Kess kept her hood drawn low over her face as she dodged puddles and people under the broken wooden awnings of the Downhill streets. While other seasons afforded the residents the use of the wider main street, Floodstorms packed everyone in like sardines. After so many years, Kess was used to it, and her slight frame allowed her to weave mostly unscathed through the crowd of sweating, busy people. Still, she was perfectly at elbow height for most grown men, and she swore as one clipped her in the face, snapping her head back momentarily.
Though the manor had become home during Kess’s recovery, its familiarity and safety had quickly become a thorn in her side. Oliver was gone, and she attended parties and dinners with handsome men. Draven was dead, and she practiced weaponry and honed her Fulminancy. The lower city was changing, and she was sleeping in a warm bed with hot water to boot.
It was enough to drive her mad.
Her Fulminancy was even improving, for Fanas’s sake. It still felt wrong, somehow, to summon her powers without blowing roofs off, collapsing walls, or otherwise maiming the environment around her. Unfortunately, her training with the sword hadn’t been going as well, and she’d mostly given up on the blasted thing. Rowan still insisted on running basic drills with it, but most days, she snuck back into the warehouse after hours to work on her wooden staff instead.
It was exhausting work that also involved memorizing Claire’s schedule to make sure she wasn’t caught ‘wasting energy that could be used to heal’ as Claire put it, but far from making her recovery take longer, Kess felt that her return to normalcy had actually hastened it. Some of the weakness had faded, and with it, Kess’s ability to tolerate the mundane. It was that lack of tolerance that had her sneaking out again, though she felt bad about making Rowan’s life more difficult. A little, anyway.
Her steps slowed as she neared the tiny steps that led down from the main street level into the interior of a stone building. A flood of people entered and exited, and shops lined the entrance on both sides—inside and out. She made a face at the several inches of water that filled the lower pathway and sighed, watching her boots slosh through puddles as she approached. Her lower city boots were not up to any Floodstorm, but bringing something more substantial would have made her conspicuous.
She sighed again and followed the crowd streaming inside.
If Arlette had sent someone to follow her after her escape from her bedroom window, they would certainly earn their money tonight. Kess followed the hallways through a series of winding passages, and if anything, the crowd thickened. People were molasses, stopped by the commotion at more popular stalls, or yelling boys as they chased each other through the crowd and tried their luck with pickpocketing. The water lessened the further she went, as grates set along the pathway intercepted the excess from the streets.
Before meeting Draven, Kess had gotten her start here, in the deepest recesses of the underground. Rings and taverns officially changed hands multiple times a year, citing damage from storms or owner disagreements. This kept the Uphill mostly out of the underground’s business, unless, of course, you had Witchblades visiting your tavern. The area had been slightly nicer than the one where she’d been attacked, but she wasn’t sure that was true any longer. The underground had changed, and not for the better.
Kess expected tears, but felt numbness instead. The loss of Draven was more evident than ever here, where his lack of leadership could be seen in every aspect of life. Children were hungrier and less trusting. Men and women looked twice for betrayal and watched everyone with haunted, sunken eyes. Metal flashed more often, and fights broke out more easily.
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The underground had never been a safe place, certainly not for a woman Kess’s size, but under Drav’s leadership it had at least felt like they had a common goal in keeping the place relatively tame and Witchblade free.
Now, Kess wasn’t sure that was the case. She turned another corner into a bustling underground square and was suddenly glad she wasn’t carrying much money. That square emptied into multiple small doorways, one of which led to the tavern she was looking for. In the square itself, several Witchblades idled nearby, their expressions bored. Kess frowned. She had never seen them so deep Downhill before.
She shrugged past a drunk man and climbed down creaky wooden steps into a depressing tavern. A tiny boxing ring was set up in the far left of the room, and a group crowded around it, screaming their approval as two men slugged it out, bare-knuckled. Kess heard a crack and knew that the other man’s jaw was finished. He wouldn’t eat solid food for months.
Kess sat down at the edge of the bar, far from the fighting ring, though part of her itched to enter it. Would Fulminancy allow her to fight someone bigger and stronger than her? As soon as the thought entered her mind, she felt nauseated. She had gotten into fighting in the first place to make sure she would have to fight fairly. What point was learning to fight at all if she had to cheat with Fulminancy to win?
A shadow fell in front of the worn and twisted wood of the bar, and two dark, beefy arms appeared there. “Kid, I know Draven’s gone, but what’re you doing in my bar again?” Kess eyed the woman from under her hood. Maude was one of the largest women Kess had ever seen, standing easily at Rowan’s height, if not taller. Her build was thick and powerful, and she had personally thrown many smaller men out of her bar when they got too rowdy. Kess shrugged, tracing the wood with a finger.
“For old times’ sake, I suppose,” she said. Maude snorted and sloshed an ale in front of her. She leaned closer to Kess, her thick arms resting on the bar. Her faintly accented voice was low, with a smoky edge to it, though it was still feminine enough to turn lesser men into school boys again.
“The last time I saw you, I had to carry you out of my bar, kicking and screaming because you were too drunk to realize you couldn’t fight a grown-ass man.” Kess eyed the ale and grimaced, face flushing.
“I was much younger,” she said, though it sounded a sorry excuse to her ears. Maude just nodded, still peering under the hood at Kess’s face.
“That you were. We all were,” she added, something distant in her gaze. “I heard what you did for Draven,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t do anything for Draven,” Kess said, voice breaking slightly. She took a sip of the ale to hide her weakness, though she doubted it fooled Maude.
“That’s not what I heard,” Maude said. “Word on the street is, you fought the Councilman tormenting him, then protected him from Witchblades who wanted to defile his corpse.”
“Is it?” Kess asked, voice toneless.
“Whatever happened, lass, it’s close enough to the truth that the Witchblades are looking everywhere for you.”
“For me?” Kess sat up slightly, her hood falling back just enough where she could meet Maude’s eyes. Maude nodded, looking over her shoulder at the bar entrance. She tugged slightly on Kess’s hood.
“I’d keep that low if I were you, though you have always had pretty eyes.” She winked at Kess. “In any case, they keep asking around for the girl who destroyed Uphill property, or some such bullshit.”
“Property?” she hissed. Kess clenched her hand together tight enough that her knuckles turned white.
“I did say it was bullshit.” She sighed, nodding at a man who had his bloodied companion slung over his shoulder, the other man’s jaw at an odd angle as they left the bar. “You put me in a bad situation. Draven harbors you, gets himself killed founding a resistance group from within Forgebrand. Half the rutting Downhill burns, and then you, of all people, show up at my doorstep.” She shook her head. “So you’d better have a damn good reason for being here.”
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