Chapter 160: Ashbridge Shelter

Ashbridge Shelter.

As they left Ember Hold by the northern ravine road, Austin Veyron couldn’t stop thinking about the name. Ashbridge Shelter.

The food lines Arin had created were still supplying the camp. Wagons were rolling out with food, and the freed ash guards were helping at the water lines. They had taken their armor off and rolled up their sleeves to work alongside the camp volunteers. Tessa and Ceryn had copied the Cinder Refuge Chain maps so that Grand Meridian’s network could send alerts to Coalwater and Emberline.

Austin Veyron glanced back one time. Ember Hold looked smaller than it had from the inside. The stone no longer had a red hue to it, and the smoke coming from the granary was thinning into a light gray haze that the wind was slowly blowing away.

"They are still moving," Veyra said.

"I know."

"You don’t have to see every wagon leave to know it’s happening."

The words hit him, because a part of him still wanted to see them leave. The black mark on his wrist was pulling toward everyone who was starving on the road. DEVOUR told him that he could watch over them. He could control them. He could protect them. It was subtle but convincing, and that was what made it dangerous.

He kept walking. Each step felt like an argument with himself, but he was able to win it every time he took another step forward.

They took the quickest path through the ravine, the one Rin knew. Tall cliffs of ash surrounded them as they made their way through. Broken bridge pillars lined the road, and they had to weave between them to keep going. Long cracks in the stone had formed sharp edges that jutted out over the road like teeth. Orena followed the old water paths to help guide them, and Nyra used the heart shard to find their way whenever there was more than one route to take.

Tessa followed them as well, with the recovered maps tucked underneath her coat. She ran efficiently, like someone who had spent years moving through dangerous places without being seen, and she never let go of the maps.

"You should be with your people at Ember Hold," Austin Veyron said to her as they ran.

"My people need the maps to find them," Tessa responded. "I know how Kharvek marks his targets. I’m choosing this path."

No one questioned her decision. Veyra looked at Austin Veyron, and he nodded. Tessa deserved to decide for herself where she wanted to go.

They saw smoke in the distance as they ran, and the ravine wind pushed it toward them. More smoke appeared ahead as they rounded a bend, and through it they could see wagons in the road. They could hear shouting, and they picked up their speed. Rin disappeared into the smoke ahead of them, and the others followed the sound of her feet hitting the stone.

Ashbridge Shelter wasn’t a town. It was a cluster of caves, shacks, and warehouses built beneath an old bridge that spanned the ravine and looked like the skeleton of some massive beast that had died long ago. Food supplies came in by convoy and then disappeared into the ravine tunnels before winter could hit.

Today, a convoy was stuck in the middle of the ravine road. The road was tight there, and wagons had to squeeze between the cliffs to reach the shelter.

Three wagons were jammed together in the road. People lined the cliff walls, trying to stay out of the way. They all held bags of rations, and they looked as if they had been starving long before the convoy ever reached them. Hunger-contract raiders stood on top of the cliffs, dropping red tag lines down to the people below. In the middle of the road, a cart was on fire, and its smoke was spreading over everything.

"We’re running out of food!" one of the raiders called down, using a bone cone to amplify his voice. "Whoever gets to it first will eat!"

The tags turned red.

TAKE THE LAST BAG.

The people in the convoy started to panic. One man tried to climb on top of a wagon to reach one of the bags near the burning cart. Another person grabbed him by the jacket and pulled him down. A baby was crying, and the raiders were just waiting for the people to break. Some of them were even laughing as they watched.

"It’s the same thing," Veyra said, her face grim.

"Not quite," Tessa said, looking at the marks on the cliff. "They are leading them toward the storehouse. They want the convoy to breach the outer line of the shelter."

Nyra held up the heart shard. "The active sample isn’t with the convoy. It’s in the bridge warehouse."

Austin Veyron could feel it calling to his wrist. He could feel the red pulling him toward it, ringing in his bones like a slow bell. It felt as if it were telling him to consume it all.

Rin shot one of the raiders before they even knew she was there. Her arrow hit the bone cone and shattered it. Orena stabbed her spear into the side of the cliff and climbed up to where the raiders were standing. Veyra ran down the road, using the wagons to cover her as she went.

The raiders threw tags down at the people in the convoy. Sable held out her broken crown shard, and the tags closest to her went white and dropped to the ground. She kept walking around the convoy, stripping the red words off the tags as she went and putting herself between the hooks and the children.

Austin Veyron reached the middle of the convoy. He could see that the burning cart was full of grain bags stamped with the black-red hand. The fire hadn’t reached the grain bags yet, and the tags weren’t there to destroy the food. They were there to make everyone think that if they didn’t take it right now, it would be gone.

DEVOUR wanted to consume. The target was bigger than a single wagon of grain but smaller than the entire shelter. He could do it. He could take all the panic out of the ravine, and the convoy would be safe.

"Target," he said. "The panic routing through the convoy tags. Not the grain, or the people, or the source in the warehouse."

"Witnessed," Veyra said as she jumped off one of the wagons and knocked a raider to the ground.

"Witnessed," Sable said.

Austin Veyron placed the white root chain on the burning cart, and DEVOUR consumed the target. It felt like swallowing smoke and hunger, and the certainty that there was only one way through a very small opening.

TAKE THE LAST BAG.

He consumed the word last, and the tags turned gray one by one, like lanterns being blown out along a street.

The people in the convoy didn’t calm down instantly. They were still hungry, and the road was still blocked. But now they were able to see each other and figure out how to move forward.

A woman in the front wagon spoke up. "We can get the injured out first. Then we can move the kids, and then we can get the grain carts through."

"Someone can clear this wheel," another person in the convoy said.

The man who had been trying to get to the grain stepped back from the bag. "I have some rope." He said it with shame, but he was already pulling the rope out of his pack.

No one crowned the woman who had told them what to do, and no one blamed the man who had tried to take the food. They all just started working together to clear the road. It wasn’t smooth, but everyone helped, and whenever two people grabbed the same wheel, one of them either laughed or stepped back.

Veyra cleared the last raider from the road. Rin shot arrows at the raiders still on the cliff, and Orena tied the captured raider to a rock with his own tag line. She didn’t break any of his bones, but she made sure he couldn’t escape.

"That path will lead us into Ashbridge," Tessa said, pointing at a small lane that branched off from the main road. "If the wagons can make the turn, we can get through."

The volunteers from the convoy helped move the people out of the road and started pulling the carts apart. Someone put out the fire on the supply cart with a wet blanket, and the smoke began to clear. Austin Veyron helped lift one of the broken axles, but when the woman who had spoken first took over, he let her lead. It was harder for him than he expected, standing back and following instead of giving orders, but they made the turn.

Once the road was clear, a small cheer went up from somewhere in the convoy. People who had been crying a moment earlier were now laughing.

A guard came running out of the warehouse district of Ashbridge Shelter. He was young, no more than twenty, and he had ash smeared across his face. His uniform looked like it had been made for someone bigger than him.

"You can’t go in there," the guard told them. "Commander Vask has all the people in the bridge warehouse. He’s saying the new rationing rite begins when the convoy gets here."

"How many people are in there?" Veyra asked.

"Several hundred. He locked the doors to the old bridge. The food is in there." The guard looked back at the warehouse as he said it, as though he were afraid someone might be watching him.

Nyra’s heart shard was pulsing so hard now that its light showed through her coat. "The sample is in the warehouse," she said. "It’s feeding off the convoy’s fear."

Tessa looked at her maps. "Vask is one of the lieutenants who help Kharvek route his targets. He marks a target and uses its own resources to convince the people there that they need a warlord."

The guard looked at the unmarked grain bags, then back at the convoy volunteers helping one another. Something in his face shifted, as if he had never seen food moved without someone standing over it with a weapon. "Can you stop him?"

Austin Veyron watched the convoy clearing a path into the shelter. He could hear the determination in their voices. It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t certain, but it was real.

"We can try, but we won’t take the shelter for you," Austin Veyron said. He said it softly, but the guard understood what he meant.

"What do you need from us?" the guard asked.

"A way in, and to know who’s in there." Austin Veyron looked at the convoy and then back at the guard. He wanted to know who was inside, not just how many.

The guard looked toward the old bridge warehouse. A red bowl mark sealed its doors, and people were moving around on the upper level behind the narrow windows.

Vask’s voice echoed out from inside the warehouse, amplified by the stone until it seemed to come from the bridge itself. "Bring your hungry to the storehouse. Those who accept our protection will be fed."

They stood at the entrance of the lane that led into Ashbridge Shelter, catching their breath. Nyra held up her heart shard, and it pulsed every time Vask’s voice echoed through the stone. The bridge warehouse waited for them at the end of the ravine. Red light glowed from beneath its doors, and the bridge above it creaked as if the hunger inside had real weight.

Austin Veyron’s wrist mark was glowing as well. He looked at his hand and felt Veyra’s gaze on him. He didn’t reach for it.

Another rationing rite was about to begin inside the warehouse, and the people trapped there sounded close enough for him to hear.