Sin and Soil 10 Read online

  Sin and Soil 10

  Anya Merchant

  Copyright © 2021 by Anya Merchant

  All rights reserved

  Kindle Edition

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental. This work is intended for adults only. It contains substantial sexually explicit language and scenes that may be considered offensive by some readers. None of the characters engaging in sexual conduct in this work of fiction are under the age of 18, legally unable to give consent, or related by blood.

  Cover art by Chocolate Raptor. Cover typography by Pixel Perfect Publishing.

  Contents

  Sin and Soil 10

  Anya Merchant

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 1

  The snow had a quieting effect on the night. Each of Damon’s footsteps across the frozen field crunched an imprint into the otherwise untouched canvas of white powder and ice. Winter had arrived in full force, colder and cloudier than usual.

  Which suited him just fine. Even now, the overcast night sky, faintly backlit by the eerie green glow of the ghost moon seemed to welcome his energy. The cold was his friend. The night was his shield. Through the silence, he found surrender.

  The past two weeks had been the hardest episode of Damon’s life. He’d spent the first few days shouting at Wrath, saying anything and everything to simply get her away from him as he set out from the freshly ruined city of Yvvestrosai.

  She hadn’t done anything to him, beyond offering her sympathy. He would have taken insults from her, or demands, or even her enticing him with another offer of her crest. Sympathy for Ria, however, had been too much.

  He pushed through a grouping of trees and emerged back out onto a road. Dueling snowbanks ran parallel on either side of the cleared portion, and old, frozen footsteps littered the ground in a random, overlapping pattern.

  The world was in stasis during the winter. Damon felt as if his own life had been thrust into a similar purgatory, unable to mourn or heal properly until he made it home to tell Malon and see Vel.

  He still didn’t know what he would be telling them, or if he’d even be able to say anything once he got there. He was afraid his aesta would know as soon as she saw his face, or perhaps he hoped she would, to save him from having to say it.

  In the distance, an inn loomed to the side of the road, not the one that marked Damon’s final destination, but one that would do for the night. The ghost moon shifted farther out from behind the clouds, casting a sliver of moonlight across the porch. Damon met the gaze of a heavily bundled young woman as she dusted the snow off the inn’s steps with an old, wicker broom.

  “Surprised to see someone out so late,” she called to him. “The snowstorm kept most of our regulars at bay. Too cold to make traveling any much fun.”

  “Yeah…” said Damon. “I don’t mind the cold so much.”

  He brushed a few snowflakes from his hair and kicked his boots to clean them off somewhat.

  “Annie cooked up a beef and bacon stew, and we just got a freshly filled keg,” said the woman. “Beds are clean, though that goes without saying.”

  Damon felt as if he had a sliver in his heart as he nodded and thought of how many times he’d heard Ria or Vel give similar rundowns to one patron or another. “Sounds nice.”

  She nodded to him, and he made his way past her and into the common room. The hearth roared with fresh logs, and the warmth that greeted him was almost too much. The evening crowd was sparse, a single table with a group of overdrunk men and a few lone travelers minding their own suppers.

  “Come on in.” A woman with a high ponytail and a heavily freckled face greeted him with a smile and an upturned hand. “Food is thirty pennies. Drinks are ten. Rooms are two sables for the night. Warming your boots at the fire is on the house and highly recommended.”

  “I’ll take one of everything.”

  He resisted the urge to try to barter a better deal, both because she’d given him a pretty fair price and because he’d been on her end of the exchange many, many times before. He also wasn’t lacking for coin after his time in Yvvestrosai, thanks to a generous payment over an exchange of masks he’d received from Austine.

  Taking the innkeeper’s advice, Damon set his boots to warm by the main fire, and in just his socks, took a seat at a nearby table. There was still a draft within the inn, the cold seeping through each and every crack and chink amidst the building’s construction. He watched one of the serving staff push a fresh log into the fire’s flames. So much effort and work just to preserve the warmth of a single room.

  The young woman who’d been brushing away the snow brought him his food and ale. The stew was steaming hot and smelled of pepper, and the waitress delivered it with a smile that would have put ideas in Damon’s head in a different time and place. He accepted his dinner with a few kind words and turned his attention to eating.

  The stew was delicious, though he’d half expected that. Repeat customers didn’t frequent certain inns for the quality of their bed or the views from the window. It was all about the food, the ale, and to an extent, the sociability and presentation of the staff. Damon felt another stab in his heart and almost found himself wishing he’d been up to sleeping in the snow.

  He was finishing the last sip of his beer and sopping up the leftover dregs of his stew with a slice of bread when one of the men from the crowded table walked over to where he sat. Damon knew, without needing any clues beyond a glance at the man’s eyes, how their conversation would go.

  “So,” said the man. “Where’re you coming from?”

  Damon leaned back in his chair. The young woman who’d brought him his food swooped in to take his dirty dishes to the kitchen. She carried a jug of water and cups, and poured him one at a small gesture from him.

  “I’m coming from the road,” said Damon. “Aren’t we all?”

  The man narrowed his eyes a bit. He was tall, with broad shoulders and bald head. A bald and scarred head. A few of the other men from his table watched the conversation with undisguised interest.

  “That’s not really an answer, friend,” said the man. “See, we’ve been hearing a lot about some trouble that’s been on the roads. We’ve been asking everyone who comes if they know anything about it, just to keep square.”

  Damon nodded as though he almost gave a shit and took a sip of his water. “I haven’t heard anything about any trouble, aside from the storm.”

  “You ain’t heard nothing?” The man took a step closer to Damon, close enough to infringe on
his ability to get out of his chair without brushing by. “Nothing about any bounties? Nothing about a wanted murderer said to be traveling this way? Some young buck with a fine silver sword and dark hair? You ain’t heard nothing about that?”

  The other men had stood up from the table, and five of them surrounded him now. Damon drummed his fingers against the thin wood of the table, feeling it shift a bit against the flimsy legs holding it up.

  “Let me think…” he said, feigning contemplation. “Nope. Doesn’t ring any bells.”

  “Doesn’t ring any bells, he says,” said one of the men. “Maybe the cold froze his bells out.”

  The men laughed, more because they could, rather than because the joke was funny. Damon joined in with his own mad cackle, figuring he might as well enjoy what now seemed inevitable.

  “Glad you have a sense of humor,” said the first man. “Now. Either you start answering our questions or—"

  Damon slammed his knee into the underside of the table, startling the men with the noise and knocking his water cup into the air. He slapped the cup sideways, splashing its contents into the man’s face. His hand continued the movement, briefly pressing against a sputtering mouth long enough for him to draw from the power of his myrblade and freeze his target’s lips shut.

  The man fell backward, attempting to scream through his nostrils, the only available place for sound to escape. Damon slid his chair back and slowly stood up, eyeing the rest of the group. They seemed torn between helping their terrified friend and salvaging their attempt at intimidation.

  “Do you have any more questions?” Damon’s myrblade sung as he drew it from its scabbard. “Because I have an answer for each of you.”

  They staggered back from him, despite several having weapons of their own. Damon slowly put his sword away. He put his boots back on from where he’d left them in front of the hearth and shouldered his traveling pack. The innkeeper was already pulling coin out to refund him for his room by the time he’d made it to the bar.

  “Sorry about that,” Damon said to her.

  “We don’t want trouble here…” She frowned and folded her arms. “But if you go out tonight, there’s no other inn for miles. You’ll go to sleep and never wake up.”

  “I don’t want trouble either,” said Damon. “Unfortunately, it seems to have a way of finding me, regardless. Appreciate your concern, but I’ll manage.”

  Her frown deepened. The young woman who’d first greeted him on his way in was the last to wave him off on his way out, her face a mixture of awe and confusion.

  Winter’s cold greeted him like an old friend. Damon pulled the hood of his cloak over his head and set out into the unforgiving night.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Just because you can sleep in freezing temperatures doesn’t mean you have to, you know,” whispered Myr.

  Shortly after tramping back into the woods behind the inn, Damon found a hollow underneath a fallen tree sheltered from the snow to curl himself into. He shifted his myrblade against his stomach, gently petting the sword’s pommel and, by extension, Myr.

  “I don’t see how I had much choice,” he said.

  “You could have answered the men’s questions.”

  “It seemed like they already had an idea of who I was,” he said.

  “You could have denied it!” snapped Myr. “Not everyone is as open to the idea of fighting every fight as you are, Damon.”

  “I still would have been there, at the inn,” he countered. “Imagine if a group of mercenaries who had a sense of what they were doing showed up and heard those drunkards talking about me.”

  “Does that even seem like it holds a remote possibility on a night with this much snow?” Myr let out an ethereal sigh, and Damon could picture her frown. “It wasn’t about those men, was it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I don’t mind sleeping outdoors. It’s simple… serene.”

  “It also doesn’t remind you of your old home.”

  Damon scowled and let out a peevish grunt. “The Rosewood Inn was never really my home.”

  The words tasted of lies even as he spoke them. The inn might not have belonged to him and his family in terms of legal ownership, but it had been a home. He’d taken it, and the people within it, for granted.

  “I understand how much you’re struggling right now, Damon,” whispered Myr. “Just don’t make things harder for yourself than they need to be.”

  “I already told you, I don’t mind sleeping in the cold.”

  “Really? Because last time, I seem to recall quite a bit of grumbling over water skins having frozen during the night.”

  He sighed and shifted his water skins out of his traveling pack, pulling them both within the slightly warmer confines of his quilt.

  “I don’t like seeing you like this,” whispered Myr.

  “I don’t like being like this.”

  ***

  The next few days passed in a similar fashion. Damon traveled through the northern reaches, opting against risking the other inns he came across, which resulted in several more nights in the cold.

  It was a clear afternoon when he arrived in Azurecliff, briskly cold and over-bright from the reflection of the sun off the white snow. Damon was still a wanted man, a fact which the world seemingly refused to let him forget. He couldn’t simply walk into either The Rosewood Inn or town without due caution.

  He waited, hidden in the trees until nightfall, catching sight of a few familiar faces on the outskirts. Arturius was still rigorous with his sword training, and Damon had a far-off view of him working through a long routine in a section of his backyard cleared of snow.

  The snow prevented it from getting as dark as he would have liked, forcing him to wait until after midnight before so much as risking approaching the inn. When it finally came into view at the bottom edge of the slope, just off the road leading into town, Damon broke into an outright sprint.

  He was still wary of barging into the common room and revealing himself, but the downstairs windows were unlit. The door had a new lock securing it, but he drew his myrblade and flooded the tumbler with a temporary key of ice to let himself in.

  His anticipation seemed to drop off a cliff as he stepped into the cold, unoccupied, common room. There was no fire in the hearth, which told him all he needed to know. The inn was empty.

  Damon couldn’t breathe. As much as he’d dreaded the knowledge that he’d have to tell Malon about Ria, he’d still wanted to come home, even if he was bearing bad news. A heavy, aching lump took over his throat, and his legs were suddenly past the point of exhaustion.

  He fell to his knees and let out a horrible sigh. Visions of what might have happened to Malon and Vel flooded through his mind, each paired with a unique sense of guilt and dereliction. He’d left them, never stopping to consider how vulnerable they’d be, here on their own.

  Had Doogle decided to go back on his word and force them out of town, after all? Had Avarice found them on his way east toward the Old Wilds and Yvvestrosai? Or had something happened to Vel, a tragedy too much for Malon to weather on her own?

  More than a month had passed since he’d left. Damon was annoyed at himself for not giving more weight to the absence of Malon’s dreamspelling. She hadn’t reached out to him. Was that by choice, or by circumstance?

  “Damon…” whispered Myr. “Don’t jump to conclusions. This doesn’t mean anything.”

  Damon punched the floor, stirring a small updraft of dust. It hurt, but that was the point. He stood up and began walking through the inn, more dazed than upset. The hearth was full of ash. The bowls and plates were all neatly put away in the kitchen cabinets. The keg was… not quite empty. He helped himself to a mug of ale, hoping it could help him stave off his headache for long enough to think things through.

  Damon sipped it slowly, forcing himself to breathe. He lit his lantern and, after a moment’s indecision, kindled a fire in the hearth. Slowly, he made his way upstairs,
confirming what he already knew as he opened each door.

  Vel’s empty room showed few signs of the sleeping girl who’d last occupied it. Her bed was neatly made, and her wardrobe was empty. Damon thought back to how she’d been when she’d first arrived back at the tower months earlier, still obsessed with outfits and perfume and the fineries of Hearthold’s court.

  Ria’s room was much the same, if not harder for him to look over with any semblance of composure. Damon set his hand atop her throwing dagger, which he’d taken to carrying in his belt. A part of him had been hoping she’d be here at the inn when he arrived, smiling coyly and teasing him for having taken so long on his own return. He tightened his fingers around the dagger’s hilt as so many different emotions roiled within his chest.

  Damon moved on, surveying Malon’s room and trying to think through what he found there. She’d left more of her possessions behind: a few books, some alchemy supplies, nothing truly important. Had she left in a hurry? How could she possibly travel with Vel in her unconscious state? He couldn’t imagine anything short of a dedicated cart or wagon being able to make such a journey feasible.

  Despite not feeling hungry, he headed back downstairs and forced himself to eat. Dinner was a rather sad affair, stale bread and dried beef strips that needed to be defrosted by the fireside before being palatable. He chewed slowly, drinking more ale from the dregs of the keg.

  There wasn’t anything more he could do within the span of the night. It was a hard fact to accept, but he did eventually. Once he finished his food, he went upstairs to his room to at least make an attempt at getting some sleep.

  The corner of a piece of parchment poked out from underneath his pillow, and Damon felt like a fool for not checking his room earlier. He nearly tore it in his haste to pull it out and unfold it. Vel’s neat, Hearthold-tutored handwriting immediately caught his eye.

  Damon,

  I hope this message finds you well. I thought about trying to send it by courier, but it seemed unlikely that anyone could track you down, given how you travel!