The village did not wait. It moved like a living stove. Roofs dropped sparks like angry stars. Doors breathed smoke. Even the dirt gave off heat the way a dog gives off breath.
The Ash Guardian stood in the road. It held the hook-blade low, the way a butcher holds a truth. Its coal skin shed tiny flakes that glowed and died before they touched the ground. Ember lines ran under its arms and neck like hot rivers that had learned to hide.
My shield felt small. My mouth felt dry. My feet wanted to leave. I told them to stay. I lifted the shield and set the angle the way Sir Halvern had taught me without speaking.
The Guardian tilted its head. It did not blink. I do not think it could. It dragged the hook once across a stone. The stone hissed. The sound slid along my teeth.
A beam fell behind me. The air jumped. Ash rolled like gray rain. I took one breath. It tasted like pennies and old bread. Then the Guardian moved.
It did not rush. It did not lumber. It walked like a man who knows the floor in a dark room. The hook went out and down, a slow test, a line drawn across the air to see if I would step into it.
I did not. I turned my wrist and let the blade kiss iron and slide off. Heat soaked through the wood rim and bit my hand. I felt the bite in the bones. I stepped back and the ground tugged at my heel, sticky with melted pitch. Not ideal.
The hook rose and came again from the other side, faster now, a sweep made to open me. I dropped my shoulder and let the edge ride high. It missed my jaw by a thumb and a lucky prayer. I smelled my hair singe.
Hazard: Thermal Load. Guard at Angle.
The Oathlink put the words in the corner of my eye like a teacher lifting a chalk. I nodded even though it did not ask for nods.
"Lesson two," I said under my breath. "Do not argue with fire. Make it argue with air."
The Guardian came a third time, a short hard stab of the hook meant to catch under my shield rim and drag me forward into the hot.
I dropped my arm half an inch. The hook snagged wood. I shoved the shield down. The hook jammed. I ripped back and the tool tore out free, but the Guardian had to step in to keep balance. I stepped with it. My knife found the seam at its side where the ember lines ran closer to the surface.
The steel slid a little and met something like glass. A thin crack of light jumped under the skin, a bright shiver. The Guardian hissed. A small hiss, but real.
"Good," I said, because when a teacher reacts you keep going. I drove the knife again at the same seam.
The Guardian's elbow came up and struck my shield. Heat punched through. My teeth rang. I slid back two steps and almost tripped on a clay jar. The jar burst. Oil splashed and found flame waiting for it. The lane became a line of sun lying on the ground.
I jumped the line on a bad angle and felt the fire lick my boot. My mind flashed an old farm fire from a winter when I was small. I tasted dry fear and heard my mother shout my name. That was not this place. I grabbed the present by the collar and shook it until the old picture let go.
Something hissed behind me. I turned fast. A figure walked out of the smoke to my right. It wore a long coat and a scarf tied over mouth and nose. A blade hung low at the left hip. The eyes above the scarf were narrow and steady. She lifted a hand and pointed past me.
I spun back. The Guardian had thrown the hook. I saw the chain streak like a black rope through yellow air. I hauled my shield up and set it at a hard slant. The hook struck and scraped off and hit a dead pillar with a strike so hot the stone steamed.
The stranger's voice came low and flat. "Do not stand still. Fire loves statues."
"Noted," I said. "Friend or thief?"
"Binder," she said. "Same as you. Move."
The Guardian yanked the chain. The hook tore the pillar out of its last good thought. The pillar fell the wrong way.
We both ran.
We cut through a doorway that had already decided it was a window. Smoke hugged the floor like fog. Heat pressed low. In the courtyard beyond, a well stood with its rope burned in two. A bucket lay near it, black and sad. Ruin wrapped the yard like a shawl.
The woman grabbed my sleeve and pulled me toward the well. "Cool the wood," she said, flicking her chin at my shield. "Or your arm will quit."
I held the rim of the shield over the mouth of the well and lowered it. The stone was hot to the touch, but the air rising from below was soft and damp. I dipped the edge. Steam rolled up. The wood sighed. My hand sighed with it.
The Guardian stepped through the broken doorway like a king entering his own hall. It looked at the well the way a man looks at a song he hates.
"Names later," the woman said. "Right now, left side." She moved with no wasted motion, blade low, knees soft, weight on the outside edges of her feet. She had done this before.
I took the right. We did not count, but our steps counted anyway. The Guardian's hook came across for my head again, tempted by the open space. I set a steep angle, caught the edge early, and let it climb. The woman slid under in the space it left and cut across the back of the leg. Her knife drew a clean bright line. The light under the Guardian's skin flared and dimmed.
It turned on her and forgot me for a breath. I did not let that breath go to waste. I pushed hard on the hook haft with my shield rim like I was shoving a lever off a stone. The hook skidded. The Guardian had to step or fall. It stepped.
The woman cut again and leaped back. She was quick. Not show quick. Survival quick. Her scarf had a burn hole now, the size of a coin.
The Guardian backed into the yard, away from the well's cool breath. It did not feel fear. But it felt something like caution. That was enough.
Observation: Entity avoids cold zones.
"Good to know," I said. "You have a plan?"
"Always," she said. "Most of them fail. This one starts with not dying in a yard." She pointed with her chin to the far archway. It led to a narrow street where the fire had not yet decided to take root. The stones were wet there. A barrel had burst and given up its water like a good soldier.
We went for the arch as if we had agreed out loud. The Guardian moved to cut us off. I threw my weight left and made a short charge to draw the hook. It bit at me. I let it pass close enough to warm my cheek and set my shield on it to push with the angle again. The hook slid. The woman went through the gap without a sound, then turned and held the arch with her blade at waist height.
I dove after. The hook took my lower back like a slap from a stove. I smelled my own skin. I did not fall. I reached the wet stones and almost cried from how good they felt through my boot soles.
The woman flicked her eyes at the chain. It lay across the threshold like a promise. She stamped it. The Guardian pulled. The chain dragged. She put her weight on it and ground it into the stone with her heel. Her body shook with the pull. "A moment," she said through her teeth.
I understood. I set my shield on the chain too. Together we made a clamp. The Guardian tugged. The chain whined. A link glowed red and then orange and then went dull. The pull stopped. The Guardian jerked the chain and it came away free, but a few links near the end had fused and cracked. It did not throw again right away.
We took the lane. It bent around a small shrine that was now only three warm stones and a bowl of ash. On the far side, a low row of houses sat close, their roofs already bitten by flame, but not yet hungry.
"Here," the woman said, pointing to a door with iron bands. "Inside. Then out the back. It will buy us one minute."
She kicked the latch. The door swung. We went in. The house smelled of smoke and spices. A pot lay on its side, and onions, half-browned, stared up at us like confused coins. A child's toy, a wooden horse with one wheel, sat near the hearth. The hearth itself burned low and mean.
The woman grabbed a cloth and threw it over the fire. It smothered with a soft hiss. She took a skin from a peg and sloshed water on the coals. Steam rose.
"We cannot save this village," she said quietly. "It is already a memory."
"I know," I said. I did not like that I knew. I wanted to save at least one thing, even if it was small, even if it was stupid. The wooden horse would burn no matter how I felt about it.
She checked the back door. A fence leaned away from it like it had lost faith in straight lines. She lifted the latch and looked into a yard with a tall fig tree and a ladder thrown under it.
"Out," she said. "We need height. Fire is greedy but lazy. It eats up. It forgets to look up if there is a faster meal."
We climbed the ladder to the roof. The slates were hot but not yet mean. From there I could see the whole bowl of the village. The Guardian stood in the main lane, looking left and right and then up. Its eyes found us.
"It looks smarter than a man," I said.
"It is not smart," she said. "It is hungry. Hunger looks like smart from far away."
"Who are you?"
"Lyra," she said. "You?"
"Corin."
"Good," she said. "Now we can shout each other's names when we do something stupid."
"Fair."
She pointed with her chin toward a long granary near the far wall. It had stone sides and a roof of tile. The tiles were old and set well. The doors were iron. The fire kissed its walls and did not yet own them. "There," she said. "The core will be in there."
"The core?"
"The thing that makes this memory last. Kill it and the place collapses. If we are still alive when it collapses, we get paid."
"Paid how?"
"In the only coin that matters now." She tapped her wrist. A dark band shone there with etch marks that looked too much like mine. "Skill and flaw."
"You talk like you have done this more than once."
"I have," she said. "I prefer not to discuss how many times I failed."
"Noted."
The Guardian tested the wall of the house below us with the hook, pulling at joints to see which one would sigh first. The wall sighed. A crack ran like a quick river.
"We go roof to roof," Lyra said. "We take the high line. If you fall, fall fast."
"Good plan," I said. "I will add a step. Do not fall."
She almost smiled under the scarf. Then she ran. Her feet found the good parts of the tiles as if the tiles had written her a note. I followed, not as neat, but not bad. The first jump was a long step and a prayer. The second was a long step without the prayer because I was busy breathing.
Heat licked up at us from the lanes. A roof edge crumbled. I went to my knee and slid, then caught a beam with my forearm. The skin took a rich warm scrape to remind me it was mine. I pulled up. Lyra threw me a look that asked if I planned to make a habit.
We made the ridge of the granary. Up close, the tiles were old but strong. The air over the roof was a hair cooler, like a breath from a cellar. Lyra crouched by a vent and lifted the iron cap with a rag. Heat rolled out. It smelled not only of fire, but of something like sweet rot and iron—grain cooked wrong and blood cooked wrong.
"There," she said. "The core."
"What does it look like?"
"Like a heart made by a man who had only seen hearts in stories. You will know it when it hates you."
We went to the far side and dropped to a window ledge. Tiles skittered. My boots squeaked. I tried not to think about the street below. Lyra slid her knife between iron and stone at the window latch. She turned the blade with a small, quick twist that told me she had known other latches. The catch gave up. We crawled through.
Inside, the air was thick and heavy. The granary was a long hall with rows of bins. Some still held grain. Some held only a smell that made my mouth water and my stomach turn. In the center, on a floor cleared of sacks, something glowed and pulsed.
It was a knot of heat and light. It was not alive, but it was trying very hard. Iron bands held it in place. A frame of old wood creaked around it. It beat on a slow count like a drum heard far under a hill. Every time it beat, I felt my own pulse twitch in my throat.
Memory Core Identified.
Stability: 71%. Guardianship Active.
"Seventy-one," Lyra said, reading the air same as I did. "We have time. Not much. But time."
The back door of the granary boomed. The iron bar across it shook like a bone in a dog's jaw.
"Less time now," I said.
Lyra looked at the bands around the core. "We cannot cut those," she said. "They are part of the memory. They will bite our steel and then our hands."
"So how do we break it?"
"We use what the memory hates," she said. "Cold water. Clean wind. Stillness." She grimaced. "We have none of those."
"We have something," I said, and pointed to the long row of sacks and a wide chute at the far end of the room. "Grain hates fire. Fire hates heavy things that smother it."
Lyra looked, then nodded. "Good. Make a river." She took out a small knife and cut the bottom seam of the first sack. Grain spilled in a slow golden wave. "Again." We cut three more. The pile grew. She slit a fourth near the chute and used the flat of her blade to push the spill. The grain ran down toward the core.
The door boomed again. The bar split. The door stuttered and held a little and then did not hold. The Ash Guardian stood in the doorway with smoke behind it like a cloak.
"Talk later," Lyra said. "Fight now."
"Done," I said.
She went left. I went right. The core beat on, unaware that we were making plans with its last minutes.
The Guardian did not step in yet. It tested the threshold with the hook and the tip sizzled on the stone. It did not like being inside the same room as the core. Maybe that was a rule. Maybe that was pride. Or maybe it was waiting for us to be fools.
Lyra flicked her eyes at my feet. There was a strip of wet across the floor where a barrel had leaked. She stepped on it on purpose. I understood a second later. When heat roared in, you wanted your soles wet.
The Guardian lunged. The hook came for my right side. I set a hard angle to push it wide. The chain twisted. It tried to pull me off my feet. I let the pull take me one step and used the step to turn around the hook and end up inside its reach. My knife came up with a short ugly thrust.
The Guardian moved its arm and the thrust struck under the shoulder. The tip scraped that glassy inside again. The crack of light jumped. The Guardian made the little hiss it made when it cared. It elbowed. I got the shield up late. The blow hammered through. I slid across the wet strip and did not fall.
Lyra appeared behind it and made three fast cuts at the back of the knee where ember lines ran shallow under what passed for skin. Two cuts caught. The third bounced. The Guardian spun fast and the hook hissed where her head had just been. She ducked so low her scarf brushed the floor and then slipped out like smoke.
"Again," she said.
She did not have to tell me twice. We began to work in a small circle, trading places around the thing, using the wet line and the grain spill like parts of a plan. It was not a good plan yet. But it was one.
The heat made my breath short and my thoughts simple. It became count, step, angle, cut, guard, breathe. The core beat at my back like a slow drum. The grains hissed where they touched the hot floor, then gathered at the edge of the frame and began to pile against the iron band.
The Guardian learned our rhythm. It began to break the timing, feinting one way and going low with a short jab that wanted to catch a shin and drag. It almost got me. My heel skidded. I saw the hook mouth open for my ankle.
My body made a choice before my mind wrote it down. I drove my weight into the ball of my left foot and beat the ground like a drum. Heat swept up from the floor. It rose around my calf like a sheet. I pushed through it in a burst.
For one half-heartbeat the world blurred into a stripe of light and breath. I came out two steps to the side, untouched. A thin scorch trail ran behind me where my boot had been.
The Oathlink's words flared.
Flame Step: Seeded.
I did not smile. But inside I felt a small white grin. "New trick," I said. "Thank you, teacher."
Lyra saw it. Her eyes widened a hair. "Do that again," she said. "But live."
The Guardian's hook hit the floor where I had been and bit stone. It jerked the hook up and looked at me with those stove door eyes. If it could have frowned, it would have.
"Again," Lyra said. She cut the back of its leg. I took the front when it turned. It tried to catch my blade in the hook curve. I let it try and then twisted the knife so the edge worked like a key instead of a sword. The crack of light under its skin jumped and hissed.
The chain clattered. The Guardian pulled in and tried a short, mean punch. I raised my shield and let it hit, but I did not take the blow flat. I let it ride. The heat still came through. My arm sang a high tired song. My heart sang a lower one that I liked better.
The grain ran faster now. The pile reached the core's lowest rib. Heat wavered above it like water. I smelled sweet stink as the old grain cooked wrong and gave up its tiny ghosts.
Core Stability: 62%.
"Good," Lyra said between breaths. "We make it choke. When it chokes, it will pull the whole place with it. We just need to be not here when that happens."
"Easy," I said. "We have done many easy things today."
"Save the jokes," she said. "You will need them later."
The Guardian had a different idea. It put one foot on the grain pile and stepped heavy. The step sent a bright ripple through the core's light. The bands creaked. The beat stuttered.
Lyra cursed under the scarf. "It is trying to stamp it clear."
"Then we make it step wrong," I said. "Make it trip. Make it catch."
She nodded once. We fanned out and then came in tight at the same time. I threw my shield forward as if to bash. The Guardian raised the hook to catch. I let the bash become a slide and knocked its wrist off line. Lyra darted in and cut the back of the ankle with a quick mean slash. The Guardian's foot slipped deep in the grain just as it lifted the other to balance. The heavy body went light for a breath. It almost fell.
I hit it with my shoulder where a man's ribs would be. It moved. Not by much. But enough.
It landed with its weight wrong. The hook came down late. Its elbow flared. Its chain tangled around the frame.
Lyra saw the chain snag. She stepped in and kicked the loop so it cinched on the iron post. The Guardian jerked and the chain held. It was only for a moment. A moment is all a poor man can ask the world to grant.
"Now," she said.
I stepped into heat. The new trick asked me a price. It asked for nerve. I paid. The floor turned to a bright smear while I took two short steps sidewise fast enough to make air follow. The air pulled flame with it, like a curtain lifted from a stove. For that one second, the space behind the Guardian's shoulder went clear.
Lyra slid into that clear space and put her knife in deep along the bright crack she had been carving on the back of its knee. The blade bit down and grated and then went home hard. The light under the skin flashed white, then red, then black. The Guardian's leg buckled.
It roared a sound made of nails in a pan. The chain tore free. It spun and chopped. Lyra dropped and rolled. The hook cut air where her neck had been. I slammed the shield at its head and felt the world hum like a bell again.
The Guardian staggered. It did not fall. It put weight on the weak leg and the leg held enough. It turned again, faster now, angrier now, hotter now. The heat rose so quick my eyes watered. The wood of my shield started to smoke. The strap burned my forearm.
"Out," Lyra said. "We got what we came for."
"We did not kill it," I said.
"We do not need to. We need to live through the end. Move."
She was right. The core's beat ran ragged now. The grain pile smothered the lower half and sent up a steady hushed sound like rain on leaves. The air trembled. Cracks crawled across the iron band.
Core Stability: 49%.
We backed toward the window. The Guardian limped once, then fixed the limp by sheer force of will that was not will. It came for us like a hearth that had grown legs. The hook cut a shelf in half like it was bread. Sacks jumped and burst and threw grain everywhere. It became a gold storm. The storm stuck to sweat and burned anyway.
I put my back to the wall under the window and set the shield. Lyra jumped up first and pulled herself through. She reached back. I took her wrist. The Guardian struck. The hook bit my shield and chewed it like meat. I let go of the wall and let the bite pull me up. It was the wrong kind of help but I took it. Lyra dragged. I rolled over the sill and hit the tiles with my shoulder.
The roof was hot and kind. The air felt almost clean. Lyra did not pause. She ran for the ridge. I ran after, half crawling, because pride is fine and all but roofs do not care.
The Guardian came to the window and stopped. The tiles under it would not hold that weight and that heat both. It hissed and hit the sill. Stone cracked. It stepped back and went around toward the door to cut us off below.
Lyra reached the ridge and looked to the right, then the left. To the right the fire ate and grinned. To the left the street ran toward the shrine and the broken gate. Beyond that a slope dropped to a dry creek bed where black stones sat like teeth.
"There," she said. "The creek. If the core breaks while we are up here, the roofs will go first. Stone will wait. We go stone."
"Down the wall," I said.
"Down the cart," she said, pointing with her chin. A wagon leaned against the granary wall. Its back wheels had burned off. Its front still held. Ropes dangled. "We slide."
"This is a terrible plan," I said.
"It is a beautiful plan," she said. "Because it is the one we have."
We ran the ridge and jumped to the lower shed roof beyond the granary. It flexed and complained. Lyra did not listen. She hit the wagon bed and grabbed a rope. I did the same. We slid. My hands burned new blisters. My boots hit a barrel and the barrel went and I rode it like a very small, very bad horse for two heartbeats before gravity wrote a firm letter to my pride. I fell in a way a man falls when he is trying to look like he meant it.
"Nice form," Lyra said, not quite laughing.
"Years of practice," I said. "Falling is my best move."
We ran for the creek bed. The Guardian came around the corner of the granary at the far end, fast now, running like a man who hates other people's legs. The chain whirled. The hook made a silver arc that cut smoke.
The ground under our feet shook. A sound like a low drum rolled through the air. The granary groaned. Light flashed under its doors. Cracks ran up the walls like little white snakes.
Core Stability: 33%. Collapse Phase Near.
We hit the creek stones and slid down them on our heels. The stones were hot at the top and cooler below. I could breathe again. I could even think.
Lyra bent over, hands on knees, then straightened. She touched the scarf where it had a coin hole. Her hair under it was copper and sweat dark. Her eyes were sharp and tired and a little wild, which is another way to say alive.
She stuck out her hand. "Lyra," she said again. "Now you have a face to go with the name you will shout when I do something foolish."
"Corin," I said, and shook her hand. Hers was rough and warm and shook once the way a hand shakes after a fight when it finally gets to stop lying.
We looked back at the village. The Guardian stood at the edge of the granary yard. It did not come down into the creek. It paced and watched and paced again. Fire climbed the granary walls like vines. The roof tiles began to jump one by one, popping into the air as heat threw them.
"Tell me the rest," I said. "You said skill and flaw."
She nodded. "When the core goes, the memory ends. If you are breathing, the Oathlink pays you. You get a fragment. It gives you a skill. It also leaves a flaw from the dead person or the thing you fought. The gift is never free."
"I have one already," I said. "Prideful rage. It pulls me toward challenges I should ignore."
She gave me a look that said she had guessed. "Yes," she said. "I have my share too."
"What are yours?"
"Debts," she said simply. "Trust does not sit well in me. And other things."
The granary's roof sagged. The cords around the core snapped one by one like violin strings breaking out of tune. Light poured from the windows in slow bright waves.
Core Stability: 14%.
The Guardian turned its head toward us as if it could see the numbers. It lifted the hook and pointed at us the way a judge points at a man he does not like. It did not step into the creek. It could not. That was a rule or a mercy.
"Why us?" I asked. "Why this? Who built the rules?"
Lyra glanced at me. Her eyes softened for the first time. "I do not know," she said. "I used to think I wanted to know. Now I want to survive long enough for the question to matter again."
Fair. The granary groaned a last long groan. The air bent. The light in its windows drew in, then pushed out in a soft white breath that hit the street and rolled over stones and licked the creek edge with gentle heat.
Core Collapse.
Survive.
The village went quiet. Not silent. Quiet, the way a room is quiet after many people leave and you hear the sound your own shoes make. Smoke lifted in thin threads. Fire dropped low. Embers looked like stars on a bad sky.
The Oathlink put its neat lines across our sight.
Fragment Claimed: Flame Step (Lesser).
Effect: Short burst movement through heated air. Leaves scorch trail. Scales with nerve and timing.
Cost: Pyrophobic Nightmares (Minor). Fire invades sleep. Focus hardens slowly in heat.
Note: Do not stay. Memory closure in progress.
Lyra wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist. She did not smile. She looked at me like you look at a stranger who might be a friend if tomorrow ever shows up.
"Good pull," she said. "Not bad for a first week."
"Feels like my only week," I said.
"You will get used to the feeling," she said. "You will hate that you do." She pointed up the creek where black stones made a stair. "We go that way. The edges go soft first. We step out before the ground forgets we were here."
We climbed. The stones were kinder now. The air tasted clean around the edges. The trees beyond the creek stood green and bored, as if nothing important had ever happened in their shade. I hated them a little for that.
At the top, the creek cut under a broken wall and ran into a dry field with weeds up to my knee. The heat faded fast. The village behind us looked like a painting someone had left in the rain.
Lyra stopped and turned. She stared a long time at the Guardian standing in the yard by the granary. It looked smaller now that the core had gone. It looked lonelier, too. It did not look at her. It looked at the place where the heart had been and could not find it.
She pulled down her scarf. Her mouth was a hard line. There were pale marks at the corner that might have been old burns or might have been a habit of biting at quiet.
"You fought well," she said.
"So did you," I said. "Thank you for the window. I would be missing a head right now without it."
"You are welcome," she said. The words sounded like stones taken out of a pocket one by one and put back in again. "We made a good team for people who met in a fire."
"That is my favorite kind of meeting," I said.
She gave me a look that was almost a smile and then was not. "Do not get used to it. I do not do teams."
"Noted," I said. "But you do live."
"For now," she said. She pulled the scarf back up and looked at the flat land ahead. "We go. When you wake, there will be people waiting for you. There always are."
I thought of Veyra and Silas on my stair. I nodded. "I know."
"You should not go with the first ones who ask," she said. "They are never the best."
"You sound like a woman who has gone with the first ones who asked."
She did not answer. She started walking. I walked with her. The field ran on in waves. The sky above was a simple blue. The bell in my bones had stopped ringing for now. It would come back when it wanted something. Bells always do.
After a while the air grew thin in a way that had nothing to do with lungs. The light went white around the edges, then the middle. The ground under my feet was still there and then it was a memory that did not need me any more. Lyra's shape became a line, then a smudge, then a thought I wanted to keep.
"See you," she said, voice far and close at the same time.
"See you," I said.
The world made a soft sound like a page turned. I woke with my cheek on straw and my hand on my knife.
My arm burned. My back ached. My thigh sang a low song about spears. The room breathed its night air. The cup on the table still had a ring where tea had been. The nail still held up the hat hope wore. The window still lied kindly.
Voices came from the hall.
"One hour," a woman said. Veyra. "We are polite until we are not."
"Polite is slow," Silas said. "Slow is dead."
"We make him useful," she said. "Then we decide the speed."
The band on my wrist glowed low like an ember behind black glass. New marks had joined the old. When I touched the metal, it felt like the bottom of a kettle that had cooled enough to be what it was again.
Status: Fragments Two.
Unyielding Guard (Lesser). Flame Step (Lesser).
Flaws: Prideful Rage (Minor). Pyrophobic Nightmares (Minor).
Advice: Do not sleep near lamps.
"Noted," I whispered. "Thank you for your concern."
A knock tapped the door. Not hard. Not soft. The knock of a person who expected to be obeyed.
"Corin," Veyra said through the wood. "You have had your hour. Open."
I stood. I flexed my hand. It hurt. It felt like mine. I picked up the shield. The rim was scorched, and the strap was a black bite. I tested the handle. It held. I wished it did not.
I opened the door.
Veyra stood with her hands behind her back. Silas stood with his arms crossed and his jaw set like a door bar. They both saw the band. They both saw the new lines. Veyra's eyes warmed half a shade. Silas' eyes narrowed.
"You took another step," Veyra said.
"I took a few," I said. "It was a dance. The floor was not friendly."
"Come with us," she said. "We can teach you how to live long enough to hate us."
I looked at her scarf. It was neat. I looked at Silas' boots. They were soft at the toe from climbing stairs. I thought of Lyra's hands. I thought of Isha's name though I had not met her yet. I thought of Cassian's name though I did not know it yet. I thought of the Ragpicker counting chains and not counting men.
"Where?" I asked.
"To a place in the old quarter," Veyra said. "We are part of a group. We will test you. We will see what you bring and what you cost."
"What do you call your group?"
She smiled a small smile that did not use her teeth. "We call it good fortune."
Silas made a sound that might have been a laugh in a meaner man. "We call it the only safe house you will find before morning."
"Safe," I said. "I have not loved that word this week."
"Then call it less dangerous," Veyra said. "But put your boots on."
I looked at my room. It looked back. We both shrugged.
"I will come," I said. "I will listen. I will not promise I will stay."
"Good," she said. "People who promise fast break fast."
I stepped into the hall and locked my door out of habit. Habits are small prayers you say to the part of the world that listens to small things. Silas turned at the top of the stairs and took the lead. Veyra walked beside me.
"Do not try to run," she said mildly. "We would catch you and then we would all have less patience for tomorrow."
"I just learned a new step," I said. "Running would be a waste of a good lesson."
"New step?" she asked.
"Later," I said. "If your house serves tea."
"It does," she said. "Bad tea. But hot."
We went down the stairs into the street where day had started to lean in. The sky over the brick wall that pretended to be a hill was milk gray. A few vendors rapped on shutters to wake coins. Somewhere a cart complained about its own idea of wheels.
Veyra led us into a narrow lane that felt like a mouth with a bad mood. Silas watched the corners the way wolves watch sheep who carry knives. My wrist warmed under the sleeve. The bell in my bones was quiet for now. It would find a reason to ring again. It always would.
We turned left, then right, then through a gate that looked like a place where deliveries had once been made to people who thought themselves important. We crossed a yard with broken stone laid in a pattern that had forgotten what it meant. We went up three steps and through a door that did not like us but opened anyway.
Inside, the air smelled like oil, books, and stew. A long table sat with maps nailed to it. A woman stood by the window, tall and still, with her hair braided close to her head like she had told it to behave and it had agreed. Her eyes went to my face and then to my wrist and then back to my face.
"Isha," Veyra said. "We brought the one the Ragpicker mentioned."
"So you did," the woman said. Her voice was calm the way water is calm when it is deep. "Corin Hale. Please sit. You look like yesterday did not ask permission."
"It did not," I said. I sat. The chair did not wobble. That worried me more than it should have.
Isha nodded to someone I could not see and a bowl appeared near my hands. It held a thick stew that smelled like beans and hope. I ate. It made my mouth happy in a way that made my eyes angry for a second because it had been a long time since food had felt safe.
"We will talk now," Isha said, watching me without staring. "We will talk about rules. We will talk about the city that eats the unready. We will talk about the people who think eating is a plan. And then we will decide something together."
Veyra sat across from me and folded her hands and looked like a good idea in a bad room. Silas leaned on a post and looked like trouble on purpose. The door behind us shut with a small click that sounded like a second chance being counted and filed.
I put down the spoon and met Isha's eyes.
"Good," I said. "Because I have a new trick and two bad dreams and at least three people who want to use me for kindling. It seems a fine morning to choose."
Isha's mouth tipped up a hair. "It is," she said. "Let us begin."