The boy staggered as his sister leapt off his shoulders, grasping the sandstone roof behind and pulling herself upwards.
“Go!” he yelled as she disappeared from sight. The only response was the fading pad of her feet as she fled.
Then the light shining from the alleyway’s mouth was obscured as the silhouettes of giants trickled through its entrance. Their long bodies slouched as they prowled towards him. The boy swallowed and grabbed a chunk of rubble from the ground, ignoring the sharp pain in his ankle. He brandished it menacingly towards them.
“I’m not- “ he began, but the countless voices swarmed over his own, smothering it.
“Traitor,” they hissed. “Killer. Monster. Ravenblood.”
Tears pricked at his eyes. “I’m not! I didn’t know!”
They continued towards him, heedless of his protests. He hurled the stone at one and it faded into the crowd, yet more replaced it. Their long arms stretched, wrapping around his own and though he struggled with all his might no force could budge them. Then they twisted.
He screamed as his arms were fragmented into a thousand shards, but more hands covered his mouth. They bore him to the ground and all their legs began cracking down, smashing his head, legs, torso, and shattering his ribs like glass. Sharp fingernails bit into the flesh of his torso and slowly, carefully peeled the skin away from his bones, revealing the organs pulsing beneath.
Through the haze he saw the figures part under a silent command. A much shorter person walked to the boy’s shattered form and knelt. A hand wrapped around his still-beating heart.
Orvi shot him an easy grin – the kind the boy had seen countless times before – and raised an arm in mock innocence. Still wearing his affectionate smile, he leaned down, bringing his mouth next to the boy’s ear.
“Idiot,” the Ravenblood whispered, and ripped the boy’s heart from his chest.
----------------------------------------
Dash woke with a silent intake of breath. For several long moments, he lay in his bedroll, eyes staring upwards towards the innumerable stars in the night sky. All of it was familiar to him: the dream; the waking; the stars that looked like some angry god had stabbed holes in an inverted bowl. He rubbed his eyes and absentmindedly snaked a hand beneath the coat he wore to grasp at his chest. Within his body, his heart still thundered heavily. He drew in a deep breath, then allowed it to shudder out.
After all that time, he still awoke in the exact same way. The dream wasn’t even real; it was a demented parody of what had truly happened. The mob had held him down, yes, but they only managed to break an arm and crack a few ribs before Sash returned with Jackson, who roared the crowd away. There had been no peeled skin or opened chest, nor mass of churning shadows. He couldn’t blame anyone within the mob, either. Overtly, the Ravenblood hadn’t been present, yet Dash had felt his hand behind every single fearfully enraged man and woman within the mob.
At thirteen years of age, he still couldn’t beat the nightmare. He’d stopped wanting to. Forgetting would be a mistake.
While the adolescent continued slowing his breathing, he caressed the small pouch tied around his neck, feeling the weight of the ash within. Simultaneously, he idly tapped a hand to the bedroll beside his. Then he patted it again. His head twisted, to find it entirely empty.
“Sash?” he whispered, panic creeping into his voice.
Dash fumbled out of the warmth his sleeping area provided, wincing as he stood into the cold of early Frost. The Wastes only truly had two seasons: Still and Dust. Both could get chilly – especially in the transition between the two – but neither came close to the cold the Heartland’s seasons offered freely.
Despite the ice beading the sharp blades of crimson grass at the edges of the clearing, Dash eschewed boots in favour of moving more quickly. In the light of the twin moons, his eyes easily found six other slumbering forms – their group contained him and his sister, Stitch as a medic and one of each type of Blooded – yet missed Pat and Fink. The adolescent pulled a dog-whistle from under his coat, and after a moment’s hasty consideration, shoved it in his mouth and blew.
“Ox’s bleeding balls!” someone swore from the trees, then a flash emerged, embedding itself a few paces from Dash’s feet. It was a throwing knife. “What did I tell you, Dash?”
He resisted the urge to cringe. “Where’s Sash, Fink?”
“Dead, for all I care,” came the reply. “Especially not when her bastard brother keeps piercing my bloody ears!”
A large form shifted from within a bedroll. “Shut up, Fink,” Olga gravelled.
“You’d tell the godsdamned kid to shut it if- “
“I swear, Fink,” the woman murmured.
“Fine! Fine.” The Foxblood dropped from the black, thorny trees. His lanky form loped over to Dash, and placed an arm lightly furred with orange onto the boy’s shoulder, where it drummed rapidly against flesh. “Next time,” he whispered, feral grin slowly stretching across his face, “I’ll beat your sister blue and make you watch. How’s that? Captain Peeler won’t care – he might even join in.”
Dash’s mind whirled for a retort. He found one when Fink turned his back. “And have the medic hate you? That seems like a good way of dying from infection.”
“Stitch’ll…” The man snarled, then paused and began snapping his fingers. It was the same rhythmic beat he always used after getting aggravated. With every snap, the clicks reduced in tempo, until they halted entirely.
Fink rubbed his hair and sighed. “Look, kid: annoying Blooded is always a bad move.” He turned, and looked at Dash, the roiling within them having fallen away to far calmer waters. “Stop doing it. Stop blowing the whistle. Before I go crazy.”
The adolescent nodded.
“Good.” The man breathed out, slapped the side of his face lightly and stalked back into the shadows of the trees. “Just as I was getting comfortable…” Dash heard him mutter before his voice faded.
A growl alerted the boy to the presence of Pat, ears raised while the dog stared after the Foxblood.
“Quiet.” Dash accompanied the order with a clench of a raised fist, and the hound instantly silenced. After squatting onto his haunches, he looked into Pat’s eyes. “Where’s Sash?” he whispered in a high, playful tone.
The stub of the dog’s tail wagged quickly. Pat loped to the edge of the clearing, the rags tied around his paws curbing the sharpness of the grass, and looked back to make sure Dash followed. Then he ambled off into the shadows.
Mollified by Pat’s lack of anxiety, Dash walked at a far more sedate pace. An errant step brought his foot down on a patch of crimson grass, which bit through his socks and into his skin, flicking blood over the pink dirt. He sucked in a breath and wobbled back to staunch the small cuts with moss and pull on his boots. When he returned, tiny sheafs of grain were beginning to sprout.
Continuing forward on the trail of the hound – who glanced back every dozen paces to make sure his charge was following – Dash ducked underneath thorny branches, slipped around menacing brambles and squeezed between hanging vines. He eyed all of it sideways. Whatever hand placed forests upon the world had no appreciation for the clean, clear lines of an open space. The claustrophobic confines of the trees made ambushes unnervingly easy as well. And despite the knowledge that plants were static things, he still couldn’t shake the impression that the shrubs were one wrong move away from lurching around his feet, holding him in place as vines wrapped around his neck and branches snaked through his skin…
So focused was he on the things growing around him that the boy nearly missed the pale blonde – almost white – of Sash’s hair through the trees. Her pale form was seated on a boulder, its red moss making it appear as if flesh were slowly consuming the stone. Upon sighting her, he quietened his steps and carefully crept towards her back.
“Hello, Dash,” his twin announced, still facing away from him.
He straightened. “Hello, Sash,” he responded, before she could get tetchy about him not replying.
Satisfied by her brother’s response, the adolescent girl became silent once again. Dash met Pat’s expectant gaze and rubbed his head, giving their dog a brief kiss on the head before clambering up onto the boulder. He stood atop it smugly and turned his head around, surveying the land he was suddenly so much taller than, then plopped himself down next to his sister.
Much like him, she’d grown since the battle of the Foot. Her hair, usually tied into a braid, now hung down her back, straight and free of the knots that used to tangle it. She’d stumbled upon the habit of brushing it every night before going to bed at some point. Her body was lean and wound tightly with muscle. Whatever fat lay on it was a result of Jackson, Stitch and Dash cramming food down her throat in the months before they’d left, desperate to put some energy reserves on her before leaving. She’d grown as well, and with her straight-backed posture stood just below some of the shorter adults.
Dash, to his glee, was half-a-head and several pounds of muscle larger than her. Jackson could still knock him over like he weighed nothing, but on a good day he could beat the older teenagers in a brawl. Both twins could outrun anyone easily in the Foot’s maze of sandstone – that was necessary to avoid beatings. And Sash folded easily in an arm-wrestle to him. Not that he felt very prideful over that anymore.
Every day since they’d entered the Heartlands, Dash had attempted to sneak up on her. Every day, he had failed. The attempts had gotten so frustrating that he’d stopped, only for Sash to berate him for not continuing the ritual.
He followed his sister’s gaze, to find her staring at a trail of ants leading away from a dead beetle. She squinted at them in quiet consideration, rubbing the pouch tied around her neck.
“Something interesting about them?” he asked, gesturing towards the bugs.
Sash looked at him, then back at the ants. “Yes. They’re a lot like people.”
“Well, except for the fact they have too many legs.”
The twin frowned at him, then huffed when she processed the grin on his face. “Be quiet. They are. Look: it’s just like when a monster is killed.”
Dash turned his eyes back towards the ants. Individually, they were nothing like humans; yet the logic they moved according to was eerily similar to what the Esfarian harvesters used. Any one of the ants could have been Sash or Dash, a single year ago – carefully butchering a drained Ravenkin as its hunters watched them and the other workers. They’d placed chunks into sacks and into their little carts, hauling them for hours and hours underneath the relentless sun.
The work was dull and monotonous, allowing too much time to think about everything except something productive. It was hard for a pair of children, made even harder if the corner of the Wastes they’d been sent to was cracked or had ravines. Both had passed out from heatstroke more than once. Fink, along with a few of the other hunters, had frequently told them to get another job and come back when they were bigger. But due to the fear the people of the Foot felt towards the monsters, volunteers were always short; meaning butchers always obtained increased merits, allowing longer training hours.
Jackson would have given them private lessons if they’d asked, but that would’ve led to even more resentful glances. They had to earn their skills; otherwise, the twins would never prove anything.
Blake – the layabout – had continually offered work in a restaurant owned by a friend. That was before he’d struck an Esfarian soldier and left. They’d both refused continually. Sash hated cooking, and Dash had never been as good a chef as Ma… or the Ravenblood.
The ants continued, inexorably carrying their load to some unseen destination.
“Okay,” said Dash. “I can see it.”
His twin hummed. “Mm. And look!” She pointed into the impenetrable shadows. “Their home is over there.”
He nodded, unsure of how she knew. “Okay…”
“It’s a lot like the Foot. All those little tunnels are built on top of one another, but if you tilt it sideways, I think it’s kind of looks like a city…” Her eyebrows furrowed. “But how a bird would look at it.”
“Kind of like,” Dash began, teasing out the thought, “how Spires is supposed to be.”
They both looked upwards. Though the sight of it had disappeared days ago, the scent of woodsmoke remained, filling the air of the Heartlands with the knowledge that something had been eaten by fire.
Tomorrow, they would continue on the wide path of stumps and splintered trees that lay mere yards off to the side of their campsite. At the end of the vast, relentlessly trampled trail were the Spires of Heltia.
----------------------------------------
Sash rubbed her brother’s back as he leaned against a shattered chunk of speartree and vomited, eyes kept firmly away from the contents of his stomach, lest she start puking again. Yet there were only increasingly horrific sights around them. Dash’s gaze caught on two shattered carts leaning against one another, a lone arm sitting on its top. A cold sweat broke from his skin as he comprehended the arm wasn’t attached to a torso. He heaved.
A hand poked his back, lightly. “What’s a pair of children like you doing with a group of Blooded?”
The hand belonged to one of their escorts – a thin, sun-spotted woman. Like most of the soldiers they’d seen around the area, she wore a gambeson overlayed with bronze around the torso, forearms, and shins. Her helmet was tied around her neck with a cord of leather. A strip of yellow cloth was wrapped around her arm and the shaft of her spear, marking her affiliation as a retainer of House Baylar.
Upon reaching the end of the strip of the mounds of wrecked trees trailing across the Heartlands, the twins, the eight other hunters and their dog had reached the backside of the Baylarian baggage train. Stitch assured them a supply train even having an end was unusual, but had mused it was likely so the army could secure a safe route before beginning in earnest.
For whatever reason Dash had expected a more insidious route than Captain Peeler loudly proclaiming their group’s affiliation and desire to meet with a General to those guarding the train. After an hour of being kept under a guard of a dozen foot-soldiers thoroughly aware of their inability to contain six Blooded, they’d given a sizeable escort and led out of the forest, towards Spires proper.
They’d seen what the god had left behind.
Dash, like any Foot-dweller, had seen many things in the past thirteen years. The sullied streets, dirt mingling with the pus of monsters to create a holy reek throughout every avenue. Monster corpse littered streets unnervingly absent of humans, yet the few patches clear of splinters, rubble, or flesh revealed where the fallen had laid and eventually been dragged away. Blood splattered the outskirts.
The twins had been kept away from the lanes of Plague-stricken people. Even so, they’d joined in carrying the dead. Fabric damp with scented oils wrapped around their faces and bodies covered head-to-toe in thick cloth couldn’t hide the boils scattered across skin mottled with unnatural red and yellow. The dead’s flesh was tough, but even through the gloves he had felt their incredible heat, as if even in death they still strived for life.
Despite that, the boy had never been unaware that it was a sanitised version of the truth. They hadn’t fought. They hadn’t cleared the initial bodies.
Where the aftermath of the Lizard’s parasites had been stumbling across the still-cooling corpses of sick people, they hadn’t even noticed the skeletons of the Raven’s Tomb at first.
Initially, the twins thought the white shapes strange rock-formations – the kind found all over the Wastes. Their attention had been drawn inward, away from the physical strain of hauling empty carts through the heat. Yet when Sash had picked up a piece of green stone to idly toy with, everything had begun to coalesce.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The mottled green fragments were not pieces of strange stone. The hills of white rubble were not natural. The pale, angular formations diving and twisting through one another were not mountains. The fragments crunching beneath their feet were not gravel.
It was a graveyard, stretching from horizon to horizon, and terminating in an impossible, incoherent skeleton.
His only memory of its life was mercifully faded by time: the warmth of a body as he dangled from its front accompanied by a cacophony of yells, screams, and screeching metal filled the air, while a reddened sky loomed above it all. Neither Ma nor the Ravenblood had said much more about it.
Both times had contained their own, unique kind of tragedy, far too large for his pubescent brain to grasp.
The place they walked through wasn’t a tragedy. Its architect hadn’t earned that title.
It was a joke with a punchline wrought from human flesh.
“Don’t look,” Stitch had told them, stern face grown even more severe. Yet their old tutor had never been a tall woman, and her words swayed them less than they used to.
They had looked. But even if they’d tried not to, the mounds of bodies would have been impossible to miss.
The bodies were piled in mounds, some placed by the careful hands of humans but most were drawn towards one another as if by some immense tempest, their broken bodies mingling with equally broken chunks of wood or cloth or speartree. Bizarrely, those piles were clustered in the same straight line as the rubble of Spires’ towers. Pieces were scattered like a child’s dolls, thrown in the wake of an immense tantrum and splitting each of the toys open. Beneath, instead of splintered wood or sprouts of cloth, broken flesh peeked through. The chill of Frost held the greater part of its stench at bay, but the scent of rot was omnipresent. The blood was still thawing in the morning air.
Dash could tell that the place had once been part of the immense camp that still stretched around the east and west sides of Spires. All the instruments of human existence were there: the broken pans, stone axes and knives, wooden trinkets and woven tapestries. The occasional bodies that still held one another, even smothered beneath the mounds of death around them. The scale of the human – all too human – life lost was impossible in scale and disregard.
Sash started crying, somewhere around the fiftieth step. Stitch’s face was pale and drawn. The six Blooded each wore different expressions: varying from Captain Peeler’s beady eyes immutably fixed on the path ahead, to Olga’s blunt, clenched teeth as her stomps sent blood sloshing around her boots. The hand Fink had placed over his mouth and nose drummed incessantly.
Dash didn’t think anything at all. Until he did, and threw up.
The woman’s question still rung in his ears. Why were they here? Cold and lonely, in a place very far from home.
He wiped a hand over his mouth and straightened. “We’re the trackers.”
The soldier’s jaw opened, then clacked shut. She gave both of them a pat on the back. “Be careful, then,” she grunted. “It’s a bad thing, to be wrapped up with the Raven’s ilk.”
Neither of the twins could give anything but a nod to that.
They continued onward, away from the worst of the obliteration. Closer to Spires, the boy could see the profusion of wood and metal crawling up and around each tower, yet unlike what Stitch had told them, none of it beat purple. The pulse of the city had grown silent; the trauma of having half of itself ripped away too much to sustain. Eight titans were missing from the sky, instead laying in chunks on the ground too large to circumvent. One leaned precariously against its twin, seeming moments away from toppling. As Dash watched, one of the bridges trailing down the side of a spire broke. It seemed to fall incredibly slowly, but its impact was accompanied by an ear-splitting echo.
Most of the survivors had wisely chosen to stay out of the Spires’ shadows, and House Baylar had followed suite. The chaos of the surrounding refugee camp – shelter fashioned from carts, scavenged wood and cloth – blended into a far more ordered encampment. Most shelters were still built from scavenged materials.
As they walked through the tight avenues between the makeshift homes, cloth would flap to reveal the dust-covered bodies of small families. Sometimes they seemed to quietly confer or play small games using pebbles and sticks, but more often they were heavy with stillness. Dash figured them to be civilians, but the structure of it breathed military. Each shelter was separated to discourage the spread of flame, while trench latrines had been created at the outer edges of the camp. Occasionally, a group of yellow-banded soldiers would walk past, carrying rations, shovels, or wood, to be given to those remaining. They eyed the Blooded hunters as the groups passed one another.
Yet though the military had clearly created the displaced people’s shelters, their barracks proper was clearly segregated from the rest. A wall barely taller than Dash’s waist ringed neat rows of hemp tents. Its avenues were sparsely populated by guards wearing armour daubed with yellow plates – more complete than the regulars’ armour. Some bore the exaggerated facial characteristics of those with Godsblood flowing within them. Their heads faced the hunting party, forewarned of their arrival. Six powerful Blooded – one of each type excepting the Raven’s – were not easily ignored. Especially not when most wore steel or bone lamellar plates beneath the peeling paint of Esfaria’s deep red.
Their escorts were briefly stopped at the entrance, but after a brief exchange of words between the soldiers they were waved through. Dash tried to count the tents but gave up quickly – there were more than fifty long tents large enough to house thirty within them. There were a lot of soldiers, he concluded. Maybe enough to match every fighter within the Foot twice over. Or thrice over. Even as poorly equipped as some of the warriors were, it still would’ve been a staggering number of warriors at any other time. But the scale was muted by the carnage they’d just walked through.
They passed a tent smelling like boiled potatoes and a group guarding some collection of pipes jutting from the ground, then arrived at a clearing within the centre of the encampment. A small tent sat within it; its yellow-daubed cloth partially concealed by a rapidly-moving line of worn individuals stretching away from a sheltered desk. The queue easily encompassed a hundred people, stretching across the clearing and vanishing into the rest of the encampment. Those waiting within it peeked out of fraying blankets as the Esfarians passed, shuffling out of the way. An older man wearing trousers and a shirt embroidered with a yellow turtle met them.
“The General requests that only three enter.” His humourless voice quelled any notion that it was truly a request. “The leader, the Owlblood, and one of the children.”
Sash was too enamoured with the man’s grey hair – shining with oil and tied into an elegant braid – to beat Dash in tapping Captain Peeler’s shoulder. The Spiderblood glanced at the boy, looked him up and down, then nodded. Sash gripped his hand and squeezed. He squeezed back, trying to figure out how to wear a reassuring smile, but before he could she let go, telling him to ‘be careful,’ and the moment was lost.
As another set of guards wielding bronze swords led the chosen three inside, Dash heard the man begin to say, “If the rest of you could join our…”
The boy leaned towards Oeus, the hunters’ Owlblood – his sharp, present eyes allowed by his comparatively weak divinity – and asked why he was allowed in.
Oeus kept his face unnervingly even. “We’re hostages. Spiderblood; Owlblood; child: all easier to kill than the rest.” At the boy’s expression he continued more quickly. “Don’t worry. It’s standard practice – none of it means anything.”
The knowledge didn’t stop Dash from trying to keep the knives sheathed against his stomach and ankle, but a meaningful stare from Peeler had him disarming. Alongside the hidden weapons, he surrendered his pack and the hatchet tied to his belt. It was the closest thing to a halberd that he could carry on the long journey.
They were instructed to wait in a sheltered alcove outside the tent proper. Two voices exchange words within: one too quiet to be heard, the other loudly vibrating with fracturing control.
“…did they expect when they signed off on the idea?”
A quiet murmuring.
The louder man barked a bitter laugh. “Keep its economy in shape? Sure, let me just send a courier to the bloody Ox with your instructions.”
Oeus’s eyes widened. Captain Peeler took a single step back.
The terse response was clear enough to distinguish words. “…no point… capturing Spires…“
“I know none of Baylar’s Heads are stupid enough to suggest Ichor. It’s been made very clear to them the consequences of searching. And half of Spires’ infrastructure is still operational.”
A snort.
“Or can be made so – and need I remind you what your position is? I’m not crass enough to punish a messenger for doing their job, but disrupting the chain of command with disrespect is another matter.” The words stopped momentarily, and the loud voice continued again. “There are many, many messengers in our employ. And favour is dependent on service.”
Silence.
“As I thought. Yoot’s essence lost within the city can be partially recouped before its dissipation. And frankly, the Godsblood requirements for Spires is far more realistic with half the city gone.”
A more hesitant sentence.
“There are Owlsmith survivors, however few, and their skills can be taught. What we have is an opportunity to win them over – an opportunity we wouldn’t have gained through any other method.”
“…speak freely?”
“No. What you are going to say is eminently clear. Now leave – I have guests.”
Moments later, the flaps leading into the tent spat a broad-shouldered, leanly muscled man out. He registered the three waiting – eyes narrowing over their red paint – then sighed and walked out.
“Please come in, Esfarians.”
Captain Peeler walked in, closely followed by the two others. Inside sat a sizeable man with a magnificent beard, curling from his chin down to his chest. His hair was kept in neat braids, and, despite being seated behind a wooden desk covered in wax tablets, wore a set of steel plate. A bloodtech lantern made redundant by the day’s light burned a dull blue atop the desk. Within the room were four guards armoured so heavily in steel that their skin did not show. At least one was large enough to be an Oxblood, and Dash would stake his sister on the other three being Blooded as well.
Two of the guards raised a hand, halting the three guests.
“Forgive me, honoured guests,” the bearded man said without rising. His voice was low, deep, and welcoming – the same that had berated the messenger moments earlier. “One can never be too careful.”
Peeler nodded his understanding. “Of course. I am Captain Peeler of House Esfaria, and this is the Owlblood Oeus and a tracker of the same House.”
Dash stared at the bearded man, and Oeus quickly shoved his head down. Belatedly, the boy realised that the Owlblood was staring at the richly carpeted floor, eyes blank. Only Peeler met the seated man’s gaze.
From the edge of Dash’s vision, he saw the man smile. “I am General Yalo of House Baylar.”
A pregnant silence filled the tent.
The Captain broke it first. “I assume Baylar is no longer upholding the Terms?”
Yalo’s brows raised in a carefully cultivated look of shock. “We would not dare go against the will of House Albright.”
Peeler frowned. “Against the will…” He paused. “Ah. The… method, is still questionable.”
Through his nostrils, the General released a heavy breath. “I can’t deny this is a tragedy. One Baylar benefits from; but make no mistake, friend – House Baylar has not broken the Terms.” When his face turned to the Esfarians, his face lacked any expression – only his eyes revealed his glare. “And if it did, it’s no less a crime than breaking the Heltian Conditions.”
Peeler chose not to remark on the irony of invoking an agreement in its birthplace’s grave. “Our role here is to uphold them.”
“And nothing else?” General Yalo quickly responded, barely acknowledging the implications of Peeler’s statement. “Let’s not pretend Esfaria’s holdings do not border the Heartlands. And the rumours – and they are just that – of an alternative power-source to Godsblood are seductive to any individual.”
“We’re not here for Ichor, General, nor any military movement. If we attempt anything outside of hunting, we will be hung upon our return.”
The bearded man closed his eyes, seeming to deflate slightly. “No greater will endorses your actions, then. You’re just here for the Ravenblood.” He snorted. “Good luck.”
Captain Peeler allows the silence to stretch. Behind the Spiderblood’s back, Dash saw him clasp two trembling hands together. “Do not misunderstand our purpose, General Yalo. We act according to an agreement made between all eight Houses – if anything qualifies as a greater will, it is that.”
Yalo snorted lightly. “You were the ones that lost the damn thing. And you’ve arrived four years late.”
Peeler’s jaw clenched. “House Esfaria has been occupied eradicating the remaining Ravenkin within the Wastes. The Ravenblood was a lesser concern than the well-known divinity within the region. With it almost entirely gone, we can focus on the Ravenblood. And if not for the interference of House Leyden- “
“A rogue Leyden scion.” General Yalo’s disbelieving reply smothered Peeler’s own. “Who – if I’m understanding this correctly – posed far more of a threat to the human Ravenkin that your House ever did. With your General mothering the thing.”
A thrill of heat sparked in Dash’s torso, but before it could travel upwards the hand on his head increased the pressure.
Peeler’s polite rebuke emanated a shadow of that same heat. “General Maja was a renowned General eight victories away from becoming a Great, and – whatever her mistakes – is a Godslayer and deserves respect as such. The scion’s ‘rogue’ status is seriously in-question. And the Ravenblood was excellent at concealing his own existence. If Leyden did not spook the Ravenblood in their greed, we- “
“It’s Avri’s ilk, Captain!” The General’s words transitioned into a frowning chuckle. “How can you lose a maddened beast?”
Peeler’s reply silenced him. “That ‘beast’ is likely in this city, General.”
Yalo quietened. The guards were perfectly still. Many voices seeped in from outside the tent. The tent’s material filtered warm light through its yellow roof. That was a lie – the sky outside was a ubiquitous grey, and provided no hints of the sun’s whereabouts.
General Yalo leaned forward. “What?”
“We’ve tracked the Ravenblood to Spires.” Captain Peeler’s trembling hands stilled momentarily. “I would’ve thought you were well aware of the Albright’s Declaration regarding Heltia.”
“Yes…” General Yalo stroked his beard hurriedly. “Of course. They… Heltia was harbouring a Ravenblood. But…”
“We’ve been tracking him for months, and the trail leads here. He’s been in this city, at least. Masquerading as a Face.”
The pressure on his head lessened, and Dash straightened, still careful to avoid eye-contact with the General.
The bearded man spoke as if in thought. “I suppose that’s fitting, in a way. A dead god’s blood wearing the mask of a shaman, instead of the opposite.”
“Do you know of any Faces within the city?”
Yalo nodded. “I’m sure there are a few survivors. If we’re lucky, the thing is dead- “
“We’ll have to confirm anyway. And I don’t think we will be lucky.”
“No.” Yalo sighed heavily, and rubbed his thumb and forefinger beneath his eyes. To Dash’s eyes, he seemed much smaller. He continued wearily. “I suppose it’s a canny beast, if it’s managed to avoid detection this long.”
“He won’t be obvious.” Captain Peeler cleared his throat. “A gag-order might benefit our search.”
“You’ll have our full cooperation, Captain,” General Yalo stated, then quickly added, “so long as you stay away from Baylar interests.”
“We simply need help searching.”
“And a blockade, I imagine?” At the Spiderblood’s nod, Yalo took a bracing breath and continued. “I’ll send a messenger to inform the soldiery.”
The General clicked his fingers, and stared into the impenetrable darkness of one of his guard’s helms, then another’s. One saluted, fist-over-breast, while the other delivered a slow nod – their arm, Dash noticed, was cradled against their chest. As the pair strode from the tent, the light of the lantern atop Yalo’s desk caught the edge of the nodder’s helm, lighting dark skin lousy with white, straight scars. The blue light made it seem eerie. Then they were gone. Dash stared after the guard, wondering what had to happen to a person to get their face so damaged, yet still survive.
Peeler bowed, Oeus a second behind. Dash hurriedly copied their movements. “Your generosity becomes your House.”
Their host waved a hand. “It’s what should be expected of us. Now,” he began, shuffling several rolls of parchment from beneath a collection of wax tablets, “we have the beginnings of a census taking place. Around an eighth of the survivors are recorded. Have your Owlblood make a copy.”
Peeler nodded. “I’ll send the boy to inform my subordinates.”
Yalo waved a hand. “Please.”
A pause. The Captain snapped his fingers twice and Dash startled, then hastily fled the tent.
He rearmed himself, resisting the urge to tuck his hands inside his armpits to shield them from the cold. As he did so, a familiar voice travelled from around the side of the tent and reached his ears.
“…I mean, look at that, mate. I’m barely Blooded. It’s so thin, it’s more like a god sneezed in my mouth. You can call me an Oxsnot – that’d be closer to the truth.”
An older woman chuckled. “The lantern is responding to your blood, so you are Blooded.”
“I’ve seen dirt that’s more Blooded than me. I’m no use to Baylar, and to be straight with you, I would’ve already carted myself out of here if not for rumours of a pretty lady fillin’ out numbers.”
Dash slowly began creeping around the side of the tent, ignoring the stern glares of the guards posted around its edges. He met the yellow eyes of Fink, loitering on the edge of the clearing, and jerked his head towards the speakers.
The old woman tittered. “And not due to the risk of starving on your way through the wilderness?”
“…Well, that too. Look: I usually wouldn’t be beggin’ to shirk work – not with everything that’s happened – but I’ve a brother waitin’ somewhere out there and I need to find him.”
“…Alright,” she said reluctantly. “You are correct: you’re just about the weakest Oxblood I’ve ever seen and it’s little issue to mark you as crippled- “
“Gee, thanks.”
“-but I will have to note you in the census data.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
A pause. Dash halted, just a single step from placing himself in full view of the line.
“Oh prettiest of ladies: could you do me another favour?”
“There are other people waiting.”
“It’ll be quick.” A rustle of clothes as the speaker turned around to address the line behind him. “It’ll be quick – promise.”
“What is it?”
“A friend of mine’s also come this way as well – didn’t come back.”
“Is she Blooded? She’s likely been conscripted.”
A silence.
“…Yeah, maybe. D’you, uh, have an Erin on your list?”
Dash rounded the corner, to find the back of a man exchanging words with a grey-haired woman behind a desk. The wooden surface had a blood-smeared orb atop it – a gaudy bloodtech lantern. It was being used to test for Blooded. Belatedly, he comprehended that any piece of bloodtech could serve that purpose. Yet no one had ever used one on him.
The speaker turned away from the woman, revealing the tall, tanned, pock-marked form of a young man. His eyes alighted on the boy, and his body froze in a slight crouch.
“Balls,” Blake swore, then turned, sprinted a dozen steps, and was promptly tripped by Fink.
He began struggling upright, then halted as Fink seized his arm and began levering it backwards. “Ow, ow. Alright! Alright. Okay.”
“Blake,” the Foxblood greeted.
“Oh, gods damn it,” the young man swore again, eyes growing increasingly frantic. “That’s Fink? Is that Fink, Dash?”
“Shut up, Blake,” Dash demanded. His voice cracked mid-demand, and he flushed.
“You rat. I haven’t done anything wrong.” He half-turned his head, addressing Fink. “Or will you hang me for leaving Esfaria’s newest outpost? Hittin’ some arse of a guard?”
Fink’s teeth clenched, and seeing the gleam in the Foxblood’s eye, Dash quickly produced a small bundle of cord from his pack and shoved them in the hunter’s side. Without a word, the orange-haired man began binding Blake’s arms, ignoring the unnerving stares of the hundreds in-line.
“Your hand would’ve been cut off for that if you hadn’t run,” his captor snapped, then lowered his tone. “You’re not stupid, Blake,” muttered Fink, “so do us all a bloody favour and don’t assume we are.”
“Never called you stupid.” The captive jerked his head towards Dash. “Just him a disloyal rat.”
Dash stepped towards him, snarling. “You’re- “
“Shut it, kid,” Fink snapped. “He’s baiting you.”
Blake’s chuckle transformed into a groan of pain as the cord wound tight. “You don’t get to tell Master Bootlicker over there about bein’ baited.”
Fink’s gaze, momentarily cooled, grew wilder. He grinned. “And you really want to reel in a Foxblood?”
“City’s dead and buried under all that rubble.” The young man shook his head. “And the trail’s buried under that. I’ll stop playing at not looking, but I haven’t found anything; I don’t think anyone can.”
“We’ll be the judge of that.”
With that, Fink shoved Blake onwards, hailing the nearby guards in order to requisition a stockade. Dash moved to follow, but the Foxblood waved him back.
“No. Go tell the rest.” The man drummed a beat on the back of Blake’s head, his lips oscillating between a fierce grin and a deep frown. “You and your sister should try and find the Face they mentioned. We’ll, uh…”
There was a pause as Fink tried to come up with a way to bend the truth. Somehow, he couldn’t see that Dash already understood.
“We’ll handle it.”