"Run the latch," Zirra said, shoving Kaddis through the splintered doorframe of his shack. He slammed the heavy cedar crossbar home. Outside, the sirens of the middle-tier fire wards were wailing like gutted goats, their brass klaxons echoing along the vertical face of Qarnat. Ash drifted down from the burning infirmary above, dusting the oilskin over the window like gray snow. Kaddis did not move from the door. His back remained pressed against the timber, chest heaving under a linen tunic blackened with soot and soaked with grease. "The blue shoot," Zirra said, ignoring the sirens entirely. She kicked a bench toward the center of the earthen floor and swept aside three rusty pruning knives and an empty salt crock. "Put it on the table. We have about four hours before the wind turns and someone realizes that charcoal doesn't smell like candied almond." He pulled the clay crock from inside his coat with hands that trembled so violently the rim chattered against his belt buckle. The mutated stalk leaned sideways in its bed of dirt, its jagged leaves shining an eerie, wet indigo under the tallow dip. "It's boiling inside them," Kaddis whispered. His knuckles were raw red. "You smelled it. That wasn't grease from the cookhouse. It was the marrow." "Ashmar's patent panacea has an alkaline base," she muttered, pulling an iron mortar toward herself and fishing a horn flask of vinegar from her travel pack. "If the lung-rot turns acidic under heat, his medicine doesn't heal the lining. It curdles it. Then the body's natural sulfur sparks against the phosphorus in the infirmary's air-scrubbers. Poof. Clean ward, no patients, zero liability." She looked up. He hadn't moved to help her. "Kaddis. Strip." He blinked, sluggish. "What?" "Your sleeve is welded to your forearm with pine pitch, idiot. Unless you want gangrene taking your hand before I can make you an agricultural baron, pull the rags off. There's a pot of well-water behind the cistern." He hesitated, then reached down, catching the hem of his tunic. He peeled the linen over his head with a sharp hiss through his teeth as the crust of dried blood tore away from his shoulder. Zirra paused with the pestle poised over a crushed blue leaf. It wasn't just the fresh burn scoring his left bicep. Across his back, running from the base of his neck down to the hollow of his spine, was a ladder of thick, keloid ridges. They weren't the ragged tracks of an enforcer's bullwhip or the casual cuts of limestone quarrying. They were precise. Geometric. The puckered stitch-marks of silver suture thread traced deep parallel troughs into his flesh, intersecting around his ribs in four neat, square flaps. Someone had harvested tissue from his ribs. Someone had done it with the cold, sterile instruments of an Upper Tier surgeon. Zirra dropped the stone pestle. It rolled off the table, thumping into the dirt. "He took your skin," she said. Her voice had lost every trace of its teasing lilt. It was hollow, hard as slate. Kaddis stiffened. He turned half-away, instinctively trying to reach for the ruined shirt on the floor, but she crossed the three paces between them before his fingers could brush the cloth. "Don't hide it," she ordered softly. "It was three summers ago," he muttered to the floorboards, refusing to meet her gaze. His throat worked as he swallowed. "When my father died of the chest-choke. I couldn't pay the burial levy on the seventh shelf. The apothecary guild offered an exchange. They called it 'living tissue contribution for civic advancement.' Ten silver drams per square inch." "Ashmar," she said. "He held the scalpel himself," Kaddis murmured. "He said farmers didn't need smooth hides anyway. Said the earth was rough, so the tanners shouldn't complain about coarse leather." Zirra reached out. Her fingertips, usually so deliberate and quick with daggers or ledgers, hovered an inch from his bare shoulder. She let them settle against the jagged edge of the highest scar. His muscles bunched under her touch, warm and rigid. He drew a sharp, uneven intake of air through his teeth, but he didn't pull away. "He used you for graft tests," she whispered. The heat that rose in her chest had nothing to do with fear. It was a suffocating, blinding fury that turned the edges of her vision red. "He used soil-tillers to see how the resin interacted with fresh flesh before he sold it to the high-born ladies on Tier One." "Zirra—" "Shut up." Her thumb traced the seam of the scar, surprisingly gentle. She felt the heavy, thudding rhythm of his pulse beneath the ruined hide. Her other hand found the side of his neck, her palm cupping his jaw, forcing his face up until his dark, exhausted eyes met hers. "He took your father's plot," she said, every word clipped and cold. "He took your skin. And now my dear sister thinks she stole a golden prince while dumping a beggar on me." Kaddis stared at her, his throat bobbing. He was so close she could smell the iron on his skin and the faint, citrus tang of the blue sap clinging to his wrists. "I'm no prince, Zirra." "Good," she said, leaning closer, her breath warm against his cracked lips. "Princes are brittle. Princes break when the wind shifts. You are going to outlive every single one of them, Kaddis Obal, if I have to sew your skin back together with my own teeth." His hand rose, hesitating for a fraction of a second before his rough, calloused fingers closed around her wrist—not to push her away, but to keep her hand against his cheek. His thumb brushed over her pulse point. For two heartbeats, the stink of the burning city vanished, swallowed whole by the silence between them. *THUD. THUD. THUD.* The cedar planking of the door rattled violently against the frame. Kaddis jerked back, snatching a skinning knife from the table in a single, fluid strike. Zirra spun, her sleeve dropping to reveal the balance dagger she kept tucked into her forearm bracer. "Who is it?" "Open the bloody door!" a voice shrieked from the dark outside. It wasn't the measured bark of an Upper Tier squad leader. It was high, ragged, and whistling with panic. "Open it before they sweep the terrace!" Zirra signaled Kaddis with two fingers. He flattened himself against the hinge side of the frame, blade lowered. She hooked the cedar crossbar with one boot, kicked it upward, caught it, and threw the door open six inches. A boy fell inward, sprawling onto his knees in the dirt. He wore the blue-and-yellow sash of an official Tier Two courier, though the silk was torn to ribbons and smeared with clinic grease. He scrambled backward, panting, staring white-ringed in the lantern light. "Master Obal? Are you Kaddis Obal?" "Speak or bleed," Zirra said from the shadows behind the door, the tip of her steel resting neatly against the hollow of the boy's collarbone. The courier flinched, pressing himself against the floor. "Dr. Tel! It's Dr. Ashmar! He's just descended to the middle gate with two platoons of the Gilded Guard!" "Why?" Kaddis demanded, stepping out of the dark, the knife held low. "The Samaritan's Hearth," the boy stammered, saliva flying from his lips. "Dr. Tel has publicly declared that the fire was no accident. He claims an infected saboteur sneaked into the medicine vaults and set the kerosene alight with terrace-tallow. He found your crest, Master Obal. A bronze harvesting sickle, stamped with your father's seal, right beneath the scorched lintel!" Zirra let out a sharp, incredulous hiss. "My father's seal?" Kaddis said, his voice going completely dead. "Ashmar confiscated that three years ago during the debt seizure." "It doesn't matter who owned it!" the messenger yelled, trembling. "Lady Taphath is at his side. She's standing before the Assembly right now, weeping! She swore under the high oath that she had an ancestral vision of Kaddis Obal setting the wards ablaze in a fit of mad jealousy over her betrothal. The Magistrate signed the red warrant five minutes ago!" Zirra looked over at the table, where the single blue sprout sat waiting in the clay pot, its indigo leaves shimmering in the draft. "A red warrant," she repeated softly. The corners of her mouth twitched upward into a razor-thin smile that had no humor in it at all. "Summary execution on sight. No trial, no bail, no questions." From up the winding cliff path, the sound of iron-shod boots began to strike the stone in double-time.

Roots in the Ash