CHAPTER FOUR

  -Leave the Chains in Your Head

  I. The First Passage: The Great Reflection

  “Before there were lands or names, there was only the wide water and the Blue Sky watching itself in the world’s mirror.”

  –The Song of Creation

  as carved upon the Ulankara Obelisks

  The boy woke to the sound of steel on wood.

  For a heartbeat he thought it was a chain. His legs jerked. His hands clawed for dirt that wasn't there. Cold air hit his face and he sucked in a panicked breath that tasted of smoke and boiled meat, not rot. Not the pit. He didn't remember when sleep had taken him, only the man's voice by the fire and the way the cabin's thin warmth had soaked into his bones until his body stopped listening to his head.

  He lay stiff on the narrow bed, staring up at the dark rafters until his heart slowed. No weight on his ankles. No ring cutting his skin. Just a thin blanket, a rough mattress, and a plain ceiling above him. The sound came again. Not a chain this time, but a knife tapping rhythmically against a board.

  Turning his head, he found the man already up, of course. The table near the hearth had him hunched over it, shoulders rounded under his worn shirt as he cut something pale, some root-like thing, into thin slices. The fire was banked low, a red glow under the ash. Snowlight leaked through the shutters in a thin gray band.

  Iye was a curled ball of fur on the shelf, tail over her nose. Only the flick of one tufted ear said she wasn't asleep.

  "You breathe loud," the man said without looking up.

  The boy swallowed. His throat felt dry, the taste sour. "I thought I was…" He stopped. There was no good way to finish that.

  "Back there?" The man's knife didn't slow. "You aren't. Sit up."

  The boy pushed himself upright. Every muscle protested. His ribs ached deep, ghosts of the breaks that had already knitted under Iye's strange touch. His arms and legs felt heavy, chains still clinging there in spirit. He swung his feet to the floor and hissed when his bare soles met the cold planks.

  "Good," the man said. "The boards are cold enough. You won't fall asleep standing."

  He set the knife down and slid the sliced roots into a pot that already steamed faintly.

  "Eat first. After that, work. Get up.”

  The boy stood. The room tilted for a breath before it steadied. He rubbed his arms, teeth chattering once before he could stop them.

  Iye opened one eye, a slit of cold blue.

  "You look worse than when you were dying," she said.

  He glared at her, but it didn't have much weight. "I was warmer in the pit."

  "That's because you were rotting," she said. "Rot keeps heat."

  The man snorted once. He ladled thick, pale stew into a chipped bowl and set it on the table. "Sit. Eat. Quickly."

  The boy obeyed. The stew was mostly roots and a little meat, salted enough to make his tongue sting. It was hot, and that's all that mattered. He ate until the bottom of the bowl showed and his belly hurt.

  "Good," the man said again. "You'll need it."

  "For what?" the boy asked.

  The man pulled on his heavy coat and reached for the door latch. "For carrying wood. And water. And for learning to walk."

  "I already know how to walk," the boy muttered.

  "If that were true, you wouldn't sound like a dragged kettle," Iye said.

  The man nodded toward the foot of the bed, where a patched coat and a pair of boots waited in a small, careful heap.

  "Those were mine once," he said. "I cut them down so you wouldn't freeze. Put them on."

  He opened the door. Cold knifed through the room. Snowlight flooded in, bright enough to make the boy blink.

  "Come," the man said. "Bring your coat. Your boots. Leave the chains in your head where they are. We'll scrape them out later."

  Outside, the forest stood in hard white silence. Snow lay thick around the little cabin, packed down in a rough oval by a single set of footprints and the path the man used. Beyond that circle, the drift rose almost to the lower branches. The trees were black bones against a flat sky. The man led him to a woodshed stacked with split logs. Logs were stacked there in neat rows, each piece split to nearly the same size.

  "First lesson," the man said. "If you want fire, you feed it. Take from the pile, carry to the box by the hearth, stack it right. Don't be slow."

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The man handed the boy a log. It was heavier than it looked. The boy wrapped his arms around it and staggered a little as he turned.

  "Stop," the man said.

  The boy froze.

  "Look at you," the man went on. "Bent, eyes on the snow, clutching one piece of wood like it's going to run away. If that were a market street instead of my yard, anyone with half a mind would look at you and think something’s wrong with that one."

  "There is," Iye said from the doorway. She had followed them out, paws barely sinking into the snow. "His face."

  The boy flushed. "I'm carrying wood."

  "You're advertising fear," the man said. "Straighten your back."

  He hesitated before he obeyed. His ribs complained, but he drew himself up.

  "Now look ahead," the man said. "Not at your feet. Take in the space. Two trees, the wood shed, the cabin, the chimney. Count without moving your lips. What do you see?"

  "Trees," the boy said.

  The man's eyes narrowed.

  "And?" he asked.

  "Snow. Your…" The boy's tongue stumbled. "Your cabin. Smoke. I used to do this," the boy said. "Back at the fort."

  The man's eyes sharpened. "Did you?"

  "Counted steps. Watched patrols. Tried to find gaps."

  "Good," the man went on, voice flat. "It means your head works. Now we teach your body to stop betraying you."

  The boy's jaw clenched.

  "How many ways out of this yard," the man asked, "if the main path is blocked?"

  The boy looked around. The flanks of the cabin, the space between the wood shed and the wall, the path to the trees that would be chest-deep snow for him and not for someone taller, stronger, faster. Not yet.

  "I don't know," he said.

  "Start thinking about it," the man said. "When you go into real streets, you need to see exits before trouble finds you. Carry the wood again. This time without hunching like you still have a ring on your leg."

  The boy took a breath and walked. His shoulders wanted to curl. His eyes wanted to watch the snow, the place where his feet would land. He forced himself to keep his spine straight, to look at the doorway instead. His steps felt wrong, like wearing a stranger's boots, but the man said nothing as he passed.

  He stacked the log in the box by the hearth and trudged back. Again. Again. The pile shrank, the box filled. His arms burned. The cold cut at his cheeks and nose until they went numb. By the time the last log was in place, sweat prickled his back despite the air. His breath rasped in his ears. He leaned a hand against the doorframe.

  "You sound like you swallowed the bell," Iye said.

  "Water," the man said. "Then again."

  "Again?" the boy asked, horrified.

  By midday his shoulders were one long ache. You could be tired in every part of your body and still be told to move. When the wood box was finally full, a wet trail of melted snow ran from the door to the hearth.

  "Sit," the man said at last. "There."

  The boy half fell onto the low stool near the fire. The man crossed to the far wall. It wasn't a large cabin. One room, really, divided by use instead of walls. Hearth and table at the front. Bed pressed against the back corner. A heavy chest sat under the narrow rear window, its iron-banded lid scarred, stained.

  The boy's gaze had gone back to that corner more than once since he'd arrived. The sword and the dull curve of metal he'd first seen hanging from the peg were gone now, the long wrapped bundle no longer leaning against the wall. The Hermit had stowed them away in the chest under the window, but even with the lid shut the boy could feel the weight of them there.

  The man knelt and dragged the chest out from the wall. The iron rings on its sides squealed faintly.

  "Get up," he said.

  The boy's legs protested, but he stood. "What are we doing?"

  "Learning another thing," the man said. He set his hand on the lid. "You keep staring at this every time you think I'm not looking. Better to open a box than let your head gnaw on it."

  He flipped the lid open. The smell of old leather and oil and metal rose up, sharp even over the wood smoke. Inside lay the armor the boy remembered. A breastplate, marked with faint lines where some emblem had been scraped away. Pauldrons, gauntlets, a mail shirt folded underneath. The sword rested along one side, wrapped in cloth that had once been white.

  The boy stepped closer without meaning to. He'd seen metal before, on the Steppes and in the fort: riders with old blades and iron spearheads, wardens in boiled leather, stiff, stained. The overseer had carried a sword, but ugly, brutally practical, a thing of cheap iron with a notched edge. This metal looked different. Better. The lines were clean. Even dulled by disuse, the pieces felt… intentional.

  He reached out and froze, hand hovering.

  "May I?" he asked.

  "No," the man said.

  The boy pulled his fingers back.

  "You were…" He searched for the right word in Zhanar, then gave up and used the steppe tongue. "You were a warrior. No. A chosen one. A… qutbatur."

  The man's mouth tightened. "That's your word for it," he said. "On the Steppes you say qutbatur. In the Zhanar cities they say blessed warrior. Where I come from they said knight."

  "A knight, then," the boy said, switching back. The word tasted strange. He'd heard it in stories, spoken by traders who had passed through the Steppes. Men in bright armor. Banners snapping in clean wind. "Like in the tales."

  The man's eyes had gone distant, past the chest and past the boy, fixed on something behind both.

  "That's what they called me," he said finally. "Once."

  "Who?" the boy asked.

  The man's gaze snapped back, hard again. "People who taught me that titles are chains you lock on yourself," he said. His hand came down on the lid, closing it with a firm thud. "You're not ready for this weight. Your back will break under it. For now, you learn to stand at all."

  He shoved the chest back against the wall, making the planks shiver. The boy held his questions behind his teeth. He'd learned at the fort that some kinds of curiosity earned blows. Here, he wasn't sure yet where the lines were. Still, the word hung in his chest like a coal.

  A knight. A qutbatur. A man who'd carried a blade with a name. If he trained here, if he lived long enough, would he become something like that, or something else? Or would he just be better meat?

  His thoughts must have shown on his face, because the man said, "You won't reach the Steppes by staring at armor, Chanyu. Up. We have more to do before dark."

  They worked until his arms shook with whatever task the man gave him. Balancing on the packed snow behind the cabin while the man pushed him with a stick to test his footing. Standing still with a bucket held out at arm's length until his shoulders screamed. Walking the same short path with different loads and different instructions: eyes closed, eyes open, counting steps, listing sounds.

  "When you walk through people, they feel you before they see you," the man said, tapping a knuckle under the boy's ribs. "They feel where your weight goes. Hunched shoulders. Sudden steps. Eyes that jump. Don't give them that."

  "I haven't walked through people in a long time," the boy said through his teeth. The bucket in his hands trembled. "Only away from them."

  The boy stumbled back into the cabin, every limb heavy. He sank onto the stool again and watched with dull fascination as the man set another pot over the fire.

  Iye jumped down from the shelf and landed on the table without a sound.

  "You survived your first day," she said. "Didn't even fall on your face at the end."

  He glared at her. "You could help."

  "I did," she said. "I told him when you were about to fall."

  "She sleeps too much and talks very little," he said. "But by her nature her eyes miss very little. Listen when she bothers to speak."

  "Who, me?" Iye said, tail curling. "I just saved his sorry ass. That's already more than enough. And it's only your assumption that I'm sleeping."

  The boy huffed a tired laugh before he could stop himself. The sound surprised him. It had been a long time since anything in his days made that shape. The man glanced over his shoulder, hearing it too and checking that it really belonged to the boy.

  He turned back to the pot. "Good," he said quietly. "Eat, and afterward sleep. Tomorrow we do it again.”