Leybound Chapter Forty | Calluses (Patreon)

Riot woke to the maddening sensation of empty ley channels in his body. The deep itch that he could not scratch. The barrier he had put in place in desperation in the woods was solid and new, and only the faintest trickle of ley power leaked in, and he seized at it like a man dying of thirst, feeling sickened by how much he needed it. He needed to master this power, and he needed a spell. But he wouldn’t have one of the lumpen scars that some of the others had; if he was going to lead them, he would need to have the best. The ability to crush the ley power into a small, devastating charge that he could send a hundred paces with killing power. 

Outside, the night was drawing in, and a few of the leybound were huddled around the fire and gave him salutes. Rimmer dunked a battered tin mug in the blackened cookpot and handed it to Riot. It was camp tea; the same leaves had been used for at least a week, and it was as weak as dishwater, but nothing had ever tasted better. 

“Nothing to eat?” Riot asked. 

“You won’t get much more than tea down you sarge, not without throwing it up again,” Rimmer said.

Riot searched for any hint of a mocking tone in the man's voice but was surprised to see only a kind of hesitant concern. 

“Moran?” Riot asked. 

“Went off early doors with the other one. They took Loic and Crease, and they ain’t been back. Something's going on he’s not telling us.” Rimmer dropped his voice to a whisper. “We don’t really know nothing about him do we? He’s not one of us. You think he’s working with the long ears?” 

A week ago, Rimmer had been shouting at Loic to beat Riot’s brains in, and now he was handing out mugs of tea and whispering about Moran being a traitor. But could Riot really blame him? The man didn’t believe in loyalty, because no one had ever shown him any. 

The other leybound tried to act as though they were engrossed in their own thoughts, but Riot knew they were listening hard. 

“The commanders got a plan, Rimmer. I’ve seen it,” Riot lied. “It’s going to make heroes of all of us, so you just mind your cook pot.”

“Sarge,” Rimmer replied with a salute. 

Natalia Quinn would be leaving tonight, and he wanted to see her before she left. He hadn’t thanked her for coming for him in the forest—not really, but it was more than that. He had been sure that her destination was the same as theirs and that her secret mission for the Wikkan had something to do with whatever Moran was here to do and whatever was in the leather pouch he carried. But if she was leaving, then perhaps she really did just use them as an escort. 

He had last seen her taking the trail into the forest; it was as good a place as any to look for her. Riot started off down the road and paused. Fletcher was on sentry at the gate, and the older man was avoiding his gaze, the faint smell of pipe smoke lingering in the air. 

“Have you seen Miss Quinn pass by Fletcher?” Riot asked. 

“No sarge, not likely. I would neither if she don’t want to be seen.”

“You might as well enjoy a smoke, Fletch; you could see the long ears coming from a mile away from up here,” Riot said. 

“Thanking you, sarge,” Fletcher said, pleasant surprise registering on his face as Riot sat beside him. 

Riot leaned against the low stone wall and looked out over the undulating land that lay between them and the coast.

“Not many leybound your age, Fletcher,” Riot said as the older man thumbed a pinch of tobacco into the pipe. 

“Most don’t make it, sarge. But there was a noble that I worked for, and I made him a fair bit of coin. When I got nabbed, he saw fit to repay me with some linium. They made me drink the stuff, if you can believe it, and I survived alright.”

“How do you fight it?” Riot asked, speaking in a low tone so his voice wouldn’t carry.

Fletcher leaned back and puffed on the pipe, the coals glowing faintly. “Been asked that before many a time, most by them that just got bound, like yourself. Guess I never rightly saw it as a fight.”

“It's a bloody war, a war I fight like hell all day and wake up on the losing side.”

“Respectful-like, sarge, that’s what they say them who aren’t long destined for this life. At first, it feels like that, a bit like this situation we’re in right now really, with an enemy just out of sight; you can't see 'em, but you know they’re there alright. But you learn to live with it, not comfortable at first, not comfortable for years. But after a time, that leyline somehow makes you stronger. Like these old hands after forty years pulling on an oar, or my old pa swinging an axe his whole life, what do you call 'em, the hard bits of skin?”

“Callouses.” Riot recalled his grandfather carving the small wooden Erudoran figurines he sold on the streets of Fallow-Neck. The old man's thumb had callouses like pads of leather. 

Fletcher clicked his fingers. “Caluses, that's it. Well, inside gets like that, but you gota keep at it, each and every day, regular, like taking a piss.”

“The barrier keeps failing.” Riot searched the face of the old soldier for any sign of amusement or mocking, but all he saw was a kind of fatherly concern, and his eyes flickered to Riot's hands. 

“You don’t have no spell that's all. When you get one, it’s like tapping a barrel of wine, let’s it all drain away, or more like sticking a boil I always thought. But you speak to any leybound they’ll tell you different. Lehan gave his leyline a name if you can believe that, he talks to it. Says its like a big cat like what they have in the jungles up north; it scratches on the door, and he lets it in, gives it a look around, then lets it out when it's bored.”

“What about Loic, what does he say?” Riot asked.

Fletcher gave a rueful smile. “Northmen are a bunch of superstitious bastards. Up there, they have a killing wind they call the cold bite, he says the ley line roams around and comes when he calls. Powerful ley line he has; saw him break an oak tree down to matchsticks once.”

The older man tapped the pipe out on the stones, the small glowing coals hitting the floor where he ground them out with his boot. 

A flare of arcane light flashed in the darkness, lighting up the landscape for a split second before fading again. 

"Rekon, Miss Quinn is down that way,” Fletcher said. 

“What about her? How does she move around without anyone seeing?”

The old boatman wore a pained expression. “Begging your pardon, sarge, but I won’t speak on that. No disrespect o’ course, but you make me watch my step so to speak; she scares the piss right out of me.”

Riot tripped on a tree root and cursed. The darkness down here in the small corpse of trees was almost absolute, but he could follow the smell of burning metal well enough. 

He froze as the tip of a blade rested on the back of his neck, raising his hands slowly. “I told you not to try to sneak up on me, Nathaniel.” She had never used his name before, and there was something else about her voice—an elation that overrode the usual distain.The blade was removed, and he turned slowly to see that she was already walking away, deeper into the trees, her footsteps barely making a sound. 

He followed her to a clearing that let the light of the moon shine down. The grass had been flattened for several yards in each direction, and even in the darkness, he could see it looked blackened. Natalia's long hair was loose and fell about her shoulders like a dark river. She had taken off her leather armor, and the wound on her shoulder had been bandaged, but the blood had leaked through. Her face was flushed and she wore a smile. She was attractive, in the same way a moth is attracted to a flame, but now she was disarmed somehow, and he tripped over his words. 

“You’ve been training?” 

“Always.” 

“I have questions about the spell craft and the ley power.”

“It took Gerrard Price to convince you to take this seriously?” She said with a sly grin. 

“I want to know how it works; how are some spells better than others?” 

“It depends on the skill of the spellcrafter,” Natalia said. 

Misting ley power bled down the scars on her bare forearms and gathered in her cupped hands, and Riot watched mesmerized as it ebbed and flowed like liquid gas. The runes on her skin blazed beneath it. 

“The runes contain the power; the better the skill of the spell crafter, the more power you can hold and form.”

Natalia trapped the power in her hands, and it blazed out of the cracks as if trying to free itself. The muscles on her hands strained, and in the gray light, Riot watched the strain in her expression as she crushed the power down. 

“This is the truest ley power, better even than Moran could form. The arcanists naturally draw ley power from their surroundings; it takes time, and they can’t make it any more potent by cycling.”

In her open palm was a small, round sphere of gray light, the size of a coin, held by the runes that shimmered with the same light. She held out her arm, palm facing outwards, and the sphere stayed glued to her skin. With a mischievous smile, she released it with a crack that hurt Riot's ears. On the other side of the clearing, a sapling exploded, showering leaves and wooden shards. 

“So you’re more powerful than Moran?” 

Natalia lifted both hands, palms up, as if weighing her words. “Yes and no. We have more power, but it is limited. I can use all of the stored ley power in my body, then take in more, perhaps once or twice, but if I tried again, it would be too painful. Arcanists do not touch the ley lines; they absorb latent ley power from the world around them, like breathing, and do so almost indefinitely, though it is weaker.”

“Can Moran give me a spell?” 

“No. I hear he is a talented duelist, but only a few living archanists can craft the kind of spell you want.”

“Who?” 

“Someone powerful and learned. Alric Rook, for example.” 

A chill wind disturbed the leaves, and Riot's hand twitched toward the hilt of his sword.

“You can relax, Nathaniel; I know enough to guess what happened in Ivansrook Castle, and if you did kill him, then you did this world a favor. Alric was a monster, and he didn’t work alone.”

“There are others?” He almost choked on the words. Other rooms, other basements, and other broken and burned bodies.

The dirty gray light misted down her arms and dripped to the floor. “I have seen and survived them.”

Was that how Natalia was made leybound, in a dark room strapped to a table? 

“I think you are a good man, Nathaniel Riot. You have won the loyalty of the leybound, and mine also.” She stepped close enough that he could feel the warmth from her skin. “I leave in the morning. The night is cold, and we are reaching the end. Will you stay with me?”

“I will,” he replied. 

Hours later, the morning light found its way through the cracks in the tiled roof, and Riot lay in one of the old Priory stables with Natalia in his arms and spoke of ley lines, spellcraft, and distilling the ley power. He held her hand in hers, gently turning it to see the hundreds of small runes that had been cut into her skin and left soft, silvery scars. 

He learned that distilling the power filtered the impurities and prevented the fouling from staining her hands. He pestered her with questions about timing, distance, and damage. 

“Enough talk of battles and fighting; you are obsessed,” she complained. 

“If only the regiments knew how useful they could be,” he continued, his head filled with battle plans and maneuvers. 

“No one knows, because they treat them like fodder, expendable. Now you see how they could be more.”

“That won’t mean anything when we get back; we’ll all be locked up again.”

“Then you need a victory, something that cannot be ignored by the guild. Speak to Moran; he has his mission and he needs your help, you might not like him, but his success is your success.”

“You must know about his mission; what is he here to do?” 

“Why must I know?” 

“Because you spy for Kerne, it’s your job to know these secrets.”

“Can you keep a secret, Nathan?”

“Yes,” Riot replied, sitting up slightly.

“Good, so can I,” she replied with a laugh like falling water. 

“Why did Kerne send you here?” 

Her defenses rose in an instant, and her eyes flashed like a clean blade. “I told you. My mission is mine to complete alone.” 

With that, she rose and dressed, pulling on the leather armor, tying her hair back, and tucking it in securely. As she tied on her sword belt, the transformation was complete, and she was once again armed, deadly, and unassailable. “Speak to Moran. Now that you are here, he will use you, but take care; he will not hesitate to leave anyone behind to fulfill his mission.”