Page 2 of Flames and Blood

Nobody in this pipeline walked in willingly. Some were trafficked. Some were tracked down by the Syndicate. Others were on the losing side of a clan skirmish.

I was betrayed.

Somebody in my own clan put me here. Only one of ours could have done it.

I just don’t know who.

I’ve turned it over a thousand times since the day I woke up in the dark with my mouth bitter and my head ringing, and it comes out the same every time. I still can’t put a face on the ones who sold me. I can’t think of anyone close who’d do it.

Or maybe I don’t want to.

I push it away again.

An old story, for a worse night.

The cab door again. We roll off the scale and climb.

My ears pop twice before the engine finally cuts. Boots on gravel, both sides. The doors come open, men standing beyond them, and the air reaches me before the light does.

Thin. Cold. Cold the way it only gets at high altitude.

I take a full breath before I catch myself. Scales shift beneath my skin.

Stop that.

Home air. Wrong mountain. The clan spends winters in air exactly like this, and my body knows it before my head can stop it. I pull the breath back down where it belongs and let them take my arms.

New guards now, stationed here. Two of them walk me out across open ground. I count before I mean to: guard on the near door, guard across the yard, a third voice behind a wall somewhere left of us. That’s all.

That’s all?

The last compound would’ve had ten times that. Fewer guards should mean a better chance of getting out. It doesn’t feel that way. It feels like a place that doesn’t need guards, and I can’t work out why yet.

The building ahead is new. Concrete still pale, edges still sharp. Quiet. No trucks idling anywhere. No voices. A site this size should have noise on it somewhere.

“Eyes down,” says the one on my left. It isn’t rough. It’s procedure.

“They usually are,” I say.

“No lip from you.”

The one on my right blows into his free hand. “Tell me again why there’s two of us on this.”

“Because it’s the roster.”

“Six weeks I’ve been on this site. I’ve patrolled an empty yard.”

“Then it’ll be an easy winter.”

“It’ll be a long one.”

“Sounds like a good job to me,” I say.

“Nobody asked you.”

“I’m only saying. Free coat, mountain views, no work.” I tip my head at the dark windows above the door. “You could bring a book.”

The left-hand one snorts before he can stop himself. The right-hand one doesn’t, and his grip on my elbow doesn’t loosen at all.