by Wight,Will
He froze with his outer robe down to his waist as he realized she could hear him even more clearly. She had an Iron body; from this distance, she could probably hear him blink. His blush became a fire in his cheeks, and he snuck out of the rest of his clothes like a thief picking his way through a field of traps.
Mercifully, Yerin remained quiet even when he tried to lower himself into the water and gasped at the heat. It wasn’t hot enough to burn him, or so he hoped, but it felt strange and hot against his skin. He wondered how long it had been since he’d had a hot bath, and that thought was enough to get him to slide into the stone-edged pool.
It was deeper than it was wide, so he was practically standing up to his shoulders in warm water, but he still let out a deep sigh of relief. As layers of dirt floated away, the heat sunk deep into tired muscles. He leaned his head against the grass behind him, letting his eyes close.
Yerin's voice came almost as soon as he had closed his eyes. “Sorry we're not getting beds.”
“Hm?” He was so tired, the words almost didn't make sense.
“Beds. You miss your house, true? I get it. We could have stayed with the Jai, it just scrapes me raw to bend to their tricks.”
Lindon couldn't deny some regret that he hadn't been able to sleep indoors for once, but letting the Jai clan do whatever they wanted seemed like the worse option. Even if they had nothing but good intentions, Yerin had been right that their actions weren't honorable.
“You have no reason to apologize to me,” Lindon said. “Without you, I'd be a raw meat in the middle of a wolf pack. If you told me to sleep outside for the rest of my life, I'd do it without a complaint.”
She was silent for a minute or two after that, so he had no idea how she'd taken those words. Maybe she didn't believe him.
When she spoke again, she sounded flustered, though that could have been his imagination. “Well, if you can recall, the Jai clan guy mentioned a Blackflame Empire. I don't know it, but the world's big. There's bound to be some regular villages around here. People who haven’t flocked to the strange and deadly ruins. Tomorrow we can skip it, move on, find some friendlier places.”
“Where will we find somewhere better than this?” Jai Sen's story of the spear had caught him up in its mystery, and being surrounded by Gold martial artists was inspiring. Even the Transcendent Ruins fascinated him; they were a dark and deadly labyrinth left behind by powerhouses of an ancient world. Who knew what treasures lay inside?
If they left, he’d be giving up any chance of finding something for himself.
“It's not comfortable here,” Lindon continued, “I certainly agree with you on that, but why would we leave? Sacred artists from all over are gathered; maybe one of them knows some pure madra techniques. Maybe they could teach me a second Path, or even take me inside the Ruins...” His imagination was spinning at full speed, showing him images of the endless benefits he could gather inside the pyramid.
“You think it's so easy to learn a Path, do you? You even want to try for two, like you’re the first person with that idea.”
Lindon was trying not to feel too embarrassed about his Sacred Valley education, but Yerin didn’t make it easy. “I know I could be wrong, but it was my understanding that most people don’t have two cores.”
“Sure, you have an advantage in that respect. Same way somebody with no legs has the advantage of saving on shoes. But I’ve got one core packed full of sword madra; why don’t I learn a second sword Path? I’d learn twice as much.”
Lindon hadn’t considered that, but now that he thought of it, he wondered why she didn’t.
“First step, I’d have to find somebody to teach me, and they wouldn’t. They know I’m on another Path; they won’t teach me their secrets. That’s handing a sword to your enemy’s son. He won’t thank you for it, and he might turn it against you someday.”
“But if you could find someone to teach you—”
“Still wouldn’t do it. Say I have a job that takes all my time. Just because I want some more money doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and find a second job. Sure I’ll make more, but that doesn’t leave much room for sleeping.” She tapped one scar that ran down parallel to her ear. “Besides, one Path is enough danger for my taste. I didn't get my scars because I'm so bad at needlepoint, if you hear my meaning.”
He had wondered about her scars in the past. They were too regular, too smooth, so that they looked as though they'd been left by razors. He assumed she'd gotten them from training her Endless Sword technique, and it seemed he'd been right.
“I'm not afraid of a little more pain,” he said. That wasn't entirely true, but he was prepared to endure whatever he had to in order to travel farther down the path of the sacred arts.
“You've had one taste at Copper, and you're thirsty for the whole bottle? Let me tell you, I had the same thoughts as you when I heard about the spear. You know how many sword artists there are in the world? There's enough Path manuals to pave the streets from here to Phoenix Height. If I could take their power by beating them, drain sword Remnants and stealing their power with that spear...I might even reach my master, someday. It draws me. But I don't chase prey I know I'll never catch.”
It somewhat hurt, having his dreams punctured one by one, but he gave her words the full consideration they deserved. She wasn't one to give up lightly—Yerin was the person who stood against the entire Heaven's Glory School and prepared to die rather than retreat from battle. If she wanted to skirt this one, it meant she really believed there was nothing to gain here.
But something about that stuck in him like a needle beneath the skin. He reached over, grabbing a smooth wooden medallion next to his pack: his badge. The character in the center glared at him, as it had every single day for the last eight years. Empty.
“I need something, Yerin, and this is where I can get it. I can finally feel the aura all around me, even now, like I'm lost in endless power...and I can't touch any of it. I need a Path to teach me how. It's like I'm dying of poison, and I'm drowning in a sea of the antidote.”
“You think people just accept any disciple that asks?” Yerin sounded angry now. “You think they teach Paths to anybody? No one will take you, no one will teach you, not until you're worth something. That's the steel truth of it, and you'd best swallow it now.”
The bath was starting to feel uncomfortably hot.
“I can get a faction to accept me,” Lindon said. Yerin's doubt cut him, but he knew his own abilities. There were enough different Paths represented here that he had to be able to find a way in somewhere.
“Are your ears just for decoration? If I say it's hard, it's hard. If a School does take you, they'll nail your feet to the ground. They don't want their precious disciples wandering out, taking their secrets with them. That's years, years, stuck in one place by yourself, because you can bet they won't take me in.”
“Then you can leave!” Lindon said, and he regretted saying it even before the words emerged. He tried to control the damage immediately. “Of course, I wish you wouldn't. It's not...I would like you to stay with me, but I wouldn't want to burden you. You're already finished with your promise to me, so there's nothing...”
It was at that point that he realized he was digging himself a deeper grave, and decided to put the shovel down.
She was silent for so long that Lindon started to overheat. He reached for the paper-wrapped bar of gritty soap that he'd brought with him from home. While he scrubbed himself down, he kept one ear open for Yerin's response.
She remained quiet.
Finally, when he'd rinsed himself and begun putting his clothes on—slowly, to give her as much time as possible to respond—Yerin spoke.
“Let's not go charting any courses yet. We'll find somewhere to spend the night first.” The words sounded dead, so Lindon responded with forced cheer.
“Of course! I wasn't planning on making any decisions tonight.”
At that moment a shadow passed in front of his
stall, and footsteps came to a halt in the grass.
“Little sister, little brother,” came the voice of the bathhouse attendant, “it would be best if the two of you finished soon. You're welcome to return any time you like, of course, but it seems as though there will be some trouble...”
A smack echoed around the bathhouse grounds, like the slap of wood on wood, and the attendant sighed.
“...very soon. If you don't have ties to either the Fishers or the Sandvipers, I'd recommend you hurry.”
Lindon tugged on the rest of his clothes, slipped the pack onto his back, and pulled on his badge. When he pushed his way out of the bathhouse, Yerin stood in front of him. Her hair hung limp and wet as well, and she was still tightening the thick red rope that served her in place of a belt.
She tied it into a wide bow, then twisted the whole mass around so that the bow hung behind her. All the while, she kept her eyes off her hands and on Lindon.
The silence was painful. He felt as though he should say something, but what he settled on was, “Shall we go see what's happening?”
“I can't recommend that,” the attendant said. “It's a hornet's nest over there.” He scratched at the back of his right hand, and Lindon saw a bright red circle there. A Goldsign. So even the servants in a place like this were stronger than anyone in Sacred Valley.
Yerin met Lindon's gaze and nodded. “Won't be hard to find them, at least.” She turned and walked off without acknowledging the attendant again.
For his part, Lindon bowed to the man with his fists pressed together before he followed Yerin. The Thousand-Mile Cloud trailed after him, dragged along on an invisible leash of thin madra.
The loud noises had been joined by raised voices, with two groups arranged on the road outside of the bathhouse. One group was wearing furs, and each had a bright green lizard-creature attached to one arm. These Remnants, or parasites, or Goldsigns—whatever they were—acted independently from their host, hissing and spitting at the enemies opposite them, though they never left. Maybe they were attached somehow.
The other group must have been the Fishers, based on the attendant's words. Most of them were dressed in clothes that would have been considered poor even in Sacred Valley: threadbare brown robes, sandals on the edge of breaking, woven reed hats with wide brims that would protect against harsh sunlight. Some of them wore them even now, after dark, though a few more had strapped the hats to their backs. Each of them carried the same weapon, which Lindon had noticed before—a wide crescent blade on a hilt, like a sword that had been bent into the shape of a hook.
One of the Sandvipers reached up and pulled another board away from a building. Like most construction in the Five Factions Alliance, this place was slipshod and half-finished, and it looked like it was only one or two boards away from collapsing. Clearly, the man had done this before, judging by the pile of wood next to the half-disassembled building.
“...we're just passing the time as we wait here,” the Sandviper said casually, peeling another board away from the structure. The whole hut groaned. “If we don't have anything to call us away, we might as well stay a while longer.”
A tall woman stepped up as the representative of the Fishers. Unlike the others, she carried two of those bladed hooks, one in her hand and the other on her back. A sneer gave her a twisted, malicious cast. “While you're waiting here, maybe I'll go back home. I made some new friends today, and they have all sorts of interesting stories to tell us about you.”
The lead Sandviper's face contorted until it looked like hers, and he stepped forward himself. In a flicker of motion so fast that Lindon almost didn't catch it, a pair of long knives appeared in each of his hand. Vivid green madra coiled around each blade. “Give me my miners back, and we can let this go here.”
“If you want to give me my brother's eye back, then we can—”
A new voice, quiet and even, sliced through the argument like a razor. “What is this?”
The Sandvipers parted like a crowd of puppies before a wolf. The first detail Lindon could see of this new figure was a spearhead, which gleamed bright even in the light from the smoky torches. The shaft was red, worked with detail that looked like it may have been script, but the weapon hardly attracted attention compared to the man who carried it.
He was roughly as tall as Lindon, but thinner, so that his build matched that of his spear. He wore ordinary dark robes, like more than half the sacred artists Lindon had seen that day, but he wore something they did not: long strips of red cloth, wrapped tightly around his head. It looked as though he'd tried to bandage himself for grievous injuries to the skull, but his wounds had bled through.
Every one of the strips of cloth was covered, without exception, in what was unmistakably script. Even if Lindon had been close enough to make out the script in detail, he likely still wouldn't have been able to tell what it did.
Perhaps it had some intimidating effect on onlookers, because everyone grew quiet at the masked stranger's approach. The Sandvipers shut their mouths like children before a parent, and the Fishers had all reached for their weapons. Even the few handful of bystanders who had stuck by to watch the confrontation, like Lindon, did not dare to utter a word.
Except Yerin. “He's strong,” she said to Lindon, though even she kept her comment to barely above a whisper.
The stranger stopped at the lead Sandviper, who drew himself and saluted over his fists. “Brother Jai Long,” the Sandviper said, “these Fishers captured some of our miners on their return from the Ruins. We wanted to at least recover the scales, in order to save face for the Sandviper sect.”
Another member of the Jai clan, Lindon noted. And once again in the company of Sandvipers. Those men and women at the gate hadn't just been Jai Sen's friends, then; their factions were close allies. He wasn't sure if that fact would be worth anything, but he tucked it away nonetheless.
“For the Sandviper sect,” Jai Long repeated softly. “Who was responsible for the missing mining team?”
“Ah, that is...I was responsible for guarding them, but the Fishers sent too many for me to handle on my own.”
“Then you were both careless and weak. You have lost respect for yourself and for the sect, and the young chief will punish you accordingly.”
The Sandviper man's hands curled into fists. He straightened his back, glaring. “Then I will hear as much from Kral's own mouth. He does not need an outsider speaking for him.”
Despite Lindon's expectations, Jai Long did not grow angry. He tilted his head back, looking up at thick, black branch hanging over the street. “I suppose he doesn't.”
A man jumped from the branch, landing with knees slightly bent as though he'd hopped off of a curb. It looked so easy. So natural.
The Sandvipers backed away at the sudden appearance of this man, who wore fine black furs and held his chin so high it looked as though he were about to issue a royal decree. He stared at the lead Sandviper like a emperor looking down upon a criminal.
Here was yet another sacred artist who could casually do the impossible, whose very presence overwhelmed lesser Golds.
“Young chief Kral,” the Sandviper greeted him, stuttering a little and bowing even more deeply than he had for Jai Long. “I intended no disrespect to you.”
“When you disrespect my friend, Jai Long, you dirty my honor,” Kral pronounced. Like Jai Long, he seemed to have no need to raise his voice to transfix the whole street. “How will you make amends?”
The Sandviper man dropped to his knees before Jai Long, bowing until his head hit the dirt. “My eyes were blind, honored Jai Long. I will never—”
Jai Long kicked him in the shoulder. The sound rang out in the night, even louder than the wood-on-wood impacts earlier, but the man wasn't visibly affected. He raised his head, confused.
“My pride is not worth our time,” Jai Long said. “Stand up.”
The man staggered to his feet, and abruptly Kral grinned. The smile transformed him, turning him from a ha
ughty prince into a mischievous boy. He threw one arm around the man's shoulders.
“He says all's well, so it's well,” Kral said, patting the man on the back. “Now, what exactly are our friends the Fishers doing out here?”
He looked to the other camp as he said that, friendly grin still in place, but the green serpent on his arm hissed loudly.
The woman in charge of the Fishers held a hook in each hand now. She took an aggressive step forward, brandishing a weapon, but neither Jai Long nor Kral reacted. “This is our territory. What's strange is your presence.”
“Territory?” Without removing his arm from the Sandviper man's shoulders, Kral turned to Jai Long. “Is the camp divided into territories?”
“Not officially.”
“See?” Kral said to the woman. “Nothing official. So what I choose to believe is that my subordinates were walking back to the mines, tired after a hard day's work, and they were ambushed by some thieves looking for easy pickings.”
The Fisher woman turned red. “You dare to—”
“And these thieves,” Kral continued, riding over her words, “were courageously captured by you Fishers, who are now eager to return our stolen property to us. Like the young heroes that you are.”
The woman stopped, uncertain.
“How many scales did they take?” Kral asked the man under his arm.
“Sixty-two, young chief,” the man said nervously.
Kral leaned a little closer. “How many?”
“...sixty-two?”
Kral sighed. “How many stolen scales are these Fishers going to return to you?”
At last, the young man caught the point. “At least one hundred scales, young chief.”
Releasing him, Kral spread both hands. “See what an opportunity for goodwill we have here? Return the stolen one hundred scales to us now, and we'll trust your honor that the miners will be back in our camp come dawn.”
The Fisher woman gave a crooked smile that had no humor in it. “It’s the law of the Wilds, Sandviper. You take whatever you can keep. If you were too weak to keep it…”
