Chapter Text
The Foundry had not made anything in eleven years, not since the last of the machinery had been stripped and sold off by whoever owned it before the regime decided ownership was a formality they could skip. Five buildings, all brick and rust and roofs patched with whatever sheet metal someone had managed to carry back from town. It wasn't much. It had never needed to be much. It only needed to be theirs.
Toby had staked his claim on the western building early on, a choice driven less by comfort and more by the remnants of copper and casing buried within its skeletal walls. It leaked in the spring and leaned at an angle that suggested the ground was reconsidering its commitment to the foundation, but it possessed the only salvageable circuits left in the compound. Most of it was dead weight, frayed and gnawed by decades of neglect before the current tenants arrived, but that mattered very little to him. The point was the potential.
He had a quiet desperation for fixing things. And on the rare, good days, they actually remained that way. A gutted radio lay splayed across his workbench, its internal components exposed to the dim light like a surgical disaster. He had spent the better part of an hour attempting to persuade the machine that its purpose was to catch signals, not to spontaneously combust in a shower of sparks.
A sharp burst of laughter drifted over from the yard. Beyond the gate, a muffled argument broke out over the scent of scorched dough. Pressea was humming one of her aimless, unsettling melodies again.
Toby sighed before giving up on the radio. He often forgot that giving up was ever an option. The sun shone brightly, a cool breeze blew, and the air was only a little hazy. As much as it pained him, it would do him some good to venture outside. He stood, stretched until he heard far too many noises for a healthy twenty-two-year-old body to be making, and made his way outside.
“Hi, Toby. "A small voice beside him made him jump nearly out of his skin. “Finally done hiding from me?”
“From you, what?” Toby asked, feigning innocence. Ghost stood before him, her purple eyes watching him expectantly. He scanned the area, seeking Ash, yet the man remained absent. “Whatever would I hide from you for?”
Ghost narrowed her eyes, crossing her arms in front of her in a pose so full of judgment it would have made Toby a little scared if she hadn't been barely four feet tall.
“You're supposed to be fixing my fort. Remember. The one in the tree." She pointed towards the nearby tree. The fort was small. The towering oak tree, whose branches secured it, made it look even smaller. A visible fracture marked the wooden wall, extending its path upward onto the roof. “You told me you’d do it last week.”
“I know, but there's only one of me and about fifty things to fix." He looked from the fort to Ghost. Something about Ghost made Toby nervous. Probably the fact that she was Ash's adoptive daughter. Or her ability to look at you with an expression that turns your blood to ice. But another part of him did deeply care for the child. He was there when Ash found her all those years ago. He watched as her blood-freezing glare came to be. “But I’ll do it soon, I promise. Before the next rainfall.“
Ghost thought for a second, looking back at her fort, then nodded. Ghost was not an unreasonable child. She knew that pressing too hard made people not want to do things. So she simply took his promise and hoped that this time it would be fulfilled.
Toby had barely taken three steps before another voice carried across the yard.
"Ghost!" Don barked from beside the gate. "If you're bothering Toby again, then you're bothering the man who's supposed to fix my fence, too."
"I asked first," Ghost replied without looking at him.
Don threw his hands into the air. "See? This is what I deal with."
Toby laughed despite himself. Don complained loudly about almost everything, but never without volunteering to help fix it afterward. If something needed guarding, carrying, or arguing over, Don somehow found himself responsible for it.
Ghost, already bored with the conversation, wandered off toward the vegetable garden, where Duncan was kneeling in the dirt beside one of the raised beds, trying with limited success to convince a stubborn vine to grow in the direction he'd planted it. Ghost paused long enough to inspect his work with the same critical stare she'd given Toby before offering an equally unhelpful nod and continuing on her way. Duncan watched her leave and laughed quietly to himself before returning to the garden.
Above Toby, Fenn patrolled the area from the roof of the building. He felt more comfortable at a height, which gave him a better view of the roads leading to the nearest village. Most days, nobody came by. Some travelers passed the area, mostly glancing in the direction of the camp before continuing on their way.
“Doesn't it get exhausting climbing the building like a feral cat?” Toby teased.
“First of all, I'm a fox. And no, unlike you, I possess the ability to exercise,” he teased back. “I don't get tired from staring at machines all day.”
Fenn stopped halfway across the roof. He narrowed his eyes toward the road.
"...Toby."
"What?"
"...How many people do you think it takes before something counts as a problem?"
Toby didn't even look up.
"Depends."
"Seven?"
"...Probably."
"...Then we've got a problem."
Only then does he shout.
"Company," Fenn called down. Fit looked up from where he'd been sitting with his back against the warm brick, eyes closed, catching what sun made it through the smog. He didn't move fast. He never moved fast anymore. But he was up and armed before Fenn had finished the word.
YD was already at the gate. She usually was.
Ash came out of the second building without being called. He had a way of knowing when he was needed before anyone told him, or maybe it was simpler than that; maybe it was just that nothing much happened at the Foundry without him hearing about it eventually, and he'd rather hear about it while it was still happening. He crossed the yard the way he always did, and the yard went a little quieter the way it always did, not out of fear exactly. Just an old habit of not knowing quite where to look at him.
To everyone but a handful of people in this camp, Ash wasn't a man so much as a shape. A shifting dark outline, edges never quite settled, with faint threads of violet drifting off him like smoke that had forgotten which way was up. Nobody had ever fully explained it to Toby's satisfaction, least of all Ash himself, but Toby had stopped needing an explanation a long time ago. He'd learned the shape of him instead. Right now the particles were moving quick and close to the surface, tight little sparks instead of their usual slow drift.
Tense, Toby thought and didn't need to ask why.
They knew this was coming. They'd known for months that the North would eventually get tired of the regime whispering in every tavern within two days' walk of the capital, tired of the graffiti insisting the king answer for things kings didn't like to answer for, tired of watching a scrappy handful of squatters make a nuisance of themselves on land that had never technically been paid for. In fact, just last month they had received a letter demanding 1000 gold shillings for the land. Ash had promptly thrown it away. Since then they'd expected a patrol. A warning. Maybe, if it came to it, a small unit would be sent to make a point.
They had not expected Aldo.
He came up the road at an unhurried pace, like a man who already knew how this was going to go. He had one large blue horn on his right temple and a stub where one had once been on his left. Five soldiers followed behind him in North colors and one girl walking just off his shoulder who didn't carry herself like the rest of them, softer stance, sharper eyes, watching the Foundry's buildings the way someone watches something they're trying to memorize rather than something they're trying to threaten. Her eyes lingered on the people, the vegetable garden just starting to grow, and the patched roofs. A clothesline stretched between two buildings, patched shirts hanging beside children's socks. Someone had painted flowers on the side of one of the workshops. Then she spotted Ghost. She had not expected a child to be here. In fact, she hadn't expected most of these people to be. She had expected soldiers. She looked away, instead looking at Ash. He was looking at her as well. She, too, had demon horns, though smaller and cream-colored. Ash didn't know her name yet. He'd learn it soon enough. For now she was just the one person in that column who didn't look like she wanted to be there.
The soldiers, on the other hand, were not so calm. They glanced at Ash before looking away. They looked to each other as though to confirm what they've seen. Ash was like an urban legend in the north's army. The towering shadow of a man they spoke about at dinner. They were already compiling the stories they would soon tell at tomorrow's mealtime.
Aldo stopped well within shouting distance and didn't bother raising his voice, because he didn't need to. "You're squatting on Crown land," he said. "I'm sure that comes as a great shock to everyone."
"Feels more like reclaimed," Ash said. "Considering the Crown never built a thing on it in thirty years."
"Doesn't change whose name is on the deed." Aldo's tone was almost pleasant. That was somehow worse than if it hadn't been. "You've got two options. Pay what the land's worth, or clear out by week's end. I'd love to tell you there's a third, but there isn't, and I didn't walk all this way to negotiate with people who don't have the coin, regardless."
"And if we don't do either?"
"Then I have five soldiers, and you have—" Aldo glanced past him, at YD, at Fit, at Fenn crouched up on the wall, unimpressed. "Whatever this is."
“Why the five-man escort, alongside their finest warrior?” Ash asked, his voice steady. “A bit excessive for a few squatters, wouldn't you say?”
"What's excessive is the noise you've managed to kick up across the territory," Aldo said, his voice retaining that unsettling, casual edge. "The King has little use for the sort of fools who spend their days dragging his reputation through the mud."
“So many words, and yet not an answer. It appears your king views us as a real threat, am I correct?” Ash once again glanced at the woman. She just stood there, ever so slightly behind Aldo. He attempted to remember if he had heard about a female demon hybrid in the royal army, but no such description found him.
“Our king regards your presence here as a minor irritation,” Aldo replied, his tone remaining dangerously light. He had taken a step closer, and slightly in front of the woman, as though blocking Ash’s view of her. Or her view of whatever seemed to be distracting her. “You should be grateful for the civility of a choice. Throwing it back in his face is the sort of mistake only a dead man gets to make.”
"Your king is the only fool I see here," Ash remarked, fixing his attention back onto Aldo. The single-horned man stiffened, the air around him tightening at the slight. It was a predictable reaction; men who traded their souls for a crown's favor rarely appreciated having their master's judgment questioned. Behind him, the soldiers shifted with a nervous, uneven energy, eyes darting between their leader and the dark shape of Ash, caught in the uncomfortable space between an order and an instinct. "Sending his primary enforcer this far from the castle just to bicker with a few squatters in the dirt. Does that strike you as the strategy of a wise ruler?"
Aldo's hand rested on the hilt of his sword.
That was when Pressea decided to join the conversation.
She came around the side of the third building at a half-skip, both hands raised like she was conducting something only she could hear, round ears twitching, whiskers catching the light. She was, by any reasonable measure, extremely cute, which made it all the more unsettling when she opened her mouth.
"Ooh, soldiers," she said, delighted. "I wonder how much blood is in five of them. Probably a lot. People always have more than you'd think." She beamed at Aldo like she'd paid him a compliment. Then, without any further warning, she pressed both palms flat against the air in front of her, and a shimmering dome of gold-white light bloomed outward from her hands, expanding fast, arcing up and over past the gate, past the yard, swallowing all five buildings of the Foundry inside it within a breath.
The nearest soldier took an instinctive step back. Aldo didn't. Aldo observed the shimmering wall as it solidified, his expression holding the weary annoyance of a clerk finding an unpredicted charge on a ledger. The barrier was almost invisible, except for the faintest of light shimmering, almost like an oil spill on water. It made a slight noise, like a buzzing of electricity, but softer, more natural. He wouldn't admit it, but he was impressed. He's never seen sanctuary magic this strong before.
"Sanctuary contract," Pressea informed him cheerfully, patting the air like she was scratching an invisible dog. She already knew that a man of his position would know exactly what magic she used, but she enjoyed treating men as though they were stupid, so she explained anyway. "You can't come in unless somebody invites you. I can feel exactly where everyone inside is standing right now. Isn't that fun? Nobody's ever tried to test it. I keep hoping somebody will."
"She's not wrong," YD said, before Aldo could decide whether that had been a threat. "About the barrier. Can't speak to the rest of it."
Pressea hummed contentedly and went back to muttering to herself, something about pulse points, and everyone within earshot made a quiet, collective decision not to ask.
The standoff held there for a moment. Aldo on one side of a wall he technically couldn't cross, Ash on the other side of a fight he had no coin to buy his way out of, and neither of them willing to be the first to blink.
But Aldo didn't look particularly worried about it. He studied the barrier the way he'd studied the problem of the whole visit, turning it over, deciding it wasn't worth arguing with directly. "That'll hold as long as it holds," he said, unbothered. "Magic like that doesn't come free. It'll run dry eventually, and the castle's not half a day's walk from here. I've got better things to do than stand in a field waiting for a hamster to get tired." He looked at Ash once more, without much heat in it. "I'll be back. And back after that, if I have to."
He turned before Ash could answer, already walking, his soldiers falling in behind him without needing to be told. The girl with the sharp eyes lingered a beat longer than the rest, glancing once at the shifting dark shape of Ash standing at the barrier's edge, before she turned to follow.
Nobody moved until the group had shrunk to a smudge on the road back toward the castle.
Pressea let the barrier drop the moment they were gone, in the way one might sit down after finally getting to put down something heavy. "Rude man," she said cheerfully, to nobody in particular. "Didn't even ask my name."
"He'll be back within the week," YD said, her accent strong. "Probably sooner."
"He will," Ash agreed. He hadn't moved from the gate.
“Power-hungry bastards. What good do they have with a run-down foundry?” Fit said, leaning against the wall. “Just greedy for greed's sake. And there's no way this land is worth 1,000 gold shillings.”
Toby, already finding something to place his attention on finally spoke up “I think the land is actually worth more. The forest, the river, the good soil. I'm surprised they haven't tried to get it back sooner. Some high lord would love to force people to work here for him”
“Well, kings are notoriously lazy,” Fenn spoke, still on the wall. “Probibly couldent be bothered until we started plastering his face on every outhouse in the kingdom.”
“Well were not paying for it. I refuse to line the king's pockets with any more gold. The gods know he has enough of it.” Ash said, the words almost sounding like a command though none was given.
"Why not just duel for it," Toby said, his voice dripping in sarcasm, going back to whatever he'd left half-wired behind him. "Save everyone the trouble of him walking out here every week to say the same three things. And I know how you love your violence."
Ash was quiet for long enough that Toby actually looked up from his work to check on him. The violet threads drifting off him had gone still. Sharp and settled, the way they did when he'd made up his mind about something and had no intention of unmaking it.
"Fine," Ash said.
"I was joking."
"I'm not." He was already looking down the road the soldiers had taken, toward where it bent out of sight in the direction of the castle. "We can't out-fund them and we can't out-wait them. But I can beat one man in a fight. That, I know how to do."
Toby opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked at Fenn instead, who only shrugged, and Fit, who didn't look up from where he'd settled back against the warm brick.
"You're really going to ask the North for a duel? Are you sure that's wise, supreme leader" Toby asked.
"I'm going to ask the King," Ash said. "Personally."
"Well..." Toby sighs, "...that's going to make my week significantly more complicated."