Chapter 6
The following day brought the beginnings of normalcy. After an unsurprisingly restless night, I rose at dawn to practice my kicks, jabs, and other maneuvers. Breakfast came, and Callen arrived soon after to resume the training we’d started before I’d gone to Koerlyn.
Little more than a week ago, we’d bet on whether I’d be able to knock him out of place within a month of sessions.
If he won, everyone would have to address me as Fish Eyes.
But that morning, neither of us brought up the bet.
It was too unserious a matter to be relevant now.
When people were being slaughtered, when Jac would soon be executed, I couldn’t find it in myself to care about silly names and stupid wagers.
The exertion effectively occupied my mind, and I welcomed it, so much so that I made Stefano continue my training once Callen was done.
During our practice, Ana had knocked on the door, but I’d used my training as an excuse to avoid her.
I spent the afternoon in the garden, pouring over maps with Stefano until dinner came.
Thus far, today had been exactly the same.
A hint of routine, perhaps. Just after the sun rose, Callen exhausted my body with more repetitions and exercises, this time with a blunt, wooden dagger—my first weapons training.
I wound up stabbing myself nine times and accidentally catapulting the tool from my hand seven.
A promising start…for a five-year-old, maybe.
Now, muscles still trembling with expended effort, I sat beneath gray skies in the garden once more. Yesterday, I’d found myself fixated on First Territory’s borders, so today, a detailed diagram of its land was spread across my lap.
The six Territories formed something of a circle around the Domus.
Each was a similar size, their curved coastlines rather monotonous.
First Territory, however, was an exception.
It occupied a narrow, disproportionately long piece of land, one-third of its domain jutting into the sea to form a jagged peninsula.
It made an aggressive break in the geological pattern.
The effect was…unsettling.
Or maybe that effect came from the swath of primitive markings that covered nearly every inch of space within those borders.
On the left, where First bordered Sixth, sharp triangles indicated the mountain range Stefano had told me about.
It lay along the border, stretching from a valley near the Domus to the tip of that peninsula.
To the right, toward the Territory’s center, lay a small open space and a dot for the city center.
The rest was covered in diagonal lines, river symbols, and sporadic circles rimmed in red.
The diagonal lines I knew as woodland, but the red circles were unknown.
They were also the only color-marked signs on the weathered paper, suggesting they’d been added after the map was made.
“The red circles,” I said to Stefano, who sat against the wall. “Are those cities and villages?”
“Dots with names usually mark cities,” he replied without looking, his attention on the garden. No one had entered since we’d arrived. The day was still too young to harvest and prep for dinner.
“What if this map uses different symbols?”
“It wouldn’t. Maps have been made with the same symbols since before Donon was king. Otherwise, they’re too confusing to read.”
I counted the mysterious symbols, finding thirty altogether, though some were clustered. “Lakes, maybe?” I guessed.
Apparently eager to strike down all of my thoughts, Stefano countered, “Maybe, but all lakes now are pretty dried up.”
Woodlands, rivers, and mountains were already illustrated by other symbols. These shapes were too small to indicate valleys, and if they weren’t cities or towns or major bodies of water, then…
I drew a blank, wishing that whoever had drawn on the map had at least added their symbols to the legend. I mean, that was the point of a legend.
“Is there a different map of First? Because this is entirely unhelpful.”
“I know First.”
I jolted at the young, high-pitched voice, my head knocking against the wall. Stefano, meanwhile, remained relaxed, like he’d known the looter boy was watching all along.
The boy stood, revealing his hiding place behind a squash plant two rows in front of me. He wrung his hands, looking very unsure of his decision to speak to us.
I stared at him in surprise for a little too long, and Stefano elbowed me.
Speaking slowly so I didn’t startle him away, I asked, “Do you think you might be able to help us figure out what these symbols mean?”
He did nothing for a minute. Just watched us.
I wondered if he’d understood me until he finally moved his head up and down, once.
“Would you like to take a look?”
Shifting on his small legs, he rapidly shook his head.
He was willing to speak, but he wasn’t willing to get close. I could work with that. “How about I just describe where the markings are?”
A nod.
I doubted the boy had ever seen a map. But looters were a nomadic bunch, and they’d probably explored more of this world than me.
“They’re spread throughout the map, about thirty of them in total.
Some of the red circles are grouped together.
One of those groups is somewhat near the Domus.
There’s another one just south of the city center, and one next to the middle of the mountain range.
There really aren’t any clusters by the coast.”
He blinked. Then, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, he said, “The Horrads.”
“Horrads?” I repeated, and the boy nodded again. Beside me, Stefano appeared just as perplexed as me. “Can you tell me what those are?”
“Dad always said not to look at them.” His eyes dropped to the squash plant before him. “Hide your eyes.”
The Horrads were living things, then. People, probably. “Do you think the circles are marking where the Horrads live?”
Bony shoulders lifted on a shrug.
On the far left wall, the kitchen door swung closed. The sudden thud caused the boy to jump and twist toward the entranceway. He knees bunched to run.
“Wait!” I blurted.
Rather than running, he froze, shoulders hiked to his ears.
Don’t make a mess of this.
Gentling my voice, I said, “I’m sorry. I’ve just never heard of the Horrads and would like to know more. You don’t have to stay, but I think you could help me if you did.”
I glanced at Stefano, wondering if his reassurance would also help, but he seemed to be focused on the kitchen area.
“Were you ever with the Horrads?” I asked.
The boy glanced from the kitchen door, to me, to the door again, scrawny legs quaking.
“Please,” I quietly implored.
Biting his lip, he turned his head to me again, though his body stayed twisted away, ready to bolt. He answered my question with a silent nod.
“Okay, that’s really helpful. Thank you.” I gave what I hoped was a gentle smile. “I just have a few more questions, if you don’t mind.”
Apparently, I accomplished the beseeching, motherly attitude I was going for, because he shifted his whole body toward me again.
“Were you ever with a big group of them? Maybe where these clusters of circles are?”
“Dad said it was a Horrad city. We didn’t go in. Just passed by. Not everyone, though,” he revealed hollowly.
With the kitchen closed off and the high Citadel walls blocking any wind, the garden was quiet, except for the occasional clanking of metal from the training field. It made the haunted note in the boy’s voice even more apparent.
“What do you mean, not everyone?” I asked.
“I never looked at them. But…” He swallowed and toed the ground with his boot.
“But what?”
“But I heard,” he mumbled.
The hairs on my neck raised. “Heard them speak?”
He said something too quiet for me to hear.
I set the map aside and leaned forward. “What was that?”
Stefano’s hand landed on my knee, but I barely felt it, too intent on hearing the boy’s response.
“Not speak. Scream,” he quavered.
I straightened, skin tingling—
Stefano shot up, and I jerked to face him just as he unsheathed two daggers.
The boy. He’s going to scare the boy away.
But the boy didn’t run. Instead, he stiffly turned and followed Stefano’s gaze, and then I was following it, too, up to the wall walk, which was…empty.
The typical guard was gone.
And no one was walking down the wall to replace him.
Stomach tightening, I looked at the wood panels of the kitchen door. There should have been some sound coming from behind it. Chatter between the bread bakers, if anything. But there was nothing.
It hit me like a bolt. My body wasn’t reacting to the boy’s eerie words, but to my surroundings. There was a tremor in my knees as I came to stand beside Stefano.
“We’re in the center of the Citadel in the middle of the day,” I stated woodenly, as if that fact alone would relieve the mounting sense of wrongness burrowing into my belly.
“We are,” he said.
The door to the kitchen opened.
The boy immediately dropped, flattening to his stomach behind the thick leaves of the squash plant.
For a shallow breath, there was no movement from within the kitchen, no apron-clad worker bustling out with a bucket of water or a basket for picking.
Stefano slipped a dagger into my hand. As my fingers curled around the leather hilt, several figures emerged from the ominous space, their appearance dashing any hopeful doubt to pieces.
Five men, mouths set in firm lines. Black leather armor around thick torsos. Blades in their hands. Attention fixed on us as they callously flattened plants beneath their boots—plants that took an exhaustive amount of care and resources to grow here.
No one from the Citadel would crush them like that.
“Mercenaries,” Stefano hissed, limbs rigid.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” he said grimly. “I know what mercenaries look like. I was one with Harthon.”
Skies.