the tale of ages

A huge skybound lizard. He’d think that would suit him just fine, honestly. Mundag lays her head on his lap and he sinks his fingers through her fur behind his ears.

“ Yeah, a big lizard. Sounds about right. I’d like to see that. Sounds like something out of a story book. ”

He has two little wolves to take care of. Two not-quite-tiny little wolves that were in his care and…fuck, he’s been reckless for someone with someone to take care of.

He lays his arm across his face as he flops down, held in place by Mundag’s massive head, and recounts to her the tale of a squadron of soldiers that had captured him – and how he had escaped with Daniil’s help.

She’s bloodthirsty, he’ll admit, so he doesn’t leave out all the gory details. Just the worst of them.

He feels better, though. Mundag’s warm and that means the cold doesn’t make him ache so badly, and the sky is unbelievably clear overhead. He could count the stars for hours. He used to when he was a child, counting with Peter.

“ Your Half doesn’t get too close to town, yeah? Don’t want the locals to get too scared and cause some hysteria again. ”

The story is absolutely insane. There were flamethrowers involved, an entire heap of soldiers decimated. There was blood and gore and glory in it. The soldiers were outsiders having no business poking their noses into anything in the town, and they did it without permission. They weaseled in, they stole children, they attacked townsfolk. They shot people, set people on fire. There was justice in just a handful of them dying. What good were guns in a plague. You couldn’t shoot the disease!

What were they expecting to do?

“They took a lot of Halves and now there’s a lot of us dead. They killed our dogs when they came in. You could’ve killed more and we would have said, ‘more’. They say that the Polyhedron got us all sick- Khan and Notkin were scared that they dreamed it up. It was Khachirkhel. Uh... a miracle, too. So I’m glad... it’s gone. Sorry.”

She frowns. Mundag’s ear swivels and she adjusts her head for more gentle fingers. She flashes her teeth at him and gently gums his hand. The points catch. 

He’s afraid, but not enough to start a fight. He’s glad when they all head to the edge of the spring and he sinks down on the edge of the spring to watch the way the water laps at the edges beneath their feet. Mundag settles and huffs at Gray’s hair and…okay, Andrey worries a little less about her wandering around the Steppe by herself.

He counts the buckshot scars and then the scar on her muzzle and reaches to pat the side of her nose once more in a thank you.

A body count of soldiers. Mutineers, probably.

“ I should tell you about how the soldiers tried to capture me. ”

He leans back, letting the cold seep into the bruises on his hands, and considers it quietly. She says she’s seen Burakh’s half and that it’s the biggest she’d seen yet, and that makes him tilt his head up at the sky.

“ Is that so? You’ve seen his? I’ve heard him talking to Notkin about how he didn’t have one yet…and what do you think mine would be? ”

He purses his lips a moment, working his jaw. She’s excited, so he won’t correct her and say the Polyhedron was Peter’s brain child.

“ Timel daa? I’ve heard my girls say that. What’s it mean? ”

"It means... It is. It’s true, ‘it’s obvious’ sometimes. Tell me about the soldiers- I heard stories about you, everybody did. We went out even though we weren’t supposed to and everybody swapped stories.”

Mundag tucks her massive head over Andrey’s lap and sighs in a cloud. It’s warm and all encompassing. It’s a young thing, like Gray. There’s none of the hallmarks of a worn or wiser monster. The huge tail it had thumped against the ground and wagged. 

“Maybe a big lizard. A really big lizard.”

She’s pretty sure a lizard would be perfect for him. But it had to be one of those huge lizards with sharp spikes on it. He made lizards on everything he built. She’s not sure if he hides them on his artwork too. He probably does. She does that in her own made things. Notkin styles himself after Jester.

Even Khan took a symbol for himself and made his cohort of children wear it. Soon, she’d be sixteen and she’d take the hood off for good. 

She’s painting her face after that and taking a wolf’s scream. Suok will be pleased for it. Suok is pleased with what she has done so far. Suok will be more pleased with what she will do on her sixteenth year. It’s not a lot of time.

She stops snarling, sniffs him and decides immediately that she likes him. Which is better than getting his head snapped off his shoulders, to be fair, but it also means she’s leaning her weight against his incredibly sore body and the fact that he nearly died a week ago.

He just reaches out to pat the end of Mundag’s nose and grunts when Gray leans up over her shoulder to look at Andrey. There’s a swell of warmth at being called Aba that he’ll unpack later, when he’s not being slobbered on.

“ That’s – good. That’s good. Holy shit, Gray, this is so scary. ”

He says it with a laugh in his voice, his eyes flicking up to her and the way her Doghead hangs crooked once again.

It’s a piece of his tower. This creature was something that remained of the Polyhedron, was a piece of it made manifest in reality. It was proof that it worked. The smell of blood, ozone and miracles.

There are bones underfoot that remind Andrey of his own words: To build anything spectacular, you need to have bones in the foundation.

“ M…maybe we can go sit down by the spring? I’m tired. We’ve been walking for a while. ”

He’s also sore and startled, and sitting down would be nice.

"You’re afraid?! Hah!”

But he is laughing in good, terrified humor.

There’s a bit of pride in scaring the scariest person in town, too. Mundag the monstrosity makes a grumbling growl noise, and Gray murmurs words to her that  seem to calm her down enough to slump back down at the edge of the spring, Gray rolling off of her to lean back against the tangible beast, her arms behind her head. Comparatively, Gray’s the size of one of the monster’s arms. 

“Okay. Let’s rest here,” she says, the beast behind her sounding like a rumbling engine, strings of hungry saliva dripping from its steaming mouth. The bones everywhere are evidence of how effective it is. Bones, army uniforms, broken guns. It’s a massive, aggressive beast. It’s got a body count. And it’s been feeding the spring’s soil.

Mundag has some buckshot splinter scars in her side that have done absolutely nothing to her. Another scratch down her muzzle from a knife or bayonet divides her face up. 

“Mundag is the biggest Half. The only one that she’s not bigger than is Big Burakh’s. Big Burakh’s half is as big as the cloudline. I’ve seen it once. I think your half would be as big as that too. You made the Polyhedron that makes special halves. Timel daa.”

“ Oh, fuck me, this isn’t a bad dream. ”

He mutters it under his breath when this thing moves closer to him, when it stands between him and his daughter and he has to dig his heels in to keep from running. 

Gray is excited, her eyes shining under her mask, and Andrey swears quietly to himself once more. Fuck. Fuck, what the hell had his life become in the last two months?

It doesn’t snap his head from his body and he exhales slowly, watching it in turn without backing down. There are strange patterns in the glow of its eyes that reflected the patterns they saw in the Polyhedron. Blueprints and the soft glow of a lantern light, the muted orange that had shined over the Stone Yard for nearly six years.

“ I’m – not going to lick it, sorry. But… ”

But he will make the stupid decision of unclenching his fingers and offering his hand out like offering to a curious animal, his movements jerky with hesitation. Oh, he’s going to regret this, isn’t he?

Well. Maybe not. Gray had been laying on him enough recently that maybe it would smell her instead. So he’s going to focus on THAT possibility and try to remember how to breathe.

“ Mundag? I…see. ”

He changed his mind. He’s not going to tell Peter that their tower could make creatures.

The thing- Mundag’s nose flares at his hand. She stops snarling to sniff it, lick his knuckles, and then makes a decision to start licking the rest of him with her massive tongue, settling back on her twisted body to sniff at his scalp and re-style his hair for him. Gray is delighted, and she runs to both of them, grabbing handfuls of Mundag’s warm, heavy fur and climbing up her back. 

Mundag ignores her, resting her head atop Andrey’s with a heavy sigh. Every time the thing breathes, and it does breathe, its ribcage growls. It’s like the rest of them that came out of the Polyhedron, constantly phasing out of being a real creature. Reality can’t stop it, it seems. Gray reaches Mundag’s shoulder and pokes over it to watch Andrey. The creature smells like ozone and the cold crisp air beyond the clouds, not anything she should. She didn’t hold the scents of earth, of body. There was blood there, sure, but it was just blood, and sky.

“See? She’s a strong creature, but she’s fair, and you’re my Aba. Here, she’s warm so you can warm up.”

Mundag lets out a low rumbling growl and flicks her ear, swatting the child on her shoulder. Gray just laughs at her, at ease and pleased with it all.

She speaks so sweetly to him about fighting anger, as if it’s that easy, and he offers her a little smile back before – oh. Oh, those are wolves. Those are lean, starving wolves.

He suddenly hates Grief for reminding him of fairytale stories, because he’s remembering girls in red coats and what happens when they meet wolves as his daughter runs towards the grove. The wolves tail them, one and then three all together, and he grunts before breaking into a run after her.

There’s a spring outside of the view of the Town, far enough that you can’t see the Town and the quiet is broken by the trickling of a river spring that gets fed by something from underground. The rocks surrounded a small drop, a circular formation that had water at the bottom. It looked similar to the Stillwater’s pond, but made by nature instead of man. The water promises to be icy in this weather and cold on a good day, which was perfect when you found this place at the height of the Steppe summer.

There are Steppe trees that bow over it, casting it in the perfect amount of shade to make it a wonderful getaway for a number of youngsters – or horrifying beasts that seem to watch over it.

And if the wolves spooked him before, this thing steals his breath away. Andrey Stamatin is not a man who is usually frightened, but this? This frightens the hell out of him.

“ Gray, with all due respect – what the fuck is that? ”

The wolves tail them still, walking in half a circle as if to herd Andrey closer when his heels dig in out of stubborn survivalist fear.

"It” is a good word for it. It was one of the reasons there was an ultimate decision to oust Notkin’s clan. Of course, there were others, more pressing reasons. The wolves, with their gleaming eyes, did not come a step closer than they had to around the pond. In fact, they stayed many, many feet away from it. Only Gray stepped closer to the thing in the shade of the trees. It looked like a mirage. It should have been just a dream, if it weren’t for the patches of swish and clean bones poking out of the snow around it saying that not only was it real, it was dangerous.

The thing was absolutely massive, covered in coarse, thick grey fur that endlessly trailed off into fading dust. It looked like a wolf. It looked like a wolf bigger than a factory machine, and if a wolf had a man’s hands. It’s eyes were the same color as the Polyhedron.

And it had a reflection. It was real.

Gray doesn’t stop. She runs towards it, and the thing’s massive body moves out of the shadows of the trees.

It can stand.

It’s even larger. The thing moves and pulls its lips back in a snarl that is distinctly not wolf and far too loud. The wolves that considered their passing, and were salivating, yipe and whine. They run at the noise. There was no meal they could take easily here. 

“She’s my half.”

And that half took a running leap and cleared the pond, landing beyond Gray, between her and Andrey. 

The thing could bite his head in two. It snarls, those eyes drilling into him. And Gray watches him.

“Aba- lick her nose. You are her friend.”

She points at him, very firmly.

He laces his boots tight and pulls his coat on and follows her down the stairs of his own loft and out into the snowy night. She howls like a wolf and he stands back to watch her before offering his arm for her to hold onto.

She’s talking about spilling blood in the Circle that Daniil mentioned to him before, something about a fighting ring where killing was allowed.

Her fingers hang onto his arm and shakes it and he laughs a little when she does. She wants to jump into the circle, to get her revenge with her bare fists, and he pats her hand a little bit at that.

She asks if he has unsettled anger and…of course he does. He has so much anger inside of him that’s just waiting for him to let it out. There’s a lesson to be said about anger being easy to be addicted to. He’s gotten so used to it, like Peter and his sadness.

“ Yeah, I do. I don’t know what the anger is directed at anymore. I got rid of the man who was torturing us, but…eh. ”

He shrugs a little bit, letting the snow crunch underfoot.

“ We’ll do more lessons later, yeah? Show you how to throw a good, proper punch. ”

He curls his fingers to bump their hands together before the Earth District opens up into the Steppe and she starts dragging him more than walking alongside him.

“ I’m coming, I’m coming. ”

Gray’s eyes crease at the corners- she smiles and holds his hand.

"You can just fight anger then. I’ll fight you.”

She wants to see him fight. Everyone will want to fight him to prove themselves and she knows they’ll lose. He keeps fighting like he’ll die even when he doesn’t need to do that, she’s heard. He’s strong because of it. He’s only going to get stronger- and that the Herbs told her. She needs to share that wisdom with him. He can read the bones and blood of the twyre but not the nerves. Not yet.

“Yes teach more. After-” she pulls him more and starts running, stopping every few feet she got too far ahead. She keeps the pace up despite the snow and the ice. Some of it cuts her feet and she leaves red indents in the snow. None of it bothers her. There’s a distant sound on the cold wind, a low baying. The sky is clear tonight and the full moon lit the snow. They didn’t even need a lantern.

And by the first fifteen minutes of walking, they pass a grove of snow-covered trees, and a large shape standing outside it. It’s large, but its thin. It’s very thin. A lean wolf breaks the treeline to start walking after them, completely soundless and in full view.

“It’s okay!”

Despite the fact there was a starving wolf tailing them. If there was one, there were more.

She leads him through a rolling plain, following a stray finger of the Ghorkon. 

She makes him walk for half an hour, pumping herbs through his system. Two more wolves join them. 

Join them, or are hungry. 

“She’s over by the spring. We can run back. It’ll be okay!”

That’s how it was supposed to be used. You used it to make good things. How…optimistic. He thinks Peter would like to hear about that. He’ll mention it to him.

Her mask stares him down, and his eyes flick from its eye to where her own were. It was a bad habit to focus on the mask first – which is what she wanted. The mask was at face height for him anyways, or just about.

She says it scattered dreams everywhere, and that’s why there were strange things all over the place. Maybe that makes sense. He’s not sure anymore. Hell, he’s not sure of a lot of things anymore, so whatever she says, he’ll go with it.

“ Ah. I think I remember him. ”

She balls her fists up and he doesn’t scold her for the anger. It’s warranted. Grieving went hand in hand with anger around here.

He looks at the medicinal tea and sips at it again, testing to see if it was cool enough to drink in one go – and he knocks it back once it is, making a bit of a face at the taste clinging to his teeth. He likes the taste of twyre, he’ll admit, but usually only when it’s steeped in alcohol.

This reminds him of the tinctures Burakh handed him, which had tasted awful, but ultimately helped.

“ Okay, okay. Bring me my boots and we’ll get up and go see your Half. Put a coat on, it’s cold. ”

“I don’t get cold,” she says, grabbing her coat anyways and pulling his steel toed boots behind her to chuck at his feet. She waits until he’s in his own body enough to lace his boots up and get to his feet. He’s not going to be running across the steppe but he’s also not a lethargic corpse. It’s good enough.

She bounds down the stairs and out the door. It’s snowing with more frequency and it’s bitter cold. Her own army jacket and a skirt is plenty. She doesn’t even put her mean boots on to cover her bare feet. She hasn’t run in a while, but the callouses haven’t softened. Walking over the town’s cobble isn’t a bother.

“Come on, let’s go it’s this way, we have to walk.”

Gray runs to the end of the street, tosses back her head, and howls. One long howl, one short yelp that carries through the entirety of the district. There’s a pause, and a response howl from somewhere in the Skinners. 

Leaving town. Inform Khan.

“We had to change it when the Souls and Dogheads were fighting,” she says, “Everyone knew what everything meant and would attack each other.”

In hindsight, and everything, she was of the opinion the schism was stupid, but it also gave the excuse to fight to a girl not quite old enough to be in the Circle. And that was fine for her.

“I’m almost old enough to paint the Circle. I’m going to fight in it. I want to fight. That bitch shabnak, Constance, should bleed.”

She’s proud of it. Excited, and angry. She even stops to let him catch up so she can talk to him all about it. He’s the perfect adult for the conversation.

“--And the raider traitor without a face should bleed too. I’ll fight the whole clan because I don’t know which one is the traitor.”

Which, she grabs onto his arm and shakes it to good effect in the thrill of it, as they walk with a brisk pace out past the shadows of the factories. Everyone of sound mind has hidden inside.

He’s managed to sit up and consider the pros and cons of actually moving by the time she runs off to make a foamy, earthy smelling tea and bring it back to him. He takes the cup quietly, considers the cup and snorts. It had been a gift from Yulia maybe…fuck, almost a decade ago. When they first came to town.

He doesn’t think he’s ever used them before in his life, but at least they’re being used now. He waits until it’s cool enough that he won’t scald himself before he drinks it and listens to her explanation about Halves.

“ Mn. They used to come out of the Tower? You managed to take stuff out of the Tower? ”

Now that’s interesting. It’s not entirely surprising. He’s seen the lanterns from it scattered on all of the kids’ hideouts in Town, but not creatures. Not animals.

He’d have to ask Khan about that later, maybe.

The tea isn’t…good, to be fair, but it’s meant to be medicinal, so he doesn’t complain. It does help to warm him up from the inside, his fingers flexing a bit. His entire body feels like a pulled muscle, and the black handprints on his torso burn the worst, despite feeling cold to the touch.

“ Makes sense if they come out of the Earth. Animals belong to the Earth, yeah? ” He’s trying to understand. Really, he is. “ The Butcher-man…not Burakh, a different guy? 

“Yeah? That’s how you were supposed to use it- to make good things.”

Animals belong to the Earth. She nods, the mask stiffly mimicking her. Its firm stare fixes on Andrey. 

“Yes. Some of them belonged to the Polyhedron, though. They were extra souls we dreamed up. When the Polyhedron was shot, it scattered dreams everywhere. The whole Town’s covered in the things we used to think about. Dreams to the Earth made Suok and Bhoddo happy.”

She crosses her legs and leans forward to watch him wake up.

“The Butcher-man- Kiev. A townsfolk yargachin who was a duck hunter. He hired me. He ran the meat shop. He’s dead.”

She says it simply though it was much more complicated than that. Kiev was a quiet person, and the other yargachin did not talk to him at length. The Pest killed him. Constance did. It balls both of her hands into tempered fists again and she takes a slow breath to release the short burst of anger.

“Come meet my half. We have to walk and you need to walk anyways or your muscles will go stiff and you’ll wanna die.”

That’s not exactly how to say it.

His kids can take care of themselves, but it means he feels a little helpless most of the time. He’s trying though, and that’s what matters.

What else matters is the fact that his first reaction when he’s shaken awake and pain lances white-hot through his spine and sides isn’t to lash out, but to go stock still and listen.

Gray has creaked his window open, standing barefoot and half-dressed beside him. Her mask is on at a crooked angle, like the dog is tilting its head out the window, and he groans low as he listens.

There are wolves howling outside. He’s heard them over the last few weeks getting closer and closer to town. They sound very close now, but not directly in town – the howls inside the town are from the Dogheads and their strange rituals.

“ ‘m up. ” 

He rolls onto his side and rubs a hand across his face. His head is pounding and he’s got maybe ten minutes before his body catches up and reminds him that he’d nearly been torn apart a scant week ago.

She mentions soul hunting and halves and his brain is moving through sludge to catch up.

“ I know what you’re talking about, but tell me again about this Half business? ”

She watches him rub at his face. He’s clammy, and looks sick enough to stay bedridden for a few more days, but she knows better than to let muscle deep stiffness sit for too long- it’ll make him more sick. 

He is sick though. She doesn’t answer him, and she closes the window first, running down the hall to the kitchen he recently stocked for their little pack. Khan wasn’t used to cooking, but she intended to teach him now that they had a place to do it and items to do it with. If she had her own herd? Then that would be perfect.

Gray’s fast on her feet. She’s faster to light the oven and set water on for tea, collecting the herbs Andrey had available to pluck the harvestables off them and mash them into a carefully constructed pasty ball. It takes a moment for his small teakettle to boil and for her to pour hot water over the paste in a small ceramic cup. It foams and smells like earth and spices.

Her feet don’t make noise as she walks back up the stairs to his room, marching over and holding the cup out to him.

“I made you this. Drink and get up if you don’t move your body will hurt more.”

And then she sits beside his bed on the ground.

Andrey had come home from the doctor fucked up. He’d shaken it off, made her and Khan food that he did not have to, and then passed out. 

There had been a battle of some kind, and he’d taken serious damage. She’s no stranger to injuries like that. She patched up the little ones and tended what could be solved with at least a needle, thread, and some bandages. Her feet could coax up small herbs when she let them out of the boots and it was easy to make quick healing mushes from it. 

And of course, it’s frustrating to see something she couldn’t help with. So she’s being rough and she knows it, pushing on his shoulder and shaking it. Andrey has a window near his bed, and she listens out it. The doghead mask listens out it.

“You hear that?”

And then she cracks the window open just the smallest bit to really wake him.

“Shh!”

And from outside, there’s a soft, soft howl.

Notkin trots ahead to start opening boxes and cages, picking the locks on some and yanking others open. Dandy wheezes a bit as the adrenaline starts to wear off and he wipes the switchblade clean on his pants before he flips it shut and tucks it back into Notkin’s coat when he passes.

Gray growls at Constance and his brow twitches in irritation. Gray and Dandy worked well together, until one or the other opened their mouth. Then it tended to turn to brawling.

“ Hey, watch it, she just helped save us. ”

He mutters it softly as he kicks over the cage that had held him and Constance, his arms tucked into his jacket.

“ They mentioned there were others coming because the Kin were migrating in with a lot of folks in tow. We’ll have to talk to the people overseeing that to make sure they check on the folks coming in. ”

It’s cold and he’s tired and the stress of the last few days is starting to wear on him.

“ Did you find Twos? Is he alright? They couldn’t haul all of us at the same time, and Twos was – he wasn’t doing so hot when we left. He’s not a fighter. ”

He turns his attention to Constance before offering his hand out to bump their knuckles together.

“ That magic is terrifying. I’m glad you’re on our side. ”

------------------------​

Khan helps bust open cages, and help out the teens and littler ones out of their confinement. He’s thankful that they’re still here, but there is a deep anger when Dandy mentions that there were more of these kinds of folk coming in.

They couldn’t do their usual circus tricks, so they’d taken to dressing like Kin- even if some of them were.

Dandy’s right about Shekhen.

“Twos is alive. We sent for a doctor before we left here…“

There’s a lot of little ones. Cold and sick… They’d be the priority leaving. He’s not going to bother with not-Clara for now, even though he’d love to turn her over to Dankovsky for the entire hell that was the outbreak.

“We’ll take all the fingernails we can, get the sick and little ones across the river first- the temperature dropping isn’t going to help anything… it’s going to take a while to get everyone back over. We’ll tend a fire to keep warm for now…“

He glances over at not-Clara and watches her fistbump Dandy in turn.

“Just watch yourself, for now,“ he warns.

Constance looks at the young herb gatherer that’s with the two leaders of the gangs. Had something to settle in the Suok Circle? The little gatherer wanted to send her back to Earth it seemed.

“I can’t help my nature. If you need me to settle in Suok’s Circle, you may as well call Clara, too. She’s just as guilty as I, if not more so- for casting her rejected fate on me, instead of accepting herself…“

Clara rejected her own capacity for destruction. That is why Constance had been born. She refused to believe that she was the Plague incarnate, so now it was Constance’s responsibility. She had to bear the burden of so-called ‘evil’ to enact the will of something… that she wasn’t sure exactly what it was, other than that it was something spectacular. The Pest was just a tool.

And now, the Pest gone- dying… she’d been left behind in the world. The supernatural will to guide her was gone. She was completely lost.

She was hated by everyone.

Well, almost everyone..

“…Yes. It’s terrifying. It was meant to be. I’m just glad that you’re on my side too.“

------------------------​

She ignores Dandy for everyone else, shooing the rest of the children over to Khan and keeping to the side so she can test the rest of the creative things she’s heard the last few weeks from Andrey Stamatin in a more controlled environment. That is, away from the little kids. The semi-adults were talking.

"Oh boo-hoo, I’m the plague, I can’t make my own decisions. I killed without purpose willingly. Wah- Wah! Are you fucking stupid? Keep crying over God’s cock in your mouth since it’s the only decision you’ve seemed to make on your own, bokhir. I said what I said. There’s no bullet in you because you helped Dandy.”

She threw both her arms out to the side in a shrug and walks back to the grass, dragging bodies, stripping them, and tossing the remains to the side for the Earth. She plucks her rifle off the ground and shoulders it, and much of their little troupe follows her.

She pops fingernails out, two for each of them, and puts two in each waiting palm. There’s a lot of sick folk among them. Not plague, just... illness that she can smell. Bad conditions.

The gun jams on the next shot and Dandy swears he can hear Gray curse something colorful that he’s never heard her say before. He’d like to hear where she learned that one.

They run full force into Notkin, which startles them both, until Notkin is pressing his blade into Dandy’s hand and Dandy suddenly feels as dangerous as she should.

He can see Gray moving and follows her quietly, his footsteps utterly silent in the moment before he’s moving to jump and jab the switchblade into the side of someone’s throat. They gurgle and slump without a sound otherwise, and he’s quick to slide back into the chaos of the camp around them, ducking behind the shadow of one of the tents. 

It’s dangerous. It’s dangerous, but he really doesn’t want them to come back and hurt more folks. They will – or rather, the Caravan will. These folks won’t.

“ Ball’s in your court, Kain. ”

He mutters it softly under his breath, curled behind the tent and into the shadows.

-------------------​

Constance hangs back, watching Dandy do a clean cut on one of the Caravan that almost stumbles in with them. She hangs back by Notkin, and watches. Two’s all that’s left.

One of them that gets a little to close to where Khan was posting himself, she reaches out for and mutters a small curse- and suddenly, blood starts to pool in the eyes of the man. Then from his lips and nose and ears.

It’s enough to stop him in his tracks as Khan fires at the man.

Even with the eyepatch, he’s still a hell of a shot, keying in on the man that was just a hair too close.

Grey told him not to let them get to the grass. He wouldn’t let his newfound sister down.

The Caravan man goes down, and he quickly reloads, a surge of manic desperation to end the encounter here and now. Quickly and decisively.

Another crack of the gun, and the bullet finds its mark square in the back of the last fleeing child-stealing coward.

He falls, and everything is still. Khan scans for a minute, hoping that there were no surprises hidden between the carts and the tents. Satisfied with the stillness, and the sudden whimpers and crying of the children in the carts, he breathes with relief, and swerves his head around to see more.

He saw Dandy. That was a relief. Then he saw Clara-

No, not Clara. They didn’t act the same. He could tell it wasn’t her by her demeanor, and also because if it had been Clara, the patrolmen wouldn’t have been so content to sit on their asses.

“Grey- Notkin? You alright? Dandy?“

He breathes out a little bit, watching his breath in the cold air.

“Let’s get everyone out- figure out a way to get home.“

-------------------​

Her orders are get everyone out. There’s no one else in Kin-esque clothes and caravan weapons. Some are Kin, and all are blasphemous. All of them are carrying knives. She stops at each corpse and sends a bullet to the back of each for Bhoddo to grace those spots with Swish. Send blood for Suok and bodies for Bhoddo. It’s ritual and she sends some prayers down with them. 

She lingers at Constance, and a low, deep growl rumbles through her throat.

“Bitch. Plague rotten ‘God’ bitch. I’ll see you in the Suok Circle later. We have unfinished business.”

And it’s not her focus. The Changeling’s empty of that temporary power, using Bhoddo’s gifts to send unnecessary souls to the grave. There’s no balance in her. She’s foul and Gray feels her blood run boiling.

But her focus is on the children and she starts ripping at the locks off cages, unbuckling containers, and taking what is spoils. The children were alive, and some were ill. There were little ones and very few of their teenagers. She nuzzles them and they cry in relief. There are fingernails aplenty in the treasures of these awful cursed traitors.

None were who she was looking for.

“Khan. We should mark this place and tell Shekhen. They must know that there are shudkher coming that dress and speak like them.”

There’s gunfire and Dandy swears loudly at the first shot that knocks down a guard in a spray of blood. Gray is barely visible among the grass – he spots her because Jester’s form shimmers with the colors of the Polyhedron’s dreams on her shoulders, and that means they need to go.

Constance kicks the door open and drags him out behind her and he stumbles when they land and roll into the grass. It’s a goddamn blessing to see Gray followed by Notkin and Khan, honestly. 

He doesn’t like Khan, but today? Today, he could honestly kiss him for being here to help them.

The tall Steppe grass, even if dusted by snow out here, was good cover for them. It’s even better in the confusion, because the snow falling from the taller grass obscures their footsteps.

He watches one of the remaining adults start saying something about finding the bastards with the guns and he hisses.

“ They need to run. They’re going to come after us too. Unless you’ve got some fancy miracle shit to help? ”

-----------------

Constance quickly assesses what she can and can’t do- she can’t spread the plague, but that didn’t hinder her other powers, apparently.

Not entirely defenseless and useless.

She focuses first on being quiet, keeping as still as she can conjuring her will to curse the scum from the Caravan that she can see. There’s six left, and she figures she can curse three.

She makes a gesture and feels for their strings… she feels her curse take, though it isn’t immediately obvious on the surface…  but those three in particular are going to be very, very unlucky.

“O ye of little faith,“ she smirks, “Come on, we can’t face them head on. No weapons, but our rescuers will have an easier time of it.“

Her powers don’t rebuke the wind and the sea, but it’s at that moment that she does spot the Kain boy. Odd sight seeing him on the ground rather than the Impossible Tower.

He follows suit behind the Doghead and takes aim at a Caravaner. In a moment, there’s the rumbling sound of the gunshot across the Steppe, and one of the wretched kidnapper falls.

She finally sees Notkin, moving in closer.

They’d all have their roles to play.

-----------​

Gray lines up another shot, and it’s just the luck that the rifle, at that exact moment, jams. It’s a trigger issue and she cusses, tossing her rifle down in favor of the pistol on her belt. It’s better than nothing.

There are two shapes breaking the visual pattern of the snow-covered steppe, running towards them for safety. The commotion from the covered carts behind them is audible even from this distance. There’s screaming, and she ducks behind the cover that Khan found with her pistol, digging her ankles in for the long haul. There’s three more that she can see above the steppe grass.

Khan’s rifle goes off.

“Jammed, Khan. It’s up to you, Khayaala. Get them before they enter the grass!”

A gunshot splits the sounds to the twyre at night back at them and she chances it, sliding down their higher elevation on the ice and skinning right through her long pants to duck down into the long grass and crawl.

Three monsters left. Her blood was boiling.

She says a prayer to Suok, to fill her with rage.

Notkin doesn’t flinch at the rifle shot, thumbing the bone charms once more before he’s moving to follow behind them. He tells Aide not to tell Burakh where they’re going, because he’ll get distracted by trying to find them.

And then he’s bolting to follow Gray through the crowd and up the street. They duck back behind one of the houses, through a broken part of the fence, and find the dock easily enough.

The Worm tending it looks at them with – not fondness, but not contempt either. This was simply his job, after all. To guide the people along the Ghorkon.

He lets Gray speak to him, offer the coins and tell them they needed to get to the other side of the Abattoir as quickly as they could. The boat fits all of them with a little bit of finagling, and he looks down into the water as the ferry is pushed off towards the center of the river.

Seeing the depths makes him a little anxious. He’s known people to fall in and never come back out. He’s not a strong swimmer himself, either.

“ We’ve got the drop on them. They don’t know we’re coming. This is good. ”

---------------------​​

They hop on the ferry, and Khan carefully reloads the rifle, and keeps scanning the other side of the river.

The worms usually stayed close to the shores of the town as they rode, but this trip would take them across river, and they were going to hopefully be able to take them back.

Grey had negotiated the pricing for getting them across river, the three of them.

Khan now wondered about how they’d manage to get children back.

He had two of the nail coins… he wasn’t sure how many Grey or Notkin had left… Briefly, there was an antic thought of Khan staying behind on the other side of the river to build a new settlement, just like Georgiy and Victor had planned…

No. That simply wouldn’t do.

“We’ve got the drop, yes. We know they’ll be disguised as Kin on the ox-carts… hm…“

He bites at his thumb a little nervously, then discards the little clip of nail over the edge of the boat, trying to regain a little composure.

“How do we want to approach this? If we go in openly- there’s a chance they’ll take off and we won’t see anyone again. I don’t want to let them get away, but also don’t want to risk our friends either… do we want to be sneaky?“

---------------------​

There’s another unforeseen consequence to the children being completely left to their own devices, and that was a distinct lack of swimmers. Gray looks at Notkin, Notkin looks at the water. They both aren’t good swimmers. Riding the ferry allows for the past ten minutes to start settling in between the adrenaline rushes.

Grey looks up from the water at Khan and nods in agreement.

“Yeah. No clue if this is the last of em’, either. So keep it in mind. I don’t think that a tiny group of people would pull this off without a bunch of help.”

Though she could be wrong and they really were that bad.

She hoped not. 

She loaded her rifle in the meantime. 

The raft moves quickly over the current. She might have enough to ferry them back or she might need to trade. The thugs might have nails on them if they too got across the river. She’s not sure

They’ll do what they have to.

The rest of the way is silence as the ferryman rides the today placid river, thoughtfully helping them onto the wooden dock each, and pausing at each child for different reasons. 

Gray murmurs, “Bayarlaa,” when her boots touch the wood.

“Notkin’s the sneakiest. We’ve got nightfall and I know the steppe- and we can be sneaky. So okay. Let’s find these people.”

There’s a dawning horror in Gray’s body language that turns to violence very quickly, and Notkin stands back to let her kick the door and scream and say things that he doesn’t even begin to understand but knows they have to be bad, because the man stops laughing and stops talking entirely.

Notkin tugs at his collar, and then at the bone charms he wears, and puts his foot on the top of the cooler to make Gray pause.

“ Hold off on that, ‘kay? ”

He speaks up after a moment, trying to think of how someone else would do this. What would appeal to these assholes? 

It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to sound convincing.

“ I’m a child in the care of the…of Burakh. He’s important to your kind. If you give us information, I’ll convince him to grant you leniency. ”

The man’s a coward. He knows being a member of the Caravan is death in any place with sense. 

It doesn’t have to be true. Just convincing.

“ He saved this town. If anyone can convince the governor, it’s him. And if anyone can convince him, it’s me. ”

He reaches to pet Jester, trying to soothe the cat around his neck and shoulders, and glances to the other two.

“ It’s this or you die. What’ll it be? ”

---------------------​

There’s a pause after Notkin’s deception. No swears, no laughter. Just silence.

Khan holds his breath and slowly counts the seconds in his head. He hopes that the fellow buys it. Five minutes had been very lenient on Khan’s part- perhaps too lenient for this kind of crime…

But then the cornered man starts speaking, offering up anything he could to try and make a more merciful case for himself.

He bought it.

“The others- they’ll be across the river- in view of the slaughterhouse. Making themselves look Kin, the ones that aren’t already- less suspicious with the clans comin’ and goin’. Your town kids’ll be there- packed up in the ox-carts.“

Another pause.

“Put a good word in for me?“

Khan had a reputation among the adults as a dark and malicious child. Cold-hearted at times, even.

Well, today it seemed that reputation was well-deserved, but he didn’t feel comfortable leaving a child-killer and kidnapper alone waiting on the patrolmen to get there, not with so many little ones nearby.

He levels his rifle at the door, pointed in the direction of the voice that was now standing still. He gestures to Grey, giving an affirmative nod.

“As good a one as you deserve.“ He pulls the trigger.

---------------------

 ​She nods back and anticipates what is coming snarling as the shot takes the rest of her hearing and temper through the door. They don’t have another kind of justice. Three down, two or potentially more to go. Their captives were taken care of, and if this was a time sensitive missive, they had to move quickly.

She scrounges her pockets and pulls a bag of ten nails for the three of them.

“Let’s move. We have people to get back who are in bad shape too..”

She gives orders as she exits, the patrolmen showing up too little too late, but showing up. She doesn’t trust them. The baby is screaming. Her heart hurts, and not for anyone she spilled the blood of. Suok willed her onward, blazing hot magma through her veins. Get the baby to the doctor as fast as possible.

Aide gives her a nod and hugs the poor thing close while it screams. 

She breaks into a run and motions for her companions to push through the quickly forming mob and follow her.

“Let’s go! Ferry’s this way!”

It’s chaos and he has a baby tucked under his coat. A baby that is rapidly starting to cry, and he’s starting to panic a little as the situation sinks in.

Gray comes back and he curls close to protect the little one as she unloads on the woman laying on the ground. The man trapped behind the door screams to be let out and tries to batter it down, and he helps her shove the dresser into place before they’re moving down the stairs once more.

There are children gathered around between the worried townsfolk, and she scans for a messenger. The child against his chest squirms and starts to wail and he tries to shush them quietly as he stands between two of the other Souls. Ace and Catnip stand nearby him, offering their support – and Aide takes the little one to keep nearby, saying he knows how to deal with them ‘because my Aunt Dora taught me.’

As long as they stay within sight, he relaxes. He follows bloody footprints back to where Khan and Twos sit.

Twos is a skinny boy already, made worse by the treatment he’d been given here. Mousy-brown hair and gray eyes that are wide with terror as he sits and just absorbs the situation.

He tilts his head up at Khan after a moment before he flicks his tongue over his lip.

“ They – moved the others yesterday. Said they were going out of town about an hour to drop ‘em. Other side of the river. ” He looks back at Gray and Notkin as well before he continues.

“ Didn’t realize I could understand ‘em. Got good eyes. They wouldn’t be more than a couple hours out if they were waiting for us. We’re – we’re the last two. ”

-------------------​

Khan gives a curt nod and makes a few calculations. They’d be expecting Twos and the baby on the other side of the River. Take too long, and there’s a risk that they may leave and they’d never see Dandy or any of the others taken again.

He looks to Notkin.

“We don’t have a lot of time to waste. They’re getting the patrolmen, and that last one in the side room ought to know something about where the others are.“

He nods to Grey.

“We’ll give five minutes to answer us. If he won’t talk we’ll have to cut our losses and ask the worms. I have two fingernails… just in case. But we can’t wait on the patrolmen to try and sort this out.“

No, this is something that they’d have to handle themselves. As it was right now, the patrolmen were disorganized from the shake ups of the plague, and Saburov’s recent internal investigations.

It seemed that these child-stealers were taking advantage of that.

He pats Twos on the shoulder and nods to Aide taking care of the baby.

“Alright Twos. Just wait with the others, doctor’s coming.“

Watchdogs and hounds arrive on the scene, a few of them armed with their own rifles. A few Souls had their handmade shotguns.

No adult was gonna get out of this place without wearing holes like a pest-infected organ.

He stands and adjusts his mask and gloves again. He marches back up the stairs to the barricaded door where the man’s shouting, and he speaks in the most imperious tone he can manage.

“Listen up! We know you’re Caravan. We know what Anna Angel was involved in. If you value your life and your skin intact, you’ll talk! You’ve five minutes. Don’t waste my time!“

-------------------​​

There’s a reedy, cowardly peel of laughter, and more obscene swearing. He calls them every nasty thing in the book for the Kin, and every nasty thing for a townsfolk. The horror dawns on Gray that this final person, with their heavy glottal stops, was Kin. And she snarled back, yelled back the most damning evidence. Abscess of Suok and Bhoddo!

She ends up snarling right back at him and jamming the rifle into the door, at the ceiling.

“Talk or I kill you and throw you to the birds!”

It was only that that made him pause.

“I’ll make the bird doctors feed you piece by piece to the sky! I’ll put you on a fucking pike and crows will eat your guts! Bhoddo will disgrace you and spit you into Suok to be torn asunder!”

She jams her steel toe into the door and the door rattles.

It has the opposite effect and the man doesn’t talk at all and Grey kicks the ground in fury, looking around and eyeing the cooler of Pest organs.

“Talk or I’ll shove one of these infected hearts down your fucking throat!”