The Eastgate Chronicles
“…and I’m telling you, Torrik,” Merrit hissed as he ducked behind a splintered wagon, “if the bridge collapses, it’s because you’ve been eating your own cooking again.”
The dwarf’s beard bristled like a stormcloud. “Cooking? Lad, I’ve not cooked a day in my life — and why you still have teeth.”
An arrow snapped into the wagon beside Merrit’s ear. He flinched, then glared at the shaft as if it had personally interrupted him.
“Your beard’s on fire,” he said flatly.
Torrik slapped at his chin. “It is not.”
“It will be in a moment.”
Beyond them, Eastgate burned.
Smoke curled black into the pale dawn, carrying pitch and something fouler beneath it. The bridge — their only way out — sagged under fleeing townsfolk, ropes groaning like strained lungs. Somewhere in the chaos, the Shadow Court’s bowmen were taking sport with anyone who moved too slowly.
Merrit squinted into the haze.
The wind wasn’t moving the fire properly.
He couldn’t have explained how he knew. It simply wasn’t.
“Wind’s wrong,” he muttered.
Torrik’s eyebrows attempted to climb toward his hairline and failed. Merrit pretended not to see.
A man in a weathered green cloak approached as if strolling a garden path, a slim leather book in his hand. Kaelen Veyr did not look at the flames or the press of bodies. His gaze rested on the open page.
The Codex felt heavier than it had at dawn. Denser. Cold against his palm despite the heat pressing from every direction.
Ink fretted at the margins. Not writing.
Settling.
“You’re late,” Merrit said.
“I’m precisely on time,” Kaelen replied without looking up. “You two, however, have been standing long enough to grow roots.”
“We’re under arrow fire,” Torrik growled.“Ah.
And yet alive.” Kaelen closed the book.
It shifted in his grip. Lighter for a heartbeat. Then denser again. Cold threaded through his fingers.
He ignored it.
“Our way out isn’t the bridge,” he said. “It’s the cellar of the blue house on the far side.”
“There’s no blue house on the far side,” Merrit said.
“Not yet,” Kaelen replied.
And smiled in a way that made neither of them feel better.
They burst from cover with the fleeing crowd. Heat licked faces. The bridge groaned under too much weight and too much fear.
“Stay low,” Kaelen said.
“I am low,” Merrit snapped. “I was born low.”
Another volley whispered overhead. Someone screamed. The crush tightened.
A woman stepped directly into Torrik’s path. Soot streaked across her face. Her breath came hard but controlled. She held a bundled child wrapped in dark cloth.
She did not shout.
She did not beg.
She placed the bundle into Torrik’s arms.
Deliberate. Careful. As if setting down something breakable.
Torrik’s hands rose without thought.
The weight settled against his chest — warm, trembling, alive. Gray-green eyes blinked open from the folds. The child let out a thin, startled cry at the noise of the bridge. The woman was already gone, swallowed by bodies before Merrit found his voice.
“What just happened?”
“She’d have been trampled,” Torrik said shortly, adjusting his grip.
“That’s not what I meant.”
The bridge lurched violently. A plank snapped mid-span. Bodies vanished into the river below.
“Through,” Kaelen said, pointing toward a narrowing gap between burning carts.
“Through the fire?” Merrit demanded.
“It’s thinning. Two heartbeats.”
“You first.”
Kaelen gestured politely. “After you.”
They sprinted through. Heat clawed at cloaks. Torrik muttered something in Dwarvish that sounded like a curse sharing space with a prayer. The child cried again when someone slammed into Torrik’s shoulder, then quieted as he steadied her against his beard.
Shadow Court bowmen vaulted a pile of barrels ahead, blades drawn now that arrows were useless in the crush. Torrik turned, shield catching a strike meant for Merrit. Merrit’s dagger flashed, found an arm. The man fell back swearing.
Kaelen opened the Codex for a brief glance.
No new text. But the weight shifted. Cold deepened.
He closed it.
“Left alley. Now.”
“You sure?” Merrit snapped.
“No.”
They turned anyway.
Merrit felt it again — that wrongness. Not pursuit. Not danger.
Something beneath. The smoke at the alley mouth thinned strangely for half a breath, as if parted by an unseen current.
Then it was smoke again.
He said nothing.
The alley scraped Torrik’s shoulders. Bricks wept soot. Halfway down, a toppled wagon blocked the path. Boots pounded behind them.
“We’re boxed in,” Torrik said.
“Climb,” Kaelen replied.
“I’m not built for—”
“Then jump higher.”
Torrik tucked the bundle tighter beneath his chin and went first, trusting his knees more than the boards. They scrambled over, dropping into a market square on the far side.
There it stood.
A blue house.
Paint still bright. Still wet along the frame.
“That was brown this morning,” Merrit muttered.
Kaelen did not look at him. “It would be blue by the time we arrived.”
The air shifted. Just slightly.
Not wind.
Pressure.
A stone somewhere adjusted with a sound too small to matter.
Kaelen’s fingers tightened on the Codex. It had gone colder again. He did not open it.
Two Shadow Court men stood at the cellar entrance.
Kaelen stepped forward without haste. The Codex rested closed in his hand. For a moment — just one — the air between them seemed to hold.
The men glanced aside, distracted by something unseen. Long enough. Torrik moved. One man hit stone. The other folded under a shield strike. The door gave way.
Cool cellar air rose — damp stone and old grain.
“Down,” Kaelen said.
They descended quickly. The tunnel walls were lined with bottles of dark liquid, sealed and stacked.
“What in the nine halls is this?” Torrik asked.
“Distraction,” Kaelen replied absently.
Merrit paused halfway down. The air here was wrong too. Layered. Underground ambience, he told himself. Nothing else. They reached the lower chamber.
An underground dock waited in silence. A riverboat rocked gently at its mooring.
“You had a boat under the city,” Merrit said.
Kaelen’s expression did not change. “I hoped.”
Boots thundered above.
Torrik cut the rope.
They slipped into the water as bolts clattered against stone where they had stood moments before.
The water dragged heavier than it should. For a breath, the boat felt lighter.
Then it moved normally again. The child fussed at the cold air off the river. Torrik wrapped his cloak more securely around her. She grabbed his beard and hiccupped.
Nothing unusual.
Just a baby.
Kaelen opened the Codex once more.
No new text.
But a line near the margin had changed. He was certain it had read differently before. It contradicted itself.
He closed the book.
“Row.”
Merrit glanced back once.
The smoke above Eastgate twisted strangely before smoothing back into something resembling ordinary chaos.
He swallowed.
“Wind’s still wrong,” he muttered.
No one answered.
They rowed east.