Chapter Text
The truck’s metal is a soft kiss of ice against your brow. The chill of it winds around the pain burrowing deep between your temples, gentling the harsh edges of it. As the agony uncurls into something softer - little electrical pulses that prick at your nerves and settle into your bones until every inch of you feels bruised - you close your eyes.
For the briefest instant, you consider what it might be like to step into the weak glow of a summoning circle, to have the pale golden warmth wind around you and soothe the bone deep ache, but then you think of Meera, Meera with her snow white hair trailing behind her like a ghostly comet’s tail as she slipped into the dark of a balmy summer night, and you consider it no more.
The truck sways beneath you as someone hops up into the bed.
Silas - you’d shrugged out from under his gentle touch as soon as you’d felt it, but he’d stayed close, his hands fluttering at his side - makes room for Lu Ren immediately.
“I’m fine,” you murmur, the words grating against your raw throat, but you do not move.
You’d stayed on your knees once they’d given out beneath you, and Lu Ren crouches down next to you. When you say nothing more, he brushes his thumb over the sweep of your cheekbone - his touch frigid against the feverish burn of your skin - and you do not have to open your eyes to know that it comes away damp with tears. He sighs. “You always did have an interesting version of fine.”
“Shut up.”
He laughs. It’s a familiar, comforting rumble, but when you glance up at him, his lopsided smile is tight. There’s something desperate in his dark, dark eyes, but he says nothing. He simply reaches out.
You let him pull you to your feet - you have long grown used to the ease in which Lu Ren can move you, his arm rippling with lean muscle, his quiet strength surging to the surface for one brief instant - and ignore the pain that jolts through you at the movement. Silas offers you a bottle of water without a word. His long fingers remind you of moths dithering around a porch light, bouncing against the water bottle rapidly. Others would ask, you’re sure, but you only murmur quiet thanks and crack open the water bottle. It flows down your throat like a balm.
Ven calls out to you.
You hop down from the truck with a sigh. Your muscles groan with each step, until you are considering simply lying down on the dusty road. Ven is clustered around the Uke Mochi’s corpse with Peking and Shakshuka; Shakshuka is nudging the carcass with one foot, her face incredibly still.
“My,” Peking says, as the carcass shifts enough for the shredded jawline to be visible, blood still lazily pulsing from the ragged flesh. The pooling gore is syrupy and blackened at the edges. Peking’s elegant fingers hover just above it. “You do live up to your reputation.”
“Which one?” Shakshuka asks, her voice crackling bitter at the edges, like caramel just slightly burned. The smile that carves its way across her lips reminds you of the hunter’s pit traps that used to dot the forests, something sharp tucked just underneath.
Ven grates a warning sound out from low in her throat before Peking can answer. Shakshuka’s shoulders loosen, and that haunted smile fades from her lips. She turns away from Peking fluidly, but you can see her hand flexing by her side - the skin still mottled as it continues to heal, the scar tissue stretched shiny and tight over her knuckles - as you draw closer.
Shakshuka’s gaze catches on you. She arches a brow. “You alright, then?”
“Peachy,” you say.
“Since when do you gag at blood?”
Behind her, Peking shifts, his golden eyes darting towards the other Food Soul. His brow furrows deeply, and his focus on Shakshuka is unnervingly steady, like he’s peeling back the layers of her flesh to get to her bones. The expression passes, his brow smoothing out, and that affable smile melts across his lips again.
“Since now, I suppose,” you say waspishly. You have never shied away from blood - have helped Mayra on the ranch in a way some would flinch at, keeping your weight in place as warm blood gushed over your hands, Mayra’s lips tight as she set down the knife - and it’s not a reputation you’d like to gain. Still, better that they think it blood that churned your stomach than realizing what had truly taken hold of you.
“Farms near here?” Ven asks, her silken voice demanding attention. She doesn’t bother to glance over. She’s gazing down at the corpse with an expression that could have been cut from stone, her green eyes roving over each inch of the Fallen. You have rarely seen her like this outside of Funeral Banks, all banked destruction, strife simmering underneath her skin. You know war thrums through her each waking second, but she has long been able to hide it beneath something softer, something kinder.
“Sunrise,” you say, pulling up your mental map as best you can, thrown by the detour Ven had forced upon you. “Yarrow, and Ginseng is close enough to count.”
“How close?”
“Close enough to count,” you say tartly.
“It’s close,” Lu Ren says as he joins you. Silas trails just behind him. Both of them are pointedly keeping their eyes from the corpse. The hard-packed dirt of the road has just started to absorb some of the pooling blood, small tendrils of moisture snaking out from the source as the dirt dampens.
“Close enough for groundwater contamination?” Ven asks.
You suck in a sharp breath.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
You’d thought - you don’t know what you’d thought, not really, had just seen Peking’s fingertips hovering over that noxious mess of gore and assumed he was a Support Soul. You’d watched once of them, once. They’d been tiny and beautiful and had wobbled to their feet when they were done purifying the corpse, their Master Attendant wrapping a jacket tightly around them before ushering them into the Guild’s outpost.
Shu can contain the blood with her iron, of course, but you know that this quickly after use, the iron itself hasn’t yet been burned clean by her Soul Power. There’s little point in contaminating her iron even more for no gain.
“Breathe,” Lu Ren tells you. “It’s just a little bit.” You aren’t sure who he is trying to reassure. He knows as well as you that sometimes the amount doesn’t matter.
It was just a little bit, Ban had said, his empty gaze focused on the horizon.
“Anafa’s fifteen klicks northwest,” Ven says. The tilt of her lips tells you that she has seen the shudder rocking through you. “Seltzer will be able to help. She’s a small Uke Mochi, the remains will be relatively easy to destroy.”
You nod.
“Ah,” Silas says, “the Academy has requested that all Fallen remains be brought to them.”
Shakshuka’s iron stirs to life. The honeysuckle flowers wither and bloom again, small flashes of the thick, angry scar visible beneath the moving metal.
Ven’s lips tighten. “Good,” she bites out, “for them.”
Silas flushes, the dusky pink glow starting at his cheeks before flowing down his neck to his chest. Peking rises from his place beside the corpse. It’s a graceful, gentle motion. Pain radiates through your left temple.
Next to you, Lu Ren sighs. He has always been the most merciful of your group.
“Anafa’s a Guild official,” he tells Silas. His gentle voice is enough to cut the building tension. It often is, especially paired with his disarming smile. He’s used it to his advantage throughout the years through bar fights and property disputes alike. “She’ll take care of it.”
“She’ll take care of your wallet, too,” Mayra says as she rejoins the group, sliding in next to Silas. His fading flush blooms again when she swings an arm over his shoulder. From the slight gray cast of her skin, it may be what’s keeping her upright. “If you let her get close enough.”
Silas stutters out an inquiring noise.
“Anafa was a pickpocket,” you say. “You look like hell.”
Mayra snorts. “Thanks. Right back at you.”
“Mayra.”
“I’m fine.”
You drop it, because even though her hair is matted with sweat and there’s a faint tremble to her limbs, she looks radiantly happy. Lu Ren huffs a despairing sigh. You think you hear him mutter something derogatory about the pair of you and your inability to recognize your own limits.
“Well?” Ven asks.
“The woman’s stable,” Mayra says. “Stable enough that they can get her to proper medical care.”
“Well done,” Ven says. “They can follow me to Anafa’s.”
Mayra beams. She pushes away from Silas - he almost topples at the sudden movement, but suddenly Peking is there, his hands gentle as he keeps his Attendant upright - and wraps herself around you. Her weight makes your aching muscles flex painfully, but you tuck an arm around her anyway. Lu Ren tucks himself into her other side. “Let’s go,” Mayra murmurs. “Tired.”
“Can’t imagine why,” Lu Ren grumbles.
Mayra ignores him, leaning forward and pressing her forehead against your temple. “I did it,” she says giddily.
“You did,” you murmur. She breathes out a sound that could be a choked-off sob. You close your eyes for the briefest instant.
“Oh, wait!” someone calls as you begin to walk away. Mayra’s quick stop means that you halt too, cursing quietly to yourself as you almost stumble.
The man rushing over reminds you of one of the monoliths that are scattered near the edge of the border, where the soil goes sandy and the sun beats down for hours and hours. He’s broad like the stones and densely made. The patch of blood smeared against his shirt is drying slowly, the edges of it already a crusty brown.
“Thank you,” he says breathlessly to Mayra. “Again.”
She says something back to him, but a wave of pain sweeps through you and carries her words away with it. You blink it away as best you can as the man turns towards Ven.
He’s faster than you’d expect with the amount of bulk he carries. He has Ven’s hands in his in an instant. He drops to his knees before her even as she recoils. “Thank you, Master Attendant,” he breathes, leaning forward and pressing his forehead against her hands. “Your kindness is immeasurable.”
You feel Mayra’s muscles lock. Lu Ren lets out a soft breath. You set your jaw.
“Ah,” Ven says. “I’m not the one you should be thanking.”
The man lifts his head. “Master Attendant?”
“No,” Ven says gently. You can see the ice settling over her, something ready to shatter into sharp points. “I’m afraid not.”
She turns her hands so that her palms face the sky. The man goes still, his eyes focusing on her left palm. The scar, you know, is a nasty one, all puckered, twisting flesh, the shining skin raised like a softly sloping hill. Still, it’s beautiful in its own way with clean, crisp edges of delicate detail, the flame perfectly outlined in her flesh, the smaller, more delicate licks of fire etched just outside. The sizzle of it, Shakshuka told you, had filled the room before being drowned out by Ven’s wail - a banshee’s desperate cry echoing, filtered through gritted teeth - as the Soul Ember dimmed.
Silas makes a strangled sound that he muffles quickly. His brown eyes shift to Shakshuka before flitting back to Ven. While Ven does not move her gaze from the man in front of her, you know she hears him, registers it, tucks it away for later.
The man’s hands fall away. “You’re…”
“Not a Master Attendant,” Ven says, as if the burn scar didn’t spell it out. “As I said. It is not me you should be thanking.”
The man’s blue, blue eyes dart behind Ven’s figure to Shakshuka. He looks lesser now, reminds you instead of the tall stones beyond the seashore, the bulk of them eaten away by the ocean’s hungry mouth, always on the edge of tipping into oblivion. His hands are trembling.
Shakshuka meets his gaze with a lazy smile that’s tipped with poison. In moments like this, you can see her first Attendant’s fingerprints bruising her, pressing violence into her until she is only a weapon. Now, Contractless, she is a weapon that can aim where she pleases, and that has always carved horror across human faces.
The man stumbles to his feet.
His retreat is silent and ungainly, a hurried backing away that almost sends him tripping over the displaced rocks he cannot see with his eyes glued to Shakshuka’s form. You watch him until he disappears into one of the caravan vehicles. You doubt it will be long before the engine revs to life.
“That went well,” Mayra says dryly.
Ven barks out a laugh. “I doubt they’ll follow me to Anafa’s now.”
“You aren’t a Master Attendant.” Silas’s odd fluctuation between confidence and timidity has flowed into confidence again. There’s quiet authority lining his tone - the brazen surety that his nobility will grant him power, you think - as he turns his full focus on Ven. Peking steps up beside him, his shoulder pressing against his Master Attendant’s.
Ven raises a brow, a small sneer tugging on her lips. “I told you that earlier.”
“But you move like one,” he says.
“Oh?”
“You move with her when she’s fighting,” Silas says slowly. “And you do it without thought, like you already know where she’s going before she’s done it. I’ve never seen anyone but an Attendant do that with a Food Soul.”
Ven blinks. Her eyes - sometimes they remind you of snow-dusted fir trees, evergreen under a thick layer of winter - go flat. Silas shifts as that hard gaze roams over him. Peking touches his hand gently and the Attendant stills, raising his chin and meeting Ven’s eyes.
She hums as her gaze fades into something softer. “Well,” she says. “Ten years sleeping with someone does put you rather in tune.”
Silas sputters, the tips of his ears burning.
“I would hope so,” Mayra cackles. Out of the corner of your eyes, beyond Mayra’s wide grin, you can see Lu Ren biting down on his laugh.
Shakshuka laughs, low and deep, and slings an arm around Ven’s waist. She presses a kiss just behind Ven’s ear. The tiniest flush flares to life on Ven’s cheeks.
“Can we go now?” Mayra asks. “Still tired.” The gray cast of her skin has faded somewhat, but it hasn’t disappeared.
“Yes, you idiot,” Lu Ren says, pressing his forehead against her cheek, all fond exasperation. “Maybe you should try not to overextend yourself next time.”
The three of you start back to the truck. Silas and Peking are not far behind you, but Ven and Shakshuka stay by the Uke Mochi’s corpse. Mayra pulls off of you - you bite down on the relieved breath as the pressure of her weight ceases, letting the little flames of pain still burning down your nerves die down into embers - and walks, but it’s a meandering path, and she sways here and there. You and Lu Ren stay close, although from the look Lu Ren sends you, he hasn’t forgotten that you aren’t in that much better of a state.
Mayra’s able to swing herself up into the truck with a fraction of her usual grace and vigor. She settles into the truck bed, stretching out on your side of the berths. Peking and Silas politely wait to see if you will climb in as well, but you catch sight of Ven beckoning to you.
You wave the two men into the truck bed and trot back towards Ven. She’s staring down at the corpse again, her fingers tapping against her thigh.
“This is the third one in a month,” she says after a moment.
A chill trickles down your spine.
“They’ve all been like this,” she says. “Small. Weaker. Easy enough for someone like Shu to dispatch quickly. Only slightly harder for Souls with lower Soul Power. But they are here, past the borders, into the heartland.”
“I’ve heard nothing.”
“Did you think you would?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“But you haven’t.”
You stare at the pool of blood. It’s still being absorbed, the viscous thickness of the fluid slowing the process. “Even the Guild wouldn’t keep this from us. They must have thought we knew,” you say, but you can hear the uncertainty in your own voice.
Ven scoffs, and you know it is deserved.
Moss, you remember, had said she’d had an unexpected Guild visit at the beginning of the month. They had told her little, simply swept through her farm and the surrounding area. Nonchalant and good-hearted as she is, she’d not bothered to ask them more, choosing instead to focus on scrambling to fulfill the airship manifest.
Her farm is by a creek that burgeons into a river when it rains. If even the faintest whisper of contamination had been breathed, even the Guild wouldn’t have been able to maintain control. Especially in the heartland, where the presence of Fallen is almost unheard of. The little Fallen popped up here and there, of course - even the idyllic rolling hills are not without their horrors - and while a Ringtooth can bite a limb off with a snap of its jaw, their blood didn’t contaminate in the same way the others might, didn’t poison the water, the very dirt, like an Uke Mochi, or an Amazake, or any of the Fallen that the Academy has termed as evolved could.
“It’s almost guaranteed they were clean to start or they purified it in time, or I would have heard sooner. There is little you can do,” Ven says, pressing against you, her soft form molding to you. “Just be wary.”
“Ven,” you breathe, and you know she hears the horror stretching your words thin. She drops a kiss onto the crest of your shoulder.
“I know,” she says, and there is war in her again, all of that violence boiling to the surface like a tempest. “I know.”
You stare again at the black veins of moisture spreading out from the gore, the tawny soil a bright contrast. “Can I tell the others?”
“I didn’t want Silas to hear,” Ven says. “The others are fine.”
“Okay.”
“Be careful with him,” she murmurs. “He’s clumsy about it, but he’s smarter than you think he is.”
You consider protesting that you don’t think he’s dumb, exactly, but rather so oblivious that it’s almost painful. But Ven has never warned you without reason, so you keep your mouth shut.
“I need to go so I can catch Anafa,” Ven says. “Seltzer’s going to be irritated enough as it is that I delayed.”
You hum an agreement - the svelte, graceful Soul has a temper that pops up unexpectedly, little explosions of annoyance that makes Anafa tease them mercilessly about how fitting that is - and she pulls away. “Say hi for me.”
“I’ll be through tomorrow or the day after,” Ven says.
You nod. She reaches out and squeezes your hand before turning back to the Jeep. Shakshuka is already ensconced inside, back to her indolent sprawl, her flood of claret hair flowing over the side of the open window. She tips you a wink and a smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
Mayra cracks an eye open when you hop up into the truck bed. You could go in the front with Lu Ren - part of you aches to do so, knowing that you could curl up in the passenger seat, pressing your feet against his thigh to ground yourself against the lingering pain, free of Silas’s chatter - but Mayra is the priority.
“Hi,” you say.
Her face is gaining color again, that gray tinge fading into a wan pallor. It’s still not ideal - she is not glowing golden under the sun, the rays catching on her cheekbones - but it’s a start.
“Hi,” she says back, shifting slightly. She lifts herself just enough to give you room to settle. Once you’re comfortable and the truck has started up with a rumble, she pushes her head into your lap so that it is cradled in your crossed legs and closes her eyes again.
“You’re an idiot,” you murmur fondly, picking at a matted knot just above her left ear. “I know you didn’t need to use this much.”
“Probably not,” she says, but you know she’s thinking of the hollow thud of the disc harrow biting into something other than dirt, of the wet metallic scent that had roiled through the fields. Mayra nestles up against your hands as you keep unknotting. It helps your shoulders loosen, too.
Silence envelops the back of the truck, broken only by the rumble of the truck's engine and then, unprompted, Mayra says: "It took just under a decade."
Across the truck bed, Silas goes still. He’s been whispering with Peking, his feet practically vibrating against the metal floor. “Oh,” he gulps. “I didn’t mean to be loud.”
“You weren’t,” Mayra says. You start to pick at another knot, keeping your eyes on her mass of hair but listening intently. “You’re just obvious.”
Peking chuckles, low and soft.
“I’ve just never met a Diminished before,” Silas says.
You wince. It’s not a kind term - how could it be - especially coming from an Attendant. One of the Guild’s particular slights, a little way to try and undercut those who learned something that was meant to be exclusive to Attendants.
“Attendant,” Peking reprimands softly. Silas blanches.
“I’m going to let that go,” Mayra bites out. Even with exhaustion lining her, the stinging tone is intimidating. “But just once.”
She had worked herself to the bone to learn the Seasoning Talent, late nights rolling into early mornings, whispering the incantations as she plowed the field with you. It’d taken six years before she could begin to heal Food Souls. Healing humans - notoriously hard even for Support Souls and coming at a high cost - had come later. But each time you thought she might collapse, or give up, she’d buckled down harder.
“I’m sorry,” Silas says. “I didn’t - I didn’t think.”
Mayra snorts.
“It’s very impressive,” Peking says, a restraining hand rising to his Attendant’s knee as Silas parts his lips again. The noble subsides immediately. Peking squeezes softly and his hand drops away. “I have not known many with the dedication to study until a Talent is actually usable.”
The disc harrow rings out in your mind again, and you think of how Mayra’s hands had shaken when you’d poured water over them at the edge of the fields, the blood washing away to soak into the dirt below. All of the greenhorns had slept on the floor of the living area that night, curled around each other, dozing fitfully until the next morning, when Zhang Hui told you that Garza - stubborn as always - would live.
Mayra had gone to find someone who could teach her a Healing Talent that afternoon.
“Thanks,” Mayra murmurs. You run a hand through her hair, recognizing the cottony quality of her voice as exhaustion catching up to her. Her breathing begins to even out, blowing hot against the back of your calf.
As she dozes, you lean back against the truck’s side. Sweat is gathering at your nape once more, even with the wind whipping through the back of the truck.
Peking and Silas begin to murmur with each other once more. The buzz of it floats to you and settles around your aching body like a blanket. You close your eyes, and let sleep claim you.
After all of this, you think you deserve it.