When Silver Burned: Chapter 48-49 (Patreon)

Note: We're almost at the finish line for Book 1!

48 - No Country for Free Men

"Who are you, and why you got your tits damn near flapping in the wind?"

Ringtail had crept up behind the silver-haired woman, sword extended and slowly circling around toward Kalsin. Her breaths were coming short, swiping at the rain that was getting into her eyes, but she was unhurt.

Kalsin stared at the spear-wielding woman who had quite literally just stepped out of his own fucking torso to impale a man, then crack his skull like a melon. She remained ramrod straight, standing at attention even as the storm raged around her.

"You..." Kalsin breathed. He waited until Ringtail drew up next to him. He then reached out and gently put his hand on the flat of her blade to lower her sword. "You can see her, too, Ringtail?"

"'Course I do," she growled, tossing her sword to her other hand, out of his reach so she could resume pointing it toward the woman. "Hey, frostcunt! I'm talking to you. Do you surrender or what?" Ringtail's head jerked around as she tried to peer into the dark for a moment. Her button nose flared in agitation. "Your buddies are just about all dead, so I recommend you do as we say, like, I don't know, right the fuck now."

The woman just kept staring at Kalsin.

"Um." He gave her a hesitant nod. "At ease?"

Just like she had done before when she had approached him in the camp, the woman relaxed her posture. She slightly leaned on her planted spear, taking a critical look around and entirely unbothered by the wind tossing her braid like a flag. If she saw more than they did in the dark, she didn't voice it.

"I apologize if my entrance has unsettled you, sir. I would have waited until you're more acquainted with us, but the Herald was ineffective and the Scout cannot intervene against the sons of men." She thumped her spear shaft with a knuckle. "Of us three, only I can cross over fully in the flesh."

"The hell you blabbering about?" Ringtail said. She looked at Kalsin, frowning. "You know this gal?"

Kalsin wanted to say no. He wanted to ignore all the weird, strange, mystical crap that had been hounding him ever since taking that scar from Jack's body. But burying your head in the sand is bad for the business of plan-making. So he let himself think. 

In the momentary break in combat, he tried to puzzle together all he remembered and all the cryptic words she had said.

Kalsin could see ghosts. That was a fact. The red-haired woman was a ghost invisible to all except him, a herald who foresaw all the gristly ways he was about to die. Nobody had seen her when he fought. Nobody had acknowledged the strange faceless ghost inside the prison office or standing alone in eastern tundras. None—except for her.

He saw the way she had emerged from his body, materializing inch by inch. How she had said 'crossing over in the flesh'. The way her silver hair, wet and windblown, gleamed in a color that was all too familiar whenever he looked in the mirror. The hateful color of his eyes.

He had never seen the herald—until the day he took up Jack’s scar.

He had never seen the silver-haired woman—until the morning he claimed Ringtail’s.

Both could appear and vanish at will. Both acted with Kalsin as their centerpiece, stepping in at the moments he needed them most. Somehow, the scars and these phantoms were bound together. He couldn’t explain why or how; but then again, he was already on the path to becoming the Republic’s number one enemy, with no clearer understanding of why scars leapt onto his body or why they came with visions of the past. This revelation was just one among a long row of many.

One scar taken for one ghost received. The scars carried upon his body were the sacrifice he made for the betterment of others, seeing and living through their traumas and cleansing them of its influence. The ghosts—unbelievable as it sounded—were the reward.

"You're... you're my creation. A byproduct of the scars I had taken." Kalsin watched her in both horror and awe, the way rain collided with her skin, gliding off in thick rivulets. It seemed so real. "You—you don't exist."

Emotion flared across the woman's features. She murmured, "That is not true, sir. You exist. Therefore, I exist too."

Despite the rain and the distance between them, he heard her as if she was standing next to him.

“What’s your name?” Kalsin asked.

“Call me the Captain, sir.”

“That’s not a name.”

“Maybe not. But with respect, it adequately describes what I am,” The Captain said. She then looked at Ringtail and gave a curt nod. "Greetings, little warrior."

"Take a pincushion and shove it up your ass anally, cow."

A wave of heat hit Kalsin as the wind changed direction. The manifested fire had grown to an alarming size by now, blotting out a large portion of the land and illuminating the stormy night all around it. He saw the bodies and those still standing, and for a moment dreaded the thought of having to mourn another score of his mates.

Fals stood with her back to them, wrestling with her burning shield before finally hurling it into the inferno. Crux, Shoreline, and Cyanfish closed in on the group’s center, deliberately giving Jack a wide berth—she squinted back at them with suspicion as she gathered Hollow’s reins. Quiescent drifted from corpse to corpse, methodically driving the final holes where needed. Only Littleguy dragged his steps, though the grim set of his jaw was enough to keep both Dweller and Wardoll at a distance. The man was holding it together, still. But not by much.

"I recognize this one," Pike said, letting the body he'd been dragging drop to their feet, making Sap dance back with a neigh. "He was from the regiment directly south of us. Had my shield crossed with the fella against the Veiled. Lieutenant's pet." He grimaced, not missing the irony. "Guess that answers how some of the older boys would take the news."

Kalsin shook his head, crouching. He turned the man's face toward him. Narrow nose, beard. "No. I doubt he was an older boy proper."

"Why's that?"

"Because I reckon if we stripped the fella and searched him for his scar, we'd find nothing but smooth skin," Kalsin said. He stood, wiping his hands. The gesture did little in the rain. "You know how Clenn rarely work together with our kind. It's not impossible, I suppose, but... maybe the Civil House had been further ahead of me than I thought. If they had managed to plant several men to pose as Scarrd along the borderlands, then maybe the noose had been tightening for a while now." 

He purposefully didn't look at Ringtail, not in the mood to see her smug expression. "I don't blame you lads for spreading the rumors, is my point. Maybe they were on their way to take me out anyway. And if that's the case—then I'm glad to have you all by my side."

"Heavens wept, that is just beautiful," Fals said. One of her eyebrows was singed. She lifted an extra pack she had picked up from somewhere and tossed it at the Captain. The silver-haired woman caught it with one hand. "You're one of his, I take it?" Fals jerked her thumb at Kalsin.

A ghost of a smile graced the Captain's lips. "I am."

Kalsin didn’t dispute it. For now, it was easier to let his companions believe the silver-haired apparition was nothing more than another bodyguard, no different from Jack. The truth was harder to swallow. It still baffled him that she was even visible to them at all—that this specter was a damn flesh-and-blood ghost, capable of speaking, touching, killing. 

But priorities. They had to survive first. Only once they were clear of the Republic would there be time to sit down and unravel this circus in full.

Jack stalked up to them, armor clinking with each step, her face drawn into a stormy scowl. She gave the Captain a glance sharp enough to cut, then fell into her usual place at Kalsin’s shoulder. For all her size, Jack was normally good-natured and quick with a grin so long as no danger loomed over her charge. Tonight, however, had been disaster after disaster. She had made a plan, and it had amounted to nothing. She wanted to rescue him and they ended up having to fight a score of Clenn instead.

"Cinder?" Kalsin called out. For a moment he thought she'd disappeared again—but a moment later she shuffled out from behind Sap's flank. Unhurt, thank the gods.

"I failed you," she whispered, staring past him with a blank face. "I should have seen them. I should have watched our backs and noticed the men following us."

"Cinder," Kalsin stepped forward, grabbing his sister by the shoulders. "We must run. I need you to find a way forward across the wall, okay? A gap, a single man missing from his post, anything. They'll come to put out the fires and they'll see the dead. Our only option now is to break through directly."

"No, no you don't understand Kalsin, you never did! This is the one thing I can give you, and I keep fucking up even that much—"

He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against hers to look into her eyes. "Just one more time, Cinder. Please. We're almost there." Her skin was cold, her hair a soaked mess. But he got her eyes to focus on him again. "You're the only one I trust to lead us out of here."

Thunder rumbled. The rain kept hammering down, stubbornly hovering over the borderlands. But Cinder nodded slowly, and she took a shuddering breath before standing tall, wiping hair out of her face.

"Okay. Yeah. I'll try my best. I'll do it right, this time."

Kalsin smiled and let go of her shoulders. He felt the others staring at him, and he did not care in the slightest for whatever reservations they had about his sister. They would fall in line, or they'd be left behind.

"There's more to your savior than meets the eye," the Captain suddenly spoke up. She did not flinch in the crossfire of gazes. "More than just the scars he takes. Have faith in him, good soldiers. Has he not done the impossible already?"

She pulled her spear from the mud, nodded to Cinder, and took the lead between her and the rest of the company.

And the company followed.

The winds were cold and the ground unsteady. The storm was beginning to lose some of its bite, but showed no signs of dissipating any time soon. Kalsin could see no better now than he had an hour ago—shadows blurred with distance, outlines dissolving into mist, every shape in the dark threatening to be a soldier or worse. His legs burned, but he was accustomed enough to the beat of the march.

Kalsin had his eyes set on the two moving forms ahead of him. One silver-haired, the other blonde. One a stranger, the other a familiar face from his earliest memories. They led the group across the windswept tundra, strung together like links in a chain being dragged by an invisible hand toward the east. Water squelched in his boots, his men hunched deeper into their coats, but still they pressed on.

The night was a chokehold on the senses. Their world had narrowed to mud, grass, and the press of comrades at their sides, boots stamping footprints that filled with water as soon as they were made. The only banner in the dark was the blazing pillar of fire they had left behind.

The borderlands lay quiet under the storm. Once, Cinder had to double back and guide them around a cluster of soldiers sent to inspect the fires, swords in hand and buckets of dirt over their shoulders. Wildfires weren’t unusual in this climate, but with rain pouring from the sky, any reasonable man would wonder if those flames had truly started on their own. It wouldn’t be long before the bodies were discovered. By dawn, the Old would be crawling with armed men, scouring the camps for deserters—faces easy to pick out for the simple reason that they were no longer in their allocated places.

Cinder slowed, waving to Kalsin. A few steps more, and he could see her better in the dark, hunched over with her hands gripping her knees. "We're here," she breathed. "Near a hundred feet forward and we'll hit the wall." She cast a wary look behind him, at the group slowly catching up. "Tell them to keep quiet. There's only a skeleton crew patrolling the walls, but they might hear something."

The Captain was already ahead of him. "Keep your voices down," she said back over the rain, her voice low and commanding, the kind often carried by those in positions of authority. "We're almost there."

"We should send someone forward, scout it out," Shoreline whispered as she drifted toward Cinder's side. His sister immediately pulled away to give her space.

"We've got the scouting covered." the Captain stated. She watched Kalsin, as if looking for confirmation. Or approval.

Kalsin watched the darkness for a minute, thinking. They could brute force their way out at this point—but these men were not their enemies. Even if his existence was essentially a declaration of war upon his country, he did not want his first known appearance to be a violent one. They had to get through undetected.

Kalsin nodded. "We'll go in pairs. Cinder will act as our spotter, letting us know when it's safe to move once the pair has made it to the other side." He got a series of worrying looks at that. Kalsin saw Cinder already striding forward into the night, exchanging a significant look with the Captain as she disappeared. "Fals, Dweller, you two go first. Try to move fast and your head low. The moment Cinder gives the ready, you leg it toward the Eastern Expanse."

"Huh. That sounds... well, far be it for me to complain, but—" Fals started.

"I'll stand watch, too," the Captain interrupted. She indicated forward with her spear. "I can stay just on the edge. Cinder will have to cover less ground if she can relay the information to me."

Kalsin didn't understand their strange aversion to his sister, but he bit off whatever he was about to say. His mates were jumpy and clearly on edge, and he had to stay composed if he wanted to lead them out of here. This plan was quick and simple. It would work. It would be good enough.

"I know you lot might not trust my sister yet. Jack, and," he paused before jerking his thumb at the Captain, "her, and Cinder are all strangers to you still. You share no camaraderie and have little knowledge of their character beyond my words. But believe me when I say that our best chance at making it out of here alive is with Cinder at the front. We've hunted mythos with less intel together. She's a prodigy at staying undetected."

Kalsin wasn't a natural leader. He wasn't born with a honeyed tongue, and only necessity made him hone his word-craft growing up. If it was up to him, he would have spent his days locked in a breezy farmhouse with nothing but a plate of roast duck and a writing table.

So it was strange then, that when he spoke, people sometimes listened. Tonight was one of those nights.

"Madness," Pike muttered. But they paired off and waited in the dark all the same.

Cinder's call came some time later. When it did, the Captain standing on the edges of their vision waved her arm, herding the first pair forward.

The women exchanged a look, Fals giving her mate a small nod of encouragement. She then shot a sardonic salute back over to Kalsin, and she was off with Dweller following close behind. He saw their shapes merge into the night before he lost sight of them entirely.

They hunched in silence for long minutes. Jack kept shifting her weight next to him, the pointy bottom of her shield digging little incisions into the mud. Shhhck. Shhhck. She flinched when Kalsin put a hand on her arm. He gave her an uncertain smile, trying to give some warmth in the depths of this cold night. The worry lines around her eyes eased a bit. She shook her head with mock sadness, rapping a finger against her own temple before lovingly thumping him on the forehead with the same digit.

'Well, there ya go. My plans had nosedived before they could even begin. I hope yours will fare better.'

Kalsin thumped her right back with a no-nonsense look. He couldn't take ownership of the plan. Running for the Maroon Gulf and then sailing across the Kel Waters toward Seven Fallter had been her idea from the start. This row of happy little disasters was a collaborative effort more than anything. With him doing most of the fumbling.

The call went out again, and it was Littleguy and Cyanfish going next. The big man had been staring at Kalsin with a far-away look until 'Fish nudged him in the side. Littleguy sniffed once, wiping water from his nose. "Did you ever draw him?" he asked.

Kalsin tapped the hard outline of his handbook at the side of his pack, recalling the redheaded youth chewing on a stalk of grass during the march. He gave a nod.

Littleguy rested his eyes for a long moment. He turned then, and the two men disappeared toward the eastern border. And the wait continued.

The moon stayed hidden and the wind unbroken, but the rain had begun to ease. Their clothes were soaked through regardless, yet it was some comfort to know the worst had passed. Far off, only scattered pinpricks of lightning still danced as the storm rolled down toward the sea. Kalsin found himself wondering how different life might be if he could only climb onto the clouds and let them carry him across land and country.

Quiescent and Wardoll went next.

"What happens once we're out there?" Ringtail asked, kneeling at his side. She idly tore handfuls of red grass from her feet.

"We'll be safe from the Republic."

"From them, sure, maybe... but that's like going from pot to kettle. Anywhere east of here is Veiled territory."

"It's no-man's land," Crux cut in. "There's nothing but red grass for miles and miles outward. Nothing that indicates a functioning civilization at any rate. If the Veiled live somewhere, it's a hell of a lot more far away than any of our countrymen had ever chronicled."

Crux was right. Allegedly. It's not like the Újtavak libraries were bursting with information about the invaders' housing habits.

"We don't have to penetrate deep into the expanse," Kalsin told Ringtail. "Just far enough away so that we're not visible from the lookout spots along the wall. Then we take a sharp turn southward, and we march until we hit the gulf." He glanced at Jack. "We can make it in a week if we push hard. Two, at most."

His bodyguard nodded. She didn't even need to use her root's surge to guesstimate.

Cinder's next call was more urgent. Some of the men had returned from investigating the fires, and the gaps along the wall were getting more scarce. Some of his mates—Ringtail first among them—argued Kalsin should go next. He insisted otherwise. Of all their ragged band, he was the best protected. He hadn’t told them about his death-predicting herald, but he did point a very deliberate finger at both Jack and the Captain. With those two towering guardians watching over him, he’d have to damn well try if he wanted to get himself killed.

Not to mention, if he truly meant to become the fabled leader of a Scarrd rebellion, then he had to start acting like one. Everyone knew the captain was always last to abandon ship.

They sent three this time. Shoreline, Crux, and Pike. The Captain sent them onward into the dark, and then waved the others over to where she was standing.

"We'll be less visible if you dismiss me, sir," she told Kalsin.

He cocked his head. "Dismiss you?"

The Captain bristled. "Technically, I can disappear without your say-so, sir. But I prefer to obey your command whenever the opportunity allows."

Kalsin could feel both Jack's and Ringtails intense scrutiny during the exchange. It made him hesitate for a moment. But not much longer than that.

"Do it," he said.

The Captain thumped her soaked chest with her fist, spraying droplets. He almost expected her to jump him; to step forward and merge back into his body like the way she had come out. But instead—the silver-haired ghost just simply disappeared.

She was there one moment, and gone in the next.

"What the holy is fucking in the hell," Ringtail cursed, spinning around frantically, searching the dark. “You didn’t tell me she was overworld!”

Jack blinked long at where the Captain had been standing, then turned to stare at Kalsin. He might have imagined it, but he swore it was understanding that dawned on her face.

"She's my ghost," Kalsin said. He searched for words before choosing one that fit the situation as well as anything else would. "My... manifestation."

"Scarrd have no manifestations, idiot," Ringtail growled, clutching her sword to her chest anxiously. When she saw Jack standing there, composed, she seemed to force herself to relax and let her sword-arm drop. "Wait, uh. What do you mean… ghost, Ghost?"

"Ironic, isn't it," Kalsin muttered. His eyes were set in the distance, waiting for his sister's call. "Somehow, the name Brownweather gives me ends up being a prophetic one." He tapped his head. "I see ghosts. One for each of the scars I had taken. Jack's is a silent horror-spawn who can see all my gristly deaths a few seconds before they happen. A proper ghosty-ghost, that one; invisible to all but me. But the one I got from you, Rin, is the flesh-and-blood woman you had just seen vanish into thin air. Also a ghost, I think. But it seems to function much differently."

For a moment, Ringtail only stared at him, mouth hanging open.

Then she spun on her heel, took a few steps, and began pacing.

“...‘Just a regular Joe,’ he says. Takes my scar like it’s pocket change. ‘Not a god,’ he says. Then goes and creates people out of fucking nothing...” 

Kalsin grimaced, shifting in place uncomfortably. It did sound sort of unhinged, now that he heard it said out loud. Jack only gave a helpless shrug.

"Now, Kalsin!" Cinder's call rang out from somewhere ahead.

He gathered Sap's reigns, motioned both women forward, and rushed into the night.

The pace they dictated through the next hundred paces was frantic. Mud spattered as Ringtail ran ahead, with Jack and Hollow following close behind Kalsin. Thunder echoed from the direction of the retreating storm, reaching them like a distant farewell, but the night remained dark and the world around them a featureless pocket only filled by the thumps of their boots.

Ahead of them, a low shadow coalesced out of the darkness, slanted like an earthen ramp—the wall. Though Kalsin saw no guards in the night, a faint sound of voices could be heard on the wind, carried down the length of the Old. Voices that sounded too near for comfort. They were cutting it close.

There was no time to hesitate. Not without risking discovery.

Ringtail was the first to reach the wall. She crouched at its base, looking back over her shoulder anxiously. Seeing Kalsin quickly wave her on, she started climbing the earth ramp like a four-legged eel. Three seconds flat, a barely noticeable pause at the top, and she vaulted down the other side. She was through.

“Come on,” Kalsin whispered, urging Sap forward. The bahten plodded on until they reached the slope of the wall. He stopped there, whinnying, front fins scraping uselessly at the incline. Kalsin tugged on the reins and stepped onto the slope himself, showing it was safe. Sap’s nostrils flared. With a sudden lurch, he hopped forward, slipping twice before finally finding purchase as his hind legs braced at the base.

Behind them, Jack’s head snapped around, her heavy steps quickening. When she saw Sap struggling, she steered Hollow past Kalsin and his mount, swinging herself into the warlander’s saddle even as the beast moved.

That’s when the whistling reached them.

A tune carried out of the dark—off-key, the kind soldiers used to fill the dead hours of a long shift. A workman’s ballad. At any other time, Kalsin might have welcomed it. Sap's head swiveled toward the sound. He was a friendly beast. That, too, Kalsin treasured beyond words.

"Go!" Kalsin slapped his flank, urgency filling his voice. Muscles coiled, then sprang forward as Sap trotted up the short slope, momentum carrying him over the top and disappearing down the other side. Kalsin would have worried about a regular horse breaking a foot in the dark, but bahten were made of sturdier stuff.

The ascent of a man might've gone unnoticed. Their mounts were bigger, and they made a hell of a lot more noise.

"Who is that?" came the voice a moment before the man appeared. "Uggo?"

It was Youthere.

Their mate was clad in chainmail and helmet, wearing the latter more against the rain than anything else. One hand rested on his sheathed sword as he jogged toward them, and in that instant Kalsin knew he was watching a man brave enough to charge headlong into what could have been a group of Veiled breaching the Republic.

"What... Ghost?" Youthere slowed, relief clear on his face. Confusion wasn't long to follow as he fully took in the scene.

Kalsin couldn't so much as hesitate before Hollow strode up beside him, Jack leaning down from the saddle with an arm outstretched, her hair falling loose across her face in a wild tangle.

He did hesitate, then. Because Youthere's sword was halfway out of its sheath, and though there was a fair bit of distance between them still—the man looked ready to surge.

"What do you think you're doing, Ghost?"

Kalsin remained very still. "You heard about it. Right? You heard about Ringtail. The things people have been saying."

"Sure. People say a lot of things."

Another slow inch left the sheath.

"But you saw it, too. Or heard from someone who did. Baseless tales rarely spread this quickly through a camp."

"You took her scar. Or so the story goes." Wind blew across the front lines. "Yeah. I know. 'Course I do. Everyone knows by now, I reckon."

Kalsin didn't look away from the older boy. "Then you know why I must get away from here."

Kalsin did not blink. He watched for the herald to appear at any moment, to move or dodge or deflect a strike that would be too quick for him to react to otherwise. He was alert, his attention drawn like a string about to snap, because alertness was all he had against people with superior speed and superior strength.

Perception—to see the coming dangers.

Perception—to see whether someone posed a danger at all.

“I would have come, Ghost,” Youthere said. “With the others. When Fals spread the word—said Ringtail was leading a secret rescue party to find you—I nearly joined them.”

Slowly, his sword hissed back into his scabbard.

"Why didn't you?" Kalsin asked. He nudged his head toward the east. "You can still come. Desertion has become very popular among fresh older boys, lately." He smiled sadly. "Or so people keep telling me."

Youthere returned the smile, for a moment. But it quickly turned bitter. "He's barely holding on, Ghost. I can't leave Gergej behind."

"Gergej?"

"Batshit."

"Oh."

Silence stretched between them. Uncomfortable, uneasy silence. Camaraderie can only fill so many holes.

A hand touched Kalsin's shoulder, insistent. He turned, accepting Jack's muscular arm and letting her help him up with a single pull. She deposited him behind her on the saddle, and his arm wrapped around her waist on instinct.

“Is it wrong that I hate them more than I do the Veiled?” Youthere asked suddenly.

Kalsin watched the man thumb his pommel from Hollow’s back, and he wished he didn’t know who he meant. He wished they lived in a world where his ability to cleanse scars wasn’t needed at all. A country where human would simply mean human.

“Me and Gergej, we never held a sword before the barracks. We knew hoe from shovel, weeds from grain, and then one bad harvest lands us in a debt too large to pay off. Join the army, then. To the frontlines with you, Scarrd scum, because whatever broke you in the past means you’re no good to us anymore. Stay on the border and watch as all your mates get picked off, one by one. Stay as Clenn recruits come and go, dipping their toes into the stew that boils you alive.”

A scent of smoke carried on the wind. The night stayed cold and still.

“Still. Of all the ways it could’ve happened, I’m glad it was this. It’s not every day you get pressed into the same regiment as a myth you’ve only been hearing whispers about.”

Kalsin looked down at the man. “A myth? What do you mean you’ve heard about…” he trailed off, then. “The seb hordozó.”

“Funny, isn’t it? A man who harbors heretical ideas. Then goes ahead and gets caught via agricultural bureaucracy.”

“Which then lands him right next to the source of those heretical myths,” Kalsin smiled.

“Heh.”

Kaslin felt Jack fidget on the saddle in front of him. She pulled on the reins, giving Hollow the tiniest of commands. Unlike Sap, the warlander was unimpressed by the tiny earthen barrier ahead of them.

“Áron and Erazza,” Kalsin said, just as they were about to jump. “That’s their name. Heretics just like yourself—they’ll be coming to the Old sometime down the line.”

“Áron and Erazza,” Youthere repeated. “Huh. Heretics doesn’t have a good ring to it. But I guess we’ll be like the dirt under the Republic’s fingernails.”

Kalsin’s arm tightened around Jack’s stomach as Hollow launched forward, kicking up mud as he lifted upward. He sailed above the wall in a single powerful jump—his fins barely scraping along the top—and then left the barrier behind, falling down on solid ground with a teeth-rattling lurch.

A single nudge from Jack's heels, and then they were gone, racing into the endless waves of red grass shifting beneath the night sky.

49 - Always With You

The night had carried them farther than Kalsin’s legs cared to measure. Eastward first, five miles or more, before the company bent northward like a line of hunted deer. The wall lay to their side now, far enough away for the curvature of the earth to hide it from their gaze, and the Republic with it. Ahead stretched only the red tundras—damp, heaving plains under a bruised sky. 

They marched without pause. Only when the winds had sagged into a soft breeze and the first light of dawn crowned the horizon did the company slow, and then finally, eventually, stop.

The halt was a quiet affair, more from uncertainty than from exhaustion. Fals was the first to kneel and begin tugging canvas out of her pack, muttering at Littleguy until he shuffled over to help. Quiescent was already off by himself, carrying his sleeping bag under his arm and, apparently, not at all bothered to sleep out in the wet flatlands.

Two tents went up—standard issue, compact and dependable little soldiering packages. Pike made a point of hammering down every stake twice, joking about Veiled scouts and how they liked to crawl inside a man’s bed if he let even the tiniest crack open in his shelter. Shoreline had nothing to add, only a set of steady hands as she held a pole upright, eyes squinting up at the overcast purple clouds. She caught a piece of jerky when Cyanfish tossed it over. It was more chewy than dry, from the looks of it.

Kalsin led Sap and Hollow over to a tiny hairline fracture just barely visible across a dry patch of land. They drank, their serpentine tongues just barely able to scoop liquid out of the crack. After making sure they didn’t mind the taste of red grass, he left them to graze.

Most of the company had trickled inside the tents by then.

Kalsin did not join them. He stayed out in the murky dawn, watching the poles with their clothes strung up to dry, the fabric snapping in the breeze like makeshift flags. His body was still chugging along, and he didn’t think sleep would come for him if he decided to lay down. 

It really was beautiful out here.

He wasn’t sure when Jack had joined him. He became aware of her arm slung across his hips at some point, holding him gently and watching the tundras with him.

“It’s not what either of us expected. Hm?”

Jack extended a hand, half framing the sunrise between two fingers, evaluating. She then made a so-so gesture. Been there, done that.

“I remember back in Gulling, right, I remember how you were beating the ever loving hell out of the adults in the training ring. The only reason I had the guts to vault over that fence was because I figured you’d go easy on someone closer to your age.”

Jack huffed with amusement. She indicated a height that barely reached her waist.

“I know. Don’t get me wrong, you were damn impressive. But more than anything, it spoke to your character that you proceeded to beat up a younger, scrawnier kid. Made me think to myself; ‘that's the morally bankrupt kinda gal I want protecting my back’.”

Kalsin jumped when she pinched his butt. He looked up to see her grinning down at him with a wolfish smile, as if eyeing a sheep too adorable to eat.

The damn girl was getting too bold for her own good.

And he—he felt his chest flutter with joy as he realized he could finally look at her without one little imperfection souring the whole picture. Her hair was a mess. Muck colored one side of her cheek. She was stunning in the morning light.

Wolves had keen senses, Kalsin read somewhere. They could smell blood in the air from a good distance away. The beasts could learn from his bodyguard.

Her lips descended on his like the first bite of a predator trying to catch a skittish antelope before it could hop away. Kalsin felt himself unable to react at first, thinking to himself with the absurd hilarity of it—did she just surge-kiss him?

Then the kiss turned softer, more questing and tentative, prodding for a response. He gave it. Fucking hell, did he respond the way he wanted to for a very long time now.

He slid one hand on her hips, the other curling around her neck to pull her further down into him. She let out a pleased little breath in response, but she somehow forced the pace to remain slow. It wasn't a contest like everything was with Ringtail. It was more tender. More—intimate.

Kalsin loved her for it. 

His fingers trailed up her spine, feeling each knot of muscle that soldiering life had carved into her. She tilted her head, trailing down to the corner of his mouth. When she finally broke away, it was only to let her teeth graze his bottom lip before pulling back just enough to see his face.

Her eyes were half-lidded, amused. She tapped his chest with two fingers. Breathe, boy.

Kalsin sucked in air like he’d just surfaced from deepdiving a fracture. “Gods, Jack.”

She huffed silent laughter, gently straightening the front of his jacket. Her hands lingered there a moment more before she shifted a step back, tilting her chin toward the tents. Sleep. She was telling him he ought to try.

“Not yet,” Kalsin said. He looked out over the sea of grass. He could see her standing there in the distance.

Jack dug into his hair with mock sternness, tossing his noggin to the side.

“I will, Jack. Just an hour more, I swear. You know how I get when there’s something on my mind.”

She understood, he thought. The way her expression turned wistful at first, then just a little bit sad. She put two fingers to her lips, then a hand over her heart, watching him.

I’m sorry, Kalsin. Sorry that I never told you.

Kalsin felt emptiness try to claw its way up his throat. He ignored it, pulling Jack close one more time in a firm embrace. “It’s okay. That’s the point of moving forward, right? There comes a point where you just can’t afford to ignore shit anymore.” He backed away then, hands held up with a faint smile. “I’ll deal with my problems the way I should have done years ago. I dunno what’ll come of it… but make sure to leave some room in your bedroll for me, eh?”

His bodyguard’s tall form slowly retreated toward their grazing bahten. Just them and the open sky. She’d probably be snoozing by the time he returned.

His own path led the opposite way, quiet steps carrying him toward the direction of the rising sun. He found a knuckled rise of land protruding above a hairline fracture. He sat, heels digging into the soft mud, and listened to the faint birdsong carried on the slow morning breeze.

“Földfutó,” Cinder said.

Kalsin looked at his sister sitting next to him, legs crossed and her arm resting on her lap.

“Those little birds the Veiled flung at us during their assault, with the screw-like beaks?” she mused, listening to the uneven chirps. “Földfutó, is what they’re called. They have these weird spirals lining the inside of their mouths that scramble the sounds.”

“Where’d you even hear that?”

“Eh. You know, here and there. I’ve had a lot of time in libraries while you were off playing find-the-cure.”

Cinder picked a blade of the red grass and twirled it between her fingers. The stalk bled color into her skin, leaving faint pink streaks on her thumb. “They use the spirals to signal their mate coordinates, letting them know where the ground is soft enough to dig a nest. The recipient dives, then, if they’re interested in the lady bird. The deeper he burrows, the better their prospects to make a family. It’s kinda romantic.”

“So you’re telling me our glorious army got harried by weaponized romantic songbirds.”

Her mouth tugged at the corner, a smile not quite forming. “I guess so. Maybe that’s what the little critters thought as they burrowed into righteous Republic soil behind our backs. ‘To claim this land for the missus.’ And who knows. Maybe some of them did, afterwards.”

Kalsin leaned back, craning his neck to see where the murky clouds broke and the sky began. No such luck. It was going to be one of those damp autumn days. A good time to be cooped up inside somewhere warm and dry.

Downwind at the camp, he caught sight of Wardoll emerging from one of the tents. She was barefoot, her pale feet sinking into the wet earth as she padded toward the drying clothes. She wore nothing but her tunic, sleeves rolled halfway up her arms as she chose a pair of socks and, after deeming them dry enough, ducked back inside.

“I like them,” Cinder said.

“Who?”

“Your mates. This little regiment that you ended up dragging along with yourself.” She sounded dreamy. “You could have done a lot worse when it comes to folk watching your back. It’s better this way, I think.”

“Hm.”

“Better than running off with just Jack and a pair of scaly horses, I mean.”

Kalsin muttered, still watching the tundras, “You don’t have to pretend for my sake, Cinder.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“They treat you like shit.”

Cinder remained silent.

“Hatred… hatred or spite or resentment, those I can understand to a degree. The collective debt Clenn have racked up against our kind is high enough, and no one expects centuries of abuse to heal in a fortnight. I get that,” Kalsin said slowly. “But I hoped, you know. I hoped that once they learned the truth—that a way back finally existed—they’d abandon this twisted mirror outlook of theirs. Their scars could be wiped clean, their surges restored, their paths to advancement open again. I thought that just knowing this fact, just seeing the possibility, would be enough for them to treat the Clenn stranger among them like she damn well existed!” His voice cracked into a near shout by the end.

Kalsin closed his eyes for a minute, feeling the damp earth beneath him. He was an idiot; a small part of him still clinged to that young, idealistic ember buried deep inside him. A tiny fragment of the child that life had beaten down again and again survived, despite every blow hammering home the reality that goodness in the human collective did not naturally occur.

His mind knew that. He’d been convincing himself of this fact for many, many years now. But maybe his heart was not yet callous enough to accept it. And that’s why it hurt.

“It’s not their fault.”

Kalsin opened his eyes. He looked at his sister with a stony expression.

“It’s not, Kal.” She fidgeted in place. She was not meeting his eyes. “How would they know at first glance I was Clenn? Most of ‘em are from Újtavak, probably. From Határ and Grenstel. For folk around those regions, displaying scars is not part of their culture. Even if they…” She faltered for a moment. “What I’m trying to say is; they would have no way of identifying me as Clenn at first glance. I’d be just a girl to them. Seriously. Think about it longer than just five seconds.”

Kalsin threw his hands up. “Then why, hm? Why’s it so hard for people to simply tell you ‘good day’.”

Cinder kept staring at the ground.

“You know why.”

Kalsin opened his mouth. No. No, I don’t, he wanted to say. But he couldn’t ignore the little details tugging insistently at the back of his mind. Somewhere in his brain, there was a box filled with a dusty collection of oddities he had just carelessly tossed things inside.

Inconsistencies. Things that didn’t quite make sense. Like the fine print at the bottom of a contract, there were… specifics that somehow a traumatized mind had filed off in his subconscious. ‘Do not touch!’, the label read.

Better to stay ignorant. Because ignorant was still functional.

Kalsin slowly began to circle the box. “You’re scaring me, Cinder,” he murmured.

“I know,” he heard her voice, sad. “I know, and I hate this. I hoped that we could have gone without this conversation forever and ever. It would be wonderful if I could simply let you close your eyes and believe everything was still the way it had always been.”

He felt her hand grip his leg, and he saw her lean in, pleading. “And it will! You hear me, Kal? This changes nothing between us. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. All you need to do is accept that… all that’s left is for you to realize that…” her voice cut off, broken.

Kalsin stood with the lid open above the box. Just a crack, a tiny opening to see through.

She stopped speaking as if she knew exactly what he was looking at.

The box was full of things about her. Starting at the top with the latest memories he had been through, dumped in here for disposal.

"Madness," Pike muttered. His eyes scoured the storm, looking ahead and only finding rain, rain, and more rain. The man did not seem to be at ease following the commands of a lunatic. But stranger things have happened tonight, right? Maybe the company figured it was time for a leap of faith.

Next image.

She slowly reached up and touched a cold finger against the scar between his eyes. His first scar, the one he’d taken so so long ago. “Oh, Kalsin. I’m so, so sorry. Other people can’t— they could never… Because I’m…” 

Another one. Jack’s words.

There are some things that I’m purposefully not saying here. It’s not the time and not the place for that, I don’t think—it probably has to do something with your mysterious talent. You’ve already been through so much, and I don’t want to add another bucketload of trouble to all that. Later. There will be time for that later.

From farther back, sneaking out from camp during those early soldiering days.

Cinder snapped off a nearby branch. "Well, it's not like I asked her. She still, you know. Treats me as if I..." She fiddled with the leaves, tearing off one or another. Kalsin could tell something was nagging at her. Cinder butchered another set of leaves. She sneaked a glance at Kalsin, an intense and thoughtful look. As if holding back something important. As if wondering if he was ready for it.

Deeper in the box, then.

"What are you two, anyway?" Kalsin asked, sitting around a campfire with Jack, Áron, and Erazza. "The collector referred to you as siblings. Around the darkfinder, you claimed you were a couple. I don't mean to intrude, but setting the record straight would be appreciated."

Kalsin swore he could hear Cinder’s mirthful snort coming from somewhere inside the forest.

More. Grab them faster.

"Did you bring it?" Kalsin asked, stepping over a thick knot of roots.

Cinder raised a sack seemingly out of nowhere with her one good hand, dangling it under Kalsin's nose. "A little decomposed, but eh, who cares. It's a sacrificial goat head, for gods’ sake."

They hurt. Every single one of them.

"Heretics primed to flee the city under Blindlight via darkfinder, hive. Intersect at O;NW;two-fifty-two. Optics advised."

Cinder was at his shoulder in an instant, eyeing the note. She let out a snort. "Just our luck. The message we're looking for ends up being the coded one."

…Jack stared at Kalsin with a strange look on her face as Cinder rambled on. 

The box was deep. So very deep.

Before Kalsin could speak, Cinder said, "I heard."

Kalsin made a noncommittal hmph in reply. Jack shifted uneasily. He didn't need to look at his bodyguard; she always wore the same expression around Cinder. He knew it by heart. Her brow crinkled, her lips hung slightly downturned. She never gave a definitive answer why she treated his sister the way she did.

Like she wasn’t even there.

It went on and on, memories piling up on top of each other. Stretching back years, lining all of his adulthood with small things and details that were easy to miss. A strange glance here when he listened to her ramble, an offhand comment there when he ordered for three in a place rough enough to not care about Scarrd-Clenn propriety.

But more glaring were the lack of things. The absence of words said. He rummaged through the box, tossing and clawing at pictures to find a single moment where anyone else—anyone had acknowledged her. A greeting. A smile. An exchange that indicated a presence from anyone other than him.

He couldn’t find one.

These scenes, they were little things. Fragments you didn’t know you were missing from the whole picture. It was easy to think they were inconsequential. Unless you knew exactly what you were looking for.

But if she’s not here—Kalsin screamed in his mind, tearing deeper and deeper into the box—then where is she? 

Because she was there, at some point. She did exist. She had a family; a mom and dad and people who loved her very much. Friends, and a life.

What happened to my sister?

He felt the bottom of the box before he reached it. It was a dusty, forgotten thing. Scabbed several times over, like someone had been tearing it up and letting it heal wrong again and again. The wood was faded, and the walls that rose at the sides contained everything else in a sturdy little frame. 

The box itself was the memory. To seal away the hurt and compartmentalize.

And Kalsin remembered.

Relief squeezed his chest when his neighborhood came into sight. He barely noticed the last threads of his shoe give way, a hole tearing open at his toes. He was home. He pushed himself to keep going, but it took effort to keep himself together for just another minute. Kalsin brushed his nose, sniffing. His hand came away with flakes of dried blood.

The door to their house was locked. Unsure if his voice still worked, he knocked instead. He waited, shifting from foot to foot. Once again he was at the edge of collapsing, the wait worse than the walk, but somehow he managed to stay upright. He knocked again, louder this time. It sent a sharp pain along his knuckles.

The door was suddenly wrenched open, his father standing in the entrance with a stormy expression, but his shout died on his lips as he looked down at Kalsin. His eyes were red and bloodshot as if he hadn't slept a minute. Kalsin shivered under the gaze that was filled with horror and disbelief. Faint crying came from deeper inside.

Terrin was blocking the doorway, but Kalsin could see a bit inside. There was a bundle of pelts laid out in the entrance hall. Mera sat on the lowest stair, clutching something to herself with a blonde mop, rocking back and forth. The body that connected to the head, laying on the pelts, dragged with her movements like a ragdoll.

His mother cried on.

…

Back in the alley, Kalsin’s body was locked in a seizure, sprawled in the dirt after he had touched her scar. The thief was looking down at him in the dark, speaking words of disdain that he couldn't hear. She spit on him. She took his coin pouch from the ground, the knife along with it, and disappeared into the night.

Just before she turned the corner, he could have sworn that the ugly scar between her eyes, the one she had just forced him to touch—it was no longer there.

…

It took him some time to realize Anise had a hand on his shoulder, shaking. "Kalsin? Kalsin, can you hear me?"

He looked into her eyes. They were damp, but she wasn't crying. He nodded, not trusting his voice. When he started turning back to his sister's still form, Anise stopped him, holding his head in place. "Here, now. Everything's alright. Kalsin, it's okay." She smiled tightly. "Cinder is going to be okay."

Kalsin looked from one eye to another, sometimes lost in the wrinkles in-between. Searching for assurance in those old, knowing eyes. "She is?" he asked.

"She's fine, love. Trust me. She will be fine. Your sister just needs some sleep."

Kalsin stared down at his sister, laying still on the cold cellar floor. Her eyes were open, staring up blindly at the ceiling. The severed stump of her arm never bled—but the puddles beneath the barrels were thicker than wine.

"She's fine, love. Trust me. She will be fine.”

“Trust me. She will be fine.”

“She will be fine.”

“Cinder will be fine.”

“She’s alive.”

“She has to be.”

“Go, now. You've done well. Go home, I'll take care of her. Get some fresh air, clear your head, will you?”

”Enough excitement for one day.”

”Enough pain for one day.”

”Enough terror for one day.”

The box was empty.

Kalsin opened his eyes.

Under the dawning tundras, the thing wearing his dead sister’s face smiled back at him.