Chapter 93: THE BEAST BENEATH THE TREE
They went around the basin of burned trees instead of through it.
A hundred yards of warm ground separated the reeds from the fire-grid. Aiden crawled the first yards on his belly. He kept one hand on Cinder’s dark flank.
Down among the fires, the white shape held its head up toward the slope.
Be another current of warm air. Nobody hunts the wind.
The Frost Wolf held its head up toward them the whole time. The handlers kept adjusting their fire-lines around it and waited. Whatever had made the Frost Wolf stop wasn’t their concern.
Then it lowered its head and walked into the next line of flame.
"It’s not sure," Aiden breathed. "Good. Let’s be wind."
Cinder had no interest in being the wind.
He felt it in her flank. The cold that dropped her fire in the basin hid something underneath. It was not fear.
It was the slow anger of a wolf deciding she would settle this later.
He put more weight on his hand.
"Not tonight. Look at me. Not tonight." He kept his voice under the crackle of the fires. "We came for a piece of fruit. We’re leaving with a piece of fruit. You’re going to be very disappointed by how little fighting that involves. That’s the whole plan. Fruit. Disappointment. Home."
She let him keep his hand there. That was all she gave him.
They took the long way, keeping low along the dead ground at the rim of the basin.
The tree stood where the burner had said it would. Opposite the basin, away from the grid, alone on a rise.
It was taller than the dead things around it and split white down one side where the lightning had gone in. Fruit hung along the low branches. Round, fist-sized, blacker than the bark.
Then he saw what sat beneath the tree, and stopped looking at the fruit.
The Hound was white-gold even in the dark.
That’s wrong. Nothing is coloured in the dark.
It did not catch the light. It made light. A low gold ran through the whole coat. Cinder carried ember in patches. This animal carried it everywhere.
Bigger than Cinder. Bigger than the Frost Wolf below. A creature that had stopped measuring itself against others long ago.
It sat under the tree, forepaws together, head up.
It was not asleep. It had been watching them come since before they were visible.
Cinder stopped dead.
All the anger in her went out at once. The heat. The settle-it look. All of it.
She did not drop. She did not bristle.
She lowered her head half an inch and went completely still.
Cinder had faced a crew who came to take her and burned her den down.
She had never once made herself smaller.
"All right," Aiden said. "You know what that is and I don’t. That’s not the split I’d have picked."
The Hound looked at Cinder.
A long look. Unhurried. An old animal observing a younger one.
Then it looked at Aiden.
And it did what the burner had tried to describe and failed.
It looked at him. Not his hands. Not his weapon.
At him. The proctor had that look. So had Marsh. The one that finds the part of you worth finding.
Then it looked past him.
Over his shoulder. At the dark behind him, where nobody stood.
Has it been waiting?
It’s checking whether whatever it’s waiting for came with me.
The hair rose on Aiden’s neck. The cold from the basin had never done that.
"There’s nobody behind me," he said to the Hound, quietly. Because something that looked at you like that had earned an answer. "It’s just us. Me and her and a cat who didn’t come, which it’ll regret missing this."
The Hound looked back at him. At his side. Under his coat. At the exact spot Nyx was hiding. Nyx shifted up as if offended.
Aiden pressed her back before she could push through his coat.
Then the Hound’s eyes shifted to his kit bag, where he had put Miasma. Miasma gave nothing back.
The hound looked back at Aiden.
So much for just us. It had counted the ones he carried without needing to be told.
Aiden held the Hound’s gaze.
It did not seem disappointed. It looked like something remembering an appointment.
Then it stood.
Aiden’s hand went to the knife in his boot and stopped there.
A knife against that is a joke I can’t land.
The Hound did not come at them.
It stepped sideways, off its place at the foot of the tree, and stood clear of the low branches.
The branches with the fruit on them.
It looked at Aiden. Then at the fruit. Then back at Aiden.
It’s standing aside.
It sat on this tree and turned a grown burner white. Now it’s stepping off for me.
He did not move yet.
Four years of locked yards taught me nothing is free. The free things cost the most.
"You sat on this tree and scared a burner off his cart," he said. "Now you’re moving for me. Why? What’s the price?"
The Hound waited.
"Right. No answer. That’s fine. Everyone I’ve met this month has been cryptic at me. You’re just the first one with teeth that size."
He waited. The Hound waited longer.
Aiden went to the tree.
He passed within the Hound’s reach. Close enough to smell scorched grass and something older.
The Hound did not turn its head.
He looked up.
Four fruits left on the whole tree, and three of them still green.
One ripe. That’s what I get. Lightning made this tree once and won’t make it again until next season.
One fruit. One chance. And I’ve got 1.3 years to spend it in.
He cut the ripe fruit down with his knife. His last finger was still numb from the cold. He fumbled the cut, with Cinder and the Hound both watching him do it.
The fruit sat warm in his palm. Warmer than the night. Warm like something alive.
He felt the wrongness before he understood it.
He sliced the fruit skin. It hissed. A thin sound, water hitting a hot pan.
Something welled up in the cut that was not juice.
It glowed. Low and red. It moved like a coal shifting under ash.
Liquid fire, beading on his palm without burning him. His hand was a man’s hand. The fire was not for men.
The marches, the wall, the sewer, a basin full of men and the animal that wants Cinder dead.
For a piece of fruit that’s angry about being picked.
"This is it," he said. "This is what we came for."
He looked at Cinder.
"This is what turns you into whatever survives that basin."
Cinder’s nose came toward the fruit.
Her fire came up. Not banked, not careful. A hard, fast bloom of ember in every patch at once. A starving animal smelling food it was built for.
She wanted it. The wanting came off her like heat off the basin.
The Hound made a sound.
Not a growl. Lower. One deep note, almost too low to hear, and Aiden felt it in the fruit before he heard it in the air.
Cinder’s bloom stopped.
She looked at the Hound. The Hound looked back. Something passed between them that Aiden was not part of.
An older beast teaching a younger one.
The wanting in Cinder dropped back to a banked ache.
"What did you tell her?"
The Hound said nothing. Beasts don’t answer.
But it looked at the fruit in his hand. Then down at the basin, where the fires burned, and the Frost Wolf worked. Then back at Aiden.
It did it twice. Slowly. So even a man could follow.
The fruit. The basin. The man.
It’s not warning me off. It’s pointing at the fire.
This doesn’t get eaten. It gets burned. And it needs a fire like the one down there to burn it in.
Aiden closed his hand around the warm, hissing fruit.
The smith told me. The next form wants real fire, and fire wants a forge to be worked in.
I have the fuel.
He looked down at the basin. Then west, toward the city wall he could not see.
And nowhere to burn it.
One forge is a hundred yards from the animal built to put her out. The other is behind the Hearthstone Chamber door, with my name crossed off the list.
The Hound sat back down at the foot of its tree.
Whatever it had come here to do, it was finished. It watched them go the same way it had watched them come.
The last thing Aiden saw, slipping back along the dead rim, was its head turning once more.
Not after them.
Behind them. At the dark. At the nobody who had not come.
Waiting for someone.
And it isn’t me.
It was never me.
I’m just the one who showed up.