The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 97: Volume 4: Chapter 89 – Gravity

Read chapter 97 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Volume 4: Chapter 89 – Gravity Day 64 They made camp in the lee of a low hill on the first evening of the second week out from Saltwhistle. The wind broke around the rise, and the smell of cooking smoke, for once, overpowered the stench of sweat, leather, and beast. Rosa claimed a flat patch near the center and turned it into a kitchen with three gestures and a glare. Ember-Palm heat rolled from her hands into pots, coaxing broths to a simmer without wood. The air filled with the scent of stew: grain stretched beyond its limits, bits of dried meat resurrected into something like tenderness, herbs she had insisted on packing from Saltwhistle. Soldiers drifted toward the fire by instinct. Hunger drew them; habit kept them in formation. Gayle stood beside her, voice low at first as he tried out a melody that had once belonged to a god and now belonged to nothing at all. “New words?” Rosa murmured. “Old tune,” Gayle said. “Updated theology.” He cleared his throat and let the song rise. “Once we sang to empty thrones, to hands that never came. Now we sing to teeth and stone, to fire that knows our names…” His voice wasn’t pretty. It was steady . The sound wrapped itself around the clatter of bowls and the murmur of talk, giving it shape. “…Consumption feeds creation’s spark, and service bends the flame. We break apart what meant us harm, and build from ash again…” The soldiers listened. One started humming the refrain. Another picked up a drum pattern on his mess tin. The words weren’t a perfect fit yet; Gayle shifted a rhyming couplet mid-line, shrugged, and kept going. “Yaradom’s the work we choose, the weight we lift together. We hold the line, we pay the dues, and bind our scattered weather…” Rosa ladled stew into bowls in time with the rhythm. Sustaining Craft stretched the food farther than it should have. Portions that would have left men hungry instead left them merely unsatisfied, which in an army counted as luxury. Daryl tried to sit near the outer ring of the fire, cross-legged, hands busy flipping his knife between fingers. The rhythm of the song seemed to crawl up his spine, demanding he move. He lasted two verses. Petra lay nearby, chainmail fur catching the firelight, eyes bright and amused. Shadowfang shifted behind Yara, blades low, voice a low rumble. “You’re making the wolves nervous.” Daryl nearly jumped. “The wolves make me nervous,” he whispered back. “Seems fair.” Shadowfang’s helm tilted. “Then stop vibrating.” “I’m not vibrating,” Daryl protested—while vibrating. Corvin huffed. Petra chuffed. Several wolves looked away pointedly. Daryl bounced his knee. “I could do a perimeter sweep. Maybe two. Maybe seven.” “You’re going to wear a groove in the dirt if you don’t pick one,” Shadowfang said. Bruno appeared behind him like a wall that had decided to grow a voice. “Blade-Born.” Daryl half-turned. “Yes, Sergeant?” “Go run perimeter,” Bruno said. “Twice.” Permission unlocked him. “See?” Daryl said to Petra. “Some people understand me.” He rose in one smooth motion and vanished into the dark beyond the fire, smoke-step carrying him from torch to torch, shadow to shadow. Gayle’s song followed him out, softer at the edges now as the soldiers joined in. Some mangled the words. Some didn’t care. The refrain settled into something like a heartbeat. “…we break, we bind, we breathe again, and call that breathing home…” For a little while, the camp felt like more than a staging ground for slaughter. It felt like a community strung together by fear, duty, and a song that didn’t yet know to which god it belonged. Yara watched from the edges, Graveclaw and Stonehide flanking her, Shadowfang slipping back behind her, a dark presence. She listened to Gayle’s lyrics wrap themselves around the Gem’s quiet hum. They worship what feeds them. Good, she thought. Let it be that, at least. After the fire dimmed and the song frayed into scattered humming, the camp settled. Watches were set; Chainwolves took outer positions, ears twitc