The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 62: Volume 3: Chapter 58 – Now What?

Read chapter 62 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Volume 3: Chapter 58 – Now What? WEEK 1: THE HAMMER FALLS Day 1, Evening — The Weight of Command The war room had once been a chapel. Someone had scrubbed the soot from the ceiling, but the stone still remembered smoke. Tables had replaced pews; maps lay where prayers used to. Eliza stood behind Yara's chair, silent as architecture. She understood her strengths: logistics, organisation, the careful mathematics of supply lines, and she knew when to speak. This wasn't her room. This was Marcus's language, Varrek's territory, Bruno's kind of problem. She watched, calculated, and let the soldiers do what soldiers did. Her fingers rested on Yara's chair-back, light as a promise to be useful when usefulness was needed. Marcus arrived first with dust on his boots and an inventory in his mouth. Behind him: Varrek, all angles and restraint; Bruno with the Chainwolves lounging too still at his back; Weaver in a window’s shadow, hands folded like a person pretending not to be many; Harry at Yara’s shoulder, the yellow-green under his scales pulsing like a heartbeat that kept reconsidering its job. “Eliza has your count,” Yara said, because the room expected her to say something leader-shaped. Marcus set his ledger down, voice steady. “Army intact from the Rainbow City march. Three hundred regulars, fifty Enhanced, twenty Iron Defenders, twelve Chainwolves under Bruno’s hand. The rest of your siege beasts and bears have stayed in Rainbow City to support the Garrison as they rebuild the walls.” His finger tapped the map in short, clean beats, roads, rivers, ridgelines. “Morale is good. Supplies are adequate for two to three weeks in the field, depending on pace and whether we’re forced to forage. Where do we march, Mistress?” Yara looked at the map and saw geography, not answers. Rainbow City had felt like falling, luck, and violence in the right order. Runewick had been an accident, and she survived. This was different. This was a line drawn toward a kingdom with walls built on purpose. The room waited. The Gem purred faintly, pleased with rooms that waited. Yara rubbed her sternum once. She didn’t need to; the light beneath her skin didn’t need reassurance. She did it anyway. “I don’t know,” she said. The Gem stirred beneath her ribs, amused. You took cities by being hungry enough to eat them, it murmured. Planning is just hunger with steps. Give it time . The quiet after was the kind that usually came before orders. Marcus didn’t blink. Varrek’s expression didn’t move at all. Bruno grinned because he grinned at knives and silences equally. Harry’s claw tips clicked softly against the table edge; the fragment inside him skipped a beat, then caught up. “I took Runewick by accident,” Yara continued. “Rainbow City by desperation. I don’t know how to plan a kingdom’s conquest.” That truth hung there, heavy and clean. It tasted like iron. Weaver’s fifty-nine voices braided into one that sounded like a woman who had rehearsed sincerity. “Then we begin where we always begin. With eyes.” Weaver stepped to the map, her transformed fingers pressing against the eastern edge. "Ferric watchers have been watching our walls for three days. They're professionals. They test our sightlines and change shifts every half hour. The Small Voices have found seven hiding spots. Eight if you count the ridge beyond the mill stream, but that one's probably a trap." Marcus nodded once. "Our scouts found the same signs. Clean boot prints. Iron filings in the grass where they've been sharpening blades." Varrek leaned forward slightly. "We go tonight. Quiet approach. Take them before they can raise an alarm." Harry's breathing hitched. "I can feel their metal when I get close. The fragment reacts to it." He flexed his hand. The shake was slight, but Yara saw it. The yellow-green light under his scales pulsed unevenly, catching rhythm and losing it. "I won't slow you down." "You'll draw them right to us if we're not careful," Bruno said, almost cheerfully. "The Chainwol