Void-Born: The Knight Who Devours Curses

Absolute zero

The ghoul nest sat in a collapsed drainage culvert three miles outside Harrowmere. Cael Rhensworth crouched at the mouth of it with his iron sword across his knees, counting the breaths coming from the dark.

Four. Maybe five. Young ones, by the wet rasp of them.

The contract had said two.

"Of course it did," he muttered, and tightened the strap on his left vambrace. It was dented, secondhand, and it had never once fit him properly. Nothing he owned had.

He went in low, the way he'd learned the hard way. Ghouls hunted by sound and hunger, and they were stupid right up until the moment they weren't. The first one lunged from the left, all grey skin and cracked yellow nails. Cael stepped inside its reach and drove the sword up under the ribs. It screamed. He kicked it off the blade and turned just as the second hit his shoulder and took him into the wall.

Stone cracked against his spine. Teeth snapped an inch from his throat.

"Not tonight," Cael grunted, and shoved the pommel into its eye socket.

The third and fourth came together, and for a few seconds there was no thinking, only the old rhythm: duck, cut, pivot, cut. A claw opened his forearm. He felt it, hot and clean, and then nothing, because the pain always came later. When the last ghoul fell twitching into the muck, Cael stood in the dark with his chest heaving and his sword dripping, and he noticed something odd.

The ghoul that had cut him had left a dark smear on his sleeve. A curse-mark, the kind ghoul bites carry, the kind that rots a man's arm black in three days.

He wiped it off with his thumb. The skin underneath was clean. It had been clean the last eleven times, too.

"Lucky," he said to the empty culvert. He'd been saying it for years.

Harrowmere sat in the crook of the Veyra River. The town had a cathedral too large for its congregation, a market too small for its farmers, and a guild hall with a staircase that was, by design, steeper for the people who used the back door.

Cael used the back door.

"Four ghouls," he said, dropping a canvas sack on the clerk's counter. "Ears, as agreed. Contract said two."

The clerk, a pinched man named Tolliver with ink-stained cuffs, didn't look up. "Contract said two ghouls at four silver each. Eight silver."

"There were four."

"Then you took on a larger hunt than you were authorized for, which is a rank violation." Tolliver finally lifted his eyes, and they slid over Cael's patched coat the way they always did. "Mana-null surcharge is two silver. Gear inspection f*e, one. Net payment is five silver."

"Five." Cael kept his voice level. "For four ghouls and a hole in my arm."

"Take it or file a grievance." Tolliver slid the coins across. "Though I'd remind you that grievances from unranked hunters are reviewed on the first Tuesday of the quarter."

"Unranked." Cael almost smiled. "That's generous. I thought I was Absolute Zero."

"A technicality." Tolliver's mouth thinned. "Don't make this difficult, Rhensworth."

Cael took the coins. Behind him, a pair of young hunters in good leather were laughing at something, and one of them said, not quite quietly, "Is that the hollow one?"

"Don't stare. They say it's catching."

"It isn't catching, you idiot, it's just nothing."

Cael walked out without turning around. He had learned that turning around gave them what they wanted. Outside, the evening bells of the Radiant Order started up from the cathedral, a long bright chorus calling the faithful to their sorting. Every child in Aldervane was weighed against a crystal before their first birthday, and the result was carved onto a brass tag they wore until they died. Class One shone like a coin. Class Nine got a cart and a quiet life.

Cael's tag had been blank. Blank wasn't even a class. The examiner had actually apologized to his mother, he'd been told. The way you'd apologize for a stillbirth.

He pulled his collar up and went to find the only warm room in Harrowmere.

The Rusted Hound was a low-beamed tavern at the edge of the hunters' quarter, and it smelled of tallow, wet wool, and onion stew. Cael pushed through the door and the noise rolled over him like warm water.

"There he is," Brannoc called from behind the bar, one-eyed and broad as a barn door, wiping a mug that was already clean. "Late. You smell like a dead ghoul."

"Four dead ghouls."

"Four?" Brannoc's good eye narrowed. "The board said two."

"The board lies."

"The board always lies, kid. That's why we read it." He set the mug down and nodded at Cael's sleeve. "Sit. Show me the arm."

"It's fine."

"Sit."

Cael sat. Brannoc took his wrist and turned it under the lamp, and the old knight went very still. The cut was already closing, edges knitting pale and tight, with no black rot creeping beneath it.

"Huh," Brannoc said.

"Don't." Cael pulled his arm back. "I know what you're going to say."

"I'm going to say that's the twelfth time."

"You've been counting?"

"I'm one-eyed, not stupid." Brannoc leaned on the bar and lowered his voice. "A ghoul curse puts down a grown man in three days. I've buried hunters who didn't make it two. And you walk in here with a cut that looks like it's a week old."

"I heal fast. Plenty of people heal fast."

"Not like that."

"Brannoc." Cael held his gaze. "I'm Absolute Zero. The crystal said so. The academy said so. Everyone in this town said so. There's nothing in me to be strange about."

The old knight didn't answer right away. He reached under the bar, pulled out a bowl of stew, and pushed it across with a heel of black bread.

"Eat," he said finally. "And kid?"

"Hm?"

"Whatever the crystal said, I've watched you fight for seven years. Nothing is not what I see."

Cael looked down at the stew so that Brannoc wouldn't see his face. His throat felt tight. "You're getting sentimental."

"I'm getting old. It's the same thing." Brannoc went back to his mugs. "Eat before it gets cold."

It was late, and the tavern had thinned to a few dozen hunters hunched over cards, when the door banged open and a courier in the crown's blue stumbled in with rain running off his cloak.

"Proclamation from the capital!" he announced, voice cracking with importance. "By order of His Majesty, Crown Prince Aldric Valemont shall pass through Harrowmere on the fourteenth, on royal progress to the northern garrisons. All citizens are to clear the main road and display the colors of the realm."

A ripple went through the room.

"The prince?" someone said. "Here?"

"Why would the prince come to a mud hole like this?"

"Maybe he's lost."

Laughter, though it was thin. The courier pinned the proclamation to the board with a dagger and left without waiting for questions.

Cael watched him go. Something prickled at the back of his neck, a feeling he couldn't name, like the moment before a storm when the air gets heavy. He glanced at his forearm, where the ghoul's cut was now barely a line.

"Whatever you're thinking," Brannoc said quietly, appearing at his elbow, "stop."

"I'm not thinking anything."

"Good. Keep it that way." The old knight stared at the proclamation, and for the first time Cael saw something in that one good eye that looked a lot like fear. "A prince doesn't come to a border town for no reason, kid. Stay out of sight on the fourteenth."

"Why would anyone look at me?"

Brannoc didn't answer.

Outside, the cathedral bells began to toll the hour, slow and heavy, and Cael found himself listening to them with a strange, hungry attention, as if something deep inside him had just woken up and was waiting to see what the night would bring.