Sineus weighed the offer. The merchant lord’s words were smooth as river stones, polished by a thousand similar conversations. A faster way. A shortcut. The promise hung in the wind that swept across the endless grass, a tempting poison. He needed to reach the Sunken Scriptorium of Ur. Every day wasted was another meter of land lost to the Blight.
The memory of Pavel Orlov’s study surfaced, unbidden. The scent of cold tea and old maps. The earnest fear in his advisor’s eyes, a man who had served Sineus’s father.
Pavel's warning felt heavy, even here, twelve hundred kilometers from the white stone of Belogorod. He had urged Sineus to trust no one beyond their walls, especially not the southern traders, whose contracts were knots and whose kindness was a blade. Pavel’s world was one of ledgers and fortifications, of tangible threats that could be met with high walls and full granaries. It was a sane world. It was also a world that was shrinking by the hour.
Sineus glanced to his left. Alani stood with her weight on her good leg, her wounded arm held close to her body. The guide from the Forest Folk, who navigated by the land’s pain, was pale. Her gaze was fixed on Timur Makhmudov. She gave a single, minute shake of her head. It was a gesture so small anyone else would have missed it. A flicker of denial. A silent scream.
Her senses, alien to him, had proven true. She had led them around a valley where the ground itself felt curdled with the memory of a massacre. She had felt the Blight-stitched wolf before they saw it. Her warning was not superstition. It was data.
On his other side, Fedor had not moved. His feet were planted wide, his knuckles white on the haft of his axe. The captain of his guard was a man who trusted only steel and stone. His eyes were not on Timur, but on the two mounted guards who flanked the merchant lord. Fedor was measuring them. Calculating angles of attack, the time it would take to close the ten meters between them. He was assessing the physical threat, and his stillness was its own kind of warning.
The guards were professionals. Their leather armor was worn but well-oiled. Their faces were impassive, their gaze distant. They were not watching the negotiation. They were watching the horizon, their hands resting near the swords at their belts. They were paid to see threats, not to understand bargains. Their competence was unsettling.
“A shortcut is often just a longer way to die,” Fedor rumbled, his voice low. He did not look at Sineus, his attention locked on the Consortium men.
Timur Makhmudov heard him. A flicker of amusement crossed the merchant’s face.
“Your man has a warrior’s caution, Knyaz. It is a valuable trait. But a warrior sees every problem as a foe to be struck. A trader sees a problem as a cost to be managed.”
He leaned forward slightly in his saddle, his silk robes rustling. The movement was casual, disarming.
“The Khevsur are a cost I choose not to pay. Their honor is a currency with a fluctuating value. One day they share their bread with you. The next, they demand your blood for an imagined slight. It is bad for business.”
Sineus thought of the council he hoped to forge. He needed the Khevsur. But he needed to reach the Scriptorium first. He could not lead from a shallow grave in a mountain pass.
“And the Blight?” Sineus asked, his voice flat. “Is that a manageable cost as well?”
The question was a test. A direct challenge to the merchant’s smooth confidence.
Timur’s smile did not falter. He gestured with his chin toward the unadorned blade at his belt, the Oblivion Blade that had made Sineus’s teeth ache. The air around the weapon seemed thin, wounded.
“Every tool has its purpose. We do not travel through the heart of the Blight. That would be foolish. We travel through lands that are merely touched by it. Sickened. Where the memories are thin and the creatures that spawn are weak. If we meet one, we unmake the memory of its passage. The path is cleared.”
He made it sound like sweeping dust from a floor. A simple, clean act of maintenance. Sineus felt the high, thin rasp in his mind again, the sound of reality being torn. Each cut Timur described was another small tear, another drop of poison feeding the sea of forgotten things.
“My guides are the best,” Timur pressed, his voice dropping to a confidential tone. “We know the safe paths. We know which memories have curdled into true danger, and which are merely whispers. We can have you on the far side of the hills in three days. The road through the mountains will take you three weeks. If the Khevsur let you pass at all.”
Three days versus three weeks.
The offer was a perfectly crafted trap, baited with the one thing Sineus could not afford to waste. Time.
He turned his head, looking east. The Echoing Blight was a bruise on the horizon, a churning grey wall that drank the afternoon light. Even from eight kilometers away, he felt its presence as a pressure behind his eyes, a low thrum just beneath the threshold of hearing. Every day they spent on this plain, it crept closer to the lands of the south, and to his own home in the north. It did not sleep. It did not rest. It only consumed.
The urgency was a physical weight. A fire at his back.
He brought his gaze back to Timur. The merchant’s eyes were patient. They had seen this moment before. The calculation. The weighing of risk against time. The silent debate of a leader trapped between a known danger and an unknown one.
He felt Alani’s fear. He felt Fedor’s distrust. He felt the memory of Pavel’s sensible, useless advice. They were all anchors, holding him to a safe path that was too slow. The world was dying faster than the safe path would allow.
Sometimes, the only path forward was through the sickness.
The ache behind Sineus’s eyes sharpened into a spike of pain. He made the choice.
He gave a single, sharp nod.
The offer was accepted.
Fedor’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He served the Knyaz, not his own doubts. Alani closed her eyes for a brief second, a flicker of resignation and sorrow crossing her face. She had offered her truth. The Knyaz had chosen another.
Timur Makhmudov’s smile finally broadened, but it was a gesture that did not reach his eyes. It was the smile of a man who has just closed a profitable deal. The tightening of skin around his eyes was predatory. The bargain was sealed.
“An excellent decision, Knyaz,” Timur said smoothly. He raised a hand, signaling to his caravan. “My men will continue north. I will provide you with two of my best guides. They will see you safely to the southern road.”
He gestured, and two of the mounted guards detached from the caravan and trotted toward them. They were lean, hard-faced men with identical, empty expressions. They carried crossbows on their saddles and wore the same functional leather and steel as the others. They stopped a respectful distance away, awaiting orders.
“They are called the Silent. They do not speak, but they know the paths,” Timur explained. “Trust their lead. They will not fail you.”
He wheeled his horse around, the fine silk of his robes catching the wind.
“May your journey be swift, Knyaz Sineus.”
The merchant lord did not wait for a reply. He spurred his horse and cantered back toward his caravan, a river of wealth and influence flowing north. He had what he wanted. An obligation from a northern lord. A piece on the great board he could move later.
The two guides moved into position, one in front of Sineus’s party, one behind. They were bookends of grim efficiency. The one in front pointed his horse west, toward a line of low, brown hills that looked like knuckles on a buried hand. The land there looked wrong. Drained of color.
The wind blew from those hills, and it carried no scent of grass or earth. It smelled of dust and stillness. Of things that had been left to rot in a place without time.
The sun was warm on his back. The grass whispered around his boots.
