“Fly away on the cloud,” Lindon said, gesturing behind him to the Thousand-Mile Cloud. That was when he remembered he hadn't actually brought the cloud; he'd left it behind in Fisher Gesha's foundry.
Maybe he could leave some of his work behind today and grab a nap.
“A Thousand-Mile Cloud isn't made of dragon scales. The Fishers have three, and I've seen at least two people zipping around on Remnants. One of the Sandvipers will run us down.”
He'd been waiting for that objection. “I've thought of that!” He dug another paper out of his pack, this one a crudely drawn map, and slapped it onto the table as well. “You remember the bathhouse? It's halfway between Gesha's barn and the Ruins. We only have to fly a short distance to the bathhouses, hide there, and head back to the foundry when we're clear.”
Lindon had prepared for other objections. For one thing, if they didn't dress as Sandvipers, they would be caught upon entry to the camp. But if they did, then the prisoners would attack them when set free. If they weren't being chased, there was no need to hide at the bathhouse, and if they were then the bathhouse wouldn't help.
He had counters to these, nuances to his plans that he'd worked very hard on. He hadn't entirely counted on Yerin handing the paper back to him, smile sharper than the blade over her shoulder. “Let's burn 'em.”
He took the plan from her, a little taken aback. “You'll do it?”
She rested a hand on the hilt of her sword. “We're working for the Fishers now, and they get along with the Sandvipers like two tigers in one cage. And they kidnapped you.” Her hand tightened on the hilt. “You let an enemy take one of yours without response, and you're giving them signed permission to do it again. The Sandvipers haven't slipped out of my memory, any more than Heaven's Glory has.”
Her expression darkened further. “They think I'm not coming back to clean their whole rotten house and burn it down, then they're getting a surprise.”
She'd agreed to his plan, and even his own family had never fought for him. But some of his warm feelings cooled in the face of her vengeful oath.
He wasn't sure why he felt that way—revenge had always been part of the sacred arts, as widely celebrated in stories as honorable duels—but her whole demeanor changes when she talked about revenge. Something in the air felt dark, and heavy, and wrong.
It was his own weakness. That was what his father would have told him, and Lindon knew he was right. Yerin was wiser, stronger, more knowledgeable and more experienced. He was seeing the world as a child.
Suddenly ashamed of his own cowardice, he bowed to her. “You won't go back alone.”
She gave him a look of such gratitude that he forgot all his misgivings a moment before.
Then something crooned, high and desperate, like a mewling baby bird.
They both started, Yerin drawing her sword in a blur of motion. Another cry, and Lindon checked under the table. A third, and he realized where it was coming from: his pack.
Shoving his notes aside, he dug into the main pocket of his pack.
At first, he was looking for a trapped animal. Something that had crawled inside and gotten stuck, maybe a small bird or even a rodent. He had a temporary fantasy of finding the rare cub of a sacred beast before he dug out a glass case.
The case was big enough to hold two pairs of shoes, and entirely transparent. Inside was a miniature landscape of tiny rolling hills covered in grass, even boasting a single tiny tree. A river flowed around the sides of the case so that the land became a green island, and no matter how he turned or shook the box, the water barely sloshed and the leaves hardly shook. It was as though the glass of the case allowed him to look into a tiny, separate world.
And that world had a resident.
The Sylvan Riverseed looked something like a humanoid Remnant the size of a finger, made entirely of flowing blue waves. It didn't seem to be made of water, exactly, but rather madra imitating water, like in the bowl test that had designated him as Unsouled.
He'd all but forgotten about the Riverseed in the weeks since taking it from the Heaven's Glory School. He took it originally because it was supposed to be valuable, but he'd never given it much thought since then, the more useful treasures he'd stolen taking up most of his attention. He'd glanced at it every once in a while as he dug through his pack, but since the Sylvan was usually spritely and energetic, he'd usually just waved to it and left it hidden. It was expensive and he didn't know what to do with it, so he kept it tucked away.
This time, the Sylvan itself had collapsed against the landscape as though dying. Its substance was faded and pale, and it raised its head to let out one more delicate peep.
Yerin whistled. “Well, that's a storm out of clear skies. You're killing it.”
“I should bring it to Fisher Gesha,” Lindon said, placing his finger against the edge of the glass. The Sylvan Riverseed raised one featureless arm, like a doll's arm, in response. “She'll know what to do with it.”
Yerin gave him a sidelong glance. “If you contend that you want to share blood with the Fishers, then I won't be the one to tell you no. But don't think you can hand a treasure to someone and they'll hand it back out of the sweetness of their soul.”
“If you know what's wrong with it, by all means tell me.”
“It looks hungry,” she said, with no basis that he could tell. “What have you been feeding it?”
“I'm not even sure how to open the case,” he said, “but I can look into it.” Which meant that he could try and smash it open later, hoping that the Sylvan wouldn't run off.
“It came with a label, true?”
It had, though Lindon hadn't taken it. He said as much, adding, “It didn't say much. Sylvan Riverseed, they thought it had some sort of water aspect, and they planned to give it to someone with pure madra.” That was why he'd noticed it in the first place.
She spread both hands as though presenting the answer. “There it is, then. Feed it madra.”
“Are you sure that'll work?” It was worth a try, he knew, but he had squeezed a lot out of his spirit already, and he hadn't even Forged his scales yet.
“I'm sure that my sword is sharp and the sun will come up tomorrow,” she said. “Everything else is a roll of the dice.” She'd crossed her arms and leaned in to watch the Sylvan, so she was obviously expecting a show.
With a sigh, he placed both hands against the side of the case and concentrated.
After almost two weeks under Fisher Gesha, his spirit almost felt like it didn't belong to him. The madra responded too easily, moved too quickly, responded to his will too well. While Forging scales was still a chore, he could condense madra now in only a fraction of the time.
A few seconds after he'd begun, a drop of transparent blue liquid materialized in the box. It dropped straight onto the Sylvan Riverseed...
...who animated as though it had only pretended to be dying all along. Its featureless head split into a mouth, and it gulped down the drop of pure madra like a snake snapping up a mouse.
Immediately energized, the Sylvan ran around, cheeping and crooning intermittently so that it sounded like a song. Once again, Lindon Forged another drop of madra, and this time the Riverseed's color deepened.
“It's like a Remnant,” he mused aloud. Maybe it was a Remnant, though it seemed both smaller and more substantial than most he'd seen. Remnants gained in power and intelligence by taking in human madra, the purer the better, which was where the legends of Remnants abducting children came from. He'd used his madra as a bargaining chip with Remnants in the past.
But if he treated this being as a Remnant in a cage rather than a stolen treasure...what was it going to become? What was he growing in his pack?