THE BLASTED CONTRACT COIN BOOK 1

CHAPTER 6 TO DREAM

POV Mercy

After a long pause, Vane spoke again, his voice dropping an octave as the city lights faded behind us.

"Another reason it weighs heavily on me is that Alistair's dream is one where we can have a kingdom where no child would ever have a past like ours. Or like that girl's. It means we haven't achieved that dream yet. We've been at it for over two decades, Mercy, and we keep failing."

I looked at the passing trees, their leaves tinged with iron-dust and the sickly orange glow of the distant furnaces.

"Alistair has a wonderful dream, but I am not certain we will ever achieve it in this lifetime. Humans are fundamentally inefficient and often cruel. It is a worthy dream regardless of this factor and whether I am present to see its completion," I said.

"He has a great vision," Vane said, his grip tightening on the steering wheel until his knuckles went white. "He took this poor, smelly, dirty city and found a couple of orphans who would have been ground into grease for its gears otherwise. He decided that if someone was going to run the machine, it should be us. He replaced the chaos with Syndicate Law. People call us monsters, but we're the only ones who actually enforce a 'Fair Trade' policy. He gave us a throne room instead of a gutter and an early death."

"It always leads back to Alistair's dream," I concluded. "A world where no child will suffer. He would not approve of the girl's state. Helping Alistair realize that dream is worthy of my utmost efforts."

Vane let out a crooked smile and kept driving, the steam from the boiler trailing behind us like a ghost.

We reached the "Clean Line," where the soot-stained pavement surrendered to the well-maintained dirt paths of the countryside. Vane pulled the vehicle into a concealed shed and cut the engine. The sudden silence was deafening, a vacuum that made my internal processors hum.

"Time to get our ass in gear," Vane said, jumping out. "Alistair wants us back to keep Saffron company for the stargazing. Fair trade, right?"

"Fair trade," I repeated.

We began a slow, rhythmic jog toward the Main House. I moved with mechanical grace, my breathing shallow and controlled, my boots striking the earth with metronomic precision. But as we ran through the deepening twilight, the "wrong" feeling in my chest spiked.

It wasn't a dull throb anymore; it was a white-hot needle. I stumbled, my lead foot catching on a root, a clumsy, inexcusable error.

"Whoa, Mercy!" Vane skidded to a halt, the dust swirling around his shins. He turned back, his Truth-Weaver eyes scanning me with a sudden, sharp focus.

"You're vibrating, Mercy. Your heart rate just jumped; that's unusual for you. You look... you look like a lie feels."

I stood still, my hand pressing hard against my sternum, trying to steady the frantic rhythm beneath my ribs.

"I am not lying, Vane. I am experiencing a significant internal friction. A glitch."

"What are you talking about?" He stepped closer, his nostrils flaring.

"The air around you... it's not clean anymore. It's got a tang to it. Like old copper and something ancient. What is happening?"

I looked at him, realizing I had omitted a critical data point.

"I told you I took a Word Weaver's purse. I did not mention the object that precipitated the confrontation. A coin. Oversized. Oily gold. It had a blindfolded woman on one side and scales on the other."

Vane's eyes widened, the pupils contracting to pinpricks.

"Where is it?"

"I cut my thumb on a thief's blade. A single drop of my blood landed on the metal. The coin drank it. The blindfold on the woman's face... it dissolved. The eyes beneath were visible. And the scales, they tipped. Then I felt the lurch. I discarded it in a slag bin, calculating that the distance would break the connection," I explained, my voice steady despite the spike in my pulse.

Vane let out a breathy, frantic laugh.

"Logic doesn't apply to Blood-Weaves, Mercy! If that thing drank your blood, it's stitched into you now. Distance is nothing to an Old Weave."

I frowned, looking back toward the smudge of black smoke on the horizon.

"I felt it just now. A sharp increase in the tension of the tether. Someone picked it up, Vane. Someone touched the metal, and because my blood is already inside it, I felt the contact. I can feel... an echo."

Vane looked toward the city with pure dread.

"You're telling me you're linked to whoever has that coin right now? You, the woman who doesn't even feel her own heartbeat, are feeling someone else's?"

"It is not a feeling," I corrected, though the word felt brittle.

"It is a sensory data transfer I did not authorize."

"Call it whatever you want, but your 'clean' air is gone," Vane whispered.

"You smell like a debt, Mercy. A heavy, unpaid debt. If Alistair sees you like this, if he feels this 'noise' in your Weave, he's going to be upset. Actually, I'm upset. Everyone would be upset. This is not ok. You're the main gear, and you've just been gritted with sand. We need to fix this."

I looked at my hand. It was shaking, a microscopic, terrifying tremor.

"What do I do, Vane? The logic of the situation is failing me."

"We go home. We tell Saffron. She's the only one who might be able to weave you back together or remove the weave, whichever. Then we find this coin and the Word Weaver tomorrow and take them off the board so they can never do this again."

I nodded. Saffron was the healer; she could undo this.

"Saffron. That is a sound plan."

"I hope so," Vane muttered, turning back toward the house.

"Because for the first time since I met you, your words taste different, slightly polluted."

I shook my head in frustration. FRUSTRATION!? I began to run again, and Vane followed close behind, but the rhythm was gone. I was no longer a machine. I was a tethered thing, being pulled toward a future I hadn't calculated, while my brother ran beside me, smelling the rot of a secret I hadn't even meant to keep.