Quickburned

Under

Five years and a day or so ago...

"Found them."

"Where? Talk to me, Chika."

The crew had fled below ground, into the tunnels under the town via the guildhall's bolthole, collapsing the access behind them. Caleb was reasonably sure Mezir's folk knew nothing about the tunnels—hell, most of Clearstone's residents forgot about them, until a Firestorm threatened. The underground portion of the town was nearly larger than the town itself, a maze of tunnels and rooms and deep shafts cut into red bedrock. They were as dark as Calibration, cut smooth and spacious and deep, and dated back to the Shogunate or earlier; a hold-over from Clearstone's heyday as an opal-mining town.

Luck had got wind of the crossbow bolt cut Caleb had taken on the first fall-back, and finally got him to strip to the waist and sit still so he could tend it. So Caleb sat, an arm over Luck's shoulders so the sawbones could get to the slice to stitch it, and gave orders, and bit back fear and rage and grief until his teeth cracked.

Chika, a slight godblooded woman with dark hair gone white at the ends and eyes currently blank and milky white, sat at his feet. Lightning, in tiny threads of blue, crackled in her hair. One hand held his cravat, bloody from where he'd used to to staunch the bleeding on his side before Luck had found it, the other trailing down to begin drawing in the dirt.

Chika was a Seeker—she and her spirit friend could go anywhere there was air, find anything not entombed in solid rock. She was using his blood on the cloth to seek out his sisters—anyone who shared blood with him, truly, but they'd like to be the closest.

And if they weren't, well, he'd like to be knowing that too.

"Where, Chika?" Caleb coaxed.

"Found them, found them," she said in a sing-song cadence. "In the big house, across the square, lots of sparkling, lots of food, lots of sad people and angry people ooh and chains. One in the big house. Two... two in the holy place, hands and feet tied, watched by men with swords and flame pieces. Oops one of them saw me have to—"

Chika blinked, her eyes returning to their normal deep brown color. "Sorry, boss," she said in a more normal tone. The air beside her rippled, and her spirit friend—an air elemental the size and shape of an elongated temple cat only with fur made of icy crystals—materialized, gliding down to duck under her hands. "That's all we saw."

"You saw plenty, Chika. You're brilliant; take a rest. Luck, am I done?"

"I wish, boss, but like as not I'll be patching you up again soon enough—oh you mean the stitchin', yeah yeah yeah, go on." Luck slathered something smelling strongly of plant and oil across the neatly stitched gash and moved off to repack his kit. Caleb slid backwards off the crate he'd been sitting on, motioning for Shade to follow him.

The eyes of the townsfolk tracked him—there'd already been a scattering of them when Caleb and the crew had come clattering in, older folk, women and youngsters, most from the temple end of town. Caleb ignored stares both curious and warily hostile.

"I see you thinking, Boss. What is it?" Shade fell into step beside him.

"Got a plan. Half of one, anyways." They ended up in an alcove muffled by crates and barrels of stored salt. His shirt and vest was waiting for him, along with a coat hastily borrowed from Sarid, and Caleb began dressing while Shade leaned against the wall.

"Still can't fathom how you got her on the crew, anyhow," Shade remarked as he buttoned the shirt. "Thought she swore back in town she'd never join a gang."