CHAPTER 90: 90: A NEW BEGINNING PART XV

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When there was time for thinking, he shaved the memory of Spitter’s feed throat on a piece of scrap and nudged the imagined rune forward a thumbnail’s width until the flow stopped pooling where it loved to nap. When there was space and no one to laugh, Fizz rehearsed stick-work with a length of broom handle he called a spear and John called "please stop."

"We are stronger," Fizz said one dawn when they had both failed at something worth failing and succeeded at something no one had asked them to do.

"Not enough," John said.

"Never enough," Fizz agreed cheerfully. "Which means more."

One week has passed...

A storm began, reconsidered, and sulked back over the hills. Under a clear sky they camped by a shrine stone in a sheep meadow where the sheep pretended to be rocks and the rocks took no offense. John chalked a circle — not to perform, but to ask — and set his breath in it.

"Show the road to the truth," he said, knowing circles are not maps and questions are not keys.

The chalk brightened, the ring held, the air thickened just enough to make the hair on his arms take notice. A moth touched the edge and decided life, all things considered, was better outside lines. Fizz sat opposite, tail around paws, a little serious judge who knew to keep quiet when a man was asking the world for manners.

The circle did not point. It steadied. Sometimes the magic is the work you do because the magic you want does not care to answer. John let it settle and felt his hands grow calmer, which is a kind of road.

They slept with their heads not far from the chalk and woke with throats as clear as the first thought of morning.

"Let’s return to the village." John said. "We aren’t getting anything useful. We got a lot to do at the forge. We will look for Lark and ask him more questions."

"Alright, I am cool with that. I miss good food. Our coins were all spent. Let’s go back. I will bite Lark if he lies to us." Fizz replied.

They return to the village. Without any useful information. All they got was maybe, not anything confirmed. Time passed like a gust of wind passed on a hill top. It was fast yet claiming.

One month later...

In the second month they travel back to East Hollow to avoid a levy road where bored guards had decided that boredom deserved taxes. In the third they labored a day for Moran’s men — shade wages, rumor wages — and learned a new knot that would make future ropes less insulting. In the fourth, a dyer swore she had seen a birch charm at a girl’s throat two winters prior; the girl had married out and left town with the man; towns are good at losing people who choose to be lost.

In the fifth month John mistook a bent nose in a plaza for the wrong man and felt his breath catch with the old memory of water. It kinda looks like one of his half brothers. But it wasn’t him. It was a stranger who looked like his half brother.

The stranger was no enemy. He ate plums with the slow, gentle indifference of a citizen whose worst crime was buying fruit before its best day. John bought two plums and split one with Fizz. Plums, he decided, reminded a man that the world grew sugar without asking permission.

By the sixth, their clean threads had turned to lint. Every lane returned a cousin of a name. Every cousin owned a doorstep that belonged to someone innocent. Even the wrong stories began to wear thin.

Sera’s parchment — the capital temple address and a promise of an introduction to the Heart Magic Academy — had waited six months in the inner pocket of John’s coat like a breath he had not yet taken. Six months had been her measure. The road, the work, almost everything had kept it. The measure was full.

They decided to go to the capital. In these six months Lark was nowhere to be seen in the village. It felt like the boy had vanished. Or hiding from them. Fizz was very pissed off at Lark. If he sees him he will bite him without asking a single question.

At a crossroads where the signpost leaned whichever way the wind convinced it, Fizz tilted his head toward the east. "Gate," he said. "I can see a huge gate, John."

"Huge gate," John agreed.

Dying Heart kingdom capitals city (also known as City of Hearts or Heart city) announce themselves by smell before sight: leather, horse, spice, smoke, ambition. The road swelled into a river of people. Traders passed with skins browned by other suns. Temple runners treated their own lungs like bargaining partners. Paladins moved with the polish of habit rather than vanity.

Children braided through adults with genius born of necessity. The wall climbed from stone to sky, and the gate sat in it the way a sure chair sits under a steady man. It was not the common and simple gate in any book; it had learned a better truth: size impresses strangers, work impresses everyone else. It was make out of something which gives a strong and dark vibe.

They paused beneath a tree that had found mercy in a crack of paving. The city breathed through its mouth. Fizz settled on John’s shoulder and let his light be small and warm.

"So," Fizz said softly. "We found almosts nothing."

"We found shapes," John answered. "Rettan is a role. The birch story is real or might be real. A ferryman kept two coins for five years and handed them to right hand. Lark steered us by giving half truths and some missing information. There is a hand on the broom that swept the tracks. We did not see it."

"We will," Fizz said, sure as a spark. "We need find the lying boy. His information let us run in circles."

"We might," John said, and for once it sounded like wisdom rather than doubt.

Fizz nodded toward the arch. "Inside there is the temple with Sera’s letter that will either behave or pretend. Inside there is the Heart Magic Academy she swore was not a rumor. Inside there are tests, rules, people who believe rules are furniture, and possibly pancakes."

"And possibly a White who thinks my name existence is shame for them," John said. His mouth, by reflex, made the old rope of a sentence: "I do not recognize them as my relatives."

"You recognize yourself," Fizz said. "Better policy."

They watched the guards sort the crowd the way shepherds persuade sheep to believe movement was their agenda. A paladin tapped a cart with a staff and apologized to the onions. A temple clerk stumbled, chose to pretend it was a bow, and converted his misstep into liturgy. The city did what cities always do at their mouths: made a mess out of useful and useless and hired people to sort it.

"Do you join," Fizz asked, not covering the thought in other words. "The academy."

"Circles are ladders," John said. "I am tired of standing at the bottom and pretending to enjoy the view."

"And if a White sits in a lecture hall and practices being tragic at you," Fizz asked.

"Then I will learn polite ways to be dangerous," John said. "And teach doors how to forget their hinges."

Fizz made a small approving sound. Nearby, a hawker shouted about peaches that had decided to be jewels. A dog committed pastry theft without remorse. Two boys pointed at the whisker-spark stamped on a passing crate and invented a tiny religion on the spot about a small god of cleverness who lived in bellows, ate pancakes, and smelled guilt. Fizz sat taller, terribly pleased, and then pretended he had not heard.

"We go to the temple first," John decided. "Collect the letter. Read it where no one can see my face decide. If it is honest and the exam is not a stupid game, I sit for it."

"And if the letter is a trap," Fizz asked, too calm for a joke.

"Then we make the trap catch the wrong animal," John said. "And leave with the bait."

Fizz put a paw on his shoulder, a small warm weight that felt like family. "This is why I like you. We will run with the bait. If someone comes after us they will get murder."

"You like me because i am your master," John said. "and I feed you tons of food."

They both laughed at that joke.

A gate guard waved them forward. The mule flicked an ear as if he had always known they would arrive at a place where even mules are appreciated for their opinions. Fizz rose just enough to give the arch a new, unnecessary edge of light.

"What do you think we will find inside," Fizz asked as stone shadow slipped over them.

"An academy," John said. "A letter. A set of stairs I intend to climb. Men who believe threats are a kind of prayer. A place to get stronger. Possibly the best pancakes in the kingdom for you."

"And us," Fizz said.

"And us," John agreed.

After some questioning they passed beneath the gate. The capital measured them as cities do — quickly, incorrectly, prepared to revise. Streets blossomed from the road like choices. The breath John took answered him for the first time since barrels and water and old panic: not as a command, not as a debt, but as an equal.

"Welcome to the Heart Kingdom," Fizz whispered. "Let us teach it that two new boss had arrived."

(End of Chapter Six)