Young Writers Society

1775 words~

Chapter Four:

A Girl is Found

Evian ran.

Past the tanner’s nook, past the apothecary and the cluster of general stores that were oh-so-general in their very existence—his feet became part of the city. He jumped over crates and barrels, his orange hair a clearly visible blur in the darkness. His eyes were black and haunted, his mouth set grimly, his hands pale flashes by his side.

When Evian Threshold was seventeen, people called him The Whirlwind, a human dragon that whizzed down streets and clambered onto terraces faster than people held the capacity to blink. The Whirlwind, the lone pirate, the wild breeze with feet.

Now, twenty-nine, Evian was still—still—a whirlwind, and it was not hard for him to soon leave the Office behind. He could hear the yells of the Royal Rifle Crew behind him, resounding in the night.

He was glad he could run, glad for the lightness of his feet and the full moon bleeding moonlight over his path. Glad that he knew Syti like the back of his hand. It was somehow a relief when he realised that he knew where to go, even when the earth seemed to slip beneath his feet and everything seemed to be lost. The Orb—lost. The map, the invitation to the Blacksmith’s meeting—lost.

Glad, Evian thought, gritting his teeth. I am glad.

A burst of wind tickled the back of his neck. He shivered, from the combined effect of the cold and Luin’s yell, an earsplitting ‘Threshold!’ that sounded too close—too close for comfort. He turned down an alleyway. Gutter water rose up to his ankles, but he carried on, barely noticing the wetness seep into his socks.

They were close, Evian could tell. He could hear the Crew grunting and splashing, and he sped forwards, jaw set determinedly. ‘Threshold, Threshold!’ they called, their accents strange and alien, their voices much too calm—as if to lull one into a false sense of security.

Left. Right. Left. Right. Up and over. Evian made his way along the labyrinthine mess of narrow streets, knowing the Eastside slums were the hardest place to navigate at night. The walls changed from dull to duller; rubbish heaps were the only thing blocking his path, and once, he had to jump over a pool of faeces. The tall alley walls seemed to compress him. Sweat trickled down his back and hung over his face in a glimmering sheen; the wind slammed into him every chance it got. It was cold. His heart was burning in his chest. He had to stop soon. He would have to catch his breath—

‘Halt! Halt!’

—but that meant the Crew would catch him, Evian thought. He had to get rid of them. He had to get home somehow—to Edith. But he couldn’t lead the Royal Rifle Crew there. Not to Edith. Although, he admitted to himself, Edith was probably more resourceful than him when it came to situations like this.

Besides, Evian thought, he already had a destination in mind. He sped up, turning this way and that. He wedged his way into a gap that ran between two buildings, relieved when he found it was not a dead end. Turning again, he found himself into another, narrower, alleyway. It was barely wide enough for two people. Evian stopped for a moment and collected his bearings; when he closed his eyes, the map in his head showed even clearer.

He opened his eyes again. The Crew were close; he could hear them grunting as they attempted to follow him.

But Evian was ten steps ahead of them (both literally and figuratively).

His legs pumped automatically now; rounding a corner, he climbed up a rickety staircase and onto a roof. Once at the top, he glanced back down. Sewer water reached the front steps of all the old, abandoned houses. Evian knew this was one of the older parts of Syti, the part that had flourished before the Fourth War of the Blacksmiths, but fell into decay once the Human-Vampire dynasty came into effect. It was dirty now--coarse, uninhabited. Evian smiled.

It was perfect.

He waited, until he was sure Luin’s men were close—closer—he could hear them, now, their cloaks slapping against their legs, their boots scraping against the ancient brickwork.

He unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it into the narrow street, glad when it caught on a pipeline. His shoes, too, were off in a flash. He hung off the edge of the building, swearing under his breath when his socks slipped on the terracotta tiles. 'Swords of a sickle,' he mumbled. He held his shoes suspended for a moment, fingering the laces. He bit down on his lip.

One, two, he counted in his head, twisting the lace nervously around his finger.

A shadow appeared along the narrow passageway, grunting and wheezing. A shadow. The edge of a boot.

Three. Evian let go of one shoe. Holding the other tightly in his fist, he was off, scaling the rooftops as nimbly as a cat.

Three streets away, he tossed the other shoe into the night. Grinning, he made his way along the old houses, wishing hard that they would not decide to crumble beneath him any time soon.

Goodness knew he had seen enough trouble tonight.

*

By the time Evian skidded in front of the Hawkstead Inn, his heart felt like it had stopped beating. A strange kind of numbness washed over him, lying heavily in the cavity of his chest. He gulped air down like water—water, Evian thought, panting—and embraced the exhaustion, savouring the chilly air when it tickled his dry throat. Laying his palms flat against his knees, he watched, with gross fascination, as sweat streamed off the end of his nose.

Silence pounded at his ears. Drum-like. Bizarre in its motions. Evian had never experienced a night in the heart of Syti as quiet as this one.

He looked back over his shoulder. The street lay empty, coiling down the hill like a snake. It glimmered every time the clouds drifted past the moon, in a way that was magical and all-too-calm, Evian thought, to be entirely real. At the bottom of the hill, the road changed from stone-paved to shale, and the old, decrepit houses looked like crumbly biscuits—not the appetizing sort, it must be admitted, but they were falling to bits in an incredible likeness of Edith’s baking.

Evian’s stomach rumbled. He clapped a sweaty hand on it, wincing as his wet hand came away wetter; he was glad he had gotten rid of his shirt earlier, otherwise it would be clinging to him like a second skin. But that was nothing—nothing, Evian thought, compared to how wet and slicked with blood he could have been had he been caught by the Royal Rifle Crew.

There was a sharp intake of air. Evian tensed.

It took him a second to realise that said breath had belonged to him.

Perhaps his mind was exaggerating the consequences a little. But then again, perhaps it was not, he argued. You never knew with Inspektors; Adreitus’ history was filled with their corruption, with cruelties and punishments they handed out simply for their own enjoyment. An odd feeling pricked at Evian's skin, almost like a mosquito had decided to wedge itself into it, and he rubbed a hand across the base of his neck awkwardly.

He was very glad he had decided to run.

He looked up at the Inn again, at its white, wooden walls and ungainly structure. For all the customers it attracted, the Hawkstead Inn was not build for the sake of aesthetics: it looked—and Evian was quite right in his judgements—like a boulder. It was even more boulder-like than it had been seven years ago, the last time Evian has popped by for a bout of business with the owner, Gale Warren.

He cast a quick look around him again, warily, searching for figures in black that should chance upon him in the night. The foreigners Luin had hired did not know their way around Syti well, which was very lucky for Evian, all things considered. They were, at this very moment in time, searching for Evian in the twisting, turning alleyways of the Eastside slums, splashing in gutter water and murmuring hisses in the night.

Evian, however, did not know this, and the stillness and serenity of the street tugged his senses in every direction, until every thought he conjured up was splayed and entirely dismal.

He wondered where the Royal Rifle Crew was now. He wondered if they would go to his home, to search for him there. He thought of Edith—unassuming Edith—and guilt settled like a cold snake in the pit of his stomach.

There was a sharp intake of breath again. His neck prickled.

‘Evian—Threshold, that you?’

Fear enveloped Evian—the kind of fear that seemed to claw up his oesophagus and left him feeling distinctly nauseous. He realised, somewhat belatedly, that he had been standing in the middle of an empty street for five minutes now, eyes idly tracing the pattern along the Inn’s wooden door. But the pattern had disappeared; in its place stood a heavy-set man with eyebrows that were bulkier than the rest of him, and thick, and forest-like. His eyes were shrewd, as was the slight turning of his mouth. He frowned at Evian.

Evian frowned back.

‘Aye,’ he said hoarsely. ‘It’s Evian.’ Silence hung between them like a curtain of flies. Evian could have sworn the air buzzed, if only for a moment. He cleared his throat. ‘I need your help, Warren.’

The bulky man shifted, his large hands patting down at his grey apron. ‘What is it?’ he asked, regarding Evian with a most suspicious look. Evian wished he wasn’t so exhausted; he would have dearly loved to knock that look off Warren’s face.

‘You owe me.’ Evian licked his lips. ‘I pulled a sword from your left leg, remember? Stitched the wound, too, and put up with your blathering for longer than any sane person would’ve, this side of the world.’ He licked his lips again and bit down on them, tasting blood as it seeped through the cracks. ‘You owe me,’ he repeated.

The larger man cocked his head at him. Then, growling under his breath, he motioned at Evian to follow him.

‘Come in, I s’pose.’ He looked at Evian over his shoulder. ‘Whirlwind,’ he added, before turning and walking into the building.

Evian smirked and followed Warren inside, pulling the door shut behind him. He breathed in the heavy scents that wafted across the Inn.

The Whirlwind, he thought. It had been a long time since he had heard that name.