Kyros Valen's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

Kyros barred the broken door and went back down to the cellar. Corvus was gone for now, but the cellar was still half a hole in the ground. The walls were bare stone. The floor was packed dirt. Pixie's cot sat in the corner beside a crate of nails and a stack of boards he had not cut. If Corvus came back, or anyone else, one look would show them a dragon in a pit. Kyros needed the room finished. He needed it today. He lit a second lantern and started with the boards. He measured the long wall and cut planks against his knee. Pixie watched from the cot. Every few minutes she chirped and hopped to the floor and pushed at his boots. He set her back on the straw. She jumped down again. The crystal toy's glow had faded to a dull blue. She was bored, and a bored dragon made noise. "Stay," he said. "One hour. Then I'll feed you." She climbed the ladder to the trapdoor before he could catch her. Her claws scraped the wood. Loud. Loud enough to carry up the mill floor and out the cracked door. A boot hit the mill floor above. Kyros froze with the hammer in his hand. He grabbed Pixie off the ladder and pushed her under the cot. He climbed up fast and shut the trapdoor behind him. A stranger stood in the mill doorway. Lavender skin. Dark hair. Tattoos ran down both arms and disappeared into his sleeves. He held no weapon. He looked at Kyros the way a man looks at a face he has crossed a long distance to see. "You're him," the stranger said. "I'm nobody," Kyros said. "Get out." The stranger stepped in anyway. His boots were worn through at the toe. "I heard scraping. Under the boards." "Rats." "No." He said it flat. "I've slept in worse places than this. I know the sound." Kyros set the hammer on the bench so his hand would stop shaking. "Who are you." "Zephyr Nexalis. I came four systems to find someone. Not you." He looked past Kyros at the flour sack over the trapdoor. "But I saw what you're hiding. I won't say." "Why." Zephyr shrugged one shoulder. "I've been the thing people wanted to report. I won't do it to another." Kyros watched his face for the lie. He did not find one. He found a tired man who had walked a long road for someone else. "Then leave," Kyros said. "Before someone follows you here." Zephyr nodded once and stepped back out into the gray light. He walked down the path toward the tavern without looking back. Kyros shut the door and slid the bar. The cellar was still unfinished. The dragon was still restless. And now a second stranger knew the mill.