IBTRFL Chapter 4

The Resolve to Move Forward

Two days had passed since the soul stones were taken.

The Director, seized by spite, ground the priests down with it. The priests went straight for the children. The same food chain of displaced rage—always repeating, always the same. At the bottom of that chain were the children, and their condition was worsening fast.

Half of them couldn't get out of bed.

Barely breathing—that was the accurate description. The ones with any strength left were run ragged between cleaning and nursing the sick, and soon enough collapsed alongside the friends they'd been caring for.

"Eat a little of this."

Aer tipped the cup slowly and let the fruit juice run between the child's cracked lips. The sweet-sour liquid spread through a dry, parched mouth. The child who hadn't moved at all worked her tongue by instinct and drew the juice in, sucking at it.

Aer kept her face hard and tipped the cup. She shook it until the last drop fell into the child's mouth.

She'd cut her sleep gathering blackberries for days, and it was nowhere near enough to fill anyone.

"…th, th, thank you."

The child squeezed the words out slowly. She smoothed the head—small enough to fit in a fist—and stepped out. The corridor was quiet and grey, dust moving through the still air.

She looked across to the window.

Saura was pacing the back courtyard, fuming. The way she was kicking at things in her path made it clear the rage had reached the top of her.

Returning the soul stones wouldn't make the orphanage better.

All of it originated with the bishop, the Director, and the priests. Until they were gone, the children had no way to be well.

"Who is this!"

A cutting, convulsive shout went out and echoed off every wall.

Aer deliberately arranged her face into terror and ran out into the courtyard. Saura heard the approaching footsteps and spun around, face blazing.

"Aer!"

"Yes—yes, sister," she answered, her voice as small and cowed as she could make it.

Saura's eyes blazed. Her hand whipped up and came down hard across the gaunt cheek. A sharp crack rang out and Aer's neck snapped sideways.

"I told you clearly. Keep your head on straight!"

"…S—sorry."

"Stupid bitch. Fed and housed and you can't keep up with your one job?"

Saura was screaming with her neck stretched taut. Aer was fighting to hold herself upright through the swaying. Her ear was ringing; a sharp pitched sound had started inside it.

"I told you the water barrel at the back has to be kept full at all times. Didn't I say that?"

"You—you did, ma'am."

"And yet!"

A thick palm struck the other cheek without grace. Saura shoved her hair back irritably and kept pushing. The ringed finger drove a sharp nail into Aer's forehead without restraint.

The tender skin left pale marks, then went red.

"You're going to slack off when you know perfectly well the Director is in a foul mood? Have you lost your mind?"

"…N—no. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"That's right, you are. Enormously! Finish up and come to the penalty room."

Saura growled at her, shoved her aside, and disappeared into the building.

The body—like a sick chicken already barely staying upright—couldn't take the impact and simply folded. The places where she'd been struck burned and throbbed in waves. She could feel a thin, lukewarm trickle from one cheek where the ring had caught.

Aer wiped her cheek without comment and lifted her head. In her blurred eyes sat a sky that was—cruelly, unfairly—vibrantly blue.

The world she'd come back to was still merciless.

A life that had started at the bottom—abandoned by the very people who gave her birth. It would be no different this time.

Thinking it that way, she found it easier to steady herself.

What is there to fear. No family. No friends. Nothing to lose but this lowly body that will return to dirt someday. If everything surrounding me is despair—then I will thrash against it where everyone can see. That's all.

Aer stood up, limping, and walked off somewhere with purpose.

The market square, which should have been thick with hawkers' calls and the back-and-forth of bargaining, was quiet as a church during Mass.

Merchants and customers alike—every gaze had settled in one direction. At the end of all those gazes: a single shabby child.

The cheeks had been struck by something—blood-smeared, bruised blue-black. The clothing gave off a sour, moldy odor. The arms and legs exposed by the ill-fitting garments were thin as chicken bones off the market floor.

A child one would not easily forget, and not for any good reason.

A few city guards who'd received the citizens' report came running. The gathered crowd shuffled back and opened a path. The guard who appeared to be in charge lowered himself to one knee in front of the child, bringing himself to her level.

"There, there. Are you all right? Where are your parents?"

The child pressed her mouth shut and slowly shook her head. The guard's face tightened and he tried again.

"Are you—are your parents not here?"

"…Yes. I came from the orphanage."

The orphanage. At that word the crowd started whispering.

The church held land throughout the city and blocked access with every justification it could name. The Solbo orphanage, where the local foundlings were sent, was one of those restricted areas.

And now a child with visible signs of abuse had come out of it. Through the assembled crowd moved a thick, contagious current of suspicion and fury.

The child blinked slowly, then extended a hand cracked with chapped skin to catch the guard's sleeve.

"Mister. Please help. It's been a long time since we—since we had food. My siblings, my siblings are sick. Some of them have already collapsed. If they don't eat something, even a little—all of them, all of them are going to die."

The voice asking for help was flat and exhausted. There was no outrage in it, no childish stumbling—nothing you would expect from someone her age.

The guard, who had been unable to speak for a moment, opened his mouth carefully.

"Did one of the priests—hit you?"

The child's shoulder flinched. Her eyes went wide.

A reflexive, wordless answer. Everyone who caught the meaning reacted at once. The child seemed frightened by the commotion and pulled herself in.

The guards and the people around them were at a loss for words.

Aer, performing pure terror, let her eyes move around the square in trembling arcs. The faces she saw were wrecked with horror and hardening into anger. A few of the more emotional people couldn't keep it in and started shouting.

"That's how it always is with priests. Who knows what they get up to behind those walls."

"The bishop walks into gambling halls openly. Got a wife at home and still can't keep his lower half in order—there's supposedly a bastard child from it."

"The orphanage director, wasn't he old? I seem to recall seeing him carrying a purse of gold coins once."

There it is. Aer smiled, inwardly.

As with most priests in positions like his, the bishop of Solbo was a man who had gone rotten.

He'd signed over rights to the city through arrangements with its citizens, but he still wielded enormous influence and was feeding off the city's wealth. If the bishop was like that, the state of the Solbo church hierarchy was easy enough to picture.

In the life before this one, the way to end the church's abuses had been almost embarrassingly simple.

She had run, desperately, and grabbed a passing stranger and told him everything. The city's power-holders, who had no use for the bishop, hadn't wasted the perfect opening.

Servants of God couldn't be punished under the laws of men. So all that could be done was to file a formal complaint with the Holy City and have the priests replaced.

But that had been enough for the children to breathe easier. No more violence. No more hunger. Care with no affection in it, but care at the minimum. That had been enough to make them happy.

This time she was only moving that moment much earlier. For the sake of the children whose lives should not have been thrown away for nothing.

The guard let out a slow breath and put a hand on Aer's shoulder. The touch was clumsy but it carried something like awkward gentleness.

"All right. Come with us for now."

"N—no. My siblings—they're starving. Some of them have already collapsed. If they don't eat something soon, all of them, all of them will die."

The corners of Aer's eyes were going red. The violet irises, already unsteady, had taken on a wet shine; a moment later, large unmistakable tears started to fall.

Aer let them come, crying with full visible sorrow, while she kept her lips pressed shut to hold back the actual sound of weeping.

The noise around her dropped as if cold water had been thrown over everyone. Small, thin shoulders sank without force. Aer said nothing more. She only let the tears fall, one after another.

That was the moment a deep, unhurried voice appeared from somewhere behind her and knocked at her ear.

"Little one. That story—would you tell it to this gentleman as well?"

The crowd stirred. Even the guards pulled back a step, looking startled.

A large shadow fell across her from behind. Tall enough that the space around Aer dimmed.

That voice. Could it be. Aer turned and tilted her head all the way back. In her eyes, still faintly reddened, a dim expectation had started to form.

By the time the angle had grown painful, she could make out the source of the shadow. The man who had met Aer's gaze creased the outer corners of his eyes and smiled with easy, unguarded warmth.

A beard not quite properly trimmed. A topknot tied without much care. Something easygoing, even sly in the face—and a build large enough to strangle a bear, which the face did nothing to prepare you for.

Aer stared blankly and blinked.

What is this man doing here.