Chapter 59: The child

Chapter 59: Chapter 59: The child

Allan stumbled through the inn door and nearly went down on his knees. Blood had soaked clean through the cheap bandages at his side. He kicked the door shut, dropped the bar across it, and wedged the only chair under the handle. The room stank of lamp oil and old wood, and when he breathed too deeply, of his own blood.

He pulled the cork on the first potion with his teeth and forced it down. It burned like acid, his throat clamping around it, but warmth spread through the wound and dulled the pain enough to keep him upright. That should have been enough. He drank a second vial anyway, and once his hands stopped shaking he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and reached for the Duke’s folder on the table, under the weak glow of the oil lamp.

The first pages were what he’d expected: patrol routes, timetables, the names of the three investigators sent into cult territory. He knew most of it already. He was skimming the second timetable when something snagged, and he went back. The investigators’ routes were written out in full, every road, every hour, as if the Duke wanted someone to read them.

They were never meant to stay secret. The routes had been laid out for the cult to find. The investigators were bait, and the Duke wasn’t hunting the cult at all. He was watching what moved once the bait dropped: who reacted, who scrambled to protect the investigators, who rushed to shut them up.

His fingers stopped on the last page. One line sat alone at the bottom, the ink still wet enough to catch the lamplight.

If the person responsible already knows what Greyford becomes, what would he do to prevent it?

The potion had only just steadied his hands, and now he had to set the page down to keep the paper from rattling.

Another sheet listed dates and places, and he recognized every one. Each matched something he’d done. The Duke hadn’t just tracked where Allan went. He’d tracked what happened after he left. Somebody had noticed that Allan knew things no one in this world should.

Something splintered outside. A scream tore through the night, then another. Allan went to the window. Orange light was crawling up the walls of Greyford, brighter every time he looked. The Duke hadn’t even had the manners to let him finish reading.

"Even now, you’re still testing me," he muttered. "Did I tickle his fancy or something?"

He yanked the chair out and lifted the bar, and somewhere between the door and the street the folder ended up inside his coat.

He kept his face covered, hoping Diva wouldn’t recognize him, and worked through the town one alley at a time. He wrote down who ran from what, which doors broke first, and half of what people were shouting, all in a shorthand only he could read. By nightfall the notebook was full, the last page smeared where he’d shut it too soon.

Year 807, winter month, Tuesday.

Morning: someone reports Early Dragon Syndrome.

Imperial inspectors forced their way toward a narrow house near the old well, demanding that a silver-marked child be handed over for quarantine.

Then the cult loosed the grey-scale beasts inside the walls, and everything happened at once. They poured out of alleys and broken doors, snarling, scaled, their eyes a dull silver. The inspectors vanished into the crush. Smugglers and half-organized anti-Imperial men came charging in with clubs and stolen blades, all of them sure this was another child seizure.

Nobody knew who had struck first. The soldiers screamed that rebels had ambushed them. The townsfolk screamed that the Empire had set monsters on its own people.

Allan stood still for the length of one breath. He knew how this went: everyone screaming at everyone else until the screaming turned into the Ashen Rebellion. Only it wasn’t due for years. He’d planned for it, but he hadn’t planned for tonight. He huffed and dragged a hand down his face. He’d guessed it might come to this, and he’d hoped he was wrong.

Why does the cult hate the Empire this much? It can’t be the players. I’ve read the history book twice and there’s nothing there either. So why? Why are they so hell-bent on spreading famine and starting revolutions everywhere?

The charcoal snapped in his fingers. He didn’t notice until the black dust had worked its way under his nails. He kept circling back to what the dragon had said: the cult belonged to him.

Ha. If it belonged to me, I’d use it to make the world better. Who am I kidding? I’d have it running my errands and scaring off my creditors within a week.

The coat caught his eye first. A child’s, dark green and patched, torn at the left shoulder. He was counting paces back to the old well before he understood why. Seventeen. Then one of the inspectors barked a phrase, and Allan knew every word of it, because he’d watched that cutscene a hundred times.

It was the kid from the hanging. Allan had watched that scene more times than he could count, and not once had he wondered what the boy was called. The game never gave him a name.

If he stepped in, the Duke got his answer. If he stayed out, the boy hanged on schedule, the way he always had. Allan had always figured he could live with either. Now he kept seeing the torn shoulder of that coat, and the math wouldn’t come out the way it used to.

The System text appeared across his vision, plain and flat.

[Investment Opportunity Detected]

[Target: Unknown Child

Original Fate: Public Execution

Projected Influence: Extreme

Current Deviation: 0%

Investment Cost: Part of your life]

"Huh. Part of my life. Which part, exactly? Do I get to pick?" he muttered.

The interface only came up when its subject was nearby.

No number, no odds, no fine print. Allan hated bets like that. But somebody had already decided this kid was worth killing, and that was all the information he was going to get.

"If he’s the way to my answer, fine. I’ll take it."

He’d barely accepted when the screaming started again, close by. He ran toward it and found another fight breaking out in the next street.

The boy was at the edge of it, in the green coat.

Allan cut through the fighting, shouldered past a scaled beast, and had the boy’s arm in his hand before he’d decided to reach for it. The kid was lighter than he looked. The stitches in Allan’s side pulled like wire as he hauled him up, and the next few steps were simply gone. The next thing he knew, he was crouched in the shadow of a collapsed cart with the boy dragged in beside him, waiting for the street to come back into focus.

The boy stared up at him and didn’t struggle. Something flickered in his eyes, and his fingers closed on Allan’s sleeve and held on. A kid’s hand on his sleeve, where a hanging was supposed to be. Allan couldn’t put that back.

The way out ran through the lane Diva was holding: a narrow street, a wave of cult beasts, three marked civilians cowering behind her, and her boots sliding back a little further every time something hit her. She was fighting like someone ready to throw herself away, and she hadn’t had her breakthrough yet. That was supposed to come while she protected someone she couldn’t afford to lose. If she died here, every route that ran through her died with her.

He set the child down behind the cart’s wheel. "Stay here. Don’t go anywhere."

The boy nodded, solemn as a priest, and Allan didn’t believe it for a second. Kids that age nodded at everything.

He went anyway. Branches and routes, he told himself, and came up on her left, close enough to be heard over the noise.

"Stop trying to kill them! They’re not even going for the civilians, look at them!"

She turned, and it was the pointed ear showing under his hair that told her who he was.

"Allan? Why are you here?" she asked, startled. Her eyes dropped from his face to the beasts’ feet. The whole pack was leaning the same way, toward the street behind her, where the civilians were backing away.

"Trust me," Allan said.

"This isn’t the time. I need to save them."

Then she dropped into her stance, and Allan knew every frame of it: rear foot planted, blade high, a two-step lunge. She was holding nothing back.

Allan glanced down the street and saw the guards coming back.

He caught her hand before she could power up her skill and pulled her in until they were nearly nose to nose. "Diva. You know me. Just trust me on this."

Diva stared into his eyes, a red so dark it was almost black, and then she nodded.

"Okay."

The beasts spilled onto the road without touching a soul, then scattered again, and by then the Imperial guards had arrived.

"Hey, you two!" one of them shouted.

Allan grabbed her hand again and bolted, and the guards’ shouts dropped away behind them.

They cut through two alleys back to the cart, both of them out of breath. The boy was still behind the wheel where Allan had left him, looking at them, confused.

"Allan..." she said, still dragging in air. "Why did you come here? If they know, they’ll..."

"I know. I’ll get sliced and diced." He pressed a hand to his wound.

She looked at his side, at the stain already spreading under his fingers, and bit her lip.

Allan leaned on the cart until the ground stopped tilting, then looked at her. "My turn. Why are you here?"

Diva’s eyes went to her boots, then to the boy, then to the burning street over Allan’s shoulder, anywhere but him. He was going to find out sooner or later, and she knew it. Her jaw worked once, and then she made herself look straight at him.

"I joined the cult, Allan."