Shahid pt. 1 · Aurôrum

The last of the party's business in Loshev is closed with a burned ledger and a councilman's private grief, and then a four-yearly festival in Harad turns, hungover, into the plan for the curse

TL;DR

Loshev closed quietly. Rook shut his door; the survivor pulled out of Wraithblade Keep woke and gave his name; and Yullen Gemsmith, shown what a trial would cost him, agreed to send his son away as a victim instead: every ledger burned, every stolen thing out of the city with the party. They made Harad in time for Shahid, the Martyr’s four-yearly day of forgiveness, and drank through it. The morning after, Ashanti laid out how the soul-ooze might be broken down, and Koa’s offhand question undid a week of her timing.

First seen

Eralan Rasi: the Hafuwë cut out of the keep, awake and named at last
Jahi Rasi: his brother, the crew’s lorekeeper, dead in the keep
Shahid: the Martyr’s day of forgiveness, kept once in four years

What changed

Cleven leaves Loshev a free man, and the evidence against him is ash.
The ooze can be broken down. Ashanti has the chemistry; she lacks a catalyst and an accelerant.
Her next work is a compound Gwen could swallow, chosen over a spare catalyst.
Rook’s name is walking Loshev attached to a vote he lost.

Left open

The horned figure keeping time among the dancers, which only Koa saw.
How to carry a stone that never stops burning.
What Rook says to the Grayeras, and when.

Synopsis

What was left in Loshev was paperwork and mercy. The auction ledgers were confirmed for what they were (goods struck from a seller’s record or never entered at all, the city itself the loser), and Aldo helped himself to the best of the stolen haul while its keeper slept.

High Councilman Nikolas Rook would not see them: a housekeeper carried the message into a cold house that is nobody’s idea of an Idirian one and came back to say he would not be entertaining anybody. Mikhail answered that on the way out of town, with a rumor set walking: the council had voted to care for those hurt defending the town, and Rook had been the single voice against it. True enough to survive the telling, and about a week to reach everyone.

At their own estate the Hafuwë they had cut out of Wraithblade Keep was awake and lucid for the first time, and knew Mikhail for the man who had healed him. He gave his name, Eralan, and asked after Jahi. He was the only one they got out; the crew’s notes had gone into the ground with his brother. The work had been to strip the keep of Mól relics for a fee big enough to retire on, and the fee came through Whent, who was spending Beltran’s money. They offered him a bed and a place in the town guard under Tariq.

Yullen Gemsmith received them that afternoon, worn thin by a day with his son. They did not ask him to forgive Cleven; they let him arrive there himself. A trial would cost the councilman his seat and buy nobody anything, where sending the boy quietly away as a man who had been used would cost only the truth. The name he goes by, he told them, is a trade and not a family: youngest child of a Peredhel house, stripped of his family name at twenty by the mette-hina, he crossed into Idir so that Cleven would never have to earn one. He agreed on terms: every ledger, note and scrap burned, and every stolen thing gone out of the city with the party.

They left in the morning with a covered cart: three days on the trade road to Forven, where the prisoner exchange still crawls, and then a boat, to reach Harad in time for Shahid. It comes once in four years: the Martyr’s day of forgiveness and sacrifice, kept far harder in Idir than in Peredhel, shops shut and food carried into the street. Strangers tie woven bracelets on one another’s wrists, a red strand for the Martyr’s blood, and you break yours when you forgive somebody.

Elliot and Cleven danced a step Mikhail turned out to know. Aldo drank enormously and lost to an eighteen-year-old who had not been drinking. Somewhere in the crowd Koa saw two cloven feet keeping the beat and a horned head above them, and then did not see them, and nobody else saw anything.

The work resumed the next morning, badly hungover. Ashanti can break the soul-ooze into what it is made of (earth and water, the water going off as air under heat), but she lacks two things: something to start the reaction outside a laboratory, and something to carry it through the whole volume. The fire-crystals still burning in the braziers at Wraithblade Keep would serve for heat, if anyone could work out how to carry a stone that never goes out. Electrum keeps surfacing as the metal that matters.

Her difficulty was timing. The ooze had to go at the exact moment the curse broke, and she had spent a week on the arithmetic. Koa asked why they could not destroy nearly all of it well beforehand and leave a few barrels for the moment itself. The week went in the fire. What remained was what she should work on next: a spare catalyst, or a version of the compound a person already tainted by the ooze could drink without dying. Elliot said the answer was obvious and walked out when nobody would say it aloud. Gwenivere Velmont has little time; they chose her.

Cleven stayed in Harad with Elliot and Ashanti. He thanked Aldo for the killing blow, embraced Mikhail, and pointedly did not thank Koa. Mikhail told him what he had been handed: his father’s sacrifice, and a second chance he must become his own man to deserve. Then the party rode out for The Crack, and after it Haudh-Gwenn.