The Outer Districts
Lark had forgotten that. Or perhaps she had simply stopped noticing it during the years she lived here, the same way you stopped noticing the color of your own walls or the creak of your own stairs.
But now, after months away, the stench hit her like a physical blow.
Rotting garbage. Open sewers. The acrid bite of the tanneries that dominated the southern quarter.
“Charming,” Darian said mildly.
“I told you about the smell.”
“You did. I thought you were exaggerating.”
“I never exaggerate.”
They moved through narrow streets that wound between ramshackle buildings, structures that leaned against each other like drunks propping one another up.
The cobblestones were cracked and missing in places, replaced by packed dirt that turned to mud in the frequent rains.
People watched them pass with the hollow-eyed wariness of those who had learned that strangers meant trouble.
Lark kept her hood up and her pace steady. Not too fast, not too slow. Nothing that would draw attention. She was just another traveler passing through, unremarkable, forgettable.
She hoped.
“How much farther?” Darian asked.
“A few more streets. The Broken Wheel is near the eastern edge of the tannery district, where the smell starts to fade.” She paused at a corner, orienting herself.
The streets had shifted slightly since she’d last been here, a building collapsed, a new one thrown up in its place, but the bones of the neighborhood remained the same. “This way.”
They turned down an alley that was barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Laundry hung from lines strung between upper windows, dripping onto their heads as they passed. A child watched them from a doorway, thumb in mouth, eyes too old for its face.
“Did you grow up somewhere like this?” Darian asked quietly.
“For a little while. Before Isolde took me in.” Lark didn’t look at him. “The streets of Summerbright are hard, but at least there’s order. The guilds make sure of that.”
“How did you survive?”
Lark shrugged. “I just did.”
They emerged from the alley onto a wider street, and Lark stopped.
There it was. Rising above the rooftops to the north, visible from almost anywhere in the city. The broken obelisk.
It had been beautiful once. The histories described it as a spire of pure white stone that had channeled aetheria to every corner of the city, allowing even the weakest witches to perform feats of magic.
Now it was a jagged stump, its top sheared off in whatever catastrophe had occurred two centuries ago.
The remaining stone had gone gray with age and neglect, the light within extinguished.
The witches of Summerbright had been crippled ever since. Their magic was weak, unreliable, a shadow of what it had once been. The guilds had moved in to fill the power vacuum, and the enclave had retreated behind its walls, hoarding what little power remained.
Lark stared at the jagged remains and felt foreboding. Duskwood believed she could repair it. That she could build new obelisks at his command and reshape the flow of magic across the continent. That was why he wanted her and why he had tried to buy her from Isolde.
Looking at the broken monument now, she wondered if he was right.
“That’s it?” Darian followed her gaze. “The obelisk?”
“What’s left of it.”
“It’s smaller than I expected.”
“It was taller. Before.” Lark tore her eyes away and continued walking. “The top half is somewhere in the bay, supposedly. No one’s ever tried to retrieve it.”
“Do you think you could repair it?”
The question landed heavily. Darian knew what Duskwood believed about her abilities. He was asking something else entirely. Could she do it?
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. She turned down another street, this one lined with taverns and boarding houses that catered to workers from the tanneries. “We’re almost there.”
The Broken Wheel announced itself with a creaking sign that depicted, appropriately enough, a wagon wheel with several spokes missing.
The building beneath it was two stories of aging wood and dirty windows, unremarkable in every way except for the studied anonymity of its facade.
No guild markings. No territorial claims. It was a place where people went to avoid being noticed.
“Wait here,” Lark said. “Let me make sure it’s still safe.”
She slipped inside before Darian could argue.
The common room was dim and half-empty, populated by men and women who looked up at her entrance and then deliberately looked away. The air smelled of stale beer and wood smoke and cooking that might have been stew or boiled leather.
Behind the bar stood a woman Lark recognized.
Older now, her dark hair shot through with gray, but with the same sharp eyes and sharper tongue.
Anya Coldwell. She had run the Broken Wheel for as long as Lark could remember, and she had never asked a single question about what her customers did when they weren’t drinking her watered-down ale.
Lark approached the bar and lowered her hood briefly.
Anya’s expression didn’t change. No surprise, no recognition, nothing at all. She simply looked at Lark, then reached for a mug.
“Thought you were dead,” she said.
“Not yet.”
“Heard you killed Isolde.”
“Something like that.”
“Good.” Anya filled the mug from a tap and slid it across the bar. “She had it coming. I assume you’re not here to reminisce.”
“I need a room. Two beds. Somewhere quiet.”
“Quiet costs extra.”
“That's fine.”
Anya studied her and nodded. “Top floor, end of the hall. The window overlooks the alley if you need a quick exit. Payment in advance, no questions asked, no answers given.”
“That’s what I always liked about you, Anya.”
“Save the charm for someone who cares.” But there was a ghost of warmth in her voice. “Welcome back to Summerbright.”
The room was small and sparse, containing two narrow beds, a washstand, and a single chair positioned near the window. The mattresses were thin but clean, and the promised window did indeed overlook an alley that connected to three different escape routes.
Darian took it all in, checking sight lines and defensible positions. “This will do.”
“High praise.” Lark set her pack on one bed and moved to the window, scanning the alley below. Empty for now. “We should be safe here. Anya doesn’t talk, and her clientele values privacy too much to ask questions.”
“You know her well?”
“Well enough. She fenced some things for Isolde over the years. Small jobs. She never got involved with the serious work, which is probably why she’s still alive.” Lark turned from the window. “I don't believe she'll turn us in. It would be bad for business.”
Darian settled into the chair, his long legs stretched out before him, his sword propped against the wall within easy reach. Neither of them spoke. The silence differed from the companionable quiet of the road, heavy with the absence of the others.
“Strange,” Darian said finally. “Being here without them.”
“Strange how?”
“I’ve gotten used to Pippa’s chatter. Her presence.” A soft and warm smile passed across his face, there and gone. “Rion’s questions. Even the wolf’s snoring. It’s quiet.”
“You don’t like quiet?”
“I don’t dislike it. It’s just different.” He met her eyes. “We’ve never spent much time alone together. You and I.”
This was true. In the turns since they had met, there had always been others present.
Pippa, whose relentless energy filled every silence.
Rion, whose scholarly observations provided a constant backdrop.
Noctis, whose presence was its own kind of company.
The five of them had become a unit, but within that unit, Lark realized, she and Darian had rarely interacted without a buffer.
“I suppose we haven’t,” she said.
“Does that bother you?”
“Should it?”
“I’m asking.”
Lark considered the question. Darian was not someone she would have chosen as a companion under normal circumstances. He was too solid, too steady, too anchored in his sense of duty and honor. The type of man who had spent his life following rules, while she had spent hers breaking them.
And yet.
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me. You’re good in a fight. You don’t talk too much, and you don’t ask questions you don’t need the answers to.” She paused. “I’ve worked with worse.”
“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
A smile flickered across his face. “I’ll try to contain myself.”
They settled into the room, unpacking only what they needed, keeping everything else ready for a quick departure. Darian checked his weapon. The ritual was familiar, a soldier’s habit that never faded.
“Tell me about your time in the army,” Lark said eventually. “You mentioned twenty years, but you never said much more than that.”
He was quiet, as though considering what he would tell her. “There’s not much to say. I enlisted young. Worked my way up to Captain. Saw things I’d rather forget and did things I’m not proud of.”
“That sounds like a great deal to tell, actually.”
“It sounds like a story for another time.” But his voice wasn’t hard.
Just tired. “Let’s just say that I understand more than you might think.
About following orders. About doing what you’re told because the alternative is worse, and then waking up one day and realizing you’ve become someone you never intended to be. ”
Lark had always assumed his steadiness was innate. It had never occurred to her that it might be constructed, built deliberately over years of learning and unlearning.
“Is that why you left?”
“I haven’t left. Not officially. I’m still a Captain, still responsible for training new recruits back in Autumncrown. This is something of a side quest, I suppose. Extended leave for exceptional circumstances.”
“And you always lived in Autumncrown?”
“Yes.” He turned his gaze to the window. “Rion and Pippa and I grew up together. You can imagine how that was. If you think Pippa talks a lot now …” A small smile crossed his face. “Well, I kept the two of them out of trouble. Or tried to.”
Lark wondered what it would be like to have that sort of lifelong friendship, the kind where you know each other’s every secret and every triumph. Or failure.
“After my two years of mandatory military service, I chose to continue serving.” He paused. “It was never about some sort of redemption. I don’t believe in redemption, not really. But it was a chance to be part of something larger. A chance to balance the scales, even if they’ll never be even.”
Lark thought about that. About scales that could never be balanced and the blood on her hands that would never wash clean.
“Rion thinks I’m more than the worst things I’ve done,” she said quietly. “He believes people can change, can become someone better.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I want to.” She sat on the edge of her bed, suddenly weary. “I spent years being exactly what Isolde made me. I’m still not sure that I know how to be anything else.”
“You’re already something else.” Darian’s voice was matter-of-fact. “You’re here, aren’t you? Hiding in a tavern, waiting to find out if your friends have convinced a bunch of paranoid witches to join a war they want no part of. That’s not nothing.”
“It doesn’t feel like much.” The thought of the Citadel surfaced. Killing two guards and leaving Colm Brannock behind to face certain death. How much had she changed, really?
“It never does,” he said. “That’s the thing about change. It happens so slowly you don’t notice until you look back and realize you’re not where you started.”
The light outside was fading, the afternoon giving way to evening. They decided to stay in the room rather than venture out. The travel rations weren’t appetizing, but they were safer than showing Lark’s face in a common room full of strangers. Tomorrow, if no word came, they would reassess.
But for now, they sat in the gathering dusk and let the silence stretch between them. Less awkward now. More like the quiet between two people who had come to an understanding.
“Thank you,” Lark said finally.
Darian raised an eyebrow. “For what?”
“For being here. For not asking too many questions and understanding what it’s like to carry a weight you can’t put down.”
He nodded once, acknowledging. “We all carry things. The trick is learning how to keep walking anyway.”
“Is that what you’ve learned? In all your years of balancing scales?”
“It’s what I’m still learning.” He rose from the chair and moved to the window, checking the alley one more time before drawing the curtain closed. “I suspect I’ll be learning it until I die.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is. But the alternative is worse.”
Lark thought about that as she lay back on the thin mattress and stared at the ceiling.
The alternative was worse. Giving up, giving in, letting the weight of the past crush you into dust. She had come close to that in the days after she fled, when she had considered simply walking into the sea and letting it take her.
But she hadn’t. She had kept walking. She had found Wintersorrow and then Rion and then this strangely beautiful new life that she still didn’t quite believe was real.
Maybe that was enough. Maybe the walking was the point.
“We should sleep,” Darian said, settling onto his own bed. “If a Brightwing comes, it’ll come to the window. We’ll hear it.”
“And if it doesn’t come?”
“Then we wait another day. And another after that, if we have to.” He pulled off his boots and set them within easy reach. “The door is locked. We’re as safe as we’re going to be.”
Lark wasn’t sure she believed that. But she was tired, and the mattress was softer than the ground. Tomorrow would bring whatever it brought.
She closed her eyes, letting the sounds of the tavern below filter through the thin floor.
Out in the city, Rion and Pippa were approaching the enclave, presenting their case, trying to build an alliance out of suspicion and fear.
Somewhere in the darkness, the broken obelisk stood silent and cold, a monument to disaster and a reminder of what Duskwood believed she could do.
But here in this room above a tavern that smelled like tanning fluid, Lark waited.