Chương 16: Strangled

"Is the entry ID ready?" The woman didn't turn to ask it. She rode at the head of the convoy, gray coat heavy across her shoulders, Uron plating strapped over her chest and stamped with a furnace worked in old bronze. Scars ran the length of her face and down into her collar, burn tissue gone smooth and shining in places, one eye gone entirely white. Whatever she'd survived to earn that face, it hadn't been gentle about it.

"Yes, Captain." The rider beside her, young, still unmarked.

"You checked the IDs twice?" the scarred woman asked.

"Three times," the young rider replied.

"Then why did you sound uncertain?" She looked back.

"I wasn't uncertain."

"You were."

"I was tired."

"Tired people make mistakes." The rider hesitated before answering.

"So do you." The moment the words left his mouth, his expression stiffened.

"Sorry, Captain." She turned her head and looked at him properly.

"Don't apologize." The young man blinked.

"Tell me when I'm wrong." He stared at her for a moment.

"I'd rather stay alive." A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

"Then learn the difference between correcting me and insulting me."

"Yes, Captain."

"And stop saying yes, Captain every five seconds."

"Yes, Captain." Her eyebrow lifted. The rider struggled to suppress a grin.

"You're doing that on purpose now."

"Maybe." She shook her head and faced forward again.

"What's your name?"

"Darin."

"Darin." She paused.

"Try not to make me remember it for the wrong reason."

"I'll do my best, Captain."

"That wasn't an invitation to start again." Darin smiled."Yes, Captain." Behind them, a line of carts groaned along on black metal wheels, hauled toward the ring shaped bulk of the settlement rising out of the snow ahead. Every cart carried the same cargo. Black furred things, long limbed, eyeless, mouths hanging open around teeth built for tearing. All of them dead, all of them stacked without ceremony. A voice called up from further back in the line.

"Captain Emelia. Any word from Corporal Winlot?"

"No." She didn't look back.

"Why?"

"It's been a full day since we sent Saltbearers out on the new mountain survey. Nothing's come back. Figured word would've reached you through him by now." Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Emelia glanced over her shoulder at that.

"New survey? Which mountain?" The rider pointed at the massive black mountain that towered then, covered with pale snow.

"That one."

"I was under the impression the Cinder Office ruled that stretch out entirely. Along with the Ourola Ring Lord himself."

"They found a fresh salt vein a few days back. Word is they pushed the order through anyway, quiet like, before—" Before the words could leave her mouth. A sudden voice interrupted her.

"Captain! Something's moving on the mountainside!" Emelia's head snapped toward the mountain. A shape tumbled down the slope, rolling through snow and loose rock, gathering speed.

"A wraik?" Someone already had a canister cracked open, salt in hand.

"Can't be. We cleared this area already."

"Wait— Look again! That's a person!" Emelia narrowed her one good eye. The shape kept rolling, limp, a thin red trail smearing behind it through the white.

"Move. We check it out. Keep the formation tight."

"Yes, Captain." The convoy peeled off toward the base of the mountain, following the fall as it curved around the slope. A boulder jutting from the lower rock caught the figure hard, the impact throwing up a burst of snow, and something red snapped loose in the wind. A scarf. Emelia watched it settle.

"Meshka. Go take a look." The woman beside her, black haired, same coat as the rest of them, cracked her own canister and pinched out a measure of Pale Salt. Her hands dropped low, and her whole body lifted off the vehicle, air bending and thickening beneath her like it had decided to carry her weight instead of let her fall. She hovered out over the boulder, looked down, and went still. What her eyes met was a young, frail boy, half-buried in snow and dirt.

His body was riddled with wounds, one shoulder torn open and his thigh bleeding steadily into the pale snow. His clothes hung from him in tatters, soaked through with blood and melted snow.

"Captain." Her voice carried back thin against the wind.

"It's a boy." … Warmth. For the first time in longer than he can remember, the nameless boy felt actual warmth, wrapping around him whole. It felt like the walls back home, like his mother's arms, like he could almost hear her humming somewhere close by if he just listened hard enough. A voice drifted in from somewhere further off, indistinct at first, then closer. Solstice opened his eyes. A dark ceiling met him, washed in soft red and orange light. One thought surfaced before anything else could. He'd survived.

He'd gotten out. But that wasn't the important part.' Where am I?'

"You're up," a voice said, somewhere off to the side. He tried to push himself upright and his body refused to cooperate. Bandages wrapped most of him, white and tight. His clothes had been changed. Someone had done that while he was out, and the thought sat wrong in his stomach even through the fog. A woman came into view. Her face carried scars and old burn scarring across nearly every inch of it, down her neck as well. One eye had gone entirely white. The white eye.

The bronze furnace worked into the plate across her chest. Solstice had learned exactly one useful thing in his short life so far. People who looked like they'd already crawled out of hell were usually the ones who knew how to send you there.' Who is this.'

"Where," he managed, voice thin and scraped raw, "who are you?" The woman smiled, unbothered, and set her cup down on the small table beside his bed.

"You're in Ourola, kid. Seventh Outer Ring of Furnax."' Ourola.' The pieces slid into place slow, one at a time. He'd seen the settlement, glowing orange against the fog. He must have gone down after that.

"Don't think too hard yet. Rest." She studied him with something that wasn't quite kindness but wasn't cruelty either.

"Your body took more damage than it should've survived. You lost a lot of blood." Solstice looked at her, then past her, taking in the room, the light, the door.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said, like that settled anything.

'You'll forgive me if I don't just take your word for it. Every adult I've met in my life has tried to kill me one way or another. One even offered to eat me.' She watched him a moment longer, then tilted her head.

"You got a name, kid? What's your name?" He didn't answer right away.

"Solstice."

"Strange name."

"What's strange about it." She looked at him, something amused behind her one good eye, and let out a short laugh.

"Means a sun that stood still, doesn't it." She lifted the cup again, took a slow sip.

"Bit of a joke, living in a world where we strangled the thing outright." Solstice held the silence a beat.

"Well.. I'm not the type to just stand there." Solstice met her eyes, flat and unflinching.

"Especially not while someone's strangling me."