by K. M. Hade
Heart
K. M. Hade
Heart
Copyright ©2021 K. M. Hade
All rights reserved.
Heart is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
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About the Author
Also by K. M. Hade
1
CRYSTAL
“Good riddance,” Blood says as our horses cross the small bridge linking the raised road from the Pit to the edge of the swamp.
It’s nearing dawn. We galloped the first few miles to put distance, then when Smoke’s familiar did not report immediately that we had the Pit on us, we slowed to a jog. The scummy air of the swamp clings to us all, and the bugs are thick.
The small town on the very edge of the swamp is even sadder than I remember. Wood logs have been set into the mushy land that separates the disgusting edge of the swamp from the less-disgusting, low-lying land. This provides a sad, semi-effective retaining wall, but the logs are sinking into the muck. On either side of us are the remains of buildings and structures the swamp has claimed over the years.
The streets are a mixture of stone and wood, just enough to reinforce the muck. Everything is covered in scum or slime, even the low, old buildings are covered in patches of greenish lichen. Everything stinks of funk and Blight. Everything is sinking as the swamp and Blight encroach further.
The horizon is red in the east. People are already moving around harnessing livestock, shouting, shuffling. There’s one inn and a few taverns that do good business. Or what passes for good in this area of the Empire.
Through everything, there’s also the smell of fresh-baked bread.
My stomach growls. I haven’t had fresh bread in months.
Nobody pays attention to us. I keep the cowl of Atrament’s too-large cloak over my head. I’m pouring sweat, but my pale hair and the sheen on my skin will out me as a Crystal Mage. The people already about don’t pay attention to a couple of Fells in Imperial uniforms. Especially not one on a huge, obviously-not-really-a-horse horse, and the other carrying a large falcon on his upraised arm.
People pull fishing nets and baskets out of the edge of the swamp. I whisper, “Dear gods. Do people fish in the swamp?”
Blood glances in that direction. “Probably Crunchy farming.”
I’m not sure that’s better.
Blood gestures to the tavern. “We’ll go around back. You two wait here.”
He means Atrament and I.
Smoke, Rot, and Blood turn their horses down a narrow ally between the tavern—easily identified by a dilapidated sign sporting beer and a skirt—and a smaller building that has no lights on and is covered in green moss and lichen.
Atrament reins his horse close to me. His thigh and ankle brush mine. He is barely visible in the gloom, the shadows make him unreal, and there’s only the core of him in my awareness. He whispers, very softly, “What are they doing?”
“Food.” I try to focus around the way he seems to be everywhere and nowhere, and the strange sensation of how even though my senses can’t focus on him, my magic knows exactly where he is.
“We have no coin,” he points out.
Hoofbeats draw my ear. I glance behind us, expecting to see the shadows of the Warden’s men galloping down the stone road, but it’s just a horse being led across the road into an ally. We’d made the swamp crossing in about four hours. Smoke’s familiar hadn’t spotted the Warden’s forces yet, but it also couldn’t fly as high or far as a true falcon.
We had at least an hour on the Warden, perhaps more than that, if it had taken the Aether Mages more than half an hour to herd the Blightling back into the tunnels. Perhaps the Pit hadn’t even realized we were gone yet, noticed the missing horses, or thought the escaped Blightling was more than a random occurrence.
“Lady Crystal,” he murmurs, interrupting my mental calculations.
I focus on his presence, feeling along some strange strand to know exactly where he is. “Innkeepers and such are required to feed and lodge Imperial Mages.”
“Then the innkeeper will tell the Warden we were here.”
“The Warden will figure that out easily enough. Not even we’d try to cross the swamp.”
“True. But what if the innkeeper knows we are prisoners in the Pit?”
I brush absently at some of the little bugs trying to swarm under my hood. “No one here is going to try to restrain Imperial Mages.”
The three Fells return with bags of food hanging from the pommels of their saddles.
“He wasn’t happy about it,” Blood tells us.
“Did you just tell him to file the usual request with the army?” I ask.
“And he will get his payment in about six months.” Blood digs into the bag and tosses me a steaming hot meatpie, then one to Atrament. Rot is holding two in one hand and is gnawing each of them. Smoke’s bird is on his shoulder and pecks at his master’s pie periodically.
The pie tastes heavenly. It actually tastes of some unidentifiable, extremely gamey, tough meat and pond scum, but compared to the trough-slop, it’s heaven. We take the horses to a communal water trough so they can drink while we gobble down our food. The water is not nearly as pure as the water from the Pit.
“Atrament.” I swirl my fingers in the gross water. “Where does the pure water in the Pit come from? You had it in your cave too.”
Atrament sips the green water and shakes his head with distaste before he answers. “Nobody quite knows. There’s nothing holy in the Pit. No god we care to name claims that place. Not even the darker gods that wield Blight gaze upon it. Only the Priests that chant endlessly in the temple you found compel the Gods We Name to tamper with it. Like the incantations that create Aether Mages compel the gods to caress a womb with favor.”
“That didn’t answer the question.” Rot grunts.
“He’s getting to it,” Smoke mutters.
“So the Priests in the temple below... keep the Old One asleep?” I ask doubtfully.
Atrament manages a snerk-like laugh. “That’s what they believe, but I think if the Old One wanted to break free, I’m sure It could. The lower levels of the Pit were built layer on layer of warding. You’ve seen the old wards. But they’ve eroded and haven’t been repaired. I think the Old One is more awake than any of us want to admit and is simply... waiting.”
“But the water,” Rot says.
“The water comes up from a deep aquifer. I believe the Old One deliberately doesn’t foul it. Have you ever seen a pike-armor turtle?”
Rot and I exchange looks, then shake heads, but Smoke nods. “It’s a turtle that has a strange tongue. The tip is very long and coiled in a
pink tube-like shape. It will sit on a low log and flop its tongue out into the water. Fish thinks it is a worm. The unsuspecting fish take a bite and become the bite.”
I look back over my shoulder the way we’ve come. Despite the sweltering heat, I feel cold.
“It makes you relax. You let your guard down. It feels safe,” Atrament says. Then he adds, “I have never let my guard down.”
The cold, fresh water had been the only thing that had made any of us feel human. And the Warden gave us soap too—just to see what happened. I glance back at the Pit. “You know, if the Imperial court knew about the fresh water at the Pit, things might change for the Warden. Or things might change in general. Really fresh, pure water is hard to come by. Most of the wells in the capital are at least a little tainted. The ones that aren’t are lined and warded with rock that’s been cut with Aether dust. Other than that, you just get used to a bit of a funk to your water or on your skin.”
“You’d think the people he brings to the Pit would notice the difference,” Rot tells me.
“Not if he was serving them water from town.”
“Mmmm, scum,” Rot says with a grin. His familiar tosses its head and makes a sound like laughter. He leans across horses and puckers his lips at me. “Give me a kiss.”
I kiss the tip of two of my fingers and push them into his lips. “There. I gave you a kiss.”
“Hey, that’s cheating,” he complains.
I bat my eyelashes at him. He grumbles and shifts in the saddle while his familiar snorts again.
Smoke, eyes narrowed, asks, “Atrament, how many horses does the Warden usually keep on the grounds?”
Rot sighs and just shakes his head. “We just escaped the Pit, Smoke. Come on, celebrate a little. Let Pebbles give you a kiss.”
“No, thank you.” Smoke has an edge to his voice.
Old pain needles a sore spot in my soul. I try to ignore it. Smoke’s Smoke, and he’s not wrong to keep it all business right now.
Atrament frowns as he thinks. “I do not know. There are two stables, but I’m not sure how many horses or mules are kept there on any given day.”
Blood brushes at some bugs then says, “Worst case, let’s say sixteen, and we have four of them. Still plenty of horses for them to saddle up and ride a team after us.”
Smoke’s familiar hops to his wrist, and Smoke launches him in the air.
My horse playfully bats the water with his lips. At least he’s still in good spirits after the hot ride from the Pit. In the increasing daylight, I can see that our horses are nicely-made palfreys. Nothing high-bred or special, but good serviceable types. When it comes to breeding horses, soundness is usually the first trait, then for palfreys, gentle paces and a good disposition, with beauty very distant. Their legs are clean and hard, their hooves in good repair, and they’re shod. Unlike a lot of horses on the front, their manes and tails are not roached or pulled, and instead full and bushy to give some protection from the swamp bugs.
It’s hard to breathe around the bugs. They try to crawl into every nook, cranny, and orifice. The horses constantly swish their tails and toss their heads. I keep my prison-issued shirt over my face. Better that the bugs crawl in my belly-button and over my skin than in my nostrils or mouth. Although they’re taking little bites out of me. Fuckers.
Rot’s horse, in daylight, is clearly not a normal horse, and the increasing number of villagers give it a wide berth. It’s an ugly shade of brown, like swamp muck, and slightly greenish, like there’s a very thin layer of scum all over it. It’s taller than average, but huge: heavy bone, hooves like platters, wide as a couch, a neck like an upside down boat stern, and a cudgel-like head with long, pointed ears like horns and ichor-green eyes. Its mane is short and spiky and greenish, and its tail is also a short, bristly-like broom that rattles as it swishes it back and forth and it slaps its flanks. It naturally carries its neck high on its shoulders, with an arch to the neck, and despite its massive size, it’s also compact in a way, like a really overgrown and inflated charger.
It’s got the mass of a heavy charger or even dray animal, but the body of a medium cavalry charger.
It even has its own saddle and bridle, although Rot doesn’t bother to hold the reins. Rot’s has one hand over ScatheFire’s thighs (still carting him around like a sack of grain) and his breakfast in his other fist.
“How much endurance does your familiar have?” I ask. Because if we need to secure Rot another horse we have to go steal something from a farmer.
“That thing will go all day, every day, carrying his big ass,” Blood answers for Rot while Rot shovels the remainder of his pies in his mouth. “Rot won the familiar lotto.”
Rot grins. Some crumbs fall out of his mouth. “You don’t like your familiar?”
“Tell ScatheFire again how useful his cat is.” Blood points at ScatheFire, slumped against Rot’s back.
Fuck. I have to free him. He was my first friend. I owe him everything. “He likes the cat. It cuddles with him.”
“And the gods knew no normal horse would haul Rot around,” Smoke says.
Blood dusts off his hands, then separates his dusty white hair into three strands and begins to plait it along his skull. “Next move, team. We have three hours’ lead at best, the sun’s coming up, the bugs are out.”
“Somewhere I can take this cloak off.” It’s going to be dangerously hot soon, and the farther away we can get from the bugs before I have to do that, the better. Otherwise, I might not have any eyeballs left. I swat at the bugs again. They’re determined little bastards. “And somewhere as far away from the Warden as possible.”
“What she said,” Rot says.
Smoke sighs. “So somewhere off the main road where we can ride out the heat of the day and is also preferably defensible should it come to that. And close by.”
Jeez, we’d broken out of the Pit. You’d think they’d at least be a little proud of themselves. Except of course for the whole we’re fugitives now. That’s probably dulling the mood.
They can be pissy about being fugitives all they want. For fuck’s sake, I might have Atrament’s baby inside me now, and the gods only know what kind of horrible monster I may be carrying. How about... no. I am not going back to the Pit. And I am going to get ScatheFire’s soul back. And if I have to double down and become a legendary criminal that they’ll be talking about for the next few centuries?
Criminal it is. And they can just deal with it and come along for the ride. ScatheFire went to the Pit to save the team from a bad Shard. The team is sacred, the team is everything, and the team owes him this.
Rot touches my arm. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I mutter under my breath. “Just thinking about how not sorry I am to have turned you all into fugitives.”
“Smoke’s got a burr up his butt. It happens. He probably just wants to touch your boob.”
“How old are you?” I stick my tongue out at him. Some flies zoom in for a taste.
Rot grins.
Blood finishes plaiting his hair and points at his skull. “You do have exquisite breasts, Pebbles. You can’t fault anyone for wanting to admire them. Now, I’d rather not get closer to anything resembling proper civilization considering we’re all now fugitives. Tell me exactly how this turns into heroism?”
I glare at him, and before I can give him the full explanation of what had happened to me, Atrament finishes his bun with one large gulp.“We go north.”
Smoke instantly shakes his head. “There’s nothing that way but the ruined lands.”
“Not that we haven’t been on missions to the ruined lands,” Blood states. “But why? We aren’t geared to go into the ruined lands, and we’d be going in at the worst section of it. The ‘civilized’ part of it is east of here.”
Atrament nods. “We need to find and harvest creeping lotus.”
“We do?” I feel exceptionally clever.
“Yes. You need Fell thread.”
“Wait, what
did I miss?” Rot says. “Did you just say she needs Fell thread?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, she’s an Aether. Do we also need to explain to you the difference between male and female parts?” Blood all but rolls his eyes.
“No,” I say grimly. “No, you do not have to explain that part to him.”
Blood places his hand over his heart. “Pebbles, did you seduce him? Have you beguiled him? You cunning vixen. I think beguiling your way out of the Pit is legendary.”
Smoke raises both brows and blinks. “You seduced someone?”
“She practiced on me.” Rot pretended to dust off his shoulders.
“If anything, she practiced with me,” Blood says, then he flutters. “Pebbles, I’m so proud. I’m going to shed a tear.”
Atrament and I exchange looks, and throat dry, I say, “Can we focus on what Atrament just said?”
“We are. You beguiled him? I feel positively faint with the thrill. Oh, do it again. Do it to me this time.”
“You? Be beguiled?” Smoke says.
Rot shakes his head.
“But it would be fun to try, wouldn’t it?” Blood says dramatically.
“Says the guy with the petal dragon,” Rot tells Smoke. “That thing is practically courtier catnip.”
“He dangles it like that turtle dangles its tongue.” Smoke’s tone is acrid.
“Atrament just said we need to go get creeping lotus for thread and you guys are talking about getting laid?” My voice cracked. “Could you focus?”
Blood flicks his hair over his back and dutifully focuses on Atrament. “Explain this insane plan that just came out of your mouth. Because the first time we met, you tried to kill us. The second time we met, you watched a dog get tossed into the arena. The third time we met is, well... now.
