Chương 7: Chapter 6 – Gentle Reminder

Passage was calm. Outwardly, at least. He watched as Pike held open the door for Cinder, following him inside like some parody of a butler. With Bracken's plan lodged in the back of his mind like a bone in his throat, it was harder to take his eyes off Pike's bulk. Cinder was still the more dangerous of the two, of course. Only a fool would underestimate a Caller in a fight. But Pike's was a familiar sort of meanness, a mundane kind of power that was easier to understand and therefore harder to ignore.

He didn't have a neck so much as his head sat stiffly on a lump of muscle that blended with shoulders forever hunched up around his ears. His bald head was lumpy where dents had been inflicted and never quite healed, and half of his left ear was missing where someone had bitten it off. What remained was so swollen that they barely resembled ears at all. His arms, thick as stumps, were pale and stiff. They must have hurt, but they only added to his menace.

The knuckles still hung around his neck on full display, but that was just theatre. Pike could beat everyone in that little bakery to death with his bare hands without ever needing an Implement or a Stain to help him. And yet, Passage did not tremble. He watched, and he waited, and he wondered in an absent sort of way, whether his father's heart would break more at his death, or his returning home a murderer.

"I asked you a question, Passage. You tryin' to piss me off or are you just as slack witted as you look?" Cinder drawled, stepping in closer and invading Passage's space. The burned man had a skinny neck, and Passage's hands were strong. How easily could the Caller conjure flames? Could he still do it while the life was being choked out of him? The Planes resonated strongest with certain emotions. Wodfyr was angry, excitable, and consumptive. The sort of power that didn't respond to fear.

"Do you see the way he's looking at me, Pike? Look at him, look at his eyes. This fuckin' kid, fuckin' glarin' at me like that," Cinder guffawed. He poked Passage hard in the chest, his fingertip glowing red. Smoke instantly began to rise from where his finger met Passage's shirt, the fabric blackening and burning away. Passage's skin began to burn. It hurt, but Passage didn't flinch. He just stared down at the goon, hands at his sides.

He would not retreat, wouldn't give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing him cower. But he also wasn't such a fool as to raise hands against a Planetouched. So, he endured, and he refused to break eye contact with Cinder no matter how much it hurt.

"Cinder, please, be reasonable. He was just stopping by, not buying anything!" Jasper pleaded. He sounded scared – clearly terrified of the man, despite his stubborn refusal to offer up his son to Tallow's gang.

"He was only here to apologise on behalf of his father. He was just telling us they won't be able to keep buying our stock," Maria added. She stood beside Passage, wringing her hands like she wanted to reach out and force Cinder's burning finger away from Passage's chest. Impromptu weapons hung forgotten in the hands of both bakers. Their bravery and their fury had fled, probably to the same place as Passage's reason. Cinder's lip curled, a black hunger gnawing away behind his eyes.

Wodfyr's power demanded its users keep burning once they started. It commanded them to escalate at every opportunity. Harrow had lectured Passage on the Planes and their dangers enough times in his life that Passage could recognise the signs. That mad, reckless hunger was exactly why so many Wodfyr users burned themselves out long before they managed to Forge their bodies. Finally, with a derisive snort, Cinder pulled back his finger and Passage had to brace his core to keep from sagging with relief.

His body was a rictus of pain, his every muscle tensed to keep from shaking as the fresh burn began to make itself known. It had been easier to ignore at first, but as the cold air touched it, the pain worsened. His nerve endings were confused, unsure if he was freezing cold, freshly stabbed, or if a lump of molten metal was embedded in his chest.

"You're lucky, Passage. Tallow doesn't want us upsetting your father any more than we have to. He's a businessman after all. Reckons we need to play nice with people, let them see we only smack the ones who don't behave right, and your father's a well-loved man. Can't have all the good Gutterfolk getting up in arms because someone made the preacher cry. Burning you isn't worth the lecture." He tried to spit on Passage's chest, no doubt aiming for the fresh burn, but he was trying too hard to seem lazy about it.

He missed the burn by a handspan, and a wad of spit got caught on his lip where the scar of his Stain kept it from moving right. Drool ended up running down his chin and he quickly wiped it away on the back of his sleeve.

"Yeah, lucky," drawled Pike like a half-witted echo with a fat lip.

"I'll be sure to thank Sael in my prayers tonight then, for the blessing of my luck," Passage finally spoke. His voice didn't shake, but it was higher pitched, more strained than he'd have hoped.

"You do that, Passage. Pray she keeps sendin' you luck. Fools like you need as much luck as you can get. There's nothin' good waiting for you when it runs out." Cinder snapped his fingers and pointed at Passage as he took a few steps back.

"Search him, Pike." The henchman leapt to obey, placing rough hands on Passage and quickly patting him down in search of coin or weapons. He found neither. Passage suffered the indignity in silence, adrenaline and fear finally catching up with him as he realised how close he'd come to being burned far worse.

"Like Jasper and Maria said, I just came to apologise on behalf of my father. We can't be interfering in your quarrel. My father wants no trouble from Tallow," Passage ground the words out. Maria squeezed him on the arm, and he caught a nod of encouragement from Jasper.

"Good. We won't need to stop by the temple with any reminders then. But that doesn't solve the question of why these two are baking anything at all when they know Tallow's not inclined to let them sell right now." This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

"We're making food for ourselves. That's all," said Jasper.

"At the crack of dawn? In the bakery kitchen?" Cinder challenged.

"We live upstairs; it's the only kitchen we have. And we have been running the bakery for years. We won't stop rising early just because the bakery is closed."

"Right, right, right. That all makes sense," Cinder nodded, tapping his lip.

"Just one more question then. Why the fuck's the sign on the door say open?" Jasper paused for just a moment, searching for an excuse like a man feeling out the next step on the staircase in the dark. It was too long.

"Pike, I think the good baker is in need of a gentle reminder of what happens when people lie to us and don't do what they's told, don't you?" Cinder smiled.

"Reckon so," Pike nodded and folded his arms. Everyone was silent for a moment. Cinder blinked slowly. Pike kept glaring, curled his lip up to snarl with yellowed teeth. Cinder turned to him, eyes flaring with annoyance.

"Oh, shit, you mean you want me to…?"

"Yes, Pike, fucking obviously I do," Cinder rolled his eyes.

"Right, right," Pike nodded and stepped forward. As had been the case in the temple, Passage was startled by how quickly the lump of a man could move. One second, he was standing beside Cinder with his arms folded, the next he was beside Jasper, the baker's wrist gripped in one hand and the other braced against Jasper's elbow. There was a crunch, followed by the sound of the rolling pin dropping to the ground, and then a scream.

Jasper dropped to his knees, his right arm flopping uselessly, bent at the elbow in the distinctly wrong direction.

"Gentle reminder," Pike said over the baker's cry of pain. Passage didn't even realise he'd picked up the rolling pin until he was standing over Cinder with the thing raised above his head, ready to crack the smug bastard's skull open like an egg. Cinder flinched and took a step back, real fear in his eyes. A Caller he might be, but he had the reflexes of a coward. Cinder raised one guarding hand to fend off the blow and clicked his tongue, "Uh-uh, Passage.

Put it down, or we'll have to give the woman a reminder as well." Passage felt the weight of the wooden instrument. Dense and heavy. It would do some real damage. Pike could probably take a hit from it. Probably several. But Cinder was so small, so thin. Objectively, he knew Cinder was probably the more durable of the two. Stains conferred power, and the body was enhanced long before it was Forged. Still, he was tempted to chance it.

The bell jingled above the front door and everyone, except for Jasper who was cradling his mangled arm on the floor, looked towards the intruder. Ressa stood in the entrance looking shocked.

"Oh, pardon me, I was just…" She trailed off, one hand over her mouth. She didn't look at Passage, didn't give any impression that she knew him. Just a startled young woman out to buy breakfast for the household, a bystander stumbling into affairs she shouldn't be privy to. The sort of naïve passerby who might just do something stupid, like call the guards. Passage lowered the rolling pin. Cinder stood up straight and adjusted his jacket, brushing invisible lint from his sleeve.

He turned a smile on Ressa that almost seemed friendly. Ressa had that effect on people.

"Apologies miss; you've come at a bad time. Shop is actually closed today," He began ushering her back out through the door. With a click of his fingers, he summoned Pike to follow.

"Oh, is it? Oh my, is… is he alright?" Ressa asked, wide-eyed and peeking over Cinder's shoulder.

"He's fine, just a bit of an accident is all. Why don't you try the bakery the next block over, hmm? Come on Pike, let's see this nice lady out and let these good folk clean up," Cinder guided Ressa out into the street. Pike followed behind, wearing a smile that was probably meant to be reassuring but just looked a little like he wanted to eat Ressa. Cinder paused beside the door, flashing one last look layered with fell meaning at the trio before he turned the sign around to read closed.

The bell jingled and the door shut behind him. Passage watched, rolling pin still gripped in one white-knuckled hand at his side as Ressa went right and the goons went left, parting ways outside.

"I'll kill him," a new voice said from atop the stairs. Passage looked up and spotted Patrick there. He knew the boy, in the distant way that everyone knew everyone roughly their own age in the Gutters. Patrick was two years older, but a familiar face at the temple. Less familiar now, however. The young man's hair was darker as though damp. His skin had a moist sheen to it, a pale tinge of green as if he were part frog, and gills flapped in the sides of his neck.

He came down the stairs, scowling with eyes stained black at the edges, like dye slowly spreading in a pond. Where his hand gripped the railing, Passage noticed webbing had begun to form low down between his fingers. Passage swallowed hard and tried not to let any reaction show on his face. Patrick's changes far exceeded what was typical for an early Stain, and he was much too fresh to be Forging himself; he hadn't even ascended to Caller as far as Passage knew.

A Stain that far progressed spoke of someone who had barely kept themselves from turning Hollow the first time they touched a Plane.

"You'll do no such thing," Maria snapped, the sharp imperative of a terrified mother. With Jasper wheezing agonised breaths through his teeth on the floor, her nerves were as frayed as the strings of her apron, but she held herself together in the way people do when deferring their own grief for a quieter moment.

"We'll endure their petty torments, we'll keep our heads down, and eventually they will get bored and leave us alone. You're not to get involved, Patrick. Or you, Passage. I saw you raise your hand, and I appreciate what you and your father have done for us, you've always been good people. But don't get mixed up in this on our account."

"Sorry," Passage said, though he wasn't sure exactly what he was apologising for. A little for intruding and making things potentially worse for them. A little more for the fact that he had no intention of obeying Maria's order. Either way, she accepted the apology with a terse nod and helped her husband stand.

"Patrick, fetch some water. Passage here has been burned. Let's see if you can use those powers to heal yet," Maria instructed.

"Where's Bracken?" Passage finally asked while Patrick reluctantly moved to obey.

"He was in the kitchen," Maria replied, looking towards the door. Passage pushed it open, peeking into the room beyond. Dough lay unkneaded atop flour, the ovens worked, loaves rising within them. But it was empty. The back door was left ajar, and Bracken was gone.