CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  -Along, Not At

  The day began again.

  Porridge. Line. Frost crackling under my bare feet. Breath steaming in front of thin faces.

  I let the morning carry me. From the yard to the gate. From the gate to the river barges. Sacks from the barges to the granary. The overseer’s voice. The wardens’ curses. The dull grind of a day I had walked so many times it felt like it had worn grooves into my bones. Watching it now, it looks like nothing at all happens here. That me walked like someone who believed every step could be the wrong choice.

  By the river, the world opened. The water moved slow under a skin of thin ice, tugging at the posts that held the barges in place. Where the current kissed the bank, it had chewed away the dirt and left a narrow shelf of stone and frozen mud. Small things collected there. Twigs. Bits of broken rope. Pebbles.

  And stones. Flat, rounded ones the size of my palm. Thin along one edge, thicker in the middle. The kind that liked to sit on the water for a breath before sinking.

  On one trip, as I shifted a sack on my shoulder, one of them caught my eye. It lay half in shadow, the weak light from the sky picking a pale line along its rim. My hand moved before I decided. I stumbled, let the sack slip a little, and reached out to steady myself against the post. My fingers brushed the stone on the way. It was smooth and cold, the weight of it sitting just right in my palm. I rolled my hand and let the sagging sack hide the motion as I straightened.

  Something small. Something no one would notice. Something that could still reach.

  “Keep moving,” the warden at the gangplank barked.

  I kept moving. The stone sat in my hand like something alive. It pulled a memory up with it. Not of this river, slow, brown, choked with ice, but of different water, clearer, running through a shallow cut in the steppe. My uncle’s voice in my ear. My cousins’ laughter bouncing off the low banks.

  “Flat ones,” my uncle had said, squatting at the edge of the stream. “You want the flat ones. Not round. Round stones dive. Flat stones fly.”

  I had been smaller then, hands still all knuckles and scratches. I remembered the way the stone had felt between my fingers, the way my uncle had curled his hand around mine and drawn it back.

  “Throw along the water,” he had said. “Not at it. Skim it like a horse’s hoof when it doesn’t want to get its legs wet.”

  The first try had sunk with a plop. By the end of the afternoon, I had made one skip three times. My uncle had clapped me on the back hard enough to make me cough and called me sharp-eyed.

  Back there, in the yard that was not the steppes and the river that was not mine, the echo of that praise settled like a stone of its own in my chest. Watching it now, it almost feels cruel how much I held onto that one good word. Along, not at.

  I walked all the way to the granary with the memory in my hand. When I tipped the sack into the waiting bin, I palmed the stone into my other hand and closed my fingers around it. No one looked twice at a boy rubbing his hands to warm them.

  On the way back to the river, I let myself fall a few steps behind the line. The warden on duty was yawning, breath smoking in the air, eyes on the cart coming through the gate instead of on the boys.

  I veered just enough. I picked a spot on the opposite bank, a knot of frozen grass that stuck up like a hand. I drew my arm back, felt the weight of the stone pull against my fingers, and threw. It hit the water with a fat, ugly splash and sank without a sound beyond that. I did not swear. I did not flinch. I just watched. Too steep. Too much wrist. Not enough spin.

  The next reset, I picked up another stone. Another day, another stream in my head. Another stolen heartbeat of practice tucked into the space between one order and the next. Sometimes I threw at the far bank. Sometimes at a half-submerged post. Sometimes at a scrap of wood caught in a small whirl of water.

  The wardens saw a boy who liked to look at the water too long. When they snapped at me, I moved faster. When they kicked my ankle, I stepped lighter.

  The bell rang. The day began again.

  I took the stones anyway. Little by little, the throws changed. I stopped aiming with my shoulder and started aiming with my hips. I let the weight of the sack on one side carry my body and used the swing of it to hide the motion of my other arm. I felt the moment when the stone wanted to leave my fingers and learned to let it go there instead of forcing it.

  One morning, the stone left my hand and kissed the surface of the river three times in a row before vanishing. There. Another day, I picked a knot on the opposite bank and hit it clean. Not close. Not beside. On.

  The river did not care. It swallowed the stone and went on moving. Something in me did care. I felt the click of it the way I had felt the bar through the wood. A line I had been pushing along without seeing finally showed itself.

  I stopped bothering to count the days. Knots blurred together; only the stone and where it landed mattered. Day after day, step by step, I did the same thing: carry, throw, learn. The repetition stopped being the problem. I braced against it and used it. Every loop was just another step toward getting out of the fort, whatever it cost.

  I knew how hard to throw now. How to angle my hand. How to let my eye and arm agree on a point in space and meet it without thinking.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The knot did what it always did when my body learned something new and refused to forget. The world held its breath for a heartbeat. A cold, thin pressure slid down my spine. A voice that was not a voice noted the change.

  [Skill acquired: Novice Death’s Trajectory.]

  [Death doesn’t miss its mark.]

  Watching it now, I think that earlier guess might be right. This looks like the next skill I couldn’t use before finally sliding into its place. If that’s true, then there’s only one of them still missing. Maybe when that last piece falls in, this First Passage will finally be allowed to end.

  I closed my hand around the next stone and did not smile. Trajectory. Not luck. Not hope. Where I put it, I thought, is where it goes.

  The day ran on. I did not try for the bucket that loop. Or the next. I threw at posts and knots and scraps of wood until my arm knew the work as well as my legs knew the path from barracks to gate. When I was sure, when I could hit what I looked at every time the throw felt right, I turned my eyes back to the cookhouse. The offal bucket waited.

  I did not change the start of the day. Porridge. Line. River. Sacks. I stole my stone the way I always did now, fingers curling around it on the way past the bank. I hid it in my palm while I worked, waited for the moment when the yard loosened its grip just a little.

  It was midday. The bell had only just finished ringing. Rauk sat where he always did at this hour, back to the cookhouse wall on his low stool, knife flashing over the pot, the offal bucket squatting between his boots. The dogs lay in a rough half-circle a few strides away, chains never fully slack, lips wet and strings of drool hanging as they watched the bucket. On every repeating day, around this hour, Rauk would spit, lift his head, and snap for someone to take the bucket to the ditch.

  Today, I meant to move it first. I kept to my work as long as I had to. Carry this. Stack that. Drag sacks. When the overseer’s attention slid toward the gate and most of the boys near the cookhouse were already bent under loads, I let my path bend a little closer to Rauk’s corner of the yard. Not close enough to look like I was hovering. Close enough that, if I stopped, I could bend once, scoop up a stone, and have a short, clean line from my hand to the bucket. The bucket was almost full now. Sludge clung to the rim. Fat gleamed. Flies already tried their luck at the edges. Perfect.

  I bent, making it look like I was rubbing at my ankle, fingers closing around the small stone I had palmed earlier and dropped on the packed earth when no one was looking. It was small enough to hide in my fist. Heavy enough that it would jump the bucket if I sent it right. Along, not at.

  I straightened slowly, letting my body settle into the shape it knew. Shoulder loose. Elbow easy. Wrist light. From where I stood, I could see the hunch of Rauk’s shoulders over the meat and the tilt of his head toward the dogs and the pot. He was not looking my way. Knife, strip, tub, scrape. The same tired rhythm as always. One of the dogs gave a low, impatient whine, claws scraping at the dirt. The chains were never truly slack; the links clicked and rasped as they strained toward the bucket. I picked my line.

  Rim, not side. High enough that it will tip. Low enough it does not sail. I let my weight roll from heel to forefoot, a lazy little shift that would look like nothing at all to anyone glancing my way. The stone sat between thumb and forefinger, cool and certain. I threw. No big swing. No full arm. Just a quick snap of my wrist, the way I had practised against the barracks wall. A small motion, meant to be nothing at all if anyone glanced my way.

  The stone flew. For a heartbeat, I could feel its path, a line from my fingers to the dull metal curve. A sound followed. Not the thick slap of offal hitting dirt. A sharp, bright ring. Stone met iron. The bucket jumped. It rocked hard on its rim, slopping a red smear down one side before it thumped back onto its base. I flinched at the noise before I could stop myself. Too loud.

  The dogs went still for half a breath. Then the smell rolled up stronger and their heads snapped toward the bucket, chains drawing tight with a clatter as they lunged.

  Rauk’s head came up fast. His hand shot down to the bucket without thinking, catching the handle and dragging it back under his boot before it could tip. His eyes followed the line of the throw the way a man followed an arrow back to the archer. They landed on the thin boy standing a few strides away with empty hands and a face that had not learned how to be blank in time.

  His mouth curled.

  “You think that is funny, rat?” he barked.

  My heart kicked. “I didn’t—”

  Rauk was already moving. Two long strides and his fist had me by the front of my shirt. The knife stayed in his other hand, held high and clear of us both.

  “You think I want them dogs tearing each other up over slop?” he snarled, breath hot in my face. “You think I got nothing better to do than haul them off and shovel guts out of the yard after?”

  My hands came up on instinct, fingers catching at his wrist. “I didn’t throw anything,” I said. “I swear, I—”

  The first slap cracked across my cheek hard enough to ring my ears.

  “Do not lie to me,” Rauk said.

  The next blow drove into my ribs, not as heavy as the overseer’s, but placed like someone who had done this often and knew where it hurt. Pain flared along my side, hot, sharp-edged, but not as bright as it should have been.

  I knew this ought to drop me. Blows like this had sent me to the ground before, left me seeing spots and sucking at the air. Now the hurt came in duller; something inside me seemed to take the edge off. I still hurt. I just did not hurt as much as I expected. Each time they laid hands on me, my body found a new way to tuck the worst of it somewhere I could not quite feel. My knees still threatened to go out from under me.

  “I hear a rock bang my bucket,” Rauk growled, giving my shirt a hard jerk. “I see you standing there, looking like you choked on it. You think I am stupid, rat?”

  Blood trickled into the corner of my mouth. “No, master,” I forced out.

  He held me there a moment longer, eyes searching my face, weighing whether I was worth any more of his time. The dogs were still barking. Wardens were shouting from the far side of the yard, trying to settle the chains.

  “Get out of my sight,” Rauk snapped at last.

  He shoved me backward. I stumbled, caught myself before I went all the way down, and backed off fast, keeping my head low. Behind me, Rauk turned back to the bucket, knuckles white on the handle as he dragged it a little farther from the dogs. The knife never left his grip.

  The rest of the day passed with a steady ache in my ribs and a tug in my side whenever I twisted too fast. It hurt, but it was the kind of hurt I could work around. No one asked why my cheek was swelling. No one cared. As long as I carried what I was told to carry and my legs kept moving, the fort let me be.

  I kept moving. Sack after sack, trip after trip, the same paths I walked every repeating day. Somewhere in the middle of it I noticed I was not dragging as much. The weight came up onto my shoulder a little easier. I could make one more round before my breath went short.

  By the time I got back to my pallet, my body felt used and sore, but not wrung out the way it should have after a day like this. Something was changing. I just did not know what yet. That night, I lay on my back and stared up at the crack in the ceiling. The dogs shifted outside. A chain clinked. Somewhere, a warden coughed.

  The stone had done exactly what I had asked it to. Right angle. Right force. Right place. And still, it had not been enough. He heard it, I thought. He heard the stone hit before the dogs moved. Before the stink reached them. The sound told him where to look.

  The bucket would never be the only thing that moved. Trajectory was not the only problem. I did not just need to put the stone where the bucket was. I needed to make the bucket move without anyone hearing why.

  I turned onto my side, winced as my ribs protested, and let my eyes close. I slept. The bell rang.

  The day began again.