The Everburning City

Act 1, Part 5, Chapter 9

Cameron

Sweat still trickled down the sides of his head, just in front of his ears, and his shirt stuck in spots to his arm pits, and his chest. His padded coat was draped over one shoulder, along with his sword belt — he wasn't wiling to put it on until he cooled down a little.

And so he waited, leaning against a wall and staring down the alleyway, watching a young woman sashay. Her gleaming black hair flicked to the side at the edge of every exaggerated step, only starting to straighten out again. She turned back at the edge of the alley, and smiled in a mysterious and beautifully complex way that left Cameron feeling — all at once— satisfied, wistful, lustful, and just a little afraid.

Like she was threatening to drown him in lustful bliss. Again.

She took a turn at the edge of the alley and vanished from Cameron's sight. He sighed, rolled his shoulders, and pulling at his shirt to air it out a little, began to buckle the straps that hid his knives under his coat.

Even sheathed, the coldstone blade at his left side nipped at his flesh. For just a moment or two, the sensation was a comfort. And the sudden spike of cold rippling though his body was enough to want to put on the thick, padded army coat he was neglecting. He buttoned up the coat as quickly as he could, hoping for the warmth the coat could provide. The knife they had taken from Saval's chest bit deeper than the last one he had been issued, the coldstone seemed hungrier, if such a thing was possible.

Cameron didn't know if it was the knife, or if he was finding it harder to be a shadow.

But the belt was comfortable; the weight and the simple presence of the sword hanging at his side was a pleasant thing to wear. He didn't have to tuck it into a coat pocket, didn't have to hunch himself forward in order to keep it concealed. He could wear it without seeing the wide, wary eyes of civilians, the visceral fear and hate of a reject he was tasked to watch, or the contempt of a Crafter. And the warmth of the white scarf as he tied it around his neck was almost as pleasant as that woman's caress.

He didn't know her name. She hadn't offered it. Cameron wondered if it would have hurt the moment, to have known her name as if he expected to have a future. Even if they won through this invasion, drove out the monsters, and reclaimed the farmland fast enough to avoid the famines that would follow, he was a shadow. A career of harrowing misery that would end in pain wasn't something he wanted to bring home to a warm bed and warmer smile.

Cameron sighed, and leaned against the wall. He let his thoughts wander, and surprisingly, they found their way to an hobby so long abandoned he thought it forgotten. "She found me broken and weak," he said to himself. "Crushed 'tween horror and grief. She held me and showed me joy, and laid me down to sleep."

The words surprised Cameron. It had been a long time since he had tried his hand at lyrics, not since he had run the gauntlet. His hands itched for a lute, a guitar, anything to put some rhythm into his thoughts.

He let his steps make a beat, and carried on as best he could.

"She is my joy and shame, and my mistress' great bane. She smiles like a spring morning, and her embrace warms to the bone," Cameron half sang, finding the steady metronome of his footsteps helping the words to come out.

Humming a few bars carried him back to the town square and the fountain, and suddenly worried he had missed something important. His squad was a flurry of motion, scrambling around the company's ammo crates like they had woken up to the Invasion knocking at their door.

Which meant the Gloamtaken were close. Cameron cursed and patted at his side, relieved to feel his ammo pouch was almost full. Something about how quickly he reached for the rounds, how quickly these new instincts of reaching for a soldier's weapon — rather than his knives — left him feeling strange.