Chương 4: Chapter 3: Charcoal In The Veins

The scrubbing did not help. I sat on the edge of the washhouse bench and worked rough soap beneath my nails until the water stopped steaming. Blood had dried there in thin black crescents. Each time I cleared one, another showed at the edge of the nail or along a split in the skin. The soap bit harder than the cuts did. I kept scraping because blood was all I could remove. The black crescents taunted me like that mystical object the Elf used in his hair. A constant reminder buried at the end of my finger tips.

My shirt and coat remained on the peg behind me, stiff with evidence Talvek had ordered me not to wash. I had taken Orven's gloves from the inside pocket first and laid them on the dry end of the bench. The gloves were too large for me. Even empty, they seemed to take more space than I was entitled to. Outside, the mill had returned to work. An afternoon of conspiracy was not enough to stop Harl meeting supply orders for the North.

Saws bit steadily through pine while lengths travelled between the yards and carts with orders to drop slowly, steady, and the like yelled over the machinery. Chains dragged. The waterwheel groaned through each turn. I caught myself counting the clean cuts between calls, the same way I had every shift since Orven taught me how to tell a straight feed by sound. My mind kept doing the work without him, and I scrubbed until the skin across my knuckles went pale. Without Orven.

The damaged shoulder should have stopped me. The Crimson Elf had struck hard enough to leave the joint grinding when I dragged Orven to the cart, yet I could already lift my arm above the water bucket. It hurt, but the pain had become manageable stiffness: heavy, hot, and inconvenient. Several hours of rest had done what several days should have required. Maybe even several weeks. I tested my wrist next. It turned farther than it had at the gate, but the colour still looked wrong.

My fingers closed hard around the soap without shaking, and the cuts across the knuckles had temporary seals. I knew iron-ranked workers carried larger loads, recovered faster, and survived winters that killed Common men. Everybody in Dunmere knew that much. Knowing it as tavern talk of commoners dreaming of a foreign world though was different from watching my own flesh repair in front of me. In Strathford or one of the larger towns, an awakening might earn a family supper and a guild visit.

In Dunmere, it meant Harl Morn would find the correct column for better wages, then discover how much extra timber those wages were expected to produce. Any man who could carry twice the load would soon be given twice the load. If he broke beneath it, Harl's ledger would record that too. I rinsed the soap away and found the other change waiting beneath it. Dark veins traced the skin near the ritual burn on my wrist, thin charcoal lines spreading outward in deliberate branches.

They had looked faint beside the clearing. Now they reached almost halfway around the arm. I rubbed at them with the towel. Nothing lifted. I tried soap again, then the stiff bristles meant for cleaning resin from beneath fingernails. The skin reddened around the lines, but the black remained below it. Taunting me. Purple and black bruises spread where flesh had been struck. These marks travelled like the blood moving through lines carved in the snow.

The washhouse door creaked open, and Merris Vale's voice entered before the cold did.

"There are cheaper ways to ruin soap, dear boy." I pulled my sleeve down and looked up. Merris leaned against the doorway with a tally slate beneath one arm and a small cloth parcel in his free hand. He always looked slightly unfinished, as though someone had begun carving a woodsman and changed their mind halfway through. He had Orven's broad jaw and grey eyes, a narrower frame, and humour where frontier stoicism should be.

"I see you missed the afternoon count," he said.

"Talvek told me to stay where he could find me," I replied neutrally.

"And you selected the one room in the yard where respectable men remove their clothes. A sound defensive position." Merris stepped inside and inspected the bucket slowly turning pink beside my boots.

"How fares the campaign?"

"Poorly... this would not be an issue in Strathford. The blood is attached to me like a permanent branding," I throw the soap into the bucket.

"A reasonable assessment," he says undisturbed by the splash from soap and bucket colliding.

"What did that bucket ever do to you?" He set the cloth parcel beside me as I put on clothing that was not stained with blood; only stained with sap instead. Bread lay inside, dark and dense, with a thin shaving of hard cheese folded through the middle. I had not realised how hungry I was until the smell of bread reached inside me. Fresh bread.

"I cannot pay for that."

"Fortunately, it is not for sale. Yesterday's heel and cheese approaching a legal dispute over distribution. I require a labourer willing to dispose of the evidence." He smiled softly. I took the bread. The crust had gone hard enough to hurt my scraped fingers, but the centre remained edible. Merris watched until I swallowed the first mouthful, then consulted his slate as though the matter had been a stock correction.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Town's already talking," he said. I look at him deflated.

"Dunmere's favourite currency, aint it. Gossip is the only coin that multiplies in a place like this." I adjusted my clothes, and threw Talvek's evidence into an old tinder box.

"What... are they saying?" Merris scratched his jaw as if selecting from a basket of spoiled fruit.

"Depends who you ask, but there are some good'uns. One version says there were three Crimson Elves and you split one in half. Head to hip, they say. Another says Orven killed them all before dying heroically in your arms."

"The second one at least sounds like Orven." Merris made a low sound that might have become laughter in a kinder room.

"Mm... Personally, I prefer the wolf version." I stopped fastening my coat.

"Wolf version?"

"The Crimson Elf had trained demon wolves hidden in the trees. A terrible investment, I should think... Wolves are difficult to invoice and worse at keeping secrets." The corner of my mouth moved before I could stop it. I could see what he was doing, and it was working. I hated that it was working. Then Orven's gloves caught against my coat as I lifted it from the peg, and whatever had almost become a smile went with it. Merris followed my eyes to the bench. His fingers tightened once around the edge of the slate.

"He owed me two coppers," he said. I looked at him.

"That is my grief speech. It lacks elegance, but tis true." I picked up the gloves. Pine resin and old smoke remained in the leather beneath the new smell of blood. For a moment I saw Orven on the bunkhouse step with a needle pinched between fingers too thick for the work, blaming thread, winter, wages, and anything else close enough to answer. I pushed the gloves into the inside pocket before Merris or I had to improve upon his 'speech'. His gaze stayed on the coat for another breath.

When he spoke again, the market humour had gone thin, "Harl says the elf's body is gone." I looked up too quickly.

"Gone from where?"

"The cold shed, which is an inconvenient place to lose a corpse, given its narrow professional purpose." My hand remained inside the coat, clenching around Orven's gloves.

"That shed was locked."

"Wood, wood, wood, and Orven, if one is counting inventory. The Crimson Elf is not on the list." Outside, the saw struck a knot and changed pitch. I heard the worker ease the timber back before trying again.

"How long?"

"Harl locked the shed after your cart arrived. Talvek placed two men beside it while Pell was being found. When Harl checked later in the day, the bar was still seated, guards reporting nothing, and the elf wasn't there."

"The door?"

"Still barred from the outside, listen boy... No broken hinges. No loose wall boards large enough for a dead elf with ambitions."

"What about Orven?"

"Still there", Merris's jaw tightened.

"I also already said that." The gloves pressed hard against my palm through the coat lining as fear curdled in my blood and my ears sounded like they had Greywash gunk in them. Orven remained where Harl had laid him, waiting to be counted, named, and burned. The elf had crossed a locked room without disturbing the bar.

"I want to see." Merris studied me, then looked at the untouched half of the bread.

"Finish that first." I ate while tidying my clothes, the bread turning dry and heavy in my mouth. Merris waited without pretending the delay served any purpose whatsoever. My clothes would never be tidy. Then he led me out through the washhouse door and across the mill yard. Work shifted around us without stopping. Men fed pine into the saw trench, rolled cut lengths towards the stacking racks, and carried chains back towards the eastern gate. Heads turned as I passed. Nobody asked about Orven.

The blood clothes in the tinder box I carried was answer enough. The mule cart still stood near the counting shed with its two pine lengths removed. A dark patch remained on the boards where blood had thawed and soaked into the grain. Harl had marked three short lines in white chalk beside it: two bodies delivered, one load incomplete. The whole trauma had been reduced to marks quickly. I knew Harl meant respect by counting it correctly. That did not make the marks any easier to look at.

The cold shed crouched beyond the saw trench, built low from thick pine boards with packed river clay between them. Winter made the place important in frontier sales. Summer required salt, ice hauled in, and Harl swearing at anyone who opened the door longer than necessary. A heavy timber bar still lay across the entrance in both iron brackets. One of Talvek's guards stood beside it. He watched us approach with his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.

Mud around the door had been trampled by Harl, the two guards, and whoever had carried the bodies inside. Nothing crossed the narrow strip of frost beneath the rear wall. No board hung loose. The roof was too low and too sound for anything man-sized to leave through it without taking half the shed along. I stopped close enough to smell cold timber and old salt. Orven lay somewhere beyond those boards. I pictured lifting the bar, then found I could not reach for it.

Seeing him again would prove only that Merris had told the truth.

"Harl checked the floor?" I asked.

"Twice. He also checked beneath Orven, which seemed to be 'beneath the Captain'." Merris kept his voice low.

"No tunnel, no missing boards, no convenient fairy tale board across a mouse house. The elf arrived. The shed was barred. The elf is not there." I studied the brackets. Both iron pins remained seated, rust unbroken except where Harl's hands had lifted the bar that morning. If someone had opened the door, the guards should have seen it. If the elf had walked out himself, he would have needed someone outside to release him. Or the body had never needed the door. Terrifying. What rank was that elf?

The mark beneath my sleeve warmed. I pressed my thumb against it until the heat became ordinary pain again. Merris's eyes dropped to the wrist I had failed to keep completely beneath the sleeve. The charcoal lines showed for less than a breath before I covered them. He saw enough. Merris did not waste expressions, but his attention sharpened the way it did when a merchant offered him goods with the damaged side turned down.

"Talvek wants you at the registrar's office," the Guard said.

"Crimson Elf paperwork."

"Did he say what he wants from me?"

"A complete account, which officials request." the Guard answered.

"If I were you, I would decide which parts of this morning are firm timber and which are rotten enough to avoid standing on," Merris said. I nodded. I finished the bread, pulled my coat closed and checked that the gloves could not fall from the pocket. The marked wrist disappeared beneath the sleeve. One part of the morning remained firmer than Merris knew. The black crescent had been wrapped against the elf's chest. He had not named it among what remained, and I did not ask.