Little Jade Stone

Mercifully, the sin eaters are few. Pfeil has seen this type before — dumb porcelain faces in stiff ceramic armor, white and shiny like teacups, with toy-soldier swords and toy-soldier shields that clatter in an insulting facsimile of the real craft, all jerky piston movements. His greatsword is not a fast or delicate thing, but compared to them he knows he will be damned nimble, even graceful. They don't notice him until he tosses a volley of shadowy magic, born from some nasty feeling he pretends he does not feel, and closes the gap, Asterion's feet pattering behind him in quick rank and file.

It is easy. Dodge a blow to the shoulder (injury to the clavicle will disarm him), step back, raise the blade and bear the brunt of another blow (Asterion is behind him with the toy gun). Hand slips, sword falls, ceramic boot connects with fleshy face — he has had worse — use the backward momentum, get that second hand back on the pommel, shake the blood out of your eyes, dumbass! Pay attention, don't get too cocky — close the fist again, bring the blade up before it stops moving, don't let it get heavy. Crack of porcelain. Sin eater smashed in half (pink in the dust in Ala Mhigo, boy in two boy-halves, seventeen-or-eighteen), motion in the corner of his eye — body between it and Asterion, take the hit if you can't dodge, they're thirteen-or-fourteen. They have very good aim. Holes in plaster wings, hole in the shield (snow). Swift beheading (Praetorium).

It is over. Easy. Normal.

He takes a deep breath, exhales slow, trying to exile the burn of adrenaline from his lungs. You're getting sloppy, Fray thinks at him.

He thinks back that he will have this conversation later, because if the kid sees them staring into space arguing with each other inside they will think he's fucking insane. He's already been silent too long, still with his back turned, and he can feel those mismatched child eyes boring a hole into his back, round little drills in a stupid mining operation.

He turns around and makes an expression he is sure is nothing to be concerned about. "It's done. We'll look for Toddia's heart stone now." Blood drips from the cut on his forehead into his mouth; he tries not to spit it out for Asterion's sake.

They gesture at their own forehead with a halfhearted vagueness and say nothing.

"This?" Pfeil touches his hand to the gash, feeling a bit chastened. "Nothing I can't handle. Stings like a whoreson, but it's just a scratch. Got a little cocky." He doesn't think he remembers how to offer them any reassurance, but he does his best with a smile.

"I wasn't worried." They scowl a little at him. "I meant you should wipe the blood off your face, jackass."

"Fuck! Language! What are you, twelve?"

Asterion makes some growling noise under their breath, which Pfeil takes to mean his admonishment was good enough, insofar as he cares whether or not they swear to begin with.

He turns away without further thought to the matter and squints, raising a hand to keep what Light has filtered through the canopy from filling his eyes with a soft yellow-white glare. Surely somewhere in the underbrush the stone will reflect that damned refulgence, and the glittering will be easy to spot. So he hopes, at any rate. Asterion kicks a clump of fallen leaves behind him and sighs impatiently.

"You're a big kid," Pfeil says. "You don't need my permission to go —"

"Stop being condescending," Asterion snaps.

Pfeil turns back around and raises his hands in surrender. Asterion blusters up to him and slaps something over the gash on his forehead, which sticks readily and begins to absorb the blood.

"You looked stupid."

He can't offer any rejoinder. Asterion practically flees into the underbrush, leaving him alone with the funny bandage and the distant half-presence of Fray fading somewhere into his amygdala. He thinks it's probably for the best, because whatever he would have thought to say would undoubtedly have left their porridge twice as pissed-in.

There is nothing to do now but look for the heart stone. Pfeil keeps his footsteps slow, not wanting to pass it by. His head throbs dully at the gash and the blow of the ceramic and the migraine he has been nursing all afternoon, and when he bends at the knee to look beneath the branches of a half-dead shrub he feels his brain pitch inside his skull like a garbled message in a bottle thrown to sea. It is not pleasant, but he has no time for it, and bends a little further.

It isn't beneath the half-dead shrub. It's not nestled in a rather promising tangle of exposed tree roots a few yalms away, nor beside the smooth speckled stone in a patch of Light-baked yellow grass. There are many places that it is not, and Pfeil tires himself by searching each is-not until he finds it, perfect, shiny jade, smooth and winking coyly at him underneath the leathery leaf of a towering, vigorous fern. He plucks it out of damp, spongy soil and brushes away a little detritus as he hears the approach of rank-and-file footsteps.

He doesn't know if the stone is warm from his hands or from sitting in the light, but it is pleasant to touch. It fits easily into his hand, slots without complaint into his fingers and sits with a comfortable weight. He presses his fingertips against it, checking for scratches or abrasions. His own heartbeat echoes back to him, pulse suddenly tangible with the pressure of his hand against the jade, and for a moment he thinks it's her — Toddia's heartbeat packed neatly into pretty bluish-green, a marriage of familiar foliage and a sky she had never seen. He wonders if Toddia's heart would be beating in her own chest rather than his hand if he had come sooner.

"You found it," says Asterion.

Pfeil meets their eyes and wonders if Toddia was their age, or maybe their size. They are taller than him, but they are not taller than Emet-Selch; the Ascian towers over the both of them when he is present, and Pfeil is glad that he is not. Asterion looks jumpy, morose. They have always looked jumpy and morose, though Pfeil has not known them long, and they are thirteen, or fourteen, or something else entirely too young.

He bites at the inside of his cheek for a moment. "Tell me if that old bastard gives you any trouble, alright, Asterion?" He does not want there to be another Toddia.

"He's not a bastard!"

"I mean it. If he ever tries to hurt you —"

"He's my dad!" They ball their hands into fists and plant their feet more firmly in the springy dirt. "You don't get to say that kind of —"

"Asterion —"

"Just leave me alone!"

They sprint off toward Slitherbough, kicking up grass and topsoil, and Pfeil wonders just precisely how he managed to fuck this up.