The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 34: Volume 2: Chapter 32 — The Final Thirteen

Read chapter 34 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Volume 2: Chapter 32 — The Final Thirteen Dawn made the courtyard honest. No shadow to hide in, no lantern lies. The thirteen who’d held out were set in a line before the steps. Two slumped, three prayed, and the rest looked at nothing like it would blink first. Yara stopped where all of them could see her, and none could pretend she wasn’t there. The Gem under her breastbone answered her breath with a private pulse. “You had your chances,” she said. Nothing fancy. A line you either stood behind or crossed. She pointed. “Those two.” They were young scout light, no special rank, just boys who’d thought stubbornness and a door could outlast thirst. They were dragged, kneeling, to the hard stone. Yara drew the dagger she’d kept since the market breach, small, ugly, a strip of iron with a memory all its own. She pressed the flat against the first boy’s sternum. The Gem surged. Feed Steel didn’t melt so much as decide it had always been a liquid. It slumped and sucked forward, threading under skin with a sound like wet cloth being pulled through a crack. The scout screamed into the gag; his back arched hard enough that his heels beat stone. Bones answered in sequence, ankles, knees, hips, clicks and pops as if a locksmith were opening him from the feet up. Muscles corded, then reknit on new angles. This one had fear. I tasted it. Fear burns fast. Give me something older . The knife’s history cuts in alleys, kills made close, a hundred panicked choices wrote themselves into his nerves like a shorthand he’d always known and somehow forgotten. By the time his breath found him again, the blade was gone. Not dropped. Eaten. Only a black line across his chest remained, as thin as a smile. He sat up. His eyes were flat, rinsed clean of everything but purpose. “Shield,” Yara said. He stood. No, look for permission. He crossed to the rack, took a shield, slid his arm through with the ease of someone who’d trained a decade, and stopped on a painted chalk line as if a cord had pulled him there. Good pattern. You shape well, Yara. She ignored it. Or tried to. The Gem’s hum pressed against her ribs, pleased and patient. Second boy, another old knife, same press. The Gem flooded; iron went green and thin and vanished into him. This one tried to tear away; the scream sawed itself off when his ribs shuddered and reset like a row of falling dominoes. He fights. Keep him. “I wasn’t planning to waste him,” she murmured. Fingers knotted, then unknotted with a new economy of motion. When the change finished, his face was the same, and his eyes weren’t. “Shield,” she said. He obeyed, and his feet found the place next to the first boy without looking. “Next,” Yara said. The Gem purred in answer. More. There are thirteen. Thirteen fits a circle. We can finish the shape. Elior stood at the corner of the courtyard, still as the stones themselves. When the third boy screamed, his hand drifted to his sword hilt, not to draw, just to rest there, as if the metal could steady something shifting inside him. The violet light from Yara's work reflected in his eyes, and for a moment, they seemed to belong to someone else. It went fast. Metal to skin; scream. The ugly choreography of a body remade to serve. Some fainted, waking as pain returned them to the hook. One vomited, then stood straighter after losing the weight. Each time, an old knife, broken sword, or bent armor rebuilt the body. The gem had mapped the design, so deciding to be liquid took less time. Yes, yes, I know the route now. I could do it without you. “You wouldn’t,” she said under her breath. No. You are the throat I speak through. We’re halves, remember? Each time, the Gem dug deeper. It left less of the man who came and more of the tool who stood up. They are emptying nicely. You could be, too, if you’d just let go of the noise. Yara’s jaw tightened. “Quiet.” The Gem’s reply came soft, indulgent. You don’t mean that. Eliza worked three paces off with a ledger balanced on a crate, a stub of charco