AKI:

Despite my initial misgivings, Merkus’ boots were a godsend. Besides providing protection from the cold and occasionally jagged surface of the cobbled streets, my foot had only stopped bleeding due to how firmly the laces were tied around my ankle, the lack of blood flow numbing my foot and transforming the throbbing into a muted ache.

The guards at The Roots gate returned to asking for my mark. What choice had I but to oblige? Lifeless bodies, their decay suspended by Surgeon Arts and their stink contained by Zephyr Arts, hung from the gates, twisted, bloodied, and broken, a memento of their promise and a warning of what happens to those who forget. But for having to traverse the span of The Roots and descend an unforgiving and near endless flight of stairs beforehand, passing through the second gate—a smaller, less manned barrier leading to The Muds—was a gentler affair.

Usually.

Two guards stood on either side. One was short, corded with lean muscle, and had mastered the skill of standing, his stance alert yet relaxed, easy, and familiar. Him, I recognized. The other, a skittish youth near my age, was new to me. He watched the area with nervous enthusiasm, his hand hungrily gripping his sword. I kept my head low and hoped to escape his notice. Luck refused to heed my prayer.

“Where’s ya mark, boy?” The young guard grabbed and pulled at my wrist. I staggered towards him, barely keeping my balance.

The older guard, Serg, shook his head and sighed. “Let him go, Lekol.”

Lekol looked back at his senior partner. “The rules say we gotta check the mark.”

“Did you learn the rules?” Serg questioned.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

Lekol hesitated a moment. “Um, yeah… I think. Am I forgetting something?”

“No mark is needed to go to The Muds, Lekol. You’ve been watching me do the checks since you joined me this morning—late, if I may add. Did I stop any going that way?” Serg pointed towards The Muds, fixing the younger guard with a how-stupid-can-you-be look. Lekol avoided his gaze, choosing instead to stare down at his feet. “And now, after demonstrating our duties for the better part of the day and waiting until crossings had lulled to a trickle before giving you the lead, you still make the most rudimentary of mistakes. I don’t know how you're gonna survive this charge, Lekol. For the life of me, I don’t even know how you got it in the first place.”

“Why ya gotta make me look bad, Serg?” Lekol whined. “How are Muds gonna learn to fear and respect me if ya making me look bad?”

Serg, having once been a Mud and possessing a rare degree of integrity, knew enough comfort and remembered enough pain to have bred a distaste for needless cruelty. Not so much as to ever shirk his duties, mind you, but enough that he’d avoided the usual power games many of the guards were so fond of. Lekol, on the other hand, was entirely too new to authority to escape his freshly elevated sense of worth.

“They’ll learn when you learn to inspire it, boy,” Serg said. “Now let Aki through.”

Lekol pulled at my wrist again, shifting me closer to the flickering lantern that hung on the gate wall. He cupped my chin and turned my head this way and that, letting the light hit my face at different angles. “Aki?”

“That is my name,” I said, curious.

“Ya ain't half as handsome as she tells it. Ma said you’d be crossing. Said you’d be here a half-turn ago, though.”

“You’re Diloni’s son?” I asked. No one else cared to know my routine.

“Yeah.” He let go of my wrist and held out a hand for me to shake. “My friends call me Kol.”

Lekol must’ve been his father’s son. He had a long face, narrow eyes you’d find hard to trust, a crooked nose, and thin lips that made for a terrible smile, none of his features at all like the bulbous features of his kindly mother.

“Don’t keep her waiting,” Serg chimed. “I doubt she wants to spend any more time in The Muds than she needs to.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lekol said, “I’m getting to it.” He turned back to me. “Ma wants to see you. I think she be wanting to say her goodbyes.”

“Goodbyes?” I asked.

“Yeah, she’s gonna be living with me in The Roots.” Lekol grinned broadly, squaring his shoulders and puffing out his chest. I trusted him a little more for that, despite his treacherous eyes and terrible smile.

“Now get,” Serg said. “You know where she is.”

***

I entered the library without Diloni’s notice. That wasn’t difficult. She’d lost much of her hearing to a rather vicious beating back when she’d first become the library’s steward. Rumor was that a nick on one of the books had the sector reeve express his displeasure with a wooden leg he’d ripped off one of the tables. Neither she nor the table had stood quite right ever since.

The smell of old books hung in the air. Weathered pages, aged ink, and tanned leather cases welcomed me with fond memories of my past, stacks upon stacks of them walling the outer edges of the circular room from floor to ceiling as if to embrace and protect me from the outside world. At the center of the small and sparsely furnished space sat Diloni. She lounged on her old chair, face stuck between a book as it so often was. A small candle lay on her side table beside a cup of watered wine. I’d never known her to risk the books so recklessly. Her impending freedom had likely relaxed her caution.

“Leaving?” I half shouted. “So soon and with barely a word of warning?”

She lowered her book and gave me a smile, the glow of her warm welcome dimmed by the sadness in her eyes. “Stop with the hysterics, child.” I liked it when she called me ‘child.’ There was a closeness in the endearment, an intimacy no other had shared with me, though I knew my thirst was making nectar out of muddy water. “I know you well enough to know you’re amusing yourself at my expense. It is good to see you.”

“I have missed you, Dil.”

“You have not visited me for the better part of a season. It seems I see less and less of you these days, and now, what with my moving to The Roots, I fear our meetings will be few and far between.”

“I’ll always endeavor to make time for you.” I walked towards my usual seat beside hers, the only other piece of furniture besides her seat, the small side table between us, and the writing desk near the entrance that she’d used to educate me into the person I’d become. The book I’d been reading last I was there—'The Fractured Gods: Salvation or Damnation’—lay where I’d left it two moons ago. I picked it up with practiced prudence. “It’s been half a season since I left this here.”

“It's been half a season I’ve waited for you to visit.”

I sighed like only the weary can. “The quiet slumber of restful sleep is as angry at me as you are—it’s been waiting longer and complains to me even now.”

“Yes, dear child, I know, I know. I don’t mean to chide. It’s just that it gets overly lonely here. I’ve sorely missed your company, is all.”

“And I yours. I see ambition is as scarce here as it has always been.” I took in the books. Each was familiar to me, printed in my mind's eye with exacting detail. They and Diloni were placed here to help educate the lower masses and give them the knowledge and tools they needed to rise above their caste. There were as many libraries as there were gates to the next plateau, which is to say many. In all the years I’d spent soaking in all it could offer, hour after hour, day after day, season after season, only once had I witnessed another come to take advantage. He lasted all but a week. “It mystifies me how few visitors you get. They should be lining the entrance and fighting for entry.”

Diloni shook her head. “What mystifies me is how you are both so old and so young, so cynical and so naive. To those who live here, dear child, survival and ambition are one and the same.”

“Just because something is, does not mean it ought to be.”

Diloni placed her book on her lap, and her tone grew severe. “Remember, most Muds are born into labor by parents who cannot afford to feed them otherwise, some are birthed by greed and into slavery, while others are without the swiftness of the mind with which to think, the aid of thought with which to understand, or the spark of courage with which to act.”

“Excuses,” I said. “Failure by way of inaction or lackluster effort is inexcusable. You remember how we met.”

Diloni opened her mouth to say something, then, thinking better of it, looked away. Harsh lines carved by time and hard living creased into a look of concern. Being old enough for grey to invade her shock of hair, she was the oldest Mud I’d ever seen; growing old was not something we Muds did. Not unless we ascended into a Root.

“Do you?” I asked. “Do you remember my broken leg? My arm when it came off the shoulder and hung by skin alone? The beating that left me all but blind for nearly a season? The first time he…? And I was unable to…?” I took a deep breath to calm myself. “Do you remember?”

“I’m sorry.”

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“What for? It wasn’t your fault.”

Diloni caught sight of the bloodstains I’d collected since last we met. She looked them over, her eyes roaming from one to the next. Besides the plethora down my right side, there were smaller blotches around my neck, a smattering on scuffed knees, some on my left shoulder, and others too small and plentiful and hidden by older stains to count spread across my tattered clothes.

Done perusing, Diloni looked back up at me. “Soon, you’ll ascend, and he will die a lonely and miserable death.”

“Yes,” I said, blood hot and voice cold. We both knew who she spoke of. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“No, child. Do not become a harbinger of revenge. It will change you into the very thing you hate.”

“Not revenge. He will die by my hand so I may balance the scales. Or, failing that, push them closer to even.” My words came harsher than I’d have liked, but she’d questioned something I’d not allow anyone to question. Not her, not myself, not anyone.

Diloni suddenly looked nervous. I couldn't fathom why.

“Your father is a product of his circumstances,” she said. “Do not become a product of yours.”

“More excuses. He is who he chose to be. As am I.”

Diloni sighed in that way wrong people do when they think they’re right but find it hard to prove. “It’s him that makes you wise about yourself and naïve about others. Ask yourself this—does he want to be who he is?”

“Excuses,” I repeated. “But it is what makes you different. No Mud can harbor kindness without being able to find ways to hope, to believe the world is not as harsh or filled with as many wicked souls as it is.”

Diloni gripped the armrest closest to mine and yanked her face closer. “Child!” She paused, surprised at her own outburst.

“Apologies,” I said. “Maybe I’m wrong. Whatever the case, I, having warmed myself by the fire of your compassion, do not insult you for it. I only meant it as praise. Who you’ve chosen to be is admirable.” Foolish, I thought, but admirable.

She leaned back into her chair and continued, her volume as restrained as her movement. “Do not forgo the wisdom of age for the arrogance of youth.” That was the closest she’d gotten to scolding me.

I shook my head. “Age is not a mark of wisdom. The old only think they are wise because life has taught them lessons with pain. The truly wise attain wisdom without suffering, foregoing the incomplete ramblings of retrospect.”

Silence reigned for a long moment as we held gazes.

“Leave,” she said.

I took a deep breath to calm myself. Maybe I went too far, said too much. “Diloni, I admit I needn’t have been so crass, but—”

“Leave,” she interrupted.

“Diloni?”

“Leave.”

I sprang to my feet, frustrated and ready to heed her request. She yelped and shrunk into herself. My brows furrowed in confusion. Was that fear? Of me? Why?

“Diloni?” I asked.

“I beg of you, leave.”

“Is it that I wish to kill him? Tell me you understand I must?”

“Please,” she begged.

My hand reached for her. She pushed herself against the back of her seat, shivering. I froze.

“I would not hurt you, Diloni.” My hand fell limp to my side before tightening into a fist. “But I will kill him. No one can change that. No one.” My hate for him outweighed my fondness for her. It was the foundation of my purpose. My ambition. My very soul.

“Please,” she said, and there was nothing left for me to say or do but leave.

And so I did.

***

The hovel I called home was not too far from the library. The door stood ajar when I got there, the jittery dance of candlelight flickering past the narrow opening. Bone-tired, injured, and preoccupied with recent happenings, I cared not.

I should have.

The steps to our porch creaked despite my best efforts to remain silent.

“Do come in, Aki,” came a voice from within. “We’ve been waiting.”

My heart jumped. No fear, just surprise—experience begat expectation, and Kalin and I had never entertained any visitors.

“Come, join us. There’s no need to be afraid.” Her sharp voice grated on my ears. She spoke without the liquid pronunciation of Muds, her accent rigid and correct, though less like a godling’s precise flourish and more like an ascended warrior's practical accuracy.

Brisk of step, I walked in, no longer cautious of being discovered. The main room was empty. I noticed Kalin’s door also stood ajar. A soft push swung it wide open.

She sat on the bed. The striking red of her closely cropped hair ensured I found her before anything else in the room. Cold, dark eyes soon demanded my attention. My mind blanked. If I had any thoughts, I do not remember them, only an emptiness like that of a dreamless sleep. Then she smiled, and my thoughts resumed. Or were it my thoughts that returned, and then she smiled? I could not remember.

I shifted my gaze away, choosing—in so much as I could—to survey the room instead. I’d not seen it before. It was… better than I’d expected, yet less than I’d imagined as a child. Consonant wooden slats covered the walls and ceiling. Worn but clean rugs of once flamboyant quality lay about the floor. A bookcase stood against the far corner next to a writing desk. That startled me. I did not know Kalin could read, let alone write.

“We have much to speak of, Aki,” she said. “Come, sit with me.”

I stepped in and closed the door. My heart jumped once more.

Kalin lay slumped against the wall. Jagged cuts and dark bruises covered his skin. His eyes were swollen shut. A nasty tearing of flesh split his top lip and led up to the mangled mass of flesh and cartilage that used to be his nose. He’s dead, I thought, and a flood of anger followed.

“Not to worry,” she said, “he won’t be bothering us. Isn’t that right, Kalin?”

He responded with a soft gurgle of blood, bubbles blooming from the raw flesh at the center of his deformed face. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“I thought you’d taken my kill from me,” I said, more to myself than anyone else; the alternative was intolerable.

She laughed, sounding like someone had taken all the aspects of her regular tone that grated on me, condensed them into a singular pitch, and provided it with a volume that was grating all by itself. “I guess nature eclipses nurture.”

My eyes turned away from Kalin. They just so happened to lock with hers. I felt her sensus slither around my mind, molding my aura and stroking the door to my soul. The tail end of my fleeting anger lashed back, and a flash of my sensus cut her reach short.

“Fuck,” she cursed, flinching back in surprise.

Weakness broke my anger and replaced it with fear.

“What makes you think you could’ve killed him?” she asked. “If not for me, you’d have been dead by winter’s end.”

I took a breath to calm myself. Recent times have shown me to be prone to a lack of control. The woman wore the light-brown, flowing uniform of a Heartwood—Roots on the brink of ascending into The Branches or those who’ve already ascended but have chosen to remain on the lower plateau; she could likely kill me with nigh the same ease with which she blinked.

“Before the gods descended onto our mortal plane,” I said, “we used to say believing in souls was the arrogance of the mind thinking it was more than it was.’”

“Are you calling me ignorant?” she asked, an eyebrow raised in wry amusement.

I shrugged. “Sometimes an unproven truth is mistaken for arrogance. Until the premise is tested, they’re much the same thing.”

“You even have her way with words.” The Heartwood patted the space beside her. “Come. Sit.”

I sat. The bed was soft, thick, and stuffed with feathers that had long since flattened. How? Kalin had the least of any working man I saw or knew. Everything else was taken. All he had left was what the godlings had deemed a crime to steal, cheat, or forcibly take from any man with a sanctioned job: food and shelter enough to survive the labor, tools to work, and sufficient clothing for a modicum of decency. Our Reeve, the Root assigned to rule our region of The Muds, had massacred dozens, regardless of guilt or innocence, every time that rule was bent or broken.

The soldier shifted to face me, one of her legs resting on the bed between us. “The time has come for you to leave this squalid hole. As you know, your father is ill-equipped to raise someone of your potential. So, at your mother's behest, I’m here to bring you to better pastures.”

My Mother! I bit down my surprise and the anger it was soaked in, keeping my mind on the present threat. “My mother?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Who is she?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

“And you are an ascended Root?”

She smiled knowingly. “I am.”

My heartbeats came slow but hard. If an ascended Root served my mother, then my mother was a godling, and I, in turn, was… There’s no reason for her to lie, I thought. She has both the power and the authority to dispense with trickery. The question is— “Why?”

“You wish to remain with this… man?” She threw a look of disgust at Kalin.

“Answering a question with another is not a particularly elegant form of deflection,” I said. Her jaw flexed. My unedited words and actions were becoming a problem. “But yes, I know what to expect from him. For all the pain he causes me, he would never take my life.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know? He has the right and, from what I could see, the inclination.”

“I do not know precisely. He once told me he wouldn’t, and I knew it to be true. I’ve always been able to tell with him. I suppose he enjoys my misery too much to be without it.”

She gave me a small, quick smile that was little more than a twitch. “Perhaps you possess the truthseeker namat. A useful skill, even if it speaks poorly of your prospects.”

“He is the only one,” I said. “I’m no truthseeker.” The truthseekers were magistrates and spies of Evergreen, tasked with extracting information from enemies of the empire, domestic or foreign.

“Dormant and without conscious use, any namat is useless against the barest of sensus. But Kalin here is a shell: one of those unworthy few who cannot parse or imbue sensus, naturally or otherwise.”

Am I a shell? The sudden question weighed on me like an anchor to my hopes. I didn’t voice my concern. Seemingly, there was no need to; my reaction spoke loudly enough.

“No, you have not inherited that trait. You have a different problem altogether—if ‘problem’ is the right word.”

She was right. I could manipulate my sensus. Not much, but enough to know.

“As for why,” she continued, “I believe your mother wishes you to culminate your talents in an environment more conducive to your development.”

“Why now?”

“Any sooner would’ve been dangerous.”

I stood. “Who exactly are you?”

“I go by Rowan.”

I should have been terrified. Rowan was more dangerous than Kalin. More skilled, more powerful, more… well, just more. I should have been quivering in fear, limbs otherwise locked, sweat dripping from my brow, and heart pounding. I wasn’t. Instead, I was calm and sure. My purpose is greater than The Muds, than Evergreen, I thought. Who is she to stand in my way? I was taken aback. I’d always aimed for the best; one’s potential is rarely exhausted unless one reaches beyond its range. But this was different. This was not a goal but a certainty. When did I become so sure of myself?

“Am I being asked or…” I walked towards Kalin. One of his eyes managed to open a sliver, glistening and threatening tears. None came. “Will I share his fate if I refuse?”

“I am but a lowly servant. Failing my master is not a privilege I am afforded, nor one I wish to partake in.”

“So be it.”

She untied a waterskin from her waistbelt and threw it to me. “Drink. I will not have you facing your mother as an invalid.”

I drank deeply. Splinters I’d been unable to reach dug themselves out of my skin, cuts mended, bruises faded, sore muscles relaxed, and all the aches and pains of my body, some of which had been there long enough to befriend my notice, were suddenly gone. Never before had I sighed as deeply and with as much relief as I did then.

“Ready?” she asked.

We left Kalin where he lay, brutalized but alive. I trailed behind her at an even distance as she headed past the gate to The Roots and yet deeper into the city. The few times I slowed, she slowed with me. The fifth time I did so, she looked back and gave me a look that told me I’d stop. I averted my eyes and dared not slow again.

The guards at the gate seemed a different species when we crossed into The Bark. They did not greet me with loud jeering, cantankerous squabbles, or bored cruelty. Instead, they lined the gate, armor polished, spears held straight, and hands clasped on scabbards. Even the bodies that hung from the gates were nowhere to be seen. I’d always considered them a pack of dangerous wolves, ready to mete out violence to whoever dared spark their ready ire. Maybe they were, but they’d shown me that even wolves whimper in the presence of greater power.

There was only one way to escape Rowan: find someone stronger who might be inclined to help me. I knew not of her strength. Foxes, wolves, and bears are all predators in the eyes of a defenseless hare. Still, I had to try.

The straightest route to The Branches would take us past the school. I’d made the journey enough times to judge the time it took. The pace I’d adjusted to was almost right.

‘Two turns,’ he’d said. I hoped it was so.