Though Kris had no memory of entering the ruins before, she felt a flush of heat run through the scar hidden beneath her dress as it came into sight. There were tales of old-time places that covered mils and mils, of broken buildings that towered up to ten stories high, with scattered remains telling the story of reaching untold heights.

This ruin was small, and more recent than those. Lara said her grandmother had told stories of when a man named Si of Tist used to come to the village to buy food and other goods. Only one man ever came, but when the first one grew old and died, a younger one took his place, also claiming the name Si of Tist, and so the villagers had decided it must be a title of some sort. This had ended shortly after Paul was born, when the villagers were woken by a boom that shook the earth, and a fire that colored the night sky red.

It burned for days, and when some of the villagers ventured out to the old-time buildings, they found only charred corpses and strange metal devices that had been cracked and melted in the heat. The braver villagers salvaged what they could, since refined metals were difficult to find, and buried the bodies so none would rise to curse the nearby village with illness or famine.

By the time Lara and Paul were courting, the place had become little more than a place for children to go for privacy and to play pranks on one another. Then, around seventeen years before, a group of men, all claiming to be Si of Tist, showed up and moved into the ruins. They had lingered for a few days, and then seemed to vanish, and after a short while, everything returned to normal.

Until a short time before Kris was born. Once again, there was a boom, though those who remembered the first said that this one was smaller. Flames flickered along the eastern horizon, but quickly died, and a few villagers, Paul and Master Mathison included, went to investigate.

When Paul and the others didn’t return by evening, the Widow Mathison, who was then the Goodwife Mathison, sent her servants out to see what had happened to them. Lara was among those sent, and she could hardly bear to recount the story, no matter how Kris pressed her. All she would say was that bad men had come, killed the men of Tist, and taken the first villagers captive. They had been looking for something, and when no one could help them find it, they had begun murdering the townsmen, hoping to make someone talk.

The Mathisons employed the best fighters in town, though Master Mathison himself was a great warrior, and had thought his own strength sufficient. He had been one of the first to die, and Paul, being a large, powerful man, had been considered enough of a threat that the invaders had injured him badly. Fortunately, Viktor, the town’s best hunter, was leading the second investigative party, and he was able to sneak in and recover the captives.

Together, the escaped prisoners and the guards were able to kill the bad men and flee, but the stress of it had caused Lara to give birth prematurely. Kris was so tiny and frail that Lara barely let anyone near her until she was old enough to walk, for fear that her precious child would sicken and die.

Thus it was that while Kris had heard frightening stories of the ruins since she was old enough to understand them, she had never before stepped foot onto the strangely smooth paths between the buildings. At least, not that she remembered. Unconsciously, her hand crept up to touch the ridge of scar tissue that started on her left clavicle.

Staring up at the broken and blackened buildings that seemed to loom high over her, even in the bright afternoon sunlight, Kris shuddered. Thal noticed and hit her on the back in what was presumably meant to be a reassuring way, but instead knocked the breath from her lungs. Thal was already turning to Rooney, and didn’t seem to notice how she gasped for air.

“Think it’s still here somewhere?” Thal asked, touching the hilt of the long, heavy blade tucked into a sheath at his belt.

Rooney’s lip curled. “According to that apostate scientist, yes,” he muttered. “This was one of the last labs built, and by then they’d been burned out enough times that they started digging down, instead of building up. Not that it saved them, but no one has found the underground workshop, or we’d have heard about it.” Cold eyes flicked to Kris. “Seen the results.”

The shiver that went down Kris’ spine this time was caused by more than superstition, and she wondered if this was how her father had felt, sixteen years ago, when he’d been captured and tortured by the strange men who had massacred the… scientist? Scientists? Was that one word, instead of a title and a place? And what did ‘apostate’ mean?

A hard hand latched onto Kris’ thin wrist, and she was relieved to find that it belonged to Thal. For all the man looked like little more than a beast, she preferred his indifference to Rooney’s veiled hostility. “We’re gonna look around a bit, girl,” Thal said, dark eyes flickering from shadow to shadow. “You’ll stay with us, but if you don’t fight, and you don’t try to run, I’ll just tie you up.”

He held up a metal cuff tied to a hemp rope in his free hand. It swung, loose and threatening as he continued. “Do anything else, and it’ll be the last thing you do. Believe me, I can make it look like a big cat clawed out your guts, and no one will ever question it.”

Her eyes locked onto his, and she nodded jerkily. “I… believe,” she whispered, hoarsely.

A moment later, the manacle was locked around her wrist, the key was tucked into a pouch hung around his neck, and the rope was secured to his belt. Without another word, Rooney and Thal split up, each silently walking among the jagged buildings that were all that remained of a long fallen empire.

Stolen story; please report.

The ruin was, indeed, small, at least compared to the stories Lara told. Once Kris’ brain learned to parse this wall, and that collapsed ceiling, and those shattered and empty doorways into the sum total of a building, she guessed there hadn’t been more than a dozen structures here before the fires. Still, Thal was slow and methodical, showing a greater ability to reason and plan than she would have given him credit for. When they passed between buildings, and Kris caught sight of the sun, it dropped steadily lower and lower, until she had to be facing toward a gap directly west in order to see it, just kissing the horizon.

A piercing whistle broke the eerie silence, and Thal’s head shot up. Looking over at Kris, he twitched the rope meaningfully and lifted a single thick finger to his lips. Kris gave a nod, making it as small, weak, and exhausted as she felt. She had a plan, but she had to wait. She had to be patient. She had to trick them into believing she was utterly broken.

Thal left the building they were searching and looked around. Another whistle sounded, slightly different from the first, and Thal’s head turned sharply north. Without looking back, he took off, his leather-soled boots making no sound on the perfectly smooth surface on which they stood. Kris stumbled along behind him, the manacle chafing her wrist painfully each time she missed a step, or turned her foot under. She was neither so clumsy nor quite so weak, but if he didn’t believe she could be recaptured easily, her plan would never work.

Now that Thal was hurrying, they quickly rejoined Rooney, who was waiting impatiently near a particularly derelict building. It was smaller than most of the others, and when Rooney ducked into the darkness within, she wondered what made it so special.

Rooney lifted a small disc of beaten metal, directing the last rays of sunlight into the last corner of the building still standing. There, mostly concealed by rubble, was a pitted and rusted slab of… iron? As the daughter of a smith, Kris could identify most metals by sight, but this one didn’t look quite right. The rust was correct, but the metal beneath had a soft luster, not the pitted, flat surface of old iron.

To Kris, however, the most suspicious thing about it was that it was there at all. One of the villagers, if not another scavenger, would have taken it long ago, if they could. So why was it still here?

Rooney leaned forward, taking something from a pouch hanging from a chain around his neck. Both men had similar pouches, though so far as Kris had seen, the only thing Thal kept in his was the key to the cuff around her wrist.

Rooney held up the object, which looked like nothing so much as a slim, metallic rectangle protruding from a longer rectangle carved from wood. A symbol was burned into the wood, but Kris couldn’t make it out. Rooney kissed the symbol, and bowed his head over it, murmuring soft words beneath his breath. With a sigh, he opened his eyes and lowered the metal rectangle to a small part of the iron slab that she could now see was cleaned of dust and debris.

The metal rectangle slid into a matching hole, and a faint yellow light sprang into being, gleaming above the object Rooney was using. Quickly, he cleared away more dirt, rubbing the ‘rust’ away with surprising ease. He swore under his breath.

“Passcode or genetic marker,” he said. The last two words came out in a hiss of loathing, and his eyes narrowed as they came to rest on Kris. Reaching out, he closed his hand around the rope that led from Thal to her wrist and pulled, hard. This time, she didn’t have to pretend to stumble, practically collapsing into the dust beside him.

Rooney’s eyes traveled over her, and his hand twitched on the hilt of his blade. Then he saw the trickle of fresh red blood oozing out from where the rough metal of the cuff had abraded her flesh, and grinned viciously, Reaching out, he swiped his thumb through the blood, and pressed the crimson smear to the yellow light.

Beneath the blood, the light turned green, the combination casting an unpleasant brownish light around the small space. With a hiss, the metal slab slid a few inches to the side, then raised up without anyone touching it.

Kris stared into the faintly lit pit thus revealed. What kind of magic was this? Was it like her own ability to speak with water? Were there witches down there?

Then Rooney’s hand was in her hair, twisting with malicious intent to cause pain, and the point of his blade dug hard into the soft flesh beneath her chin. Only Thal’s reluctant voice saved her life. “Roost, you can’t. She’s already been useful once. We may well need her again.”

The point dug deeper, and Kris felt a hot trickle flow down her neck to gather in the hollow of her throat. She needed to swallow, but didn’t dare, frozen as she was in the grip of a man who wanted her dead very, very badly.

“We can use its blood after it’s dead,” Rooney said, knife unmoving.

“And if there’s a lock that needs her biorhythm or a retinal scan?” The strange words flowed easily from the big man’s mouth, and Rooney hesitated, then lowered his blade. Leaning forward, Rooney looked into Kris’ terrified eyes.

“Never doubt I know what you are,” he hissed. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, and their demon spawn must be put to fire. You may live another minute, or another hour, but you will die today.”

Kris just crouched on the ground, frozen like a startled rabbit confronted by a wolf. Thal rolled his eyes and motioned to the open hatch, seeming unfazed by the dramatic declaration. Distantly, Kris wondered if he had heard something like it so often that it was little more than a minor irritation.

“You first, or me, boss?” Thal asked. “Either way, she goes in the middle. She’s definitely going to try to escape now, since you just guaranteed we’d kill her if she stays.”

Rooney glared, and swiped at a speck of foam in the corner of his mouth with a sleeve. “Me,” he said, finally. Without further ado, he swung his legs out into empty space and dropped into the hole.