The tension between them was a live wire as they left the tannery courtyard. Kestrel walked a few paces ahead, a ghost in the crowd, her posture radiating a prickly defensiveness. Arrion followed, a watchful mountain, his mind churning. He had a guide, but he needed to know if she was merely a mercenary shadow or something with a tether that could be pulled.
He caught up to her as they navigated a less crowded lane behind the chandlery. "You're skilled. Why thievery?" he asked, his voice low. "With those hands, you could apprentice to a locksmith, a tailor."
Kestrel didn't look at him. Her laugh was a short, brittle sound. "Apprenticeship costs. Guild fees. A patron. Things you buy with silver, not with skill. The only thing that's ever been free for the taking is what's in someone else's pocket."
"It's a short life," Arrion observed, the memory of his own near-disaster sharp in his mind.
"Shorter if you starve," she shot back, finally glancing at him. Her blue eyes were chips of winter sky. "You think I woke up one day and chose this? You with your fine sword and your heavy purse? You don't know the first thing about the world under the cobblestones."
"Then show me," Arrion said, the command quiet but absolute.
She hesitated, conflict warring on her sharp features. The silver Shield he'd given her was a bribe for cooperation, but this felt like a demand for vulnerability. Yet, something in his tone—not pity, not cruelty, but a stark, factual curiosity—pierced her defenses. Perhaps she wanted him to see. Perhaps she wanted to shove the ugliness in his face.
"Fine," she muttered. "But you keep that sword sheathed. You scare them, and this deal is ash."
She led him away from the commercial bustle, into a warren of crumbling tenements and leaning shacks that clung to Oakhaven's northern wall like a fungal growth. The air grew thick with the smell of uncollected waste and hopelessness. Finally, she stopped before a structure that might once have been a small wayside shrine to some forgotten minor deity. Now, it was a ruin. The roof had partially collapsed, and the carved symbol above the door—a sheaf of wheat—was worn smooth by weather and time.
Kestrel didn't knock. She slipped through a gap in the sagging door, motioning for him to duck and follow.
The interior was dim, lit only by cracks in the walls and a small, carefully shielded fire in what had been the altar hearth. The smell of damp stone and woodsmoke couldn't mask the underlying scent of unwashed bodies and hunger. And then Arrion saw them.
Children. Eight of them, ranging from perhaps eleven to fifteen. They were scattered on piles of filthy straw and ragged blankets, their clothes worn to transparency in places. Their faces were gaunt, cheekbones sharp against pale skin, but their eyes… their eyes were not the soft, lost eyes of victims. They were watchful, hardened, old beyond their years. They held crude weapons—a sharpened stick, a broken bottle lashed to a handle, a rusted kitchen knife. When Arrion entered, they didn't cry out. They went still, a unified flinch, their weapons coming up, their bodies shifting to put the fire between him and the smallest ones. It was a drill. They'd done this before.
A boy of about fourteen, with a shock of matted brown hair and a scar across his chin, stepped forward, a chipped hatchet in his hand. "Kes? Who's the giant?"
"Talen, stand down," Kestrel said, her voice losing its street-rasp, becoming weary, maternal. "He's… a client. He's with me."
The boy, Talen, didn't lower the hatchet. His eyes scanned Arrion's weapons, his size, with a tactical assessment that chilled Arrion's blood. This was a child who had learned to measure threat by lethality, not by intention.
Arrion slowly, very slowly, raised his empty hands, showing his palms. He knelt, bringing himself closer to their eye level, reducing his intimidating height. The living thorn pulsed against his chest, a reminder of a different, greener world.
"He's why we almost ate tonight," Kestrel added, her voice tight. She pulled the silver Shield from her pouch and held it up. It caught the firelight, a tiny sun in the gloom. A collective, sharp intake of breath went through the children. The hard edges in their eyes didn't soften, but they flickered with a desperate, hungry hope.
"How did they come to be here?" Arrion asked, his voice softer than he'd used in years.
Kestrel's story tumbled out, stripped of drama, told in the flat tones of a report. She'd been working the caravan routes last autumn when she'd stumbled upon a "child levy" being taken by a brutish factor claiming to represent a distant mine in the Marches. The children were from starved-out hamlets in the Verdant Veil, "sold" by desperate families or just taken. They were being marched east, towards the Drakespine shadows and Ralke's infamous mines. She'd seen the look in their eyes—the same dead terror she'd once felt.
"I didn't plan it," she said, her gaze fixed on the fire. "I just… created a distraction. A fire in the factor's supply cart. In the chaos, these eight bolted. I led them off the road. We've been here since. Winter was…" She trailed off, the unspoken horrors of the past months hanging in the air. "I steal to feed them. To keep a roof that doesn't leak too much. I tried to find their homes, send word… but the roads are watched. The factor's bosses want their property back. And I don't have the coin to bribe a river captain to take eight extra mouths west, let alone to pay for their keep."
Arrion looked from her exhausted, defiant face to the children. The youngest, a girl of about eleven with fiery red hair peeking from a grimy cap, clutched a wooden doll with no head. The boy with the hatchet, Talen, was clearly the second-in-command, his body positioned to protect the others. They were a family forged in terror, a tiny, feral army hiding in a ruin.
The weight of his own mission felt suddenly different. It wasn't just about a blight or a Marquis. It was about the human cost of that evil, distilled here into eight pairs of too-old eyes. Ralke traded in souls. These were the currency.
He made a decision. It was impulsive, perhaps foolish, but it felt like the only right turn in a world of crooked paths.
"You can't stay here," he said, his voice firm but not unkind. "The factor's men will widen their search. Or sickness will take you. Or the next winter will."
Kestrel's head jerked up, defiance flashing. "We have no choice! Where would we go? Back to the mines?"
"No," Arrion said. "West. To my home. To Hearthstone."
Silence, thicker than the temple's gloom, descended. The children stared. Kestrel's mouth opened, then closed.
"My uncle is the lord of the village. He's a good man. He has a big longhouse. He needs strong hands for the coming season—and eyes to watch the woods." He looked at Talen. "You know how to stand watch, don't you?"
The boy gave a stiff, proud nod.
"He'll take you in. Feed you. Give you real beds. You'll be safe there. Safer than you've ever been."
"You expect me to believe that?" Kestrel whispered, her voice raw. "That some noble's uncle just takes in street rats?"
"I'm not a noble," Arrion said. "And my uncle was a sergeant who earned his title holding a pass against a beast-tide with nothing but an axe and a loud voice. He took me in when I had nowhere else to go. He'll do the same for you. On my word."
He could see the war raging in her. Hope was a dangerous, unfamiliar weapon. It could get you killed. But the alternative was a slow, grinding death in this ruin.
"What's the price?" Talen asked suddenly, his young voice hard. "Nothing's free."
"The price," Arrion said, looking at Kestrel, "is that you guide me true. You get me to where I need to go in the Marches. And you come back alive to collect them. This," he gestured to the children, "is your surety. You help me finish my business, you have a home to return to. A real one. For all of you."
It was a gamble. He was tying her loyalty to something far more powerful than silver: to the safety of these children. He was also giving her a reason to survive the journey, to not vanish with his coin at the first opportunity.
Kestrel looked at the children—at the red-haired girl clinging to her doll, at the skinny boy trying to look brave, at Talen's stubborn, protective scowl. She saw the faint, terrifying glimmer of hope he'd ignited in their eyes. It was a cruelty as much as a kindness.
She closed her own eyes for a long moment. When she opened them, the street-rat was gone. In her place was a general, making a strategic retreat to save her army.
"How?" she asked simply.
Arrion laid out the plan swiftly. He would write a letter to Borryn with the silver from Evander's purse to pay a trusted, discreet carter he knew from the Stubborn Stag's suppliers. The carter would take the children, hidden among legitimate cargo, west to Hearthstone. The letter would explain everything. The children would be there within a week.
"It's a risk," he admitted. "But it's a better one than you have here."
Kestrel knelt, gathering the children close, speaking to them in low, urgent tones. Arrion heard snippets: "...strong walls... real food... Talen, you're in charge until I get back..."
He turned away, giving them the illusion of privacy, and used a charred stick from the fire and a scrap of parchment from his pack to write a hurried, coded note to Borryn. "Uncle. These are mine, as Arrion is yours. Keep them safe. Their sister guides me east. I will explain when the world is greener. Trust them as you trust me. -A."
He handed the note and a substantial pile of silver to Kestrel. "The carter's yard is 'Finn's Haul,' by the west gate. Give him this. He knows Borryn's mark."
Kestrel took the items, her fingers trembling slightly. The transaction was complete. She had sold her skills, and he had purchased not just a guide, but her soul's anchor.
"Get them ready," she said to Talen, her voice steady now. "We move at dusk."
As the children began, with a quiet, disciplined efficiency, to gather their meager possessions, Arrion looked at the broken altar, the sheaf of wheat. A temple to harvest, now sheltering the unwanted harvest of a corrupt lord's ambition. His path to the mountains was no longer a solitary quest. It was a rescue mission layered upon a war mission. The blight on the forest and the blight on these young lives sprang from the same rotten root. And he was now, irrevocably, the axe aimed at it.