Chapter VII The City Between Two Fires
«Borders are not lines on a map. They are the place where men learn that one step in the wrong direction can cost them their lives.»
The city had no walls. That was the first thing Estus noticed as he approached, and the observation produced in him a mixture of contempt and curiosity. A city without walls was a city that trusted in something more than stone to protect itself: in an agreement, in a treaty, or in the simple convenience of both empires needing it alive. Border cities usually worked that way: they existed not because they were strong, but because they were useful. Markets where Alsius merchants sold hides and iron to Ignis traders in exchange for grain and wine. Meeting points for spies who pretended to be travelers and travelers who pretended not to be spies. Road junctions where information was worth more than gold and where everyone had something to sell and something to hide.
The streets were narrow and loud. Houses of grey stone and dark wood pressed against each other on both sides of cobbled alleyways where two people could barely walk side by side. Patched canvas awnings stretched from wall to wall, creating an intermittent ceiling that plunged the street into perpetual shadow. Beneath them, commerce bustled with the frenetic energy of places that live off transit: butchers dismembering carcasses hanging from iron hooks, bakers pulling steaming loaves from brick ovens, tanners whose smell —acrid, penetrating, impossible to ignore— contaminated entire blocks.
Soldiers. There were soldiers everywhere. Not in formation, not marching with the discipline of an army in motion, but scattered through the crowd like loose pieces on a disordered board. Some bore the insignia of Alsius —a stylized snowflake on a blue background—, others carried no insignia at all, and others bore a symbol Estus could not identify at first glance. All shared the same expression: the tense vigilance of those who are in a place that does not belong to them but from which they cannot leave.
The boy walked at his side. No longer behind, but at his side, or nearly: half a step back, close enough not to be in the way but near enough that anyone watching them might assume they were together. Estus noticed but said nothing. He had more important things to think about.
He needed supplies. He needed information. And he needed to avoid drawing attention, which, given his height, the scars on his face and the sword he carried on his back, was like asking a bonfire not to give off light.
⁂
They found an inn. Or something resembling one: a two-storey building with a wooden sign hanging over the door like a loose tooth, with a beer jug carved in relief and the establishment's name erased by years of rain. Inside, the air smelled of grease, stale beer and too many bodies in too small a space. Rough wooden tables occupied every corner, and at them huddled merchants, travelers, off-duty soldiers and the inevitable midday drunks that existed in every inn in every corner of the world.
Estus sat in a corner, back to the wall, with a line of sight to the door. A habit. Not a choice, but an instinct branded into his behavior by years of sleeping in places where death could enter through any crack.
The boy sat across from him. He looked at him with those eyes too large for his face, waiting for something. Instructions? Food? Confirmation that he had permission to be there? Estus offered him none of the three.
—Let us make something clear —he said, and his voice cut through the inn's murmur like the edge of a knife—. If you want to keep walking with me, you are going to prove you are not dead weight.
The boy looked at him without understanding.
—First: no complaining. Not about heat, cold, hunger or exhaustion. If something hurts, keep quiet. If you are afraid, swallow it. Understood?
The boy nodded.
—Second: no stealing. Not food, not coins, nothing. The next time you try to put your hand on something that does not belong to you, I will not intervene. They will break your fingers or cut off your hand, and I will keep walking.
The boy swallowed. He nodded again, more slowly.
—Third: you stay silent. You do not speak unless I speak to you. You do not ask questions. You do not tell stories. You do not try to make conversation. If you open your mouth for anything other than breathing or eating, I leave you in the next ditch. Understood?
—Yes —said the boy, with a voice that was barely a thread.
—Good.
Estus signaled to the innkeeper. He ordered bread, cheese and water. When the food arrived, he placed it in the center of the table without touching it. He looked at the boy.
—Eat.
The boy threw himself at the food with his usual voracity. Estus watched him for a moment —dirty fingers tearing pieces of bread, teeth sinking into the cheese with a desperation that had nothing childlike in it— and then looked away.
He felt nothing. Or so he told himself.
While he waited for the boy to finish, his attention moved through the inn with the same mechanical alertness with which he evaluated any new space. It was then that he saw it, carved into the central wooden beam that supported the ceiling, half erased by years of smoke and grease but still visible to anyone who knew how to look: a lion pierced by a sword. Not the official shield of either of the two empires whose border crossed the city. Something different. Something older. Someone had carved it there long ago, with the precision of one who does not engrave an ornament but a signal. Estus stared at it for an instant, with that same feeling that had grazed him at the guillotine years before —something between recognition and unease— and then looked away. It was not the moment.
⁂
They left the inn and moved through the city. Estus needed to get a sense of the place: the exits, the surveillance points, the density of soldiers, the level of control. It was a mercenary's habit, an automatic evaluation he performed every time he entered a new environment, like an animal that sniffs out the territory before deciding if it is safe to stay.
The boy followed in silence. He obeyed the third rule with a rigidity that seemed painful: he walked with pressed lips, tense jaw, eyes fixed on Estus's back, making no sound other than that of his feet on the cobblestones. But his body constantly betrayed him. He stumbled on the uneven paving stones. He stopped to catch his breath every few steps, hands on knees, breathing labored. And his eyes —those eyes that tried to be obedient and still— strayed ceaselessly toward the food stalls, toward the fruit piled on carts, toward the smell of roasted meat drifting from the taverns.
Estus set him a test. He pointed to a bale that a merchant had left against a wall and told him to carry it to the end of the street. The bale probably weighed more than the boy himself. He tried. He lifted it with a groan he swallowed before it reached his lips —obeying the first rule—, took three steps, four, five, and collapsed under the weight with a dry thud that tore a stifled cry from him.
He got up. He tried again. He fell.
He got up. He tried again. He fell.
At the fifth fall, Estus picked up the bale with one hand and returned it to its place. He said nothing. He did not need to. Both knew the boy had failed.
But both also knew he had not given up.
And that —that stubborn, absurd, almost suicidal persistence in his determination— produced in Estus something he did not want to name. It was not admiration. It was not tenderness. It was perhaps the recognition of something familiar, a quality he himself had once possessed, in another life, when he was a boy who walked the streets of a miserable district with the blind conviction that things could be different.
⁂
He saw them before they saw him.
Four soldiers entered by the main street with the unmistakable cadence of those accustomed to people stepping aside at their approach. Their armor was different from that of the other soldiers who moved through the city: heavier, more polished, with a dark finish that absorbed light rather than reflecting it. And on each man's chest, engraved in the metal with a precision that betrayed expert hands, gleamed a symbol Estus knew far too well.
A lion pierced by a sword.
The same one he had seen at the guillotine. The same one he had just found carved into the inn's beam. Not Ignis's official shield —that was a simple lion, rampant, on a field of gules— but something different. Something that kept appearing where it should not, with a persistence that was beginning to look too much like intent.
Imperial soldiers. Elite, judging by the equipment. They were not the local garrison nor the border guards. They were something more. Something that should not be in a merchants' city a hundred kilometers from any important fortress.
Estus stopped. He leaned against the wall of an alley, in the shadow, where his figure blended with the dimness. The boy pressed against his side without needing to be told, with a survival instinct he had probably learned on the streets before their paths crossed.
The soldiers walked with the deliberate slowness of those who are in no hurry and want everyone to know it. Their eyes moved through the crowd with professional attention, evaluating every face, every body, every hand that might conceal a weapon. People stepped aside at their approach with a mixture of respect and fear that Estus recognized immediately: the deference of the weak before the strong, the peasant's bow before the lord, the submission that empires cultivated with the same care with which a gardener tends his flowers.
One of the soldiers turned his head toward the alley where Estus was concealed.
Their eyes met.
It was an instant. A single instant that stretched like a taut wire between them. The soldier was young —younger than his armor suggested—, with an angular face and a scar that crossed his forehead. And in his eyes, during that instant, Estus saw something that froze his blood: recognition.
Not the recognition of someone who sees an old friend nor of someone who identifies a wanted criminal. It was something more subtle: the gaze of someone who has heard a description and has just found the man who matches it. The soldier's eyes moved across the scars on his face, the sword at his back, the breadth of his shoulders, and Estus could read in them the mental process: this is him. This is the one they speak of.
Someone had talked. Someone had described what had happened in the village —the fight against the bandits, the ability of a single man to kill twenty— and that description had reached ears that should not have heard it. The imperial general, perhaps. The same man whose emblem these soldiers wore.
The soldier said nothing. He did not stop. He did not point. He simply kept walking with his companions, as if he had seen nothing, but his head turned slightly before disappearing around a corner, and in that last glance Estus read a promise: we have seen you. We know you are here.
The air grew heavier.
Estus remained motionless in the alley, his hand closed around his sword's pommel and his jaw so tight his teeth ached. The boy at his side looked at him with very wide eyes, not understanding what had just happened but sensing the tension with that sixth sense children have for detecting danger.
⁂
What he saw next stopped him cold.
He was looking for the city's exit when he saw them again. The same imperial soldiers, now crossing an open plaza where merchants were dismantling their stalls at the end of the day. And among them —walking with a naturalness that was impossible, absurd, contradictory with everything Estus knew or thought he knew— was she.
The elf.
She was not a prisoner. She was not being escorted. She wore no chains or shackles, nor the resigned expression of someone who has been captured. She wore imperial equipment —a light armor of leather and metal, the same dark color as the soldiers', with the lion and sword engraved on the left shoulder— and moved among them with the familiarity of someone who had long been part of the group. Her hair, that long, pale hair that in the forest had fallen like a luminous cascade, was pulled back in a tight braid that gave her a martial, hard appearance, completely different from the ethereal and compassionate creature who had touched his face beside a campfire.
Estus stopped. His body stopped before his mind, anchored to the ground by a confusion so profound it paralyzed even the reflexes that never abandoned him.
The elf turned her head.
She saw him.
For three seconds —three seconds that stretched until they seemed like hours— their gazes met across the plaza. Those blue eyes, the same ones that had wept while touching him, the same ones that had seen inside him things no one else had seen, looked at him now with an expression that was a wall: closed, impenetrable, empty of all the empathy and tenderness he remembered. There was no recognition in those eyes. No apology, no explanation, no shame. Only a gaze that said: yes, it is me. And no, I am not going to explain anything.
Then she looked away.
She kept walking with the soldiers, without altering her pace, without turning back, without giving any sign that the encounter had affected her in the slightest. The imperials turned a corner and disappeared into the city's narrow streets as if they had never been there.
Estus stood motionless in the center of the plaza.
Inside his head, questions piled up like rubble after a collapse. What was an elf —a supposedly extinct race, a living myth— doing wearing the empire's armor? How long had she been serving the men who had destroyed her people, her race, her world? Had she always been a spy? An infiltrator? Had that encounter in the forest, those tears, that touch that shredded his defenses like wet paper, been a calculated act?
He had no answers. And the worst of it was not lacking them. The worst was that a part of him —a small, weak part, buried under layers of mistrust and cynicism— wanted to believe there was an explanation. That not everything had been a lie. That that creature who had wept feeling his pain could not be the same one who marched under the banner of an empire built on suffering.
He clenched his fists until his knuckles went white.
It was not his concern. She was a stranger. A brief and confusing chapter from a night in a forest, nothing more. He owed her nothing and asked her for nothing. The world was full of betrayals, of double faces, of people who were one thing in the darkness and something else entirely in the light of day. This was no different.
It was no different.
And yet, his hands kept trembling.
⁂
The rest of the afternoon passed in a haze of narrow streets and anonymous faces. Estus bought supplies —bread, dried meat, a water skin— with the few coins he had left. He spoke to no one more than strictly necessary. His answers were monosyllables, his gestures minimal, his expression that of someone who is not really there, who walks among people but exists somewhere else, an interior place to which no one has access.
The boy followed in silence. He had obeyed all the rules for hours. He had not complained. He had not spoken. He had not tried to steal. But his body spoke for him: he dragged his feet, his shoulders were slumped, and every few steps his legs buckled slightly before recovering their vertical, like a building that sways but refuses to fall.
When they reached the city's eastern gate —a stone arch without a door, open to the road that continued toward the northeast, toward lands that were already more Alsius than anyone's— the sun was low and shadows had taken over the streets.
Estus stopped beneath the arch. He looked at the road stretching before him: a long, dusty straight that disappeared between low hills covered in dry grass. Beyond those hills, the world continued. It always continued. It never stopped, never took pity, never offered a moment of peace that was not contaminated by the promise of what was to come.
He looked at the boy.
The child stood at his side, trembling with exhaustion, face dirty and eyes half closed with tiredness. He was barely keeping himself upright. His lips, cracked and dry, moved slightly, as if he were praying or counting the beats of his own heart to make sure he was still alive.
Estus watched him for a long moment. A moment in which something moved inside him, something slow and heavy, like a stone rolling downhill after years of stillness. It was not compassion. Not exactly. It was something more primitive: the recognition of a will that refused to break, even when the body containing it was already broken.
He sighed. It was a sigh so brief it could have been mistaken for a normal exhalation, but it contained the weight of a small surrender, of a minimal concession wrenched from a fortress unaccustomed to yielding.
—If you are going to keep walking with me, stop complaining.
The boy looked at him. And on that exhausted, dirty, gaunt face appeared something Estus had not seen in a long time. Not a smile —the boy was too tired to smile— but a relaxing. A loosening of the muscles in the jaw, the shoulders, the whole body, as if the tension accumulated over days of uncertainty was released all at once. It was not joy. It was relief.
—I haven't been complaining —said the boy, with a thread of a voice.
Estus did not respond. He adjusted the sword on his back, turned up the collar of his jacket against the afternoon wind and began walking east, leaving the city behind.
The boy followed.
This time, they walked together.
Not side by side —Estus remained one step ahead, always one step ahead, as if he needed to maintain that minimum distance to remind himself that this was not a relationship, not a bond, nothing more than two people walking in the same direction—. But the distance between them had shortened. It was no longer thirty paces. Nor twenty. Nor ten.
It was three.
And in the silence that enveloped them —a silence that was no longer hostile nor uncomfortable but simply the silence of two people who have exhausted words and discovered that sometimes silence says more— something had changed. Something small, almost imperceptible, like the first crack in a stone wall: barely visible, seemingly insignificant, but enough for water to filter through with time and the wall, eventually, to yield.
Estus did not know it. Or perhaps he knew but refused to admit it.
The road continued. And for the first time in years, he did not walk it alone.