Vincent

Vincent hated waiting.

The agitation of being wasted like this, of not having anything to do, especially now, gnawed at Vincent's patience. All around them, tens of thousands of people were being lead into train cars, hundreds of soldiers were so buys they couldn't possibly keep up with the demands on their time.

Golems marched through the City's fields. Crops burned. Thousands of acres of precious foods, the achievements of generations, were sacrificed just to buy a few precious hours. Gloamtaken stalked beneath the pallid shroud surging through the breaches in the walls.

And Vincent was left with nothing to do but wait.

"Stop fidgeting," Mackaroy said from the other end of the table. The shadow barely raised his head long enough to look up, and there was a small trial of soup broth in his thin beard. "And are you planning on eating that bread roll?"

Vincent only began to shook his hand before Mackaroy's hand flashed out and snatched the bun off his plate. Vincent only shrugged indifferently in response, and pushed his plate away.

A quick glance around the table confirmed to Vincent that his own troubled state of mind wasn't being shared. Cameron, the other shadow, was eating with gusto. The soldiers were only eating with slightly less enthusiasm, as they glanced warily to the door. Even the youngest one, Roderick, had his head nearly in his plate as he shovelled food into his mouth.

But Vincent, with one hand resting on the satchel full of notes he wasn't supposed to have, couldn't find either his appetite or even his interest in the small conversations happening around him. His eyes wandered, his fingers tapped the table, and his ears strained for something more interesting to listen to.

Perhaps somewhat embarrassingly, it was Mackaroy who found it for him first. The shadow looked up from his plate and glanced into the crowd, just once, but picked out something that immediately got his attention. "Curious," Mackaroy said, and the hand holding his fork slowly fell to the table.

"What is it?" Vincent asked, looking in the direction Mackaroy had turned.

"Red coats," Mackaroy replied quietly. Vincent's attention seized on those two words, and he scanned the crowd until he spotted the familiar rust-red colour that only the Guild's membership was allowed to wear.

"Don't know who, but anyone this far in the fringes might be here because of those failed strikes on the Golems. It couldn't hurt to see why," Mackaroy said as he stood up. He looked over at Vincent, and added, "It couldn't hurt to keep them here until your master returns. I imagine they'll want to talk to her."

"They might even be here for her," Vincent agreed, standing up and marching around the table. As he followed Mackaroy, he reached out and seized the nearby torches, and turned his new eyes to finding the Crafters he had seen.

It didn't take long. The red coats were meant to be noticed, and anyone who wore it fully expected that attention. "They're straight ahead, through the crowd. We'll need to pass a couple dozen people," Vincent said to Mackaroy.

Mackaroy turned to him, his expression surprisingly stern. "You're crafting?"

"I am," Vincent admitted.

"Your master allows you a lot of freedom," Mackaroy said. His tone was mild, his expression bland, but there was a hint of something very threatening in the shadow's delivery. "Frankly, a lot more freedom than you're supposed to have."

Vincent stopped, and gave the shadow a long, hard look. "Thought you and my master were friends."

"We are. Much as she and I can ever be. But if she's so comfortable letting you craft by your own judgement, why isn't your coat red?" Mackaroy asked. The question stymied Vincent, who found himself unable to come up with a rebuttal. Mackaroy scoffed, and turned away, leaving a Vincent behind as he parted through the crowd. 

Vincent followed, watching Mackaroy with his sight through the torches, as the shadow somehow cut a direct line towards the Crafters. It only took another few moments until he drew close enough to see their faces, and was surprised to see he recognized one of the faces.

It was a face every apprentice in the City would recognize. One of the first teachers any potential received, the Guildmaster Lionel Adams was as familiar to Vincent as any person who wore the red coat. His companion, however, a woman with a lot of grey in her hair that Vincent suspected was new, practically lurked in the Guildmaster's shadow as they looked around.

"Crafters!" Mackaroy called out. The people in the crowd around the shadow instinctively gave him a bit of space, and the path ahead parted. The two Crafters turned, and both of them waited as he approached.

Vincent was hard on Mackaroy's heels, and took the opportunity to speak first when it presented itself. "Crafter Adams?" Vincent asked as he drew near. "Can we help with the reason you're out here?"

Crafter Lionel Adams frowned, and looked at Vincent for a long moment before his expression changed. "Ah, Hearthsward. Polden's apprentice, aren't you? What on the knife's edge of oblivion are you doing here?" Crafter Adams asked, disregarding Mackaroy for the moment.

"Accompanying master," Vincent explained. "Were you looking for her?"

"I'm out here to collect any survivors of that fool venture," Crafter Adams replied curtly, though he was still frowning at Vincent, as if not quite sure what to make of him. "Words can't express how relieved I am to hear that someone else survived. Until an hour ago, I believed that Crafter Carathal was the only one who lived through it."

"Crafter," Mackaroy said finally. He was surprisingly polite, unusually so for a shadow, and he made a show of holding his hands out. "Forgive the impertinence, but which strike team were you with? And how did they fare? We only survived because Guildmaster Howel covered our escape."

"I stood with Crafter Kohl," the other crafter said. Crafter Carathal spoke so softly it was hard for even Vincent's Craft-enhanced senses to hear her. Her head hung down, and she was clutching something in her hand. Something Vincent thought looked a lot like a knife. "I only left because he sent me away, after the others were killed."

"Crafter Carathal, there's no need," Vincent began to say.

"There is a need!" the haunted, hollowed-out Crafter rasped, and she pointed her finger at Vincent. Out of the corner of his eye, Vincent could see the woman was indeed holding a knife, now clutched by the handle in her other hand. "For you especially. Anyone who's going to stand at the front lines next. You need to be told."

"He's an apprentice, Sally," Crafter Adams said, irritation rising in his still be told tone. "He won't be taking a turn on the wall."

"He's Polden's apprentice. He already came from the wall," Crafter Carathal said. She shook her head and moaned, clutching her hands together.

Vincent felt something begin to pull at the nearby torches and exhaust pipes, including the ones he had already seized. The grey in Crafter Cartathal's hair began to glow as she took a breath, like fading coals surging back to life under a bellows. The sight turned Vincent's blood cold. "Oh spit and burning ash, Lionel, the Guildmasters should have listened to you. How many like Kohl do we have?" Crafter Carathal asked.

Vincent glanced over to Mackaroy. Unnnerved but not surprised, he could see the shadow had shifted his stance, and his hands had disappeared into his coat.

"What do you mean?" Vincent asked, partially to draw the Crafter's attention and hopefully her focus. "Crafter Carathal, what happened at the wall?"

"Kohl brought it down," Crafter Carathal whispered.

Vincent felt like he had been dumped in the river. The pronouncement shook him and robbed him of his breath. Even Mackaroy beside him was stunned enough that he abandoned his ready stance, and the shadow's hands fell to his sides.

"How?" Vincent managed to ask.

"Alone. We struggled against the Golem together at first, but we couldn't harm it. Whatever we did, we could barely break pieces off of it, and we hit it hard," Crafter Carathal said, and she looked back down at the knife in her hand. "Even as we lost ourselves to the Craft, burned as brightly as we could, it came and snuffed is out."

"What happened next?" Mackaroy asked quietly. Vincent could see the shadow once again had his hands beneath his coat pockets, and his calm expression was like holding paper over fire to cover it up.

"That's none of your business, shadow," Crafter Adams said angrily.

"Crafter Adams, that is exactly my business. She's holding a knife that belonged to a coworker of mine," Mackaroy replied, his voice deceptively mild. There was rage simmering beneath his self control, Vincent could see as much as Mackaroy clenched his jaw, and his hands clutched the knives beneath his coat.

"It's comforting," Crafter Carathal murmured, almost as if she were speaking in a dream.

"It's a Coldstone knife," Vincent explained. "But why do you have it?"

"I carried it with me, away from the wall," Crafter Carathal said. "It helps."

Mackaroy's expression seemed to darken.

"The Golem reached the wall. Killed the others, put its hands through crafts that could turn stone into smoke. Struck the others like bugs on a shelf. Garland, he sent me away. Then he fought it alone."

Crafter Carathal seemed to come back as she spoke, as if she were being rekindled as she talked. "Vincent, I've never felt the likes of it before. They might have felt that fight in the City. I couldn't hear the Spire over his power. He broke that monster, shattered stone we could barely splinter. The Gloam shuddered and shrank from his power. It collapsed on him when it fell."

"Spit and burning ash," Mackaroy whispered.

"May I burn so brightly," Vincent said.

"Sally, that's enough," Lionel said, and he put his hand on her shoulder. "Let's find Olivia and get you back to Central. Vincent, where is she right now?"

"She should be returning here. She followed a pair of soldiers to a meeting, their fellows and the soldiers who escorted them are still here. As is the train we took," Vincent explained, and pointed to the train on the nearby platform.

"The Cadavalan Rangers," Crafter Lionel Adams mused as he looked around at the nearby soldiers. "I haven't seen their company since the Fourth."

It occurred to Vincent, again, that Lionel Adams was not only the City's oldest Crafter, but the oldest person in the City. "I'm afraid I don't know much about them, Master Adams."

"I'm not entirely surprised. You'd only know much about them if you were in the army. They're a special branch of the army, a small company of self-declared elites. They're loaned out between invasions to help the Orderlies if firepower is needed to diffuse a situation. Most of the army hates them," Lionel Adams said. Strangely, his tone and his expression didn't match his words. As if he didn't quite believe what he was saying.

"Is that your opinion, Master Adams?" Vincent asked.

"No. I remember the Fourth. I remember an army that held no better than the walls when the Golems arrived," Lionel's expression was placid, and his eyes were focused on a sight a long ways removed from the present. "And I remember those white scarves evacuating Sorrowsoul even as Gloamtaken streamed into the streets."

Vincent looked back, at where the white scarved soldiers sat near the small group that had escorted Vincent and his master earlier. A few of them were now talking animatedly with Hendricks, who appeared to be in the middle of a story requiring exaggerated hand gestures and the miming of sword swings.

And it was only because he was watching them that he noticed a group of soldiers marching towards them. All of them carried short truncheons in their hands, and their padded coats were white, rather than black.

"Military police," Lionel Adams said. "Curious."

The man in front, a burly looking man whose nose had clearly been broken before, pointed his truncheon, and said something Vincent couldn't hear. Irritated by that, Vincent seized a nearby torch, and listened.

"There he is. Sitting with the Rangers," the leader said.

And the only people sitting with the Rangers was Valen's small group of soldiers.

Vincent marched back to where they were sitting, ignoring Lionel Adams as the crafter called after him. But forced to weave his way around the crowds, he was still dozens of feet away when the military police reached Valen's companions.

The soldiers arranged themselves in a wide circle when they reached the table. Each one held their truncheon loosely in their right hand. Their leader took a step forward, and looked around the table. "Private Hendricks Lamar. We're here to collect you."

The quiet conversations seemed to stop all around the table, and every eye turned to the leader. Vincent seized another flame to look at the rank on the white-coated soldier, and marked three bars above the 'MP' emblem. A sergeant.

Hendricks turned around in his chair and stood up, glancing at the military police warily. "What's this about?" he asked carefully.

"You've been summoned. Message was issued 'Priority Blue'," the white-coated sergeant said. "We're here to escort you home."

"Home?" Someone else asked. One of the Rangers, a stern looking woman who rose from her seat with her left hand resting on her sword. "Who's orders are you acting on, soldier?"

"Lieutenant, this isn't any concern of yours," the sergeant replied. "His retrieval is at the request of the Bureau Chief of Civil Development."

"I'm not going home!" Hendricks bellowed, scrambling to his feet and stepping backwards. His steps were efficient, and despite walking backward moved faster than the police pursuing him. He stopped after a few steps, and his right hand wrapped around the handle of his sword. "I'm not a coward."

"Kid, get your hand off your sword," the lead sergeant warned. The man's truncheon was now resting in a loop on his belt, and his own hand had gripped his sword.

There was a new tension around the table. Mildred and Fauth had both stopped eating, and were ready to stand. The Rangers were still eating, but warily, as if anticipating an interruption.

"Hendricks, I'm seconding that request," the Rangers' Lieutenant spoke, but she very deliberately stepped between Hendricks and the police. "However, sergeant, I need to know what this order is, and who gave you this order."

"This is inappropriate interference, lieutenant..."

"Lieutenant Nevaeh Volenski, First Platoon, Cadavalan Rangers. And I asked you a burning question. Unless you have charges to level against Private Hendricks, you need to have orders from his superior," The Rangers' Lieutenant said. Her voice carried so fiercely through the now quieting ambient noise that Vincent didn't need the craft to hear her.

"We act, as always, under the authority of the Lord Captain," the sergeant said. And he pointed his truncheon at Hendricks. "Come with us. At once."

Hendricks hesitated, just for a moment. Vincent could see the emotions warring on his face, twisting his mouth and casting his eyes down to the paving stones. But when that moment passed, it was fury that won out. "Burn you!" Hendricks rasped, and his curse covered up whatever noise his sword made as it flew out of his scabbard.

But whatever fear the sergeant and his squad had for Hendricks was dwarfed by an accompanying cry from Lieutenant Volenski, who filled the momentary silence with a commanding shout.

"Rangers! At the ready!"