Shadows in the Rafters

I did not scream. In the siege trenches, screaming only filled your mouth with dirt before the trench-runner put a spade through your teeth.

I slid my left foot back half a pace, lowering my center of gravity. My right hand tightened on the hilt of the skinning knife.

The thing dropped from the ceiling without a sound.

It was the size of a hunting hound, but its body was made of shifting, semi-solid black vapor wrapped around a brittle cage of pale bone. Its limbs were too long, ending in three-jointed claws that clicked against the pine floorboards. A Shimi scout. Where its chest should have been, a dark crimson core pulsed with sickly, irregular light, pumping thin ribbons of black mist through its ribcage.

The rot-beast hissed, a dry sound like salt thrown into a low fire.

It leaped.

It aimed for my throat, claws extended to pin my shoulders against the stone wall.

I did not try to block it. The knife in my hand was four inches of dull iron; striking bone would only shatter the blade. Instead, I ducked beneath its lead claw and pivoted hard to the right, driving my left shoulder into its ribs to throw off its trajectory.

The beast slammed into the heavy oak doorframe. The impact splintered the rotted trim.

Before it could twist around, I snatched a three-foot length of broken cedar joist from the debris near the wall. I drove the blunt end straight into the side of its skull, pinning its head against the doorpost.

The Shimi thrushed violently. Black mist boiled off its skin, scalding the back of my hand like grease from a hot skillet. The stench of burned sulfur filled the room.

Its right claw lashed out, tearing through the sleeve of my tunic and scoring three shallow red lines across my forearm.

I ignored the burn. I leaned my full weight against the cedar timber, locking its jaw in place, and brought the skinning knife down with both hands.

I did not aim for the skull. I drove the point directly beneath its collarbone, angling downward into the pulsing red core.

The iron point met hard, crystalline resistance. I shoved down with the heel of my palm, putting my whole body behind the thrust.

The core cracked.

A sharp, glass-like snap echoed through the room.

The beast went rigid. The red light inside its chest flared blindingly, then shattered into a dozen dull gray fragments. The black mist making up its flesh collapsed in an instant, melting into a puddle of foul-smelling gray oil that soaked into the pine planks.

All that remained was the brittle bone cage and a thumb-sized sphere of condensed rot, dull and clouded like a bruised plum.

I stood there for three breaths, my chest heaving, the cedar timber still locked in my white-knuckled grip.

The hallway outside remained silent. No second beast dropped from the ceiling. Down in the courtyard, no alarm sounded. Naoto was probably sitting by his brazier, polishing his silver thumb ring.

"First harvest," I whispered, wiping the sweat from my brow with the back of my uninjured arm.

I picked up the Shimi core. It was cold as river ice, smooth and surprisingly heavy. The Meisho Cordon charged four bushels of rice for ten of these. Souta would weigh it, look for flaws, dock two-tenths of its value for impurities, and hand over half-spoiled grain with a patronizing pat on the shoulder.

I wiped the greasy residue from my skinning knife onto my trousers and inspected my forearm. The scratch was shallow, bleeding sluggishly, but the edges were clean. No black discoloration. The rot had not taken hold.

I carried the heavy oak crossbar to the door, dropped it into the iron brackets, and shoved it down until it seated with a solid thunk. Then I went to the window, took the small iron wedge from my satchel, and hammered it into the sash frame with the pommel of my knife until the wood refused to rattle.

The room was secure.

I sat down on the floorboards in the far corner, away from the puddle of rot-oil, and unslung my canvas bag.

Three barley cakes. One spare pair of wool socks. A six-foot coil of hemp twine. A small tin of coarse salt.

It was everything I owned in the world.

If Souta decided to conduct an inspection during his next supply run, he would search the room, take whatever he fancied, and call it an administrative levy. The Cordon did not permit conscripts to hold surplus rations or uncatalogued gear.

I needed a place to hide the salt and the spare twine.

I inspected the floorboards in the corner. The pine planks were three inches wide, hand-hewn, and secured with square iron nails. Most were rusted tight into the joists below, but near the corner hearth, where water from an old roof leak had rotted the sub-beam, one plank sat slightly proud of the rest.

I worked the tip of my skinning knife under the edge.

The wood groaned. The rusted nail head sheared off with a dry click.

I levered the board up, expecting to find damp sawdust, mouse droppings, or rotted insulation.

Instead, the knife blade struck something hard and metallic with a dull ring.

I froze.

I set the loose plank aside and reached into the dark cavity between the floor joists. My fingers brushed against heavy, waxed canvas wrapped tightly with oiled leather cords.

I caught the edge of the wrapping and dragged it out into the fading daylight.

The bundle was two feet long, heavy, and smelled strongly of clove oil and weapons grease.

I cut the binding cord with my knife and peeled back the oiled canvas.

Nested inside the waterproof wrapping was a long, lacquered wooden field case bearing the stamped black crest of the Meisho First Assault Division.

I lifted the brass clasps.

Inside lay four combat daggers of folded imperial steel, their edges ground to razor sharpness and coated in clear preservation grease. Beside them sat a brass spool of high-tensile steel tripwire, three ceramic flash-pots filled with alchemical ignition powder, and a silk pouch containing seven pristine, uncut Shimi cores—each one glowing with a deep, radiant crimson that far outshone the cloudy marble I had just pulled from the scout's chest.

This was not scrap left behind by a desperate conscript.

This was frontline assault ordnance from an elite Cordon strike unit, hidden beneath the floorboards of an abandoned wing where no inspection officer ever walked.

I picked up one of the daggers. The balance was perfect, the rayskin grip wrapping cold and sure against my calloused palm.

Down below in the courtyard, the fourth bell of dusk began to toll across the misty gorge.

I closed the case, slid it back beneath the joists, and replaced the pine board.

Then I sat down in the corner with the stolen blade resting across my knees, watching the darkness gather outside the iron-barred window.

I was going to survive this place. And the Meisho Cordon was going to regret putting me here.