The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 5: Chapter 4 — The Burned Man

Read chapter 5 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Chapter 4 — The Burned Man Ash fell in a steady drift, going where the wind wished and piling in doorways and broken tiles. The fires had burned to their cores. Stones still gave off heat, but now the city was quiet, letting small sounds emerge: a shutter knocking, water dripping from a gutter, the soft slide of dust when a wall settled. Yara walked with her palm brushing the walls. It wasn't for comfort; each touch told her where the stones would hold her weight. Her ankle still ached, but she was not limping. She kept close to the wall, letting it support her. The market lanes, once familiar, were now alien. Ash hid beams, and good shortcuts had become traps. She moved as she'd been taught in crowds, eyes shifting ahead to each next corner, shadow, or safe step. She noticed bodies before she truly recognized them. A woman in a shawl was crushed beneath a signboard; a guard slouched against a post, helmet dented as though struck by air; a boy in a butcher's apron still clutching a hook. Near them, something not-human: bone plates for armor, a spine ending too soon, a mouth wide, teeth jagged and too many, crowding each other for space. Ash caked its tongue, and flies had already settled. She kept moving. At a cross street, she found the bones of a barricade, crates braced by wagon wheels, a net of chain stretched across half-burned and broken inward. The work had been hasty; you could see where rope had replaced nails and prayer marks had been scrawled in soot on the boards. The boards were in splinters now. Behind them, chalk letters on a wall declared a god's name so many times that the last line had devolved into scratches. A length of chain rattled. Yara took a step back, spear angled low. "Don't—" a voice rasped, more air than sound. "Don't swing." He sat slumped inside the barricade's shadow, coat burned in long ribbons down one arm. The fabric had melted into his skin in places. The smell of cooked wool and blistered flesh made her stomach tighten. He lifted a trembling hand as if to show he was unarmed, then let it fall again. "Can't lift that side. Don't worry." His laugh was a cracked wheeze. "Not much left worth stealing." She crouched a few paces away, eyes tracking over him. Blood had soaked through his tabard on the left side, dark and spreading slowly. His breathing came in shallow, careful breaths, each one costing him. The hand he'd lifted was scraped raw, but the arm moved. The side he couldn't lift stayed pressed against the rubble, propped at an angle that looked wrong. "You pinned under that?" She nodded at the stones behind him. He blinked, eyes red from smoke. "Was. Dug myself out." A pause, then quieter: "Wish I hadn't. Hurts less when you don't move." She studied the blood again. Still spreading, but not pumping. Not arterial. Maybe broken ribs. Maybe worse inside, where she couldn't see. He coughed until it bent him double, then managed, "Water?" She passed her flask. He drank greedily, some of it spilling down his chin. When he tried to hand it back, his hand shook so badly that she took it before he dropped it. "What happened here?" He gave a short, confused laugh that turned into a cough. "Depends where you start." He drew a careful breath. "We heard a hum first—felt it, really. Thought it was the forges blowing air wrong." Another pause, longer. "Then everything started moving." She waited, watching his chest rise and fall in shallow pulls. "Things came up from the river," he continued, voice going distant. "Too many legs. Or not enough. Some wearing...pieces of people." His eyes drifted unfocused. "And behind them—men with masks. Bright ones. Like festival masks, but dipped in blood and left to dry." "I've seen them," Yara said quietly. "Dead ones. Their skin looked wrong." He nodded weakly. "They fall, they...dust. Like they were never solid." A wet breath. "Shouting words that didn't match their mouths. Walked through the Guard line like it was smoke." "The Guard fought them?" "Tried." His han