Chapter 2 #2
Last moments. I meant last hours, before the Watchman is at our door, loading me onto a cart that will take me east to the king’s castle, but I watch Stellan’s eyes flare with concern again and regret my choice of words.
We’ve never been good with them. We’ve gone days without saying anything to each other at all.
Our language has always been that of smelting and shaping metal.
He’d barely said anything during those first few weeks when he brought me here and all I could do was cry.
I thought he didn’t care. I thought he was a giant oaf, all beard, thick eyebrows, and grunts.
I thought he would forget me in the closet of a room he had piled blankets in.
I thought he might throw me back onto the streets.
One day he knocked on my door and came in to find me still crying. This is the end of warm blankets and soup left at my door, I thought. Tears were hot on my cheeks. This is good. If he leaves me to die, maybe I will. Maybe that would be better than all this pain.
But he didn’t kick me out of his house. All he did was slowly kneel before me, so our eyes were close to level.
All he did was hand me a figurine of a little girl holding a blade, in a fighting stance.
It was painstakingly made of metal, so detailed, so expertly crafted that it could only be one person.
Through sniffling, I said, “But—but I don’t have a sword.”
He shook his head. Pointed his massive finger at the tiny figurine. “This here’s a dagger. Not a sword. And you will, if you get up and stop your crying.”
That was when he pulled a blade from his pocket. Something in me thought perhaps I should fear this towering man, with his hard eyes and weathered skin and long beard. He had a weapon. He could kill me. But I was so stunned by the sparkling metal, I stopped crying for the first time in weeks.
He quickly sheathed it.
“It’s yours, when you’re ready for it. You can even design the hilt if you want. But only if you get up. It’s your choice.”
He stood. Then he offered me his hand. I knew what it meant, even then. Either burn or rise from the ashes once and for all.
I took it.
And from then on, he spent his days teaching me to make swords and his nights teaching me to use them.
In the last decade, I never once saw his brow furrow. I never saw him display any type of emotion.
But now his face is all twisting lines. It’s easy to see the time that has passed.
I take a step forward, pushing off the wall. My tone softens. “If—if you want to help me live … then tell me something. Anything that will keep me alive.”
Stories about Starside are full of creatures and magic that are nearly too far-fetched to believe. But he knows the truth. He was one of the few survivors of the last Questral. He can tell me how he did it.
Stellan’s face hardens again. I ready myself, believing he might finally tell me something about the other side, after all these years.
“You want to live?” he says.
I nod. Of course. I need to survive until the very end to get to the gods. “I do.”
He leans in closer, as if about to tell me one of the world’s great secrets. I don’t dare breathe, in anticipation. It’s so quiet, I can hear the simmering of the forge, and I remember all the work still left to do for the night. His mouth is almost to my ear.
“Don’t go, then,” he says, and then he passes by me on the way to the forge.
I stay frozen in front of the hearth, hoping he might return, might actually tell me something useful, until I hear the familiar sound of pounding metal.
It’s only when I feel around in my pockets that I realize he’s taken his dagger with him without my noticing.
Shit.
I don’t know what else I was expecting. He’s never said a word about Starside. Why would he help me now, when he’s still hoping I’ll stay?
In my foolish mind, I envisioned us sitting in front of these weak flames. Him—telling me everything I need to know. Me—planning my survival.
Now I take a lesser blade from its hidden place on a high shelf, cursing Stellan and his ever-present concern for my well-being, and duck out into the night.
It’s suffocatingly hot, as always. A very convenient place for someone who must wear so many layers to live. Sweat already slips down the center of my chest, but I dutifully check the fabric at my throat, the way I have most of my life, just in case the collar has slipped.
Cursed markings.
As I approach the village square and see women wearing just bits of material, I wonder what that must be like. Feeling the wind against my bare skin. Having people look at me. Not hiding.
A curl of laughter spills out from inside a bar that is normally empty, considering few here have scraps of metal to spare. Through the open window, a teetering man spots the arc across my brow and tries to shove a chipped goblet into my hand.
I decline and cross to the other side of the road, making my way through a sea of strangers.
I brush against fabrics worlds softer than the scratchy ones made by the local weaver, a woman with long, dirty nails who buys clothes I steal off corpses.
Some weeks, she’s the reason we have enough to eat.
She’s also the reason I have clothes that cover me, when usually so much fabric would be seen either as wasteful or dangerous in heat like this.
I turn another corner—then stumble back as a group of travelers pours out of the local inn. An inn I was sure was abandoned, given the fact that I have not, in the past decade, seen a single person inside of it. Now, its second floor is visibly sagging because of the crowd.
Stellan warned me of the throngs months ago. I thought he was exaggerating. Who would travel for days, or weeks, to see people die fighting to get onto a stone? It’s not like they actually get to see the events of the mysterious Culling …
Thousands of people, apparently.
Merchant carts have been wheeled in from miles away.
Their lines make mazes through the normally empty streets.
I weave through them, eyeing foaming mugs, whipped sugar, and spice-encrusted pastries.
Some travelers will stay for as long as their coins last, just to await news of anyone making it back through the gates.
My empty stomach grumbles. I introduce it to my empty pockets.
I might not have scraps of metal to spare, but there are some mushrooms still left from my foraging.
My stomach twists—and not just from hunger this time. Stellan and I should be making soup instead of fighting.
Regret sinks through me. He sounded so upset. So disappointed. I should go back home, but I don’t. I turn again, toward the stone I barely made it onto. The crowds begin to thin, most people headed toward the carts. I see a wisp of smoke.
“There she is. The hands thief.”
I jump, then whirl in the direction of the alley I just passed, blade clutched tightly. It’s copper, barely worth anything at all. One of the first daggers Stellan let me make.
A man is leaning against the brick, swirling a drink in a rusted goblet. He has brown skin, dark hair, and is so tall I have to lift my chin to look at his face. I recognize him from the platform. He tilts his head at me. “Aren’t you sweating rivers in all that clothing?”
Yes. Literal rivers, it feels like.
I ignore his question and raise my brow. “Tell me you aren’t really going to drink that.” It’s one of the chipped goblets from the bar.
He cracks a smile. “Not even a drop. I’d like to make it to the gates. It would be a shame to have survived the platform only to be bested by bad ale.”
“Poisoned ale, more likely,” Kira says as she comes walking up to us from the other side of the street. Her red hair is now clean and combed, blood washed out of it. She’s frowning at her own cup. “This even looks disgusting.”
Poison wouldn’t surprise me. Some of the Great Houses would do whatever it takes to ensure their heirs make it to the Fifty. We’re all under the king’s protection for now, but poison is difficult to prove.
Kira dumps the liquid into a half-dead bush next to her. It will likely be full-dead by morning.
A shame. There’s such little green on this side to begin with.
“So,” Kira says, turning to the man. She stays at the mouth of the alley, in a pool of moonlight. “You are?”
“Zane,” he says. “From the Bladelands. Helmspeak, specifically.”
Kira stumbles forward, her suspicion instantly melting into excitement.
“Really?” The Bladelands are a stretch of mountainous territory to the west. Stellan says people lucky enough to be born there die there.
The top of the mountains remain lush. Every year, hundreds migrate to Helmspeak during the spring, when the conditions are less harsh. Few survive the climb.
Kira’s eyes are wide with a thousand questions. I just have one—if people die trying to reach his mountain’s peak, why leave?
Why risk almost certain death?
“Tell me. Are the Helmhawks real?” Kira is in the shadows now, halfway down the alley.
I remain at its mouth, hand still gripped around my blade.
I should move on. The frustration curling around my bones has already softened.
I should go back and help Stellan finish the last of his orders. It’s the least I can do.
These are strangers. No—now they’re challengers. We’re all fighting for fifty placements. They’re rivals.
But I don’t move an inch. I’m curious to hear Zane’s answer, I realize. I haven’t been west at all.
“They were,” he finally says.