Chapter 85: THE REPORT
"Four years I had that wolf."
The tracker said it to the fire, flat.
"Kennel-bred. The master broke her before I ever touched her. All I did was teach her my hand."
He turned his palms over on his knees and looked at them. "Four years getting her to work off my finger. That’s four years I do again from scratch, on a beast that isn’t bred as good."
Aiden said nothing.
He isn’t grieving. He’s counting the cost of replacing a broken tool.
Aiden looked past him at Cinder. Her head was still up. It had been up since the man’s scent reached her, and every second she held it there looked harder than the last.
"You knew the baron would send you after a tamer," Aiden said.
"I knew." The flat voice picked up an edge. "I said so. I said it in his own hall. He sent me anyway, after a man who’d already put a Cinderhound in the ground."
He looked at the empty ground behind his own right leg.
"So no. I’m not going to stand here and tell you I hate you for it. You did what anyone does when a wolf comes at him in the dark." He pointed at Cinder. "I’ve got a hole in my kit and four years of work to do again. And the man who put that hole there is the same one who owns her."
He was quiet a moment.
"She tried to stand up. When I came into the light. Did you see it?"
"I saw it."
"She got her head off her paws for you. An inch of ember came up in her flank for you, then went out." His voice did not change. "There’s not enough left in her to face a threat for one breath."
"A D-bloodline. He bred her to stand in front of men like me without having to try. His own cold took her down to where trying nearly kills her."
"You’re the lamplighter."
Aiden did not answer.
"The one with the Venomspine and the shadow." The tracker tipped his head at the kit bag in the firelight. "The clerks have talked about nothing else for a fortnight. A lamplighter walked into the Inner Ring, stood in front of a panel, and made Harken Vane put a paper down. I didn’t need to see your face."
"Why did you walk in here?"
"Because I don’t put guesses on a Baron’s desk." The tracker crouched, slow, and put his hands open on his knees where they could be seen. "I had to see her alive with my own eyes. I had to see whether she was bonded. She is. That’s the report."
"You knew I could kill you from here."
"I knew it on the road." He did not sound worried about it. "I track both beasts and men for a living. I’m tracking one who slowed on the road to light a fire that would expose him for a broken beast. That man doesn’t knife a messenger in the dark."
He stood.
"I’m going to report it. Don’t mistake that for anything else. I’ll put it on the Baron’s desk myself. The beast is alive. She’s bonded. Bonded to the flagged man from the stake row, the one his paper was already about."
"I know."
"Anyone who finds the Baron’s beast and hides it goes into the cold room next." He paused. "I’ve already lost one asset this week. I’m not adding myself to it."
"I know."
"You’re not going to kill me to stop it."
"No."
Aiden said it without moving out of the dark.
Killing him buys a quiet that lasts one night.
The charter crew’s already west. This one only knows more. That changes how fast the report lands on the baron’s desk, not if it does.
"Killing you stops one mouth," he said. "The charter crew’s already west. A body at my fire just tells them where to start."
He let that sit.
"And I’ve spent my whole life being the thing a House steps on. I’m not going to step on someone to buy a day I’m going to spend on her anyway."
The tracker looked at him a while longer than he had before. Not friendly. Adjusting his opinion.
"I’ll give you something for free," the tracker said. "Not because you spared me. Because I want you carrying it while you walk."
He stepped back toward the dark he had come out of.
"The Baron froze her the first time with a thing his men carry on a pole. The cold-iron. You saw the crew set it."
"I saw it."
"That’s the small one. The travelling one. It’s a shard from something bigger that doesn’t move. A room under the baron’s mansion. That’s where they took her down."
Aiden’s hand went still on the blade.
A room.
"What he sends now isn’t going to be a pole," the tracker said. "The crew that staked her den were takers. Slates and hooks. That’s not what comes next."
He was a shape at the edge of the light.
"He’ll send tamers. Four of them, maybe five, with beasts bred to put men down and handlers who’ve done it before. They won’t be on foot, either."
"And the room?"
"She’s worth a charter and a scandal both now. He’ll bring the room to her, or her to the room. Bringing a room is slow."
"How long?"
"The room? Long enough to get her to a forge." The last of his shape against the dark. "Not long enough for you to do anything after that."
He turned to go.
"One more thing, and then I’m gone." He was almost out of the light. "I’m walking this road west tonight. The report’s on his desk by morning. It takes a day to put four mounted tamers together and point them."
"They come out the same road I’m walking."
"They come out the same road you’re walking." The tracker sounded almost pleased about it. "You’ve got until they’re saddled, lamplighter. After that you’re on open ground with a wolf that can’t run."
He went west, toward the desk his report was going to.
The dark took him.
Nyx did not move against Aiden’s side. It had no work to do on a man walking away.
Aiden listened to the bootfall until the burn swallowed it. Then he came out of the trees to the fire.
Cinder’s head was still up.
She had held it up through the discussion. The scent was thinning now. She let her head down, slow, onto the cat bedded in her chest.
The cat did not wake.
Aiden crouched and put his hand on her skull, above the eyes.
You tried to get between me and him.
You can barely lift your own head, and you tried.
She pushed up into his palm, about an inch, which was all she had. Then she stopped.
The boy had heard every word. He sat with his back against the green. His eyes were wide, and he had not blinked in a while.
"He’s going to tell the Baron everything."
"He’s going to tell the Baron the truth." Aiden did not look up from Cinder. "The truth was always getting there. Now I know what’s behind it."
"That’s not better."
"No. It’s just known."
He got the kit bag onto his shoulder. Miasma was still on top of it. She did not stir when he lifted her.
He put two fingers on her spines and left them there a moment.
Sleep. I’ll carry you.
Then he looked west.
A day and a half of country between this fire and the forge district.
A forge could only warm her. Warm was not D. Putting her back where she was born meant a bloodline acknowledgement from an ancient relic or a trial. Perhaps even an evolution he did not have the years to pay for.
And a city he had to walk a dying beast into. The only heat big enough was sitting inside the walls of the man who wanted her back.
He banked the fire down to coals.
"Get up," he said, loud to make it real.
Cinder got up.
Her legs went like the third pup’s had at the end. Not putting much in. Doing it anyway. She came off the warm ground and put herself at his heel.
Aiden reached back and pushed her shoulder forward until she was beside him.
She stayed there, same confusion.
"Better," he said.
He turned west and started walking into the dark.
A cold wolf on his left. A day and a half of country in front of him.
And in the city’s first ring, behind a wall he could not walk through, a room already turning over. Waiting to take her down a third time.