Chapter 4 – Smoke Among the Weeds
The fog returned the next morning.
It clung to the rooftops, pale and wet, muting the cries of street hawkers and the grind of cart wheels along uneven cobblestone. Crossbridge looked older in the fog—tired, as if the city itself was exhaling.
Vale rose early.
He washed in cold basin water and dressed without sound. The innkeeper had already vanished downstairs. The smell of boiled barley and sour milk drifted up through the floorboards.
He had a plan.
It wasn't much—just questions to ask, streets to walk, names to remember. But it was more than most men here carried with them.
Outside, the streets were already awake.
He passed a chimney-sweep coughing into his sleeve, a washerwoman slapping frozen linens against a rail, and a man on crutches mumbling to himself about "flame-faced birds in the river." No one looked twice at Vale.
He walked east.
Toward Wren's Hollow, where the buildings grew lower and the streets thinner, like veins leading to a heart gone black.
---
He found Tallis sweeping the stoop of a tannery. His face was flushed with cold and smoke. His fingers were wrapped in ragged cloth.
"Tallis," Vale said simply.
The boy looked up, surprised. "You came."
"You said you worked mornings."
Tallis nodded, leaning the broom against the doorframe. "This place stinks worse than dead dogs, but they pay a half-pence an hour and throw in crusts. Want to come in?"
Vale didn't move. "Walk with me instead."
"Won't be missed?"
Tallis glanced at the door, then shrugged. "They won't notice till lunch."
They walked west, toward the edge of Wren's Hollow.
Here, the city changed.
The cobble turned to hard-packed earth. The buildings leaned inward like gossiping drunks. Chickens wandered loose across narrow alleys. Everything smelled of soot and steam and the strange iron tang of burned hair.
Tallis kicked a stone.
"My brother says I should stay away from this part of Crossbridge," he muttered.
"He worries for you?"
"He worries for appearances. He's a clerk. Thinks everything's solved with a wax seal and two signatures."
Vale didn't answer.
They passed a narrow alley, where a beggar boy sat cradling his arm. The limb was swollen, raw, and half-wrapped in dirty gauze. Flies clung to the wound like petals.
Tallis slowed. "He's been like that two days."
"No one helps him?" Vale asked.
"People tried. But he screams if you get close. Said he was 'touched.'"
Vale stopped. "Touched by what?"
The boy glanced over his shoulder, voice dropping low. "Some say he got cursed. Others say he's got the Weep."
Vale crouched beside the boy.
The child flinched, but didn't speak. The bandages were half-soaked in blackened blood, skin puffed in strange ridges beneath. The flesh looked burned—not by heat, but by something stranger. As if it had twisted inward.
A woman passing by crossed herself and hissed, "Don't linger near him! Afflicted ones draw things."
Vale stood again. "What things?"
She didn't answer. She just walked faster.
---
Later, in a low-sheltered court tucked behind a smithy, Vale and Tallis shared a heel of rye and a chipped tin of smoked salt pork. Vale let the boy talk.
About Windenhall.
About the ferrymen that took bribes in feathers. About the woman who read bones and once guessed the color of his thoughts.
Vale watched him, saying little.
Eventually, the talk drifted back to the city.
"You ever see one?" Tallis asked.
Vale raised a brow.
"An Afflicted. A real one. Not just sick. Someone… strange."
Vale said nothing.
Tallis looked uncomfortable. "Back in Windenhall, we had this boy. Always quiet. Nothing wrong with him. But when he got scared, the wind moved. Like shutters banging and straw lifting. Not just once. Every time."
"Did they kill him?"
"No. He vanished. Same night the dogs started howling."
Vale's voice was calm. "You believe he had a gift?"
"I think people who change the world… get changed by it first."
---
By afternoon, the light grew watery and thin.
The streets thickened with smoke—coal, mostly. Some wood. A few factories had begun burning peat to save coin, though everyone said it made the lungs rot.
Vale and Tallis turned back toward the central district, crossing over into Brickturn Lane.
That's where they found the riot.
Or what was left of it.
Six men in blood-streaked shirts were being dragged into a cart by Watchmen in long coats. One bled from his temple. Another was missing two fingers.
Tallis pulled back. "What happened?"
A vendor hissed, "They struck a merchant's boy. Said he shorted them flour weights. Merchant sent the Redcoats on 'em."
"Redcoats?" Vale asked.
"Watchdogs. Paid muscle. Not real law. Just fists in borrowed uniforms."
The cart rumbled off.
Vale turned slowly. On a nearby wall, painted in fading red letters, was a single word: LIMED.
He didn't understand it. But others did.
A man beside him muttered, "Another one chalked. Someone's stirring them up again."
"Stirring who?" Vale asked.
The man looked at him carefully. "The ones who burn. The ones who don't belong. You keep your head down, stranger."
Then he walked off.
---
That night, Vale returned to his room at the Nine-Tooth. He opened the shutter just enough to let in the dying light. On the windowsill sat a single page he'd taken from the archive—a census list, torn down the middle.
Three names had been underlined.
Each one marked DECEASED – cause unknown.
Each one noted as residents of Wren's Hollow.
Vale stared at the page for a long time.
His fingers drifted to his wrist again. The black line there pulsed—soft, slow. A heartbeat not quite his own. He pressed against it.
And again, a whisper behind the eyes.
A breath.
Something waiting.
But not yet.
Not until he understood what this place feared. Not until he saw what they tried to erase.
He blew out the candle and let the dark settle in like an old friend.