The ceramic mug felt warm, a fragile comfort against Liska Raden’s chilled fingers. Acorn coffee, thin but steaming, offered the only solace in the pre-dawn gloom of her tiny cottage. She lifted it, inhaling the faint, earthy scent, imagining it might taste better this time. A sharp crack splintered the quiet, followed by the high-pitched whistle of a bullet. The mug exploded in her hand, shards of cheap pottery showering her bare arm, liquid splattering across the rough-hewn table. A hot sting bloomed where a ceramic fragment had grazed her skin. Through the shattered window, a distant clatter of hooves echoed, then faded into the endless drizzle that clung to Oporov. “Blast it all,” Liska muttered, dropping the ceramic remnants into the growing puddle. She wiped her arm with the sleeve of her coarse linen shift, the scent of spent gunpowder acrid in the air. Another day, another stray shot from the illicit runs through the Slag Pass. This was Oporov: a muddy collection of hovels perched on a vital smuggling artery, where the only constant was the hum of clandestine traffic and the ever-present threat of the Gresnian State Police. Before she could even locate her broom, a heavy boot slammed against her door, rattling the frame. The latch groaned, then gave way with a splintering crack. Matron Ruzha, a woman built like a barrel of pickled krovash, filled the doorway. Her face, usually a roadmap of censorious disapproval, was flushed an alarming beet-red. Her wiry grey bun, usually pinned tight, had a few defiant strands escaping. “Liska Raden!” Ruzha’s voice, rough as a grindstone, grated through the small room. She stormed in, oblivious to the broken mug and the wet patch on the floor, her eyes zeroing in on Liska with the precision of a State Inquisitor. “Is this what you call a contribution to the State? Unmarried, untethered, and nearly thirty cycles old! The District Governor’s office issued new directives this morning. If you are not wed before the midday bell, you will be deemed unproductive. Unproductive women, Liska, are sent to the sulfur mines of Volkov. You hear me? The labor pit!” Liska stiffened. The labor pit. The name alone was a death sentence, a bleak hole where lungs turned to ash and bodies to broken tools. Her cover as a cheerful, scatterbrained weaver would evaporate the moment her feet touched the dust of those mines. She couldn’t risk it. The resistance needed her here, a seemingly harmless whisper in the heart of the State’s underbelly. “Matron Ruzha, please,” Liska started, trying to inject a note of flustered indignation into her voice, a performance she’d honed over years. “There are no eligible men! Everyone is either already married or too old to lift a shovel!” Ruzha scoffed, a sound like gravel spitting. “Nonsense! There’s Daris Torvak, that turnip farmer down the lane. Scrawny thing, but he works hard enough, though his field looks perpetually diseased. And he’s unmarried. The State demands you contribute. Choose him, or pack your rags for the pit. I’ll be back before the noon chime to escort you to the registry. The State will not tolerate shirking.” The door slammed shut, leaving Liska in a stunned silence. Daris Torvak. Her neighbor. The man who owned more ragged shirts than decent tools, whose crops rotted half-tended in the furrows, and whose only ambition seemed to be avoiding hard labor. Perfect. Absolutely perfect for a cheerful, scatterbrained weaver. She didn’t bother with the broom. She pulled on her thickest wool cloak, shoving her hands deep into the pockets, feeling the familiar, cold weight of the revolver hidden there. Her pace quickened as she approached Daris’s ramshackle hut, the mud sucking at her boots. Smoke curled lazily from his crooked chimney, a sign he was likely still nursing his own thin coffee. She banged on his door with the flat of her hand, the sound echoing hollowly. After a long moment, the door creaked open. Daris stood there, his hair a tangled mess, eyes still hazy with sleep. He was tall, but slouched as if weighed down by iron. His clothes were patched and worn, his hands calloused from the soil. He looked exactly what he claimed to be: a dirt-poor, bone-tired farmer. “Liska? What’s all the fuss?” His voice was a low rumble, devoid of any real curiosity. “Matron Ruzha,” Liska said, trying to keep the frantic edge out of her tone. “She just came from the District Governor’s office. New quota. If I’m not married by noon, it’s Volkov for me. You’re the only bachelor left in the entire village.” She waited, expecting protest, confusion, anything. Instead, Daris merely blinked, slowly. “Volkov,” he repeated, the word a flat stone in the air. “That’s… inconvenient.” He leaned against the doorframe, his gaze drifting over her shoulder, as if considering the implications for his turnips. “So, you need a husband. By the noon chime.” “Yes. Just for show, Daris. For the State. We’ll live separate lives. It’s just… paperwork. And a roof over my head. You get… an extra ration coupon for a spouse, don’t you?” She knew he did. A meager incentive, but a lifeline in these lean times. He pushed a hand through his dark hair, a faint stubble darkening his jaw. “Ration coupon. Yes.” He looked at her then, a long, assessing look that felt oddly penetrating despite his sleepy demeanor. “Alright. Give me five minutes. I’ll put on a clean shirt. Such as it is.” Liska stood there, mud clinging to her boots, watching him disappear into the dim interior of his hut. His agreement had been so swift, so devoid of emotion. It was almost unnerving. He hadn’t even asked what it meant for him, beyond the ration coupon. Had the threat of Volkov been enough? Or was it just his customary indifference to everything that didn’t involve turnips? The registry office was a cramped, dusty room behind the communal bakery. The clerk, a portly man named Borislav with spectacles perched precariously on his nose, seemed to take perverse pleasure in the mundane act of state-sanctioned unions. Matron Ruzha stood by the door, arms crossed, a grim sentinel of compliance. The air hung thick with the smell of stale bread and the faint tang of official ink. Borislav droned through the abbreviated ceremony, a series of questions about allegiance to Gresnia and commitment to productivity. Liska gave her answers, automatic and practiced, her cheerful weaver persona firmly in place. Daris, standing beside her, looked utterly unremarkable, his new shirt only slightly less wrinkled than his old one. His responses were curt, almost monosyllabic, his gaze fixed on a spot on the wall behind Borislav’s head. “Do you, Liska Raden, take this man, Daris Torvak, as your lawfully wedded husband?” “I do,” Liska said, her voice clear and bright, a performance for Ruzha’s benefit. “And do you, Daris Torvak, take this woman, Liska Raden, as your lawfully wedded wife?” Daris shifted his weight. “I do.” The words were flat, emotionless. But as he spoke them, his eyes, previously unfocused, flickered to Liska’s. For a fleeting instant, the drowsy indifference vanished. What lay beneath was a cold, terrifying calculation, utterly unsuited for a simple turnip farmer. It was the look of a predator assessing its prey, or a master strategist contemplating a complex move on a deadly game board. And it was directed right at her.

The Matchmaker's Ultimatum