On the eve of a midsummer night, an entire city disappeared without a trace.
Asher arrived at an outpost outside the border of Valenda two weeks later, expecting a ghost town, expecting empty buildings and overgrowth. The men guarding the road were sullen enough to prove the image. They weren’t soldiers by any standard, and if Asher was back home he would have smacked each of them upside the head for slinging loaded rifles around so casually. None of them turned those guns on him as the horse came to a stop though, and he appreciated that. Each one of them were built like farmers or labour men, rough around the edges with wear and tear on their clothes. As Asher dropped down from the front of the carriage, his legs protesting at the stiffness from hours of travel. One of the farmers broke away from the group, stepping around a splintered old cart and approaching him. The driver pulling the carriage gripped the reigns as if weighting for Asher’s signal to turn and run.
‘Sorry for the show, sir,’ the leader said. ‘We’ve been told not to let anyone past this point ‘less they in uniform.’
Asher nodded, though the sight of civilians guarding the road so openly made something in the base of his stomach squirm. The whole reason he was here was because they needed the extra hand, but nothing in the letter had described a situation so desperate. The man in front of him seemed calm at least. He was rough around the edges, muscles chiseled into shirt and skin, with worn, calloused hands and a thick beard covering half his face.
‘Where you hailing from?’ the man asked.
‘Ralkauda,’ Asher said.
‘City boy! You been this far north before?’
‘Not on this road.’
The man chuckled. ‘We won’t lead you astray. Name’s Clyde.’ He held out his hand. ‘I been running the boys between here and the site.’
Asher shook his hand. ‘Lieutenant Wulverman.’
‘Ah, you’re the public response,’ Clyde said. ‘I’m glad I’m talking to you first. Situation is a mess right now, and I’m only one of three people who’s been going back and forth frequently.’
‘I’m not here to step on anyone’s toes,’ Asher said.
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Clyde said. He moved over to the carriage still waiting, and Asher took the moment to stroke the head of the great mare that pulled it. She gave a tired huff in return. Clyde spoke quietly to the driver, then motioned Asher back as the vehicle turned on the road and made its way back the way it came.
‘We got lodging for the people coming in,’ Clyde said. He clapped Asher on the shoulder hard enough to make him stumble. ‘Come on, I’ll walk you up.’
The barricade parted as the two of them stepped through, and Asher noted the details of the men watching him. They were all burlier than him, dirty and sullen and tense. Only a couple of them didn’t have a rifle slung over their arm.
‘I hope those aren’t for people,’ he mumbled.
‘The guns? Nah.’ Clyde shook his head. ‘My boys would never aim at another human being. Most of them are scared is all.’
‘Is it really that bad?’ Asher asked.
Clyde grimaced, which Asher took as a bad sign. ‘How much were you told before you decided to come out here?’
Decided is a strong word. ‘Only that Valenda disappeared,’ Asher said. ‘Everyone’s gone, and no-one knows where. I don’t know much more then that.’
‘You’re expecting a ghost town, aren’t you?’ Clyde chuckled at Asher’s blank look. ‘You’re not ready for this.’
Clyde didn’t elaborate as they made their way further up the road. The pine trees grew thicker on each side, and Asher noted the gentle rise of the gravel in front of him. It wasn’t enough to strain his legs, but it was enough of a hill to block what was coming. Clyde said nothing, and Asher tried to remember if the correspondence had said anything else. There hadn’t been much of a request; the letter had only explained that he would be relocated to Dalvany to deal with a shortage of men on the ground and a “crisis in Valenda.” Namely, that Valenda had disappeared.
The road dropped down in front of them, and Asher recoiled. The letter had been far more literal than he expected.
He’d only been to Valenda once as a teen, though he still remembered the view from the road. Tall cobblestone buildings all pressed in winding, circular roads. He remembered pointed roofs and Telkite patterns carved into walls, and in the centre of it all, the Tarneyan Palace. What had started as a battle fortress overlooking the valley had been repurposed as a great house of grandeur, and as the city grew around the moat, the palace added rooms and buildings, and stretched out with the population.
Now, he saw nothing but empty field. There was only grass as far as he could see. Even the road – the very road he was standing on right now – ended a few paces in front of him. The sun hung low over the scene where it would usually be hidden by buildings and mountains. Asher eased his foot forward, hoping this was some illusion, but Clyde caught his arm and pulled him back.
‘I’d be careful,’ he said. ‘Ground is really weird.’
He gestured down to the road in front of them, and Asher noticed a thick black line carving through the road, a perfect border between normal and unnatural. He kicked a loose stone toward it, and it touched the ring and disappeared, slipping into a crack that hadn’t been visible until now.
‘Deeper than it looks,’ Clyde said. ‘But your lot have a tent set up that way.’
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The makeshift tent sat on the normal side of the line, a large black cloth propped haphazardly on particularly tall sticks. A table sat underneath, maps and papers scattered across the surface. A small handful of people milled around it, some in the official watch uniform like Asher, and some in the royal maroon tunics of the palace guard. One such guard had his back to Asher, but the familiar flash of dusty brown hair made his stomach lurch.
Captain Navarre Chavereau had a figure that looked like it was carved out of marble. In the years since Asher had seen the man, he hadn’t changed. Deft hands with long fingers, a sharp jaw and long face. Even when they were teenagers, Navarre always towered over him. Now, years later, he had a foot over the others around him, his body stretched and bony, showing the familiar bars of muscle. He turned, and pale brown eyes lock onto Asher. A sharp, toothy smile spread across Navarre’s face.
‘Well, look at you!’ Navarre exclaimed. He straightened and glanced Asher up and down. Asher felt his neck flush red. The uniform was new, the leather collar stiff and high around his neck, the half cape slung over his shoulder and the threaded bronze knots that tied the buttons together. ‘All dressed up in your fancy little uniform. You’re still a dock boy to me.’
‘And you’re still a dick,’ Asher returned. Navarre chuckled and they both slapped their hands together in a firm handshake, which turned into a short hug.
‘How long since you made Lieutenant?’ Navarre asked. ‘I wondered why your name came up. I thought you were still city watch.’
‘I am still city watch,’ Asher pointed out. ‘I’m just in charge down there now.’ Though it had only been six weeks, and ten of those days had been on the road coming up here.
‘Well, you’re up here with the big boys now,’ Navarre said.
Asher glanced to Clyde, then realised with a start he was marching back down the road. ‘Clyde said I was pulled in for public response.’
‘Who’s Cly— oh, him.’ Navarre sighed. ‘It’s a long story. Well, I don’t need to tell you.’ He gestured to the empty field next to them. ‘Come on, let’s go for a walk.’
Navarre tested the ground beneath his boot, prodding at the ash line in the grass, then stepping over it completely. Asher stared after him, and when nothing happened, he leapt over the line and rushed after the man. The grass was fresh and bright beneath his feet, flattening under his boot and bouncing back up as he stepped away. The smell twinged at his nose. It was real. It was all real.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
Navarre blew out a breath. ‘I can’t tell you. I was down in Fanmaryh sorting some stuff with the Duke. I’ve only been here for about a week. All I can say is what you see. Valenda is gone. It’s just…’ he threw his hand up, sweeping it across the vast empty space.
‘That’s why you sent for me?’ Asher asked. ‘The people are missing too.’
‘The people, the palace, the other guards, Valenda’s city watch… the King.’ Navarre sighed. ‘Dalvany is way too small, it can’t take the shitstorm that’s about to hit us.’
‘Shit.’ Asher could only stare. The King. ‘Do we at least have a chain of command?’
Navarre gave a short and sharp laugh. ‘The only living brother he has is the Duke of Fanmaryh, and he’s inches from death. Like I said, we’re gonna get messy quick. No-one can decide if we go with the Delana kid because the Fanmaryh Duke is the last living brother, or if we give it to Armel Barque because Lord Barque was the next oldest brother before he died.’
‘We don’t have that figured out?’ Asher asked. ‘The man is eighty-seven years old.’
‘Well sure,’ Navarre said. ‘We had a few heir apparents, a few advisors ready to step in, but they’re not here either.’
Asher ran his hands through his hair, his fingers catching in his thick black curls. Navarre reached over and ruffled the mop at the back. ‘Don’t worry about that. If you think about it too much you’ll start going grey. All I need from you is to act as a go-between.’
‘When you said public response, I thought you meant making sure a riot doesn’t break out.’
‘I’d appreciate if you added that to your itinerary.’ Navarre flashed a grin. ‘The boys at Dalvany have their own plans, but they don’t have people. Most of the ones you passed are volunteers from the farmlands. Civil servant types.’
‘The farms will feel it if they lose too many workers,’ Asher commented.
‘Yeah, they will,’ Navarre said. ‘Which is why we’re bringing in people from other provinces. We need to get this under control before it snowballs. Right now the issue is that there’s a lot of people who don’t trust us big boys, and the watch is getting stretched thin running back and forth. It’s why I jumped when I saw your name. We’ve worked together before, and you’re clearly doing well.’ He gestured to Asher’s uniform.
‘We’ve never worked together,’ Asher pointed out.
‘True, but we know each other well enough.’ Navarre winked. ‘These old sods aren’t gonna be convinced by some story about going to the same boarding school. They’re not gonna like having a civil servant sitting at the rich man’s table either.’
Asher nodded absently. In the end it really didn’t matter why. This situation was so bizarre that he couldn’t walk away, and even if he wasn’t here now, news would spread quickly enough. The scale was too much to consider to feel anything other than confusion. Valenda’s population sat somewhere around a hundred and thirty thousand people, including the in-house palace staff and the range of royals permanently in the palace. Dalvany next door only hosted about twelve thousand in total. The idea that so many people had vanished without a trace was impossible, so impossible that he couldn’t feel loss or fear at the idea. Only confusion at how a field now stretched across the space where a city had existed two weeks ago.
He would need to check in with the local authorities. Someone had to have seen something.
‘Dalvany’s Lieutenant,’ Asher said. ‘How are they faring?’
‘She’s stretched thin,’ Navarre said. ‘Wrangling those trigger happy commoners like children, keeping things calm. She’ll give you the full story tomorrow when you get back to town.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Asher echoed. ‘I’d rather touch base as soon as possible.’
‘Sundown is in an hour, and you haven’t met with everyone here,’ Navarre pointed out.
Asher bit his lip. The man had a point.
Something caught his eye, a flash of colour in the grass that popped out beneath the blades. Noting where he stood, he crouched down and prodded at the nearby grass with his finger. Navarre made a small noise of protest, but didn’t say anything.
It was a sapling, the beginning sprout of a bush or tree, but the leaves were red. They were the colour of a sunset in smoke, the veins of the leaves so vibrant they seemed to glow in the light of the afternoon. Asher knew better than to touch it with his bare skin, but there was something that pulled him to run the edge along his finger. A hypnotic quality that turned the air around the strange plant.
‘Do we have a botanist nearby?’ he asked Navarre.
‘He should still be around,’ Navarre said. ‘Wait here, and don’t touch that.’
Asher scanned the ground around him as the other man rushed off, and noted others buried in the grass. They weren’t spread in any kind of pattern, but there were many of them. They were developed enough to be sprouting leaves, but didn’t stand taller than the grass.
Asher rose to see where Navarre got to, and instead caught sight of a shadow in the distance.
This stranger stood alone in the field, wearing a tattered green cloak that wrapped around their front and their head. and shielded their face. They were too far to make out any key details, but Asher could see brown skin along their legs and arms, and a complete disarray to their appearance. Definitely not refined in the way of the guards or officials, but too ruined to be a farmer either.
Asher took a step forward, and the stranger turned. Two bright orange lights flashed where their eyes should have been, flickering like flames against a shadowed face. Asher recoiled, and he glanced back to see if anyone else had noticed, but when he straightened, the stranger and their strange eyes were gone.