Outsiders 14.2

Outsiders on the Run, Part 2

Kiva stood on an empty square in the city of Lochmire Keep, staring at the gallows the Chosen's forces had erected and left up. This was where it had happened. This was where Zaman had killed her friends, and made a show of it.

She didn't know what she'd expected.

When word had first reached Shadefall that a group of outsiders had tried to assassinate Zaman and been executed, Kiva's stomach had dropped. Her father tried to get her to see sense, to remind her that there were other outsiders in Xykesh, and that Arden and the Waymire sisters had no reason to go after Zaman. But she wouldn't hear it. Not when everyday, the sinking dread in her chest only grew worse.

So she packed a bag. Her father wouldn't go with her. He hadn't left Shadefall since before Kiva's mother had died. But she didn't care. She'd have gone alone if she had to.

Mercifully, she didn't. Bai and Li, the two men who ran a novelty store in town, were making a trip to Lochmire Keep to purchase some things they couldn't get in Shadefall, and were happy to take on an extra passenger. When Daniel Shen heard where she was going and why, he and Thomas came too. 

They found the city of Lochmire in a state of quiet unrest. People were still nailing holy symbols to their doors or hanging out sticks of burning incense to ward off undead. Entire streets had been cordoned off while construction crews worked to repair damages from a monster attack. And the Chosen's regiments had all but supplanted the local guard. Urks and elites were on every street, and urks did not have the nuance for civic policing.

Some elites kept their urks under control with specific orders and guidelines. But most didn't. On their first day in the city, Kiva, Daniel, and Thomas watched a man beaten on the street for trying to take a shortcut through one of the closed streets to get to work. The elite that came to stop it seemed more annoyed at the inconvenience of transporting the man to a healer than actually upset about what happened.

Kiva had never been more grateful to Samira Shen for refusing to take urks for Shadefall.

There were public information offices in Lochmire Keep, but Kiva wasn't stupid enough to go them for answers. 

"Yes, hello. Those criminals who were executed for trying to kill the Chosen. Could you tell me who they were? They might have been my friends."

So instead, she'd stuck to what she knew. She had been practically raised in the Scaled Maiden. She knew her way around a tavern, and so she, Daniel, and Thomas visited several in the city, asking careful questions and absorbing rumors. All the while, she prayed she was wrong. That she was wasting their time, and everything was fine.

But she wasn't.

The very first story they claimed one of the outsiders that attacked the chosen had been some kind of "demon girl," and that had been enough for Kiva. There were other outsiders in Xykesh besides List and Valerie. But hellborn outsiders with a penchant for getting herself in trouble?

Bai and Li had only made plans for a two day trip. But Kiva stayed the week. Now that she knew it was them, her friends. She had to know everything. What had happened? Why? It took the week, and tracking down someone who had seen them fight firsthand, but she put enough pieces together to get a rough picture.

Her friends had been attacked, by monsters and by the Pavers, and made a real mess of defending themselves. So Zaman pinned all the city's recent problems on them, and killed them for it. Because of course he had.

And now, Kiva's friends were dead.

Daniel and Thomas were back at the inn they'd been staying at, getting dinner and asking about transportation home. But Kiva had gone out, because she had to see it. Had to see where they'd died.

And now here she was, staring at a bunch of wood scaffolding in a town square as if it could give her anything. There was no closure. No last scrap of them to collect or cling to. Anything that was them was gone, save the bodies that had been turned into their own headstones and tossed into some sick collection.

None of the execution's witnesses would have cared. Nobody knew who they were. Outsiders. Strangers. Nobodies.

An ache far older than Kiva's friendship with the Waymire sisters stirred inside her.

It was like Zaman had erased them. Like he'd erased his predecessor. Like he'd erased her mother, for the sin of being appointed by someone other than him.

Kiva threw her head back and roared. Years old pain coursed through her, sharpened and magnified by this newest loss. The latest thing the King's Chosen had taken from her. Heat swelled in her chest before exploding through her body, seeking release. And her roar, her guttural cry of anguish, ignited flames that spewed into the air.

It was only a quick burst, dissipating as quickly as it formed, but as the fire swept out from her, Kiva felt all the strength leave her body, and she dropped to her knees. Dragonbloods didn't release tears when they cried like humans did, but her keening left her shuddering in the street as she held herself, and her tail thrashed into the ground. Over and over.

When it passed, and the grief finished hollowing her out from the inside, Kiva's jaw clenched. And the fire returned. Not as physical flames, but as rage.

Enough. Zaman had taken enough. She would not let him erase her friends.

Kiva left the square, searching for a shop that would have what she needed. She returned hours later, after making her purchase. The sun had gone down, but her eyes were unhampered by the dark.

She approached the jail just behind the gallows under the cover of darkness, bucket of bright red paint in one hand, brush in the other. She dunked her brush into the bucket with an angry thrust, drew it out like a dagger from a sheath, and she began to paint.

She marked the building that had been her friends' final home with their memorial, She branded it—a reminder to them and all the world of what they'd done, and a warning that it would not go unpunished. The Chosen had taken too much. On that street, as she painted, Kiva swore that he was finished taking from her. That from now on, she would take from him.

She would take, and take, until he had nothing left.

And as a symbol of her promise, she chose the one insignia she could recall that symbolized her friends. Three roses arranged over a shield, a pair of crossed arrows behind it. The symbol of Valerie's family, painted in the bright red of List's powers.

It was just paint. It would be washed off some time tomorrow.

But it was only the first one. Before Kiva was done, she was going to paint that symbol many more times, until Zaman hated the sight of it, and knew what it meant.

That his days as the Chosen were numbered.

"People have been putting that symbol all over the province ever since," Jose said. "Usually, just to tell the Chosen and his people to go fuck a pig. But sometimes, as a real warning, before an attack. Or a signature after. There's talk of it becoming a capital offense to display it. Naturally, that's just made people put it up even more."

"How do know all this?" Valerie asked.

"I am in the business of knowing things," Jose said. "I was curious about the crest when it first went up, and looked into it. I met the dragon girl a few weeks after she first started painting, and I got the story. Since then, I've had a vested interest in keeping tabs on how it's all played out."

No one was more quiet than Valerie as Jose finished telling his story. A mystery figure sneaking across Lochmire Keep in the night, throwing up her family's crest in the weeks after their execution. The symbol spreading to every place where discontent with the Chosen festered, used by both common people tired of being tread upon, and actual rebels.

Whether she'd meant to or not, Kiva had turned them into martyrs.

List looked as disturbed as Valerie felt, but she came at the shock in at a different angle, and asked a question that hadn't occurred to Valerie.

"I'm sorry, did you say weeks?" List asked. "How long have we been gone?"

Jose made a show of rubbing his chin. "Well, now, today is Twosday, so—you were executed a year and two months ago."

"What?"

Everyone but Arden shouted it at the same time. They'd only been on the run for a few days, and being in stone hadn't felt like any time at all, as if they'd been asleep.

A year. Gone.

"Well, that does explain a few things," Arden mused, the only one not visibly disturbed.

"We lost a year?" List asked, voice hollow. Valerie realized how much worse this must feel for her, already having her own lost time to grapple with.

"I don't know if I would call it lost," Jose said, tilting his head noncommittally. "More to say it was . . . moved. For you, and no one else, seeing as you don't age while you're made of rocks. I would assume, at any rate." He paused to consider. "Do you feel a year older?"

"I don't think so?" Kaleb said, staring at himself, but also at nothing. As if the revelation of the lost year had thrown his whole world off balance. "But I don't think I'd notice that much of a difference."

"Well, you haven't missed too much," Jose said with a shrug. "Zaman's closed the province's borders and expanded the regiments. Pockets of rebels are sprouting up almost as fast as he can put them down, and to the north, most of the Blackthorne province has been overrun by the living dead. Honestly, with who the Chosen is there, that last part's almost not worth mention—"

"Is this a joke to you?" List snapped.

Jose raised an eyebrow. "No, but this is Xykesh. Rebellions do not succeed. That this unrest has lasted as long as it has is testament to the minds of the peoples leading it. Speaking of which, I'm almost certain they would like to meet you."

"Oh, that's a great idea," Xigbar scoffed. "I was actually worried the Chosen didn't have enough reasons to want to kill us just from breaking out prison. Making friends with rebels ought to fix that. Good plan. Thanks for the tip."

There wasn't literally venom dripping from his words, but there may as well have been.

"We want to avoid a conflict with the Chosen. Not start one," Arden said.

"If that's true, you probably should have stayed in prison," Jose pointed out.

Silence, because he had a point.