Crossroads is finally starting back up here! For those of you just joining, this is the first (unedited) chapter of the sequel to Three and Two and Two. Similar to the way the story has appeared on the blog up until now, this is neither formatted as it will be in the final version (e.g. prologues and interludes may be absent or presented out of order) nor is it necessarily even what this chapter will look like in the end. I’m excited to be continuing this journey with you all–if you would like to catch up on the story so far, check out Three and Two and Two here!
“We believe that you speak the truth,” the white-gowned man said. “The Sculptor will surely see that no aggression was intended.”
Bleeding Wolf leaned back in his creaky wooden chair and met the speaker’s gaze across the table. The man, Elder Stephen per the introductions, had a familiar sort of face–the type on which Bleeding Wolf could see glints of the arithmetic the man perceived in every relationship, every exchange. The kind of face that belonged to shrewd merchants. Or connivers.
The meeting was nominally to discuss the breach of diplomacy that had occurred a little over a week ago, on a job Bleeding Wolf had undertaken upon making it to town. His group had encountered a rival group of Holmite scavengers in the Bloodwood, and they had killed three of them. Apparently, no survivors had made it back, and the mayor had anticipated that concessions would need to be made to unwind the tensions. But despite Stephen’s assurance that the offense to the Crossroads’ largest trading partner had not been grave, Bleeding Wolf did not think the negotiation had yet begun.
“That is good to hear,” Mayor Bergen replied, acknowledging the opening salvo. “We nonetheless regret that this bloodshed occurred, and we would like to send along an apology in the form of goods, perhaps including whatever you may require from our artifact dealer during this visit.” Stephen smiled and shook his head. Gracious, condescending, characteristically Holmite, Bleeding Wolf thought. A counteroffer was coming.
“That will not be necessary. We have already visited Marko. His prices were very accommodating, given the circumstances.”
The two acolytes sitting beside Stephen nodded their affirmation of this detail. They, Bleeding Wolf had decided, were definitely not connivers. They were zealous idiots, eyes practically sparkling with their dearth of questions.
“The spirit of the apology is appreciated,” Stephen continued. “But I would propose a more even exchange. Rumors run upon the wind of danger approaching the Crossroads. Holme, of course, would also be affected by the Blaze’s southern encroachment, even incidentally, but we also do not believe Holme’s involvement to be incidental.”
“Oh?” Bleeding Wolf interjected, breaking his silence. “What do you mean?”
“The members of our flock whom you…encountered in the Bloodwood were contracted by an itinerant dealer, one Salaad of hazan. Salaad’s remains were discovered a little under a week ago in one of our field communes, scorched. Two dead dragonlings were found nearby. It does not stretch the imagination to suggest that his death may be connected to the survivors you mentioned failing to return to us. And–” Stephen gestured toward the mayor, “–it is known that attacks upon the dealers are growing more common of late.”
Bleeding Wolf grunted at this. The logic was absurd: The Ben Gan Shui’s probing attack on Marko’s office certainly had nothing to do with the Blaze killing Salaad of Hazan. Even the reasons behind the attacks probably had nothing in common. But Stephen’s overture had little to do with logic. It was rhetoric that appealed to the mayor’s priorities. Stephen knew it, Bleeding Wolf knew it–hell, Bergen probably knew it, even as he was eating it up. But it worked:
“That is certainly the case,” Bergen said. “And we would welcome closer ties with Holme in the face of these new developments.”
“Excellent,” Stephen replied, smiling just a little too serenely before launching into the details of his proposal. Bleeding Wolf stopped himself from rolling his eyes at the honey, the saccharine eloquence spritzed like perfume over the duplicity. Fucking politics.
He glanced at the empty chair on his side of the table. Funny, he thought, that the most distracting political gesture of the meeting was actually that empty chair. It should have been occupied by Atra, the newly-appointed commander of the Crossroads’ militia, but she had a matter come up which, she claimed, urgently required her attention. Bleeding Wolf was sure the excuse was bullshit. For one, it seemed highly unlikely that any such matter could not have been overseen by Anita or Michel, the Crossroads’ long-standing peacekeepers. But even beyond that, Bleeding Wolf harbored doubts that Atra even experienced the feeling of surprise. This was a woman who calculated every decision, every step, and so far, it seemed her only slip had been the arc of mana she had exchanged with Bleeding Wolf when they shook hands a few days ago. All he knew for certain was that she was a mage, one of the most terrifying he had ever encountered, but by the same token, he was sure that her missing this meeting meant that she had very purposefully wanted to miss it. He wondered why, and he wished that Mayor Bergen–who certainly noticed but didn’t seem to care–would put a little more effort into wondering himself.
“…then we shall await your delegation in the coming weeks,” Stephen was saying as Bleeding Wolf tuned back in. “There remains one symbolic request, though. It is the Sculptor’s teaching that conflicts should be resolved through mutual sacrifice, of the kind which begat the dispute. Given that our disagreement began in bloodshed, the Sculptor requests that agreeable blood be shed to close the cycle.” Bleeding Wolf inhaled sharply. Uh oh.
“Do you mean an agreement sealed by a drop of blood?” Bergen asked. “Or something more substantial?” Stephen shook his head with a theatrically solemn frown.
“My apologies. The blood itself is metaphorical. The Sculptor requests a life.” Mayor Bergen drummed his fingers on the table, showing entirely too little shock at the request for Bleeding Wolf’s liking.
“Must the sacrifice be willing?” he asked after a moment. “Or simply willingly provided by the Crossroads?”
“The latter will suffice.”
Bleeding Wolf shook his head. Gene wasn’t going to like this.
***
Looking over his shoulder at the busy town square, Gene paused before Marko’s theater-office. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, he realized. He wasn’t actually concerned that he had been followed, and it wasn’t as if he were doing anything forbidden. Marko’s office just made him uncomfortable. It had made him uncomfortable ever since the time Marko had almost shot him with a crossbow when he’d come by unannounced, and the furtive look behind, he supposed, was just an expression of that discomfort. Grimacing, he swallowed it and rapped on the door.
“Appointments only!” came the muffled response. Gene glanced about once more before half-shouting at the door:
“It’s Gene!”
There was a moment of silence before the door creaked open, revealing a wizened, androgynous figure in a brown habit. It was Brill, the apothecary.
“Oh good, you’re here,” Gene began. “I wanted to–”
“Not here, Gene. Let’s discuss inside.”
Brill receded quickly into the shadows of the entryway as Gene raised a hand to object.
“It’s nothin’ secretive…” he said, though it was clear that Brill wasn’t listening–or at least didn’t care. He sighed, following them in.
He noted with disappointment that he had to tilt the door on its hinges in order to close it. His apprentice, Jeremy, had built it about a week ago to replace the one that had been destroyed during the Ben Gan Shui’s “visit”, but this was terrible craftsmanship. Gene would need to send the boy to Frank and Erik, he decided. He could teach smithing well enough, but his carpentry was beginning to slip.
Inside, standing over a table set up in the theater’s cleared-out audience floor, Gene found both Brill and Marko, the Crossroads’ prickly, paranoid artifact dealer.
“Speak of the fuckin’ devil,” Marko muttered, looking up. Gene blinked.
“You were…speakin’ about me?”
“You had better see this, Gene,” Brill added, beckoning him to the table. Shuffling over, Gene saw that they were considering a piece of parchment with a detailed sketch upon it.
The sketch depicted a scene at a long table where five men engaged in some sort of negotiation. The man in the foreground was leaning back from the table, some degree of dismay flashing across his face. He looked familiar, Gene realized.
“Is that…Dog Boy?” And then he noticed the caption scrawled at the bottom of the page, where Bleeding Wolf’s sketched torso faded into the margins: Gene wasn’t going to like this. He looked at Marko, alarm bubbling up in his chest. “What in the shell is this?”
“The most artistic invasion of privacy you ever did see,” Marko replied with a sour grin. “Really gotta give whichever mage that thought of it some credit.”
“It’s a scrying artifact, of a sort,” Brill explained. “You ‘tell’ it someone you want to see, and it sketches their context in that moment.”
“Got it on the sly from an old contact in the Westwood,” Marko said. “Needed a way to follow along with whatever Atra’s tryin’ to do. But Brill’n I got curious as to what was goin’ on in Dog Boy’s meetin’ with the Holmites.”
“What does it mean that ‘Gene won’t like this’?” Marko shrugged.
“You should ask Dog Boy. But I reckon you ain’t gonna like it.”
“Guess I’ll have to,” Gene said, shaking his head resignedly. “I came here for you, though, Brill. Had folks wanderin’ by the shop wantin’ to know when you’d be back.”
“My apologies, Gene,” Brill replied, a twitch of frustration nonetheless crossing their face. “Dull moments are seeming more and more a distant memory these days, and I’m trying to stay abreast of the…political situation. Between Marko’s read and Bleeding Wolf’s warning, I am concerned about Atra.” Gene nodded.
“You ain’t the only one. John’s playin’ with fire.”
“He is. I agree. But his read on the landscape is sensible. The Crossroads is growing less safe, and Mayor Bergen is right to respond. Moreover, the town’s opinion of Atra so far is quite high. Anita is quite enamored with her, and the relationship between the merchants and the militia has remained entirely amicable. They do not interfere, and people feel safer when they’re around.”
“Sure it’s easy to seem decent when you ain’t doin’ nothin’,” Marko spat.
“Of course,” Brill agreed. “But we must be careful, lest our attention to detail be mistaken for common xenophobia.”
“Hmph,” Marko grunted. “Wanna let ‘im in on the latest?” Brill looked back, pausing a moment before recognition set in.
“Yes, that’s right. There are two updates: The first is that Atra has an accomplice in town. We only have what this–” they gestured to the parchment, “–can tell us, but we understand that the accomplice looks like a child.”
“A kid? Godshell.”
“They are probably not actually a child, but I will admit, I am out of my depth as far as magic may be concerned here. The second update, well. Marko, would you show Gene our picture of Atra right now?”
Marko nodded. He placed his hand on the parchment and closed his eyes momentarily. The scene of Bleeding Wolf and the Holmites faded, and new strokes of ink began to line the page. But these did not seem to form any coherent picture, instead just massing in blots and nests of chickenscratch.
“Been getting this more often in the last day and a half,” he said. “My money’s on her figurin’ out she’s bein’ watched. Dunno how she’s counteractin’ it, but she’s figured out how to hide when she needs to.”
“And apparently, she wants to be hidden right now,” Brill added.
***
A few miles outside of town, Atra sat upon a boulder, contemplating the trickle of the river through the reed-crowded shallows stretching before her. She knew the river, knew what it encoded, though it continued to surprise her how many lifelong Riverlanders regarded it as a solely physical phenomenon. There was old magic in the river, magic that even she could barely parse. But she was only listening for a specific piece.
No. Not yet. It was the loosest end so far: What was Lan al’Ver doing down south?
She felt a sudden intrusion of mana, troublingly familiar of late, as an enchantment began to weave itself in the aether around her. Fortunately, she was prepared: The strands had eroded somewhat in their travel from the Crossroads, and she needed merely to nudge one out of place to disrupt the weave. Instead of an oculus, the enchantment resolved to a tangled mass and began to dissipate.
“What the fuck was that?” Cirque asked, suddenly perched on the boulder beside her. She side-eyed him, this ragged, piranha-eyed not-child with rats scurrying off him, into the swamp below. It was enough to make her laugh: She could glean temporal portent from the river’s flow, she could parry a metamagical scrying attempt, mid-formation, but even she couldn’t keep track of Cirque. He was a valuable ally, and she was glad that the relationship had little risk of inverting.
“Marko, most likely,” she replied. “Been noticin’ oculi formin’ about me ‘round town. Integrity falls off hard with distance, though, means it’s probably an artifact powerin’ it.”
“So town isn’t safe to talk anymore? You might’ve warned me explicitly.”
“Yer a sharp one. Ye caught on just fine.” Cirque growled, a sound which might have come off as a pathetic mewl if not for the ominous chittering that reverberated through the boulder with it.
“We’re encountering an awful lot of resistance for what this town is,” he spat. “Are you sure it will be worthwhile?”
“Ye tell me: Is the meetin’ with Holme done?”
“Yes.”
“And they took note of Salaad?”
“Are you second-guessing my work?” Atra shook her head.
“Hardly. I merely question the Holmites’ vigilance. It seems ye got their attention, though.”
“At some cost,” Cirque muttered bitterly. “You should try biting into a dragonling sometime.”
“An incandescent pleasure, I’m sure,” Atra said, considering the idea of napalm on her tongue with more curiosity than revulsion. “They are amicable to reconciliation, then?”
“Yes. On the condition that the Crossroads supply a sacrifice for one of the Sculptor’s insipid harvest rituals.” Atra smirked. It was almost too perfect: an alliance of rivals against the Blaze’s overwhelming threat of annihilation, with each harboring a tinge of toxic distrust for the other’s murder of their countrymen. The makings of the tinderbox were there. Now, it was simply a matter of preventing it from igniting too soon. To which end, the political backlash from this would be Mayor Bergen’s to shoulder. That, after all, was why she had not attended the meeting.
The mayor, she had to admit, was in an interesting position. Laughably out of his depth, of course, but he wasn’t dumb. He had seen her own ulterior motive plain as day. But though he had the intellect and guts necessary for realpolitik in the lawless age of the scav trade, Atra doubted he had the skill, the wherewithal to deflect blame, or the instinct to predict when his allies would become his enemies. More than likely, he would provide everything she needed from him, and then he would die.
The real problem was the folk who would never trust her. Marko, to an extent, though he carried so little of the town’s favor that he might not matter. But Gene and Brill–tradition was a potent defense against the brainfever she hoped to instill–and, of course, Bleeding Wolf. She would need to be careful with those ones.
“I still think we should kill him,” Cirque said, as if reading her thoughts. “The beastman. He knows what you’re up to.” Atra groaned.
“Not all of it. Not yet,” she said. “And like I told ye before, there are others watchin’.”
“Apparently,” Cirque replied, with a significant look at Marko’s withered enchantment. “And I think it’s time we took some countermeasures.”
“Fine. If it please ye. But no assassinations yet–all the pieces are still too important.”
“What, then?”
“Keep an eye on Marko. If he finds another toy to use against us, it’d be better we find out before and not after. The apothecary too: That one holds more of the strings than they let on.”
“And–”
“Leave Bleeding Wolf to me.”
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