Chapter 1: The Denier
A.S. -746
When Volen opened her eyes, she was no different from a mummy whose wrappings had loosened. She had not been able to shake off the exhaustion of the previous day immediately. Sometimes she could not help asking herself, “I have a petite body. Why do I feel like I could sleep until evening if they let me, when I should be able to recover with little sleep?” She had asked herself this question twice this morning as well, yet she had found no answer.
She had been alone on the roads for months. She did not know where she was going, but she knew who she was running from. After all that time, she had thrown herself into a room no more than twenty steps wide, as an uninvited guest. She immediately found her trousers and fastened the clasp of her belt. She walked toward the dining table. There was nothing on the table except a bottle of Nerve Milk and two handfuls of rabbit diamonds. Reluctantly, she stuffed the apples into her mouth with the help of her fingertips. She straightened up, put on her short jacket, slung her crossbow across her back, and left the room.
Today, she had to put an end to this escape. She had already come far enough east of the city of Nevera. She could go no farther, and the distance between herself and the others had reached one hundred and fifty miles—perhaps even more. Besides, she possessed enough gold here to buy herself a small house. She could settle down. Yes, she had to abandon living like a smuggler. In the best case, the Deep Circlers would never find her. But in the worst case, if they caught her, then her fate would resemble that of her other companions—those she had heard nothing from since the escape.
When she stepped out of the hut where she had stayed, the air outside suffocated her. This part of Nevera smelled. It smelled of sour fish, blood, bone, prostitute discharge, and dead soil. She stood motionless for several minutes and looked up at the sky. Its color was a mixture of gray and filthy yellow. She let out a deep sigh and bent down to tie her red boots, which were unusually long for her small frame, but she could not control the trembling of her fingertips. After clumsily fumbling with the laces for a while, she groaned, shoved them inside her boots, entered the first alley before her, and began walking.
The alley was extremely narrow. It resembled less a street and more a corridor with both sides covered in white stone. Volen observed her surroundings carefully, but she did not dwell on such ridiculous details. It did not matter whether one walked in a narrow or a wide place. What mattered was who was present there.
The surroundings were empty. Since the stallkeepers had not yet begun their work, it must have been early. Thus Volen’s thought of buying herself a tart had fallen through. She did not care. Descending the stone stairs at the end of the narrow alley, she reached a broad courtyard whose upper side was half open. Part of the courtyard had been covered with wide cloths brought from outside the city by the stallkeepers in an attempt to create the appearance of a roof. The stallkeepers in Nevera’s capital did the same thing as well. Of course, there the work was done more properly and with finer cloth.
Volen examined the empty stalls for a while. They were quite wide, yet just as close to the ground. Ever since childhood, she had never been able to suppress her desire to become a stallkeeper. There was kindness within her as well. She had always imagined serving people by selling quality goods, engaging in friendly commercial conversations with them, obtaining enough needle grass essence to fill a bottle or two, and trading them. But Volen had failed to calculate one thing: as people grew older, they became dirtier, and their surroundings shaped their personalities. Because of this, her dream of becoming a stallkeeper had given way to becoming a lock expert carrying a crossbow on her back. A true thief…
Although her miserable childhood and years of extreme poverty had affected Volen’s mind like a sharp knife sliding across rabbit skin, she had resisted losing her sanity. On the contrary, as she grew older, she became a more intelligent girl. Then more, and more, and more…
While Volen was lost in deep thought, the silence was broken by a stallkeeper who slammed the earring in his hand onto the ground with a loud noise. The stallkeeper, who had a pitiful appearance, a mustache resembling a short shoe brush, and carelessly cut short brown hair, was now staring in astonishment at this small girl with red boots standing in the middle of the market courtyard at such an early hour.
Unlike many men in the city, the stallkeeper was a curious man. Without removing his hands from the earring, he stood there and painted the image of the girl in the square with his eyes. She looked as though she had stepped out of the tales of Nevera’s Riddle. She had a burgundy leather jacket, straight black hair gathered into a short tail behind her head, and a tiny nose whose bridge curved inward. She was beautiful, yet her face was excessively childish. If not for her cheekbones and rather thick eyebrows, she would have appeared entirely the same age as his own daughter. Now he himself had become the focus of the girl’s attention, and she too was examining him in surprise. Yielding quickly to his curiosity, the stallkeeper approached Volen.
“May I help you?” he asked.
Volen was startled. Quickly regaining her composure, she said, “I’m looking for land that’s for sale.”
The stallkeeper was disturbed by the way Volen avoided his eyes.
“There’s no land for sale around here. You’ll need to look in Lower Derelict,” he said with a cunning smile. Volen could see the remnants of Nerve Milk on his teeth. She had seen this picture before, and it had never been a good picture. She pretended not to notice and continued.
“In these pouches you see,” she said, rattling the two leather bags hanging on the right side of her belt, “I have solid gold. If I find land with fertile soil, I can pay far above its value.”
The stallkeeper grinned again.
“My business is selling cloth dyes and medicinal materials, child. From your clothes and your accent, it’s obvious you don’t belong to this side of the city. Besides… no one has bought land here in more than ten years. In fact, people don’t even dare ask about it anymore. Now, if word spreads that a stranger came into the middle of the market square at dawn wanting to buy land, the city magistrates will demand an explanation.”
“From whom?” Volen asked.
“From you, from me, or from someone else. It doesn’t matter. Nor is it important. So leave before the city greets the day,” said the stallkeeper.
Volen turned on her heels. As she walked away, she looked back over her shoulder.
“I understand that you cannot imagine your failing business becoming even worse, but it’s truly sad that you cannot imagine the gold you would earn from this,” she said to the stallkeeper.
With those words, she had struck the pitiful-looking man directly in the heart. The stallkeeper approached quickly and fixed his eyes on Volen.
“What makes you think business is bad and will continue getting worse?” he asked.
“You know there was an invasion. A long time ago… Its effects will continue, so don’t think it has ended just because you people of Middle Derelict survived. It will continue. But with the reward you receive, you may gain the chance to escape farther away,” said Volen.
“The Aberrants were destroyed. The ones who remain can’t even find money for a boat. And even if they did, they would never set foot here,” said the stallkeeper.
“There’s already another group,” said Volen. “A group that will use people from every direction and sell them their own graves. They started selling them five years ago. They call themselves the Deep Circlers, but I call them fanatic zealots.”
At this, the stallkeeper paused and nodded while examining Volen. Then he raised his index finger into the air.
“You should leave now, child. I’ve listened to you more than enough,” he said.
Volen lowered her head toward the ground and continued on her way without answering. Even while walking, she could not stop muttering to herself.
“You people of Middle Derelict… Because of your know-it-all attitude, your narrow thinking, and your blind eyes, you will remain poor. The king is naked! Why do you still insist on saying he is magnificently dressed?”
Things were going badly. Volen had begun the day in poor spirits because the stallkeeper had rejected her. Part of her thought, I’m not going to care about being rejected by a mad merchant who drinks Nerve Milk, yet another part of her could not avoid becoming like a whining child who could not obtain the toy she wanted.
She had to reach someone else. Perhaps, if possible, a high-ranking official: a Harvest Lord who could arrange the land matter. Only then could she acquire property for herself and hide safely for as long as she wished.
Middle Derelict was not a very large place. Its soil was not fertile enough to grow every plant. It did not even possess a proper trade network. The people living there survived by purchasing the goods that barely five or ten stallkeepers brought from the center of Nevera once a month. A very small portion of the population earned their living by producing and selling medicine. However, this was not easy work. To make medicine, one needed plants and materials. They had to know them well, recognize them, and travel from mountain to mountain, pass to pass, and plain to plain for long periods in order to find these plants and materials. The reason the people of Middle Derelict were known as “Herb Craftsmen” came from precisely this effort they expended.
Once, in the center of Nevera, Volen had purchased a parchment about Nerve Milk from a seller. She had lost it by now, but she still remembered word for word what had been written on the paper:
