Chapter 13: Blood Due!
Orrek Sain ate like he was fighting the paste. He tore into the fungal brick with his teeth, chewed three times, swallowed hard, then glared at the rest as if it might insult him.
CLANG!
A human sound survived under the pressure: breath catching, teeth grinding, cloth dragging over blood. Kael trusted that more than the room’s clean threats. The red smear dragged down the wall and stopped at hand height, close enough for Kael to judge the next reach.
Workers with cracked lips and wrists rubbed raw by old labor bands did not look heroic. They looked bruised, hungry, and stubborn enough to keep moving, which mattered more.
Renn watched with open disgust.
"You know food cannot run away, right?"
Orrek pointed half a brick at him.
"In this pit, food runs all the time. Into other men’s mouths."
Vaela sat on a broken axle near the dead cart lane, cleaning old blood from her crescents with ration cloth.
"He has a point. An ugly point, but still."
Kael leaned against a wall of packed slag and let his breathing settle. Every breath pulled at the bruised line across his ribs. The two shards from the ration house sat unused inside the Sovereign Root, bringing his unallocated total to twenty two. He could feel them the way a starving man could feel coins in his fist.
Spend. Harden. Heal faster. Move better.
No.
Not yet.
Power had to answer need, not panic. Panic made men waste water in the Deep Wild Abyss. Panic would waste shards too. Rain hammered the tin bones of the dead carts above them.
RUMBLE!
Dead cart lane was not a road. It was a narrow underpath where bodies from pressure accidents were stacked, tagged, and dragged toward buying pits. Some went to bone grinders. Some to organ stalls. Some simply vanished beneath ledgers that knew how to turn a corpse into profit three times before rot claimed it.
The group had hidden between two overturned carts. Workers crouched in the shadow with food pressed to their chests. No one spoke loudly. Then a voice from the lane mouth said, "Orrek Sain."
Orrek stopped chewing.
The way he went still changed the air.
Vaela noticed.
Kael pushed off the wall.
A woman stepped into view with six debt men behind her. She wore a coat made from stitched pressure cloth, black on the outside, red underneath. Her hair was shaved on one side, braided on the other with tiny clay debt tags. Each tag had a name scratched into it.
Orrek’s name hung at the front. Renn whispered, "Who is that?"
Orrek swallowed.
"Bad memory with shoes."
The woman smiled.
"Still loud. Still ugly. Still owing."
Vaela slid from the axle.
"Name?"
"Mara Vetch. Chain Yard blood clerk."
Vaela’s expression sharpened.
"Blood clerks do not leave the Yard for small debt."
Mara looked at Orrek’s shoulder and smiled wider.
"This was never small. He borrowed against twelve names. Mother. Two brothers. A furnace team. Three children who were not his. Claimed he would pay with double labor. Then he broke a collector’s jaw and ran into deeper debt."
Orrek stood.
His bad shoulder twitched. His jaw worked once.
"They were starving."
Mara lifted the debt tags in her braid and let them click together.
"They are dead."
Silence crushed the lane.
Renn lowered his food.
Kael watched Orrek, not Mara. The big man did not look away. He did not argue. He did not dress the truth in better cloth. His eyes went red, but he held his ground.
"I know."
Mara stepped closer.
"Then kneel. Pay something useful. The Warden wants Kael alive. Give him up, and I burn three tags. Give me the boy too, and I burn five."
Renn froze.
Orrek’s answer was immediate.
"No."
Mara sighed.
"Still stupid."
"Still breathing."
"Not for long."
Her debt men spread out. They did not carry nets. They carried chain hooks, short hammers, and bone nails. Tools meant for joints and small spaces. Capture for Kael. Punishment for Orrek.
Vaela glanced at Kael.
"This is your fault."
"Mine?"
"You collect impossible people."
"I did not collect him."
Orrek grinned through grief.
"He stared at me. That counts."
Mara snapped her fingers.
The first debt man rushed Orrek with a hook aimed for the ruined shoulder. Kael moved, but Orrek beat him to it. He caught the hook with his uninjured hand.. The metal bit through his palm. Blood ran down his wrist. He pulled the man close and slammed his forehead into the man’s mouth.
CRACK!
The debt man’s front teeth vanished in a red spray.
Orrek roared in his face.
"I said no."
Two more came at Kael.
He ducked under a hammer swing, stepped into the man’s hip, and drove a palm into the lower ribs. Not full force. Enough to break balance. The man folded.
Kael swept his leg and sent him under a dead cart wheel. The second swung bone nails on a cord. One nail tore across Kael’s forearm. Another struck his shoulder and stuck shallow.
Pain flared.
The Sovereign Root did not speak.
Not enough. Not deep enough. Annoyance was not pressure. Kael gripped the cord, yanked the man forward, and smashed him face first into the cart frame. Nose broke. Eye socket cracked. The man dropped twitching.
Vaela fought Mara.
Knife against clerk spike.
Mara was better than she looked. She used the debt tags in her braid as noise, flicking her head to pull Vaela’s eyes wrong, then stabbing low with a triangular spike meant to punch through wrist bones. Vaela gave ground, not from fear, from calculation.
"You corpse market girls always move like rats," Mara said.
Vaela smiled without warmth.
"Rats survive clerks."
Mara stabbed for her throat.
Vaela caught the wrist between both crescents, twisted, and cut just enough to open tendons. Mara hissed and kicked Vaela in the stomach. Vaela slid back, breath leaving her, but her eyes stayed clear. Orrek was losing blood.
The hook in his palm had torn free, leaving a dark hole. His shoulder sagged worse. Still, when a debt man tried to drag Renn out from behind the cart, Orrek crossed the lane and hit him with his whole body.
They crashed into a corpse cart.
The cart tipped.
Bodies spilled.
PLOP!
Renn screamed as dead arms rolled near his feet. The debt man came up under Orrek with a bone nail and drove it into Orrek’s side.
Orrek grunted.
Then he grabbed the man’s head with both hands, even the torn one, and smashed it down against the cart axle.
Once.
BANG!
Twice.
CRACK!
The skull split at the temple where metal edge met bone. The man went loose. Cause. Axle edge. Repeated force. Orrek’s mass.
Mara saw it and stepped back.
Kael saw something else.
Not light. Not glow. A pressure in the air between Orrek’s refusal and the Sovereign Root. The same hint from the Chain Yard, deeper now, pulled tight by debt and grief.
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[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ SUBSIDIARY COMPATIBILITY PRESSURE OBSERVED: Orrek Sain
≫ REQUIRED CONDITION: Deliberate Sovereign Grant Not Yet Issued
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[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Refusal Under Blood Debt Recognized.
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Orrek did not see the block.
He was too busy standing between Renn and the remaining debt men.
Mara looked from Orrek to Kael.
"What are you making down here?"
Kael stepped forward.
"Nothing yet."
That frightened her more than a threat would have.
She whistled once.
The surviving debt men dragged themselves back.
Vaela moved to chase.
Kael raised a hand.
"Let her carry the message."
Vaela stopped, annoyed.
"Everyone gets to carry messages today. Soon the whole pit will be literate."
Mara held her bleeding wrist against her chest.
"Orrek still owes. The tags do not burn because he pretends at honor."
Orrek wiped his mouth with the back of his torn hand.
"Then keep them warm. I am not done disappointing you."
Mara left.
When her footsteps faded, Orrek sat down hard beside the spilled corpses. He stared at the clay tag with his own name still swinging from a braid that was no longer there. Vaela had cut it free during the fight.
Kael picked it up.
The tag was light. Too light for all the dead names behind it.
He tossed it to Orrek.
Orrek caught it and closed his fist.
"I am not your man," he said.
Kael nodded.
"I did not ask."
"Good."
"But you stood in front of the boy."
Orrek looked at Renn, who was trying not to stare at the bodies.
"He is small."
"That is all?"
"That is enough."
Kael felt the Sovereign Root quiet again, but not empty. It had noticed.
So had he.
Above the dead cart lane, pressure rain kept falling, washing thin blood into the gutters. Behind them, Malrec wanted Kael alive. Ahead of them, every debt Kael touched seemed to bleed. Vaela crouched by Orrek despite herself and wrapped his torn palm with a strip cut from a dead man’s sleeve.
"Hold still."
"You are bad at kindness."
"I am excellent at not letting useful idiots bleed out."
"That is kindness with a knife hat."
Renn gave a tiny laugh, then covered his mouth as if laughter might cost ration. Kael watched Vaela tie the cloth tight enough to make Orrek bare his teeth. She did not soften. She did not comfort. Still, her hands were fast and careful, avoiding the worst torn meat around his knuckles.
Orrek noticed too.
"You done pretending you do not care?"
Vaela yanked the knot.
"Ask again and I open it."
"Fair."
The dead cart lane smelled worse after the fight, but the group stood closer than before. Not loyal. Not safe. Closer. Kael looked at the tag in Orrek’s fist.
Debt did not vanish because a man refused to kneel.
It followed with names attached.
And now the pit had learned Kael would stop for names.