Chapter 91 City’s Blight, the Hollow’s Bloom

  The city gnawed uneasily that late summer, with every wind-swept street corner carrying murmurs of violence. Marcus Luceron, heir of Litus Solis, knew the reality before the merchants even swarmed the hall with complaints: the docks were slipping beyond control.

  He walked the length of the great hall with his father’s warhammer displayed on the dais above him, a reminder of Lord Luceron’s presence, though the lord himself rode north. Marcus wore no armor, only a dark doublet belted at the waist, but Captain Darius of the guard strode at his right hand, steel at his hip, and eyes scanning every shadow.

  Hadron, the old steward, hunched at Marcus’s left, parchment clutched like weapons of another sort. His whispering voice was the voice of memory itself—forty years of keeping this city from falling to ruin. But even he could not make order out of the chaos that now rippled across the wharf.

  And in the wharf, the chaos had two names.

  Varcus. Fast as lightning, with the smirk of a noble gone to rot. Though branded a pirate, whispers said he was kin to Eastwatch, a bastard cousin with too much pride and no inheritance. His speed was not natural; the guard swore he moved before men drew breath, blades flashing in and out like firelight.

  And there was another—the red-haired brute with a beard like a tangled net, known only as Garran. Where Varcus struck like a snake, Garran was a storm. Once, it was said, he split a stone wall in a drunken brawl, his axe biting through mortar and rock as if both were clay.

  The two together made the docks a war zone.

  …

  The game was tit-for-tat, a cat-and-mouse struggle fought in alleys and wharfside taverns. The guards would arrive at a warehouse just as Varcus’s men slipped out the back, crates already emptied. Marcus would double patrols at the fish market, only for Garran to appear on the far side of the quarter, shaking down wine merchants with threats of broken barrels and broken bones.

  One week past, three pirates had been killed in a skirmish at the net-yards, and six hung in the square the next dawn. But four guards lay wounded in the infirmary, two maimed. The pirates took their revenge by harassing the bakers who fed the guardhouse. Marcus answered by stationing watchmen in disguise among the bakers’ families. Each move was met with a countermove, the tension climbing higher.

  …

  And then there was the darker rumor.

  “Cistern,” Hadron rasped, laying the parchment down before Marcus, his finger tapping the note with brittle insistence. “The one beneath the wharf quarter. Broken. Foul water leaking in. Coin says pirates did it. The people cry it already.”

  Captain Darius’s jaw tightened. “We’ve found no proof.” His hand strayed to his sword hilt. “But I’ll wager Garran’s axe had a hand in it. The stone cracked through, like no tool had ever done it. That’s his way.”

  Marcus read the words without seeing them, the image already in his mind: a cistern fouled, barrels filled with brackish water, children drinking sickness into their veins. The anger set his teeth on edge. “Proof or no, the people believe. That is worse than any sword strike.”

  …

  Another whisper came from the shadowed corners of the hall. A merchant had sworn one of the pirate captains—Varcus, most said—had offloaded a score of chained men and women in the forest north of the road. Yet no slaves were ever seen again. Murder hung in the air like salt on the tide. Marcus demanded search parties. Twice they scoured the woods, but found only old ash pits and scattered bones, too weathered to speak the truth. The pirates laughed louder each day.

  And still the city faltered. Merchants grumbled that the docks were no longer safe, that cargoes would divert to rival ports if Litus Solis could not be trusted. The fishermen muttered about “ghost wells,” claiming the water tasted of poison. Mothers hauled children inland to draw from crumbling wells that yielded only mud.

  …

  It was on one of those nights, storm threatening on the horizon, when Captain Darius brought him word.

  “They planned to seize Elinor’s boy.”

  “Elinor?” Marcus asked sharply.

  “The spice merchant’s widow. Her son keeps her accounts. Too clever by half. Varcus’s men tried to corner him near the olive market. They’d have forced him to forge her ledgers, take her ships, bleed her dry.”

  “And?”

  “We were faster,” Darius said grimly. “My men cut them off. Three ran, one we caught. He spoke Varcus’s name before the rope took his breath.”

  Marcus turned to the steward. “And now?”

  Hadron’s old eyes gleamed with weary resignation. “Now, the widow fears, the merchants demand safety, and your father’s city sits on a tinderbox. And the men who set the fire dance openly on the docks.”

  …

  Varcus and Garran were only the heads of the serpent, but it was their gifts that made the guards fear to face them. Even in numbers, men faltered when Garran’s axe split stone or when Varcus blurred into motion no human should manage.

  And the worst truth: both were untouchable in law. No proof would bind them. Every merchant who swore to their crimes recanted the moment a blade glimmered beneath the table, or when a relative vanished on the tide. Marcus’s hand itched for the warhammer his father wielded, but he knew one swing in anger would damn him more than it would cleanse the city.

  It was not only fear that shielded them. It was the web of law, tangled and spun across Avalon’s realms.

  First, Varcus’s bloodline whispered trouble. However far fallen into piracy, his kinship to an Eastwatch house—minor though it was—made any move against him fraught with peril. To seize him openly would be to insult Eastwatch pride, and the repercussions could ripple far beyond Litus Solis, even back to the Crown Prince’s council. Marcus knew his father’s temper, but even Lord Luceron would tread carefully where noble feuds might be sparked.

  Second, there were their gifts. Varcus’s speed, uncanny and unnatural, made men swear he was smoke-given flesh, a blade moving before breath was drawn. Garran’s strength was worse still—stone and timber alike bent beneath his strikes. No guard wished to face either man, not even three to one. Men of such gifts could claim protection under old maritime law, declaring themselves bound to the sea rather than to Avalon’s soil. “The Veil favors them,” Hadron muttered more than once, though Marcus doubted whether the Veil had anything to do with it.

  And third, perhaps most bitterly, was the truth that these were seafolk—drenched in salt and bound to tide—not citizens of Avalon. That line of separation was constantly repeated in the halls of governance: they are not of us, and so they cannot be judged as us. It was a convenience for every lord who profited from their trade and their silence, and a curse for those who had to live with their crimes.

  Marcus repeated those truths in his head as if they were catechisms: noble blood, unnatural gifts, seafolk laws. Yet with every repetition, he felt the wrongness deepen. They had slaughtered men, bled merchants, left women and children in chains—and still the parchment and ink of law would not bind them.

  Still, this was the way it had always been. This was the counsel he had received from father, from steward, even from the crown’s emissaries. Each year when the priest in white came down from Eastwatch, bearing the sigil of purity and the authority of the greater realm, he would murmur the same hollow warning: “Follow the law of Eastwatch. They are under its hand, not yours.”

  And Marcus, though he had bowed, felt the gall of it still burn in his chest. For what law was it that excused cruelty? How could it be justice and honor that allowed murder to walk the docks with a smirk?

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  He looked to the sea through the high window, his jaw set hard. If the law did not bind them, then he would find another way.

  …

  Outside, another late summer storm broke over the harbor, waves battering the insufficient seawall. The city of Litus Solis shuddered under the roar of wind and surf, much as it shuddered beneath the weight of Varcus and Garran’s shadow.

  Marcus stood at the high window, watching the lightning trace white veins across the dark horizon.

  “This city is perishing from within,” he said softly.

  Captain Darius bowed his head, voice low. “Then, my lord, we must bleed the poison.”

  But Hadron only sighed, parchment trembling in his old hand. “And pray the treatment does not kill us first.”

  …

  The morning mist clung low over Gloamhollow, swirling pale and thin between the rising columns of smoke. From where Pit stood on the mound—hands braced on his hips, boots sunk in damp earth—he could see three separate fires burning bright in the gray light. The kiln glowed like a caged volcano, its vents hissing and breathing as the stone within was baked into lime. Further back in the clearing, the blacksmith’s forge spat sparks with every hammer fall, Bran and Petyr working in rhythm—one steady as a mountain, the other quick and light, shaping something that Pit didn’t yet understand. And farther down, the new pottery kiln blazed, and the cookfires smoked over stew pots, their scent heavy with fat and herbs, the first warmth of the day.

  The Hollow was alive. Too alive, Pit thought. Every flame meant wood, and wood meant labor—and the forest covering the mound was already thinning. The accumulations of cut logs that had once towered at the edge of the clearing were now half their size, stripped and split into cords. “We’ll burn the Vale bare at this rate,” he muttered under his breath.

  Behind him, two of the men heaved on ropes, their boots slipping as they maneuvered the A-frame crane up the slope. The rough beams groaned, the rope creaked, and the smell of pitch from the joints filled the air. Pit threw his shoulder into it, helping them haul it the last few feet across the mound.

  “Right—there!” he barked, and the frame settled into place with a heavy thud. Below them, Caelen’s voice called out in his rough cadence:

  “Root, pull. Save good wood.”

  Pit grinned, wiping sweat from his brow. “You heard him. Dig and drag, lads. The genius wants the roots too.”

  They rigged the ropes through the pulley at the top, the crane arm jutting over the cut slope. Soon, they had a thick tangle of oak roots hooked and ready. The freed men below heaved on the line, muscles straining, and the earth tore open with a wet, sucking sound as the rootball came free.

  Caelen had said the roots would dry faster—“burn hotter, burn longer.” Pit didn’t know if that was true, but he’d stopped doubting him months ago. What confused him more was the boy’s latest decree: “Salt—no fire.”

  He’d repeated it twice, tapping the copper pans they’d hammered out. “Hot water, Sun, not flame,” he’d said, then turned away, as if that explained anything. Pit had just shaken his head. “Mad genius,” he muttered now. “Mad, but it works.”

  Below the mound, the Hollow spread out in slow, industrious motion. The freed peoples were shoulder-deep in their trenchwork to the west, mud streaking their arms as they lined the channels with flat stone. That one carried the clean overflow—the “good water,” Caelen had called it—toward the mouth of the Hollow, where it would spill harmlessly into the river.

  To the south, a darker task was underway. The second trench cut through the muck toward the break in the ridge, where it would carry away the foul water and the waste from the bathhouse, latrines, and the old pools. The smell was dreadful; even the wind carried it like a slap. But the dwarves joked through it, shovels biting rhythmically, and the men and women newly joined worked with a grim, determined pride.

  Here and there, life was budding in small, stubborn ways. Children chased one another between the piles of stone, their laughter rising bright against the hissing of the kiln. A few of the younger mothers washed clothes in the clearer pools, their chatter echoing faintly in the cavern mouth. The dwarves had rigged a wooden spit for roasting meat, and one of them, Soren, had carved toys for the smallest of the little ones—a wooden horse, a bird with wings that flapped when its tail was pulled.

  Pit paused a moment, watching it all. Smoke, mud, noise—chaos, if you didn’t look closely. But there was rhythm in it now. Purpose.

  Caelen moved through the center of it like a storm contained in flesh. He stopped at each crew, checked their progress, adjusted a line or a beam, gave a few words—never many. “Good. Keep.” or “Too thin. Again.” Then he was gone, already thinking two steps ahead.

  Pit had followed a lot of people in his short years—lords, captains, fools—but none like this one. The boy barely spoke, barely slept, and yet somehow had everyone working as if they’d known him all their lives.

  He watched Caelen climb the ridge to the western side, his cloak snapping in the faint wind. From that vantage, the young lord—though few called him that aloud—could see everything: the lime kiln’s glow, the half-built row homes, the bathhouse steam curling skyward.

  Pit spat into the dirt and shook his head, grinning despite himself. “You’re mad, Cael,” he said quietly. “But by the Veils, you have fixed this broken place.”

  Behind him, a small girl squealed with joy as one of the dwarves raised her onto his shoulder. The innocent laughter drifted upward, mingling with the crackling of the fires and the rhythmic thud of hammers on stone. The Hollow still stank, the mist still clung to the air—but now, it smelled less of decay and more of work.

  …

  The new stench of the hollow greeted them, the stink, mixed with stew and lime dust, mingling in the air, while the fires began to flare against the darkening sky. The clang of the forge had softened to a steady rhythm, each strike a dull echo beneath the hum of evening. Pit and Tib had been hauling stones for the kiln when Kali came running, breathless, saying Caelen wanted them at the smithy.

  They found him there—shirt sleeves rolled, soot streaked across one cheek—holding something long and iron-bound in his hands. The forge still glowed behind him, casting his face in fierce red light. For a heartbeat, neither Pit nor Tib spoke; the thing in Caelen’s grasp looked half like a spear, half like a weapon from some older world.

  “Caelen?” Tib began carefully. “What’s that?”

  He turned the weapon over once in his hands, then set its butt against the ground. “New tool. For boar.”

  Pit frowned and stepped closer. The head of the spear wasn’t like the usual kind—broad and flat—but instead narrow, tapering to a cruel, bulb of iron. Just below the head, with a long, slender iron shank before it joined the wooden half. It was smaller than a spear but heavier than a javelin, and its balance felt almost perfect when Pit took it and tested the weight. “It’s light,” he said, surprise in his voice. “Lighter than it looks.”

  “Throwing weapon,” Caelen said, matter-of-fact. “Hard strike. Stay in target.”

  The two men exchanged a glance—this wasn’t a hunter’s spear. It was something else, something meant to wound and to hinder.

  Tib knelt, examining the point closer. The metal shimmered strangely in the firelight, and when he pressed gently against it, it flexed—just barely—but it did. “Wait,” he said. “This bends.”

  “It won't break,” came a gruff voice from the forge. Bran emerged from the shadows, wiping his hands on his apron. He grinned, teeth gleaming white through soot. “You bend it, and it won’t shatter. And if it sticks in the beast, it stays there. Every thrash, every step—it pulls, it drags. Slows it down. Will make it mad as a demon, but slows it down.”

  Caelen nodded once, short and approving. “They charge. They flail. No safe to close. So—” he gestured to the weapon, “—we stop charge.”

  Pit hefted the weapon again, feeling the balance shift as he held it above his shoulder. He imagined the throw—the arc of it flying toward a snorting boar in the thickets north of the Hollow, the sharp impact, the animal’s furious scream as the iron barbed deep and stayed there. “A cruel thing,” he said softly. “But it’ll work.”

  “Cruel’s better than dead,” Tib replied grimly.

  The two of them tested the weight of the second one that lay on the anvil. Its shaft was smooth, the tip still dull from the tempering process. Pit rolled it in his hands. “Two each, you think?”

  “Two,” Caelen said. “Throw first, stop movement.” He took the first from Pit and turned it in the fading light. The iron gleamed like liquid fire. “Tomorrow,” he said simply. “We test.”

  For a moment, none of them spoke. It was quiet so that the only sound was the crackle of the forge and the soft whistle of the wind through the narrow ravine that framed the Hollow. Pit felt a strange sense of anticipation, something deep in his gut stirring—a feeling that this, like all of Caelen’s strange inventions, would change how they lived, how they hunted, how they survived.

  Tib broke the silence first, resting his arm on the anvil. “These’ll do more than slow a beast,” he said. “If pirates come through again, they’ll find out what it feels like to carry their own death in their shoulders.”

  Pit grinned, though there was no humor in it. “Aye. Let ’em charge. See how far they get.”

  They shared a laugh—quiet, low, the kind that came from grim satisfaction rather than joy. Caelen smiled faintly at that, eyes glinting with approval, before setting the spear back in its cradle.

  Then from across the Hollow came a voice, calling his name. “Caelen!”

  Mirelle’s tone was sharp but not urgent—firm, insistent, the way she always was when something needed his mind. He turned toward the sound, already half distracted, his thoughts shifting gears from warcraft to building.

  “Mirelle,” he acknowledged softly.

  “She’s got plans,” Bran said, chuckling as he turned back to his tools. “Always plans.”

  Caelen gave a curt nod to Pit and Tib. “Keep weapons safe. Try throws tomorrow.”

  “Aye,” they replied in unison.

  He left them there in the glow of the forge, iron cooling in their hands, smoke curling up into the violet dusk. As he walked toward the lamplight of the canvas tent where Mirelle waited with her parchments and sketches, the first stars began to show over the Hollow—distant, cold, and watching—while below, the fires burned on, bright and defiant in the dark.