Chapter 164: Hunger Furnace

The furnace came to life.

A black ember glow spread through the pipes surrounding the main chamber, and the ledgers chained to the furnace began to open. They opened one by one, their pages flipping on their own. The pages started to burn, and each time one did, a red line shot out from the furnace along another route toward a refuge outside the citadel. Austin Veyron could feel a deep humming throughout the room, a vibration that settled into his teeth and the soles of his feet.

The quartermaster bound to the chair began to scream as the iron tightened around them. Their face was covered in dirt, and sweat was running down their neck, but they kept looking at Kharvek defiantly.

"Tell me the northern ration routes," Kharvek said.

"I will not." The quartermaster’s voice was hoarse, but it didn’t waver.

"The furnace does not need your cooperation," the eastern envoy said through its closed-mouth mask.

Nyra felt her heart shard react to the black ember above the furnace. Blue-black energy was being pulled from it in thin, trembling threads.

"It’s taking the route information from them," Nyra said. "It’s taking their knowledge."

Austin Veyron could feel it too. If he devoured this furnace, he would have all the route information for every refuge. He would know where to send food and aid to every starving place in the Marches. It felt like a hunger he was supposed to give in to, and that was exactly what made it dangerous.

Veyra placed her hand on the back of his coat. "Say it."

"I want to devour it."

"What would it give you?"

"All of the routes."

Sable lifted the shard of the crown in her hand. "Then that’s not what we’re looking for."

Kharvek forced the quartermaster’s hand onto one of the pages, and red letters appeared across it.

ROUTES SERVE THE ONE WHO HOLDS THEM.

"That’s the clause we need to devour," Tessa said, her face pale. "If we can devour the clause that’s feeding the furnace, we can stop the routes from being devoured."

Ceryn pulled out the Cinder Refuge Chain map and held it up toward the furnace, holding it flat against the grate with both hands. "There’s still route information inside this furnace. We need to be careful."

"We won’t devour the routes," Austin Veyron said. "We’ll devour the claim that’s holding them."

The eastern envoy looked up and turned its closed-mouth mask toward them, as if it had known where they were the entire time.

"Devourer, you always pick the lesser hunger," the envoy said. "Vordessa was wondering when that would change."

Kharvek looked up as well, and more ash guards came running toward the service tunnel.

"Now," Veyra said.

They jumped down into the furnace room, one after another, landing hard on the iron floor. The heat was almost unbearable, pressing against Austin Veyron’s body like a wall, and the floor was burning hot under his feet.

Rin landed on a pipe that ran over toward the guards, light as a cat despite the heat, and shot two arrows before any of them could shout a warning. One stuck in a guard’s sword sleeve, and the other shattered the red light above the guards, plunging that part of the room into darkness.

Orena landed next to the quartermaster and began stabbing at the iron that bound them.

"It’s furnace-powered," she said, gritting her teeth and leaning her whole weight into the spear as she struggled to break through.

Nyra began walking toward the black ember above the furnace. Blue-black energy rose from her hands like smoke from cold water. She wasn’t trying to devour it. She was building a barrier around it.

"I will not be your vessel," Nyra said to the black ember.

The ember reacted to her, and for a moment the room went silent, as if the whole citadel were holding its breath.

Then the ash guards closed in on Austin Veyron. Their armor was glowing from within, and each of them had a page from the furnace fastened to his chest.

The guards moved in perfect formation, their steps landing in exactly the same rhythm. Veyra struck the first one, sending his weapon flying across the floor. Sable erased the red line on another guard’s chest with her crown shard, and he just stood there, confused, staring at the weapon in his hand.

Austin Veyron grabbed the third guard’s arm and looked at the page on his armor.

DEFEND THE FEEDER.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The command in the guard’s page. Not the guard."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

Austin Veyron touched the page, and DEVOUR opened. He tasted the command, like ration smoke and a locked gate, and felt a rush of power come with it.

DEFEND THE FEEDER.

He devoured feeder.

The guard’s armor went dark. He looked at Kharvek, then back at the quartermaster.

"The furnace was feeding the camps," he said in a dull voice, as though he were only now hearing the words for what they were.

"It was feeding Kharvek’s power," Tessa said.

The guard put his sword down and began helping Orena free the quartermaster, working at the iron with his bare hands even though it burned him. The other guards began to back away from him. One charged toward Tessa, but Rin shot him with an arrow that pinned his cloak to the ground.

"You’re taking my soldiers away from me!" Kharvek yelled. "You’re taking away my power!"

"I took your name out of their hunger," Austin Veyron replied.

The quartermaster broke free of the iron and coughed dirt out of their mouth. Orena caught them before they could fall onto the hot grate and helped them stand.

"My name is Halren," they said, wiping their mouth with a shaking hand. Their knuckles were bloody from fighting the restraints. "I was in charge of all the food supply routes. I can help you with the failsafe to release the information."

Kharvek swung his weapon at them, his face twisted with fury, but Veyra blocked it, and sparks flew from the impact.

"Can you release the routes?" Nyra asked Halren.

"No, not by myself," Halren said. "The furnace has all the routes chained to it."

Ceryn held up one of the clean route sheets they had found. "Then tell us which routes need to stay."

Halren looked at the furnace and began to remember the routes, and some of the fear left their face as the familiar work took over. "Coalwater has the water route. Ashbridge has the grain route. Emberline has the rail routes to the camps, and there are medical supplies going to the south."

"Those are our routes," Tessa said, laying the maps out on a platform and weighing the corners down with loose bolts from the floor.

The eastern envoy, which had stood perfectly still through all of it, finally began to move. It reached toward the black ember above the furnace, and a red conduit opened behind it, leading into the deep east.

"The Caldera Throne is where Vordessa will feed next," the envoy said, breaking off a piece of the ember as easily as someone breaking bread.

Nyra reached for the piece, her blue-black energy lashing out after it, but the envoy vanished into the conduit before she could catch it.

Austin Veyron could feel the furnace pulling at him again. Devour it all, he thought. He wanted to devour everything in front of him, and for a moment, his vision narrowed to a single point of red.

"What do we devour?" Veyra asked, her voice cutting through the roar of the furnace.

Austin Veyron forced himself to look at the phrase burning on the furnace.

ROUTES SERVE THE ONE WHO HOLDS THEM.

"The clause that says routes serve the holder," Austin Veyron said. "Not the route facts. Not the furnace. Not the citadel."

"Witnessed," Veyra and Sable replied together.

Austin Veyron ran toward the center of the furnace and leapt over a burst of steam from one of the pipes. Kharvek tried to stop him, but Veyra blocked the warlord and sent him crashing back into the pipes.

Austin Veyron pressed both hands against the burning page, and DEVOUR opened. He felt the hunger for power try to take over him. If one person controlled all of the routes, then no one would go hungry. No one would starve if one person had control over everything. It was the oldest lie power had ever told, and it sounded so reasonable.

ROUTES SERVE THE ONE WHO HOLDS THEM.

He devoured holds.

The furnace let out a scream like metal tearing, and red command fire burst out of the pipes. But the furnace didn’t destroy the route information. It only destroyed the clause that had been holding it.

Halren pulled the failsafe on the side of the chair, throwing their whole weight against it, and released all of the route information stored in the furnace.

With a heavy clunk somewhere deep inside the machine, the vents opened. White route steam began to fill the air of Cinder Citadel, and it poured out through the old relay tower built into the citadel. Nahlia’s relay network picked up the information and began sending it along the Cinder Refuge Chain.

COALWATER HAS WATER ROUTE

ASHBRIDGE HAS GRAIN ROUTE

EMBERLINE HAS RAIL ROUTE

The black ember above the furnace began to dim, and all of the guards lowered their weapons, staring up at the white steam as if they had never seen the sky before.

Kharvek stared at the steam pouring out of his fortress. For the first time since Austin Veyron had met him, the warlord looked uncertain. "You have given my routes away to everyone," Kharvek said in disbelief.

"No. You gave them away when you tried to take them from the people," Tessa said.

Kharvek ran toward the eastern conduit, but it was already closing behind the envoy. Veyra blocked his way, and he threw flames at her feet, forcing her to jump back. Kharvek slammed his hand onto a lever on the wall, and iron shutters crashed down, cutting the tunnel off from the rest of the team.

"This isn’t over," Kharvek called from behind the shutters. "The Caldera Throne will awaken soon."

Then the shutters sealed with a clang that echoed through the whole hall, and Kharvek disappeared into the darkness beyond them.

The black ember cracked above the furnace with a sound like splitting ice, but it didn’t explode. Nyra caught every piece before it could fall into the route pipes, her arms trembling with the effort.

"The furnace is down," Halren said, looking at the dark engine with something between relief and grief. "But that conduit is still open somewhere in the citadel."

Ceryn began writing down all of the new routes they had found, their pen moving quickly across the page. "The envoy was heading for a place called the Caldera Throne."

Austin Veyron’s wrist began to glow, pulling toward the east, darker than it had ever been before.

Veyra saw it and took a deep breath. Her sleeve was scorched where Kharvek’s flames had caught it. "What’s our next target?"

Austin Veyron looked at the shutters Kharvek had closed behind him. He looked at his team, all of them tired and scorched and still standing, and he knew there was still more to come.

"It’s not mine, but it’s next," he told them. He meant it as a promise, to them and to himself.

The furnace in Cinder Citadel went dark, and the hum that had filled the chamber finally faded. Somewhere far to the east, the next hunger was just beginning to grow.