Rustle! Rustle! Rustle!
I woke to a sound like a quiet bell inside my bones.
At first I thought it was a dream left over from the night. My room was small and honest. A table with three legs and one wobble. A chair that leaned when I did not look at it. A window with a view of a brick wall that pretended to be sky when the light hit it right. I owned one cup, one spoon, a patchy blanket, and a nail on the wall where hope could hang its hat. I had been proud of all that last week. It meant the world had stopped taking for a moment.
The bell rang again. Not in the air. In me. A soft ping, like two coins touching.
My left wrist felt heavy. I lifted it and saw the thing that should not have been there.
A band of dark metal circled my arm, just above the wrist bone. It was not thick, but it had weight like a promise. Etched lines ran around it in short marks and long dashes. The marks moved when I stared. When I blinked they looked normal again, like I had imagined the motion.
I pulled. It did not budge. I tried to slide a fingertip under the edge. My skin met cold that was not the cold of metal. It was the cold of water deep under a bridge at night.
I stood. The chair complained. I went to the window and lifted my arm to the light. The band looked dull, almost old, but the notches glowed for a heartbeat when the morning hit them. I could not tell if it was pretty or cruel. Maybe both.
I told myself to breathe. In for four. Out for four. It is a trick I use to catch panic and put it on a short leash. I have a few tricks like that. Some days they work. Some days they need help.
I fetched the knife I keep under the straw mattress. It is an honest knife. The blade is straight and the handle has a crack that fits my thumb. I pressed the edge under the band. The knife skated like I had tried to cut a river. A thin sound sang in the air, too high to be a real sound. The knife's edge turned white at the tip. The band did not notice.
I laughed once, because what else do you do when a thing ignores a knife. Then I stopped, because laughter sounded like a man in trouble.
There is a man in the market who knows strange things and buys stranger ones. People call him the Ragpicker. He wears layers like a house. He buys anything that does not scream. Some say he buys things that do scream, but they do not say it near him. The Ragpicker pays fair and talks fair and never looks surprised, not even when a woman tries to sell the shadow of a bird that died last winter.
I pulled on my boots, grabbed my coat, and went out. The stairs creaked like they were practicing for a play. The landlady nodded from her broom. She has four teeth and a heart like an old oak. She did not see the band. No one in the street saw it either. They saw my face, my coat, my bad haircut, and the same thin purse I had yesterday. They did not see the dark circle chewing at my wrist. Either I was the only one who could see it, or I had fallen into a trick of light that did not care about witnesses.
The Ragpicker's stall sits in a narrow lane that thinks it is a secret. I walked that way with hands in my pockets and the bell still ringing inside my bones every few steps. I told myself it was in my head. My head told me to shut up and walk faster.
He saw me before I saw him. He always does. He smiled the way a cat smiles at a plate. "Morning, Corin. You look like a story trying to decide if it wants an ending."
"I have a question," I said. "It is a stupid question."
"Those are my favorite kind." He held out a palm. I put my left wrist in it without meaning to. His fingers are like wire and heat. He touched the band. His eyes did not show surprise. They went a shade darker, like a cloud grazing the sun.
"You see it," I said.
"I see a thing that wants not to be seen." He let my arm go. "And you hear a sound?"
"A bell. From the inside."
"Hmm." He looked at a point over my shoulder. He always looks at places where answers might hide. "Do you sleep, Corin?"
"When the rent is paid."
"Sleep again. Not here. Home. Lock the door. If it pulls you, let it. If it does not pull you, do not try to make it. If you wake, write what you remember. Words run when you do not watch them." He leaned in a little. "And if someone calls you cursed, do not argue. They are not wrong."
I wanted him to tell me more. He had already told me too much by saying too little. He waved me away like a friendly priest does after he takes your coin for a candle you cannot afford. "Go on. I will be here when you return. Or I will not. That is the game."
"Can I pay you?" I asked.
"You will," he said. "One way or another." He went back to sorting chain, as if he had just sold me a storm.
I walked home because running would have made the world answer, and I did not want to hear its voice yet. The bell rang twice on the stairs. The landlady hummed a song that has no words. I shut my door. I leaned my forehead on it. I listened to the quiet trying on my room like a coat.
I lay down on the straw and stared at the ceiling. The crack above my bed looks like a tiny river. I follow it when I need to fall. I followed it now.
Sleep came fast and took me hard by the hand.
I fell into mud and noise and cold.
A gray sky pressed down like a lid. The air was thick with smoke and iron and the sour of fear. Bodies lay in heaps and in lines. Some wore armor. Some wore nothing but last night. Banners hung in the wet like tired tongues. The ground sucked at my boots.
Men shouted. Horses cried. Arrows hissed. Somewhere a horn blew a note that did not want to be the last one it ever played.
The bell inside me rang like a command now. The tone threw words across my sight in clear lines that were not made of ink or light. They were just there, as if the world had decided to speak in the language of knives.
Oathlink: Initial Binding Detected.
Rule One: Die in the memory, die in the flesh.
Rule Two: Survive the end of this memory to claim a fragment.
Rule Three: A fragment is a gift and a cost. Choose both.
The words vanished. The world stayed.
A man in battered plate stood ten paces from me, back braced, shield up, sword low. His banner lay in a puddle at his feet. He had a face like a map someone had folded too often. His eyes were bright in a tired way. I knew his name without learning it.
Sir Halvern of the Ash Field.
He looked at me like a soldier looks at a late messenger. He did not ask who I was. He did not have time to care. "On me," he said. "If you run, do not run in a circle."
A line of men formed around him the way birds form around strong wind. I moved to the gap because the gap would kill someone if it stayed a gap. A boy to my right threw up behind his teeth and kept his shield up anyway. To my left, an old man prayed under his breath to a god that might be a habit.
The enemy came like a dark wave in a gray sea. Spears set. Shields slammed. The world became narrow. The world became the distance from the edge of my shield to the edge of my knife. I do not remember lifting my arm, but I found a round shield there, not mine, and it was right in my hand, like my hand had always been waiting for this weight.
The first spear hit like a hammer. The wood bit my palm. The point slid. The shield twisted. A second spear came in low. I stamped mud, turned my wrist, and the point skated off the rim. A thought like a small sun burned through my panic: do not meet force. Angle it. Make it miss the place you are.
Another line of text flashed and was gone.
Unyielding Guard: Seeded.
I did not have time to wonder what that meant. I had time to stay alive.
Sir Halvern stepped in and out like a man waltzing with a rumor. His shield kissed blows aside and his sword wrote short lessons in soft places. He did not swing big. He cut true. "On me," he said again, calm as a winter sun. "Stand. Stand."
Something hit my helmet and the world rang. A shadow came over the shield rim, all teeth and leather, and I saw my own face in a wet eye that was not mine. I jabbed. I felt the give that means you will not have to jab again. I wanted to throw up and did not. I wanted to run and did not. I wanted to live and did.
The line bent. It did not break. We gave ground like a trader who gives a coin to get a gold. The mud wanted our feet. The enemy wanted our throats. Sir Halvern wanted our backs together.
A horse screamed. A man went under. The boy to my right sobbed once and then made a noise that was not crying. He stabbed until the air was quiet again. After he stopped his hands shook so hard he almost dropped the blade.
"Breathe," I told him. "In four. Out four." I do not know why I said it. He did it. His eyes steadied.
The press eased for a breath. I dared to look past my shield.
We stood in a shallow bowl of earth. On the far side was a low rise with a crooked banner that still tried to be a banner. Behind us was a tangle of broken wagons and a cart that had known better days and had decided to retire right there. Smoke crawled over the ground like a lazy animal. The enemy was a mix of men with bad food and worse pay, drawn here by a lord's promise and a hunger for stuff that did not belong to them. Some wore symbols on their chests that looked like a wolf that had lost an argument with an anvil.
"Left!" someone yelled.
The left folded like paper in a wet hand. Sir Halvern went that way without asking permission from his legs. We followed because he made it feel like the only good idea left in the world.
I found myself shoulder to shoulder with a man with a broken nose that had tried to heal crooked and had died in the attempt. He grinned at me with only half his teeth. "First day?"
"Feels like it," I said.
"You are doing fine," he said. "You are still here."
The left did not break. It learned a new shape. We pushed and were pushed. A spear bit my thigh. It felt like a hot nail and then like nothing when the mud cooled it. I moved the leg and it moved, so we were friends again.
A big man in a coat of rings came out of the mess like a boulder rolling downhill. He wore a snarling wolf on his chest and a helm that made him taller than he had paid for. He roared words that meant he was proud of his throat. Men around him shouted his name like it would do the work for them.
Sir Halvern met him. It was quiet in that small pocket. Then it was loud. Steel spoke to steel. The wolf man swung big. Halvern cut small. Their shields were two different sermons. I could not help. I could only keep the ring of men off the edge of that fight so the story could finish the right way.
The wolf man slammed Halvern's shield and the old knight went to one knee in the muck. The wolf's sword came down like a decision. My legs moved before I thought. I put my shield under the falling blade and turned my wrist the way the small sun had told me to. The sword slid, bit my rim, tore my fingers, and missed Halvern's neck by a thumb and a prayer.
I felt the bite through the bones. I felt the world bend around the angle. I felt something inside me click like a lock opening.
Unyielding Guard: Awakened (Minor).
Halvern rose. He did not say thank you. He did not need to. He stepped in and cut the wolf man under the arm where rings do not reach if you do not ask them to. The wolf man made a sound like a jar dropping. He fell the way jars fall. When jars fall they do not get up.
The men around him made the sound men make when the story they bet on changes at the last page. Some ran. Some tried to be brave and were. Some tried to be brave and were not.
The push eased. We took three steps that belonged to us. I looked down and saw a banner in the mud, torn and wet. I picked it up without thinking and jammed the broken pole into the ground. It stood because wood is stubborn. The cloth hung like a tongue that had forgotten its words. The men around me saw it and their backs straightened a little. I do not love banners. I love what they do to spines.
The bell in my bones hummed. The air tasted like old pennies. The sky pressed closer. Words scratched the edge of my sight again.
Memory End Approaches. Survive the End.
I did not know what that meant. I knew enough to stay behind the shield.
The enemy did not vanish. They pulled back like a tide that had heard the moon ask for quiet. Arrows still fell. They sounded like ants with wings. A handful of men tried to come in hard to grab bodies and pride. We sent them home with less of both.
The boy on my right laughed once and then cried once and then stood very still. His shield had three new teeth in it. None of them were his.
Sir Halvern looked over us the way a father looks over wood he is about to use to build something. He nodded once. "Good," he said. "We will live to argue about this later." He bent and picked up his banner and handed it to me. "Hold that up until your arms cannot. Then tie it to a fool who thinks he is taller than he is."
I held it. My arms did not want to, but the wood leaned into me like a friend. I felt the small sun again, but this time it was a warm coal. Set the angle. Let force find the floor.
Something in the air changed. The smoke thinned without wind. The sounds came from farther away. The light went a step whiter, then another. The mud lost its claws. The faces around me blurred at the edges, as if the world were forgetting details it did not have time to paint.
Memory End.
The words slid across my sight. The ground did not drop. The sky did not fall. The world did not end. It just stopped caring whether I believed in it.
Men faded like chalk in rain. The banner's cloth fluttered once like a bird that chose not to be born. Sir Halvern looked at me and for the first time saw me, not a soldier, not a gap, not a hand holding a stick. He smiled with the left corner of his mouth, the one the years had not stolen yet.
"You stood," he said. "That is the whole trick." He tapped his brow to me with two fingers. Then he turned, lifted his shield, and stepped into a light that was not light. He did not look back. He was done.
The bell hit like a hammer on iron. The world snapped.
I woke on my straw with my heart punching the air. The room was still my room. The window was still a liar. The table still had three legs and one wobble. My left wrist still wore the band.
It glowed. The notches had rearranged. A thin line of warmth ran from the band up the veins of my forearm, like a little river had decided it liked this new course.
Words wrote themselves on the air above my chest and were kind enough to let me read them.
Fragment Claimed: Unyielding Guard (Lesser).
Effect: Angle and redirect incoming force. Best at close quarters. Scales with timing and nerve.
Cost: Prideful Rage (Minor). Insults and challenges pull you into bad choices.
Note: A fragment is both a gift and a debt. Pay on time.
I let out a breath I did not know I was holding. Then I took another because I realized I had been copying the way the old knight breathed and that felt like stealing a coat from a dead man. I sat up, swung my legs off the bed, and put my feet on the floor like a person again.
My fingers hurt. My thigh hurt. I pulled my trousers up and saw the spear bite. It was there. It was not bleeding. It was a clean line that said yesterday and today had shaken hands.
I laughed. Then I stopped. Then I laughed again, because if the world is going to lie to you, you might as well enjoy it when it lies in your favor.
I put water on the stove and made tea that had ideas above its station. I drank it with both hands around the cup so the warmth would teach my bones to be less surprised. I set the cup down, found a charcoal stub, and wrote on the wall because paper costs coin and walls do not.
— Woke with a band. — Bell sound. — Ragpicker saw it. — Sleep pulled me. — Battlefield. — Sir Halvern. — Held line. — Big wolf man died. — Banner. — Words in air. — Unyielding Guard. — Prideful Rage. — Wounds came back. — Tea still bad.
I looked at the list and felt calmer. Words on walls make fear sit in a chair and behave for a while.
The door shook under a knock. I flinched and hated that I did. I stood, put the knife in my belt, and opened the door a finger's width.
Two people waited in the hall. They did not look like the landlord's kind of problem. They looked like the kind of problem that wears leather well and finds the stairs without looking. A woman stood in front. She had a face that could be kind when she was tired and cruel when she was paid. The man behind her had a hood, a scar that tried to be a map, and eyes that moved before his head did.
"Corin Hale," the woman said. "We saw you at the Ragpicker's. He told us you were interesting."
"I did not pay him to say that," I said.
"We do not think you paid him at all." Her eyes dropped to my left hand. She should not have been able to see the band. People on the street had not seen it. The landlady had not. But her eyes went right to it and then politely did not stare, the way you do when someone's shirt is on fire and you are choosing to save face before flesh.
"You are cursed," the man said.
I thought of the Ragpicker's advice: if someone calls you cursed, do not argue. "I am busy," I said.
"You are prey," the man said. He smiled in a way that made the word sound like a suggestion.
The woman lifted a hand before he could say more. "Easy, Silas." She looked at me again. "We are Binders. Like you. We came to help you make good choices."
"I am not fond of other people's choices," I said. "I have a great set of my own. Most of them are bad. I am loyal to them."
The man, Silas, took a step closer. "You will come with us." His hand moved toward his belt. He was not going for a coin.
"I would prefer not," I said.
The bell rang again inside me, soft and pleased like a cat that sees a poor bird. It made a thin ringing under my skin. The band on my wrist warmed.
"Here is the part where you do not get a say," the woman said. Her voice was still calm. "This city eats people who do not know the rules. We would hate to see it eat you. We would like to eat you first." She smiled to show it was a joke. It was not.
"Do you have names?" I asked. "It is hard to be kidnapped by people without names. It feels unprofessional."
"Veyra," she said. "This is Silas. We are part of a group that will keep you alive long enough to be useful."
"Useful to who?"
"To the people who keep the rain off heads. You are lucky. You are needed."
"I have been many things," I said. "Lucky is not a name I have worn much."
Silas reached for me. I closed the door. He put his boot in it. The door had known men like him and did not like them. It groaned. I sighed. Doors should not have to do the hard work.
"Corin," Veyra said through the crack, always polite, "if you make this ugly, we will make it uglier."
"Everything about my life is simple and ugly," I said. "You will not improve it." I looked down at the band. It sat quiet and deep, like a river that has decided the bank can erode without telling anyone first.
The Oathlink's words flickered at the edge of my sight, soft as a thought I might have had anyway.
Sleep to bind. Wake to pay.
"Give me an hour," I said through the door. "Then come back."
"That is not how this works," Silas said.
"It is today," I said. "Unless you want to break my door. You can. It will cost you time and noise. Someone will ask stupid questions. I will lie badly. We will all have a worse morning."
There was a pause. Veyra weighed time like a coin. "An hour," she said. "If you run, we will find you."
"I have a window with a view of a wall," I said. "There is nowhere to run."
They stepped back. The boot left my door. Their steps walked the stairs like they owned them. The hall grew quiet. The landlady coughed once to prove she was alive.
I shut the door and slid the bolt. I put my forehead on the wood and laughed once, quietly, so the door would not have to join in.
I was not going to run. I was going to sleep.
It sounds foolish. It is foolish. But the Ragpicker had told me to let it pull me. The band pulsed warm in time with my heart. If I could claim another fragment before those two came back, I might live long enough to regret today. Regret is a rich man's sport. I wanted to try it someday.
I lay down on the straw again. I set my knife on the floor by my hand. I counted my breath until numbers became a soft rope and the rope pulled me down.
Mud again. Smoke again. Sun like a white coin you cannot spend. But not the same place. Not the same death.
A village burned in a broken bowl. Fire crawled roof to roof like a careful cat. A figure walked through the flame. Its skin was coal. Veins of ember ran under it like fire roads. It carried a hook-blade that smoked even in the rain that tried to be helpful and failed.
The Ash Guardian turned its head. Its mask face had eyes like stove doors. It saw me and did not mark me as enemy. It marked me as student.
"Lesson two," I said, because I had the bad habit of speaking to things that could kill me. "Fine. I can do lessons."
The bell rang. The Oathlink wrote its clean words and made a promise I did not trust and wanted anyway.
New Memory. Survive to Claim.
Behind me, in the world with doors and polite kidnappers, an hour would pass. In here, time had its own habits. I lifted my shield and stepped toward the flame. The air tasted like pennies and smoke and decisions.
If I survived, the band would tighten. The rules would change. I would be less human and more something else. If I failed, there would be no need to worry about rent or tea or people at my door who smiled when they said the word prey.
I went forward because there was nowhere else to go, and because the one trick I had learned was the trick Sir Halvern had given me for free.
Stand. Angle. Do not meet the world head-on if you can help it. Let it miss you by an inch and then make that inch matter.
The fire greeted me with a low hiss. The Guardian lifted its hook. I lifted my shield. We bowed to each other like two old friends who had never met.
And then the village tried to teach me about heat.