Chapter 1 #2
A narrow stone strip served as their pathway to a sewer grate lid, which Ksenia lifted with a grunt.
Ahead lay the Vein—the sprawling catacombs of a long-dead kingdom over which Kraal had been built. Now those forgotten tunnels served as the beating heart of Kraal’s black-market trade that Ksenia was unfortunately very familiar with.
The walls thickened with scrawl as they descended.
Old symbols and maker’s marks carved deep into the damp stone. Evidence of bondsmiths who had come before them when living here wasn’t hiding. Initials, dates, Damascus fold counts boasting numbers that Ksenia could understand, but her charges didn’t yet.
There were new marks layered over the old along with crudely painted slogans.
‘Bound steel, bound hands.’
‘Bound weapons kill. Bonded blood pays.’
Her own face stared back at her from a wanted notice, half-torn.
She ripped it from the wall without breaking stride. One boy averted his gaze.
One girl let out a keening cry and hugged her brother when the darkness engulfed them in the tunnel.
Ksenia knelt down to face them, turning a blue-gray metal coin in her fingers.
“Do you know what this is?”
Life sparked in one girl’s eyes. “That’s Grastelian steel!” A metal so rare and coveted it was worth more than its weight in gold.
When forged and beaten into shape, it became the most durable and lightest of weapons, never losing its edge, and now it would serve as their beacon to a safe house.
“Smart girl.” She beamed at Ksenia and accepted the coin in her outstretched hand. “Do you want to know a secret?”
The children crept closer. Ksenia coaxed them deeper into the tunnel and lifted the girl’s palm until a faint glow began to emanate from the coin.
The sewer ceiling above them shone with blue metal shards embedded into the rock. Their eyes lit up, mouths parted slightly as the girl let out a giggle, waving the coin to mimic a firefly.
The teal glow lit their awed faces, and Ksenia was transported back to when Danika had first shown her.
She'd been upset over something small and enormous, the way everything was as a five-year-old.
Danika had taken her by the hand, led her to a tunnel entrance, and held a scrap of Grastelian steel up to the ceiling.
When it lit up like a second night sky, Ksenia forgot what she was upset about before Danika even lowered her arm.
But now they were running for their lives, and there was no time for play.
“Listen carefully,” she began, “this is a wayfinder coin, and there aren’t that many left in Kraal. It’s your light through the darkness and will unlock the safe house. Guard it like your life depends on it because it does. The Shepherd will find you there and take you to Drenvar.”
They sobered, but with the token clutched in the girl’s hand, their gazes were sharper and more focused as they looked into the darkness.
Ksenia gathered them even closer. “That man earlier, you sensed his blade, didn’t you?”
The children nodded slowly.
“That feeling of his blade, that’s your bondsense. Every one of us has it; it’s how your blood recognizes bound steel.” She kept her voice steady. “Headhunters know you can hear that. That man wasn’t bored; he was hunting.”
The youngest girl pressed closer to Ksenia’s side.
“The Vein isn’t empty. You might hear the same thing down here. If you hear a soulbound blade—what should you do?”
The boy on the right hesitated. “Run?”
“Yes. Run. Fast, in the opposite direction. Do not approach it, do not investigate it, do not try to see who’s carrying it. Just run and return to the coin’s light on the path when the sound has subsided. Understood?”
“Yes,” they chorused, though their faces had gone pale.
“What about—” The same boy swallowed hard. Ksenia waited for his courage to return. “What about hellbound blades…?” His question trailed.
Her expression hardened. “If you hear a hellbound blade, what do you think you should do?”
A little girl at her waist whispered up to her. “Run faster?”
“Run faster,” Ksenia confirmed. “They’re worse. Much worse. No one in the Bound Eye will be carrying those, only bad people who want to catch you before you can reach the safe house.”
Ksenia looked at each child in turn. “Stay sharp.”
“Stay safe,” they replied together, stronger now.
Ksenia nodded and managed an encouraging smile.
She watched the children descend farther into the tunnels until the glow dimmed.
She clambered out of the canal, fingers digging for purchase between the stones lining the wall. As she hoisted herself over the edge and back onto the walkway, dried blood greeted her nose.
At her side, a small stone shrine was embedded in the wall. Inside, a statue was worn down, its face smoothed and unrecognizable as to which god it honored. Nailed to the shelter’s pointed archway lay a dead rabbit with its entrails torn out, blood dripping on the shrine’s floor.
Ksenia surmised it was a blood offering to a god of travel, based on the crudely chiseled compass and lodestone motifs lining the archway. Sacrifice was the surest way to get a god’s attention, giving them power in leaps and bounds compared to other forms of worship.
Wordlessly, Ksenia drew her dagger from a sheath at her thigh. A warm but imperfect resonance harmonized in her body, like an iron tuning fork struck upon stone then held against her sternum, still vibrating.
No two bound weapons rang the same.
And this one was her own: a beautiful, simple design with a needle-thin blade and an aged mahogany–polished hilt. It gleamed in the low light as she ran her finger against the blade.
Pain blossomed before becoming a warm haze as the blood beaded from the slit on her finger, and she pressed the wound against the statue’s forehead.
“God of Wanderers and the Lost, I commend those four souls to your keeping. Guard their steps, steady their hearts, and deliver them from this hellish place,” she murmured before stealing into the night.
Threading the alleyways and retracing her steps, she returned to Danika.
She had expected silence, even darkened windows.
She hadn’t expected to find the door hanging crooked on its hinges, splintered wood catching the wind.
Ksenia’s heart lurched into her throat as she broke into a sprint.
“Danika—”
The words died as she reached the threshold. The candle they’d left burning on the table had been knocked to the floor.
“Niks—” Her voice cracked.
No answer.
She stumbled over a broken chair. The air reeked of smoke mixed with the coppery tang of blood.
Her hands shook as she fumbled for the matchbox in her pocket and struck it once, twice.
A small flame caught, and the shadows pulled in to reveal the violence that had taken place in her absence.
Overturned furniture, packs torn open, contents strewn over the floor. The mattress had been flung to the opposite corner and slashed.
Her heart turned to stone as her gaze shifted to the dark stain in the room’s center, a bloody trail of someone or something being dragged out the cottage’s back door. Her mind raced: the raid had caught Danika. She hadn’t been fast enough, wasn’t here to help.
The match burned low in her trembling grip, but she barely registered the burn until her fingertips seared with pain and she flung it down with a hiss.
It landed on the blood-slick floor and sizzled.