The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 33: Volume 2: Chapter 31 — The Second Day

Read chapter 33 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Volume 2: Chapter 31 — The Second Day Evening lay bronze across the stones, turning the sealed barracks into a long, dark mouth. Wedges bristled from the iron-bound doors, oak chewed into the jambs, chains drawn tight, spikes sunk deep where mallets had persuaded them. The wood complained softly with each cooling breath of the day. Varrek met Yara in the torch-wash outside the gate. Soot striped his jaw where he’d wiped sweat and missed. Behind him, two crews leaned on pry-bars and their own ribs. “Report,” Yara said. “Desperate,” Varrek answered. “Buckets scraped dry. Some tried to sing to keep the others from breaking. The song failed before the men did.” He tipped his chin toward the door. “They’re weakening.” Yara watched the seam where light did not pass. The Gem under her sternum pressed, wanting to make a change, fix in the only way it knew. She kept her palm against the leather of her coat until the feeling tucked itself back. “No point letting them die,” she said. “Waste of resources.” Waste is loss. Keep what can serve. Varrek’s mouth ticked. “Mercy or arithmetic?” “Both,” Yara said. “Loosen the wedges. Not released just enough to speak.” He signaled the crews. Iron rang. Chains shuddered. A spike pushed out, squealing like a stubborn pig. The door’s left leaf bowed, wood fibers whispering. Rank, old heat, and sweat leaked through. Torchlight slid into the crack, glinting off eyes. Sweat beaded the brow of the nearest man, as if the torch had put it there. “Enough,” Yara called, and the crews stilled. For a heartbeat, the barracks held its own silence. Then a voice near the seam spoke in a rasp that still remembered rank. “What do you want?” Yara stepped forward until the iron’s chill found her knees. “One more chance.” Her voice was not loud, just placed. “Tomorrow, you become Iron Defenders, or you serve me by choice; either way, you will serve Aramore.” She let the words fall and settle. “You can step out now and keep your minds. Or you can wait, and lose them.” Choice binds better than chains. Someone in the dark laughed without humor; another whispered, “Water, please,” a word stretched thin as a thread. The scrape of boots. A cough that tried to be quiet and failed. “We’re not your monsters,” the rasp said, defiant and faint. "You aren’t anything if you die in there," Yara said. "In an hour, we close the seam again. At dawn, if you’re still inside, I take what I can and strip the rest. Surrender now and keep your minds. Wait until tomorrow and lose them." She pointed at the barrels ten paces away, dark in the torchlight. "Walk out, kneel, drink. You breathe again in my city. You work. You eat. You’re watched." Silence reassembled itself in the gap, all the pieces fitting badly. Then the first man pressed his shoulder to the loosened door and slid sideways through the slice of night into the air. He blinked fast, as if the light might be a trick. Without prompting, he sank to his knees in the dust and crawled to the nearest barrel on raw palms. The sound his throat made when water touched it was obscene and holy. That broke whatever held the others together. They came in clots and singles, low and hurried. Speed, if they waited, might be taken from them. A boy with gray in his beard. A man with one sleeve ripped high, looking as if he'd lost something he'd been born with. “Down,” Varrek said, and they obeyed. Creak of wedges kept time. Knees found dirt. “Count,” Yara said, without looking away. “Ten,” Varrek murmured. “Twenty… twenty-seven… thirty-two…” He didn’t rush the numbers. There was a weight to each. “Forty-one… forty-seven.” The last of this run, a gaunt sergeant by the look of him, crawled until his forehead touched the barrel and stayed there, breath shivering. The line bent around him and made space without speaking. Inside, someone spat on the stone and called them traitors. Another voice, thinner, said only, “Please,” to no one. “Hold,” Yara said, and the crews stilled again with pry-bars braced an