Hungry Heart - Book 5 - Ch. 14 (Patreon)

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Chapter Fourteen – Making a Whole

Toru knew that his body was failing him. It was an acute awareness that kept him fighting against the eyelids growing heavy, the fog that seemed to embrace his mind in false affection. Claw had done his best, drawing people’s attention away so that he could sneak into their houses and take the shard fragments out of whatever machine they were in. The bearshifter had noticed his growing weariness and suggested rest on more than one occasion. Toru had preferred to plod forward, even though this puny body he had to use for now didn’t listen or understand that there was no time to waste. With increasing worry, he realized that the shard fragments were so numerous that it would be truly difficult to collect them all in one day.

The sun was at its zenith, but its warmth was no longer enough to make Toru feel invigorated. Mako’s body was that of a mere mortal, which meant that he needed rest, or he risked the same trouble from before when Duril had been forced to intervene to help him. That had destroyed their strategy, and now Toru worried about the guardians that had taken Varg being on the hunt for his friend and lover. They still didn’t know where Varg was, where the city’s prison was located, and whether he wasn’t having to confront dangers on his own.

Thinking and worrying about such things wouldn’t help him. He went out into the street, another shard fragment trapped inside his palm. He hadn’t said a thing to Claw, but his arm had grown heavy with the burden now hidden under his skin. It took him all his force of will to keep it concealed from the bearshifter’s keen eye. If he pushed against the weaknesses of this body, he would get all the pieces of the shard and finally have it put together so that he could get his real body back. That had to be the solution to the terrible situation he was in now.

He stopped, dead in his tracks, as he took in Claw from a distance. The bearshifter was surrounded by a small crowd, and someone was shouting that they would get the guardians to see about the suspicious stranger.

He moved in Claw’s direction, but the tall bear looked over the heads of the people surrounding him with a warning in his eyes. Toru understood and hid himself behind a corner of a building. Claw had a way with words, which meant that he would be able to convince those threatening him for whatever reason that they had no reason to worry.

Accusations were being flung at Claw from all directions. It appeared that the inhabitants of Coinvale had started to realize that wherever this traveler made an appearance, they would soon find themselves without their shard fragments.

If Claw was caught by the guardians, what could he do? All by himself was no option. Not when he was weak like this. Closing his fists, he walked out of his hiding place and marched toward the angry crowd.

“Why are you harassing him?” he said as loudly as he could manage. “He is a stranger to your city, and you are rushing to accuse him of all sorts of things.” He had given his little speech as much thought as he could manage. “I know this traveler. He is a good man.”

The fact that he wore ordinary clothes and looked like any other young lad on the streets of Coinvale helped. The people began moving out of his way while studying him with curious eyes. A small tremble shook his fingers and he closed his hand into a fist. It looked like the shard fragments were reacting to something, but he couldn’t understand what they wanted. If this was him, his real body, he would pay such a small thing no mind. But Mako’s body was no match for the evil power the shard fragments held. Even as parts of a whole, tiny parts, they could be dangerous to someone who wasn’t a shapeshifter. Who wasn’t him, to tell the whole truth.

“Don’t butt in, lad,” a large man with a big moustache and a leather apron that must have just come out of a blacksmith shop not far away growled at him. “This stranger might be responsible for many a thing that has been happening here on this street.”

“He might, but that doesn’t mean that you have proof. I was told that Coinvale is the greatest city on the face of Eawirith, that all travelers are welcome here, and that the heart of this place is made of gold, in more ways than one. What I see here is nothing of the kind.” As he spoke, he thought of the words someone like Duril, who was kind, would use. Or someone who was cunning like Claw and bold like Varg. He could only hope that the people staring openly at him wouldn’t easily see through his charade.

All he needed was for his lie to hold until he got Claw away from there. They would have to take a break anyway. And then, they would talk about where to go next, preferably to a neighborhood far from this one, so that the locals’ suspicions would have a chance to die down.

He walked through the crowd and took Claw’s hand. “I promised that I would treat you to a late lunch,” he said with decisiveness in his voice. “Have a nice day, people.”

It could be that no one from the crowd had expected someone to come and snatch the object of their accusations out from under their noses, because no one opposed them as they walked away.

“And where did you learn to talk like that, kitty?” Claw teased him with a smile once they were far enough away.

“I can’t scare everyone off by shifting into my tiger, which means that I have to rely on other things,” Toru explained. “The thing is, I have often observed you, Duril, and Varg, as you are older and wiser than me. I don’t like lying to people or using their own foolishness against them, because that is not how I fight, but I can see the usefulness of such things when the situation demands it.”

“Look at you, acting all grown up?” Claw laughed. “You are very clever, kitty. And you really helped me out there.”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t dare touch one hair on your head as soon as you shifted into your bear.”

“Indeed, but the last thing we want is to have more people becoming curious about us. And ready to report us to the guardians of the city that, for all we know, seem to be quite suspicious. You did well, kitty. How is that arm of yours doing?”

Only then did Toru realize that his elbow was stiff and he couldn’t move his forearm at all. “It’s all right. I can manage,” he said, but the sensation that he was running out of time turned into pure worry.

Claw remained silent for some time. “Toru,” he said quietly, “it won’t help anyone if you collapse under the weight of those pesky shard fragments.”

“I won’t collapse,” he protested but just as he said those words, he swayed on his feet and Claw had to reach out to catch him.

“Let me take you back to the inn,” Claw said and hiked him up in his arms.

“No,” Toru protested. “I’ll worry Duril, and I don’t want that. I only need to rest a little.”

Claw pursed his lips, and Toru worried that the bearshifter would tell him no. He was in no position to oppose, but it looked like his friend understood him well enough. “I will find a place for us to take a break. These shard fragments will still be in the same places once we get back to them.”

“Do you think we’re far from the Aureate Sea?”

“Do you want us to go there?”

“I’d feel closer to my tiger. Who knows?” he said with a wan smile. “Maybe the messengers will see just how pathetic I am and take pity on me.”

He wasn’t sure why he wanted to be there, close to the sea of gold, but he felt that it would do him good to rest on its shore. The city, with its bustling streets and tall buildings, was closing in on him like a threatening presence. It was the sort of enemy without a face that Toru didn’t know how to attack. Or defend from.

It looked like Claw didn’t need any convincing. “I promised Duril that I would take care of you. Your wish is my command, Toru.”

“Are you at my beck and call now?” Toru asked in a voice he intended to sound playful but came out raspy and pained.

“You could say that,” Claw replied. “There’s no other master I’d rather have.”

***

Varg paid attention to every noise that reached his ears. The hallway had turned dark, but there was a change in the air that let him know that wherever he was, a vent of sorts if not a full-fledged exit had to be around. He let himself be guided by the soft breeze as he tried to identify all the scents blended together brought to him by the draft. One of them reminded him of the sea. Could it be that the exit from this foul prison was close to the Aureate Sea?

He stopped abruptly when he noticed that the hallway had ended. Before him lay nothing but darkness, but Varg could distinctly hear soft waves crashing against a shore. He padded forward carefully until he reached a ledge.

Although he couldn’t see anything in the pitch dark, there had to be water below. And if the water wasn’t stagnant, it had to be part of a larger body that would take him out of the underground prison.

He was as good a swimmer as the next wolfshifter, so he jumped into the water below with all his confidence.

He grunted when his paws met hard floor. Because of the way he had dove to enter the water for minimum impact, his entire weight had been shifted forward, putting extra pressure on his front legs.

“What is this?” he asked with a growl.

“Did you survive that?” he heard an astonished voice ask from somewhere nearby.

“That?” Varg turned his head in the direction of the voice. “Vetor, is that you? Why do you keep playing pranks on me?”

“I am not. I must ensure that you don’t reach the--” The curator stopped abruptly.

“I don’t reach what?” Varg’s ears perked up.

“Nothing. I will get you,” Vetor promised, although he didn’t sound sure of his own abilities. “They will have my hide if I don’t stop you,” he mumbled to himself.

His sense of hearing was working just fine, so Varg moved stealthily toward the source of the sound. If he grabbed that ball of fur, he’d make sure the creature spilled all of the secrets of this place.

Unaware of his attacker drawing near, Vetor continued to talk to himself. “And you’d think that they’d know better than to send a shapeshifter down here. Don’t they know just how dangerous that is? Why did they send such a big challenge my way? All I know to do is keep the people at the Market of the Damned happy. I don’t know how to deal with this shapeshifter business.” He seemed quite dumbfounded by the position he was in and apparently he had no idea how to communicate with those above, Varg concluded to himself.

His nose brushed by a piece of fabric hanging loose, and he grinned when he realized that Vetor had to be right behind it. He tore the thing with his teeth, revealing a small room. The curator stood on a tall stool in front of a big cauldron. Vetor was busy using a ladle to make the liquid inside the cauldron splash against the walls. That had to be the wave sound Varg had thought he heard earlier.

“I got you,” he said before he pounced.

“Eek!” Vetor rolled from the large stool and fell to the ground with an unpleasant sound.

Varg stepped to his side and looked down at him. “You are going to stop running and you’re going to tell me everything you know about this place.” To make sure he didn’t risk Vetor escaping him again, he placed a paw on top of him.

There was no response, and that was when Varg began sniffing the poor creature. Could it be that Vetor had hurt himself badly with the fall? He removed his paw and turned into his human so that he could examine the ball of fur for anything broken. He was no surgeon and had definitely never treated a creature like this before, but he could offer help as needed.

“Ha-ha-ha.” Vetor laughed and pushed himself away from Varg.

This room had some light, unlike the pitch dark outside, so Varg quickly shifted back into his wolf to give chase. Vetor was incredibly fast for such a diminutive creature, so Varg had to be even faster.

“You’ll never catch me,” Vetor shouted as he rolled down another long corridor, very much like the one Varg had left behind after jumping from the ledge above.

“Don’t be so sure,” Varg said and pounced just as Vetor was about to turn a corner.

He caught the ball of fur under his front paws and this time knew better than to let go. Vetor could play dead all he wanted. Varg had nothing against applying some intimidation techniques, so he opened his muzzle wide and pretended to be ready to take a chunk out of the curator.

“Stop!” Vetor pleaded right away. “If you eat me, you’ll never find the way out of here.”

“So, there is a way out of here,” Varg said and snapped his jaws close to the poor curator to make sure his intentions were taken at face value.

“In a way,” Vetor replied.

“What’s that supposed to mean? And what were you saying earlier, about something I shouldn’t reach?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Vetor protested. “It is a big secret.”

“Really? Then if it’s such a big secret, why do you keep babbling about it?”

“I’ve done no such thing,” Vetor squealed. “Do you mind taking your paws off me? You’re heavy and you’re crushing me.”

“I’m not falling for the same act a second time,” Varg replied. “Be quick about spilling this big secret because I feel a little peckish. You made me run up and down these corridors enough for me to work up an appetite.”

“Do not eat me! I’m sure I would leave a bad aftertaste.”

“That doesn’t matter much. When I’m hungry, I can eat tree bark. You can’t be worse than tree bark, right?”

“No, not worse than that,” Vetor agreed, albeit reluctantly. “You won’t feel full, though. I’m skin and bones.”

“You’re all fur, actually. But I can tell you’re quite plump,” Varg teased his enemy some more. “Out with it. Where is the exit? I need to return to my friends.”

“That won’t help your friends.”

“And how do you know that?”

“If they’re strangers and willing to stick their noses where they don’t belong, just like you, then sooner or later the guardians will take them into custody.”

“So they’ll join me here? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“There is a chance of that happening. Stop pressing down on my belly!”

“You seem uncooperative. I think you need an incentive to start spilling the beans. By the way, if my friends join me here, they’re all shapeshifters. What are you going to do when they are here, roaming your little labyrinth?”

“More shapeshifters?” Vetor squealed. “I can’t deal with more shapeshifters. I can barely deal with you!”

“I’m the one who’s going to deal with you if you continue to annoy me like this. Tell me the secret of this place. No, better, tell me how to find the exit.”

Vetor remained silent until Varg pressed down on his belly or whatever that part of him was, until he got another annoyed squeak from the curator.

“All right, all right. But you should know that they are the same thing.”

“How so?”

“If you don’t understand, I can’t explain it to you.”

“Then show me. I think that’ll be better.”

“Release me, and I will.”

“No.” Varg grabbed Vetor in his teeth, making sure not to squeeze to the point of hurting the curator too badly. He swung the ball of fur to and fro.

“You are the worst, shapeshifter,” Vetor mumbled. “Walk forward and turn only when I tell you.”

For all he knew, Vetor could be leading him into another trap, but there was a chance the curator feared enough for his life not to risk it. For now, he’d play along.

***

Duril hadn’t wielded a hammer and a chisel with so much efficiency in his life. Sogou was right; his merchant disguise opened all doors, and the moment people heard that there could be something wrong with their shard fragments, they immediately invited them in. He still kept his face hidden, but there wasn’t much to do about the missing arm. Sogou sold a story to anyone asking about how even someone as skilled as a worker of the Sheparon mines could suffer a terrible accident every once in a while. He offered so many vivid details about how Duril must have lost his arm that he had to wonder at the superior storytelling abilities of his newfound friend.

When they said that they needed to remove the shard fragments, there was little opposition, as Sogou proved to be quite the convincing fellow. That and the fat purse he kept swinging about; a few coins here and there to compensate for the inconvenience had the power to make everyone surrender their precious fragments of evil power. Duril pitied these people, because they had no idea what was going on there, but at the same time, he was fully aware of how the same inhabitants of Coinvale would be quick to turn against him and his friends if they knew the truth.

“What do you reckon? How many did we get so far?” Sogou asked once they departed another house left without its shard fragment that had been used to power a cooking implement that made only sorbet. If Duril hadn’t known how serious the situation was, he would have found it ridiculous. The citizens of Coinvale were like children wielding dangerous weapons because they didn’t know any better.

Duril was carrying the fragments in their stone encasings in a bag he had thrown on his back. “We’ve been quite efficient, I believe. But nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine pieces is quite the number, Sogou. We have twenty pieces with us so far.”

“I’m sorry you have to carry that by yourself. It wouldn’t bode well if I were to help you in plain sight.”

Duril found it a bit amusing that Sogou worried about such things when he was so willowy underneath the fancy merchant clothes he wore that a heavy breeze would likely knock him over. “You don’t have to apologize. Even without an arm, I’m stronger than you are.” He smiled as he imagined that this could very well be something Toru would say.

“And you’re a hero on top of everything,” Sogou added in the solicitous manner that he used when he addressed Duril.

“Sogou, while we walk to our next destination, would you mind telling me more about how your people came up with the idea of splitting the Heart of Tradeweaving into so many pieces?”

“I don’t know the details, and not even my father knows them. But I do know for a fact that the big shard was broken into many pieces back at the mines.”

“Did you ever see it whole?”

“Yes,” Sogou said and inhaled sharply. “Before it was cut into pieces, as you say, the Council of Merchants decided to throw a parade to show us the object they had named the Heart of Tradeweaving. The shard was not very big itself, about this big,” Sogou explained, opening his hand and displaying his palm, “but it did have a strange quality to it. As if it could absorb all the light of day. The people who witnessed the parade talked about it for days.”

“How did the merchants know about its power? Do you have any idea?”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. There are powerful people in this city that know a lot more than I can tell you right now.”

Duril thought about Toru. Where was he now? How was he faring? Claw was with him, so there was no point in worrying, but he couldn’t help it. Collecting all the shard fragments was a tedious task, and even if Toru might be faster than he was, many hundreds of pieces were still buried inside stoves, carpentry tools and sewing machines across the city. It would take them days.

“What are you thinking of, Mr. Duril?” Sogou asked.

“It’s going to take a lot of work to gather all of the shard fragments. Making the shard whole will require at least a few days. I keep wondering if there’s not an easier way we haven’t thought of.”

Sogou stopped so abruptly that Duril smacked into him from behind, making the stones in his bag rattle. He was about to ask what was going on when he realized the source of Sogou’s bewilderment.

In front of the house they intended to visit next stood a pair of guardians dressed as usual in their black armor. They appeared to be expecting someone.

“Do you believe that we might have raised suspicion with our little endeavor?” Sogou asked in a hushed whisper.

“It appears so,” Duril agreed.

“There are many other places we can go first,” Sogou suggested.

After crossing several streets to get to their next target, they were greeted by the same sight. Guardians waiting at the door, most likely ready to ask them questions. And so it happened with the next, and the one after.

“How many guardians does the city have?” Duril asked.

“I have no idea,” Sogou replied. “I mean, because Coinvale is a peaceful place, and these protectors of the city’s serenity remain unseen most of the time, I assumed that there are but a handful of them.”

“It surely doesn’t look like there’s only a handful,” Duril murmured. “We can continue with our plan, but it feels like they are everywhere now. We need another plan.”

“Yes,” Sogou agreed. “We need to pay a visit to the Council of Merchants.”

“With what purpose?” Duril asked.

Sogou smiled from underneath his wide-brimmed hat. “We need to take our act a bit further. We must convince the bright minds of the city that we need to remove the shards from people’s homes and businesses and employ the help of the guardians to do so. Isn’t that bold?”

“Bold, yes,” Duril said, astonished by both Sogou’s confidence and nerve to come up with such an audacious plan. “And pure madness.”

“Indeed,” Sogou agreed. “We don’t have the manpower to overcome the guardians of the city. Therefore, we must use the power of the mind.”

Duril smiled. “Let’s first see if we can gather more of the fragments before we embark on such a perilous adventure.”

“Agreed,” Sogou said, inclining his head.

TBC

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