Free Soulwoven by Jeff Seymour

fist painted on the top of it, and Ryse finally understood why he’d chosen this destination. The smoke-belching tent was a royalist tavern in the high-lying shantytown of Kings’ Run, where the slum dwellers believed that the monarchy was all that held back a cresting wave of darkness threatening to overwhelm the world.
    Cole had filled her and Litnig in on the things Quay had told him. From the sound of it, if the prince was recognized, Kings’ Run was one of only a few places in the city he might be safe.
    The Red Fist was practically silent. The city had been muted all day, but Ryse had figured the slum dwellers would come out to drink, especially with the floods on. They only stayed in when they were scared, and slumfolk didn’t scare easily. It would take something big to keep them from the drink on a rainy spring night. Something like visions of a black dragon that mirrored the Kings’ Run stories of dark apocalypse.
    Cole didn’t lead them into the Fist. He turned left just before it and climbed over a pile of collapsed stone and lumber into an alley surrounded by empty-looking hovels. Partway down it, he stopped in front of a three-walled, sagging hut of split timber and old thatch. After glancing up and down the alley, he pulled the moth-eaten curtain that covered it aside and gestured inward.
    Within the hut, the air smelled of stale piss and wet straw. A small fire burned red and smoky near the back wall, next to a pile of peat and sticks. Makeshift, splintered benches lined the walls. Ryse stepped inside after Litnig. Cole followed.
    A man hidden in shadows sat on the bench at the far wall, warming his hands. Wordlessly, he took a slab of peat from the pile and threw it on the fire. He was young, between Litnig and Cole in height, dark skinned and athletic looking. A gray cloak draped from his shoulders over drab clothing that fit him only loosely. Two swords hung comfortably from his belt. He looked like he belonged there. Just a vagabond taking refuge for the night in a part of the city that asked few questions.
    But Ryse had seen Quay Eldani’s face when her cohort at the Academy had ascended, and she hadn’t forgotten it. As she entered the hovel, he watched the whole way. Stared at her as if he was reading everything she was and everything she ever would be. By the time she reached him, she was already starting to kneel.
    “This is Ryse Lethien—” Cole began, but the prince cut him off.
    “Don’t,” he said, looking at her. “Remember who I am, but do nothing that might show another.” She stood up, and he leaned forward, his voice hard and serious. “Why are you here?”
    She fumbled for words. The prince didn’t shift a muscle, simply kept his eyes pressing down on her like a stone weight.
    “The heart dragons have been broken,” she said. Not a flicker of emotion passed over the prince’s face.
    “Do the Twelve know where you are?”
    She shook her head. Somehow, he’d seen her robe. She’d thought she’d hidden it well, but—
    “You’re prepared to sever ties with the Temple?”
    A hundred dead memories swept over her. “I already have,” she mumbled.
    Quay Eldani took a deep breath, let it out, and then nodded. He pulled a map case from a large leather backpack that sat at his feet and slid a small scroll from it. Ryse was ignored. Not accepted. Tolerated.
    But she had questions.
    “My pr—” she began, and then she caught herself. “You believe in the dragon?”
    The question had been vexing her all afternoon. On her way back to the city, she’d heard a priest on a corner explaining to an anxious crowd that the story of Sherduan was nothing more than a legend. She’d heard another doing the same near the Jin household.
    Quay’s eyes landed back on her, brown and cold and bracing. “Three thousand years ago, the heart dragons were broken. On separate occasions, a black beast was seen in the skies all across the continent. The land of Mennennar sank beneath the Gulf