Celeste

  By the fourth morning, Rodin had started to feel like a loop I couldn’t escape.

  The same smoke-sweet air seeped through the shutters. The same distant bells counted time I didn’t have. Even the inn’s floorboards had begun to remember my steps, creaking in the same places as if mocking how often I crossed the room with nothing to show for it.

  We’d tried it every way I could think to try.

  At first, I’d asked the way I believed Art may have, casual, careful, as though I didn’t care what the answer was. I kept my voice light, my questions vague enough not to draw a second glance. Any trouble on the roads? Heard of travelers going missing?

  Most people didn’t even bother pretending to think. They shrugged, turned away, and went back to their work like I’d asked whether it might rain. So I began to ask more pointedly.

  One man’s smile vanished the moment I let the word trafficking slip. His eyes hardened like I’d accused him personally and spat in his doorway. A woman grew so uncomfortable under my questions she backed away from me as if I was the guard. Another didn’t answer at all, just turned and hurried straight to the nearest patrol.

  The guards hadn’t arrested us. Not that time. We’d talked our way out with a lie that probably sounded as bad as it tasted. Regardless, they allowed us to walk away free with a warning.

  By that point, the rest of the day went cold. Every stranger’s glance felt heavier. Every word felt like it might tip us into a cell.

  We looked for Art too, constantly. Not by name or description, Rodin was too big for that, and I knew he’d be keeping his head down even if he had made it here. So we watched instead. Faces in the crowds. Watching for a man who I knew was good at hiding.

  Nothing.

  We tried the inns next, as if he might leave a trail. That was laughable in a city like this. Every stable was full. Every common room was packed. Every innkeeper saw too many travelers to remember one more.

  Today, we attempted a different approach. We rode the perimeter until the sun sank low and my legs ached from the saddle. We traced the edges of Rodin’s shadow, watching roads peel off into forests too dense, scanning hills and brush for signs that didn’t exist. The land outside the walls was too wide, too indifferent. We could have passed within a stone’s throw of the place where I was held and never known it.

  We turned back to toward the city as the light began to fade, horses tired and dusty, tempers worn thin. I’d been dreaming of food the whole ride back and the small mercy of a bed that didn’t sway beneath me.

  Rodin had other ideas.

  The line at the gate stretched nearly as long as it had that first day. Carts backed up along the road, voices raised in tired arguments that went nowhere. People shifted from foot to foot, reins looped tight around their hands, all of us moving forward at the same maddening pace.

  By the time we reached the front, my shoulders ached and my patience was gone. The guards asked the same questions they always did, their voices flatter than they had been the first day we arrived.

  When they finally waved us through, it didn’t feel like relief. The streets inside were just as crowded as ever. We had a long ride ahead just to reach the inn, weaving through districts that blurred together in smoke and torchlight.

  The city swallowed distance the way it swallowed people. No matter how far you traveled, it never seemed enough.

  I heard it coming.

  It wasn’t the usual rattle of wheels or the clatter of hooves on stone, but something different. The way the iron-rimmed wheels struck the street with a deeper cadence, the harness fittings chiming in a way that didn’t belong to ordinary carriages. I glanced over my shoulder.

  We were already moving. People drifted aside without looking, carts angling toward the edges of the street. I guided my gelding in tight with the rest of them, muscle memory doing the work. Lioren eased his mare back a step, matching the flow of the street.

  A lacquered carriage rolled through the opening, its dark wood catching torchlight as it passed. A crest marked its side, gold and deep green.

  Only when it was gone did the street breathe again.

  I hadn’t been told to move. But I’d learned enough in four days to know better than to test it.

  I’d learned what the crests meant without anyone telling me directly.

  The first time I’d seen one, I hadn’t understood why the street had folded so quickly. I’d thought it was courtesy. By the second and third time I’d understood it was the way of this world.

  Nobles marked what belonged to them. Their clothes. Their carriages. And when they moved through the city, the marks went first, clearing the way before a word ever had to be spoken.

  I’d made the mistake early on of watching the people instead of the symbols. Faces told you nothing here. Crests did.

  Gold thread worked into a sleeve. A signet ring catching the light. A painted emblem rolling past on polished wood. You didn’t need to recognize the house to know what it meant. The city did that part for you.

  I shifted in the saddle, eyes tracking the carriage until it vanished into the press ahead of us.

  It unsettled me how quickly I’d learned. How natural it felt to move when I was supposed to, to give ground without being asked.

  I knew where we were now.

  The gate we’d come through spilled into the same stretch of the city, the lower district where the streets stayed narrow and the noise never quite faded. It wasn’t something I’d been told outright. I’d figured it out by repetition.

  The gate fed the working part of Rodin. Laborers, traders, travelers. It was the closest one to the inn, and after learning how much distance mattered here, I’d stopped pretending convenience wasn’t a factor.

  Other gates led elsewhere.

  I’d heard it in fragments. Try to enter through the wrong gate and you could be turned away without a word. Just told that you didn’t belong there unless you lived there or had business worth naming. Otherwise, you were sent on to another gate.

  Nobles had no issues when it came to entering any gate they wanted to get into this city. I’d seen nobles in the lower districts before, drifting down like they were visiting another city entirely. They stood out even without trying. Their clothes fit better. Their boots didn’t match the filth underfoot.

  Some wore crests openly. Embroidered on cuffs or worked small along a collar. Those were the richest ones. The great houses. I’d only seen their marks in the higher districts, or painted on the sides of the carriages that passed through the lower streets without slowing.

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  Lioren and I wandered too far uphill, chasing answers that led straight into one of their districts.

  The change had been gradual at first. Fewer people. Broader avenues. Stone laid smoother underfoot, with patterns instead of being patched. The noise fell away in layers until even our horses’ hooves began to sound out of place.

  Then I seen a structure so large I’d taken it for a temple at first, set far back from the road, rising above everything around it. It was gated and guarded well with city guards posted at every approach.

  I later learned that it was the High Lord’s home.

  We hadn’t gone closer. We had already stood out too much. Nobles passed with suspicious glances, guards changed their routes just enough that I could feel them behind us. Never the same one for long. One would linger, then fall back, and another would take his place as we crossed some invisible line.

  They didn’t stop us.

  They simply followed until we left.

  I’d noticed the uniforms then too. Most wore the standard yellow of the city guard, familiar enough to fade into the street. But among them there were others.

  Those that wore red were given more space. More care. Conversations dipped when they passed. I’d picked up through gossip that they were Casters.

  And only once had I saw a guard wearing blue.

  I didn’t know what it meant. The street itself seemed to bend around her, people parting faster than they had for the crested carriage.

  I nudged my gelding forward as the road narrowed again, noise creeping back in around us.

  There were some nobles out tonight. I watched one pass us now, riding easy on an adorned horse despite the amount of bodies, riding loosely as though the street belonged to him alone.

  I’d seen them drift down into the lower streets enough times to recognize the pattern. Younger ones, mostly. They came without escorts more often than not, as if that made the excursion daring instead of safe.

  Their clothes were cut better, stitched closer to the body. Coin passed easily from their hands, tossed onto counters without counting, spent the way of people who had never learned to care what things cost.

  They were treated differently.

  Not feared. Just… accommodated.

  Tavern doors opened faster for them. Service came quicker. Laughter followed in their wake, louder than it needed to be, sometimes forced. They took tables near the center of rooms and filled them with noise, voices carrying as if the space belonged to them simply because they were there.

  Most didn’t cause trouble. At least, not real trouble. They drank, gambled, disappeared into back rooms with knowing smiles. Brothels seemed to bloom around them.

  It felt like a performance they all understood.

  We stopped to eat where the smell grew too thick to ignore. Spice and bread baked fast and sold cheap. The food was good enough, filling without being memorable, and cheaper.

  Cheaper, I learned quickly, only by Rodin’s standards. Outside the walls, the same meal would’ve cost half as much. In the towns we’d passed through before, it would’ve been something you saved for. Here, it barely counted as a kindness.

  The inn had been worse.

  The room cost more than any place I’d ever slept in, and not because it offered comfort. The beds were narrow, the walls thin. We’d taken it because there hadn’t been a choice.

  We would have slept outside the gates, but Rodin didn’t allow it. Anything farther out meant losing half a day just getting back through the city to start again.

  Every other place we tried that first night had been full. The reason for the overcapacity was due to the larger military presence.

  Rooms were taken weeks in advance for soldiers passing through. Stables crowded with mounts that bore fresh tack and unfamiliar colors.

  Even stabling the horses cost more than I’d expected. Stable space wasn’t included with the room. Feeding and watering came extra, and every time I went to fetch my gelding, a hand was held out, waiting for a coin no one ever bothered to ask for outright.

  When I first saw city guards pass soldiers in the street, I hadn’t thought anything of it.

  A uniform was a uniform. A ruler was a ruler. In the smaller places, power wore on face and answered to one name. You didn’t need to know more than that.

  Here, it wasn’t that simple.

  Rodin answered first to the High Lord. The city guard wore his colors, kept this streets, enforced his order. His presence was everywhere, woven so tightly into the stone that it felt permanent.

  The Governor was something else.

  We passed his residence on another day, in a different quarter of the city. Smaller than the High Lord’s estate, but no less imposing. Doors built for function rather than display. It wasn’t just a home, it was an office, a place where orders were written and carried out.

  Soldiers patrolled there instead of city guard.

  The Governor answered to the Triarchy—not the city. Two authorities, sharing the same place.

  As we finished our meals, we began moving again. I guided my gelding forward as the lower district reclaimed us quickly. The inn lay ahead somewhere deeper still.

  I was tired. Bone-deep. Of the city. Of its rules.

  The stable closest to the inn lay a few streets off, and it was already crowded when we arrived. Horses pushed in tight as a line formed to get them inside, steam rising from their flanks in the cooling air. Voices carried low and impatient.

  I patted my gelding as we waited our turn. He shifted restlessly. I couldn’t blame him. The crowd made my skin itch.

  That was when I noticed him.

  He stood apart from the line, just beyond the reach of the lantern light. Cloaked with his hood up, hands tucked loose at his sides. He wasn’t waiting with anyone else.

  He was watching the stable.

  At first, I told myself it meant nothing. People lingered everywhere in Rodin. I adjusted my grip on the reins and guided my gelding forward as the line crept.

  When I glanced back again, his head turned away.

  A prickle ran down my spine.

  I finished stabling the horse quickly after that, passing over coin without comment. When I turned back toward the street, the cloaked figure was still there.

  Still watching.

  By the time we stepped away from the stable, the man had melted back into the street. We merged with the flow of people and I told myself the feeling would pass.

  It didn’t.

  We’d gone maybe half a block when I caught movement at the edge of my vision. I glanced across the street, more instinct than intention.

  He was there again.

  Walking now. On the opposite side of the road, a few paces back, keeping the same easy distance as the crowd flowed around him. His cloak was pulled tight, hood still up, face lost in shadow. He didn’t look at us.

  Lioren leaned closer, close enough that his shoulder brushed mine. His voice stayed low, casual enough to blend into the noise. “See him?”

  “Yes,” I murmured

  “Good,” he said. “Wasn’t sure if it was just me.”

  My fingers tightened on the strap of my pack. “He was at the stables too.”

  “Aye, I saw him as well.”

  We walked on, matching pace, letting the street carry us forward. Carts rattled past. A pair of men argued loudly near a tavern door.

  I risked another glance.

  He was still there. Closer this time.

  My stomach dropped, pulse thudding hard enough that I felt it in my throat.

  We reached the next intersection and slowed with the crowd.

  Across the street, the man slowed too—not enough to stop, just enough to keep us in sight.

  Lioren didn’t look at him. His eyes stayed forward.

  “Don’t head back yet,” he murmured. “The inn’s too obvious.”

  I nodded once. “There’s a side street ahead.”

  We angled left with the flow of people, letting the wider road fall away behind us. The noise thinned with fewer carts, fewer lanterns.

  I glanced back again.

  He followed.

  “That settles that,” Lioren said quietly.

  “You think it’s the Veil?” I asked.

  “Aye. Or someone workin’ for them.”

  My jaw tightened. Then they know.

  “They know you’re here,” he said, answering the thought. “And they want to see where you lead them. Either that, or this is when they attack.”

  The street dimmed further. Footsteps echoed now, louder in the quiet. People still passed us, but not enough to blur faces anymore.

  “Let’s be sure,” he said.

  Behind me, Lioren stopped, bending as if to adjust his boot, one hand braced on his knee.

  I kept walking, every instinct screaming to turn around. I didn’t. I held him in the corner of my eye instead, a dark shape matching my steps.

  The man hesitated, head snapping between us.

  I stopped and turned as Lioren straightened at the same moment.

  The cloaked man realized his mistake. His shoulders tensed—then he spun and ran.

  “No you don’t,” Lioren said, already giving chase.

  I ran after him, my breath breaking.

  He cut right, then left, deeper into side streets.

  We hadn’t found a single lead since arriving in this city. If this man knew anything at all, I couldn’t afford to let the first real answer slip through my fingers.

  Lioren was faster than me, longer stride eating up the distance. The street narrowed again, lanterns fewer now, deeper shadows. Voices faded behind us until all I could hear was my own breathing and the rhythm of pursuit.

  The man took two more turns and then—

  Nothing.

  The alley was empty.

  It pinched down to a dead end. A high stone wall choked with old crates and refuse.

  Lioren slowed first, blade already in hand. I came up beside him, pulse hammering,

  A chill ran down my spine.

  “How—” I started.

  Footsteps sounded behind us.

  I spun, Light flaring instinctively.

  The man stood at the mouth of the alley, hood still up, blocking the only way out. He didn’t look winded. The streetlight behind him caught the edge of his cloak, carving him out of the dark.

  Lioren cursed under his breath and readied his stance.

  The man reached up and pushed his hood back.

  Everything else fell away.

  It was Art.