“Kaddis Obal!” the commander roared, his voice grating against the stone rim. “By decree of the High Council, your lands are hereby seized for the plague quarantine! You are to be held for questioning regarding the spread of the Rotting Scourge!” Kaddis, still half-pinned by Zirra, flinched. His gaze shot from the grim-faced enforcers to the ruined fields, then back to Zirra, his shoulder muscles seizing. This was it. The final, crushing blow. He began to struggle, not against Zirra, but in a desperate, futile effort to rise and face his fate with some semblance of dignity. “Hold still, consort,” Zirra murmured, low and steady. She didn’t release him. Instead, she tightened her grip, her fingers digging into the muddy fabric of his tunic. “They haven’t seized anything yet. And you, my dear, aren’t going anywhere with them.” The officer, a brute with a face like pitted river stone, snorted. “A Vash, wallowing with a ruin-tiller? You’ll be lucky not to share a quarantine cell, girl. Stand aside. This one’s coming with us.” Zirra finally pushed herself off Kaddis, rising fluidly to her feet. She stood between him and the enforcers, her silk-spun wedding gown, soaked in muck and lamp oil, clinging to her ribs. A slow, unsettling smile spread across her lips. “Consorting? Captain, I am his wife. As of sundown, you’re trying to bind a Vash by proxy. And I assure you, the man stays put.” Rix’s lip curled. “Don’t play games, Vash. The contagion spreads. We hold orders. Any interference will earn iron.” He flicked two fingers, and two guards stepped forward, clubs slapping against boiled-leather greaves. “Oh, I know all about iron,” Zirra drawled, her tone dropping across the dying tier. “Except this isn’t about sick leaves, is it? It’s about tier titles. It’s about grabbing cheap limestone shelves before the auction closes.” She winked, a sudden, jarring flicker of her usual irreverence. “And honestly, Kaddis, you’re far too handsome to be an example. We have plans.” Kaddis, pinned to the loam, watched her bare nape. “Clear off, Vash!” Rix barked. The two flankers broke into a jog. Zirra tracked the coil of jute near a rusted winch, then the row of salt-clay jugs by the trench, then the grease-slick ditch before them. “Tell me, Kaddis,” she called over her shoulder, not looking at him. “How well do these new water channels drain after a heavy storm?” Kaddis, bewildered, stammered, “They… they pool near the old reservoir, Zirra. Why?” “Splendid,” she muttered. She drove the heel of her bridal slipper into the rotten base-pin of the trellis gate. Cedar groaned, tilting out from the stone post. “Commander Rix, mind your footing. My partner keeps an unforgiving furrow.” The lanky guard lunged forward for Kaddis’s collar. Zirra didn’t even glance at him. Her sight locked onto the second guard, a broad-shouldered woman lumbering down the ditch line. When the woman’s boot struck beside a raised capstone, Zirra hooked her heel beneath the slate, snapping the silt seal. The retaining lip gave way. “Mind the drop,” Zirra purred as the lanky man hauled Kaddis upright by the sleeve, wrenching him under the timber arc. “Down it goes,” Zirra said brightly as the cedar gate slammed shut, missing Kaddis's shoulder and pinning the lanky man’s shin against the stones. A howl of pain erupted. The burly woman, startled, stumbled back. Her heavy boot landed squarely on the hairline crack Zirra had created. With a sickening *slurp*, the ground gave way beneath her. She plunged knee-deep into a hidden mud pit, a trap Kaddis had dug for burrow-weevils. Her scream was cut short as her face slammed into the muddy bank. Rix unsheathed his broad blade. “Bind the girl! Take both of them!” The two rear guards broke into a sprint. Zirra pivoted on her heel, using the slick mud slope to dodge. A strategically kicked pile of brittle stalks tripped one. An unseen tripwire, likely used to scare away sun-hawks, ensnared the other, sending him face-first into a patch of thorny thorn-leaf bushes. Kaddis, freed from the enforcer’s grip, finally understood. This woman wasn’t just talking. She was fighting, using his land, his neglect, his very despair, against their enemies. He saw the woman in the mud hole clawing toward her belt. Without thinking, Kaddis grabbed a nearby trowel and, with a grunt, slammed its flat side against the enforcer’s helmet. The clang echoed, and she slumped, dazed. The third guard, spitting twigs, rushed Zirra. She ducked under his elbow, her gaze dipping to a bright speck near Kaddis’s knees: a tiny shoot, barely a finger high, thrusting through the dry crust. Its leaves were an impossible, vibrant cerulean, pulsating faintly. It was clearly mutated, unnatural, yet Kaddis instinctively flung himself over it, shielding it with his body as the enforcer’s boot stomped down, missing him by an inch. Zirra, seeing his desperate act, felt a flicker of something she couldn’t quite name. Loyalty? Madness? She didn’t know, but it was *fierce*. She used the enforcer’s momentum against him, shoving him towards a half-collapsed section of a stone wall. The enforcer crashed through it, scattering loose stones and dust. Rix, splattered in grey clay and backed toward the terrace drop, lowered his steel. “You’ll answer for this, girl,” he spat, lifting an ivory pipe to his lips. A shrill blast pierced the fog, and his crew dragged their limping comrades down the switchback trail. Once the last crimson uniform had vanished beyond the twilight’s edge, silence fell, broken only by Kaddis’s ragged breathing and the distant calls of night-birds. Zirra knelt beside him, pushing herself up with a low groan. “Still breathing, farmer?” she asked. Kaddis slowly pushed himself up, still shielding the bizarre blue sprout with his hand. He looked at her torn hem, chest heaving. “What… what was all that?” Zirra merely grunted, her gaze already sweeping over the churned earth where the enforcers had stood. She picked up a handful of the blighted soil, crumbling it between her fingers. A sharp, acrid scent hit her. Not the usual decay of the Rotting Scourge, but something else. Something chemical. Her fingers probed deeper, finding a small, cracked glass vial half-buried in the mud. Its contents, a murky brown sludge, still clung to the inside. And etched into its base, unmistakable even in the dimming light, was the spiraling crest of the Vash family. Her smirk faded. “This isn’t natural sickness, Kaddis. It’s an alchemical drip.” She crushed the vial in her palm, the shards biting into her skin, unnoticed. “And my dear, dear sister has much to answer for.” Kaddis stared at the shattered vial, then at the bright blue sprout he was protecting. “The Rotting Scourge… it’s been… manufactured?” “It was poured,” Zirra said flatly. “A wedge to strip your deed and bury me under the scrap.” She looked up, meeting his bewildered gaze. “But it also tells us two very important things. One, the Vash family is behind this. And two, we have leverage. If we expose this, we don’t just save your farm, Kaddis. We bring down an entire dynasty.” She rose, wiping her muddy hands on her ruined dress. “Here’s the deal, husband. You handle the botany. Figure out what this poison is, how to stop it, how to turn it into something useful.” She pointed toward the luminous sapling. “You clearly know what to do with dirt.” Her eyes hardened. “I’ll handle the business. The politics. The bloodshed. I’ll make sure my family chokes on their ambition. And I’ll make you the richest man in Qarnat in the process.” Kaddis wiped the grey crust from his knuckles and gave a single nod. Down on the switchback path, Rix’s brass horn gave a single flat bray. His shout drifted back up the cliffs: “Obal! Vash! Bring five hundred sun-scales to the precinct post by dawn for containment costs, or face the scaffold for harboring the rot!”

Seeds of Treason