To Saiya, it was another day in the Lowwards outside the high stone walls of Verinna.
She had spent eleven years learning the shape of being on the wrong side of them. Which streets the market spilled into on a busy day, which alleys went quiet after dark, which route was the quickest way home towards the River District. Today the square was filled, Highward and Lowward alike, and she was winning.
“Give it back, that’s mine,” a Highward boy frowned, watching his prized glass marble roll neatly into her palm.
“No. It was yours. And I won it, fair and square,” she grinned, seeing his temper rise. “Upset? Because you lost to one of us? Or because you lost to a girl?” The children around her howled. This had been her whole morning, dusty knees and the click of glass and clay, the small fierce pleasure of winning something off someone who thought they were above them.
The noise of the market fell when the first bell came, thundering from the citadel, high on the mountain above them. All heads turned toward it in fear.
She felt it in her bones, the way the sound dropped and echoed across the city, her heart matching in pace. More bells followed, from the Order temples to the Royal Palace at the walled city’s heart, one bronze throat after another taking up the warning until all Verinna was shouting the same word. Run.
She was on her feet before the marbles finished scattering, the Highward children they were competing with already gone.
Above the rooftops the sky had torn, a seam of violet light, widening at its edges. By the sounds of screaming and the way the ground vibrated with running feet, the Rift was close.
She seized the nearest child by the wrist and shouted for the rest, voice swallowed by the panic already racing through the street.
“Stay close!” She stirred one boy ahead of her as another grabbed her shirt. “Don’t let go of each other! Don’t stop!”
The marbles were gone, rolling into gutters, crushed under boots. It didn’t matter. They could always win more glass. They could not win if they came face to face with what came out of a Rift.
The main road had become a single panicked animal, all elbows and cries of fear as everyone ran for the gate. The merchants that had travelled from all around Novareth Novareth had gone through first with their carts, the iron doors always stood open for coin. By the time half of the market had emptied, the gate was grinding down on the rest of them.
The wards that protected Verinna stopped at the wall and so did the city’s mercy.
Saiya had been raised on the Council’s promise that the protection would reach further one day. When the old texts gave up their secrets, when the Rune-Masters had enough metal. When, when, when. Her father had a word for that promise. A pretty stone, he called it, polished smooth and passed hand to hand so no one looked too hard at the empty pocket it came from. They had been polishing it for centuries.
The gate was already down by the time they reached it, chains shrieking as the last of the barrier dragged into place. She didn’t waste a breath. She pulled left instead, toward the western plinth where the walls bulged outward, her friend Iris and her siblings at her heels along with half a dozen children who should have stayed closer to home where they belonged.
“Are you sure it’s this one?” Iris dropped to a crouch as they stopped, dragging the youngest down with her.
Saiya didn’t answer. She was already tracing the stone with her fingers the way her father had taught her, palm flat, hunting the groves for the one place where it went smooth. There. The swirl under her fingertips, under it the seam he had traced a hundred times while she complained she would never need to use the tunnel.
Four strokes. Left. Up. Down. Right.
She felt a pulse as marks appeared on the rock and the wall breathed open.
To her surprise, someone was already on the other side.
Two boys older than her, fourteen or fifteen, one with dark hair the other golden brown, staring back with the same shock she could feel on her own face. Highwards, head to foot, coats cut by someone paid well, clean boots, and the easy way they held themselves. Behind them, deeper inside, were more.
She felt the change in posture of those at her back. The children drawing their hoods up. Even Iris, who lived within the walls of Verinna, pulled her cloak across her face. Saiya bristled, stood her ground, and lifted her chin.
“What in Thyran’dai,” the fairer haired boy took a step back.
“It isn’t the Nerathi,” the dark-haired boy called into the dark. Grey eyes, moving over her huddle and dismissing them as he turned his head. “Just Lows.”
She knew the words they used to those born in the Lowwards. Lows. Lowborn. Dustrats. Each one stung. She let none of them reach too deeply into her chest, only held his stare when he faced her again until the corner of his mouth pulled down.
“You didn’t even touch the wall, Corin.” The fairer boy was shaking his head, half a laugh in his tone. “The tunnel didn’t open for you. So how did she—”
Corin’s face hardened, cutting off his friend, eyes on Saiya. “What are you doing here?”
A monstrous cry came up from the streets behind them, and every child at her back flinched as one. The sound crawled over her skin. They were coming closer.
“Taking a stroll,” Sarcasm drenched in her tone. She couldn’t believe his ignorance. “What do you think we’re doing? We’re trying to get away from it! The gate’s shut. So, unless you’d like to watch us die out here, let us through.”
He swore under his breath and stood aside. “In. All of you. Now.”
Saiya herded them in the wide yet dim passage, the stone scraping their shoulders as they pressed against the near wall. Each one walked in hesitantly, unwilling to go a step deeper than they had to despite the Rift and its creatures roaring at their backs. Simply because the dark ahead of them was not empty, holding a different kind of enemy.
“Just leave them where they belong.”
“Lowborn scum.”
“There are enough Dustrats inside the wall already.”
She felt the children around her shrink, shoulders dropping, and something in her went hard and cold.
“None of you would last a day on our side of the wall,” she shouted towards the faceless voices. “’So, stop acting like you’re better than us. Close the tunnel.”
Corin hadn’t moved and was still eyeing her.
“No one outside the wall should know about this tunnel,” his gaze was wary and curious at the same time. “So how do you?”
For half a breath she almost told him. My father showed me. She swallowed the words before they escaped her lips. “How should I know? It opened. That’s all that matters. Will you just shut the tunnel?”
“It can’t be that bad out there. The Riftguards always handle it,” a boy in the dark called out.
Saiya shook her head in disbelief, turning an angry voice towards the dark once again, “You have no idea, do you? You don’t live outside the walls.”
Corin paused and his hand lifted toward the seam to close it. Just then, they heard a cheer from the walls above. Highwards were leaning over, watching the fight unfold from the safety of the walls. The fair-haired boy was already leaning past him, grinning at the violet light bleeding down the street, “Sounds like we’re winning. Let’s take a look.”
“Hal wait, stay behind me,” Corin went a pace after him, and Saiya instinctively caught a fistful of his retreating cloak.
“Are you mad? Get back inside!”
Corin glared at her, “Why are you still here? Get back inside!”
“Don’t fret,” Hal’s grin didn’t budge, one hand resting on the clean little sword at his waist as his blue eyes glittered with excitement. “My sister’s out there.”
She stared at him. “Softbloods with no brains.”
“Petty.” Corin turned back to her, silver eyes flashing. “You scold them about name-calling, then throw it back just as easily?”
“And who started throwing names in the first place?” Her teeth clenched. He wasn’t wrong, and it made the insult sour in her tongue. “We’re not lower than you. Stepping out into a Rift with a sword that’s never been used only proves what they say about Highwards.”
“Which is?” His brow rose as he folded his arms over his chest.
“That coin doesn’t buy common sense.”
He bristled then leaned forward. “We’re not going out there to fight. Only look. We can handle ourselves.”
“With those?” Her gaze flicked to the near pristine short swords and laughed. “You’re no Riftguard.”
“Neither are you,” he retorted. “On top of that, you shouldn’t know about this tunnel. Only members of the court, the guards and a select few Riftguards know about this. You treat the rules like an insult when it is there to protect the city. This is why Lowwards can’t be trusted.”
“Rules that you get to bend and we don’t?” She sank into a mocking bow. “Forgive me, your highness. I’ll go die quietly out of your way since you’re obviously on official business.”
His jaw tightened and for half a breath she thought her sarcasm landed an insult. Then something small shot past all of them, a younger boy with short dark hair and a sword too big for his hands.
“Lyric!” Corin lunged and missed by inches.
“I only want to see!” Lyric called, already gone round the corner. “Before it’s over!”
Saiya’s feet moved without thinking, preparing to chase the idiotic Highward child down and drag him back.
Stupid Wardpets.
Disbelief ran through her mind, even as her feet carried her out into the open.
Hands caught her shoulders and threw her back.
Her spine hit stone hard enough to empty her lungs. She came up off the wall with a startled gasp for air, fury where breath should have been and glared at the slate-grey eyes looking down at her.
“Stay here!”
“I know these streets,” her face red, straightening instantly to face him. “My father’s a Riftguard. I can find him faster than—”
“So is Hal’s sister,” Corin’s eyes cut to the corner where the small boy had gone, his shoulders tense. His friend Hal was out of the tunnel, glancing back and forth between them. “I’m not dealing with a half-wild girl with a death wish on top of finding him.”
“I can move faster than—”
“Stay here and don’t—”
“You’ll die out there—”
“Nasg!”
One turn of his fingers and her hands snapped back to the stone as though iron had closed round her wrists. Except there was no iron, only a cold weight biting in, and a low hum waking in the rock at her back. She threw her whole weight forward, yet the bind didn’t give.
Rune magic. A simple binding word spell, not one any ordinary citizen knew, the kind of thing kept locked behind the Council. Whoever he was, he was no idle Highward boy.
“Unbind me! You can’t do this!” She screamed.
“I can and I will.” His eyes went again to the corner, darkening in panic. “It’ll fade in a few minutes.” He spoke past her, into the dark. “Don’t let them out until it’s over. No matter what she says.”
Hal was already in the street, a half-smile on his face, the same one plastered there since the start of their argument. “He couldn’t have gone far, we’ll find Lyric. But you really could stand to learn how to talk to girls, mate.”
“Just move, Hal. We need to find my brother.”
The wall sealed.
Saiya struggled against the binds until there was nothing left in her, screaming at closed tunnel entrance. The cold weight on her wrists held long after the boys’ footsteps had gone, then released all at once, so that her hands dropped to her sides as if they were never there. Iris’s hand found her shoulder. Neither of them spoke. The other Highwards, in the dark behind them, didn’t either as the sounds of screams and battle continued outside.
When the bells finally stopped, she opened the wall herself and stepped out.
The fight was over. Riftguards moved among the fallen, healers running towards those who needed aid. She looked for the boys. She looked for her father in every dark uniform.
She did not find him.
It was a week before Iris found her under the willow by the River Stagra, near the circle of standing stones where they had scattered what the Rift attack had left them of her father. Only ash that wasn’t completely him, because there had been little left to give the fire. The Nerathi saw to that.
Iris looked hollowed out, as though the week had eaten her from the inside. She sat down without a word and laid a fistful of wildflowers at the foot of the tree, among the others already gone brown in the sun. Saiya did not ask where she had been, but she felt that she understood. Her parents probably kept her inside, punishing her for being beyond the walls, afraid to let her go past the city again. The Rift had been the worst the city had seen in years. But Iris had always been stubborn about loyalty.
For a long while neither of them spoke. The wind moved in the willow and the river kept its own counsel. Saiya had no tears left. She had spent them in the first days, and now there was only the flat numb weight where her father’s voice should have been as well as the dagger in her lap, his favourite, the one he had taught her with.
Iris spoke; eyes turned to the river.
“They’ve finished the counting,” her voice cracking. “Five Riftguards gone. I– I’m so sorry. About your father. I heard that he was the only one found.”
Saiya had no words. Hearing it said so gently still took something out of her she hadn’t known she still had.
“Over thirty injured. But fifty-three are still missing. Four Highwards. The other forty-nine—” Iris didn’t finish. They both knew who she was referring to.
“I still can’t believe how bad it was, how much worse it could have been if you hadn’t found the tunnel. We could have—” Iris stopped, and pulled a thread loose from her sleeve, the way she always did when she was agitated. “Do you think the others were taken through?”
Taken through. Four Riftguards. Fifty-three citizens. Pulled screaming into the Rift by monsters, swallowed by the tear in the sky, their only way home sewn shut behind them. Saiya turned the dagger over in her hands, still staring at the river. She shuddered, remembering the screams and nodded once. “May the Veil know their name.”
“May the Veil know their name,” Iris echoed quietly. She paused before she continued. “Remember the boys in the tunnel?” Iris finally turned to her. The shakiness of her voice made something in Saiya’s stomach drop.
“What about them?”
“They saved the boy that ran out ahead. Lyric.”
A small sliver of relief moved through her, and right behind it, anger.
“Good for him.”
“One leg broken but he is lucky to be alive. The other two though,” Iris went on, twisting another thread loose. “They didn’t make it.”
“Oh.” Saiya swallowed. “Taken through?”
“No. They found their bodies.”
Saiya shut her eyes and breathed out, “They shouldn’t have gone out. I told them. We tried to stop them.”
“I know,” Iris nodded, then sniffed. “After they saved Lyric, they got cornered.”
Saiya looked out to the river, imagining the worst. I told them. Stupid Highwards.
“But they came back. Reborn.”
The wind seemed to stop. Saiya turned her head and saw, for the first time, how red Iris’s eyes were. How she trembled.
“A day later. Both. Marked. The youngest anyone can remember. They’re to be made Riftguards when they’re eighteen. Corin and Hal. They’re being sent to Vaerngard now, to begin training.”
Saiya saw the grief sitting plain on her friend’s face and touched her shoulder to steady her as she shook.
“Did you know them?”
“Family friends,” Iris answered quickly. “I couldn’t show my face that day. You know my parents would never let me out again if they knew I’d gone past the walls.”
Saiya nodded, guilt weighing down on her shoulders. “I’m… sorry.”
Her father had come back once, dying as a city guard not long after she was born, then returning to life marked, to serve as a Riftguard instead. The Veil had handed him his gift the way it had just handed it to a boy whose pride and ignorance ignored her warnings and pinned her wrists to a wall. The same gift. Or perhaps it was a curse. To be taken out of one life, forced to serve in another, only to die again. Those boys died, then returned. Her father did once, but now he was gone. No one returned a second time.
She didn’t know what to feel.
She hated that boy, Corin, for the way he’d spoken to her, for binding her hands, for taking from her the right to act on her own terms. She felt the loss of her father even more sharply for it. The anger. The grief. Maybe, if she’d been out there, she could have warned him. Saved him. Saved the boys who ran out of the safety their precious runed walls.
She felt sorry and livid at the same time. They hadn’t deserved it yet was certain that somehow it could have never been avoided. She had warned them, yet they hadn’t listened. Highwards never did.
She leaned into Iris who leaned back against her as they stared out at the river, the two girls small against the high walls of Verinna behind them, a city that had decided who was worth keeping safe inside it.
Saiya closed her hand around her father’s dagger until the hilt went warm in her grip, the way it must once have gone warm in his. She promised herself that she would never let it go.