Under an Iron Sky

They walked until the moon sank below the tree line and the world turned pitch black. They put ten miles of hard, frozen road between themselves and the toll camp before either of them finally spoke. The cold was absolute, slipping past the wool of their coats to bite directly into the bone.

Cain set a punishing pace that he knew would exhaust her, because every mile they covered before dawn was a mile the lord’s riders would have to close to find them.

“They won’t follow us,” Mira said, her breath fogging in the dark as she struggled to keep her boots falling in time with his.

“They will,” Cain replied, not slowing down.

“But you broke their legs. I’m certain they won’t reach us.”

“That’s true, but surely the lord of the valley will have other men with horses, so we keep walking,” Cain replied, his voice flat and perfectly steady despite the agonizing, rhythmic throb in his shoulder.

Mira didn’t argue. Instead, she adjusted the heavy canvas bag on her shoulder and matched his stride.

By dawn, the sky turned the color of old iron and the wind picked up, driving a fine, stinging snow across the open fields. They finally pulled off the road. They found a shallow depression behind a stand of dead oaks that offered a meager windbreak.

Cain sat down heavily against a trunk and closed his eyes. He let his head rest against the rough bark as the adrenaline that had kept him moving for the last eight hours finally burned away. It left nothing behind but exhaustion and a deep, pulsing agony in his right shoulder.

The world tipped once, hard, and then settled. He did not remember deciding to sit. He was simply down, breath thin, the cold climbing his sleeves.

Mira dropped her bag in the snow and knelt beside him. She uncorked a tin flask, warmed the rim against her palm for a second, and brought it to his mouth.

“Drink,” she said.

He would have waved her off if his hands had been worth anything. She tipped the water carefully against his lips instead, the same steady pressure she used on a wound.

He swallowed because there was nothing else to do. The water was cold and clean. It tasted faintly of iron.

When she took the flask away, he kept his eyes closed a moment longer than he needed to. When he opened them, her dark eyes had gone entirely professional, and she started reaching for his coat.

“Don’t touch it,” Cain said, opening his eyes and shifting away from her hand.

“This is not the time to argue. You took a pike handle to the collarbone,” she said, ignoring his protest and grabbing the lapel of his heavy coat. “We’re taking this off.”

“It’s just a bruise.”

“I saw someone swing a heavy piece of wood at you with the intent to shatter your chest. I doubt that it’s just a bruise,” she said, her voice dropping into that immovable register that he was quickly learning to hate. “Take the coat off, or I will cut it off you.”

Cain looked at her, weighing the stubborn set of her jaw against the very real possibility that she would actually take a knife to his only protection against the winter. He sighed, a short and clipped sound of annoyance, and carefully worked his left arm out of the sleeve. He winced as he peeled the heavy wool off his right shoulder.

The skin beneath his coarse linen shirt was mottled an ugly, angry black and purple, swelling heavily across the collarbone and down into the muscle of his chest. It looked exactly as bad as it felt. Mira sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth when she saw it.

“See, it isn’t broken,” Cain said defensively.

“Hold still. This isn’t time for jokes.” She set two fingers below the collarbone, not quite on the worst of the swelling, and went quiet for a breath. Whatever she was reading, she did not like it. “If you had taken that swing clean, your arm would be useless by now.”

Mira reached into her bag and pulled out the clear glass prism and a small jar of salve. She opened the jar and the sharp, clean scent of pine root hit the cold air. She scooped a measure onto her fingers and worked it into the bruised muscle with a practiced, methodical pressure. She found the edges of the damage and pressed the salve in where the swelling was worst.

Cain set his jaw and stared out at the grey, snowy fields, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a flinch. The pressure Mira was applying to the muscle sent bright lines of fire shooting down his arm.

When she finished with the salve, she settled the clear prism against the darkest part of the bruise. Her free hand hovered a finger’s width above the injured muscle. She closed her eyes, and nothing flared around her at all. The stone stayed cold on his skin while a careful warmth began to build underneath it, slow at first, then steadier.

It was not relief all at once. The sharp pulsing eased in stages, like heat seeping into a frozen joint. Under it he felt the torn muscle drawing tight and settling as if someone were pressing frayed rope back into a single line.

The swelling loosened. The worst of the fire drained down into a deep, tired ache. His arm still hurt, but the hurt had changed. It no longer felt like something about to tear open if he breathed wrong.

“What is that?” Cain asked, watching the stone.

“Fleshknit,” Mira said, eyes still closed. “It mends torn muscle and soft tissue. It makes your body finish the repair faster than it would on its own. It does not take all the pain away in an instant, but I know you can feel some relief right now.”

“Yes, I can feel it. Thank you.”

Mira nodded once, then opened her eyes and pulled the stone away, wiping it clean on the edge of her coat before putting it back in the bag.

“You move like a street brawler,” she said quietly, not looking at him as she fastened the buckle of her bag. “But you hit like a butcher.”

“Do you think so?” Cain said after a chuckle, pulling the heavy coat back up over his shoulder.

“Yes. But I’d say that you didn’t have to hurt them that badly. You could have just opened the door and we could have run into the dark.”

“And they would have chased us, right…” Cain said simply.

“What I mean is that you crippled six men.”

“Mira, you need to understand that they were fully prepared to lock us in that barn and throw away the key,” Cain said, finally turning to look directly at her. “I just did what I needed to do that time. We don’t have much choice.”

She went perfectly still and sat back on her heels in the snow. Her eyes dropped to her hands. Cain watched the anger drain from her face, leaving something quieter behind as the wind whipped her hair across her pale face.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and her voice was so quiet he almost lost it in the wind.

Cain stopped adjusting his collar and looked at her. “For what?”

“For interrupting you at the barricade. I know that you were trying to leave us room to retreat, and I kept escalating. I forced you into this, to bleed for my pride.”

Cain watched her for a long moment, listening to the wind tear through the dead oaks and feeling the dull ache in his shoulder. He realized that he had spent two years entirely alone precisely so he wouldn’t have to deal with the heavy, complicated weight of another person’s guilt.

“No, don’t apologize,” Cain said, his voice softer than he intended it to be.

She looked up at him, surprised by the tone.

“You were right,” he said, leaning his head back against the oak tree and closing his eyes again. “It was an illegal toll. And I am tired of paying.”