Soulsmith (Cradle Book 2)

by Wight,Will

  Suggested topic: Soulsmith life expectancy. Continue?

  Denied, report complete.

  ***

  It had been almost two weeks since Lindon had begun working for Fisher Gesha, and in that time, he'd continued every night until his body refused to continue any longer. Even when he finished his work early, he’d spend hours taking notes on what he’d learned, keeping careful records for the Path of Twin Stars, until he eventually passed out on the page.

  As a result, it took more and more drastic methods to wake him. One morning, the Soulsmith had coated his entire hay-strewn nook with uncomfortably warm slime from a binding. Noise didn't work; he'd slept straight through a thunderstorm that rattled the rafters and sent the spider-constructs overhead swinging like chimes in the wind.

  So when he woke facedown with some man's shoulder digging into his stomach, he wasn't entirely surprised. Even in his groggy, sleep-wrapped state, he recognized one of Gesha's attempts to wake him.

  When the bright green lizard-spirit attached to the man's arm turned and hissed at him, that was when he knew something was wrong.

  He scrambled for details. The man's boots were crunching on grass, not dirt, so they'd gone off the path. Smoke in the air. Torchlight flickered against the furs the man wore, and a biting chill lingered in the air.

  So a Sandviper had taken him in the middle of the night, and had left Fisher territory to bring him somewhere else.

  Still drifting as he was, he initially wondered if he could somehow turn this to his advantage. The Sandviper was an enemy, and therefore an honorable target for robbery. Would he have anything on him? Was there some way Lindon could talk his way out of this? Would the Empty Palm disable him, or just make him angry?

  As clarity returned, his thoughts changed. Was he headed back to the Sandviper camp? Was this some sort of revenge against Fisher Gesha, or against Yerin? He hadn't personally done anything against the Sandvipers, but now he was going to be treated to a full, painful taste of their powers. Their insidious, venomous powers, which could dissolve flesh like an acid.

  He'd dismantled a Sandviper Remnant under Gesha just two days before, and even its dead matter was enough to slowly burn through living flesh. She'd demonstrated on a dead rat.

  Worse, she said, the aura they gathered did not kill so quickly. Their Ruler techniques produced a sort of gas that caused seizures, paralysis, and other, less pleasant symptoms. She'd spoken with a shadow in her voice that suggested she'd seen that state entirely too many times.

  Now Lindon started to struggle. He'd tried not to, in order to avoid giving away that he'd regained consciousness, but it had become too much. He kept seeing the corpse of the rat, its hair hissing and sizzling away as the flake of Sandviper madra had steadily drilled its way through.

  That same madra, in the form of a legged serpent, stared at him from a few inches away. It hissed again, but the sacred artist gave no indication that he cared what Lindon was doing. He trundled along with the consistency of an ox, though with considerably more speed.

  It would have been more interesting to Lindon under other circumstances, but while the Sandviper man gave the impression of moving slowly, ground passed beneath him with alarming speed.

  He started slowing when sounds of laughter and chatter cut through the night. It had to be the Sandviper camp, though even craning his neck, Lindon couldn't see much more of it than a few temporary buildings and some torch-smoke.

  The man walked passed the laughing crowd, taking him to one of the only buildings Lindon had seen in the entire Five Factions Alliance that wasn't made of rough, freshly cut wood. Instead, it was entirely constructed from iron bars, with rings of script spiraling up the length of the bars like creepers on tree trunks.

  Hinges squealed as the door opened, and Lindon hit the ground hard and rolled before he came to a stop on his back.

  Even the ceiling was made from bars, which must get unpleasant when it rained. If Lindon were left here, where Fisher Gesha and Yerin couldn't find him, he'd have to survive those rainstorms huddling in the corner and bunched up against the cold.

  Before the Sandviper closed the door, Lindon scrambled for it. He kicked at the dirt, launching himself forward.

  The Gold still didn't say a word. He grabbed Lindon with one hand like scooping up a squirming puppy, then tossed him back inside. The door shut faster this time.

  None of the other prisoners made a break for it.

  There were only five others inside this cage, though there were other cages on the left and right. He couldn't begin to guess how many total, which he imagined might be useful information if he ever got out of here.

  As he rose to shaky feet, trying to get a better look at his surroundings, one of his cellmates raised her head to look at him. She was filthy, shrouded in a ragged blanket, and she stared with one eye. The other was a half-healed mess, shredded by what seemed to be claw marks.

  Lindon couldn't meet her good eye. He was too busy staring at her missing one as though it had shown him his own future.

  The next one in the cage was a man that revealed a missing arm and, when he turned in his sleep, several missing toes.

  The third, a boy about Lindon's age. Half his hair had been seared off, and he stared into the distance with a glassy look.

  The fourth and fifth clung to one another so that he couldn't make out the details of one against another, but blood clung to the bars behind them and the floor beneath him.

  Wounds surrounded him, a tale of misery and pain etched in flesh. All of these were Golds, he was sure—a weak cloud drifted over the one-eyed woman's head, and one of the couple in the corner seemed to have a tail—and they had suffered like this. What had wounded them would crush a Copper to paste.

  He took a breath, calming his disordered thoughts, though it felt like trying to spit water onto a forest fire. He knelt and examined the door, studying the latch and the script together, but so many of the symbols were unfamiliar to him. He recognized something similar to the circle he'd used to ward off Remnants, but with ten times the complexity.

  That was it. There wasn't much else to examine. No other tools to use, no threads to pull, just idle time to pass before whatever had shredded the other prisoners' bodies was used on him.

  Though when he spent some time thinking about it, he thought he might know what had happened. These must be miners.

  When he looked up, the blocky silhouette of the Transcendent Ruins blocked out the moon and a good half of the stars. They were camped right at the base of it—so maybe this wasn't Sandviper territory at all, because all of the five allied factions would want to share access to the Ruins.

  The Sandvipers he'd met before had mentioned miners, and Fisher Gesha had told him the story of how dangerous it was to go inside the Ruins to draw scales from the air. She'd suggested a survival rate of less than thirty percent.

  Lindon took another look around him as he imagined what had happened to the rest.

  Laughter echoed around the camp until it sounded almost like screams...no, those were screams, along with some shouts and the ringing of metal.

  He craned his neck, trying to stick his head between the bars—though they were too closely set for that—in order to see down the row of cages and storage buildings.

  Another cage, just like the one in which he found himself, was rattling back and forth as its inhabitants threw themselves against the sides. It looked as though it would actually tip over, but a couple of Sandvipers appeared out of nowhere at the final instant. One of them sent two bright green lights flickering into the cage—he couldn't see the details, but it was obviously a technique of some kind—and the other grabbed the cage in both hands.

  He heaved, lifting the entire cage off the ground, and then slammed it back down.

  The screams had redoubled in intensity, but now other cages were rattling, and more guards were pouring out of nearby shelters.

  When the commotion spread closer to him, with Sandviper guards runn
ing past him to help, Lindon stepped back. He was getting too detailed of a look at what the Sandviper techniques were doing to prisoner flesh.

  And his cage seemed least likely to join in. Not a one of his fellow inmates even looked up.

  He sat himself with his back against the bars, trying to think. What did he have on him? He didn't have his pack, of course, but even his pockets had been emptied. Except...

  A smooth, round ball slightly bigger than his thumbnail sat at the bottom of his pocket, forgotten. He reached in, pulling out the glass marble from Suriel. A single blue candle-flame flickered in the center, pointing straight up no matter how he turned the outside.

  The marble had no use, unless he could throw it like a pebble to distract a guard, but it was a comfort. A concrete reminder that the heavens hadn't given up on him.

  He rolled it between his fingers as he took further stock.

  He was in reasonably good physical condition, and he'd recovered most of the energy in his cores that he'd spent earlier that night. Not that either of those things would help him against the Sandvipers.

  Other than the marble, he had nothing but his clothes and the familiar presence of wood against his chest. So they'd left him his Unsouled badge. How considerate.

  The badge itself was tied to a ribbon of blue shadesilk, which was bright as day in direct light and absolutely black in the slightest shadow. The interesting reflective properties of shadesilk had allowed Sacred Valley to keep trading with the outside world, but now Lindon found himself considering more about the fabric's strength. Could he strangle someone with it?

  Not anyone who mattered, not with a Copper's strength. Maybe he could take a toddler hostage, assuming a toddler passed within arm's length of this cage in a prison camp, but that would be as cowardly of an act as he could imagine.

  But if he stayed, he'd face the Ruins.

  The sky began to lighten before he'd come to any conclusion on a strategy, and in the distance, he saw an enormous block sink back into the wall of the Ruins. A small army filed out, the Sandvipers in the front carrying weapons, and the collection of people in the middle carrying iron barrels speckled on the bottom with crystal chalices.

  They passed close enough for Lindon to make out the wounds on the prisoners—missing limbs, fingers, chunks of flesh. The procession turned to a building that looked like a big, painted wagon...

  And Lindon gained his first truly interesting piece of information. The back of the wagon lifted open, and the first prisoner—prodded by a knife—dumped his barrel into the back.

  Scales clattered out. They fell into a box specially prepared for the purpose, and then the second miner stepped up, also emptying her barrel. It took twenty or thirty people before the box was filled up and pushed to the back.

  To join dozens of boxes just like it.

  Lindon's eyes were glued to the stack of boxes, the blue-lit marble spinning in his fingers. Fisher Gesha had said that scales could be used for advancement, but doing so was like watering down your madra. Well, his madra was essentially all water.

  How many scales would it take to break through to Iron? Twenty? A hundred? However many he needed, they were right there.

  He pushed himself against the bars, eyes stuck on the boxes.

  When the prisoners had finished delivery, the door on the wagon slammed shut. Something like an angry trumpet blast sounded, and the wagon actually rumbled forward, sliding out from between a pair of cages.

  So the fortune didn't stick around. That was a disappointment, but it was a good policy not to leave their treasures sitting among a group of disgruntled prisoners.

  A Sandviper woman walked up, and Lindon backed away from the bars just in time to avoid her slapping her sword against the cage. It rang like a hideous bell, hurting his ears, but not as much as her voice. She propelled her words with the full force of her Gold spirit and Iron body, causing him to clap hands over his ears and his cellmates to scramble to their feet.

  “Wake up, wake up. Feed time, and then it's day shift.”

  So there was a day shift. Meaning the wagon would show up at sunrise and sunset, for the two mining shifts to deliver their haul.

  She pulled the squealing door open, stepping back, and Lindon eyed the gap uncertainly. Was she really trying to fight six people on her own? He couldn't contribute much, but the others were Gold. Even wounded, they should be on her like a pack of wolves.

  That was when he noticed the collars, iron and scripted just like the bars.

  He touched his neck, in case he'd somehow missed being collared in metal, but his fingers met only skin. He wondered if they'd put one on him later, but he found it unlikely.

  He probably just wasn't worth collaring.

  Four of the five prisoners shuffled forward at the Sandviper's prodding, but the woman with the missing eye had curled back against the bars. She shook as though weeping, but made no sound.

  The Sandviper woman looked bored as she stepped past the other inmates and into the cage, holding her sword in one hand.

  Before she could reach the crouching woman, Lindon bent over and grabbed the prisoner by the shoulder. “Stand up. I don't know what's happening, but I know you'd better stand up. Come on.”

  He shook her harder, but she didn't respond. The Sandviper pushed him away and raised her sword.

  Unlike his imagination, she didn't decapitate the miner in one stroke. Instead, she slapped the edge of her sword against the shaking woman's head with such force that each stroke sounded like a lumberjack axe against a tree.

  Lindon winced and took another step back. You probably had to do this much to get through an Iron body, but a single one of those blows would have caved his head in.

  A familiar voice came from behind him, sharp and venomous. “There are no pieces of him missing? Hm? This is good for you.”

  Lindon spun to see Fisher Gesha, goldsteel hook on her back, standing on top of her mechanical spider legs. She looked the same as always—bun tight on her head, expression disapproving—but there was something about her that made him shiver.

  The Sandviper guard stopped beating the prisoner and turned to Gesha, leaning her sword on her shoulder. “What do you think our sect is, that you can come in and order us around? Do you think everyone works for you?”

  A gentle, invisible force tugged Lindon out the open door so that he stumbled forward until he was standing next to Gesha.

  “You need Copper miners that badly, do you?” the Fisher asked dryly. “Tell your young chief his message was received, but I am taking back my property. Can you remember that, hm?”

  Green light spidered up the edge of the Sandviper's blade like veins in a leaf. She glared at Gesha and raised her voice. “Fisher—”

  Whatever she was going to say next was cut off when Gesha moved like a flickering snake. She suddenly stood next to the Sandviper woman, one arm behind her back, the other holding her goldsteel hook extended. The sharp inside of the blade's crescent was pressed against the younger woman's throat.

  “Silly girl. When I was weak as you, did I disrespect my betters? No, I kept my head on my work. And you have a miner to catch.”

  She nodded down the row, where the one-eyed woman was hobbling away, casting fearful glances behind her.

  As Gesha removed the hook, the Sandviper guard tore her gaze between the escaping prisoner and her enemy, muttered something under her breath, and bolted off after the miner. It was probably a jog for a Gold, but her movements blurred to Lindon's eyes.

  He turned back to Gesha as the guard seized the miner by the hair and started dragging her back.

  “Can we take them with us?” he asked, voice low. They probably heard him anyway, considering their hearing, but he had to ask.

  She gave him a look of almost comical surprise. “There are worse things than this in the world, Wei Shi Lindon. These are enemies, captured in battle.”

  “They didn’t quite capture me in battle,” he said. “They took me in my sleep.” She
darkened.

  “And so I have taken you back,” she said. “This time. But you are not my grandson, you hear me? Hm? I cannot come to save you every morning. If you cannot protect yourself, I cannot protect you either. Next time, remember that.” She gestured, and his red Thousand-Mile Cloud floated up from behind her. He hadn't noticed it, and he wasn't prepared for the sensation of relief that flooded him at the sight.

  “Follow me,” she said, and he did.

  His neck was tight from the effort of not looking back to see the others he’d left behind.

  Gesha spent most of their journey back cursing the Sandvipers for their cowardice, but Lindon remained lost in thought. When he asked her how she’d found him, she simply said “I looked,” in the tone of voice that suggested he was an idiot.

  When they returned to Fisher territory, his plans had clarified enough for him to ask better questions. “Pardon, Fisher Gesha, but I’d be better able to defend myself with a Path.”

  Her drudge’s spider-legs did not falter in their smooth, rolling gait, and she didn’t so much as glance at him. “You think you’ve earned it? Hm? You think you’ve given so much to the sect that we must give you something back?”

  “I have nothing but gratitude to you and to the Fisher sect,” he assured her, though his only contact with the Fishers thus far had been limited to glimpses of customers in the Soulsmith foundry. “I will never repay my debt for your kindness in this lifetime. I’m only impatient to contribute more.”

  Judging by her pleased smile, flattery had been the right choice. “Why so impatient? If you have not walked a Path so far, waiting until Iron is not so late. Focus on Forging two scales a day. When you can do that, you will keep one.”

  He wasn’t sure if she’d found his successful scale or not, but he was still a long way away from two scales a day, every day. “If I could, then how long might it take me to reach Iron?”

  She was silent for a moment, contemplating the question. “If you work hard, one year is not too short. Not so bad, is it? A year is nothing when you’re my age, I can tell you.”