I got up before Kit did.
She hadn’t reached the stage I was at. Tears so raw they should’ve been red were still being wrung from the folds of her face; moisture seeping into any surface that would allow it. A dull peal ripped from her chest. Her body was still soaked in my blood.
I was further along. A kind of confused numbness pressed against my shoulders like some ceremonial garb, and it threatened to stifle the thing that had just been given to me. I stood to throw it off. To touch the clothes I wore: not silk, but smooth and dark with perfectly-formed buttons wrought with delicate indentations, bound to the material of my clothes. To run my mind’s tongue along the fiery ruins of my arms and the stabbing in the back of my neck. To trace my fingers along my scabbarded sword – carved from the bones of a dead god and with the story of a dead hero, or villain, or whatever people would call her a century from now. To feel the weight of my body settle onto my feet.
I got up and forced myself to stay there. My vision shivered like stressed glass.
Then I left Kit where she was to reach for the observatory’s balcony. The tips of my fingers slid against its lower edge. I eyed the distance for a moment before jumping upwards and clenching my fingers around the balcony’s lip. The effort of pulling myself into the Fort was immense. Yet though I was weaker than I had been, my body had also become lighter; mere sinew and gristle grinding together. I strained onto my elbows. A kicked foot sideways toed the ledge, giving me enough to leverage to roll myself over the top. I hadn’t needed Kit to help me, that time.
I straightened and looked down at the swordswoman, still bent over my body.
“Stay there,” I managed to tell her. “I’ll be back.”
Someone had died within the Fort moments ago, sending lifeforce scattering like petals in wind. The echo of that death could be heard in a guttural exchange that sounded down the hallways of Fort Vane to squeeze up the stairwell and into the observatory proper. The only decipherable aspect of it to my ears was how raw it was.
In the time we’d been gone, whatever meeting the lord of the Fort had held with House Baylar had gone wrong. I could feel Gale writhing in my mind’s eye. Tam, the girls, Maddie, Taja, Ronnie, and even the giant’s dog were still stuck inside.
I’d figure out what was happening. I’d get them out. Then I could take the next step.
In a cascade of sparks, Gale rushed through another two and sucked their flames into his own. I rushed down the steps into the wavering azure light of the hallway, bringing to my ears someone’s panicked threats against the Vane family, which quickly guttered into a scream. Balancing my gait between stealth and speed, I quickly shambled my way into the Hall of Mirrors. The reflections on either side threatened to dominate my being, forcing me to shield my eyes from the sight of them.
Huddling within the Hall were several maids, the assistant chef – folded in his mother’s arms – and Taja, directly behind Ronnie, who held an entire table in their good arm for use as a makeshift shield. The corpse of a Baylarian lay at its centre, where the brazier had once stood. His neck was a ruin of splintered bone and cartilage: artfully oiled hair irrevocably marred by blood. Someone had twisted his head until it faced behind him.
Darkness licked the corners of the room. My entrance prompted little more than a flicker of the eyes from the gathered groups, before their gaze returned to the glass floor. Through it, I saw Gale, standing amidst the shattered furniture of the dining hall. At his feet were two bodies – still clad in their robes and impeccably oiled beards.
Arrayed against him were the guards of the Fort.
“Henrik,” the noble was saying, accent dipping into one I’d never from his mouth, “listen to me. It looks bad, but I have- “
“You killed her,” the Fort’s captain of the guard blurted. “You stole her soul.”
“I’m no corpse, Henny- “
“Oh, gods.” The old man retched, worn lines in his face beading with sweat.
“Don’t you speak with her voice,” another guard – Henrik’s son, I recalled – spat. His voice splintered. “Don’t.”
“I’ve only done what I needed to.”
“You killed a bloody delegate!” The tip of the man’s spear wobbled. “You killed mum!”
Another accent emerged from Gale’s throat. Familiar, somehow. “The delegation was under the impression they were negotiating from a position of power. They needed reminding of the kind of connections I wield.”
The son’s face reddened, but his father placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “…What about Greta?”
“She… I…” Though his features were hidden from my sight, I could sense the furrowed brows and frown etched across his face. I’d felt them on my own enough times to know. “I… I? Knew something was wrong with… Gale was… I was…”
“He’s mad,” Henrik muttered. “Utterly insane.”
Gale shook his head vigorously. “I know what it looks like, Henrik. But though their bodies decay – as all do, in time – I’m keeping them safe.”
Henrik’s face folded. “It was about Mael, then?” He released one hand from his spear to rub his eyes. “Your family? I should’ve known.”
“What other choice did I have, Henrik?” The Ravenblood’s voice cracked. “What else is there to strive for, when you’re a person like me?”
Gale’s figure – less slender than it had been weeks before yet still shorter than most men – stepped forward, and the dozen or so guards stepped backwards. The pause that followed seemed delicate enough to allow me to pad over to my companions. Both Taja and Ronnie’s eyes were still as they looked at me.
“You need to go,” I whispered. “Take everyone here, grab some blankets from the bedrooms, and go up the observatory. There’s a way out through the balcony – use the sheets as a rope if you need to.”
Ronnie signed ‘Dog’.
“Yowler is…” I searched for the giant’s dog for a moment. “Still in your room. You shouldn’t run into anyone if you get him.” I paused. “Three doors down from yours is a room containing a woman and two young children. It would…” I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Please get them out as well.”
“What are you doing, Vin?” Taja asked, eyes locked onto Gale’s increasingly desperate pleas towards the guards.
“I’ve got to get Head Maleen.”
“She was part of the negotiations. I don’t- “
“She’s alive,” I interrupted.
The teenager shook his head. “I just don’t think you can beat him, Vin.”
I gave a weak smile. “You’ve seen me fight- “
Taja winced. “And now he’s got what you had.”
I licked my lips. “We don’t know that.”
“Vin…”
“He’s blind. I’ll avoid him; it should be fine.”
“Can he… sense things like you can?”
“It took me years to understand how to interpret what my extra sense means,” I stated firmly. “Years to comprehend how the things I felt mapped to the world around me. There’s no possibility he’s done so in a few weeks.”
“Still…”
I took the boy by the shoulders and bent down until my eyes were level with his own. “You need to save these people, Taja. Can you do that for me?”
Despite the fearful cast of his eyes, he nodded.
I turned to the Strain. “Ronnie?”
The giant nodded down at me.
“…The Jackal’s also in the Fort,” I told them. “Kit’s mother. You need to avoid her.”
Ronnie’s fingers curled into ‘Question’.
“…You’ll see when you make it to the roof. Just- ”
Another voice cut into the exchange occurring below. “Gale. This isn’t what we agreed on.”
I glanced through the glass floor, to the dining chamber. A tall, dark figure had pushed in front of the guards – Gaia, the Shrikeblooded woman I’d talked to earlier.
The blind noble shook his head disparagingly. “What else did you expect from me?”
“Not to actively sabotage the meeting,” she growled.
“You understood I would be volatile- “
“I thought you would have better control- “
“You expected me to simply allow them to walk over every single one of my counter-proposals?”
“You have what you wanted,” the older woman insisted. “There was no need to resort to violence.”
“I did not desire this, Gaia,” the man rumbled. Behind that firm tone was a brittle edge. “But I am capable of- “
“You need to keep an iron grip on yourself,” Gaia stated firmly. “Nothing occurred that cannot be undone, but if you keep behaving like this any kind of alliance will be impossible.” She scowled. “I’m going to leave, now. I’ll return tomorrow.”
Henrik craned his neck sideways to look at her. “You’d just leave us?”
“If you fight him, you will die,” the Shrikeblood stated gently. “I won’t stop you. But I won’t throw my life away, either.”
“Gale’s only gonna get worse,” Henrik insisted. “That’s the way Ravenbloods work.”
She inclined her head – whether in acknowledgement or in farewell, I was unsure – then slowly backed out of the dining hall. A thickening tension rose in her wake. Gale shifted into a strange stance: one hand splayed open beside his head with the other extended in predatory laxness. The nervous shifting of the guards ceased. The minute adjustments quaking their limbs stilled. They did not dare to breathe.
“Ready, men,” Henrik commanded. “Lower- “
It took ten heartbeats for them to die.
The Jackal’s blade cleaved through the guard-captain’s neck as she slid from outside the doorway, spraying blood in the faces of those beside him. Their ensuing flinch gave Gale – palm still held in its bizarre position – the opportunity to step forward, yank a spear from a man’s hand, and splinter his skull using its haft. He stepped between three separate spear-thrusts and was suddenly between them in a flurry of elbows driving against skulls. The crack of breaking bone was audible from above, but the sudden seizure of their souls by Gale was obvious only to me.
The Jackal – still unnoticed – hacked another three hapless guards down as Gale dominated their attention. Each of his steps measured the precise distance needed to remove him from danger, with every twist of his body heralding another dodge or another corpse. Gale’s movements were a dance made possible only by his complete mastery of the situation. Throughout it all, Gale never moved the hand beside his head.
By the time Henrik’s partially decapitated form slumped to the ground, only his son remained. The young man pointed his spear from the Jackal to Gale repeatedly as his knees trembled.
The old monster glanced at the Ravenblood. “You wanna kill him?”
Gale shook his head.
The Jackal shrugged, then casually stepped forward and impaled the man on its blade.
The blind man let loose a hoarse yelp. “I didn’t want you to kill him!”
The creature beside him sniffed. “Oh. Thought you meant you didn’t wanna kill him yerself.”
I tore my gaze from the fight and began shoving the two beside me from the Hall. When that was done, I grabbed the servants cowering throughout the room and pushed them towards Taja.
“Enjoy the show?” came a craggy yell from below.
I looked downwards to find the Jackal staring at me from amongst the gored corpses. Beside her, Gale – amidst a flurry of twitches and strained mutterings – removed a palm from where it pounded against the side of his head and pointed it in my direction.
In its centre was a single eye.
“Orvi?” the Ravenblood said. “Is it… Is that you?”
I sprinted from the Hall.
Head Maleen was in the kitchen attached to the dining area; she’d likely hidden in there when the killing began. Which meant there were decent odds the pair would enter it, if only to use the staircase adjacent to it. I had my doubts that either would kill a House Head – however politically castrated – immediately, especially considering Gale’s history with her, but they would inevitably capture her. From there, her fate would be determined by the whims of the Jackal and Gale’s fragile mental state. Every single person they’d killed, Gale had assimilated. More than twelve people. More than I ever had.
I’d spent the first six years of my life watching as people like him and I sloughed apart under the weight of too many poorly-tied pieces. Whatever sinew that bound Gale together would be fraying rapidly.
I slammed into the employee stairwell, resisting the urge to take the steps two at a time in favour of rallying my diminished reflexes and avoiding a fall. The majority of my attention was dominated by Gale and the Jackal flitting through the shattered dining area. Every time they seemed to veer in the direction of the kitchen, my heart bubbled into my throat.
Yet I barged into the room before they entered, locked onto Head Maleen huddled behind an oven, and seized her. She flinched backwards, slamming her head against the clay stove.
“Maleen, it’s me,” I whispered.
She cringed away, hands pushing against my chest.
“It’s Tully,” I said.
“What?” Her green eyes flicked open. “Vin?”
I blinked. “Yeah. Come on. Come on.”
The orange-haired woman allowed me to pull her upright and begin dragging her up the stairs. When we reached the warbling light of the upstairs hallway without pursuit, I finally allowed myself to talk.
“What the hell happened?” I demanded. “Gale killed a diplomat? Why?”
Head Maleen blinked, then swallowed. “I don’t know. It’s not… it’s not like him.”
“He’s taken the Ravenblood I shed,” I told her while we walked. “It’s not just Gale making decisions anymore.”
Maleen glanced at me. “Is it?”
I felt the urge to shield my face. “What were the diplomats asking that aggravated him?”
“They were talking about you.”
“What?”
We passed into the Hall of Mirrors. My eyes drifted sideways, beholding myself scattered an infinite number of times along the hall stretching into eternity. The dead diplomat’s glare was multiplied a million times. The collapse of his neck seemed endless. I saw a haggard monster guiding a shorter woman through that landscape. It looked at me. The sudden skittishness of a mouse caught beneath the Fox’s gaze wracked my body. I looked away.
“The diplomat wanted to use you,” Maleen continued, eyes generously cast away from me. “‘The last Ravenblood’; a chance to prove the Albrights were lying in their Declaration, if someone testified you were elsewhere. They wanted to parade you around.”
We passed from the Hall and I released the breath I’d been holding. “Gale didn’t like that?” I asked.
“The moment you were mentioned, he began trying to shut down the conversation.” She paused. “Without any kind of subtlety, which is unlike him. Which is also strange, because they wanted me to do something similar and he seemed fine with it. I guess that makes sense – you’re more at risk of execution – but he didn’t seem to like any time you were named at all. But the Baylarians dismissed him – they were only really talking to the warrior-lady.”
“Gaia?”
“Yeah. Then…” She released a shuddering breath. “When they were barely paying any attention to him, he said something about ‘making the scales clear to the delegation’, killed one, and everyone ran.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “Gods.”
Maleen nodded.
As we approached the spiral staircase leading to the observatory, I veered towards Gale’s room instead. When I tried the door handle, I found it unlocked.
Beside me, the short woman tugged at my sleeve. “What are you doing?”
“His workshop might have something we can use,” I explained.
“We’re not Owlbloods. Neither of us will know what anything does,” she protested.
“No, I, uh…” I swallowed. “I will.”
Her eyes widened. “What happened?”
I ignored her question. “You search his room: let me know if you find anything. I’ll go through the workshop.”
Maleen’s voice was hoarse. “Who died?”
I entered the bedroom – shrouded in a darkness that made all that entered it blind – then fumbled my way towards the attached workshop.
“Vin!” came the call from behind.
I walked into the workshop. Nothing about the space had been altered since my visit that morning: the massive table dominating the space remained where it was, as did the kiln, its adjacent tools, and the acrid scent permeating every surface. Its impeccably ordered confines rang discordantly against everything else that had happened. Everything should’ve been torn asunder.
It hadn’t, though, so I went into the storage and began running my eyes over the bloodtech (heat, light, basic array; bond, basic array; force, momentum, recursive array…) devices within. Amongst tools for easily creating flame, generating cold, producing bright lights, launching light loads into the air and many, many bells lay two dials that echoed the movements of one another. It seemed useful for communicative purposes, so I tucked them into a pocket. However, any objects that could’ve been used as weapons were conspicuously absent. I recalled there being more the previous day, when I’d visited Gale to work on Whip’s crossbow. Which should’ve still been present; Gale must’ve moved it.
I emerged back into the bedroom, I found one of the everburning lanterns on its wall lighting the room in a barren glow. Beside a large bed, Maleen feebly shook the handle of a wardrobe. When she turned, I found tears running down her face.
Her reddened eyes fixed on mine. “How did it happen?”
I didn’t need to ask what she was referring to. “Kit’s mum. The Jackal.”
The delicate lines of her face drew together. A sob broke from her throat.
I stood still. “It wasn’t Kit’s fault.”
The young woman nodded, then wiped her face with her sleeves. It failed to staunch the tears. “Did it hurt?” she managed.
“No,” I lied.
Another small nod as Maleen slumped onto the bed beside her. She gestured vaguely towards the wardrobe before burying her face in her hands.
I swallowed, then approached it. The darkly rich wood its shape had been wrought in from shone in the flickering light, showing the marks of countless fingernails in stark clarity. Decade’s worth of markings, likely made in either idle boredom or legitimate accident. No other embellishments marked it beyond that, but the almost seamless lines of its doors and legs marked an outstanding display of woodcraft. Nestled on the edges of one of its doors was a simple keyhole.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Instead of trying to pick the lock – I hadn’t done so in years, and I’d always been horrible at it anyway – I reached upwards and used my bodyweight to slam the wardrobe onto the floor. The sound of the impact drove a flinch from Maleen, as did the moment when I hopped onto its back and began stomping.
With every crack of my boot against wood I felt myself wince – it was an utter waste of a beautiful piece of furniture – but we hadn’t time for prettier methods. It took six kicks for the wood to splinter, then another three for it to give entirely. When a hole large enough to fit an arm had been created, I slithered my hand inside and began groping within. It was almost entirely empty, except for several stone slates. There were around five inside, but it only took me withdrawing one to recognise what they were.
Head Maleen’s sobs quietened. “What’s that?”
Her voice sent a shiver through me. As if she weren’t staring at a stone tablet but my flayed skeleton. But I owed an answer.
“It tells a tale,” I grunted.
“You can read it?”
There was no writing embedded in the stone: merely tiny pictographs. Made either by an illiterate or in a time before writing. From its ancient surface, I judged it the latter. It’d take weeks for most to decipher. But I barely even had to look at it.
“See this?” I tapped the figure of a dark bird in flight. Its image reappeared constantly throughout the story. “That’s our protagonist. It’s roosting in its nest…” My fingers ran over the dark cave in which the avian lived in. “…In a state of perfect peace. But it hears these cries from outside its home, so it takes flight.”
The cadence of my voice fell into the same worn tracks the Aunt’s words had walked a lifetime ago. My hands brushed over the image of a deer with its throat torn out, slowly bleeding to death in a bed of grass.
“First found is the deer: small and lithe; spends most of its days gay and blithe. The eyes of our bird espy it felled: its blood spent in the turn of the earth.
“Gracious bird does sight the oncoming loss, and saves poor deer in the folds of its coat.”
I tapped the new image of the bird. The brown eyes of the deer peeked out from amidst its feathers.
“‘Twas the dog that killed me!’ the deer cries. ‘Fangs biting to steal but a chunk of my life!’
“Both of them follow the howls of the dog; both find it lain in the shade of a log.”
I tapped another image: a large hunting dog with vast gouges ripped through its side.
“Second found is the hound: noble and proud; spends most of its days patrolling its pound. The eyes of our bird espy it felled: its blood spent in the turn of the earth.
“Gracious bird does sight the oncoming loss, and saves poor dog in the folds of its coat.”
The dog’s eyes joined that of the deer embedded in the bird’s flank.
“‘Twas the beast that killed me!’ the dog cries. ‘Claws slashing to steal but a slice of my life!’
“All of them follow the roars of the beast; all find it felled in a desert so deep.”
My fingers stopped at the pictograph which dominated the slate: a cracked wasteland bereft of greenery. A monstrous figure that could only be a Godkin lay sprawled in a dry riverbed, bones stark against its thin hide. The bird watched it with three sets of eyes.
“Last found is the beast: savage and lean; spends most of its days looking to eat. The eyes of our bird espy it felled: its blood spent in the turn of the earth.
“Gracious bird does sight the oncoming loss, and saves poor beast in the folds of its coat.”
The bird was large now: made mighty by those it had saved. Four pairs of eyes peered from the black of its feathers.
“‘Twas the world that killed me!’ the beast cries. ‘Earth making me kill for a fraction of life!’
“All of them find this final truth: the earth spends its people in pursuit of the moon. Its turning made in a millstone of pain, and only one bird can prevent this fate.”
The final words of the story petered into the musky air of the room. My vision trawled through the empty air and found nothing. I felt a migraine brewing in the side of my skull.
An arm snaked from behind me and ran across the slate. “What about this bit?”
I squinted downwards. There was another set of pictographs below the final image of the bird; an addendum to the story I was familiar with. It depicted the bird soaring through the air to settle in a cave.
“That’s the cave the story began in. Its original nest.” I blinked. “But that would make the story cyclical. The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end.”
“You sound surprised,” Maleen noted.
“It’s…” I groped for the words, then hastily yanked two other tablets from the wardrobe. “Look at these other slates.”
One was dominated by two opposing vistas: one in which fields of the dying sprouted blood-soaked flowers and trees as they writhed in constant suffering, and another in which countless smiling figures joined hands. “Hell and heaven,” I explained, gesturing to the exemplar of pain and its peaceful alternate. “Earth and paradise.”
Another depicted a collection of cross-legged figures circled by a ward of feathers, apparently protecting them from a sea of churning chaos that drove beast, man, and monster into violence against one another. “Same thing. Notice how in both pieces, the ‘heaven’ has almost no motion, while the ‘hell’ is absolutely blanketed in it?”
Maleen nodded.
“That’s because paradise is supposedly eternal, and doesn’t change. The story I just read to you implies constant movement. It’s not…” I ground my teeth as I searched for an explanation.
“It doesn’t fit with the Raven Cult’s philosophy?” Maleen quietly offered.
I snapped my fingers. “Exactly. It’s undoubtedly a Cultist tale, but it’s got an unusual shape for one.”
Maleen gave me a weak smile as the tears dried on her face. “If they’re using pictures instead of writing, it might be an earlier version of the story.”
I leaned backwards. “You’re probably right. I guess I never thought of it as a story that changed.”
She didn’t ask how I knew the story in the first place. I was grateful. Every telling had felt exciting, once. When I was a child amongst others, sitting cross-legged in our playroom to listen to our Aunt. To know that my god was so kind and generous. Before I realised what ‘taking into the folds of its coat’ truly meant.
“It’s just…” Maleen gazed at some warping of the floorboards. “It feels strange to think they had art.”
“Yeah.”
“How did… How did Gale get these?”
I shrugged. “Maybe one of the Godslayers sold them, after the battle. It’s not as if they made many chits from… You know.”
“They didn’t?”
I turned to look at her. “Most were conscripts, Maleen. They weren’t paid. And most actual commissioned officers were only given standard rates for the battle – I believe only the northern Houses were the exception, and only because of the distance they needed to travel. It still wasn’t a huge amount.”
She released a weary sigh.
“Gale must’ve bought them at some point.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “He’s a godsdamned Raven Cultist. Revived its practices after it spent a decade in the dirt.”
“Do you think he’s the only one?”
“Yeah. He wouldn’t’ve had to kill the guards if he had any other following the creed.” I sighed. “The last bloody Raven Cultist. Gods.”
We digested that for a moment, alongside the auxiliary implication: the astronomically low likelihood that the last Ravenblood coming to the last Raven Cultist was a coincidence.
“Gale’s not stupid. A god was killed for this – why would he think a mortal would fare better?”
I shrugged helplessly. “Maybe he thinks he’s smarter than the Raven was.”
“Is he?”
I snorted humourlessly. “One of them’s famously insane, so- “
A distant shout stopped my words where they stood. “Orvi!”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
Maleen’s head twisted towards the doorway. “That’s Gale.”
“Come on.” I hastily scrambled to my feet. “We need to go.”
The pair of us quickly exited and mounted the stairwell outside. Maleen strode upwards first, yet when my eyes brushed over a deep gouge made in the varnished wood, I halted. My hands fell to my belly, and the wound that was no longer there. That thought sent me loping back down the hallway.
“Keep going,” I called backwards, voice lowered, “I’ll be fast.”
I yanked the door to my room open, stepped inside, then eyed the set of bandages floating in blackened water and realised I’d went into the wrong room. Instead, I moved three doors down and entered my other room. Where I was met by a rotund silhouette formed by the shattered air, sitting cross-legged in the corner. A ghost.
I stared at it. It grew firmer as I watched; its kaleidoscopic form more defined. It was unmistakeably Gast, yet the features of its face scraped together in indecipherable ways; twisting under my eye as the distorted light that formed it rotated.
Then it rose and shuffled over to the bed, where a slight depression in the mound of blankets atop it marked the body that had once slept there. The ghost’s head faced the bed in a stillness only marred by the slow rise of its chest. Then it detached a piece of itself and slid it beneath the covers. Afterwards, it gradually turned, walked through my body, and exited the room.
I eyed the place where it had hid an insubstantial chunk of its form. Then, I lifted the blanket and exposed the runeslate beneath. It would be easy to pick it up. I’d done it almost every day for more than a decade.
Hadn’t I? Had it been me, watching the years as they passed above me? Was Gast even in this body? Or was that simply a convenient way to label the madness running through my veins? Was it just her echo? Just another piece left behind, like the depression in the bed where her body had once laid, and the runeslate that lay atop it? Like the ghost that had trodden the same path I remembered walking just that morning? Like the body quietly shedding its blood beneath the Fort’s summit? Which one of us was true? Which was her? Was it any of us?
Yet I remembered giving Vin – giving me – myself, before I died. Because I wanted to help. Believing that a lie would be sacrilege. A disrespect that violated the borders of what I was.
The drum of my heartbeat in my ears guided my hands as they wrapped around the edges of the runeslate. A thousand tiny imperfections surrounded its runes, where my chisel had missed or the tablet had slipped from my hands. They blended into the array of runes writ across the stone: the veins of a decade of labour stretched into an ineffable story.
My hands shook. I blinked heavily. Then I brought it to my forehead and closed my eyes.
When the moment passed, I began strapping it to the ruin of my left arm. The bandages scraped against the exposed flesh and sinew beneath. My breath hissed through my teeth as pain whipped through my body like a tangle of thorns, yet I managed to finish binding it before slumping against a wall. Agony throbbed where the runeslate pressed against my bandages like a collar of flame. It ebbed, and I left the room to return to the observatory.
I moved quickly. When I’d finally hurried after Maleen, peaked the stairwell and pushed through the door to the observatory, my eyes briefly ran over the map that dominated the room. The borders between Houses were marked with a thin ditch, while their names were carved into the earth itself. The known world – stretching from the mountains of the Wastes in the south to the Dolphin’s seas in the north – rendered so a blind man could see them.
By the time I’d arrived, I found Head Maleen had already entered the balcony and begun hesitantly climbing down the blanket-rope either Taja or Ronnie had mounted on the ornate battlements. Her eyes locked on mine before she lowered out of sight, and I heard her shout something to whoever waited below. Before following her, I approached the small workstation lining on the corners of the room.
Swallowing the space atop it was Whip’s massive crossbow. It’d always dwarfed the girl’s size – she’d only ever managed to keep it level by bracing it against her crutch. Several runes (force, recursive array; heat, momentum, recursive array) lined its firing mechanism: designed to allow people without an Oxblood’s strength to cock the weapon. Amplifying the force a person exerted on its string necessitated a complex pattern; one I’d never be capable of designing alone. Gale had also added a stirrup to its nose. The bolts sitting in a quiver beside it had been made with spearwood – incredibly difficult to work and incredibly sturdy once formed – making it possible to fire ten without a single one breaking. I – or Gast, I reminded myself – had painted it a light green. The colour of Whip’s eyes.
Beside it lay two other items. One was a chunky device studded with a head-aching assortment of runes (heat, light, recursive array; force, activation array; force…) far too complex for me to comprehend without a month or three at my disposal. But they convened on a long grid of buttons. I pressed one.
“AAAA,” the device screeched discordantly, driving a nail through each of my ears. Almost immediately, morbid curiosity drove me to press another. “DJAH,” it hissed, but my fingers were already in my ears.
Neatly ordered behind it was a set of documents. Made of paper instead of the usual wax tablets used for logistic or household affairs – Gale hadn’t gotten them for himself to read. My gaze barrelled through their contents. I’d read enough of their sort as a Heltian quartermaster that I barely needed a minute to parse their contents.
They seemed to be written by some kind of informant, reporting on the results of a request to discern the origins of a Spider Strain. The writer had managed to narrow her origins to the western region: either Leydenese or western Baylarian territory. They inferred that this made it unlikely the Strain’s parent had acquired their Spiderblood through monster hunting – Siik was on the opposite side of the continent and Spiderkin were proportionally sparse in the area. The informant promised their next step would be accessing the Blooded records of both Houses to discern whether a deserting Spiderblood was the parent of this Strain.
I stared at the assortment of objects. The crossbow had been made on my request. The prototype speaking device had to be for the only mute in the Fort: Ronnie. Following that pattern, the information – about Whip, and where she’d come from – must’ve been gathered under Kit’s request. These were the wishes Head Maleen had promised us, to make us stay on the top of the hill months ago. Gale was trying to grant them.
The speaking device alone was staggering complex, even to an Owlblood of Gale’s skill. Merely making sound wasn’t difficult, but modifying it? Even a single vowel could’ve only been produced by countless hours of drudgery – mapping and remapping the same sets of runes over and over just to slightly modify the sound.
I’d learned when we worked on the crossbow together that Gale – like many Owlbloods – was a creature of great focus. Obsession. Yet even obsession needed a seed for it to grow. He’d done all that labour for a Strain that he couldn’t communicate with. For a promise that someone else had made on his behalf. What possible seed had there been?
As my fingers brushed over the workstation, they knocked aside a piece of metal that let loose a slight tinkle. A bell, I realised. For who, I did not know.
I eyed the four objects for a moment, then slung the crossbow and its bolts over my back. I didn’t quite know who it now belonged to, but it wasn’t Gale. My fingers twitched with the primordial urge to pocket the other three. I left them, though.
It didn’t take long for me to follow Head Maleen down the makeshift rope and arrive at the balcony. Ronnie – along with their dog tied to their back – Taja, and Maleen squatted around Kit, who knelt at my body. The sight of my corpse clanged discordantly against the walls of my skull. I felt my eyes tremble in their sockets, so I looked downwards, past the sloped tiles of the roof to its lip, where the maids were carefully lowering themselves onto the battlements. With the Jackal and Gale inside the Fort, they had a clear shot to the exit.
My eyes halted on Tam: helping the girls down. Her gaze found my own, and she offered a small nod. Belatedly, I returned it.
Behind them, a long, empty strip of grass stretched from the Fort to the Heartlands. Mere grass and shrubbery, terminating in a monstrous mass of forest punctuated by ivory speartrees; the pillars which held up the Heartland’s canopy. Starvation and soldiers and a god and Frost and my own diseased mind had chased us through it. We’d shed lives to escape. To end up here.
A rough voice broke through the silence. “I wanted to say thanks.” Kit’s stare burrowed into the blood of my corpse trailing between the tiles of the roof. It slowly trickled down the roof. “Back in Spires, there weren’t a whole lotta people willin’ t’put up with someone like me.” She chuckled lightly. “Weren’t any at all, ‘cept you. An’ I know it wasn’t easy. I’m not an easy person. An’ I know you, uh…”
Her voice broke. “You didn’t have much choice, ‘cause there weren’t many offerin’ t’join you but you, uh…” Kit blinked rapidly. “I wanted to say thanks.”
Ronnie signed something. “Why are you saying this?” I translated.
Kit nodded slowly while she chewed her lip. “You all should get outta here.”
“And what’re you doing?” I challenged.
“I gotta stay.”
Maleen’s lips curved downwards. “Why would we leave without you?” she growled.
Kit’s eyes were still. The tears that had fled from them left them perfectly dry. “I gotta stay with Mother.”
“That’s absolute drivel and you know it,” the short Head snapped.
The swordswoman turned, revealing her face. Its sharp features – scars and cocky eyes – had crumpled, as if the person that lay behind them had been crushed under the foot of a giant. I’d never seen her wear that expression before. Yet at the same time, she looked more like Kit than ever before.
She pointed at my corpse; quietly cooling in the twilight air. The wind blowing across the plain tangled with her hair. “This’s what I am.” The young woman clenched both hands. Her eyes were plaintive. “This’s all I am.”
Dawn was beginning to seep into the sky. The many clouds above the horizon began to blush red. Another day to mock us with its beauty.
“You know, I used to be a thief.” My voice surprised even me. “Not because I needed to steal. I just liked it. I’d break into places and take the things I found were the most beautiful. I’d do it constantly. Every chance I got.”
I turned my gaze away from the others, to where a speck of a bird hopped across the grass surrounding the Fort. “So when House Esfaria came to the Foot, I figured: why not steal from them? And when someone came to me and said they’d help, I figured: why not?”
Every moment that my thoughts pass through my mouth seemed to leave me a little more naked. The urge to stop and cover up filled me. Momentum kept me going.
“Only, they were a Leydenese plant. And almost all the people posted by House Esfaria died because of what I did, and when the Lizard came to the Foot there was no one to stop it except House Leyden and my mother. And she died.”
The sound of my teeth grinding together filled my ears. “Because I couldn’t keep my nose out of other people’s business. Because I can’t seem to help fumbling every single task I’ve ever been given. Because all I ever do is take.
“I try not to steal any more. But I still take, constantly.” I clenched my eyes shut. “And it’s no longer trinkets, or silver, or pretty stones; it’s people.” My mouth felt full of sand. “It’s people.”
Words kept tumbling from my lips; a deluge to smother any possible replies. “You know, almost everything I’ve said – from six all the way to fourteen – has been a lie? I lied to everyone. Indiscriminately. So often that I could do it without a thought. I could tell someone a thing I knew not to be true, and not even register that I’d just deceived them. You know I didn’t even tell my mother I was a Ravenblood until just before she died?"
A bird began singing, spurring a wry scoff into breaking from my throat. “Since I left the Foot, I’ve had more to lie about. I think I’ve gotten worse at it, though. But I kept doing it anyway. My own mentor never knew I was a Ravenblood, and he’s dead, too – I left him beneath one of the towers the Ox broke through. He’s dead, and all he ever knew of me was a lie. I’ve lied to each and every one of you, and I’m sorry.
“I’m a thief and I’m a liar and I mess everything up. And I’m a Ravenblood. I keep thinking that I can take these things and just… dump them.”
The next words caught in my throat. I felt like I was about to choke. I clenched my teeth against the sensation. Behind my closed eyelids, the others waited. The silence stretched. There were no more excuses.
“But I can’t,” I managed in a tremulous whisper. “They’ll follow me until I die. Because they’re mine.”
I opened my eyes. Taja’s gaze was narrow; almost suspicious. The childish features mounted on Ronnie’s face lay at odds with the mournful way they twisted. Head Maleen’s lips trembled on the border of rebuke and tears. From deep within the tired lines of her face, Kit watched.
“I’ve got to kill Gale,” I told them. “And- “
“Rot on that!” Kit blurted. “Did you steal someone’s brain damage, too? A flight of bloody stairs’s enough t’thrash you within an inch o’ yer life. You can’t beat my Mother. You’re not capable of it.”
My gaze descended upon her, and she swallowed heavily. “I’m responsible for this. I need to fix it.”
“You can leave- “
“And what happens if I leave, Kit?” I snapped. “How many more days do I have left?”
Her mouth worked silently. “I- I saw you freeze up,” the swordswoman stuttered. “When Mother came round. You’re terrified of her.” A feeble chuckle dribbled from her lips. “You’re, you’re too weak. Too stupid.”
I didn’t deny it. “If she doesn’t kill me, my failing body will. I have to try and fix this.”
For a brief moment, Kit considered that. After several heartbeats passed, she rose to her feet; leaving my body to carefully walk over to the blanket-rope trailing beneath the observatory. She carefully found a spot where her boots wouldn’t slip on the steep slope of the roof. When she turned back to us, her eyes shone above a mouth twisted into a sneer.
“How’s this for a reason?” Her sword hissed as it left her sheath. “If you put one hand on that there rope, I’ll kill you.”
The others flinched back.
“Kit,” Maleen, “what- “
“That goes for you too, Maddie!” she screamed. “It goes fer all o’ you!”
I raised my hands. “Kit- ”
“You can’t beat her,” she snarled. “So keep stealin’, keep lyin’, and keep fumblin’, ‘cause that’s all you’ll ever do.”
My expression began to mirror her own. “Kit- “
“If you want up,” Kit hissed, spittle flying from her mouth “you’re gonna have to kill me.”
I paused.
“So come on, oaf,” she drawled derisively, idly flipping the sword in her hand. “Fight me.”
I looked at her.
Her belligerent sneer intensified into a rictus of mockery. “Put that thick skull o’ yours to use. Fight me.”
I licked my lips. “I need- “
“Fight me.”
“ -your help.”
Dawn light trickled across one side of her face. The eye the light shone into flickered closed, then open. The tip of her sword quivered. “Are you stupid?”
I would’ve rather ripped out my own nails than ask her. But they’d fallen out a few nights ago. “Leave if it gets dangerous. But I…” I clenched my fists. “Everything that made me powerful was stolen. I’ve got some ideas, but… If Gale leaves the Fort, he could kill countless people. This is too important to leave… to me.”
“I can’t beat Gale and the Jackal. I…” Decades of nightmares flashed before my eyes. “I don’t know if I can even defeat just her.”
I tried to get the words out. To ask her. My mouth worked. But I couldn’t do it.
“You need our help,” Maleen stated, and a fear ignited through my body because I couldn’t deny it.
A panicked laugh erupted from Kit. Her eyes slipped from mine and fumbled through the empty air around us. “You’re cracked in th’ head.”
Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to find Ronnie’s blue eyes staring straight into me. The giant pointed to my dead body, then unslung a massive axe from where it hung on their back. The message was clear.
“I… I brought you here.” Maleen’s teeth clenched, but she seemed determined to look at me without flinching. “It’s my fault. I’ll help too.”
Taja’s eyes darted between the two of them. Then they stilled, and his gaze turned south: to the crimson mass of the Heartlands squatting on the horizon. When I was about to turn away, he spoke. “I will as well.”
“None of you have to,” I said. I wanted to deny them. But there was a need in me, and I’d never fulfil it alone.
“I know,” he replied. “But I should.”
“I don’t want any of you dying- “
The teenager interrupted me. “I won’t. We won’t.” He turned to look at the other two. “Right?”
Somewhat bemusedly, the pair nodded.
I ran my hand through my hair. “Okay, so- “
A voice from behind me shattered my sentence halfway. “What do you godsdamned fools think you’re talkin’ ‘bout? None o’ you are so much as gettin’ into th’ Fort.”
“Please help,” I asked her.
Her eyes widened. A shiver travelled through her body.
“I can’t leave him in the Fort. He’s an Aspirant.” I paused, realising she’d be unfamiliar with the term. “A Raven Cultist. He’ll kill and he’ll keep killing. That’s what they do. And he’ll do it with the blood I gave him.”
Her teeth were bared. Yet the sneer had abandoned her lips, leaving only the futile stubbornness of a cornered animal. “No. If you want in, you’ll have t’separate my head an’ my neck. ‘Cause that’s th’ only way you’ll stop me.”
“Kit…”
She stepped forward and pressed the point of her blade into my stomach. “Fight me.”
I stared at her. Slowly, I shook my head.
She pushed her sword deeper: past my shirt to bite into the skin beneath. Her face consumed my vision: ravaged by fatigue and desperation. “Fight me.”
I unsheathed my sword. Its onyx edge drew in the dying light of the day. Kit smiled – broad and full of relief – and withdrew her sword to take a step back.
I threw the blade to the roof beneath our feet, where it settled between two tiles. “I’m not fighting you.”
She drew back. Her lips opened slightly. Deep in their weary sockets, her eyes quivered. “You fight me, or I’ll kill you.”
I breathed out. “No.”
“I’m not playin’, Vin. I’ll gut you – just watch.”
A weak smile flashed across my face. “I’d lose anyway. Without my blood- “
“Don’t gimme that garbage, Vin,” the swordswoman spat. “I see th’ crossbow. There’s always a chance.”
“A chance for what, Kit?” I pointed at the sword on the ground. “The only way that ends is with one of us dead.”
“What else d’you want from me?” she pleaded. “T’play th’ godsdamned hero?” Kit chuckled, devoid of any mirth. “Heroes ain’t real, Vin. This- “ she shook her sword, “-is who we are. Now kill me or leave.”
Once again, I shook my head, but this time my eyes didn’t leave hers. “Stop pretending you can’t put down the sword.”
Her lips peeled back. The shocking white of her sclera left her pupils drowning in a lake of white. For a few seconds, her jaw worked soundlessly. Eventually, she spoke. “I can’t.”
Seconds passed. I just nodded to her and myself. “I understand- “
“You don’t- “
“I do.” The words escaped me in a hiss. An image flashed by: two children; a blanket; a body. “I get it. Maybe you can’t. But you still have a choice, Kit.”
She looked at me, more terrified than I’d ever seen her.
“I can’t leave this.” The words floated on the tip of my tongue. I swallowed, then forced them out. “And I can’t… do this alone.” The admittance was slow and halting. “Not without you.” Kit stared at me, perfectly still. “So either look at what you’re doing, or kill me.”
The young woman stumbled sideways, sending her sword in a half-hearted swipe in my direction. It missed. “Fight me,” she whispered.
“No.”
Kit fumbled a dagger from her belt and tossed it towards me. It bounced off my chest and slid down the tiles of the Fort’s peak. At the sight of it clattering down, she released a sound halfway between a growl and a scream.
“I can’t beat her,” I muttered to her. “But you can.”
Her voice came in a low whine. “I can’t.”
What was I doing? What was I asking of her? How could I ask her to do this for me? After everything? But though I could take most of the danger on myself, I wouldn’t be able to kill Gale without help. And if I left Kit in this place, I felt as if she’d never leave.
“You’re the best mortal swordswoman I’ve seen,” I told her, blinking against ineffable tears pricking at the back of my eyes, “in this life or any other, Kit. She doesn’t stand a chance.”
“It’s not about that,” she protested. “She will kill me – she’d kill anyone.”
I took a step closer. “Are you gonna spend the rest of your life under her thumb, then?”
Her sword lowered. “It’s a partnership.”
“It’s not.”
“She’s my mother,” Kit protested. “I have to help her.”
“She’s a monster,” I spat, “and the only thing you owe her is the edge of your blade.”
“I’m no different, Vin,” she begged. “You have to see that.”
“You’re not like her.” I pointed to the person I used to be – to Gast. “She died telling you that. And you’d disbelieve it?”
She flinched. “I…”
Then Maleen stepped past her sword and reached up to wrap her arms around Kit’s shoulders. The far taller woman froze.
“We’ll help,” Maleen promised.
A crooked sob broke from Kit’s body as she began quietly shaking. Her hands were stuck at her sides, but Maleen’s embrace wrapped tight around her body. She let her head fall on the other girl’s shoulder.
From atop the roof, we watched a line of diplomats and servants-made-refugees trail across the plains we’d sprinted through weeks before. The sun clawed its way above the horizon and leapt for the sky above, where a layer of clouds heralded its coming by reflecting its radiance. To the side of its ascension, the crimson mass of the Heartlands shed the last remnants of Frost. A hot wind blew across the plains, blasting our hair behind our heads. Tempest was coming. I hoped the others would be alive to see it.
After a while, Kit raised her head again. Her eyes were dry. “Alright. What’s th’ plan?”