Cradle: Foundation (Cradle Collected Book 1)

by Will Wight

  How many scales would it take to break through to Iron? Twenty? A hundred? However many he needed, they were right there.

  He pushed himself against the bars, eyes stuck on the boxes.

  When the prisoners had finished delivery, the door on the wagon slammed shut. Something like an angry trumpet blast sounded, and the wagon actually rumbled forward, sliding out from between a pair of cages.

  So the fortune didn't stick around. That was a disappointment, but it was a good policy not to leave their treasures sitting among a group of disgruntled prisoners.

  A Sandviper woman walked up, and Lindon backed away from the bars just in time to avoid her slapping her sword against the cage. It rang like a hideous bell, hurting his ears, but not as much as her voice. She propelled her words with the full force of her Gold spirit and Iron body, causing him to clap hands over his ears and his cellmates to scramble to their feet.

  “Wake up, wake up. Feed time, and then it's day shift.”

  So there was a day shift. Meaning the wagon would show up at sunrise and sunset, for the two mining shifts to deliver their haul.

  She pulled the squealing door open, stepping back, and Lindon eyed the gap uncertainly. Was she really trying to fight six people on her own? He couldn't contribute much, but the others were Gold. Even wounded, they should be on her like a pack of wolves.

  That was when he noticed the collars, iron and scripted just like the bars.

  He touched his neck, in case he'd somehow missed being collared in metal, but his fingers met only skin. He wondered if they'd put one on him later, but he found it unlikely.

  He probably just wasn't worth collaring.

  Four of the five prisoners shuffled forward at the Sandviper's prodding, but the woman with the missing eye had curled back against the bars. She shook as though weeping, but made no sound.

  The Sandviper woman looked bored as she stepped past the other inmates and into the cage, holding her sword in one hand.

  Before she could reach the crouching woman, Lindon bent over and grabbed the prisoner by the shoulder. “Stand up. I don't know what's happening, but I know you'd better stand up. Come on.”

  He shook her harder, but she didn't respond. The Sandviper pushed him away and raised her sword.

  Unlike his imagination, she didn't decapitate the miner in one stroke. Instead, she slapped the edge of her sword against the shaking woman's head with such force that each stroke sounded like a lumberjack axe against a tree.

  Lindon winced and took another step back. You probably had to do this much to get through an Iron body, but a single one of those blows would have caved his head in.

  A familiar voice came from behind him, sharp and venomous. “There are no pieces of him missing? Hm? This is good for you.”

  Lindon spun to see Fisher Gesha, goldsteel hook on her back, standing on top of her mechanical spider legs. She looked the same as always—bun tight on her head, expression disapproving—but there was something about her that made him shiver.

  The Sandviper guard stopped beating the prisoner and turned to Gesha, leaning her sword on her shoulder. “What do you think our sect is, that you can come in and order us around? Do you think everyone works for you?”

  A gentle, invisible force tugged Lindon out the open door so that he stumbled forward until he was standing next to Gesha.

  “You need Copper miners that badly, do you?” the Fisher asked dryly. “Tell your young chief his message was received, but I am taking back my property. Can you remember that, hm?”

  Green light spidered up the edge of the Sandviper's blade like veins in a leaf. She glared at Gesha and raised her voice. “Fisher—”

  Whatever she was going to say next was cut off when Gesha moved like a flickering snake. She suddenly stood next to the Sandviper woman, one arm behind her back, the other holding her goldsteel hook extended. The sharp inside of the blade's crescent was pressed against the younger woman's throat.

  “Silly girl. When I was weak as you, did I disrespect my betters? No, I kept my head on my work. And you have a miner to catch.”

  She nodded down the row, where the one-eyed woman was hobbling away, casting fearful glances behind her.

  As Gesha removed the hook, the Sandviper guard tore her gaze between the escaping prisoner and her enemy, muttered something under her breath, and bolted off after the miner. It was probably a jog for a Gold, but her movements blurred to Lindon's eyes.

  He turned back to Gesha as the guard seized the miner by the hair and started dragging her back.

  “Can we take them with us?” he asked, voice low. They probably heard him anyway, considering their hearing, but he had to ask.

  She gave him a look of almost comical surprise. “There are worse things than this in the world, Wei Shi Lindon. These are enemies, captured in battle.”

  “They didn’t quite capture me in battle,” he said. “They took me in my sleep.” She darkened.

  “And so I have taken you back,” she said. “This time. But you are not my grandson, you hear me? Hm? I cannot come to save you every morning. If you cannot protect yourself, I cannot protect you either. Next time, remember that.” She gestured, and his red Thousand-Mile Cloud floated up from behind her. He hadn't noticed it, and he wasn't prepared for the sensation of relief that flooded him at the sight.

  “Follow me,” she said, and he did.

  His neck was tight from the effort of not looking back to see the others he’d left behind.

  Gesha spent most of their journey back cursing the Sandvipers for their cowardice, but Lindon remained lost in thought. When he asked her how she’d found him, she simply said “I looked,” in the tone of voice that suggested he was an idiot.

  When they returned to Fisher territory, his plans had clarified enough for him to ask better questions. “Pardon, Fisher Gesha, but I’d be better able to defend myself with a Path.”

  Her drudge’s spider-legs did not falter in their smooth, rolling gait, and she didn’t so much as glance at him. “You think you’ve earned it? Hm? You think you’ve given so much to the sect that we must give you something back?”

  “I have nothing but gratitude to you and to the Fisher sect,” he assured her, though his only contact with the Fishers thus far had been limited to glimpses of customers in the Soulsmith foundry. “I will never repay my debt for your kindness in this lifetime. I’m only impatient to contribute more.”

  Judging by her pleased smile, flattery had been the right choice. “Why so impatient? If you have not walked a Path so far, waiting until Iron is not so late. Focus on Forging two scales a day. When you can do that, you will keep one.”

  He wasn’t sure if she’d found his successful scale or not, but he was still a long way away from two scales a day, every day. “If I could, then how long might it take me to reach Iron?”

  She was silent for a moment, contemplating the question. “If you work hard, one year is not too short. Not so bad, is it? A year is nothing when you’re my age, I can tell you.”

  “Of course not,” Lindon lied, thoughts cast back to the wagon full of boxes. “Not too short at all.”

  Chapter 12

  Five days after his release from the Sandvipers, Lindon went to see Yerin. She'd spent most of her time with the Fishers helping them hunt down Remnants and sacred beasts, which seemed to be one of the primary businesses of their sect. There were many Soulsmiths in the Five Factions Alliance, and most of them got their primary supply of bindings and Remnants parts from the Fishers. Refiners paid for rare medicinal ingredients or sacred beasts as components for elixirs, and Fishers prided themselves on diving into the wilderness and emerging with whatever their customers requested.

  Yerin provided something that the sect had previously found in short supply: overwhelming offensive power. Though Lindon had sunk entirely into Gesha's Soulsmith business since that first night, he and Yerin had seen each other every few days.

  According to her, the Fishers were experts at tracking,
navigating the wilderness, and extracting natural treasures for later sale. But they were forced to give up on some prizes simply because their madra wasn't as suited for combat.

  As such, they treated Yerin like some kind of long-lost younger sister who had returned to usher in a golden age of economic prosperity. Now, when Lindon showed up at the Fisher housing to see Yerin, she had a room of her own. Previously, she'd had to share one long log cabin with twelve other women. Now, she had her own, smaller log cabin, complete with baked clay tiles for the roof and a hearth and chimney.

  She opened the door blearily as Lindon knocked, swiping at her eyes with one hand. The silver sword extended out from her back, touching the invisible traps she'd Forged around the doorframe and dissolved them.

  He was glad to see that all the traps were on the inside of the door this time. He'd hesitated enough just knocking, wondering what lethal tricks were lurking in the air.

  “I'm sorry for waking you,” he said. “Should I come back later?” He kept moving inside as he asked; the question was a formality anyway.

  She shifted that red rope she wore as a belt and stretched, yawning. “Cycling. The snoring doesn't start until about the third hour.”

  He'd come at sunset, so she may well have been preparing to sleep, but she still looked better-rested than she had when they'd arrived. The Fishers had replaced her old, tattered sacred artist's robe with a new one, and the fine black fabric looked unmarred despite her days in the wilderness. Her injuries had already healed into new scars—one of the many benefits of the Iron body that everyone but Lindon enjoyed—though her hair had grown out, longer and less even than before.

  In short, she looked like she'd had two weeks worth of rest and regular food to get her back into fighting shape. While Lindon himself...

  She looked him up and down, growing visibly concerned. “You need to take a seat? You look like a dead dog on a bad road.”

  He took that to mean he looked tired, which was true. His fingers were twitching and he couldn't seem to focus his eyes on more than one thing for more than a handful of seconds, but excitement kept him fueled.

  Lindon slung his pack off, throwing off his balance and staggering for a step, then he pulled out a sheet of paper and slapped it down on her one table.

  She leaned over for a closer look. “They've been making you take a lot of notes, have they?”

  “These are the shift changes of every Sandviper guard working regular duty with the mining teams. I've been following them for most of the last week. I made up some of the names, but this isn't all; I know their habits, their replacements, what they like to drink, which teams they're responsible for, when they deposit their scales, everything I could think of.” She lifted the paper as though wondering how he got so much information on there, and he hurried to add, “That's not the only sheet.”

  “Why?” she asked simply.

  “I know where they keep the scales,” he said, passion burning away exhaustion. “It pulls in twice a day, they load up the haul for the day, and then they take it away to a secure location back in their main camp stronghold. Their guards are tired, their miners are angry, and everyone's rushing so that they can squeeze the Ruins dry before the Arelius family gets here.” His words were tripping all over one another, and he knew it, but he plowed on anyway. “They're too strong when all the Sandvipers are together, but that's almost never true.”

  He waited until he had her full attention before hitting her with the selling point. “We can free the miners. All I have to do is activate one of Fisher Gesha's spider constructs, take it to camp, have it disrupt the script—”

  “That sounds like a tall cliff to climb,” she interrupted. “You think you can keep it powered that long? And you know how to disable the script?”

  Lindon had to clasp his hands together to keep them from shaking. Maybe he had been awake for too long. “It's easy, if you know how and where, which I do because they gave me a personal look. It's like breaking a lock.”

  “Breaking a lock isn't usually easy,” she said.

  “It is if you have specialized equipment, which we do. We'll have a construct. Anyway, we release enough prisoners, and we can take the wagon. So long as we strike at dawn or dusk, of course, when it's there. If I fill my pack, I expect I can walk away with a thousand scales, and I'm sure you can too.”

  “And then we fade away like mist in the sun, do we?” She was still eyeing the paper, so at least she hadn't dismissed him completely, but he'd been hoping for a more enthusiastic reaction.

  “Fly away on the cloud,” Lindon said, gesturing behind him to the Thousand-Mile Cloud. That was when he remembered he hadn't actually brought the cloud; he'd left it behind in Fisher Gesha's foundry.

  Maybe he could leave some of his work behind today and grab a nap.

  “A Thousand-Mile Cloud isn't made of dragon scales. The Fishers have three, and I've seen at least two people zipping around on Remnants. One of the Sandvipers will run us down.”

  He'd been waiting for that objection. “I've thought of that!” He dug another paper out of his pack, this one a crudely drawn map, and slapped it onto the table as well. “You remember the bathhouse? It's halfway between Gesha's barn and the Ruins. We only have to fly a short distance to the bathhouses, hide there, and head back to the foundry when we're clear.”

  Lindon had prepared for other objections. For one thing, if they didn't dress as Sandvipers, they would be caught upon entry to the camp. But if they did, then the prisoners would attack them when set free. If they weren't being chased, there was no need to hide at the bathhouse, and if they were then the bathhouse wouldn't help.

  He had counters to these, nuances to his plans that he'd worked very hard on. He hadn't entirely counted on Yerin handing the paper back to him, smile sharper than the blade over her shoulder. “Let's burn 'em.”

  He took the plan from her, a little taken aback. “You'll do it?”

  She rested a hand on the hilt of her sword. “We're working for the Fishers now, and they get along with the Sandvipers like two tigers in one cage. And they kidnapped you.” Her hand tightened on the hilt. “You let an enemy take one of yours without response, and you're giving them signed permission to do it again. The Sandvipers haven't slipped out of my memory, any more than Heaven's Glory has.”

  Her expression darkened further. “They think I'm not coming back to clean their whole rotten house and burn it down, then they're getting a surprise.”

  She'd agreed to his plan, and even his own family had never fought for him. But some of his warm feelings cooled in the face of her vengeful oath.

  He wasn't sure why he felt that way—revenge had always been part of the sacred arts, as widely celebrated in stories as honorable duels—but her whole demeanor changes when she talked about revenge. Something in the air felt dark, and heavy, and wrong.

  It was his own weakness. That was what his father would have told him, and Lindon knew he was right. Yerin was wiser, stronger, more knowledgeable and more experienced. He was seeing the world as a child.

  Suddenly ashamed of his own cowardice, he bowed to her. “You won't go back alone.”

  She gave him a look of such gratitude that he forgot all his misgivings a moment before.

  Then something crooned, high and desperate, like a mewling baby bird.

  They both started, Yerin drawing her sword in a blur of motion. Another cry, and Lindon checked under the table. A third, and he realized where it was coming from: his pack.

  Shoving his notes aside, he dug into the main pocket of his pack.

  At first, he was looking for a trapped animal. Something that had crawled inside and gotten stuck, maybe a small bird or even a rodent. He had a temporary fantasy of finding the rare cub of a sacred beast before he dug out a glass case.

  The case was big enough to hold two pairs of shoes, and entirely transparent. Inside was a miniature landscape of tiny rolling hills covered in grass, even boasting a single tiny tree. A river flowe
d around the sides of the case so that the land became a green island, and no matter how he turned or shook the box, the water barely sloshed and the leaves hardly shook. It was as though the glass of the case allowed him to look into a tiny, separate world.

  And that world had a resident.

  The Sylvan Riverseed looked something like a humanoid Remnant the size of a finger, made entirely of flowing blue waves. It didn't seem to be made of water, exactly, but rather madra imitating water, like in the bowl test that had designated him as Unsouled.

  He'd all but forgotten about the Riverseed in the weeks since taking it from the Heaven's Glory School. He took it originally because it was supposed to be valuable, but he'd never given it much thought since then, the more useful treasures he'd stolen taking up most of his attention. He'd glanced at it every once in a while as he dug through his pack, but since the Sylvan was usually spritely and energetic, he'd usually just waved to it and left it hidden. It was expensive and he didn't know what to do with it, so he kept it tucked away.

  This time, the Sylvan itself had collapsed against the landscape as though dying. Its substance was faded and pale, and it raised its head to let out one more delicate peep.

  Yerin whistled. “Well, that's a storm out of clear skies. You're killing it.”

  “I should bring it to Fisher Gesha,” Lindon said, placing his finger against the edge of the glass. The Sylvan Riverseed raised one featureless arm, like a doll's arm, in response. “She'll know what to do with it.”

  Yerin gave him a sidelong glance. “If you contend that you want to share blood with the Fishers, then I won't be the one to tell you no. But don't think you can hand a treasure to someone and they'll hand it back out of the sweetness of their soul.”

  “If you know what's wrong with it, by all means tell me.”

  “It looks hungry,” she said, with no basis that he could tell. “What have you been feeding it?”