Chapter 5
Chapter Five
The city of Meridian smells like sulfur and dust, a choking, miserable stench to go along with its miserable appearance.
It's a different sort of misery here, compared to Halvgate.
I guess because it faced a different kind of destruction.
There was no single attack that destroyed this once thriving city; instead, it was a series of smaller ones.
A slow, seeping decay that took decades, supposedly beginning after a cluster of dragons took up residence in the mines just to the east of here.
All dragons affect their environment in one way or another, regardless of their species or nature.
Older legends claim most of them used to shape our world in only beneficial ways—that their fire blessed entire kingdoms with warmth; their shedding skins and fallen scales strengthened any structure they were built into; that their songs could coax plants into growing.
Even the larger features of the empire—from the mountains to the seas—were supposedly formed by the beasts.
The Evendell Range is the spine of a long-dead dragon, for example.
The Veil Sea formed when an ancient dragon's tears filled the basin over centuries.
The Great Tangled Forest is said to be the product of two mated dragons who were buried together beneath the earth, and the first trees that grew there sprouted from their decaying, interwoven bodies…
I don't know how much truth there is to any of it.
All I know is that the dragons ruling our skies these days spread only ruin and wreckage.
Their breath always destroys, whether it’s tinged with fire, ice, or other elements.
It also frequently contaminates, and this is one of the main reasons Meridian is completely uninhabitable now—because its groundwater is poisoned, a byproduct of the nearby dragons scorching the land around their stolen territory in an effort to mark it, to protect whatever they're hoarding within the usurped mines.
It's only been five years since Emberfall, but there have already been signs that similar poisons might be seeping into Halvgate's soil.
One of the many things we need to find a way to fix before it's too late, and yet another reason we need to keep earning enough money to not only survive, but to somehow rebuild. Refortify.
The air here in Meridian isn't completely unbreathable.
Yet. But Briar and I still wear thick scarves wrapped around our noses and mouths, just to be on the safe side.
Specially-made masks with filtering mesh join our horses' usual equipment, too, and we ride as quickly as we dare over the broken streets, trying not to linger in any one spot for longer than necessary.
Our target sits at the city's center, a crumbling building with columns that lean at precarious angles.
Wide steps sweep up to a pair of doors hanging from broken hinges.
There are gaps along the facade, empty pedestals where statues likely once stood.
All of the windows have been taken, too, carefully removed rather than being left to crack and shatter like so many of the windows in nearby buildings; they were likely made of ancient dragon-blown glass, which can fetch a high price in the right marketplace.
Inside, the trend continues; nothing glitters, nothing shines.
Nothing of obvious value is left.
We find proof of the rumors Koen overheard in no time at all: A dead body is splayed out in the middle of one of the first rooms we come to, his body stiff and oddly contorted against the cracked, dirty floor.
On his crookedly bent arm, I see the familiar Ashwalker symbol.
His face is blackened and swollen, but his features remain clear enough to tell me he was young—eighteen at most—though I don't recognize him.
Probably from one of the guilds farther north of here, in the Silverbank region; we don't cross paths with them often, but more of them have been encroaching into our routes as of late, since many of the cities they used to service have been completely abandoned.
I have mixed feelings about that encroachment.
In the beginning, our work was as much about providing a lifeline for the struggling kingdoms as it was about earning coin to survive.
But as more cities fall and desperation rises, it's hard not to see other Ashwalkers as competition for dwindling opportunities.
My parents cautioned against that kind of thinking—warning that we'd need each other more than ever as things got worse.
But I often wonder what they would have thought about the way things are now, had they survived long enough to see it.
Beside the fallen Ashwalker is a leather satchel, its flap hanging open. Carefully, after adjusting the protective cloth across her face, Briar kneels and pulls this satchel toward her, delicately shifting through its contents.
“Well, this is convenient, at least,” she remarks, holding up a bundle of sealed documents tied with string. “He was definitely one of the previous hires Koen mentioned. And it looks like he's done the work of gathering the records for us.”
I frown, my focus still on his gruesomely twisted body. “Poison, you think?”
“Most likely.” She takes an instrument from the bag slung across her chest—a small copper disc.
In its center is a glass chamber filled with a liquid that changes color based on what's in the air.
It's one of the many tools Koen's uncle insisted we take with us when venturing into this city.
I'm not entirely sure how it works; I only know the color shifts when it detects dangerous vapors or other lingering effects of dragon magic.
Briar studies it for a long moment. “Nothing seems to be in the air of this particular room, luckily. Must have been extremely concentrated in whatever vault he got into, though…probably one of the underground chambers.”
Even so, I still don't lower the scarf wrapped across my face; if nothing else, it blocks out the horrible smell of decomposition. I swear all of my other senses got stronger when I partially lost my vision, and I'm really wishing that wasn't the case right now.
Pressing the scarf more firmly against my nose, I put some space between myself and the body, taking a moment to study the names and declarations engraved into one of the nearby walls.
Cracks split through many of the etchings, rendering them unreadable, and I have to kick aside bits of stone and plaster dust to reach others. The grime that soon cakes my boots makes them feel oddly heavy, as if I’m trying to lift up the entire fallen city with every step I take.
“Wonder what happened to the other Ashwalker Koen mentioned?” I muse.
“No telling,” Briar replies, pushing the papers back into the satchel and tossing it over her shoulder as she stands. “But I'd rather not stick around and investigate further.” Giving the satchel a pat, she adds, “It looks like everything we need is in here.”
“Seems too good to be true.”
“It does. Then again, I think we’re overdue for some good luck.”
Even though I had the same thoughts about our luck last night, I find myself hesitating now. There’s a growing unease in my gut that I can’t seem to shake. “It feels wrong to just take things, doesn't it? To leave him here to decay after he did most of the work?”
She gives me a bemused look. “What do you want to do? Shall we send him his cut of the payment? Doubt he'll need it, but it's up to you, of course.”
I shake my head at her, taking a few steps back toward the body.
It's foolish, I know, but part of me wants to bury him properly.
Or at least take some sort of token, some proof of his identity and existence—something I could send to his family, if I could track them down.
Though there's a decent chance he has no family; so few with significant others risk this line of work.
But I could send it to his guildmates, maybe.
I would want someone to do the same for me.
“I wouldn't get any closer to him,” Briar says, frowning, and I know she's right to warn against it.
This kind of dragon-tainted rot is known to cause swelling in organisms that are subjected to it, blowing them up until their insides reach the point of bursting—a disgusting, violent event that I've witnessed only once, and hope to never see again.
A single wrong touch could set off the putrid explosion.
Forcing myself to turn away, I follow Briar toward the exit.
She starts thumbing through the documents once more as we walk, double-checking things, comparing the contents to the list that was included along with the job offer.
Our footsteps echo eerily in the empty halls.
My skin prickles with the feeling that we’re being watched, though no one is ever there when I look.
Briar eventually slows, taking out a sealed envelope and holding it up in a beam of sunlight filtering through a dust-covered skylight. “I wonder what's in these envelopes marked as ‘secret’?”
“I don't know, but we're not going to find out. You break the seal on those and we'll be lucky if we get any of the promised payment.”
“We might be able to sell whatever's inside them for double what the baron offered us.”
“And end up with a target on our backs, having pissed off one of the richest and most well-connected nobles on the southern peninsula? Yeah, great idea.”
She shrugs. “I'm just searching for more creative ways to line our pockets.”
We argue halfheartedly about the merits of selling secrets versus honoring contracts, our voices hushed even though we’re alone.
I doubt she would actually consider sabotaging the job, even if it did promise a higher reward; I think it’s just the tired desperation of yesterday still lingering, seeping into both of us, poisoning our thoughts as surely as the poisons destroying this city.
If I'm honest, I'm as tired as she is of this endless cycle of barely surviving.
But as we step out into the hazy sunlight, my exhaustion is suddenly the least of my worries.
There's fresh blood all over the front steps.
A winding trail of it goes from one side to the other, as if whatever left it behind was pacing frantically. Its color is a distinctive deep, deep red, bordering on black. It has a distinct smell, too. Saltier than human blood. More acrid.
Dragon blood.