.
Young Wall stepped forward. “Key?” he asked. Key couldn’t meet his gaze.
“Let him go,” said Sun Wall. “He knows nothing of firework. He does not know its meaning. Vigor’s birthwoman will speak to this.”
Many of the Sixbraids glared at him, although Vigor himself was present and said nothing. Sun Wall withered away and fell silent.
“Are you blind?” Young Wall spat at his elder. “Do you see any other fireworkers here? He’s the only-”
“There are three straws,” Wellborn interrupted. She turned to Key. “Peak left us the words. If you’re not strong enough to say them, there are other bodies. Do you want to be born?”
Key wanted to shrink away. “I would stand with you,” he said. “Voicewoman.”
“Then let it be so.”
Whispers went through the crowd. There was sadness in the eyes of the Sixbraids, and anger, and fear. The Lodge’s shoulders drooped in defeat, and he clenched his chest.
Suddenly, Young Wall leapt forward, grabbing Key by the shoulders and shaking him.
“Gapman,” he thundered. “You’re not going anywhere. Do you hear me? You’re not released from this. I don’t permit it.”
Yawn rushed over and pulled him away from Key. As he was dragged outside, he turned his ire on the shell-dwellers. “You’re just going to let him leave? You’re not allowed! Don’t you know?! He’s got a problem! You’re supposed to look out for us! You don’t get to pick the easy one!”
He looked toward Old Wall. “Do something, birthman! For the good of your own, do something!”
Old Wall did not even look at his son as Yawn wrenched him away.
“I disown you!” he cried. “All your sons disown you! You women! You heartless bites!”
The straws were drawn. The Sixbraids walked.
Wellborn, Key, the Lodge, and the other selectees marched through the night to the Larun encampment, past the river, past the shooters keeping their perimeter, and toward the standard that stood at its front. On their arrival, they found the three additional punishers the Freemen had produced at the head of the camp. Nearby torches threw a light on the poles and ropes that cast long shadows against the Larun tents.
The sentries’ commander murmured to his men, who surrounded them – chattering in Larun, holding their hands up in demonstration and illustratively emptying their armor and pockets. The Sixbraids followed suit.
The Freemen passed through their host, checking them for hidden knives, and counting to make sure their number represented at least a quarter of the shell, referring to a set of written rolls that looked older than the Lodge.
“Healer?” their leader asked the Lodge in simple, stilted Goalish. “Words to say?” His tone was hushed and tender.
“The words have been said,” the Lodge replied. “All is finished. Do what you have come to do.”
-
Awaken! shouted the Bell. Pain! Danger! Awaken!
The warrior leapt to her feet, one hand on her sword’s handle, before she realized she was alone.
It was night. She had slept for two steps-of-the-sun.
There’s nothing out there, she said to the Bell. What’s wrong?
Pain! Danger! The weak thing intends to freeze!
The warrior massaged her temples in frustration. Even if you weren’t trying to mislead me, she replied, the weak thing is little, and unimportant. And not our problem.
He is!
It is not the assigned territory.
You cut Laruns! We cut Laruns! What does it matter where their bodies fall?
It is not the assigned territory.
Fear words! the Bell accused. Rot! Bad-danced drink!
The warrior put down her sword and walked over to the Sixbraid’s rock, sitting on it, and looking at the shell over the horizon. The stronghoof breathed with a therapeutic weight and regularity in its slumber. Her sweatsight enabled her to see a number of smoke columns emanating from the shell, where the heat danced itself into a series of white spirals that cascaded upward. The sky’s vast host would surely be bathing the night in hues of blue and gold, but in the dark, it all appeared one color.
How is it you hear him? she asked the Bell. Never have you heard so far, for a thing so small.
I am joiner and joined! the Bell wailed. I touch all that touches you, and the weak thing is touched!
I don’t think-
Too much thinking! Warmth! Embrace! Hold! Do it now! No more time! NO MORE TIME!
The warrior set her jaw in resolution. The Bell could obviously hear what she had concluded. No! it screamed. No! I will not permit it! I will not-
The Bell went silent.
She lurched slightly as a harsh cracking sound came from below her. The stone had broken, shattered into pieces. She stood up and looked at the rubble. Starlight glinted off something underneath.
How did…?
The warrior kicked over the stone’s remains, and inspected what she found there.
She sighed in irritation, stuffed the necklace in her pocket, and rubbed her eyes. “What a troublesome little fool,” she muttered.
-
“Are you afraid?” Wellborn asked Key.
The Sixbraids had been bound, placed in a line up to the punishers, and left to wait as the shell-dwellers were observed by Manor and hung. Their bodies were comported dutifully by Freeman porters to a set of wagons, whose riders prepared to carry them back to their Houses. More shooters stood over them, arrows nocked in the event of attempted revolt or retreat. In the distance, one could just make out a rapid, thunderous jingling, as though someone in the country were clapping together metal plates; it was weak enough that Key chalked it up to his incipient madness.
Key had been trying his best to hold it together, but through the proceedings he had been falling apart intermittently, so Wellborn’s question came as a shock.
“Doesn’t it look like that?”
“Well, we have a lot to cry about. It could be something else.”
He ran his restrained arms across his nose. Snot came out. “Yes,” he said. “I am afraid.”
“Of what?” she asked. “This way is quick; there is little pain in it. Among his wrongs, that was a right Manor spoke.”
“I wish I didn't have to go,” he said. “I'm scared."
She nodded. “You don't.”
He looked at her questioningly.
“Nothing needs to go. Don’t you go making that mistake. Things do, and there’s no wrong in that. But to leave is no good. To be is not a wound. Its time and worker are of no concern. A smile is a smile. Contentment need not pass; the thought that it should is a thing of these.” She pointed to the shooters, who ignored her accusing finger.
“This leaving will happen now,” she continued. “It will happen tomorrow, to you and I. But our sons and daughters – they are the builders. One day they will live long. That is how we are charged. That is the Sixbraids’ aim. That is the meaning of firework.”
She was interrupted by the sound of metal crashing through wood. “New set!” the Freemen called.
The jingling had grown louder since she started talking, and it grew further as they approached the rope. He thought about asking Wellborn if she could hear it, but his tongue held itself. He was tired of talking.
They walked up together. The dead were hauled away and the stools reset by the porters. Key stepped onto his; his knees wobbled perilously on the unsteady platform.
An armsman placed his hands on Key’s shoulders, steadying him. Then he looped the rope around Key’s neck; he placed it close to the skin, but not so tight that he couldn’t breath.
As his executioner finished cinching the knot, the jingling, for the first time, came into popular earshot. The shooters, armsmen, and Manor and the Head Man could clearly hear it now, and some looked around in confusion.
Manor whispered into the ear of the Head Man, who shouted a command in Larun to the shooters overlooking the other Sixbraids from their berm, who shouted in turn to the men assigned to watch the river.
The noise had slowed, turning to measured, deliberate beats, in the way of footsteps. The wind carried the words of the Freemen back to the punisher, where Manor and the Head Man looked at one another in bewilderment. All strained their heads towards the bridge and squinted their eyes. Key twisted his neck around to see about what it was they had been informed; even through the darkness, he could clearly see that a figure was approaching, marching on their position.
After it had passed over the river and out of its Western bank, it became quite obvious to Key that the creature was the warrior. It had to be, and there was something strange about her. The rippling tide of hair that once flowed from beneath her cover was gone; it was as though she had not been born with it to begin with. She seemed even taller than she’d been, as great and strong as an Astoran wrestler. She wore the thick metal armor that hung from her beast, stained now a quiet indigo that dissolved her body into the dark. Her eyes had undergone a transformation, shrinking down into a pair of shiny black peas that protruded and flicked about. Their size – that of the socket and ball – dilated when she came in range of the camp’s torchlight, and their sharp blue tint appeared to swirl back into the iris, as though it were water from a drain. Key wondered if he had simply imagined it.
The interceding Freemen turned to the Head Man, unsure whether to let her pass. He mumbled something to Manor in Larun, who called out in Goalish to the warrior. “You’re not Seen, are you, stranger?”
The warrior called back in Larun herself. “No, brightman. I’m just a Star, wandering your sky.”
The Head Man pushed forward, and called back with his own tongue, which Key found to be high and exceptionally sweet. “You’ve picked a poor spot to wander on.”
“I have business here,” the warrior said.
“So uncover it.”
She raised her left hand and extended a finger at Key, who shrank backward in fear and incomprehension.
“That one paid me to perform a duty,” the warrior said. “A duty I cannot accept. I will return his payment to him now.”
“You can return it after his breath is ended,” the Man said. “There is goodness to be done.”
“I will return his payment to him now,” the warrior repeated. She raised up her pointing hand to grip the hilt of her instrument, and tore it from its scabbard. It was a blaith, a long single-edged blade, forged from black metal – more of a large skinning-knife than a sword, with a smooth, curved pommel. “Do not hinder me.” She kept walking.
The Head Man barked a command in Larun to the Freeman nearest the warrior. He glided toward her, and moved to grab her by the arm.
The handless Freeman wandered away, clutching the smooth, angled wound where his bicep used to be. He fell against a wagon and started to make an amazing sound. In the warrior’s second hand, she clutched the short, thick blade stowed at her side - not quite a fighter’s knife, nor as long as her sword. It was hard and heavy and caked with blood. She brandished her weapons and continued to advance on the punisher at an inexorable pace.
The Head Man didn’t speak again. He raised his hand to the shooters, who let their arrows fly. The Warrior didn’t knock them out of the air with her blaith; she didn’t catch them, or duck beneath them, or use a strange trick to deflect them. The shafts of wallrock struck her, one after the other – the first lodging in the armor above her heart, two in the plate by her lungs, and a fourth that pierced her throat. The force they struck with failed to stagger her. She ripped each free in quick succession and cast them all aside. Other than that which had stained the arrow, the cavernous notch in her neck showed no hint of blood. She continued.
The Head Man whispered something to Manor and shoved him away before he drew his weapon from his sheath. When he stormed up to The Warrior, his every step rattled Key’s jaw. He drove his point at The Warrior’s sternum; before it met her skin, a single cut split his blade open at the channel. Her blaith passed through it, through the Man’s armor, through one side of his body and out another. He fell, and his body dissolved into two neatly partitioned halves. Blood from both began to leak into the dirt.
The other Freemen stood still, as though locked into place. Then, without a second thought, they unsheathed their langnivs and rushed into her.
-
The Warrior’s thick, bloodstained gauntlets took hold of Key’s wrist. She put his binding to the edge of her knife, pulled, and snapped it free. He gasped in shock as he felt blood rush back to his asphyxiated hands; his skin burned when he touched the marks that the wire had made, and a red handprint had made its way onto his wrist. As though she were afraid he’d fall as he stepped down from the stool, she steadied him roughly, grabbed him by the chest, and hauled him off it. He turned to thank her, but she was already well away, snipping the bonds of the next Goal in line.
A group of his neighbors were standing around a man who had been set to hang alongside Key. He walked closer to them to see what it was that made him so interesting.
The ring of people parted. Key saw the body of the Lodge, low on the ground. He didn’t appear to be breathing. One of them had their head to his chest, searching for breath or a heartbeat.
Key stumbled away. He sat against one of the punishers’ poles and hugged his knees.
“A dryman,” One of the mourners stood up to face The Warrior; it was Old Wall. He jabbed a finger at her and then Key. “And Peak’s thing.”
Whispering began as the rescued Sixbraids gathered around the two of them.
“She pointed to him! Why would she point to him?”
“‘Payment.’ That’s their Larun word. Payment. That’s the word she used.”
“They got to talking by the hearthouse! He went right up to her, and the others hid - I saw it!”
“I was on watch when she left. The dryman who saved us. He followed her out there!”
“There’s some bargain between them. Has to be.”
The Warrior said nothing. Key shook, his gaze jumping between the many different sets of eyes swarming over his body.
The gears turning in Old Wall’s head clicked into place. He seized Key by his upover. “Gapman. Can you hear me, gapman? You did this, yes? You offered to this dryman? You offered to her?”
“I… I…”
Old Wall’s fist collided with Key’s jaw. “I’ll cut you apart,” he bellowed. He hit him again. “Do you know what happens now? Do you know what happens, gapman? There are a thousand thousand of these heartless forces, hungry for us all. Now they will burn your home. They’ll burn all our homes. They’ll eat us and take our children.” He hit him again, drawing blood. “They’ll steal our minds with nightrock. They will bury the river’s banks and seal us away forever.”
He raised his fist again. As he brought it down, a hand shot out from the darkness, stopping it cold.
The Warrior bent Old Wall’s arm backwards, ripped him off of Key and tossed him back toward the other shell-dwellers, who cushioned his fall.
After he recovered, he accosted the two of them while his subordinates restrained him. “Hairless thing. Hairless thing! You’re a disaster! You’ve broken mine. You’ve broke my rulers and you’ve broke my own. You have stolen away my boys. We’ll break you, I promise. I promise that.”
The Warrior ignored him. She offered Key, who was still reeling from the blows the Wall had paid him, her cloth. He shook his head, so she put it on him herself, wiping some of the red and grime from his face onto the sign that adorned the fabric.
Seeing this, Old Wall let out a horrible laugh. “I see now,” he snarled. “You’re not a gapman. You’ve departed your own to grab at others. You’ve thrust your way into alliance with disaster. You’re a thruster, just like your birthman before you.”
Neither The Warrior nor Key responded to his insults.
“You have nothing of us inside you!” he screamed.
At last, Wellborn walked up to Old Wall, pushed away his men, grabbed the back of his neck, and catapulted his skull into her forehead.
Old Wall fell to the ground, blood gushing from his nose. She wiped off the stain this had made on her chin. “What a loathsome noise,” she crowed. “It clogs my ears!”
“But why, eldsister?!” Sun Wall asked, rushing over and trying to cradle Old Wall’s head. He flailed and smacked Sun Wall away. “Wouldn’t you of all agree? It was you who spoke of injury in flight!”
“It was I,” Wellborn boomed. “Forsaking the river on its own is wrong. And it cannot be stomached. But don't you have eyes to see this virtuous sign?” She pointed at The Warrior. “This fighter has brought in the Thought Ruler’s will. She is the lightning! It’s just like you, isn’t it, Old Rock? Not nearly enough power with you to fight; just enough to accuse and lament the one who fought.”
Old Wall spit blood at her. She spit on him twice in return, and gave him a kick to the stomach. He crawled away, before being helped up by a pair of Walls. They glared at Wellborn. She paid them no mind as she walked over to The Warrior.
“I can’t stay,” The Warrior said. “I’m only still here because of why I said.”
“And why is that? Your words eluded me. Something about… money? Recompense? Responsibility?”
“A work that I could not perform.”
Wellborn pointedly glanced at the field of mangled and brutalized corpses The Warrior had left in her wake.
“Some work that must’ve been!” She snorted. She shook her head, turned to Key and said, “Fragile man, just how is it you impressed this divinity? I must’ve underestimated you.”
Key began to reply, but The Warrior spoke again. “It’s an affair between us. My actions were mine and mine alone.”
“I have no doubt about that.”
“I will not tolerate retaliation.”
Wellborn saw that she was not looking at her, but over her shoulder at the Walls. She smiled wearily. “Don’t worry about that rock. The Lodge’s gone; he’ll be next. Probably won’t need anyone to do it for him, either.”
There was a pause. “He’s right,” The Warrior said. “About the Laruns. I can’t stay. When they come back, they'll finish their work.”
“Then give us your will.”
When she said no more, The Warrior tilted her head.
“The Ruler has delivered you to our purpose,” Wellborn explained. “You have cleared the trial he issued us; the will you speak is his. Will us to follow you, or fight them to our last breath, and it will be as the Ruler charged.”
“I am not your Lodge. I know little of your need.”
“The will you speak is his.” Wellborn pointed at her blaith. “When you first raised that drycane to our Lodge’s fortune, you delivered yourself to our Lodge’s obligation. So now we must have your will.”
The Warrior did not speak for a few moments. She turned away from Wellborn and scratched an itch thoughtfully. “The best choice you have is to depart your river,” she said. Wellborn shut her eyes and bent her head before opening them again, released of much bravado.
“From the look of it, it has been leaving for many seasons,” The Warrior continued. “There are waters closer to the dawn that flow from the same source. Perhaps your rulers and your virtue await you there.”
Wellborn didn’t reply. She stepped away and looked around at the bodies: the Sixbraids, Manor and the Head Man, and the swarm of massacred Laruns. She peered down at one of the dead Freemen, who The Warrior had skewered through the chest. She reached down to his waist, and removed a knife from his belt.
Wellborn held it up to the Sixbraids. “What are we?” she asked them. “See it for yourself. We are given by the rulers to depart from the rulers. The drymen took wallrock from us; the rulers have brought it back in.” She pointed at the horde of dead men. “Look now at what canes can fight! Creators of chains and stone! We have been punished with a gift, and there is virtue in it.”
Wellborn slashed the dagger across her palm; there was shock and outrage from the Sixbraids when she threw her hand at the ground, sending flecks of herself into it. “Let fall the river here,” she said, “On this place. Then pick up your gifts, and if you are virtuous, follow me. I walk with the rulers. They are no longer here.”
There was chittering and frightened whispers between the Sixbraids. Many of the older Walls looked glared at Wellborn even harder than before, but a few of the younger ones had clearly been infected with her energy.
Some of the Sixbraids began to disperse among the bodies, collecting weapons. Wellborn returned to Key and The Warrior, and slipped the dagger into her waist. “Where will you go?” she asked The Warrior. “If you desire, you might travel with us a while, taste our hospitality. If the Laruns do learn of your allegiance, you’d be better hidden in a group.”
“No, I’m afraid not,” The Warrior said. “I’ll demand no offering from you, but I do need to make up for the time that I’ve lost. All this work, for no returns-”
She was interrupted by a growing pack of shell-dwellers. In addition to scavenging arms, they had begun to pick whatever they could off the mutilated corpses of the Freemen she had butchered. One let out a cry of jubilation as he located and plucked out a purse, filled to bursting with coins. They stumbled up to The Warrior, pressing them into her arms, laying their hands on her armor, and tearfully extolling her in jubilant Goalish.
Key tried to reach her, and give her thanks for her work, but the group of supplicants was thick and energetic, and his efforts were frustrated. Soon, he watched her vanish from sight.
He turned his attention back to the remaining inhabitants of the Larun camp; in particular, their most aggrieved participant. Manor was holding the upper half of the Man in his hands, weeping. Key saw that he had taken his helmet off, and that a face was bubbling up from inside. It melted into the tanned visage of a Mekar, one of the desert people, and as it reached a crumbling hand up to brush a tear from Manor’s face, its eyes turned from gold to blue.
Key could see the mark Manor had been given on the back of his neck – an irritated black welt of ink and heat that could never be undone. A group of men took hold of the Pointer and pulled him off the body. When he began to scream, one of them threw the handle of a scavenged langniv into the back of his head. After two, and then three hits, Manor fell silent. Blood poured from his nose as they dragged him down to the riverbed.
Slipping his hands into the folds of his upover for warmth, Key felt a strange, cold lump embedded there that he hadn’t noticed before. He was about to draw it out and inspect it before Wellborn addressed him. Besides certain stragglers still in mourning, or picking at the dead, they were alone.
“Fragile man,” Wellborn said. “Why do you keep here?”
“What will be done with him?” Key asked.
She looked out towards Manor, being hauled by the Walls over the bridge into their imminently vacant Houses. “I doubt we will ever see any more of that one. They will bring into him something cut of nightrock.”
She offered him her hand. “It’s time to go home,” she said. He took it, and she pulled him to his feet. They set out from the carnage, over the bridge and into the newly forsaken remains of the shell-seat.
As they passed out of the destroyed camp and through the grasses and past the dried-up river, something itched at the back of Key’s mind. “Why did…” he began to ask Wellborn, before he stopped.
“Speak strongly, eldbrother,” she said.
“There’s something…” Key muttered anxiously. “It can’t…”
He ran a sweaty hand through the folds of his upover, found the lump, and wrapped his fingers around it. Before he pulled it from his breast, he knew from its shape and texture that it was the necklace he had left with The Warrior. Wellborn turned to look at it when he stopped walking.
“That was Peak’s, wasn’t it?” she asked, catching a glimpse of it in his palm. “That was the price you offered?”
His body trembled. In his mind’s eye he saw Peak swinging, swallowed by the wind and detached from space. He saw himself let go of his other hand, pluck the knife from Wellborn’s belt, and fix it to pierce his stomach.
Only Wellborn’s own strength prevented him from bringing down the blade. He saw stars, the knife flying through the air, and felt his nose gushing with blood. He saw that it was not a different part of his mind that had done these things, but the whole of it, a rampant involuntary core. He held onto her, the last person he knew in his life, for the last time. Then, she was gone.