Morning broke wrong. The light came up red instead of gold, as if the sun had bled through a thin skin. Fog hung low over the ridges, but the fog itself glowed. Ari stepped outside and felt the hair rise along her arms. The air tasted like iron scraped with a knife. Her brother pressed against her side.
"Is it fire?" he asked.
"Not yet," Ari said. She wanted that to be true. She swallowed and tasted smoke she could not see.
Their father came from the shed with his helmet under his arm. Stone dust still clung to the strap. He looked at the sky a long breath longer than any morning before. Then he tied his scarf with the knot Ari had set for him and kissed her hair without words. He meant be steady. He meant breathe.
"Stay near the house," he said. "If the bell rings twice, go to the low fields. Not the market. Remember."
"I remember," Ari said. She touched the red cord on her wrist. Her fingers shook. She hid the shake by tightening the knot.
They walked toward the mine with the others. People moved fast but tried to look slow. No one wanted to be the first to run. Priests swung iron bowls and chanted, their blue smoke making the fog look bruised. Warriors marched in small groups, plates buckled, fists already swollen from vows. Healers carried bundles of cloth and jars of herb-water. The foreman strode at the front with his board of papers held high like a shield.
They reached the square. The gate lamps still burned though the sun was up. Oil ran in bright lines down the glass where someone had overfilled them. The hum of the ward plates buzzed like angry flies. Kael stood by the threshold with his spear across his palms. He kept checking the latch as if fear were a thing he could trap and bolt.
"You should go inside," Ari told him.
"I swore the door," he said. "If I leave it, I break."
She wanted to tell him that a broken vow was better than a broken body. He looked so young. The words stuck behind her teeth and stayed there.
The sky opened with a sound like cloth tearing. The fog shredded. Shapes cut through it, black and sharp, too straight to be birds. Cutters. Engines roared low and steady, a sound made to teach people their size. A line of ships descended in order that felt like a command. They did not wobble. They did not sway. They took the valley as if the valley had waited for them.
The first cutter hit the flats beyond the mine and threw a ring of dust. The sound of its landing rolled over the crowd and made the ground say yes. Ramps dropped. Soldiers came down in columns of gray. Their helmets hid their faces. Rifles sat clean in their hands. Their steps did not hurry. Only people who feel safe move that calm.
The officer at the front carried a board as thick as a plank. He did not shout to be heard. His voice came through a horn and slid into every corner of the square.
"By authority of the Empire, the Marrow Vein and all surrounding lands are requisitioned. Work will continue under Imperial oversight. All persons will register. Resistance will be treated as theft of state property."
The words hit the crowd like stones. People muttered. Warriors spat. Priests lifted bowls higher as if smoke could bless guns. The foreman walked forward, jaw tight. He held up his own board, thin and stained with thumbprints.
"This land is clan land," he said. "Signed and witnessed. You have no claim."
The officer looked at the thin board and then at his thick one. He smiled without showing teeth. He lowered his eyes as if to say I am being patient. He waited for the foreman to step aside. The foreman did not. He tore his own paper in half and let the pieces fall at the officer's boots. The crowd roared. For a breath Ari felt the roar lift her like a wave.
The officer raised his pistol and fired. The sound cracked the red morning into shards. The foreman jerked and fell hard, chalk flying from his hand. Blood bloomed through his shirt. Silence rolled over the square and pinned everyone to the dirt.
Ari's brother grabbed her waist. His fingers dug deep. She could not breathe. Heat flared under her ribs. The fleck she had hidden in her pocket burned hot enough to sting. It beat faster than her heart, then dragged her heart to match it. She pressed her palm to her chest. It did nothing.
The officer lowered the pistol as if he had set down a spoon. He spoke again in the same even tone.
"Register by household. One representative each. Present tools for inspection. All weapons to the ground. Any attempt to flee will be treated as hostile."
Warriors looked to their captain. He clenched and unclenched his bloody fists. The priests sang louder. The healers crouched by the fallen foreman and pressed cloth to the wound that would not stop. People did not kneel. They did not run. They froze. Fear had them by the ankles.
"Back," Ari's father said. His voice did not shake. He put himself between his children and the square. "We go."
"Papa," the boy whispered. "What about the mine."
"The mine will still be there tomorrow," their father said. "We might not."
They edged along the wall with other families who understood the shape of the day. Not defiance. Not surrender. Survival. A soldier spotted them and stepped forward with a rifle across his chest. He did not aim. He did not need to. His presence was a kind of aim.
"Registration," he said.
"We will return," Ari's father lied with a calm face. "We need our papers from the house."
"No movement allowed until count completes," the soldier said.
"We live at the edge of the square," her father said. "You can see the roof from here."
The soldier did not look. He had learned long ago that looking makes people into people. He shook his head. "Stay."
Ari's chest burned. The fleck's heat crawled under her skin and set her nerves alight. A name formed in her mouth. She did not know whose. It tasted like metal. She swallowed the name and held her brother's hand harder.
Kael stepped in front of them, not aggressive, just present. "They live there," he told the soldier. "I can see their door from my post. Let them fetch papers."
The soldier's visor hid his eyes. He looked at Kael's spear. He looked at the small strap on Kael's arm that marked him as a door guard, not a fighter. He let his rifle dip a fraction.
"Two minutes," he said. "Go. Come back."
Kael dipped his head in a motion that meant I owe you later. He turned to Ari and tried to smile. It looked like pain.
"Run," he said.
The three of them moved as one, heads down, shoulders tight, each step measured so as not to invite a shot from a twitch. They reached the door. Inside was their table. Inside was the dented kettle. Inside was the scarf peg. Ari's mother stood by the stove with a bag already tied. Her eyes were steady and wet at once.
"We go now," she said.
"Papers," their father said.
She lifted a small wooden box and tucked it under her arm. "Papers do not keep breath in a chest," she said, but she brought them anyway.
A siren screamed from the ridges. Not the town horn. A higher, thinner sound that set teeth on edge. Drones rose from the cutter ramps and darted over the square like sharp insects. Red lights flashed. Soldiers shifted into new positions that had been practiced a thousand times somewhere else. The officer did not look nervous. He looked satisfied. He had seen this dance before.
"Change of plan," Ari's father said. He grabbed the boy and shoved him toward the back door. "Fields."
"The gate," Ari whispered. "Kael..."
"Fields," her father repeated. His hand found Ari's shoulder and pushed. His touch said I am not asking.
They ran out the back and cut through the narrow lane that ran behind the longhouse. People jostled them. Children cried. A priest stumbled and dropped his smoking bowl. The blue smoke smeared along the dirt and turned their boots the color of bruises. There was no order here. There was only movement.
They reached the bean fields. Stalks rose taller than a man. The wind ran along them and made a sound like cloth torn and mended in the same breath. Ari pulled her brother into the rows and crouched low. Leaves slapped her face. Dew soaked her sleeves. The fleck's heat eased for a moment, then flared again as drones passed overhead.
"Stay low," their father said. He kept his body between them and the sky. "Do not run straight. Run like a hare."
They moved in a broken line. Left toward the ditch. Right around a fallen scarecrow. Left again toward a line of stones that marked the old irrigation channel. Ari counted her breaths to keep from panicking. Eight in. Eight out. The fleck pulsed too fast. She tried to slow it with her hand. It ignored her.
A drone dipped and buzzed the tops of the stalks. It clicked in a rhythm that did not belong to any bird. A red eye scanned the rows. Ari pushed her brother flat and covered his head with her arm. The drone paused above them. The noise set her teeth on edge. She felt the fleck vibrate in her pocket as if answering a question the drone had not asked.
A stone flew from two rows over and struck the drone's wing. It skittered sideways, lights flaring, then righted itself and shot upward. Ari looked through the leaves and saw Kael three rows away, his chest heaving, another stone already in his hand. He met her eyes for a breath. The breath held a hundred things. Then he threw again and vanished into the stalks.
Soldiers shouted beyond the fields. Shots cracked. The sound was wrong here, muffled by green, more like a slap than a split. Ari's brother flinched at each one.
"Keep going," Ari whispered. "Keep your eyes on my back. If I crawl, you crawl."
"I'm scared," he whispered back.
"I am too," Ari said. She meant it. The truth steadied her.
They reached a break in the rows where a narrow track crossed to the ditch. A patrol had set up there while the families ran. Three soldiers. One upright at the path. Two crouched near the water with rifles low. The upright one held up a hand.
"Papers."
Ari's father lifted the wooden box. "Here."
The soldier shook his head. "Return to the square."
"We have a sick child," their mother said. She had no tears in her voice. Only iron. "He needs water and clean air."
The upright soldier looked at the boy's face. The boy looked very small. The soldier's rifle did not move. He had orders that had been washed in other people's blood. He did not have permission to break them.
"Back," he repeated.
Ari's father stepped forward. He did not raise his hands. He did not make a threat. He stood where a man stands when he wants another man to see his eyes.
"Let us pass," he said.
"Back," the soldier said again. He brought the rifle up a little. It was still low. It was enough.
A drone zipped low over the ditch and suddenly the patrol's heads snapped toward the square. A burst of static came through someone's helmet. Orders rattled fast. The upright soldier flicked his fingers at the ditch.
"Fine. Fast. Go."
They went. They slid down the bank and splashed through water that felt like a knife. Mud tried to pull their boots away. Ari shoved her brother by the belt and lifted him when he stuck. Her breath tore at her throat. She realized she was crying only when the tears made the mud on her face crack.
They climbed the far bank. Beyond it the ground rose into a strip of woodland that ran along the irrigation canal. Trees here were old and pale, their leaves a dull blue in the odd light. The air smelled cleaner. The fleck in Ari's pocket cooled a fraction. She pressed her palm against it and whispered thanks to nothing in particular.
Behind them the cutters' engines rose in pitch. The sound slid under Ari's skin and made her want to run until her legs failed. She forced herself to stop just inside the trees. She listened. Shots. Shouts. The crack of wood where a cart tipped. The metal whine of a drone's wing catching on a line. All of it layered. None of it clear.
"We head for the culvert," a voice said to their left.
Kael stepped out from behind a trunk, spear in one hand, hair stuck to his forehead. His mouth was a tight line. He did not look at Ari long. He looked at the boy. He looked at Ari's father. He looked at the strip of sky between the branches.
"There's a grate under the old road," he said. "It leads to the far side where the reeds start. Soldiers won't follow there yet."
"You are sure," Ari's father said.
"I am sure," Kael said.
Ari nodded once. That was enough.
They slipped through the trees, keeping the ditch close for cover. Twice they dropped flat as patrols moved along the field edge. Twice Ari held her breath so long she saw black at the edge of her sight. The fleck throbbed as if in sympathy. She almost laughed at the idea that a stone could care if she passed out.
They reached the culvert. A grate of rusted iron covered the mouth. Kael jammed the butt of his spear into the seam and levered hard. Metal groaned. The grate lifted a hands-width. Her father slid fingers under and lifted more. Kael nodded at the boy.
"In," he said.
The boy hesitated at the dark mouth. He hated tight spaces. Ari touched his cheek.
"I'll be behind you," she said. "If you get stuck I will pull your feet off with my hands if I must."
He made a small sound that might have been a laugh and crawled in. Ari followed. The air inside was damp and tasted like old stone. The fleck's hum grew louder in the confined space. It felt like a second heartbeat bouncing off the walls and coming back wrong.
Behind her she heard the grate drop back into place with a hollow clang. Kael slid after them. Their father came last. Water ran in a thin sheet along the bottom of the culvert and soaked their knees. The space forced them to crawl with shoulders hunched. Ari kept one hand on her brother's heel so she could feel him move.
Above, the world shouted and smoked. In the tunnel was only breath and scrape and the slow steady drip that counted time without caring who listened. Ari breathed through her mouth and pictured the steps she had taught her brother. Three points of contact. Move one thing at a time. She whispered the numbers under her breath. Eight in. Eight out. The fleck tried to pull her pulse faster. She told it no and meant it.
The culvert turned and widened. Light showed ahead, thin and gray. They sloshed toward it and came out under an overgrown bank where reeds grew taller than a house. The air smelled of wet metal and green. The sound of the square was a distant smear. The cutters' engines were softer here, as if the reeds drank noise.
They crouched in the shadow and listened. For the first time since the ships broke the fog, no one spoke. Ari looked at her father. He looked back and tried to smile. It was a poor try. He reached out and rested a hand on the back of her neck. She leaned into the rough weight and let herself feel small for one breath.
Kael pointed along the reed line. "We keep them on our right," he said. "We follow the water. There's a place where the bank collapses into a slope. We climb there. After that, the wood grows thick and the ground rises. We can decide where to hide."
Ari nodded. She touched the red cord at her wrist. She felt the fleck through her shirt, warm and stubborn. She thought of the longhouse and the blue smoke and the foreman dropping like a cut rope. She thought of the officer's calm face. She thought of Kael's hands throwing stones at a machine that did not care.
Her brother tugged her sleeve. "Are we safe."
"No," Ari said. "But we are alive."
He breathed out slow and copied her words under his breath. Alive. He needed the shape more than the truth. She gave him both.
They moved along the reeds. The hum of engines faded to a dull band in the back of the sky. The light shifted from red to the thin gray of a day that does not decide to be anything else. Ari put one foot in front of the other and counted without meaning to. She felt the fleck's beat settle into a rhythm that matched her steps. It did not feel like comfort. It felt like a promise without a name.
Behind them the valley burned in places. She did not look back. Ahead the ground waited with whatever shape it would take next. The burning sky had come. It would not be the last time. Ari knew that before her mind could catch the thought and hide it from itself.
"Eyes on my feet," she told her brother.
"I'm watching," he said.
"Good," she said. "We keep moving."