Chapter 78: The Shadow of Slane

Kōya’s right hand had curled into a fist. He opened it one finger at a time and felt the Demonic Aura sink back into his veins like water into sand.

Not yet. Not before the gates.

He had woken before sunrise to a camp gone quiet. Mist lay over the borderlands, and the fire had burned down to orange embers that smelled of ash and cold horse. Lyra slept beside it, wrapped in her heavy wool cloak, her wooden wand near her hand.

He looked at the wand for a while.

Not long ago she had waited in the dark for other people to decide where she belonged. Now she carried her own pack and her own wand, and she had opinions about where they slept. It was a small change. On a battlefield, small changes like that decided who stayed standing, and most people never learned to see them.

He turned east.

The mountains stood closer than they had the night before, their peaks scratching at a pale sky. Past them lay the fortified territory they had been walking toward for days. Slane.

Kōya knew it only through the fragments he had torn from Zeref’s dying memories: a hub where elite demons did business with slave traders and rich merchants, and the business ran across a whole continent. It was a spider’s web, and he had seen only the center of it.

Somewhere inside those walls was Mizuki.

He closed his eyes against the cold. Mother.

The Aura pulsed once under his skin, hot and eager. He held still until it quieted. He couldn’t afford to burn his rage down to nothing before they reached the gates. He would need all of it later.

A muffled voice came from the blankets. "Are we there yet?"

Lyra sat up, rubbing her eyes, her dark hair flattened on one side.

"No."

She stared at him. "Then why did you wake me up?"

"I didn’t say a word."

"You were thinking loudly."

Kōya blinked.

Lyra covered a yawn with the back of her hand. "I can tell when it’s something serious."

"You can’t hear my thoughts, Lyra."

"No. But your face gets scary."

"My face always looks like this."

"That’s what I’m saying."

He ran a hand through his hair. She grinned, got to her feet, and beat the dirt out of her cloak in a gray cloud. "Let’s go."

By late morning the eastern road was crowded.

The emptiness of the borderlands was gone. Kōya counted eleven merchant caravans before he gave up counting. After them came supply wagons, rumbling past with their axles shrieking, then knots of armed travelers keeping close for safety, then professional adventurers marching in organized squads with their packs squared and their eyes forward. Twice, silent riders passed in military insignia he didn’t recognize from the Academy. They didn’t look at anyone.

Lyra kept glancing over her shoulder. "This is different."

"How?"

"There are too many people on this road."

Kōya watched the dust climb. "It’s a major territory. That’s what happens when you get close."

"No." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "This isn’t normal."

She pointed, and her finger shook.

An iron-reinforced wagon was coming down the road toward them. Armored mercenaries walked on every side of it with their hands resting on their weapons. The smell reached Kōya before the wagon did: urine, old straw, sweat gone sour in the heat. Thick wooden bars ran across the back.

Packed behind them, shoulder to shoulder, were chained people.

Slaves.

Lyra stared at the mud until the wagon had passed. Kōya tracked it until the dust swallowed it whole.

Slane had been a name on a map, a point to walk toward. Now he could see what waited there. A system so settled into the land that nobody on the road turned their head.

The wheels of their own wagon ground the gravel. Neither of them spoke for a long time.

"They check everyone at the main gates," Lyra said at last.

"You’ve been there?"

"No. My old master used to talk about it." She pressed her lips together. "Slane isn’t like the towns in the west. They keep records. A registry of every person who comes through. Merchants, adventurers, laborers." She swallowed. "Slaves."

"How many slaves?"

"I don’t know. It has the biggest market in the east." She looked at the mud again. "Everyone in the borderlands knows about the auctions."

Kōya said nothing. The reins were warm and slick in his palms.

"There’s another problem," Lyra said.

"What?"

"They’ll ask about me at the gate."

"You’re free."

"I know that."

"But?"

She touched the back of her neck, where the dark slave crest was burned into her skin. "The guards won’t believe it."

Kōya looked at the mark. He had forgotten it was there. Somewhere on the long road he had stopped seeing her through it. The guards at Slane would see nothing else.

They reached the outer checkpoint by late afternoon.

A paved road climbed to an iron gate built between two sheer cliffs. Under a wooden guardhouse stood close to forty armed territory guards, spread out along the line of waiting wagons. The line crawled. Names were shouted and scratched into ledgers. Travel documents were read, then stamped with a sound like a fist on a table.

Kōya slowed the rented wagon at the back of the line. Lyra went rigid beside him.

"We need to stop the wagon."

"It’s stopped."

"I mean we need to talk. Before we get to the front." She swallowed. "About this."

"The crest."

She nodded. For a while neither of them spoke, and the noise of the crowd filled the gap.

"If they check the registry," Lyra said, "I’m still registered as property. Legally."

"You aren’t."

"I know. But they won’t care what we say, Kōya."

"How do you know?"

"Because that’s how the system is built. A person with a slave mark has an owner. Someone has to be responsible for me existing." She gripped her cloak. "If I show up without one, they’ll assume I’m a runaway."

"And?"

"They’ll detain me at the gate."

Owner. The word sat in his mouth like a bad tooth. He had spent the whole journey helping her out from under that idea, and here it was, written into law and stamped on paper.

"There’s another way," Lyra said.