IBTRFL Chapter 38

Aer was flat on her back for three more days.

Actually, by the day after she woke up she could move around well enough—but Djite's fierce opposition had kept her to the bed.

If it hadn't been for the three people who kept her company—Fons, Mela, and Djite—she would have dried up and died of boredom.

Aer, who had been lying in bed, yawned at full stretch and sat up. The medicine the doctor had prepared was effective, but it brought on a sleep she could barely fight through.

She looked down. The wooden splint immobilizing her right arm. A week had passed since she woke, but the injury had been so severe that recovery was slow.

The doctor had said it would take about a month to fully heal. Even then, it was only this good because her body was strong—an ordinary person, he'd warned, would have lost the use of it entirely. The look on Djite's face while he listened to that part.

Aer let out a slightly sheepish laugh, then reached deep into her pocket and took out the soul stone.

The stone, roughly the size of a large pearl, gave off a deep, lustrous golden light. Djite had set it aside during the work of breaking down the carcass and handed it over to her separately.

Smaller and more brilliant than the ones she'd swallowed before. Even as an immature specimen it must have lived at least a hundred years.

"…So the King of the Earth really is a king, I suppose."

Aer turned the soul stone over and examined it, then slipped it back into her pocket. Swallowing it now wasn't a good choice.

She had broken ribs—even breathing wasn't comfortable—and the bruising that covered her entire body was still intact.

'Damn it all.'

Aer let out an irritated exhale and got up from the bed, pulling her robe over herself. She'd gotten the knack of it by now and could manage it quickly.

“Rana-sis! It’s me, Fons!”

A bright voice rang out from beyond the door. Aer roughly straightened herself up and pulled the door open quickly. Fons was standing at the entrance with a basket nearly as big as his own torso, his face all sunshine.

The look of him the first time she'd seen him in the bandits' hideout was long gone; flesh was filling back in over his cheeks. The peach color returning to the healthy sheen of his face—she could feel Mela's determination in it.

"Are you going to see Grandfather Djite?"

"Yeah, I was just heading out."

"Mom asked me to bring this over."

Fons beamed.

"I helped this time too. We put in lots of chicken so it's going to be really good."

"Thank you. I'll enjoy every bit."

"Okay! I'll get going then. Starting today I'm back to learning my letters!"

Fons, basket delivered, went tearing off somewhere. The lightness of the child's steps carried a joy too innocent to erase. Aer watched him go for a moment, then lifted the cloth covering the basket.

Dark bread, still warm. A soup thick with chicken and vegetables. A small bag with fresh fruit and nuts had wedged itself into one corner too.

Today's portion, same as always—enough to feed five people comfortably.

"…Chicken soup."

Every time she'd eaten Mela's cooking over the past few days, she couldn't shake the feeling that it was familiar.

Chicken soup was common enough, found anywhere you went—but this was a different kind of familiarity, something definite and close-feeling.

Aer looked down at the robe. The fabric. The familiar smell of the soup.

"…Could it be."

Looking at the various pieces of evidence, it wasn't an impossible guess.

She decided not to ask directly, though. She wasn't certain, and even if she was right, she had no idea what might follow between those two people.

"Hey! Rana!"

A carpenter nailing something on a roof waved at her. Both hands were occupied—the basket in one, the splinted arm the other—so she lifted the injured side in a sort of wave back.

The carpenter called out loudly:

"Heading to the gentleman's?"

"Yes!"

"Make sure you eat properly! And mind that arm!"

Aer smiled and nodded.

The carpenter's shout drew people nearby, and they came toward her with warm faces.

"Rana. Are you feeling better?"

"Yes, I'm fine."

"My goodness, you're so thin. You absolutely have to eat properly."

"That's right! You need to eat a lot to get well."

The people offered their comments one by one and pressed bread or fruit into her hands. She insisted, repeatedly, that Mela had already packed more than enough—but the words didn't seem to reach anyone's ears.

"Oh my. We've held you up too long."

"Go on and have a meal with the gentleman."

"If it's not enough, come and say so. I'll bring more."

"Th, thank you."

Aer bowed her head and moved on. The basket, already heavy, was now enough to make her shoulder shake.

The people here were decent and sincere, just as Djite had said.

People who had been abandoned by friends or family, or who had run here because they had no power to resist those above them.

The village that those people had built together was warm and full. A richness rare in a village of fugitives cut off from the outside.

By Djite's account, he said he’d just been picking people up one and two at a time for so long that, before he knew it, it had become a real village. When she asked how he'd known who to take in and who to ignore, the magnificent answer that came back was you can tell just by looking.

Farmers, doctors, bakers, carpenters, bricklayers, builders, even a priest who'd been unjustly excommunicated.

Somehow he'd gathered exactly the right spread—everyone essential to a functioning village was here.

Her recovery had been faster because of it. The people had joined their strength and rebuilt their precious home. They scrubbed out the blood that had soaked deep into the ground and raised the collapsed buildings back up. Along the way, a small, modest funeral had been held for those they had lost.

The people, bound together by wounds and grief, were moving forward using each other as their light.

"…What a shit world."

Where rotten people come out on top.

"Maybe I should just ask him sometime…"

Aer dug her fingers into her hair through the robe and scratched.

The papal Inspector-General of Ecclesiastical Law held considerable power. But that power was confined to the inside of the Church—it didn't really reach beyond it.

Clearing these people's names would need someone at the level of a cardinal, or the Pope herself—

"No."

She’d already asked for so much. She couldn’t keep doing that. Aer sighed and made her feet start moving again.

"Nothing left."

In front of the fully collapsed abandoned mine, nothing remained but small scraps of flesh and splinters of bone. After days of work, Ertorix's carcass had been broken down entirely and buried at a distance.

Not eating the meat of a chaos beast unless you kept herbivores or were in desperate straits was ordinary common sense. And for all its ferocity, Ertorix hadn't been a particularly useful beast. The village's particular situation made disposing of the carcass cleanly difficult besides.

Aer shifted her gaze and went on her way. Past a few buildings still waiting to be repaired, the sound of water came cool to her ears.

Water tumbling off the falls broke white against the surface below. Behind it, gray smoke seeped from the cave—but the waterfall scattered it before it could go anywhere. The location had been chosen so the village wouldn't be spotted from outside, but it had a certain quality to it regardless.

Aer twisted to keep herself and the basket dry and went in through the side of the cave.

She'd been told it was a smithy assembled from equipment salvaged from the abandoned mine settlement, but it didn't feel lacking. Probably because the smithy's owner was an extraordinary craftsman.

The cold ring of heavy iron meeting iron drummed against her ears. Djite raised a cherry-red piece of metal, set it on the anvil, and brought the hammer down. Practiced and sure. Light and exact.

Even to someone who knew only how to swing a blade, never how to make one, it was plain this was mastery.

Djite had been striking the metal for some time when he felt the eyes on him and looked up.

Aer, robe pulled well down over her face, waved at him with a smile.

The brown eyes softened. The old blacksmith cleared his throat unnecessarily and launched an objection he didn't really mean.

"…If you're here, say so. Don't just stand there making me nervous."

Aer grinned.

“Here I am.”

"You—!"

Djite barked. It didn’t land. Aer snickered and came toward him.

Djite turned his head away and said curtly:

"You're in the way. Wait outside."

"Really?"

"Yes."

The red coals in the furnace breathed out a wave of heat. The sharp ring of metal continued.

Aer watched the not-quite-honest old man through half-closed eyes.

His gaze was fixed on the anvil, but his attention had quietly tilted this way—she could feel it.

She'd come every day since she could move around again, and they'd eaten together each time—and he was always like this. If she made a show of her arm hurting he would panic and not know what to do, hovering uselessly, but—

I shouldn't, but I want to tease him. Aer deliberately let out a deep sigh and set the basket down.

Djite's considerably sturdier shoulders twitched.

Aer spoke in a voice that dripped disappointment:

"Then I'll just leave this here and go. You make sure to eat it, all right. I'll just have mine with Mela."

"No."

Before Djite could really stop her, Aer had already stepped out of the cave.

The large hand that had reached out missed and wandered the empty air. In the forge where cold silence had come to rest—only the occasional pop and crackle of the coals, echoing.

Djite looked toward the entrance and murmured to himself, forlornly.

"...she didn’t have to actually go. Stupid old fool."

His appetite had gone flat. Djite was reaching, glum-faced, to pick up the hammer again.

Then Aer's head appeared in the entrance, with a particular sort of smile.

Djite's neck went red before anything else did.

"I knew it."

“You little—! The blood on your head isn’t even dry yet and you’re already mocking your elders!”

"You're always waiting for me to come."

"I am not! Who would wait for you!"

Aer watched the flustered old man with a mildly mischievous eye. He was putting on a show of anger, but the brown eyes were as fond as anything.

"Come and eat. Mela sent a ridiculous amount again today. Other people added to it too."

"Who said I was eating with you?"

"Then I'll really leave?"

Djite flinched—and then, without further argument, put down the hammer and washed his hands. Aer bit back her laughter and began taking the food out of the basket.

When the basket was empty, the narrow table was packed—not room enough to set down a single spoon.

Djite sat down, and the peaceful meal began. Neither of them said grace.

Aer frowned at the bread set in front of her.

Using the hand she didn't usually use was agony. Scooping up the soup was just barely manageable, but tearing bread was still difficult.

Even when she managed to tear it after a long struggle, the bread was a wreck.

Except that it hadn't come to that since the first time.

Because Djite, sitting across from her, always tore the bread into clean pieces and handed it to her.

"Thank you."

"It's nothing. Eat up."

With the sound of the waterfall as backdrop, the two of them talked in easy, inconsequential conversation.

A young rooster making a run for it the night before his castration. A man who mistook a coil of rope for a snake and screamed. The state of Fons's front tooth, which was beginning to wobble.

Completely ordinary talk crossed the table.

And somewhere toward the end of the meal, Djite set down his water, and in a calm, quiet voice, asked.

His gaze wasn't on Aer. It was moving idly over the empty bowls.

"When the sword's done—are you leaving?"

"…I'll have to."

"Right. Yes, of course."

The air inside the forge settled, going slightly bitter. Thick, calloused fingers traced the rim of an empty plate.

Aer looked at him for a moment, then tilted her head forward and said, with elaborate casualness:

"You can't go slow on purpose to keep me here, you know."

"…"

"I'm expecting something extraordinary."

The violet eyes sparkled with mischief. Djite let out a flat, deflated laugh, then raised his hand and ruffled her hair in deliberate, affectionate revenge.

Aer yelped and pulled her neck in.

"Don't worry."

'Your sword will be made of my wishes.'