Chương 10

Precision is far more important than strength. The Depths are littered with the corpses of the strong." Wrack and ruin." Harker slammed his boot into the window frame. It held firm. He kicked it again, this time cracking the frame and sending the glass raining down onto the sill and rooftop outside.

"There. Not painted shut anymore." He slid the window up and crawled out, scrambling across the roofing tiles just as the sliding bolt—and the door—blew off its hinges. With a panicked grunt, Harker tumbled over the roof's edge, fingers scrabbling for the stone gutter. It groaned beneath his weight, but it held. His fingers were another question entirely.

"He's gone!"

"The window is shattered. He must have—""Could the Stitcher have taken him?"

"What for? Think, iyeshi."

"I don't know!" Slowly, Harker set his feet against a window casement. His worn boots slipped once, but the rough texture of the stone walls stopped a second time. He held his breath, ear turned up toward the rooftop. The older woman whispered something that was lost to the bells. Harker's skin prickled. She was using her Talent.

"I cannot pick him out from the clamor. He's good as lost." Bless the Ancestors for small miracles.

"I don't believe that."

"It doesn't matter what you believe. I have entertained this glory hunt for far too long, Adhira. We're leaving. Now." Listen to her, stubborn girl. Get outta town, but mostly get away from the window!

"Sejal, this isn't about me anymore." The young woman, Adhira, banged her fist against the sill.

"You know what'll happen if the Illwrought aren't stopped."

"Let the mercenaries earn their pay. You are required at the Travelspire."

"Three months remain before they make their return trip—""And without our hounds, the journey will take us two, even at a swift pace." What a strange relationship. Harker adjusted his grip and glanced down. The downspout was two window-lengths away. He started inching his way over.

"That Stitcher didn't come here on a whim—their kind doesn't do that. They know something about the artifact."

"You're still not listening. This situation is beyond even your ability to master—" A scream cut them off. Harker stilled. That's sounds like it's from…

"The courtyard!" A blur accompanied the voice, one that arced over the roof holding an impossibly large axe." Ve nyatti!" The older woman followed, her robes flapping in the wind and a cloak made of scales flowing off one shoulder. Yowling roars were met by metal and stone, and whomever screamed went silent. Harker didn't care to find out more. He clambered down the drain, making the street in record time before he took off. The sooner he put distance between himself and these insane people the better.

The bells rang wildly, though they were harder to make out from below. It was far easier to hear the Illwrought. They prowled in the distance, cutting across the major thoroughfares in packs of confusing shadow—too swift to believe and too large to be allowed. Harker moved with caution, keeping to the narrow pathways between homes he'd long since mapped out. He had no clue how many of the fell beasts there were, but that Adhira was right.

If they were as nasty as the ones in the north woods, even one would gut half the Vale. Even the survivors would rot from the spiritual poison in their bite. The alleys intersected, pooling with rainwater that was as still as glass. Harker touched his left arm, feeling the carved flesh. They were indents, slightly smoother than skin, and he half expected them to hurt each time he grazed one—they didn't, and it was confusing. That same rot should've been tearing him apart from the inside out.

That it wasn't was almost as unnerving as the opposite. Almost. I'm not gonna argue with survival. He checked his angles and stepped over the pools as quietly as his old boots would allow. The Illwrought could be anywhere. The bells and their howls were wild in the air and the noise covered a great deal. Harker wasn't moving slowly, but he moved with as much precision as he could muster. Law 1—Avoid Attention and Law 3—Avoid Conflict often worked in tandem. They were the baseline of how he had survived.

Law 2—Everyone Is Selfish came in a close second. Law 4—End It Quickly was used far less, though it was proving necessary today. Every step was clean on the cobbles, avoiding mud and debris that the storm had chased out of the gutters. If he could remain in back alleys, then Harker could have slipped free of Vale without incident. It wasn't to be. Harker approached an intersection of three large roads, just down the block from Whitlock's Inn and stilled himself. Pay attention.

The sky was bloody and wood smoke was sharp in his nose along with another scent. It was very familiar. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Bodies. Three of them. Their cloaks were splayed against the wet cobbles and not nearly as pale as they once were. Crimson stained their lengths, especially where the bodies had been shreded into grisly piles. Harker frowned. He'd seen worse working with his mother, but not often.

The Illwrought did not eat their kills, but they were not kind to them either. Harker crept close to the corpses, checking over what remained. Two were closest, and while most of their armor was shredded, their coin purses were quite full. I'll take that. He could put it to better use than a dead man. Dead men, he amended. I'll have that one too. Both coin purses disappeared into his pockets, as did five knives, a spool of wire, and a firestarter.

The latter was quite useful—a Thaumist device that just needed a drop of Water to light anything from a candle to a bonfire. The blades weren't as impressive. They certainly weren't made for throwing, but they were balanced enough to make do. The sword and bearded axe he found were left in their mangled sheaths—Harker had no intention of getting close to anything with claws or fangs again. The third hunter was too mangled to recover much of anything, though an amulet hung around what remained of his neck. No.

A ring. It was suspended on a chain, and clearly engraved with a mazed saltseal. A betrothal seal. Harker left it. He wasn't a monster. The night went silent as the bells stopped ringing, leaving only a few distant howls to fade away. Harker stood slowly, scanning the streets. What happened to the alarms? A chill plucked his spine, leaving a trail of gooseflesh in its wake. He'd been half tempted to try and recover some of their armor, but not now. Everything that wasn't mangled was too heavy anyway.

He was far better off in his borrowed clothes, thin as they were. I'll need a new cloak though. And warmer clothes… Oh. Now that's a great idea. Just down the road, he caught sight of a familiar sign. A few quiet minutes later found him two blocks down and soaked. He encountered nothing but the return of a cold drizzle. His linen shirt was heavy ice against his shoulders, but the eerie silence of the bell-less night weighed on him far more as he approached Garon's shop.

It dragged at him all the harder when he found that the door had been broken open. Harker crept up on the shattered doorframe. It was wet with rain too, but also a darker substance. Blood? It wasn't quite red and far too thick. It was scraped against the sides of the door, smeared across the panels that had been sundered vertically. Jaw clenched, Harker peered around the corner. The interior was a chaotic mess of items across shelves, hanging on hooks, or dangled from the rafters.

Exactly as it had been earlier that night—except for the bent and busted timber shelving. Two had been knocked askew, their contents hurled to the floor where they'd been crushed into a slurry of miscellanea. There was little else to see. Harker slipped in, staying low, and immediately found a pile of sacks and stitched cloth. He snagged a second-hand pack, stuffed his own stachel inside, and proceeded to seize the spilled piles of dried fruit, oats, and nuts.

It would suffice until he could catch game with his snares. Garon usually has some dried trail meat though. Where'd it go? He cast about, inspecting around toppled produce and supplies for anything that might fill out his kit when he heard a wet crunching. Harker frowned. It wasn't a pleasant sound but it drew the attention like a lodestone. He crept across the aisle in a crouch, and on the edge of the endcap, he could make out a mass of shadow hunched near the countertop. Illwrought.

Worse, its foul jaws were tearing into someone he recognized. Damnation. Garon. The man was dead, killed by what looked like a boar spliced with the hindquarters of a marten, except that its hooves were replaced with the scaled claws of some massive bird. Those claws were set on the shopkeep's chest, while its tusked snout rooted around his innards. Harker bit back a curse. Sink swiftly, old man.

Garon might have been a foul-tempered old codger, but he was one of the few people in the Vale that had been willing to give him the time of day. No one deserved to die like that. Harker glanced back at the doorway. He'd have to cross the creature's sight lines again in order to get out, and that meant it wasn't an option. He let his gaze flit around the cluttered shop, trying to parse out anything that might be useful. It was too much to encompass, let alone catalog; he'd have to be a— Harker licked his lips.

Did he dare? Perhaps if I can control a small piece, it won't be so bad. He adjusted his shoulders where he sat.

"Sovereign Sigh—" Harker blinked his eyes open, his head fuzzy and vision blurred. Water surged through him, raging through his tributaries like rivers flush with Spring runoff. Too potent and powerful, it pulled at him even as it sprayed through his left hand Lock. He plunged into the Sea. Waves surged, only a few feet high but ferocious to Harker as he struggled to stay above the Surface. Foam and spray gagged him, blinding his eyes with salt as cold currents dragged at his heels.

The Infinite Sea churned, heaving him forward and back along crest and trough, and Harker fought to recall anything about the place. One day you may witness the Sea, Harker. On that day, you must remember to hold your soul still. Do not allow yourself to stray, or else you will not live to regret it. Remain on the Surface, at all costs. He fought against the current even as it sent him spinning over the foamy crest. Harker kicked, treading chill water as the Sea roiled.

It pulled inward, a cataract where the Sea dipped inward… toward him. Toward his chest. Water filled him, rushed through his center, and Harker couldn't help it. He was being ripped apart. But he saw. The broken shop burst into excruciating detail, every piece of flotsam and jetsam that had been cast onto floorboards and beneath splintered shelves. Sensation followed, just as with his Delve, all of them at once feeding into him with such immensity that it overwhelmed his mind.

The world wavered as if he were viewing it through the Sea itself, and Harker fought back—he focused, stilling his body and commanding his wayward heart to slow, dammit! Dust flitted through the air. The Illwrought's stink wafted too close. Rain-cooled glass. The taste of whitewash on the wooden walls. Despite it all, Harker held on, weathering the onslaught until his Talent faded. The world seemed to breathe. Or maybe it was just him. Harker wasn't sure.

What he was sure of was the space around him, down to the smallest of nails, for exactly five feet in every direction. Information filled his head, too much to parse through, but he grasped the highlights. The shelves. There were a great number still standing. They'd been bashed and bludgeoned by the Illwrought, but Garon overbuilt them—iron brackets bolted each shelf to the stone foundation.

The shelves themselves were made of hardwood aged and reinforced by a Water wash that the man had once bragged about to anyone that would listen. The Illwrought was big and ungainly, but it clearly wasn't so strong that it could split everything in its path into kindling. That meant it could be funneled. Controlled. Harker flitted through the mess of inventory in his head—a few long nails, a hammer, even a sickle hung on the wall. None of them would do him any good.

An illwrought wasn't something that he could fight head on. No I need something I can use from a distance. Oats, old shirts, and bags of sawdust sat next to seed and flour— Harker's eyes widened. Vale had a mill, but it was called the New Mill ever since it was rebuilt a decade ago. Harker still remembered what happened to the Old Mill, and the fate of the miller's careless apprentices. Dangerous… but he'd make it work. He had no choice. Harker unsheathed a knife and stood up.

"Hey! Piggy!"