Chapter 1 — Heartbridge

Greyhaven woke early.

The harbor bell rang once before sunrise. Fish carts rattled up from the docks. Smoke drifted low between the buildings until the wind carried it out over the water. By midday the market square would be packed with traders, sailors, and arguments over prices nobody liked and everybody paid.

Riven worked wherever the day would pay. Some mornings he hauled crates off fishing boats until his shoulders burned. Other days he swept floors at Mara's inn, scrubbed tables, carried messages, or did whatever job happened to be nearest when somebody shouted his name. If rent was due, he worked longer. If rent was overdue, he slept less.

That morning Mara had sent him to the lower dock with a handcart and a list of names nobody would remember by noon. Two crews short since the fever. The dock boss kept calling for the same crates twice. Riven loaded herring until his gloves stank through, stacked the cart until the axle groaned, and wheeled it up the harbor road past a chalk sign for the fiddler at midday in the square. Heroes. Never forgotten. Somebody had drawn a dick beneath the second line. Greyhaven kept its priorities straight.

At the fish quay a boy tried to lift the wrong end of a crate and dropped it. Herring slid across wet planks. The boss swore. Riven swore too, then spent ten minutes sorting the mess because nobody else would and because sorting was still paid if you argued loud enough.

The boss counted the crates wrong twice—once short, once long—and tried to pay for the short count until Riven stacked the empties in a row and made him count again. "I don't work for maybe," Riven said. The boss called him a prick. Riven called him worse. They settled on the right number because the handcart was still half empty and the noon bell was coming whether the herring cooperated or not.

A woman from the smokehouse wanted her order moved ahead of the fish. The boss said yes. Riven said no until she showed him the coin. Then he said yes and hated both of them for it. The coin shut the argument up faster than reason did.

His back complained before he reached the hill path. It would complain louder tomorrow. Just thinking about tomorrow made the ache worse.

By the time he started up the hill above the harbor road, his sleeves smelled like rope tar and herring and the noise of town faded a little with every turn—wheels knocking over stone below, somebody shouting about fresh catch, a dog barking, a boy in a hat three sizes too big running past the wrong direction without looking back. Up here there was wind, space, nobody asking him for anything.

He climbed the zigzag path with his hands shoved into his pockets and gravel slipping under his boots. Halfway up he passed a pair of pilgrims—older woman, younger man, both in road-stained cloaks—resting on a bench somebody had nailed into the hillside last winter. The bench listed to one side. The man wore a hat with a feather so bedraggled it looked ashamed of itself. The woman counted coins into his palm while he tied a fresh ribbon around his wrist. Riven stepped around them without slowing. His stomach was already thinking about lunch he hadn't earned yet.

At the next bend he glanced back. The wind shifted, and three words drifted up from somewhere below: Heroes. Curse. Never forgotten. Riven rolled his eyes and kept climbing.

Everybody in Greyhaven knew the bond story. Pilgrims climbed the hill in pairs. Riven had stopped counting how many times he'd heard it.

On the lower switchback a woman sat on the broken bench with her boot off, blister blood dark through the wool. Her companion tried to tie a strip of linen and got it wrong twice. Riven stepped around them. Help on Heartbridge always turned into the bond story again.

The path leveled out. Heartbridge stood ahead of him, hard to miss even after all these years. Two figures carved from pale stone rose from a broad base overlooking the harbor. They leaned into the same pull, bound together by a single rope carved across both chests and into a knot between their joined hands.

The pamphlets made it look clean. The real thing wasn't. Rain had worn away faces. Bird droppings streaked the stone. Wax filled old cracks. A ribbon had rotted into one seam and never been removed. At least the mess looked honest.

He pulled a folded pamphlet from his pocket, the paper already soft at the creases. Heartbridge. Power flowing. The land choosing. The usual promises. He stared at the carved knot between the figures' hands and felt his lip curl before he could stop it.

His boot found a loose chip at the base of the monument. It skittered downslope. For a stupid second he imagined the whole thing tipping after it.

He rubbed his thumb across the ink until it smudged, then reached toward the stone. His fingers stopped an inch short. The monument held the night's cold.

"That's fucking gross."

Riven turned. Cael stood a few paces back on the loose rock, tall and broad-shouldered in a dark coat, short hair, somehow not sliding on the gravel like any normal person would. Riven hadn't heard him approach. That irritated him more than it should have. They'd been friends since before the fever—not brothers, not kin, just the boy from the lane behind Mara's who kept showing up on the hill whether Riven wanted company or not.

"Everything's stained," Riven said, nodding toward the monument. "Fish scales. Mud. Wax. Bird shit. It gets into everything."

Cael stepped up beside him and looked at the stone, not the pamphlet, not Riven, the stone.

"You've been up here since first light."

Riven folded the pamphlet and shoved it back into his pocket. "Didn't have anywhere else I wanted to be."

"You smell like cold air and smoke."

"I smell like cheap soap and bad tea." Riven scrubbed his palms against his trousers. "Call that morning air if you want."

A gull cried overhead. Another answered from somewhere below the hill. Beside him, Cael read the carving at the base of the monument, slow and careful, one worn letter at a time.

"You're in a mood."

"I'm studying."

"You're in a mood while you study."

Riven snorted despite himself. "Impressive." The smile didn't last. He looked back at the joined hands. "In the woodcuts they always look heroic." He tapped the folded pamphlet against his palm. "Swords up. Faces clean. Like they knew exactly what they were doing." The wind tugged at the paper. "But then you get to the small print."

Cael glanced over.

Riven unfolded the pamphlet and read from memory instead. "'Bodies found fused from the bond. Ribs pressed together. No space left for air.'" The words sounded ridiculous spoken aloud. He folded the paper again. "I keep trying to figure out which part people are supposed to admire."

Cael looked at the monument. "It still happened."

"Maybe," Riven said.

"It did," Cael said.

Riven sighed. "Tell that to the singers."

"The singers aren't here."

"No. Just us." For a while neither spoke. Below them the harbor spread across the bay—grey water, crooked docks, tiny figures moving through the streets. Riven's shoulders ached from herring crates. Same ache tomorrow. Same crates, probably.

A maintenance crew worked on the lower switchback, three men with ropes and wooden supports shoring up a section of path that had cracked in the last rains. One of them shouted measurements up the hill. Cael's head turned toward the sound before Riven's did. Of course it did.

The foreman had the wrong length twice. The man on the rope argued back. Somebody below shouted that the support was crooked and everybody stopped to look at the same timber from three angles. A gull landed on the railing and stole somebody's lunch without anyone noticing. Cael watched the crew. Riven watched the gull make off with a whole herring.

"You'd fix it," Riven said.

"If they'd let me."

"They won't."

"No." Cael's eyes stayed on the support. "They'll patch it and call it done until the next rain."

The foreman finally cut the board short and hammered it anyway. The support held. For now. Cael looked away first.

"You hear that?" Riven asked.

"Brace placement's wrong."

"You can't see bad support placement."

"I can see it." Cael nodded toward the timber. "They're loading the outside edge. First heavy cart and it'll roll."

One of the crew looked up, saw them watching, and waved—tired, not friendly. Riven waved back. Not waving picked a fight with somebody else's job.

A cart came up the switchback an hour later, loaded heavy on the inside edge. The support held. Cael watched it pass and said nothing—not because he'd been wrong, but because nobody on the path had needed him to be right.

"You always do that," Riven said.

"Do what?"

"See the next failure before this one's finished."

Riven watched the crew a moment longer. They weren't loading the outside edge. Or maybe they were. He couldn't tell, and that irritated him almost as much as Cael being wrong this time.

Riven leaned against the stone base. His gloves still smelled like herring.

"You ever think about anything else?" Cael asked.

Riven blinked. "What?"

"The inn. The docks. Money." Cael shrugged. "You always look angry after."

Heat climbed into Riven's face—part anger, part embarrassment at being read that easily. "I'm angry because I can already feel tomorrow in my back."

"Which part?"

"The part where I haul crates until my back gives out and the boss still counts wrong." He scrubbed his palms against his trousers. "The part where Mara scrubs my name and hires somebody cheaper by noon."

Cael nodded. Fair enough.

Riven looked back toward the harbor. "If I die tomorrow, nobody's singing about it."

Cael laughed once, short and unexpected. "That's your nightmare?"

Riven glared at him. "Don't."

Cael went quiet for a beat—not disagreement, recognition. Riven was afraid of vanishing. He was afraid of staying and still not knowing. "Buy me lunch first, then."

Riven rolled the pamphlet tighter. Down below, somebody shouted from the market.

"You ever stop looking for things to fix?"

Cael considered it. "No."

"That sounds exhausting."

"It is." Cael's eyes tracked a loose slate on the inn roof two streets over. "Still cheaper than letting it fall."

That earned another laugh, small this time and real. The wind shifted, salt and wet wool and smoke. Riven's stomach growled. He ignored it. Cael pretended not to hear. That helped.

"You eaten?" Cael asked.

"No."

"Mara's got oat bread in the kitchen. Stale by noon."

"Stale by nine." Riven shifted on the stone. "I'll eat when she yells at me for skipping."

"She'll yell anyway."

"Then I'll eat angry. Works better."

"The dock stew tastes like dishwater," Riven said.

"The dock stew tastes like the dock."

"Same thing." Riven squinted at the harbor. "Mara waters hers down on slow weeks."

"She does not."

"She does. Bran told me."

"Bran eats everything and lies about half of it."

Footsteps scraped up the path behind them, fast and careless. Bran came over the rise breathing hard, all elbows and oversized boots, knit cap crooked, one lace untied somewhere down the hill.

"Oi," he called. "Mara says if you two are skipping work again, she's charging your mothers."

Riven groaned. "Tell Mara my mother's dead."

Bran stumbled half a step. "Uh."

"Don't tell Mara that." Cael cut in before the boy could repeat it. "Tell her we'll sweep the yard after."

Riven exhaled. "What he said. Sorry." He waved Bran off. "The sweeping part."

It wasn't a joke. Three winters since the fever, and people still said mothers like everyone had one.

Bran nodded, careful now, then remembered something. "Oh. And that singer's back."

Riven closed his eyes. "The fiddle one?"

"Yeah." Bran grinned. "They're doing the bond story."

"Of course they are."

The market square appeared in Riven's head immediately: cheap pamphlets, children staring, some drunk trying to sing along and getting every third line wrong.

"Fucking hell."

"It's probably just a fiddle and a hat," Cael said.

"It's never just a fiddle and a hat."

Bran laughed. Cael pressed a coin into his hand, and the boy vanished down the trail almost as quickly as he'd arrived, sending loose stones skittering after him. The wind filled the silence. Far below, somebody cheered. Riven didn't need to hear the song to know which one it was—the bond story, always the bond story, fiddle climbing the same three notes until your teeth hurt.

"You going down there?" Riven asked.

"To the square?" Cael said.

"To tell Mara we swept," Riven said.

Cael looked at the monument, then the path. "After."

"Singer'll be done by then."

"Then we'll hear the end of it from the yard." Cael shrugged. "Mara charges less when the square's loud."

Riven snorted. "She charges more when it's quiet and she can hear us think."

Far below, somebody cheered again.

"Mara's head hurts when that singer's in the square," Riven said. "Mine too."

"Bad note again?" Cael asked.

"Always the third one." Riven rubbed his shoulder. "This herring smell is never leaving my coat."

"Wash it," Cael said.

"With what? Rain?" Riven said.

Cael almost smiled. For a moment he said nothing. Then he touched the chipped base where rain had eaten the stone. "Still two people under the carving."

Riven looked over. "What?"

"Not my point." Cael pulled his hand back. "Forget it."

"Say it," Riven said.

Cael glanced over. "Say what?"

"What comes next." Riven jerked his chin toward the monument. "Not the song version. The thing you've been thinking all morning."

Cael looked north. "Ashfen."

Riven blinked. "What?"

"I want to go look." Cael looked north. "If any of it's true, I don't want to waste it down here counting wrong."

Riven stared at him. "You're serious."

"Yeah."

"Ashfen's two days of bad road and bad weather."

"Probably."

"And if we get there?" Riven asked.

"We find out if it's carved rock and market talk," Cael said.

Riven looked at the pamphlet in his hand—the smudged ink, the bodies-fused line he'd read aloud for Cael's benefit and his own disgust. "And if the market talk is all there is?"

"Then we come back and tell Mara she was right to charge extra." Easy to say. The dread that came with it settled in Riven's chest—same hill, same counting, same not-knowing forever.

Riven barked out a laugh despite himself. "She'll love that."

"She'll charge us for the story too."

Riven looked at the pamphlet again—the cheap diagram, the fused ribs line. He wanted to throw it off the hill. He didn't. Throwing things off Heartbridge was for pilgrims and drunkards.

Below them, wrong note from the square, then laughter—somebody covering for the fiddler. Riven winced in sympathy before he could stop himself.

Riven looked back toward town: Mara's inn, the docks, the same streets, the same jobs, the same board, the same tomorrow. Then he looked north.

"Christ," he said quietly. Not agreement. Not yet.

Cael waited. Riven kicked a loose stone off the path. It bounced once and vanished into the grass.

"I hear you," Riven said. "That doesn't mean I'm saying yes before we've slept on it."

Cael's mouth twitched. "Fair."

He thought about the dock list in his pocket, names already smudged. Thought about the boss calling for crates twice. His legs were tired. His back was tired. Tomorrow sounded worse than today, and today had been bad enough.

He didn't want another tomorrow like that. Ashfen still sounded insane. But tomorrow here sounded worse.

The wind kept blowing. Riven looked at the road instead of the monument—and didn't walk it yet.