Scales.

That was not anything close to what Vael could have guessed to be the answer. “What in the world…?” he whispered as his eyes widened. Meanwhile, Kiran was uncharacteristically quiet as she reached up to catch the edge of Ryland’s shirt collar. Her eyes were just as confused and concerned as Vael felt.

“I don’t know, and we don’t have time.” Ryland bent down and snatched up his cloak again. “That monster is gonna come back for me and anyone near me, and I have to be gone before that happens.”

“I’m getting real tired of you insulting us with all this ‘I’ bullshit,” Kiran said, snatching her hand back and returning to her rifling. She came up with three rucksacks, one of which she tossed to Vael. “Last time, Ryland. We’re not letting you do this alone.”

“I can’t keep you safe!” He rasped as he restrained another yell.

Vael managed to catch the sack. “Nobody asked,” he said as he went back to digging for supplies. “We can defend ourselves, and we can watch your back in the meantime. That’s what ‘being a unit’ is.” He shook his head. “You’re not leaving without us.”

Kiran grunted her assent, stuffing ratty bedrolls into the two packs she’d kept, tossing another toward Vael.

“Did you not just see him rip through the fort to get to me?” Ryland gasped.

“Yeah,” Vael answered. “Scary mother fucker. I think it’d be best if you didn’t have to deal with him alone. Y’know, maybe get some rest between running while someone else watches out.” He shoved aside the crate he was in when nothing useful turned up and started on another. Much better finds in that one. Jerky and potatoes, nothing fancy, but enough to survive on for a bit. He started pulling provisions from the crate and stuffing them into his pack. Hopefully they’d be able to hunt after that.

“…Ugh!” Ryland clenched his teeth as he threw his hands in the air. “Crazy fucking—” He pulled the door open just enough to peek out down the hall.

“It runs in the family,” Vael retorted. Applied to everyone present, too. Kiran was half raised by his mother, after all.

Kiran grunted in the affirmative as she came up with flint and tinder and put it in her pocket. Then she started disassembling the lid of the crate. She tossed nails away and stuffed the newly freed planks into the rucks. Forcefully. It was lucky they were oiled canvas or they’d have torn clean through.

“Yeah, well, our family isn’t a ringing endorsement,” Ryland grumbled. “Hurry. They’ll want to patrol the hall soon, if they haven’t started already.”

Vael finished digging through his current crate, shook down his pack, and set a second lid down by Kiran to pull apart. He pulled open another and pulled out uniforms. Change of clothes! Might be handy. Or they’d become kindling, either way. “You want to change before we head out?” he asked as he shuffled through the varying pants and tops to find something close to their sizes.

Ryland closed the door. “No time, just pack. And pray our ancestors at least like your two dumb asses.”

“Finally talking some sense,” Kiran grumbled.

Maybe it was the wrong time to notice, but Vael couldn’t help it. He smiled a little at Kiran’s comment. The way those two got on each others’ last nerves, only to come right around to remembering they always belonged on the same page together. After eight months apart, even as the world was redefining ‘chaos,’ they were solid and true to their frustrating natures. The three of them would figure out the scales and the fort and the Drums of Death. They’d gotten through the worst of times before because they were together. They would do it again.

Soon as they had scraped together all the food and supplies they could muster, Vael shouldered his two packs and nodded with a smirk. “Onward.” To some kind of adventure. This wasn’t how he’d imagined it would be to leave the confines of the fort when they were kids. What could they do, though, except put one foot in front of the other?

“Alright.” Ryland put on his scouting face. The one that let him look straight into the wind without blinking. He didn’t need sleep. He didn’t need food. He didn’t need anything except the completion of the mission. So he would tell himself until he dropped. Good thing Vael and Kiran were there to catch him. Ryland cracked the door open once more, looked out, then slipped through. He looked either way before he motioned for Vael and Kiran to follow.

The three worked their way down the rest of the tunnel. Felt like a farther walk than it was, and all the worse with the constant glances over their shoulders. Once they got to the trap door to the surface, Kiran stood watch as Ryland shouldered it open. Easily. No resistance from built up ice. “…He got out,” he said over the howl of the wind outside.

Kiran turned her back to the tunnel. “Great. Is he out there right now?”

Ryland opened the door enough to glance around. “Not that I can see. Weather’s made it near impossible.” He closed it again and looked to his companions. “No way anyone can track us in this. Him or the fort. If we can get a cave dug out, the storm will keep us under cover for a while.”

“You’re sure?” Vael asked.

“Nope. But you two agreed to be as screwed as I am, so shut up and get ready.” With that, Ryland pushed the door open all the way against the snow and wind coming down on it.

They headed into flying gusts of powder so cold it burned their cheeks. Vael could fully believe this storm would screw things up. But maybe, just maybe, it would screw Tienja more than the trio.

Ryland led the way, trudging through the tundra, stomping with those Te’il-made snow boots. Awful that they worked so well. Vael needed to take a look at them when they had a chance to—

He and Kiran both gasped as Ryland’s knee buckled and he barely saved himself from falling into the snow.

“That’s it,” Kiran shouted as she pulled forward and helped Ryland get steady again. “We stop here.”

Vael nodded as he unshouldered his packs. “We’ll get the cave sorted.” Thankfully they’d built plenty of them in the fort growing up. Survival skills as play. It would come back to them easy enough. “Take a breather and keep watch.”

“I can—rgh!” Ryland bent forward as he leaned to favor his weakened knee. The anger and determination that fueled him moments ago was burning out quick. “Fine. Fine, just be careful, don’t let snow get in your inner layers! Fuck…”

“We know,” Vael assured. “It’s not our first time in the snow.”

Kiran pulled out a couple planks from the disassembled crates and handed one over to him. “Less talk. More dig. It’s cold out here.”

Constructing their shelter was work, especially while the memories were a little rusty. Fighting against the cold and wind while they did was its own level of distraction. But soon enough, they had enough progress going that the wind couldn’t reach them as easy. Between that and the movement, the cold got more manageable, too. And once Vael got into a rhythm, it was easy to let his mind drift beyond the mechanical task at hand.

Ryland was alive. He was alive, and he had returned to them…and he had scales. And strange things were happening, none of which had explanation. From his disappearance to the lock to their escape from outright murder. Sure, ancestors could bestow blessings, but this? This was… Vael’s father had told him a few stories about Te’iltic gods and the incredible things they allowed mortals to do, passed down from two generations before. Not many. His father hadn’t survived long into those years when Vael could start remembering such things. But the bit of Te’il blood and culture the man had brought into the T’Vair family stuck with Vael. His Kyarian ancestors made sure the sun would shine when they all needed it most. But everything they’d just witnessed? Maybe the gods of the north had overstepped their bounds.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Not that Ryland would hear of it. Nor Kiran. Vael wasn’t even sure he could throw in with such a possibility whole-heartedly.

…But silver scales…

He glanced at Kiran. Her eyes were hard, and her effort was harder. When this shelter was done, there would be blood.

Once they’d dug out their foxhole in the snow, Vael turned and called to Ryland. “Let’s go!”

Ryland barely registered he’d been yelled at. When it did sink in, he turned his head, then sighed. “Alright. Fire. Small one. Doesn’t take much...” He started unfolding himself from where he sat, which looked to be harder than he anticipated with how stiffly he moved.

Kiran wasn’t so angry she couldn’t go and give him a hand up. Vael grabbed their bags and brought them inside as she did that and pulled out what they’d need for a fire. They needed food soon. By the sun, he was starved. “You should close your eyes for a bit, cousin,” he said as he worked.

“I’m fine.” Ryland stayed sat up, securing his hood as he did.

“Can’t say you’re terribly convincing.” Vael spared a hard glance his way.

“I’m fine,” the scout repeated.

Ryland’s stubborn response got him the consequence Vael had hoped to spare him—Kiran. “Great,” she snapped. “That means you can explain where you’ve been. And what is going on with your neck.”

Much as Vael wanted to save Ryland from her harshness, he kept his mouth shut. He wanted the same information out of his cousin. If the scout was going to be cagey despite being in obvious need of help, he was going to get what he got.

“....I don’t know," Ryland answered, his voice husky and raw. “I don’t.”

“You don’t know where you’ve been?” Vael quirked a brow. He’d accept Ry didn’t know what was happening with the scales. That was…there was no rational explanation for that. None that Vael knew of. Certainly nothing his mother had ever trained him to treat. His burn scars could get a scaly feeling if he neglected to keep them moisturized, but this was another thing entirely

“I know where I was,” Ryland grumbled.

“The time for hedging is over, Ryland,” Kiran snapped, arms crossed over her chest. “You’re exhausted, and we want answers before you sleep. So quit making us ask twice.”

“I’m not hedging. I don’t know where the scales came from.” Ryland scratched at the back of his right hand through his glove. “…And I was captured by the Te’ils.”

“Te’ils dragged you out?” Kiran asked tersely. “We didn’t hear anything about a breach before today.”

Ryland sighed as though he were emptying his whole body of air. “No. …The Guard did.”

The glare Kiran gave. It near threatened to melt their little shelter. “Which guards?” It was less a question than a demand.

Vael leaned in to blow some air into his little spark. He was glad to have a task in this moment. Whoever Ryland named would be meeting a bad end, one way or another.

“Kiran,” the scout said as he rolled his eyes, “you can’t take on the damn Guard.”

“I’ve already warned you once tonight about telling me what I can’t do,” Kiran seethed. “Gettin’ real tired of repeating myself.”

Vael snorted as their friend voiced his frustration as well as hers. If his cousin had been kidnapped because some idiots in their own home dragged him out beyond the fort walls instead of sending him to the infirmary or otherwise trying to help, the Guard needed to be ready. When the three of them did return, there would be a reckoning that made Tienja’s coming look like an afternoon stroll.

“Fine!” Ryland barked. “Salen led the charge, alright? But the whole shift dragged me out! And you storming in, demanding blood isn’t gonna help you get back and stay home!”

No. No more. “Why in the name of the sun would we want to stay there?” Vael retorted, glaring hard into the flames. “If the whole shift dragged you out and you were subsequently kidnapped by Te’ils, then it’s not just the guard that knew. And all of them looked us and my mother in the face and told us they had no idea where you were.” He turned that glare up to his cousin, though it clearly wasn’t directed at him. “Fuck the fort. We’ll find a new home.”

The cave held in the silence that followed. It pressed in around the three, and even calmed the fire in Kiran’s eyes a touch. Ryland stared at Vael as the quiet lingered on, then looked to the smoldering wood before them. “Cousin… I—”

“No, Ry,” Vael cut him off. “If I go back, it will be to demand justice for you and compensation for the pain we’ve all suffered. My mother has been beside herself. We—” He paused and took a slow, deep breath before turning his attention to his little fire again. “Fuck the fort,” he repeated, “and anyone who covered this up. We’ll set up someplace warm, bring my mother down.” Lower, barely above a whisper, he cursed, “May the ancestors judge them justly and fairly.” Because he likely wouldn’t.

“The ancestors can do what they like after I have my say,” Kiran snarled. “As soon as we get this Te’il menace taken care of.”

Easy enough to agree with. Vael grunted and nodded.

Still Ryland argued. “He is death incarnate. He will not stop. Not unless we can lose him.”

“Then we’ll do that first,” Vael said definitively. “Which direction is his tribe? We’ll go the opposite and keep going.”

“He isn’t part of a tribe.” Ryland swallowed. “He serves Queen Jaraka.”

Kiran and Vael looked at their loved one’s haunted eyes. Jaraka. The frozen queen of the Te’ils. The ruler of the one permanent Te’iltic city state in all of Kyare. The very one that the people of Fort Salité were charged with keeping eyes on, in case she ever projected machinations beyond her own walls.

“That’s where you were,” Kiran let the words quietly fall from her lips. “She’s the one who kept you prisoner for eight months?” By the look in her eyes, she was adding people to a mental list.

Ryland rubbed at his face with his hands. Then he sighed as his cousin finally got a proper flame going. “…Five. I made my way south first. Trying to…figure out what’s happening to me.” The weariness was showing in his voice, and he was losing the will to disguise it.

“So you went south,” Kiran said, unimpressed. “Which means you came back north and right past the Fort and didn’t once consider sending a damned letter. To us or your aunt.”

“Right, because a letter would help!” Ryland snapped back. “I got pulled out because I asked Salen what was on my neck! They treated me like I was cursed! What would you have done? Called them out? Gotten you all banished and frozen to death for talking crazy?”

“We would have known you weren’t dead, Ryland!” She snapped into motion, hands flying in frustration as she spoke. “One of us could have gotten out to you, gotten you supplies! Spirits, we could have moved Lila to Veriki and saved you this whole damn assassin mess! But no. No, you couldn’t bother to think about the people you left behind. The people who care about you. It didn’t even occur to you to trust us!”

“For all I know I am cursed!” Ryland yelled back. “And I’m not bringing that on you! Or I guess I am now, since neither of you have an ounce of sense between you!”

“Then why come back at all?”

“Because I had him on my tail! I—I can’t take him myself! I thought the Fort would….” He squeezed his hands and pressed them to his forehead. “…I have to be cursed…”

“Ryland.” Vael looked at him with a flat expression. “You’re not cursed. You have to earn a curse. It doesn’t just randomly show up on your skin one day. And it can’t be related to your scouting or there’d be an affliction going back generations.”

“But it might be related to the Te’ils,” Ryland said. “I headed back north to try to find answers in the city. Snuck in and out enough times. …Overstayed. Got caught.”

“What do silver scales have to do with Te’ils?” Vael asked, brow creased in confusion.

“No Kyarians seemed to know anything. And some of the Te’ils, when I got captured, they…kept calling me a strange name…” He yawned. “No one explained why.”

“Then I guess we need to ask other Te’ils.” Kiran was still fuming, but she seemed content to let her outbursts pause. “There are tribes to the south, right?”

Ryland closed his eyes, involuntarily. “Yeah… But I don’t know where.”

It was time to stop. “Maybe we can ask in Veriki,” Vael suggested. “Time to rest, cousin.”

That got the scout to force his eyes open again. “No. I’m fine.”

“Still don’t believe you,” the blacksmith retorted.

Kiran snatched the nearest rucksack, dug out the bedroll, and tossed it unceremoniously in her wayward friend’s face. “Rest.” Her tone left no room for argument. “We’ll wake you for food and then you can sleep until morning. I’m taking watch.”

“We can do watch in shifts,” Vael suggested. “You need to get some sleep, too, Kir.”

“Don’t go out there,” Ryland warned, even as he made no move to actually lie down. “Just…just keep your eyes on the opening. The snow should have covered it enough by now.”

“Rgh—fine!” Kiran huffed, moving enough to keep her back to the men and watch the entrance.

She would be fine. She always was. It would just take time for her to burn out. “Lay down,” Vael instructed his cousin. “Or so help me, I will tuck you in.”

Ryland had to be exhausted. He scowled, but he didn’t argue further as he picked up one of the sleep sacks Kiran had pulled out. “…This thing has holes.”

“Best we got for now,” Vael quipped. “We’ll get nicer when we get to Veriki.” Did he have his purse on him? He’d emptied the drawer for the day, but had he put the day’s sales in the vault yet? He’d been running late to meet Kiran. Hm. He could look later. Right now, he needed to fish out some of the root vegetables they’d scrounged and see what he could do with them.

“Mm…” Ryland struggled to get into the roll, mostly from exhaustion, but he eventually did it. And he was not conscious for long after that.