Chapter 17: Ears

My hand flew to my throat.

Fingers pressed hard against skin, searching for the wound. For the gap where steel had opened flesh.

Nothing.

I sat there in the dim interior of my tent, chest heaving, sweat running down my temples. My pulse hammered so violently I could feel it in my teeth.

Outside, the sounds of the camp stirring filtered through canvas. Boots on packed earth. The creak of cart wheels being loaded.

I lowered my hand from my throat, staring at my fingers as if expecting them to come away red.

They didn’t.

Yet, my memory was perfect.

The line across my skin. The curtain of warmth sliding down my chest. The ground rushing up to meet me. Lucy, still crouched behind those crates.

Vael’s eye going dark.

I pressed the heels of my palms against my closed eyes until colors burst behind my lids.

This death was different.

Not because it hurt more. In truth, the blade had been so sharp and so fast that the pain had barely registered before I died.

But the other deaths had been impersonal. Monsters killed because that was what monsters did.

This had been a person.

A person with fine features and a hooded face who had stepped out of the dark and cut my throat.

Before that, someone had done the same to Vael.

After that, someone would have done the same to Lucy.

My mind began to sort through the wreckage.

What did I know?

I closed my eyes and rebuilt the night piece by piece.

We marched to Grezheim. I heard conversations about monster attacks, about the Guild failing to respond, about patrols pulling back. I saw five Knights walking south through the town.

I stayed at the inn. I ate. I slept.

Sometime later, fire. Screaming. Hooded figures in the streets, killing with short curved blades and terrifying speed. Garrison soldiers cut down. Students slaughtered. The entire town burning.

There was also the one who killed me.

He moved like smoke. The blade appeared in his hand as if it had always been there.

His features were fine, almost delicate. Yet, not human-fine. It was something else.

I shoved the thought aside.

The more pressing question was easier.

I need a weapon.

Tonight, people were going to die.

Vael was going to die.

Lucy was going to die.

Unless I changed something.

 

---

 

The column marched.

I walked behind the mule with the rope in my hand and my jaw set. The beast was as stubborn as ever, stopping without warning, planting its hooves in the dirt, regarding me with that contemptuous stare.

I didn’t care.

My mind was already in Grezheim.

When the town’s walls appeared on the horizon, when the column filed through the main gate and the officers began their dismissal speech, I collected my thirty silver coins and moved.

No wandering or marveling at the patchwork architecture or eavesdropping on conversations about frontier politics.

I went straight to the tavern.

The door was open. The smell of cooking meat drifted out. Everything was exactly as it had been.

Vael stood behind the bar, wiping a mug with a cloth. His mechanical eye tracked me the moment I crossed the threshold, the tiny gears clicking softly as the iris adjusted.

“Welcome,” he said.

“Room and a meal,” I said. “How much?”

“One silver gets you—”

“Fifty copper,” I said.

Vael’s hand stopped mid-wipe.

His real eye narrowed. The mechanical one whirred, refocusing.

“Fair enough,” he said.

A beat of silence. Vael set the mug down and accepted the coins I counted onto the bar. His expression shifted from suspicion to something closer to grudging respect.

“Meal’ll be out shortly,” he said.

I chose the same one near the wall. Getting a clear view of the kitchen entrance and the back door.

The food arrived. Meat, stew, bread. I ate quickly, not savoring it the way I had the first time. My attention was elsewhere.

When the plate was clean, I looked toward the kitchen.

Vael was behind the bar again, his back half-turned as he organized bottles on a shelf. The kitchen door stood ajar, and through it I could see the edge of a kitchen table.

Cutlery.

My eyes lingered on them.

There were knives. Of course, they weren’t sharp enough to serve as weapons, but the thought still crossed my mind.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I turned back to Vael.

“Those knives,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “Where did you get them?”

Vael glanced over his shoulder toward the kitchen, then back at me. One eyebrow rose.

“The knives,” he repeated flatly.

“I’m looking for similar tools,” I said, the lie assembling itself as I spoke. “Butchering equipment. For… processing meat.”

The words sounded wrong even to me. Like a man reading from a script he’d written five minutes ago.

Vael’s expression told me he agreed.

“Processing meat,” he said, in a tone that suggested he was deciding whether to be amused or concerned.

“I’m not from around here,” I added, which was at least honest.

“I gathered that.”

He set down the bottle he’d been shelving and turned to face me. His mechanical eye clicked through several adjustments, and I had the uncomfortable feeling it was analyzing more than just my face.

He reached beneath the bar and produced a slab of cured meat, dark and dense. He set it on the cutting board with a solid thump.

His index finger extended. The air around it shimmered, barely visible.

He drew his finger across the meat in a single motion.

The slab split.

It separated along a perfectly straight line, both halves falling apart with the clean precision of a surgical cut.

Wind magic.

Vael lowered his hand and looked at me.

“Why would you need knives to process meat?” He said simply.

“I can’t do that. No magic,” I answered.

Vael’s expression shifted. The curiosity drained from his face, replaced by pity.

It wasn’t even close to the kind of look others gave me. Blut and the students saw me more like a walking piece of rotten meat. Vael’s face, however, held no cruelty. Only genuine pity. Not that it made receiving it any less uncomfortable.

He coughed once, as if trying to physically dislodge the awkwardness.

“There’s a smithy,” he said. “Doesn’t work on the main street. They’re further out, closer to the wall. They do a bit of everything.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Vael nodded once, already turning back to his bottles.

I pushed back from the table and headed for the door.

As I stepped outside, I glanced back into the tavern’s interior.

Lucy wasn’t there.

Too early, I thought. She must start later.

Neither of you is going to die.

I said it to myself like a vow.