I caught sight of Gedric as I exited the opposite end of the exploded building’s alleyway. His back was covered in a spray of the white dust, Riley’s too long trench coat dragging on the ground. His hand, which peeked out from the rolled-up sleeve, was clutching what looked like a small, well-knitted pouch.

“Ged!” I shouted.

He turned, waved the hand holding the sack jovially and jogged in my direction.

“Look what I found!” Gedric said, presenting his prize.

I examined the sack. The opening of the pouch had a triangular pattern stitched on it, weaving white and black thread into something resembling a pair of mountains, the tops of the triangles lightening like snow-capped peaks.

“Is that from the girl who was holding up the line?” I asked. I was surprised my brother had managed to nab it in the chaos.

Gedric nodded. “When that guy in purple jumped through the wall, he attacked both her and her friend. It flew off her belt when she got grabbed.”

“Did you just steal from a victim of assault?” I accused.

“Not technically. I think they were criminals or something. The guards showed up pretty soon after and didn’t do anything to the purple guy. He was holding them both up by the throat and everything!”

“So you stole from someone while they were being arrested. Much better.”

Gedric shook the sack.

I can’t count coins from clinks, but that was a lot of clinking.

“We can keep it. If she’s getting arrested she won't need it anyways.” I said.

“Exactly.”

I passed my brother his pastry, holding on to the second of the three I had grabbed in my ill-fated attempt at baked good banitry.

I gestured with the third tart.

“This one is Riley’s.”

“I guess we should bring it to him.” My brother said.

Gedric removed the coat and folded it over his arm - turning it inside out so that the white dust coating the back of it wasn’t visible - and we made our way back to the docks. Riley was where we left him, legs hanging off the edge of the wooden pier with a bottle in his hand.

I approached and called his name. He gave a half wave.

“Got my cut?” Wet Riley mumbled.

I passed him a tart. Gedric draped the coat over his head.

“Your coat stinks, Riley.” My brother said.

Riley just grunted.

The sound of chains and metal on gravel came from the shore. I glanced over to see the man in purple striding down the boardwalk, flanked by a pair of soldiers in military plate, chainmail hoods covering their heads. One of them had a thin, whiplike sword strapped to their waist, which I found odd.

They’re for stabbing. I recalled what my mother said when I was younger. The metal gets easy to bend when it’s that thin, so blocking will get you cut up. You have to parry and dodge, and use the light weight to strike back like lightning. They have a name for it. A rapier.

The armor didn’t make sense. Wouldn’t wearing metal make it hard to dodge?

“That’s them, Het.” Gedric gestured. I snapped out of my sword-induced fugue.

He was pointing at the pair in chains, the boy and girl from the market. The girl had a heavy bruise across her face, and both were littered with the same white dust that had covered us in the explosion.

“Cool.” I said. “She got robbed, arrested, and was given a concussion in the span of half an hour. Now I feel much better about this whole thing.”

“Wassat?” Riley said, turning from his spot on the edge of the pier.

Gedric showed him the coin pouch. Riley seemed to suddenly sober.

“Where did you find that?” He asked.

“Filched it off her.” My brother said, pointing at the woman being escorted down the docks by the man in purple.

Riley looked at the parade and groaned.

“Gimmie that.” He said, gesturing to the coin pouch. Gedric did as asked.

Wet Riley let it roll out of his hand, and it made a ‘ploomp’ noise as it hit the water.

“Hey!” Gedric and I shouted in unison. One of the mail-hooded guards glanced our way, momentarily at the sudden noise before looking back at their charge.

Riley gave us a shut the fuck up look. We did.

“Are you trying to get arrested too?” He asked, whispering.

“What are you talking about?” Gedric asked at full volume.

“That’s property of the Jirou Bloodline, you idiots.”

“How do you know?” My brother asked, doubting the drunk’s claim.

“Did you see the color? The pattern?” He asked. “The triangles at the top. What did they remind you of?”

“Mountains.” I said. Riley bopped me on the head.

“No. ” He said. “They’re horns. What animal is on Jirou’s emblem?”

“A black rhino.” Gedric completed, the realization dawning on him.

“Shit.” I said. “Good save. Thanks, Riley.”

“You think that’s why they got arrested?” My brother asked.

I shrugged. “Who cares.”

“I care.” Gedric said. “She was cute.”

“You stole from her. You’ve already destroyed your chances with the cute fugitive girl.”

“She doesn’t know it was me. Besides, if she’s a criminal that just means we have common ground.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“If she’s stealing from the Jirou Bloodline, she’s probably an idiot too. We match!”

Don’t smile. If you smile, he wins.

“Let’s just go home.” I said, attempting to keep my unamused facade whole.

“You laughed. I saw it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bye Riley!” Gedric called.

Riley was rubbing his temples, but managed a wave in between what looked like a splitting headache.

I’m sure it only came from the hangover.

Home was quiet, as expected. We didn’t have the key to the front door anymore, so Gedric and I jumped the back fence. Inside the garden, the back door to the house had a loose deadbolt, so all we had to do to get in was lift the door at a slight angle in order for it to scrape open.

Most of this district of Byras was abandoned, anyways, so there was no need to even keep a lookout for people who might think we were breaking into our own house. I think the guards knew we were ‘squatting’ here, anyway - well, those that weren’t drafted, the city guard numbered third of what I remember it being when I was younger.

I took the small step up the lip at the edge of the back door before removing my shoes. The interior’s floor was mostly well-worn birchwood, the walls and the landing inside the back door the same cold white stone as the rest of the city. It was clean because I swept when I was stressed, and I was stressed whenever it was dirty. Gedric put up with my tidy tendencies, though I had to tell him to pick up his heist supplies more often than I wanted.

“I’m going to count the stash.” I declared.

Gedric plopped down face first on the bed in our room, adjacent to the living area I was still standing in.

“Gonna be the same amount.” He said.

I just shrugged and walked to the fireplace.

Gedric huffed, knowing it was futile to say more. It was the same back and forth we’d had many times over the past few years, truncated. The fat had long been trimmed from the argument, so that all that remained was the initial intent of the words:

You’re doing that thing again, Hetis.

I know, sorry. I have to, or I won’t stop thinking about it.

Dropping to my knees, I reached up the chimney to the loose brick against the inside wall. After pulling it out, I grabbed the leather sack sitting on the small ledge the brick concealed. Dad had built the safespot years ago after hearing mom might be drafted for the war. Just as a place to keep stuff for emergencies, nothing more. I was thankful for it now, seeing as the spot was much safer than hiding it beneath my bed or something similarly childish.

In the sack was a veritable pile of coins, mostly silver and copper. I started counting.

Seven hundred and ninety six silver. Forty seven gold. A horde of coppers that made the pile look much larger. Probably another hundred or so silver in value, though I had miscounted them so many times I didn’t bother verifying the exact amount. In total, our fortune came to about a hundred and forty gold. Not even a tenth of what we needed to buy the house, I guessed.

For a long time that number had been going down - Gedric and I were fortunate that before the war started and Mom had been drafted she was already a Captain and had the paycheck to fit the job. It was only within the last year or two that a combination of our heists and picking up odd jobs along the docks that we actually started to increase our savings instead of biting into them.

I shoveled the money back into the container and stuffed it back in the fireplace alcove.

With my counting ritual finished, I started the long process of keeping the house a semi-livable space. I stepped over the hole on the floor near the entrance to the kitchen - the wood had broken a few months ago and neither I nor my brother had the carpentry skills to fix it up - and grabbed the broom we’d stolen from a tavern near the boardwalk when the first one had lost the last of its bristles.

I was about halfway through sweeping the kitchen when I heard a knock on the door.

The last visitor we had, almost four months ago, was a burglar. He didn't knock, unless you count sticking a shim into the crack of the window as knocking. Gedric had gotten the man to leave by poking him in the fingers with a kitchen knife when he tried to pry the window open.

“Someone at the door?” Gedric said quietly.

I nodded in response.

“Hello? Is anybody there?” A female voice called out.

I gestured to Gedric that I was going to go peek through the front window, and took what I thought were some of the most silent footsteps I'd ever taken.

“I can hear you.” The voice said.

I parted the curtains enough for a single eye to gaze at the front of the house. On our porch, a figure decked in shining platemail stood. It was armor I recognized; she had the same chainmail hood I had seen earlier that day. She was one of the soldiers with the man in purple.

“And now I can see you.”

I quickly closed the curtain.

“What do we do?” I whispered to my brother.

Technically, we weren’t supposed to live here. Neither of us were of the age where we could own property, and with both our parents gone, our house was owned by the city. If her boss was allowed to explode walls in broad daylight, there was a good chance she would have authority to remove us.

“Nobody's home!” Gedric yelled.

“Not that!” I scream-whispered. “He means our parents aren't home!”

“Come open the door and we can talk!” she shouted from outside.

“Shit.” I said.

I opened the window and stuck my head out.

“We can't unlock the front door right now, But we can let you in the back.”

She gave me a quizzical look. “Sure.”

Gedric ran to the back door and undid the deadbolt - it was much easier to open from the inside - and we met the woman at the back gate. She was intimidating up close, standing a full head and a half taller than me, and was as thick as the brick wall that surrounded the garden in her plate armor. Once inside, she lowered her Hood to reveal a strict bun of brown hair and a pair of steel grey irises that relaxed when we revealed that we were, in fact, scrawny teenagers.

“Where are your parents?” She asked.

“Mom's a Captain. She got drafted, and then got Vanished.” My brother said. The truth.

The woman coughed awkwardly.

“My condolences. What about your father?”

Gedric’s brow furrowed further.

“He-”

"Dad's out getting the front door fixed.” I said, cutting off Gedric.

The woman crossed her arms and tapped the metal plate near her elbow once.

“I see.” She said. “Do you mind if I wait here for him?”

“I have to keep sweeping.” I said quickly.

“Okay.” she said, letting herself in after pushing past my brother.

I gave my brother a ‘what do we do?’ look, which he frantically returned with a ‘how the hell am I supposed to know?’ as the scary armor woman stepped into the house, plated boot clipping the edge of the stone landing.

“What do you want to talk to my dad about?” I asked.

The woman gingerly clomped around the hole in the floor near the kitchen entrance as she thought on my question. She found a chair at the table by the window and sat. The chair groaned under the weight of her metal and leather carapace.

“I’m sure you heard the Savage War ended?” She said.

“Yeah.” I said. I had heard. The Savage War, the years-long struggle that had culminated with a whole lot of nothing, had been called off by the Emperor a few months ago. It turns out that was just a thing he could do. About five years too late, if you asked me or our parents, but they were gone, so nobody asked us.

“I’m here on clean-up. Sort of.” The armored woman said. “Can I be straight with you two?”

I nodded hesitantly, after seeing my brother do a similar affirmation.

“Jirou fucked up.” The armored woman said. “That war was supposed to end years ago. The Savage Lands should’ve been conquered after a campaign of a few months, at most. At a minimum, a foothold.”

“But it didn’t end.” Gedric said, tapping his leg in annoyance. “It just kept going. Even after the Vanishing-”

“I’m not here to debate politics with a teenager.” She said, holding up her hand. “But you’re right, it should’ve ended. The Jirou Family was the one to make the call for it to continue.”

I nodded hesitantly. I guess it made sense - Jirou was the governing bloodline for the entire Domain. It was effectively a seventh of the entire empire, though in terms of landmass it was more than that. As far as I knew, the head of all of the Major Bloodlines only answered to one person: the Emperor himself. If the Jirou Bloodline head said ‘the war continues’, the war would continue.

“Why didn’t the Emperor stop it sooner?” I asked.

The woman shrugged. “From what I understand, the Emperor trusted the Jirou Family to have the war under their control. He regrets it, though. He’s sent his son and a bunch of his Ambassadors to help with the aftermath.”

“That’s why you’re here?”

She nodded.

“One of the things the Emperor is doing is that he asked for compensation to be given to those whose loved ones were taken by the war. Your family included.”

“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” Gedric said, frown now deepened to a scowl. “Mom and Dad have been gone for five years, and just NOW we get something for it? Are you serious? They tried to put us in an orphanage, but they didn’t have enough beds. Hetis and I slept on the floor, until we got sick of being hungry and tired all the time, so we went back to the house. How were we supposed to do anything? We were just left on our own! It’s like nobody even knew we existed! They still don’t!”

Silence stretched across the room as Gedric finished his rant.

“Mom... and Dad?” The armored woman said.

Uh oh.

“He means Dad was gone, uh, like a metaphor.” I said quickly. “Dad hasn’t been the same since Mom got Vanished.”

The woman tapped twice.

“I see.” She said.

“So how much money are we getting?” I asked.

“That depends.” She said, “Did your mother have a Bloodline?”

“She did. But we don’t have a last name, she was first generation.”

“If that’s the case, then this conversation should wait for your father. Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“Not till much, much, much later.” I said. “We can come find you tomorrow, if you want.”

The woman tapped three times.

“Alright, I think that’s enough.” She said.

I feigned confusion.

“Enough of what?”

She sighed.

“Where’s your father?”

“We told you, he’s out.”

Tap.

“Our door is broken. There’s a hole in the floor. Where else would he be?” I said nervously.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you, he’s out at the locksmith.”

Tap.

“Why do you keep tapping like that?”

“You know why.” She said.

“I’m not lying.” I insisted.

“This is your house, right?” The armored woman asked.

“Of course it is!” Gedric said.

The woman snorted.

“At least you aren’t squatting, I suppose.”

My heart skipped a beat. By legal terms, we were.

The woman’s eyes shot to me.

“You are?” She asked.

My eyes widened. She can read my mind?

“I sure can.”

“Why do we keep running into scary magic people today?” I lamented.

“This is the Empire. Everyone is magic, or scary, or both.”

“Hetis, what are you talking about?” My brother asked, confused.

“I think she can read my mind.”

“Really? Cool. Wait, no. You’re scary and I hate you, weird armor lady!” He said.

“Where’s your dad?” She asked, again.

“When Mom’s day to go south came, Dad was one of the navigators on the boats contracted to bring them to the staging ground. From what we heard, he made it there fine, But his boat was parked in the bay of Chalia during the night of the Vanishing.”

The rest of the story was implied - she wouldn’t have to read my mind to figure out the rest. The Vanishing was an event everyone in the Empire knew, at this point. The entire town of Chalia was emptied of life in a single night, every boat staged for the invasion, evaporated. The houses remained, but there were no signs of struggle. Just open doors and the occasional cold bowl of food.

From what I understand, Chalia had remained empty despite its strategic importance to the war. Nobody wanted to stay in a freshly cursed city.

“Well, that simplifies things.” The woman in armor said. She stood, adjusting her gauntlets.

“Why?”

“We aren’t allowed to give the reparation money to minors. In the case of children with no legal guardians, I’ve been told to give any reparation money to Byras’s governing Bloodline to distribute to orphanages instead.”

“That’s really stupid.” Gedric said. “Have you seen the orphanage? It sucks. The guy who runs it is so old, I don’t think he even remembers his own name.”

The woman shrugged. “I’m just following orders. Not my problem.”

She headed towards the back door.

“Wait!” I called.

“What?”

“Are you going to tell anyone we’re living here?”

She gave me a strange look. “Of course I am. You’re living here illegally.”

“Please don’t. Gedric wasn’t kidding. We asked the owner of the orphanage his name. He said ‘I’m not sure’, and then laughed.”

“I’ll tell them you expressed doubts about the establishment.”

“Please!” I shouted. “There has to be another option.”

“There is one, but you wouldn’t like it.”

“What is it?”

“Enlisting.”

“Oh.”

She sized us up. “If your mother had the blood, you would qualify to be tested, at the very least.”

“And if we passed?”

“You would have the option to come with me and my lord to the Imperial Capital to be trained.”

“You want us to choose now?”

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“What I mean,” I said, “Is that you are currently asking us if we want to join the Imperial Army as soldiers, or you are reporting to the local government for squatting in our dead parents’ house. An action, which, in turn, will uproot our current lives, forcing us to once again sleep on the floor of an orphanage that both doesn’t want us and doesn’t have the resources to take care of us.”

“I wouldn’t put it like that.”

“Fine.” I said. “You caught us. We were squatting on the land our family used to own. Our bad. We'll turn ourselves in and go back to the orphanage.”

Not that I was actually planning to do that. I just wanted to get her to move on and leave so that we wouldn’t have to deal with this any more.

She tapped once.

I groaned. “Oh, Right! You can read our minds! Great! Super!”

“Wait, Het.” Gedric said. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

I glared at the soldier in our house. “Sure.” I said. “Just a second, lady.”

I took a tactical retreat from the kitchen with my brother.

“Hurry, please.” She spoke from the other room. “I have other houses I have to get to.”

“Fine!” I shouted back.

“We should get tested, at least.” Gedric said. “Get all of our options on the table.”

I stared at my brother like he was an idiot. Which he is.

“Absolutely not.” I said.

“Why?”

“What if the test is a secret ritual that we can’t be left alive after seeing? What if one of us goes into one of those bloodrage things? What if only one of us can use it, and is super strong, and the soldier lady is like ‘oh you must come with me because you are the chosen one’ and then I’m like ‘oh no I can’t my brother can’t live without me’ and then-”

“Why are you assuming you’ll be the super strong main character guy? What if it’s me?”

“Come on, Gedric. It’d obviously be me.”

“Your hobby is sweeping.”

“So?”

“It’s lame and you’re lame and-”

“No. It’ll come in handy during a duel, years from now, and then I’ll win. I’ll prove it to you. Let’s take the test.”

“Fine.”

“Fine!”

We ran around the corner, back into the kitchen.

“We want to do the test thing to see if we can join the military.” I said.

From where she was leaning against the wall, I could see the shadow of a glimmer of a smile in her eyes. The woman stood to her full height, and unstrapped her gauntlets. She dumped them on the table with a heavy thud, and cracked her knuckles.

“Then,”

She put both her hands out, palms up, like she was offering us an invisible object. They were calloused and scarred, a long gash down her right palm between the thumb and the index.

“Let’s begin.”