My eyes and my tongue are mine now,only by grace. A grace personified in the flour-coated, sweat-soaked figure of Mr. Blair, the cook at the Court. They will discover it was he who had given me the warning. The idea was a frozen weight in my stomach, heavier than the fear of my own escape. He'd marked his own death with his generosity.
"I do not have family, lad," he rumbled, his voice low and urgent, cutting through the usual kitchen clamor that now felt like a grotesque parody of normalcy. He stood framed in the scullery doorway, his formidable silhouette blocking the harsh light from the main kitchens. His formerly white apron was splattered with gravy and soot, twin meat cleavers heavy and deliberate at his waist, incongruous peace tools now appearing instruments of war. Even while he delivered the words that broke my world, his muscular arms were crossed over his large chest, a gesture of decisiveness, a barrier against the tempest he knew would arise. "They cannot dominate me by threatening a family that I don't have, you are my only family now. Go. Now. While you still can. The Hero… and the Princess…" He spat the titles like foul meat. "They intend to cut you into pieces tonight.". Cut you up like a Sunday roast for even daring to ask questions, and your head will be put on the gallows for all to see."
His eyes, normally creased with laughter lines over a flour-stained mustache, were rigid. "You were a good lad, Terson. A blasted good leader, cut as sharp as my finest boning knife. But you were born in the wrong era, son.". Born with fire in your stomach where others have cold porridge only. Too presumptuous by half." He moved forward, the smell of onions and wood smoke on him. "Do not go back to your family. Don't even head in the direction of Plythe House. They betrayed you. The cost of their continued ease was your silence… or your death."
The words struck hard. Sold out. By them? The breath escaped my body. The warm kitchen, the reassuring clash of pots, the sweet aroma of yeast dough rising – all curdled, grew sick and stifling. My family? The bedrock of my life? Bartered like property? A numbing, ill health revulsion struggled with a sickening tide of nausea. But beneath the shock, deeper still, a sharper, more intimate pain ripped through me – the vision of her. Melissa. Spun moonlight hair, summer sky eyes over the Reform Gardens, a laugh that once made my heart stumble. And him. Loyd. My brother but not blood, Hero-in-waiting, whose shoulder I'd stood alongside since we were barely able to hold up wooden practice swords.
They knew. They heard the secrets I'd whispered to Melissa in whispered minutes before the palace grenery, my visions of a Harland less strict, less unkind to the Lower Houses whose stripes I bore. They heard the debates I'd had with Loyd, questioning the Holy Church's dogma, the Order of Knights' unchecked authority. I'd believed. idiot that I was. I'd believed we were sparks in the tinder, waiting to set fire to change. Together. I'd spilled my dreams, my risky truths, into their ears, believing in their common vision, their common heart.
And now, truth was a rusty knife turning in my belly. They hadn't shared my vision; they'd made it stronger. My idealism, my trust, my love – used to prove my execution. The Hero and the Princess, hand in glove, arranging my demise. Had my family cried? Pleaded? Or had they merely signed the document with icy detachment, glad to be done with the inconvenient heir whose presence imperiled their position? Mr. Blair's grim assurance indicated the latter. Part of me, the desperate, hurt child, clutched at excuses – compulsion, violence against others. But the cook's gaze left no space for such delusions. He'd witnessed the exchange. My mouth tasted not only of fear but also of the acrid ash of betrayal, pure and simple.
I could only manage a stiff, jerky nod, the extent of movement possible beyond the shock and heartbreak's paralysis. I couldn't speak. Gratitude struggled with horror at what my rescue would take from him. Turning, I went stiffly towards the tiny, high window in the wall of the scullery, where vegetable peelings were tossed down to fall among the midden below. It was just wide enough. Rubbing my shoulders raw against the coarse brick, I wriggled through, falling awkwardly into the stinking alleyway below. Before I even had a chance to hit the wet cobbles, the high, ear-piercing scream of the estate perimeter alarm ripped the relative calm. Iron bells rang out, resonating off the surrounding walls. Screams burst from inside the palace walls. The hunt had started.
I ran. Dressed in the green and black stripes that identified me as Lower Houses – colors now more like a label and less like an identity – I was a shadow darting through the maze-like underbelly of Heaven's Reform. Terson Plythe. The name itself felt alien now, a brand, a death sentence hanging over my head like the pall of smoke from the city's thousand chimneys. Lean from years of kitchen toil and youthful energy, I pushed my body hard, darting down narrow passages slick with refuse, vaulting low walls, melting into the press of early evening crowds where possible. My ash silver hair, a source of pride for the Plythe family under normal circumstances, seemed to be a beacon. I wrapped the hood of my cloak low over my face, eyes darting back, anticipating the flash of Order plate or the intent stare of a Church seeker around each corner.
Heaven's Reform, the pounding center of Harland County, was an marvel of industry and a testament to focused power. Outside the great Capital, the remainder of Harland spread, decentralized and virtually helpless, its energy and power fed relentlessly into this huge, smothering city. Cobblestones, smoothed by untold feet and wheelbarrows, ran in gridlike arteries between giant structures of fired brick, darkened by years of smoke. The air was hot and heavy, a sulfurous, nearly tangible miasma – the greasy aroma of street food sellers fighting the ripe zip of trash cans bursting with filth, the stinging ammonia edge of pee from dark alleys, the metallic zip of the factories, all simmering in the unremitting heat generated by furnaces and the crush of humanity. It was an aroma of power, raw and untempered. Intimidating. Inaccessible. Or so it seemed.
The city's security was formidable – high walls patrolled by vigilant guards, checkpoints at district gates, magical wards humming along the main thoroughfares. Escaping its grasp should have been impossible. My only chance lay in the fact that the Hero and the Princess, secure in their treachery and the complicity of my family, likely expected me to walk obliviously to my doom within the palace walls. They hadn't counted on Mr. Blair's interference. They hadn't allowed for the frantic haste of a trapped rat who was familiar with the warren.
Bearing only on the twisting, abandoned alleys, I crept on feral reflex towards the Merchant's Quarter. One of the alleys gave onto a slightly wider lane. Automatically, I pressed back into a recessed doorway, heart pounding against my ribs. And there it was. Over the busy street, looming like a monument to my ignorance, was Plythe House. Four tiers of imported granite and polished oak, its windows flashing with costly glass, its wrought-iron gates ostentatiously swung open, meaning business as usual. Carriages arrived and departed. Well-disciplined servants scrambled about their work.
A rush of dizziness fell over me. Business as usual. While their son, their brother, ran for his life from their treachery. While the man who rescued me probably endured torture and death. The face of my father's stern expression, my mother's perfectly set smile, my little sister's innocent babble… they marched before my mind's eye. Was there a moment of hesitation? A waver of remorse? Or had it been a calculating over brandy in the study? The understanding was a blow to my body, doubling me over for a second. That 'nasty taste' Mr. Blair suggested wasn't figurative. Bile, sour and hot, poured into my mouth. They sold you out. The cook's words overwhelmed me, silencing the city's noise. There was no force to compel this. Only ambition, terror, and an icy willingness to sacrifice one of their own. The last thread of denial broke. The heartbreak was not only for Melissa and Loyd, but for the destruction of all I believed my family represented. The pillars of my existence were not cracked; they were shattered.
I spat onto the dirty cobbles, the action useless but unavoidable. Plythe. That name was poison now. A legacy of betrayal. As I edged away from the entrance and dissolved into the darkness, I dropped it like a sickened hide. Terson Plythe no longer lived in that dirty alleyway. What was left was… Terson X. A specter. Pursued by the Order of Knights for my alleged heresy, by the Holy Church for defying their divine right, and now, by my own kin. The holy trinity of catastrophe.
Hours later, far back in the squalid refuge of a flophouse attic room bought with the few coins stitched into my cloak lining, I spread out a map of the Continent of Gharal. Harland reclined bloated and all-powerful at its center. My choices were black and white: North, into the cold, the Elk herding tribes rule there, the Tundra sees scant life, scant vitality, or South, to the tropics, city-states of merchants, and the hushed, riches of the Gharal Ocean. Both had offered anonymity. Both had threatened danger.
Indecision, something I could not indulge in, tormented me. I reached into a pouch and drew out a lone, worn copper penny – a standard Harland penny. Heads, North. Tails, South. A rough technique, but occasionally fate required a push. I concentrated, using the weak, illegal threads of magic I'd accumulated and practiced in stealth, the very abilities that made me a heretic. A wispy, silver glow came from my eyes, illuminating the coin in an unnatural sheen. I charged it with a basic seeking cantrip, a cry to hidden currents for direction. Taking a deep breath, I flipped it high.
It twirled, a shiny copper star in the faint attic gloom, and then dropped. Clink. It landed on the buckled wooden floorboards… and disappeared straight down a thin, dark crack between two boards. I went down on my knees, scrambling wildly, but the gap was too narrow. The coin was gone, eaten by the blackness under the floor. Neither heads nor tails. Just… nothing.
A rough, humorless bark of laughter burst from my lips, ringing in the vacant space. The sound was coarse, roughing my throat. "Just my luck," I breathed softly, the words heavy with dark irony. Complete, crushing, zero-sum luck. Betrayed, hunted, anonymous, and now deprived even of the illusion of direction by fate. The silence of the attic closed in, thick and smothering. The radiance ebbed from my eyes, and only the chill of reality remained, the map laid out before me, the enormity of Gharal, and the inescapable, tightening vise of my pursuers. North or South. It was all the same. Flight alone was left to me. I folded the map in shaking hands. The coin was lost, but the decision still stood. Dawn couldn't arrive soon enough.