Celeste

  The city was loud.

  Hooves struck stone instead of dirt. Cart wheels rattled over seams in the street. Bells rang somewhere close enough to vibrate my teeth, answered by another farther off. Voices overlapped in every direction, haggling, arguing, laughing, shouting warnings that vanished into the press before they could finish.

  The air smelled wrong.

  Not bad. Just… too much.

  Hot stone baked by the sun. Smoke clinging low between buildings. Food layered over it all: grease, spice, bread, something sweet burning above the rest.

  I slowed without meaning to.

  The street beyond the gate spread wider than any road I’d known, but it didn’t feel open. Buildings rose on either side, tall enough to steal the sky. Stone and timber stacked high, upper floors jutting out over the street like they were leaning in to listen to all the commotion.

  People moved everywhere. Motion came from every angle, cutting across us, brushing past, and stopping short.

  Lioren stopped just past the gate, forcing me to halt with him as we guided our horses through the crowd. Our horses shifted, ears flicking as though the bodies pressed too close for their liking.

  “Easy,” he murmured to his mare, hand steady on her reins.

  I scanned the street, trying to take it all in at once and failing. Every glance caught on something new.

  I felt anxious, not with fear but with the uneasy awareness of how small I suddenly felt.

  We nudged forward, letting the crowd swallow us. The stone beneath my boots radiated warmth through the soles, heat stored from the long day. I adjusted my grip on the reins, acutely aware of how close every stranger stood. How easily a brush of fabric could become a grab.

  I leaned closer to Lioren without thinking.

  He noticed but didn’t comment.

  We passed a row of stalls wedged against one wall. A smith’s hammer rang out in a steady rhythm, iron on iron, sparks briefly into view through an open doorway. The heat that followed wasn’t from the forge alone. The smith lifted a bare hand, Fire flaring once to reheat the metal before fading. I felt the flicker of it even as I walked past.

  I though back to Greyfen and how it had been the largest city I’d ever seen.

  Compared to this, it wasn’t even close.

  I’d asked Lioren days ago if he’d ever been to Rodin, half-expecting the answer to be yes. But it hadn’t been.

  He was navigating this city blind, same as me.

  A cart rumbled past close enough that its wheels brushed my boot. I stepped back instinctively and nearly collided with a man behind me. He muttered something under his breath but kept moving.

  Lioren caught my sleeve before I could drift another step further.

  “Let’s find an inn first,” he said, close enough so I could hear him. “Then we can think without all this noise.”

  I nodded, somewhat relieved to let him do the searching. The city encroached too tightly for planning. Every thought scattered the moment I tried to hold it.

  We followed the slow logic of the street instead of fighting it, letting the current of people carry us until signs began to repeat themselves.

  The first place we tried was full.

  So was the second, but there the woman offered us advice on where we might find one in the lower quarter.

  It sounded far. Everything did.

  By the time we found the place, my shoulders ached from tension I hadn’t realized I was carrying. The inn itself was nothing remarkable, stone walls darkened by smoke, windows thrown open to bleed out heat and noise.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The innkeeper barely glanced up when Lioren asked for rooms.

  “I have a few rooms left,” he said, scratching something on a slate. “Stable space too, if you don’t mind sharing.”

  “We don’t,” Lioren replied without hesitation.

  Coin changed hands. A key was slid across the counter.

  The stable lay behind the inn, tucked into a narrow courtyard already crowded with horses and carts. We led ours inside, found space along the far wall, and finally loosened the tack. My gelding huffed softly as the weight came off his back, already lowering his head toward the hay scattered along the ground.

  I rested my forehead briefly against his neck, breathing in his familiar scent. It steadied me more than anything else had since we passed through the gate.

  Inside again, we climbed a narrow set of stairs and claimed the room.

  Lioren dropped his pack by one bed and rolled his shoulders.

  “Could be worse,” he said.

  I nodded, setting mine down beside the other bed.

  It wasn’t relief so much as release. My limbs were heavy and my thoughts sluggish, as if my body had decided we were safe before my mind could argue otherwise.

  For a moment, it felt like enough.

  Then the quiet thickened just long enough for the truth to creep in—we were in the city, and I had no idea where to begin.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the floor as I gathered my thoughts.

  Lioren moved around the room without urgency. He poured water from a pitcher into a chipped cup and took a slow drink, like this was any other stop along the road.

  I drew in a breath and let it out slowly.

  All right, I told myself. We’re here.

  That had been the goal for so long. I waited for the next step to surface on its own.

  …It didn’t.

  My thoughts drifted back to Greyfen, to Art moving through the city with a confident purpose while I trailed a step behind. I’d watched him speak with shopkeepers, innkeepers, even the occasional passerby. Carrying casual conversations while piecing together who was hunting me.

  The realization hit all at once, like a bruise blooming under the skin.

  I don’t know the questions he asked.

  I didn’t know how he steered those conversations, or what he’d listened for. I only knew the result. Somehow, he’d found the slavers who’d held me, both their name and their network. The Black Veil.

  I’d watched the process. I just never learned how to do it.

  I lifted my gaze to Lioren.

  He’d finished with whatever he’d been doing while I was lost in thought, and now he was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching me. Waiting—as though he assumed I had a plan.

  “I actually don’t know where to start from here,” I said with all honesty.

  He shrugged. “With how hard you were thinkin’, I assumed you had a plan brewin’. Seemed impolite to interrupt.”

  He shifted his weight against the wall, expression thoughtful.

  “Far as I understand it,” he went on, “You were kept somewhere around Rodin. Not in it.”

  I nodded once.

  “And you don’t know exactly where, because they brought you in a covered wagon. You only know it had to be east since you traveled nearly a week before you escaped into Pylin Forest.

  “Yes. I stayed off the trails,” I said.

  “All right. Then let’s start with what it wasn’t. You didn’t cross the Aelvir?”

  “No.”

  “Then it wasn’t west. You didn’t see Rodin at all?”

  I shook my head. “Never even heard it. No bells. No traffic.”

  He paused, thinking.

  “And it wasn’t south either because we came in from the south,” he added.

  “Yes,” I said immediately. “I would’ve recognized that road.”

  “So, wherever you were, it wasn’t anywhere that fed into that route.”

  “If I’d crossed it while running, I would’ve remembered. I was watching for roads. And people”

  He nodded once, going quiet again, eyes unfocusing as he turned it over.

  “I’ve never been to Rodin, but I know the foothills north of it.” he said at last. “If you didn’t see a major road at all, then that’s ruled out as well.”

  I looked up at him.

  “Which only leaves east of Rodin,” I murmured.

  “Aye,” he said. “Somewhere off the roads. Could be angling north or south, long as it keeps going east.”

  He let out a slow breath.

  “And that still leaves a lot of ground,” he said with a shake of his head. “Could be ridin’ for weeks inside that cone and still miss it.”

  My fingers curled into a fist.

  “And Samuel?” he asked.

  I blinked. “What about him?”

  “You two didn’t plan past Rodin?”

  I hesitated. “No. Just to meet here. Though I got here later than was planned…”

  He gave a faint huff.

  “So we’re lookin’ east of Rodin for one place that shouldn’t exist, and inside Rodin for one man we can’t be sure is actually here...”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You’re not givin’ me much to work with, love.”

  My jaw tightened. “I know.”

  I stared at the floor for a second longer, then forced myself to look up.

  “Samuel knew how to do this,” I said. “In places like this I mean.”

  Lioren’s brow lifted like a question.

  “He’d walk into a town and come out with answers. I watched him do it. I just never learned how.” I sighed. “Do you know how to track someone through a city the same way?”

  He blinked.

  He snorted softly and pushed off the wall. “I can follow footprints, broken branches, bad decisions—”

  “But—”

  “But I don’t have a web of informants tucked under my coat,” he finished. “No spies or quiet friends in dark corners. And certainly no habit of sniffin’ out slaver rings in cities this size.”

  That earned a thin breath of laughter from me. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  “That doesn’t mean Sam’s tricks don’t work here. It just means they’re not mine.” He tilted his head, like he was trying to put me at ease.

  I nodded once.

  Then I straightened.

  If Art had escaped, he could be here already, moving through Rodin already asking the right questions and listening for the right answers.

  And if he hadn’t…

  Then I’d have to find the slavers first.

  Either way, the city held what I was looking for.

  And tomorrow I’d start asking questions.

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