Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
There are no ranks or titles in Bassuras, but a Bassuras kid - any Hellcatch kid - develops a keen and immediate understanding of power.
What matters: who comes running if you get jumped in the street; does anyone come at all, or do you scrape yourself off the ground and - with your aches and bruises, and your hair saturated with red dust - keep walking?
What matters: if you go up to a caravan trader to have a nosy poke at their wares, and they take a look at your clothes, are they going to smile, or shoo, or reach for the knife in their boot?
What matters: when you're clambering up a roadway arch to unhook a lantern that's never worked anyway, and you fall off, and a Crawler guard lifts you up by the scruff of your shirt and demands to know what the fuck you think you're doing - is it going to help if you say your name?
By every such measure, a trader's kid should have one up on a salvage yard kid, who should have one up on a Greymoore kid, who shouldn't have one up on anyone. But it's a lot more complicated than that. What if nobody's kid from Krook's Salvage makes friends with nobody's kid from Greymoore, and sneaks them flatbread and oily chickpea fritters when they're hungry (always, Ashton is always hungry), and tips them off about any side job that's going in the yard? The flows of power flex and change; the kids stick together, they grow savvier, they survive.
"Power is a bit like hot metal when it looks solid but it's actually slowwwwly flowing?" Milo tells Ashton one time. They're sharing an evening meal on the roof of the foundry after a day of hauling broken-up parts of salvaged machinery (for Ashton), and carefully disassembling what might have been the voice box of an ancient automaton (for Milo).
"How so?" asks Ashton around a slice of goat jerky he's patiently chewing. The jerky is as tough as a blacksmith's work apron, and just as appetising, but the pair of them hadn't been quick enough to snag anything better that night.
And even though Milo suspects that Ashton is only half-listening, they explain their observations about pecking orders, and how you can make them annoyingly complicated when a few of you stick together. You can be somebodies together, even if you start out as nobody at all.
"Huh, that's really smart," says Ashton. He grabs a handful of dried flatbread chips, crams them into his mouth, washes them down with watery milk that's just beginning to turn.
Milo doesn't say anything. They pretend to stare into the distance, into an orange column of dust swirling its way across the valley, way beyond the city walls. In truth they're watching Ashton eat, trying to be subtle about it, and worrying at the edges of a hole in the knee of their breeches.
Ashton reaches across the remnants of their shared supper and presses down Milo's fingers as they pull at frayed cotton threads around the perimeter of the hole.
"Hey," says Ashton. "Milo, hey. What's the matter?"
He always notices when something is the matter.
"Takemewithyou," the words spill right out of Milo’s mouth, even though they'd sworn to themself to keep it cool. They brave a look at Ashton; their friend grimaces like they've smelled a tanner's shop. "I know you're leaving some day. Take me with you. Please. Please."
"Where did that come from? We're a long-ass way from being able to go anywhere."
Milo knows this is true; you can't just up and march out of Bassuras, even if no one exactly cares whether you stay or go. You need gear, you need skills that will get you hired to work a well-defended caravan, or else you need to be really good at avoiding Crawlers, dust storms, sink holes, and who knows what else out there in the Valley. Most of all, you need a group.
The Greymoore kids, Ashton’s friends, make a group together. Milo - not a Greymoore, and years younger than the youngest of them - is not unwelcome to visit or hang around, but nor do they belong.
Milo says: "You'll be ready one day, maybe soon. Please, Ashton. I won't slow you down."
"Look," says Ashton awkwardly, obviously choosing their words as though they're talking to a little child. "It's stupid dangerous out there. Who the fuck knows if we'll make it. You're what, ten?"
"Eleven, I think."
"You see a lot of eleven-year-olds running with the Crawlers?"
"Maybe they should," says Milo bitterly. "Maybe the rest of them wouldn't be such dicks." They turn away to glare at the sun, its light painted orange as it filters through the dust of the valley. The burning in their eyes can be blamed on the light, if Milo just stares into it for long enough.
Ashton reaches over to ruffle Milo's hair, but they duck sideways and swat at his hand. "Go away!"
"Oh, stop that! You're going to throw a tantrum, because I don't want you to fucking die?"
Milo glowers at Ashton, who raises their hands, palms out.
"Peace, kid. We'll come and get you. OK? Just hang on for five years, six. You'll grow a bit. We'll maybe have a base by then, in King's Fall or, I don't know. Jrusar."
"Yeah, right!" It's not that Milo doesn't believe that Ashton would want to come back for them. They even believe that he would try his best. It's just that Milo understands how many separate things have to go right for the promise to have a chance to be kept, and none of the things are even slightly in Ashton's power to control. It's baffling how Ashton doesn't understand this.
"I'm serious, Milo. We'll come and pick you up. Promise."
***
Ashton doesn't get to keep their promise, and of course it's through no fault of theirs. By the time the Nobodies walk into Jrusar, five years and many dusty miles later, Milo has already been living there for some time. Milo has a broken guildsman's medallion in the back of a bench drawer, plenty of scars, and a profound dislike of being out in the daylight - all honestly earned along their way here. They don't think about all of that so much, because in addition Milo has a web of connections, affections, favours, and friendships - and at the nexus of it all sits a workshop, with sturdy scaffolding built up all around it, and colourful fabric walls that delineate a few cozy if not especially plush living spaces where Milo's friends are always welcome to crash. The entire structure has Milo's name on the door, not that the wooden tablet with "Krook House" spelled in neat pyrography marks is necessary in order to find them. Their maker's mark - their own, not the guild's, fuck the guild - is known up and down the Fownsee Hollow and a good way beyond. The traders in Elder's Post call them "Mx Krook", and many give them first refusal on any interesting junk that turns up there. Some even bring it around to Krook House, saving Milo a nerve-wracking trip outdoors.
Jrusar is miles and years away from their beginnings in Bassuras. Jrusar's ranks and titles are firmly written in its laws, and its customs, and the geography of its spires. As far as Jrusar is concerned, a former salvage yard kid and a gaggle of their Greymoore pals are about as respectable as each other, and as everyone else who makes their home in the Fownsee Hollow. And yet, isn't it weird, Milo thinks, how here in the Hollow the lot of them have neatly fitted into a new, complicated, constantly updating pecking order? They fit in without even trying, as though they'd carried the pieces of this order with them in their packs. There's space for them all in the Hollow - a world that to outsiders looks closed, but is actually porous, people and objects and rumour travelling in and out, indiscernible to those who walk the surface of the spires.
Milo is able to put in a good word with a neighbour or two, and get the Nobodies some of their first Jrusar jobs, each shadier than the last. Together, they add a couple more sections to the scaffolding that makes up the Krook House. They all think it hilarious that the little kid Ashton used to hang out with back in Bassuras has not only made it to the big city before the rest of them arrived, but has also become their benefactor.
Milo isn't surprised by this development at all. They understand how Jrusar works, especially those parts of Jrusar that are within the spires, rather than on the outside.
They understand Jrusar, and that is why, when everything goes bad in the space of one horrifying night, Milo is the first to realise that the Nobodies can't stay in the city long beyond sunrise. Milo is desperately, catastrophically focused on trying to piece their oldest friend together with glass and gold, so they leave the rest of the Nobodies to arrive at the stark necessity of flight without their help. By the time the sun is rising over Jrusar, invisible from the Hollow, Ashton is still unconscious on Milo's workbench, his brain casting rainbows on the walls and ceiling through solidifying layers of glass. Milo - half-hysterical, half-delirious, and fully terrified - doesn't stop working on Ashton's golden scars for long enough to say their goodbyes.
CHAPTER 1
Six months later
MILO
Milo's impeccable internal clock jolts them half an hour after Ashton had limped out of the door for their self-prescribed daily dose of exercise consisting of a wobbly stroll around their immediate neighbourhood. ("Twenty minutes, Ashton, promise me, I don't need to wonder if you got into a fight with some drunken asshole or fell off a stair.")
Milo pokes their head out of the door, looks left and right along the walkway that winds around the wall of the Hollow, and immediately spots Ashton - not returning to the Krook House, but sitting on the floor a hundred or so yards away, on the stretch of the walkway where there are no living structures. Ashton's back is pressed to the rock wall; they're staring up at the cloudy fug suspended between them and the roof of the Hollow. They're holding a beer stein - gripping it in both hands as though it's about to make an escape.
"Heyyyy," says Ashton without turning their head. "That was more than twenty minutes. I apologise. I needed a..." They trail off, and Milo quietly notes another instance of Ashton apparently forgetting they were talking. When Milo gets close enough, they discover that the stein contains not beer, but a pint of light, steaming tea.
"Do you want to come home?" Milo asks, careful not to sound annoyed or petulant. "Want to lean on my shoulder, or something?"
"Huh? No, I can walk. Just. Ma Rahela gave me this tea, but she wants the cup back. Didn't want to make two trips."
"Ma Rahela gave this to you?" Milo peers ahead towards the series of walkways and ladders known as The Wobbly Stair, to where the old seamstress sits with her stitching in the entryway of her rickety wood-and-canvas pavilion. She is always perfectly placed to give the passers-by her opinions on whatever's on her mind, and - as far as Milo knows - has never before expressed any interest in being neighbourly.
"She said I looked like a headstone from her aunt's grave. Do you think she's coming on to me?" Ashton winks at Milo with their good eye, and takes a long gulp of tea. "Fuuuuck, that's sweet, she put honey in it. Do you want some?"
Milo shakes their head. "Let's get you home. I'll take the cup back to her when you're done."
Ashton doesn't argue. They let Milo help them to their feet, then stand there with their hand on the wall, catching their breath as though after a long climb. "Fuck," they say. "I need to do more walking, or we'll never leave. This is fucked up. Do you mind bringing the tea? I've already spilled it just getting here."
"Of course."
Milo lets Ashton walk first so that he can set the pace, and also so that they can use this chance to examine their repairs in motion. The golden scars stretch and contract with Ashton's skin, and Milo allows themself a little vain thrill at how striking the work looks, how smoothly stone and metal move together.
At home, Ashton doesn't head for their room, but slides onto the bench at the common table - way too big for two, painfully empty of the Nobodies' clutter. They immediately extend their hand after the tea, and take several gulps.
"Ma Rahela says it's good for sleeping," they say, dragging a tired hand across their eyes.
"You didn't mention you had insomnia," Milo says, instantly alarmed. Anything that sounds like a new turn in the state of Ashton's brain gives Milo an instant jolt of alertness. "How much sleep have you missed?"
"Not insomnia. It's just. For those dreams." Ashton looks away, which with them is an obvious sign they're trying to hold something back. After a moment, just as Milo is ready to push for more, Ashton changes their mind and looks up again. "The woman we robbed. She's in my dreams, kind of a lot."
Milo nods, and stays quiet about their own frequent, varied nightmares about the creepy house, the botched job, and their friend's shattered body on their work bench. Instead they ask:
"Can I check out that tea?" They reach for the stein and give Ma Rahela's concoction a sniff. "Yeah, I know this one, it's valerian. It's probably good she added lots of honey, otherwise it tastes like mouldy sleeves."
Before the knock on the head Ashton would for sure have told Milo to stop sucking on sleeves, but instead they just ask:
"And it's good for sleeping, do you think?"
"Maybe. When I was having the whole thing -" Milo gestures in the air, which Ashton will know is referring to their messy break with the guild, "valerian on its own didn't do a lot. The apothecary then gave me some pixie's yawn to mix in with it, and that sort of worked for a few nights. But I'm not you. Pouring glass down my skull would have killed me, so who knows what the sleepy tea will do for you."
Ashton sits in silence for a little while, staring at their own fingers drum against the tabletop.
"So listen, Milo. Have you got any of that pixie's yap left over?"
ASHTON
The effect of the tea is not just relaxing, but apparently also a bit of a painkiller, because Ashton drifts into sleep more at peace with the world than they've felt in forever.
Beyond the thick rug nailed to some planks that makes up the wall of the Krook House, the Hollow is passing from evening into night. Nighttime workers' boots shake walkways and ladders as people move out onto the streets; kids' voices fade away as their minders convince them to go the fuck to sleep; then, as Ashton drifts, they hear a snatch of drunken song, a quarrel from one direction, a shameless moan of pleasure from another. It's peaceful, and oddly beautiful in how familiar it all is, even after living here for only about a year.
Ashton's awareness of their body melts into static. They're forgetting how to know things. Then, blissful quiet. They're weightless, not rock but cloud; they're in a soft nest; they are a soft nest, a place to nest in, soft; they are -
A woman's voice: "Sedatives? Don't you dare. Snap out of it!"
Loud, loud; as though she’s yelling inside Ashton's skull. She's both inside and outside - there she is, standing in front of them, glowering. No, not in front - she's above; she is a giant: long, thin, immense, Ashton can barely see over the polished tops of her shoes; she bends at the waist, peers down at them with dark angry eyes; one finger the size of a tree trunk reaches down, presses on the top of Ashton's head, pushes them into hot churning earth. The ground is boiling; Ashton is sunk to the neck in a froth of sand and pebbles. They lift their face to take a gulp of air, then the sole of the woman's shoe bears down on them like a toppling wall; the earth will chew and swallow and absorb them, they will die, they're dying, they're already dead -
"Wake up! Wake uuppp! Ashton, you need to turn onto your side, I can't turn you, you need to turn, I can't -"
Cold water, like a branding iron against their brain. Ashton sucks in air, and coughs, and without thinking helps Milo roll them onto their side. The pain in their head is enormous, drowning out all other aches.
"Hurts," Ashton manages to squeeze through their teeth.
"I've got you!" Milo's hands disappear as they dash away. Even though Milo is skinny and light on their feet, their every step jolts the floor, which jolts Ashton's cot, which tolls their head like a temple bell. Pain crests, and Ashton finds that they wake up for a second time, having presumably blacked out. This time, Milo is holding a spoonful of chalky mixture to their lips. Ashton swallows the medicine without question.
A lifetime passes, or maybe twenty minutes. A warm cat's tongue of pain relief slowly laps up his back, starting deep in a muscle at the top of his butt cheek that he hadn't even realised was seized up. Warmth washes up the ribs to the left of his spine, reaches under his shoulder blade, trickles up his neck. The medicine - poppy sweat, Milo calls it, apparently they'd learned to mix it when they apprenticed in that fucking mining guild - only just takes the edge off the pain any more. It also makes him queasy as fuck. But it's better than nothing.
Without looking, Ashton knows that Milo is sitting on the floor somewhere nearby. "What time is it?" he asks.
"Twenty minutes past midnight," Milo says immediately. Their voice sounds high and tense. They specify, "Still the same day. You've been asleep for an hour and a quarter. Then I heard you grunt and cough like something was ch-ch - " The words turn into a sob.
"Choking me, I know," Ashton says. His tongue is so tired. "A really fucking awful dream."
"Was it because of pixie's yawn tea? I bet it was because of the tea. I'm really sorry, Ashton."
"It probably wasn't." The woman's voice: Sedatives? Don't you dare. "I should probably not drink any more of that though."
"Yeah, no," says Milo. "Maybe instead I'll tell you a story next time you're scared to sleep."
Laughing takes an effort, but Ashton laughs anyway, feeling warm and fond.
"I'm serious," says Milo. "I can tell you one now if you want."
"Please," says Ashton, smiling in the dark. They forget sometimes that Milo was never at the home with them. Maybe kids at the mining guild also huddled together around the biggest kid's cot, telling dumb stories until either somebody cried or everybody passed out.
"OK. So, one time the Owlbearman was visiting Ank'harel, and he was walking past this gambling house..."
***
It's the next night, and in Ashton's dream Milo is carrying Ashton on their back. Off to the side, the woman they robbed silently watches.
When they were kids - when Milo was a kid, and Ashton not so much any more - Ashton had delighted in lifting Milo bodily off the ground and depositing them on high places. Up a tree was a favourite, or on top of a stack of crates, or the busted-up, shallowly slanted roof of Greymoore gatehouse. Milo laughed and wriggled, trying to wrestle their way free, or at least land a good kick, and when that didn't work they'd complain: "Ashtonnnn! Come onnn!" In response Ashton would put a hand to their ear, as though trying to hear somebody yelling for them in the distance: "What's that? Did somebody say my name?"
Ashton never once dropped them.
They both thought this game was hilarious. They had not remotely tired of it by the day an emissary from the silver guild of Kamath came to the salvage yard to trade for apprentices. Milo got packed off to Evishi, loaded onto a cart that carried two chief exports of Bassuras: crates of salvaged machine parts, and young persons with a knack for tinkering.
One of the first things Ashton did when the Nobodies found Milo in Jrusar - after "Holy shit, look at you!", and "No way, you made it!" - very nearly the first thing Ashton did was lift Milo off their feet and hold them high above the ground. "Come on, Ashton!" Milo protested, laughing, "You're gonna drop me, you large goon!" Ashton said: "I coulda sworn somebody said my name!" And it was as though the preceding five years had melted away.
In the dream, Milo is carrying Ashton on their back like a yoke, legs dangling over one shoulder and arms over the other. The woman they robbed watches them from a large wingback chair; she is scribbling notes in a book balanced on the chair's wide arm. Milo is out of breath; Ashton feels their shoulders tremble with effort - yet they forge ahead. It's completely stupid and can't work. "This is stupid, you can't haul me like that," says Ashton. And Milo says, what choice is there? Ashton says, "Set me down, fucker, I can walk." And Milo says, I wish you could, I really wish you could, but you can't. In the dream, Ashton knows they're right.
He wakes up furious. He doesn't know why.
Something clatters in the next room; there's a sound of breaking pottery. Milo yelps, "Matron's tit basket!" - and Ashton blinks a few times trying to process the swear, which he's sure Milo has never said before. He opens his mouth to yell, "her what?" but the dream he's already forgetting has left a murky undertow of anger just under the surface of his thinking. As he tries to untangle memories from dreams, and dreams from the present day, the moment to question the swear has gone. Sourceless anger remains.
A short while later - as Ashton is marshalling their fucked-up body through a getting-out-of-bed ritual that now requires way too much care and focus - Milo comes into their room. They're carrying a bowl of rice porridge that's cooked practically to mush in one hand, and a clay mug of weak, unchallenging tea in the other.
"Dropped the mug, the handle broke off, sorry," they say. "Any more dreams? Here's some breakfast, or actually lunch." All of this comes out in a rush, in the same breath, as though Milo is trying to get out everything that's in their mind before they forget.
"Can you fucking knock?" says Ashton, letting their irritation simmer over. "Or like, yell when you come in?"
Milo's cheeks darken. "Yeah, yeah, of course. I'm sorry." They set the food down on the painted beer crate that serves both as Ashton's shelving and their table. "Do you want some time to yourself, shall I -"
"No! It's fine." Ashton lifts the spoon out of the porridge and lets it drool the goop back into the bowl. "Let me guess, no sugar, and no butter neither."
To their immense satisfaction, Milo doesn't take this one like a martyr, but instead rolls their eyes as they plop down cross-legged onto the floor (a position Ashton can't yet manage). "I can get butter and sugar, and a bucket for when it all comes back up."
"Oh, fuck off and stop being right."
Ashton gives up on getting out of bed, and instead picks up the bowl. "Go on, take your notes. 'The subject woke up in a fucking mood.'"
Milo swallows this one. Ashton feels like a huge asshole.
"Was she in your dream again?" Milo asks, a graphite stick and their tinkering log book already in hand.
"Maybe? Actually, you know what? She was."
"Right, right, ok. Can you tell me about the dream?"
Only Milo would ask to hear about somebody else's dreams and call it a fun time. Ashton has no idea what good it can do to delve in that slag heap, but writing shit down has the magical effect of keeping Milo calm, so he sighs, swallows a mouthful of weak-ass tea, and describes the woman, her chair, her notebook.
Milo stops writing, hesitates for a second.
"Does it bother you that I take notes?" they ask, looking off into the corner. "If it's giving you nightmares, I can stop."
"What? No, you're cool, it's fine," says Ashton around a spoonful of porridge.
"OK, good." Milo is silent for a while as they rustle through their log book. "You know, I've had some amazing nightmares in my time, but you're really breaking some new ground."
"I'm fucking special," says Ashton. "And it's not usually nightmares, mostly she just sits there. It's creepy, but it could be worse."
"Things could always be worse. Listen, I know what this will sound like, but what if she's getting into your dreams on purpose?"
Ashton snorts.
"You don't think she has anything better to do at night?"
Even though it painfully pulls on the scars, he waggles his eyebrows, just to be extra explicit that he's making a dirty joke. The joke falls flat - if anything, the tight expression on Milo's face grows more anxious. Ashton feels shitty. He pats the space next to him on the cot and, when Milo slides up next to him, wraps his arm around them and pulls them tightly into his good side. It's not as good as lifting them off their feet, but it's what they've got for now.