Chapter I – The Wedding

  Rori

  This time of year, the morning gusts cut sharp. Dry with dust, and cold with dew. The ground was slick beneath Rori’s boots, which were still caked in yesterday’s mud. His vest clung damply beneath his cheap Tava-hide plate, and the air tore at his throat with every jagged breath as he ran.

  His chest pounded. So did the turf underfoot. Both stirred the knot of fury in his gut. They didn’t stand a chance, not really. Everyone knew it. knew that his pack stood no chance. Still, his pride refused to let him slow.

  Spoke Ijabor stirred in the distance. Smoke curled lazily from yurt chimneys as men emerged, yawning, rinsing their mouths, or poking at last night’s cooking pots. The bitter, oily scent of boiled Tava fat hung in the breeze.

  Rori reached the camp perimeter, passing yurts, men, and stinking hides stretched taut on drying frames. Beyond the camp, further north, rose Hub Asoah, massive, foreign, alive. The city they hoped to winter in. If the marriage went through.

  The ash-colored walls were Scriptwrought, etched and humming faintly. His home, little Hub Toma, could’ve fit inside those walls a hundred times over, and there’d still be room to spare.

  He sighed as he reached the yurt he shared with the boys from Toma.

  Inside, acrid smoke bit his nose. Onjor’s damned cooking pot again.

  “Put that out, would you?” Rori muttered, ducking in. The other boys stirred, some half-dressed, others still dead to the world.

  There were twenty of them in total. Not counting the three Resonants. All jammed in a space made for ten.

  Onjor moved sluggishly, smothering the fire. He wasn’t sharp like back home. None of them were.

  Back in Toma, Onjor had been the ringleader in every game of Scriptcaster and Enyi, and Rori had been his second, or maybe it had been the other way around, depending on who you asked.

  The pair were the strongest Resonants the hamlet diviner had seen in decades. That had meant something back then.

  Rori’s mother was relatively well-off, by Toma’s standards, anyway. She ran a seamstress trade, employing village women. When migration season came, she provided horses and Tava vests not just for Rori, but for Onjor and Jass too. An unheard-of luxury in a place like theirs.

  Outside, the morning grew louder as Spoke Ijabor came alive. Rori stood in the entrance flap and watched.

  Glydra, scaled, dog-like beasts, stalked past under riders. Horses cantered by. Herds of Tava bleated complaints as they were steered through the camp, and towards the city. One of the Ancestor moons still lingered in the sky, its metallic surface casting silver over the distant walls in the early morning light.

  None of the Toma boys had ever seen a city so vast. Truth be told, none of them had ever seen anywhere.

  The furthest they had wandered was to the small cave outside Toma—the one with a live Ka’vor pool—that the Resonant boys dared each other to approach when they were younger.

  But that had just been the games boys play. A flicker of danger and rebellion while this.

  This was their first martial season.

  They weren’t just playing at war anymore, not sparring with old sir Tor using wooden glaives, not chasing chickens while pretending to be Glydra herding Tava.

  That had all been make-believe.

  In spring, the Spoke would go to war. Real war, and Rori felt a cold knot settle in his stomach.

  Kam was still too young, clumsy on foot and worse in a saddle. Malie was clever but too trusting, boys from other packs had already started pulling tricks on him. Faro was always jittery, flinching at loud noises. And Besu, who slept with a blade under his mat, couldn’t wake up without a solid kick.

  Rori swallowed hard. A flash of Faro’s throat, slit open, blood soaking into frost, there and gone.

  He pictured Aunty Lusa’s eyes, Faro’s mother, sharp, accusing, wordless. What would he tell her if her son didn’t come back?

  They all felt it. The weight. The quiet burden of being Resonant.

  He, Onjor, and Jass had to prove themselves in the winter pit. Had to catch the eye of a wealthy pride. It was the only path to bonding, the only route to Cores, for nobodies like them.

  He blinked. Jass had come to stand beside him, grinning as he looked out over the camp.

  “Stop daydreaming,” he said, nudging Rori. “You’re the one who got us moving.”

  “I’ll get the horses. You get this lot to pack up the yurt,” he winked.

  Trust Jass to grab the easy job.

  “You, you, you. Come with me,” Jass said, peering back in, and jabbing his finger at three boys. They shuffled upright without protest. One needed a swift kick to the ribs.

  They weren’t Resonants. But their fate was tied to the three who were. Tied to the pack.

  “Let’s move,” Onjor muttered. The gloom had lifted from him somewhat. He even smiled as he pulled on his boots.

  “I’m sure I’ll find a merchant’s daughter to share my barracks tonight,” he said with a wink.

  “You wish,” Rori replied, snorting. But a smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth.

  They were big lads all of them. Even the non-Resonants. That was the one blessing Toma had given them. Strength. But every morning, as they packed their cramped yurt, the illusion wore thinner.

  Other initiate packs had better quarters. Larger yurts. Proper Glyphplate. Blades. Wealth. Prestige. Proof that Toma was, and always would be, a speck on the map.

  As if summoned by the thought, Yamar appeared, flanked by a few of his posse.

  He didn’t have a pack. Although this was only his second campaign he was a Lodge officer already with five hundred men, and four full-fledged Outriders sworn to his purse if not his personality.

  His smile was all teeth, and his eyes, knots of polished coal. His hair was a shock of bronze. Rare for an Ikalean.

  His Zanji coiled around his shoulders like a serpent made of bronze and ink, flicking its forked tongue at Rori and Onjor. Its jeweled eyes shimmered with latent script, and its presence alone was enough to make them look away.

  Yamar was not as big as the Toma boys, but he didn’t need to be, and he didn’t need his cronies to intimidate them. He was the only son of Ava Vonaka, one of the richest women in all the Clans, Guild mother of Hub Ijabor, and he made sure everybody knew it.

  Yamar could have walked alone, and most of them still would’ve pissed themselves.

  “You lot are on latrine duty,” Yamar said, his snake-like threadling coiled lazily around his shoulder. It flicked its tongue at them.

  Rori clenched his fists. Yamar’s skin shimmered with Script. His Zanji was already fully manifested, faceted eyes gleaming like cut jewels.

  For some reason, Yamar had taken a disliking to the boys. Maybe it was their poverty that irked him—their worn gear, their backwater accents. Or maybe it was simply because he could. Regardless, he was the newest officer of the Lodge, and by tradition, that put him in charge of the initiates and their packs.

  “Nwaze said we were to join the work crews,” Onjor growled, stepping forward just as Rori moved to stand beside him.

  Nwaze, unlike Yamar, was a grizzled veteran. He had taken a quiet liking to the boys, perhaps he saw a bit of himself in Onjor’s fire, but this morning, with everything important going on, he was nowhere to be found.

  “And that’s what we’ll do,” Jass said quickly, cutting in before things could escalate. His voice was smooth, steady.

  “We’ll clean the shit, then join the Durkha crews,”

  He struck his chest with a closed fist, formal, flawless. The other two were slow about it, but they joined him in saluting.

  Yamar’s grin didn’t falter, and didn't even attempt to reach his eyes.

  “You’ll never win Cores,” he hissed. “You can be sure of that,” as he stalked on to harass the next batch of unfortunate Initiates.

  Rori didn’t reply. His blood was already boiling. And it only got worse when he found himself elbow-deep in the Spoke’s waste pits.

  The stink clung to him. So did the shame. This was a job rarely assigned to a pack with Resonants unless as a punishment.

  “Argh, this is disgusting,” Onjor muttered, nose wrinkled as he shoveled.

  “Wear a cloth like the rest of us,” Jass called back, still cheerful behind the kerchief over his mouth.

  Most of them had their curls tied back and their faces covered, but not Onjor.

  “Weak,” he growled. “Bad enough they’ve got us shoveling shit. I won’t cower from it too.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Rori said, smirking. “This is one experience I’d gladly flee from.”

  A few of their boys laughed. It was bitter laughter, but better than none.

  They weren’t rich. They weren’t armed. But they were together.

  By the time they joined the gathering line outside Asoah’s walls, the stink was still on them, soaked into skin and cloth.

  “He just wanted to get us dirty before the wedding,” Onjor said, unusually sharp. “Break our spirits.”

  Rori said nothing. He wiped sweat from his brow, adjusted the cloth around his neck, and stared northward at the looming walls.

  “We’ll find a Pride to join,” he whispered. More wish than promise.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  Jass, usually the dreamer, was quiet. Onjor scowled, the kind of scowl he used to hide fear.

  “We need a plan,” Jass muttered. “There’s a lot of hamlet packs here this season. Getting a Pride’s attention won’t be easy.”

  “Especially not with Yamar there at the auction pits telling everyone we’re shit-stinking rubes,” Onjor added. “He’s already bitter about the Spoke switching wives for the season.”

  Jass snorted. “Let him talk. Pride leaders care more about who can fight and command their pack than about who smells like latrine pits.”

  “Still,” Rori muttered, eyes narrowing as he scanned the towering walls of Asoah, “We’re going to need more than just broad shoulders.”

  Onjor adjusted the cloth around his neck, which the rest of the boys had eventually convinced him to wear.

  “Then we stop whining and start showing them we’re more than just shit-shovelers.”

  With that, they moved forward, drawn with the rest of the Spoke toward the rising gates of the Hub.

  The Dhurka was a sprawling mess of canvas, timber, and hide, half-built, half-imagined. Their section lay unfinished, skeletal ribs of wood pointing at the sky like broken fingers.

  The boys from Toma dropped their gear, rolled up sleeves, and joined the others who’d avoided latrine duty.

  Dozens of men worked in rhythm. Barked orders, hammer strikes, the groan of hide stretched over frame. The smell of labor and treated Tava leather filled the air.

  Women lined the walls above, watching, whispering, pointing. The barracks weren’t pretty, but they mattered.

  If the marriage succeeded it would be monumental shift in clan power.

  “Do you think the marriage will go through?” Rori asked Malie, the smallest of the bunch, but the sharpest. His grandmother was Toma’s old diviner.

  Malie hesitated mid-swing, bolt and hammer in hand.

  “Winter’s too close,” he said finally. “The Spoke can’t make it back to Ijabor in time. The Lodge will have to settle here, the question is how steep the Guild mother's price will be.”

  “The Hub’ll bleed us of Ka'vor, and offer few Cores,” Jass muttered.

  Rori felt it too. That twist in the gut. If the Hub extracted too steep a price then the Prides would be even more discerning at the auction.

  No Cores meant no Enyi. No Enyi meant no Scriptcasting, and no Scriptcasting meant just blood and steel against the Ndikere.

  “We’ll be Glyph fodder if you lot don’t bond before spring,” Malie said flatly.

  “I’m sure they’ll strike a deal,” Onjor said, bravado cracking at the edges. “I heard the Lodge won many Cores this season gone.”

  A younger boy piped up, voice hopeful, seizing the rare chance to speak directly to his Resonants.

  “Will they let us into the city soon?”

  Onjor ruffled his hair, the gesture rough but not unkind.

  “Only if the marriage goes through.”

  “And if it does,” Jass grinned, “the women will visit our barracks. Sit on your lap, sing you songs. Right, Kam?”

  The boys laughed as Kam turned red.

  “Dreamers,” Rori said, but his smile was genuine.

  “They won’t be choosing shit-shovelers to sing songs to,” he added.

  “Speak for yourself. I know what a bath is,” Jass shot back. "Besides I'm sure there are women on the other side who have to shovel shit too," he add wryly.

  The sun dipped low. Shadows stretched long across the camp. The last support beam was hoisted. Their final yurt-frame stretched and drawn tight. Drainage dug.

  The work was done.

  They leaned against each other, bone-tired, blistered and filthy, but finished.

  Even the overseers’ yells had faded into silence, and the crowd of women atop the walls had thinned. But something else was happening.

  The Outriders were moving.

  They rose from where they squatted and lounged in the last of the autumn sun almost as one, and their Enyi’s Zanji paced, or flew, alongside them. Rori spotted Yamar among them, bronze hair and Glyphplate shining.

  Zanji circled. Some translucent, showing their veins of flowing ink, others growling at unbonded men who got too close.

  Rori and the pack shoved their way forward with the crowd. Thousands of Spoke men pressed in behind them, initiates, herders, guards, and laborers alike.

  Then the gates creaked open.

  Black oak, massive and groaning. The Clerks filed out. Their gowns and skin glowing faintly with their inked Script. They were followed by murmuring women. As with the men who followed the Outriders, their faces shone, not with ink, but with anticipation.

  Marriage concerned them all.

  At the center glided a tall woman with piercing green eyes, rare in Ikaleans, and Glyphs inked directly onto her bronze skin.

  She looked like someone who had never worked a day in her life. And who had never lost at the bargaining table.

  Her Zanji prowled beside her, feline and blue, the size of a grown boy.

  “Ava Temarien,” said Fa’dan, the Lodge Commander, stepping forward. His voice rasped like gravel.

  “Lodge Commander Fa’dan,” she replied coolly.

  They bowed, but just an incline that barely touched the neck.

  “Winter finds you far from Ijabor,” she said, lips curled in suggestion.

  Rori shifted. He didn’t know why, but he stood straighter. These were powerhouses. Movers of clans.

  “Far from Ijabor,” Fa’dan answered, “but still in Clan territory.”

  They didn’t shout. Didn’t use Script to amplify their voices. And yet the entire crowd heard.

  “Yes...barely,” Temarien’s gaze swept across the gathered members of the Spoke's Lodge and the regular men and Resonants closest to them. The clerks behind her shifted slightly.

  “You’ve built your... shanties. I take it you seek to invoke marriage rights?”

  “A temporary union. For this winter... No name change.”

  “Only one? Is our hospitality charity now?” she asked, already turning away. “Perhaps you'd be better served continuing on to Ijabor since you so love the name.”

  Her clerks turned with her. Calculated dismissal.

  “Wait,” Fa’dan said.

  Even the Outriders looked tense now.

  “Two seasons,” he said. “We’ve been married to Ijabor for a decade. More would be... improper.”

  “Five,” she countered, her smile sharpened. “And the Spoke shall take our name.”

  Rori noticed Yamar shifting, clearly about to speak, but Nwaze elbowed him silent.

  “Three seasons,” Fa’dan said firmly. “For the three seasons we shall be known as Spoke Asoah, and eight hundred measures of Ka’vor.”

  He had expected the name change in all truth, but had to try to get away from it for honor's sake.

  Temarien’s smile didn’t falter.

  “Done.”

  The clerks turned back in unison.

  “However our Breeding Pools and Spirals will require two thousand measures of Ka’vor.”

  Fa’dan didn’t blink. “A thousand. And thirty Cores from your Pools. We brought many Resonants, and if we are to take your name, then you bear this responsibility now.”

  “A thousand five hundred,” she said. “We have ten Cores ready to be bonded. No more.”

  Fa’dan smiled slightly. “Ava, you’ve the best Pool in all Clan Yasore, maybe all of Ikeala. Twenty eight Cores.”

  A pause. Then—

  “Done.” Her smile finally reached her eyes.

  “We’ll finalize at the Guild. But… there is a small matter.”

  Fa’dan’s eyes narrowed. “What else?”

  His voice was clipped, his confusion evident. Around him, the Outriders shifted, posture tightening.

  The negotiation had followed the familiar rhythm of ritual haggling, and symbolic concessions. Anything important should’ve been settled by Glyph long before the Spoke began constructing the Dhurka, and minor trade concerns were usually handled later. The crowds on both sides were growing and the energy was pent. Further delay might lead to chaos.

  Even the Ava’s Clerks were caught off guard, if the sudden rustling of skirts was anything to go by.

  Ava Temarien raised a hand, and from behind her stepped a girl.

  Young, maybe seventeen, but standing tall. Her Clerk robes were cut in the style of their Martial wing, made for riding and violence. Her hair was braided high and wrapped in gold thread. Script-charms clinked faintly at her wrist. She said nothing, but Rori caught her eye as she looked out at the crowd. He was just one face amongst many, but he could tell that she was nervous.

  “This is Emkai,” the Ava said, laying a hand on the girl's shoulder “My only daughter,”

  “She grows tired of the calm routes trading within Ikeala, and I wish to humor her. I would have her Caravan ride with the Spoke this coming season,” she said.

  Murmurs rippled through the Outrider ranks. A heavy responsibility to be saddled with the daughter of an Ava.

  The crowd was bewildered generally. The import of the present topic above their heads and inaudible to most, instead men and women struggled to catch a glimpse of each other through the massed bodies of their Scriptcasters.

  Nwaze grunted. He was one of the senior Lodge officers, and was stood at Fa'dan's side. Fa'dan glanced at him and nodded almost imperceptibly, knowingly.

  “Our Spoke is rough and built for war,” Nwaze muttered, “Surely too dangerous for... your daughter.”

  'No more dangerous that the average guild hall i assure you," she said staring into Nwaze's eyes. "She will be just as safe with you and your Outriders as she would be here," She said. More rustling of skirts amongst the Clerks around her.

  Fa’dan held up a hand, silencing any further commentary. His voice was calm, but it carried the weight of command.

  “Very well, but I expect when the time comes that she and her people will be able to keep up.”

  The Ava nodded, satisfied. "Then it is settled,"

  The Ava stepped forward. The Ink Glyphs she had formed on her skin earlier flared to life, and her Enyi's eyes flared with power. She painted in the air precise gossamer Glyphs which fragmented almost as quickly as she cast them. When she spoke again her voice boomed reaching even the men and women at the very back of the crowds.

  “It is agreed! Asoah welcome our new husbands!”

  The cheer that followed was thunder.

  Men surged through the gates. Women spilled out to meet them. Clerks and Outriders dropped their masks of stoicism. Zanji leapt, spun, hissed with joy.

  Even the city itself seemed to exhale.

  The wedding was on, and It was chaos.

  They hadn’t realized it, but the crowd had crept up behind them, men in thick boots and leather vests pressing forward in waves.

  The only thing that had held them back was the gravity of seeing so many Scriptcasters gathered in one place.

  Now that the words had been spoken, the rites agreed, the gates thrown wide, there was no more holding back.

  The city answered in kind.

  Women poured from doorways like birds from opened cages, some still wrapping scarves around their heads as they stepped into the cold.

  Others had already painted their cheeks, or oiled their curls into gleaming coils. They wore layered skirts that shimmered with color, sleeves and hems short. Their laughter came in bursts, spilling into the streets.

  Music shimmered in the air—not just played, but crafted. Scriptcasters stood on raised platforms, weaving tones and rhythm with their hands. Strings of ink unfurled from their fingers and curled into instruments that pulsed and sang on their own. A drummer conjured a tethered rhythm loop that echoed through the city walls, deep into its bones.

  Outriders let their Zanji off leash. One great birdlike thing flew overhead, dropping wrapped parcels of dried meat and sugared roots, which children scrambled after.

  Another, some sort of crawler, droned past dragging two massive casks of beer, its feet leaving sticky prints as it rolled through the crowd.

  Laughter, smells, and sound collided in layers. Someone cast a low-level warmth script over the main square, heating the cobblestones just enough that no one felt the wind anymore.

  It was a whirlwind courtship between two masses of people, most of whom, hadn't seen a mature member of the opposite gender for the better part of a year.

  Everyone was... available.

  Strangers smiled too long. Daughters glanced sidelong. Outriders loosened the belts of their Glyphplate and leaned a little closer to the fire pits. The food was free, the drink sweet, And the rules... well for now at least there were few.

  One woman walked up to Jass and offered him a steaming sugar plum. He blinked, stammered something, and then stuffed the whole thing into his mouth without thinking. She laughed at at him like the idiot he was and was spun up in someone's arms dancing and bright.

  Onjor was in heaven faced with savory meats, and a curly haired girl who to Rori seemed to be offering his buff friend herself as much as her produce.

  Malie was gazing in awe at a circle of dancing Outriders and Clerks. The Glyphs that peeled off their skin cast multivarious lights over everyone, and their Zanji capered enchantingly.

  Men pulled crews of swine like Tava through the gates hauling more casks of beer, while food flowed out from the city. Besu was there already with a cup that looked too large for one person, and two more for his close friends in the pack Kam and Sevas.

  And Kam. Rori couldn't believe it, but it looked like Jass's prediction would come true because Kam was dancing in the street with two girls about his age. They twirled him between themselves like a toy and he was smiling so hard it looked like it was painful.

  For a moment he stood there. Most of the men were caked in sweat and grime, but the women paid it no notice, and Rori had never seen or felt so much happiness in his life before.

  The music was everywhere now, woven into the stone, and thumping in his chest. Food and drink was everywhere and the air carried scents he did not have the words for.

  The sun was finally setting. As the last light bled from the walls of Asoah the city became bathed in the soft swirl of Scriptcasted Glyphlight. Painted symbols that pulsed to the equally magical rhythm of the Outrider's drums.

  And as night came possibilities grew. Whispered promises and kisses that never had to be spoken of again unless the parties so wished.

  Moments where the past was far away, and the future hadn't yet begun.

  It was in such a moment that Rori caught her eye again. The girl from before. The daughter of the Ava.

  And this time she noticed. As they locked eyes he felt himself being weighed, but he also felt that she saw past the sweat dust, and poverty that was writ plain on him.

  She saw that he had the one thing she wished for, but could never grasp.

  The freedom to choose.

  This was a night when everybody longed to be free.

  Rori didn't know if he was drawn to her, or she to him, but she was stepping forward. Not speaking, not smiling just her hand reaching out and brushing his wrist - pulling him in.

  Deep into the crowd where the music was loudest and the heat from the Glyphs warmest. She didn't ask Rori if he could dance. She didn't really care, and he could have been anyone. She could have been anyone.

  What mattered was that they were where the air smelt of sweat and perfume, and words no longer mattered. Only the rhythm of the crowd. Only the closeness of another.