Legendary Beast Tamer: Every Beast I Raise Makes Me Stronger

Chapter 127: TWO DAYS AWAY

They left before the city could get an opinion about it.

Packing took no time. The map went inside his shirt with the Token, and that was everything he owned, along with what was left of the dried meat he had bought at CinderFall and the venomous mushrooms he kept for Miasma.

He was heading toward the gates when someone leaning against the wall at the entrance to the tannery lane caught his attention.

A woman over sixty, hair pulled into a tight bun, with fingers shaped by years of counting coins the old imperial way and writing information in dangerous ledgers.

She was pretending to be waiting for a courier.

She waited for him to reach her, then spoke quietly.

"We don’t have much time. I know you picked the marsh. Someone looked at the file before you did. The night porter at the registry told me. Grey cloak. They paid him in temple scrip, sat an hour with the folder. They took nothing. They wrote nothing."

"When?"

"About a fortnight ago."

"Temple scrip?"

"Paper the Church prints. Take it back to a temple, and they’ll give you bread, oil, and a bed. Take it anywhere else, and they’ll laugh at you."

"So the porter took it to the temple."

"He did. And a priest asked him why a man with a job was queuing for charity." She looked pleased about it. "He got a sermon and no change. He’s still angry."

She paused.

"I’m glad you’re safe, but stay on guard. Don’t ask about the network."

"Alright." Aiden took a deep breath, then asked what had always weighed on him. "How’s Marsh?"

"Well. He’s living out of the city, and so is the smith who helped you. Don’t try to find them. I’ll tell them you’re fine. Now go."

"Thank you. Stay safe, Renn."

He walked off, relieved that Marsh and the smith were alive somewhere.

His eyes narrowed at the rest.

Two weeks ago, I hadn’t heard of that marsh. Nice to know someone was doing my reading for me.

The guard at the gate had a list of beasts that had to be declared. Every one on it got written into the gate book, with a tier and an owner.

The man looked at his list. Then at Cinder, filling the road.

He put his list away without reading it and waved them through with a face that said he wasn’t paid enough to deal with that.

Aiden walked out of the city.

The road ran through farmland for half a day. Hedges, turnip fields, and a boy on a wall who dropped his lunch when Cinder came around the bend.

By afternoon there was empty country in every direction.

Cinder ran ahead, enjoying it. Then she slowed until he caught up, and playfully ran around him.

He rode her when the road was bare and walked beside her when it wasn’t.

Nyx had a worse time than Cinder.

By day it hid in Aiden’s shadow and sulked there.

Every time he stepped into open sun, it made an annoyed noise from beneath his boot.

It ended up giving up entirely and rode inside his coat.

"You dislike light more than before, but you’re going to have to make peace with the sky."

Nyx didn’t make peace with the sky.

At full dark it came alive again. It ranged beyond the firelight, growing a little bigger each night. On the third night, it came back with a piece of someone’s clothes.

"Where did you get that?"

Nyx dropped it on the cat.

The cat wore it for an hour and believed it looked magnificent.

Miasma chose where they would sleep each night. She spent the day on high ground, then picked the safest place before dusk.

Twice she walked off the spot Aiden picked and stood on a better one until he moved.

The second time he argued. He lost.

"Fine," he said, dragging the wood across. "You’re right. You’re always right. And you don’t even need to make a sound to make me admit it."

She settled on the new stone and put her chin on her forefeet, satisfied.

Aiden brought his Perception up one evening, out of habit.

There was almost nothing to see. A few pale motes drifting, and one green thread in a ditch where something poisonous grew.

Then he looked at Nyx. Its shadow was darker than everything around it.

You’re growing more and more. What’s happening with you?

That evening, Cinder left the road and ran across the hillside.

She ran two loops across it with the cat flattened between her shoulders. She came back smelling of burnt thyme and with nothing to report.

Aiden checked the horizon anyway. No roofs. No riders. Sheep country going blue with the dusk.

"Clear," he told her.

Fire engulfed Cinder and pulled in tight around her. A beautiful red-haired woman with ember-bright tips stepped out of it.

"Sit." She sat around the bonfire and patted the ground beside her.

She was still learning words as she needed them. They were blunt, but her attempt at a smile convinced him that politeness could wait.

She took a burning log off the fire and ate it like bread.

"Your face is red," she said.

"It’s the fire."

"I am the fire," she said, very pleased with herself.

"A naked fire." He took the piece of clothing from the cat, who hissed at him, and covered Cinder’s lean body with it.

His face went redder than any fire could make it as he watched the fabric tighten around her chest.

She poked his shoulder, laughing, and he looked at the map instead of at her.

There was nothing new on the map. He looked at it anyway.

Then Nyx Shadow Stepped onto the paper and sat right where he was pretending to read.

It stared at Cinder, its pale eyes fixed.

"You’re small," Cinder said. "And in my light."

Nyx did not move.

Miasma climbed onto Aiden’s shoulder and coiled around his neck. Her spines came up against his skin.

Whatever she was showing, she didn’t feel she had to explain it.

"Mm," said Cinder, chewing. She was enjoying this enormously. "Everyone’s found a seat."

Aiden sat very still. Cinder on one side, Nyx across his map, Miasma at his ear.

I became a coat rack. A coat rack for very dangerous beasts who are doing something I don’t understand.

Cinder sat closer to him. He didn’t move away.

"My seat is beside you."

He looked at her. "Nobody can see you like this but us. If anyone does—"

"They take me. I remember being taken before..."

Her shoulder touched his. For a moment, she leaned her head against him.

Not the big wolf’s head he knew. Her human head, warm, her cheeks flushed, her breath warm against his neck.

"So. I’m only yours."

Then she jumped back, turning her back on him. Flames engulfed her, and she took her Solari Blaze Dancer’s form.

He stayed there for a moment. "Right. You’re only ours to see."

Cinder didn’t answer. She sat behind him.

Nyx let out a small, annoyed sound from the map. Miasma simply dusted Aiden’s shoulder with her spines.

They went to sleep. Nyx refused to leave him that night. It tucked itself between his arms and glared at Cinder.

For the next few days, they passed nothing but fields, hills, and empty roads. Then they started seeing sheep again. Then farmhouses. Then, a low building with a yard and a lamp lit over the door.

A one-armed widow lived there, the last roof before the marsh. She told him so when he approached.

She fed them mutton and barley. Cinder stayed outside, and the widow watched her through the open door throughout the meal.

The cat walked onto the table as if it owned the place. It got the only kind word the widow had all night.

"Hearthcat," she said. "Good. You’ll want one in the Fen."

"Fen?"

"That’s how we call the marsh here." Then she changed the subject. "Exploring the Fen? You’re bold. The last ones who went there were from the Church."

"Claim business."

"That’s the same thing out here. Nobody’s claimed that Fen in sixty years, so the only people who go in wear grey and don’t talk to me on the way back."

She cleared his bowl one-handed.

"Let your beasts graze near the edge if you want. There’s good grass by the stones. They mark where the Fen starts. Not beyond. A sheep wanders past those stones and it comes back out on its own, next day or the day after. Looks fine. Eats, walks, everything. But no shepherd will put that sheep back with his flock. Not one. They keep it in a pen on its own until it dies."

"Why not?"

"Nobody says."

That’s the second person this week who says that.

Then she looked at him properly. At the white in his hair, and the corner of the map showing from his pocket.

"Don’t rely on your map." She wiped her hands on her apron. "Everyone relies on it at first. A man who counts how far he is from the stones never reaches them. He walks two days toward them, asks a shepherd, and he’s told two days again. Then he walks two more, asks another one, and it’s still two days. The sheep get there because they’re not counting anything."

How are the shepherds going there then? More local nonsense, I guess.

He slept in the yard with his pack and left before the widow was up.

The land past the waystation was all pasture. Sheep on every slope, and low stone walls between them.

He passed three shepherds that morning. He said good day to each one. Not one of them answered him.

Ahead of the pastures stood the fog.

It was a wall. It ran along the horizon from one side to the other, its edge perfectly straight, as if something had cut it.

The wind was blowing hard against it that morning. The fog didn’t move.

Aiden walked toward the fog for three days. It was exactly as far away as it had been on the first one.

He brought his Perception up.

The wall of fog was filled with silver motes.

Fire was gold. Silver is new.

He stopped a shepherd bringing his flock in.

"How far to the stones?"

"Two days," the shepherd said. He pointed and kept walking.

Two days again. Of course. What is this place?

Aiden made camp and took out the map.

The widow wasn’t making up stories about this place. The road’s lying, or the country is.

Across the fire, Nyx sat at the edge of the light and faced the fog.

Everyone kept saying two days.

The widow had said the same thing three days ago.