At first, Lucas the Scribe felt only the injustice of it all.

“You can’t do this to me! You cannot silence me! The people will hear about this!”

Indignation fueled his anger, and made him say things he probably shouldn’t have. Nothing was ever gained in prison by losing your cool.

“Everyone will find out what you’re doing here! I will make sure of it!”

Which, he knew, wasn’t exactly true. Other scribes had come to Thrass before him, and Lucas hadn’t heard a peep from them about the immoral, disgusting, violence-profane madness of this place. He should’ve known how horrible this would be by the way the Head Scribe smiled when he first gave Lucas this assignment.

Now, he was here. His forehead pressed against the bars of a cell, screaming down the prison block: “I am a senior scribe for Carper’s Weekly! You will have to answer when they come looking for me!”

Again, not exactly true. He was a junior scribe for Carper’s Weekly, and even that was contingent upon the material he wrote from this assignment. So, really more of an unpaid intern.

The people he worked for knew people, but Lucas doubted if his Head Scribe even remembered his name. And Lucas didn’t know anyone.

His mother had taught him to write, and she would slap his hand for every word he misspelled. Not an uncommon punishment for bright, young central cyrans, who were otherwise unconnected and had no great prospects. His curiosity was encouraged, up to a point, but his Father always reminded him: we’re no great house. We’re the bottom of the top, and count yourself lucky that we are.

The Lukaiaen bloodline was nothing to write home about, unless you were very interested in his great-great-great-great grandmother, who may or may not have been a minor governor during the provincial wars.

Nobody would come for him, which was such a distressing feeling that, once his outrage subsided, Lucas found himself hyperventilating in the corner of his cell.

How long could they keep me in here?

A day? A week?

On the one hand, it was soul-crushing. But his mother taught him to always think of the silver scale.

At least I’m alive. And at least they didn’t put me with the political prisoner, and the other traitors.

When he first came to Thrass via the gate, one of the junior officers gave him a tour of Sseran Thay City and the warcamp. Lucas had seen what they did to the political prisoners.

Compared to those cramped, dark, and perpetually-wet lockups, Lucas’s cell was a grand hotel room. Two square meals a day. A window. A linen sheet to lay down on (and a bucket to go in). And all the free time a writer could ask for. No paper, but a good journalist didn’t need to take notes.

So, as the hours turned to days, and as Lucas grew tired of hyperventilating, he took a nap. And woke up. And told himself, “I will not waste this time. Any scribe worth their salt would kill for a chance like this.”

Lucas Pulchus Lukaius promised himself that he was going to craft the greatest hit piece on the cyran warfront of his generation. His prose would make the foundations of cyran society tremble and quake. His words would cause the greatest political shift of the last century.

And he would compose the whole thing in his mind.

In his mind, he was a grand storyteller, rolling out the sentences as though they were great mountains and deep valleys. He composed and recomposed his ledes, his theses, his hooks and loops. And his moral arguments, most of all. Each day, as the sun fell and the rains began, and the rains went away, and the sun rose again, the details became more exaggerated, until he blossomed into a kind of prophet-figure in his imaginary fight against the Cyran aristocracy, and their awful war machine.

In some compositions, the soldiers were his direst enemies. In others, they were weak, helpless souls who needed just as much salvation as the next cyran. Salvation, that his words and his words alone would bring.

And when it was done?

And when there was nothing else to say?

The sun still rose. And the rains still fell. And Lucas the scribe was still incarcerated.

So, he sat down and slept. And woke. And ate. And slept. And wrote more stories in his mind, just to pass the time.

Ate. Slept. Woke.

Ate.

Slept.

Ting.

Sometimes he dreamed he was back on Cyre. He could hear the laughter of conversation, sitting at his mother’s dinner table. Eating with their neighbors. Sometimes Saraius, the neighbor’s daughter, was there, that girl whose eyes shone brighter than any glittering scale. And he could hear the olive trees rustling, and the lemons dropping from the boughs. And the ting, ting of metal cutlery, clinking together as people laughed-

Ting! Ting!

The sound stirred the scribe from his slumber. Metal against metal. It was an annoying sound, that’s what it was. He woke up only to find the source of the sound, and stop it from bothering him.

But as he sat up, and looked around his cell, he could hear no sound. Nothing but his own breath, and the gentle fall of the rain.

He looked up at the window, to see what time it was. Dark. Middle of the night, maybe.

The bars are gone. The bars that filled his window like long, metal teeth were gone. Each one of them, pinched off at the top and at the bottom, as if they were made of the softest clay.

Then, a face appeared in the window. Two big, black eyes. A huge beak, as dark as dyed leather.

What mad dream is this?

The scribe couldn’t help himself. He had to talk to the face, whatever it was.

“What the hells are you?”

“You’re not so pretty yourself.” The face said. It’s beak clacked gently, and its voice came out, forming the words more easily than that cumbersome proboscis would suggest.

The scribe scrambled across the room, his back ramming into the bars of his cell. “Get away from me! Get out of here! I’ll call the guards!”

“Now, why would you go and do a foolish thing like that?”

And then, horribly, that thing started to climb into his cell. Its body was covered in feathers, some of them gray at the tips. Its face contorted with pain as it pulled its torso deeper into the cell.

And then, it reached out a hand at Lucas. Trying to grab him. It’s coming for me. Oh, gods-

He looked wildly around the cell, looking for anything he could throw at the hand. The sheet? No. The bucket? Gross. Nothing-

“Come on,” the thing crawling through his window said. “Take my hand.”

Almost like it was trying to help him. Its eyes bored in to him, both pained and determined, as it stretched.

“What are you?” Lucas asked.

“Corvani,” the thing answered. “Or have you never seen an avian before?”

Of course, he’d seen an avian before. They were brilliantly colored, with huge, dazzling beaks and majestic wings covered in... feathers…

“You’re… Not… Then…” Lucas struggled to understand. It’s not a monster. It’s not a nightmare. Then what?

“Who are you?”

The corvani, whose body was half stuck in that tiny, square window, his arms held out like a fool, rolled his eyes.

“Come on, cyran,” He said, exasperated. “You owe someone a favor. Stop asking questions and take my hand, gods damn you, or I’ll leave you in here.”

Lucas stepped up to the window. His fingers brushed against the corvani’s hand - and he almost pulled away at the cold shock. He hadn’t noticed, the avian’s appendage was made of metal. The metal fingers wrapped around his wrist - so smooth, and gentle - and then, the avian shouted, “Got him! Pull!”

Suddenly, Lucas was being hauled up. Up into the window. He started to scream as the twisted remains of the metal bars dug into him, but the avian’s free hand wrapped around his mouth, and silenced him.

Gods! He’s going to kill me! Lucas started to struggle. To twist and turn and writhe in the avian’s grip. They sent an assassin! To kill me for everything I wrote about the cyrans-

It did not dawn on Lucas that, as of yet, all his grand writings were still only in his mind, and no one could have possibly read them.

And then, Lucas was falling.

He fell to the mud with a heavy whumpf. The wind was knocked out of his lungs, and he struggled to breathe. Mud splattered his face and he had to lift his head to not drown in it.

There were talons next to his head. Big, and black. Throat-cutting talons…

And a pair of soldier’s boots.

Lukas looked up to see the most beautiful face he had ever seen.

“It’s-” he gasped, “It’s you.”

Agraneia bent down, and pulled him out of the muck. Her grip was just as strong as when he’d first seen her, and she lifted him as easily as if he were a child.

“Yes,” she said. And nothing more.

It was definitely her. Down to the last, understated word. At least she wasn’t grunting her responses anymore.

“And who is this?” Lucas nodded at Eolh. The avian’s feathers looked ruffled, and not just from the fall. His black eyes were wary, and locked onto the Scribe.

Agraneia looked at Eolh. Narrowed her eyes while she conjured up an adequate explanation. She settled on a simple shrug as her answer.

“Will someone tell me what’s going on?”

“Is he going to be a problem?” Eolh asked, nodding to the scribe. Talking about him as if he wasn’t standing righ there.

“Scribe,” Agraneia said, “This is Eolh. He’s… he’s with us. We’re getting out of here.”

Eolh turned back to Agraneia. “Not until I’ve found Kirine.”

“My name is not scribe. It’s Lucas.” But neither of them seemed to hear him. They were already discussing their next steps.

The avian named Eolh seemed to want to find someone else in the camp. Agraneia disagreed. She thought it would be better for them to escape first, and come back later after “it” happened, whatever “it” was.

“He could be dead by then,” Eolh said.

“He could be dead right now.”

“Who are we talking about?” Lucas asked.

“I’m not leaving until I find him. You don’t have to stay.”

“Corvani, we have tried our luck too many times tonight. Lady Fortunae’s smiles are swift to change-”

“Thought you didn’t believe in the gods. Besides, if I don’t find him, then I have no idea how I’m going to find Poire. You can take your scribe and go, but I can’t leave without looking for him.”

“Who?” Lucas asked again, but they were … doing something.

Agraneia and Eolh were staring at each other. Locked in some kind of unseen communication that the scribe couldn’t interpret.

Agraneia moved first. She nodded over the avian’s shoulder. “Prefect’s tent. Over there. Let’s go.”

***

Lucas was still in a daze. Every step was better than the last, and made the world feel more real. To feel the breeze on his scales. To feel the open sky, above his head.

To be free.

To be walking, directly back into the mouth of the beast.

Of course.

It made him jumpy, knowing where they were headed. Agraneia seemed to understand. When they were crouched in an alley, waiting for another patrol to pass by, Agraneia whispered into his ear. “Stick with me. Stay quiet.”

It was the most comforting thing he’d ever heard from her. Or from any soldier, come to think of it.

Eolh was at the mouth of the alley. He had a strange set of goggles pressed to his eyes. They seemed to mold around the shape of his beak, fitting his face perfectly. A faint green glow lined the rim of the goggles.

“There’s no one in there,” Eolh said.

“What do you mean?” She was at his side, peering into the darkness of the war camp. The rain drizzled softly on their heads, and pattered on all those canvas overhangs. In the war camp, not a single body moved.

“Who are you looking for?” Lucas asked.

“The Tribune,” Eolh said, offhandedly. “But the Prefect’s tent is empty. The whole camp is empty.”

“They left,” Agraniea growled. “They’re all at the Gate.”

Eolh was shaking his head, cursing under his breath.

“Eolh,” Agraneia said. She was clenching her fists, “I’m sorry.”

“Tribune Kirine?” Lucas said. “Is that who you’re looking for?”

Eolh whirled around, his huge, almost animal eyes searching his face. “You know where he is?”

Lucas nodded, slowly. “I think so. The guards were talking about it. A building they call the Boxes. Right behind the Consul Vorpei’s manor.”

“Which is where, exactly?”

No sooner had Eolh asked the question, when a brilliant glow illuminated the sky, somewhere over the center of the City.

A string of light, appeared above the gate. Thin and gossamer and whiter than white. It stretched all the way up, beyond the rooftops. Beyond the clouds. Up, into the stars themselves, until the light could not be seen.

“There,” Lucas said, his mouth hanging slightly open. “They said he was near the gate. Is that what that light is? I thought we didn’t open gates at night.”

A boom rolled out from the center of the City. The buildings and the ground trembled with the low rumble of an explosion. As it subsided, they could hear the screams. The crackle of gunfire. And the crashing of the cannons.

Agraneia said, “It’s begun.”