Julian laughed, the sound low and rich. He seemed less wary of her now that she’d stopped commanding the undead, which was a relief.
Wren started to smile in return, but then she remembered the kiss. The rejection. This was a bad idea. They were slipping back into the easy rhythm that had landed them in that spring together, which made it difficult not to think about… not to want…
The warm glow in her stomach turned cold, and she looked away. They were here together because they made a good team. Not for anything else.
“They do that because silver has healing properties, so they use it as a treatment,” Julian replied, oblivious to her thoughts. “They’ve definitely tried to do implants, from what I’ve heard, with varied success. It’s generally considered too risky, whatever the benefits. The procedure is painful, the implanted object often rejected by the body, and the amount of additional power it actually provides is debatable. It comes down to the quality of the material and its compatibility with the host. It’s long since fallen out of practice.”
Wren narrowed her eyes. “How do you know so much about it?”
He laughed again, though it sounded a bit forced this time. “I—unlike you, I can only assume—was actually a good student.”
Wren snorted, but she sensed he hadn’t given her the whole truth. He wasn’t wrong, though.
“I thought that’s what the well might be,” she admitted. “Some sort of amplifier.”
“I think it was closer to raw magic. It doesn’t just increase power… It is power.”
* * *
They continued on after that, making their way through the steadily lightening dark. More undead rose and flickered to life as they passed, clusters of ghosts and the odd revenant, but none pursued.
Wren didn’t speak to them again, but she held her last command—“step aside”—in her mind whenever she saw any, and perhaps that was enough to extend the magic. Maybe by repeating it internally, she gave it new power—or maybe she was just imagining things. She also continued to fiddle with the ring in her pocket, unable to resist running her finger along the well-worn grooves and that strange, dark spike.
They moved through the Haunted Territory unscathed, and when the sun rose, it highlighted the rooftops of Caston in the distance.
Julian stopped in his tracks, and a second later, Wren did too.
Smoke rose from several chimneys, along with the faint but unmistakable sounds of life—the clatter of movement, the murmur of voices, and something else, ringing in a steady, echoing rhythm.
Caston wasn’t an abandoned ruin. It was filled with people, living and working in the Haunted Territory.
And an iron revenant was heading this way.
THIRTY
They approached Caston warily, finding a high vantage point to perch themselves and observe before they strolled through the town gates, which were tall and well fortified, in addition to the river that wrapped around it. There were bone protections too, but they were poorly placed and in desperate need of repair. Whoever had done them had not been a bonesmith, but the river made up for their failings.
Wren was amazed by the geography, until Julian pointed out that the water had been diverted and directed to encircle the town—via several dams and an aqueduct, visible in the distance—and had not been an original feature.
He looked grim, and Wren couldn’t blame him. That kind of work did not come easily or cheaply. Whoever was running this operation was well connected and well funded, and who would fit that bill more than the regent of the Iron Citadel? Julian believed their people were struggling to survive, and surely many of them were—but not all of them. And the Haunted Territory wasn’t just a wasteland threatening their very existence… It was also apparently a smokescreen, a way to conceal certain activities. Whether what they’d witnessed in the Breach was connected to what was happening here remained to be seen, but Wren suspected they’d soon find out.
The question of why someone would put so much money into keeping such a dangerously positioned town alive was soon answered.
Mining.
That was the source of the rhythmic sound they could hear, emanating from an apparently active mine situated on the northern border of the town.
“This must be where all that shiny armor for the iron revenant came from. I thought mining was illegal.” As far as she knew, it had been ever since overmining had been determined to be the cause of the Breach in the first place—whether or not it was true.
“Who’s going to enforce it? We aren’t a part of the Dominions anymore—still,” he added, before she could protest, “I didn’t know about this, and I don’t support it. Things are bad enough already; we don’t need them to get worse. We don’t need a second Breach.”
“But maybe whoever is behind this wants things to get worse,” Wren murmured. “Think about it. That boy can control them. Suddenly, the revenants aren’t a blight on your lands. They’re an army.”
“What good are they if they can’t get past the Border Wall?” Julian asked. “They’re undead. They may be a threat east of the Wall, and maybe they can build, but they aren’t strong enough to tear down…” He trailed off, seeming to come to the same realization Wren already had.
“I suspect those suits of ironsmith armor might solve that problem,” she said softly.
It made sense. The Breachsiders didn’t have the numbers to muster a force that could take down the Wall—not since Locke Graven—and even if they did, they’d lose too many lives in the effort. But with the undead, they could set them on the Border and its defenders, let the revenants do the dirty work, and then they could stroll through afterward.
Those iron suits would protect the revenants and their ghosts, making them nearly impossible to stop by bonesmith methods. The metal would allow them to touch the Wall and protect them from bone blades that might pierce their spirit, and reapyrs would struggle to make a clean cut with their scythes. Even regular weapons couldn’t pierce ironsmith metal. They were warriors the Dominions couldn’t defeat.
“Do you see them anywhere?” Wren asked.
“Who?”
“The iron revenants. According to that boy, there were others here. But the people seem…”
“Fine,” Julian agreed, nodding thoughtfully. “Either they know about the iron revenants and don’t fear them, or the revenants are stationed somewhere nearby but out of sight… Do you think they could actually get into the town? With the water?”
“There’s a drawbridge,” Wren said, pointing it out. “You have to assume at some distance, the water doesn’t affect them. Think about the spring in the Breach, and the revenants crossed the bridge over it. And there are underground rivers and wells all over the place. Maybe they found a height that works?”
“Or maybe the iron suits offer some manner of protection?” Julian said. “Like a body?”
Wren tilted her head, considering. “Could be. We’ll need to get inside and look around.”
“How? I doubt they get many visitors,” he said dryly. “You and I will stick out like sore thumbs.”
“Not necessarily,” Wren said, peering into the town’s center. “Look, there. It’s a market, and there are wagons equipped for long-distance travel. There aren’t any farms around, obviously, so they must get traders coming here, even if they’re infrequent. They aren’t completely isolated.”