The Silver Tongued Devil Chapter 8: Chapter 8 - Earn your Keep

Read chapter 8 of The Silver Tongued Devil by The Vilkas on NovelPedia.

Serh’s shoulders tightened a hair at the footsteps echoing up the corridor—multiple sets, heavy and deliberate, like men who’d never had to wonder who they were. The drip somewhere below counted seconds like a slow fuse burning toward something irrevocable. The door filled with Tharel, flanked by two elders. They were older than him, faces carved by wind and hearth-scar, hands blackened as if they gripped live coals daily. No robes, no staffs—just wool and leather worn soft by years. They were the ones who got to sit closest to the flame; that was authority enough. Lantern light threw their shadows long across the stone, and the room seemed to press in around them. “Matas stands,” Tharel said. Flat command, no request. I pushed off the cot. My left wrist ground with a dull twist of fire. Ribs hummed protest, shoulder tight, legs heavy as unpaid debt. Serh watched me like I might bolt for the slit window. There was nowhere to run. Not anymore. The fire room widened only slightly off the cell corridor: a low hall with a central pit of banked coals glowing sullen red. Smoke crawled up through a narrow cut in the ceiling, dragging the heat with it. The elders took stone benches ringing the pit, close enough to feel that heat. Tharel gestured to a bare patch of floor at the edge of the circle for me. Not a seat at their level. The message landed clean and hard. “Words first,” the left elder said, voice dry gravel. “Tell me—does the ice sing late, stranger?” The proverb hit fast, too fast. For a heartbeat all I heard was sound—the familiar vowels and consonants—but my new channel tripped on the binding between them. Then the meaning slammed in like someone had shoved a card into a slot: Drop the stone before the ice sings. Pain stabbed behind my left eye, chalk dragged across bone. “I hear it,” I managed. “Just late. It…catches up.” The right elder leaned forward, firelight picking out old scars like tally marks around his eyes and along his jaw. Whatever had cut him had done it more than once. “Your eyes went wrong when the void took you,” he said. “They bled red at the edge. Speak clearly—where did it throw you from?” “The Void pulled,” I said. “Really it broke me. Dropped me on your mountain. I don’t have any more information than you, really.” No mention of roads, vans, or Alea. No need. It’d be stranger if I volunteered everything freely. “Before that void,” the first elder asked. “What work held your days?” For a second I almost said husband. That wasn’t what they were asking. “Construction,” I said instead. “Roofs. Walls. Making sure bad stone doesn’t win. If I fall, I die. If my work falls, someone else dies. You learn to pay attention to what carries weight.” Tharel cut in before the elders could chase that further. “Wolves died under his hands,” he said. “Two, at least. His eye slit like a cold-blood’s when the thing lit. Yesterday he could barely ask for water. This morning he speaks like a man who grew under our roofs.” His gaze held mine. “Stone may have taken a liking. Or not. I will not pretend to read that alone.” The left elder grunted softly and glanced at his counterpart, a look with more weight than any spoken word. “Pain keeps careless feet off our hills,” he said at last. “It keeps the curious from turning our doors into a game. If you prove you are not another fool the mountain will have to bury, the chief may choose to ease that burden. Or he may decide you are not worth the risk.” The word chief snagged. Tharel didn’t flinch at it; neither did the elders. Nobody had used a title yesterday. There was someone who sat even closer to the fire than they did—or something. Another piece of the load path I couldn’t see. Merrik shifted in the doorway, an eager half-step forward. “If the Hills—” Serh’s voice cut across his, low and sharp. “Merrik,” she said. “He has not earned those words.” Her glare hit him like a thrown hammer. Merrik’s mouth shut with an audible click. The right elder’s eyes flicked to her and dipp