The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 101: Volume 4: Chapter 93 – The Descent

Read chapter 101 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Volume 4: Chapter 93 – The Descent Day 72 Midnight came quietly. No horns, no shouted orders, just the slow dimming of fires and the murmur of a camp pretending at sleep. Yara stood near the outer picket line, cloak drawn tight, breath white in the cold. The walls of Eldania loomed as a darker band against the starless sky. The city didn’t sleep; it watched. Torches burned steadily along the parapets. Occasionally, a silhouette moved, pacing. At her feet, a rat sat very still, whiskers twitching. A thread of soft gray yarn circled its chest like a sash. “We’re ready,” Scythe said. He and the others emerged from the deeper dark: Scars first, then the ten Enhanced chosen to go with them. All stripped down to essentials, no jingling plates, no extraneous gear. Leather, muted cloth, blades tied tight to scabbards. Scythe wore a plain cloak over his armor, hood down for now. His eyes were steady. They always were when he had a plan. Shadow moved at his right shoulder, a darker absence in the night. Mist padded along her flank, a ripple of almost-cat that seemed to drink what little light there was. Slash, lean and quiet, flexed his hands once, the garrote hidden under his sleeve glinting faintly when he turned. Spark had vials strapped to her chest and belt, each stoppered tight, fingers resting near them like a musician checking her strings. Face’s features had already softened into something forgettable, bones shifting subtly as he tuned his Maskwork to “unremarkable city guard.” Daryl bounced on his heels, unable to be still even standing in a line. The ten Enhanced behind them looked like an answer to a question no one had wanted to ask, hard-eyed, disciplined, each fully blended with their anchor items. These weren’t the raw, frightened Enhanced of Aramore’s first tax. These were veterans, remade and blooded. “You remember the path,” Yara said. Scythe nodded. “Down the dry gully. Third runoff grate. Bars cut earlier by Shadow and the inside team. Then we follow the flow map from Weaver. If the old storm drain is where it should be, we enter there.” “And if it isn’t?” Eliza asked quietly from Yara’s side. “Then we adapt,” Scythe said. “Or we die. But we won’t be useful if we start assuming the second.” Daryl grinned. “He does pep talks now. When I met him, he mostly did threats.” “I still do threats,” Scythe said. “You just stopped hearing them as separate from your daily life.” Daryl considered that. “That’s… fair.” The rat at Yara’s feet looked up at her. Weaver’s voice came through it, dry and threadbare with focus. “Sightline ready. I will ride Shadow’s shadow and Mist’s pelt. You will see enough.” Yara crouched, touching two fingers gently to the yarn around the rat’s chest. “Go,” she said. It darted off toward the dark. The infiltration team fell in behind it, moving silently through the outer picket line, slipping between watch posts without comment. Wolves watched them go, ears pinned, then settled again. One of the younger bears—the scouts—shifted as if wanting to follow, but Stonehide rumbled, and the cub stilled. Harry stood a little apart, eyes fixed on the shadow of Eldania’s eastern wall. The shard’s light under his skin pulsed fast, like a hurried heartbeat. “Weaver will feed me what they see,” Yara told him. “Good,” Harry said. “I like to know where our chances of dying are concentrated.” Eliza exhaled through her nose. “Try not to make more than one additional war front in the sewers.” “I’ll do my best,” Scythe said. “No promises.” The last of the infiltration team vanished over the lip of the shallow ravine. Yara’s vision doubled for a breath—Eldania ahead of her, black and huge; and, overlaid, the narrow confines of the dry gully as Weaver’s rat scampered down into it, the world reduced to stone, frost, and the smell of old water. She let her body stay on the ridge. Her mind went below. The runoff grate crouched at the gully’s end, half-buried in silt and dead weeds. Rust had eaten through the lower bars; the