The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I get to update you on two several Headless Over Heels chapters!

After the bit I excerpted from Thursday's chapter, the al Ydrises got the United Territories version of a telegram, which prompted precision F-strikes from Annalise, Tiago, Ofelia and Seth in order:

Skywire Bulletin — Highest Priority — All Legion Agents Exark & Superior

Seraph breach reported upon Central Plainland Corridor route. Traced inbound to Shaheill, to reach on 6th Drozt at 2100.

The seraph Enna-Belum has breached the deathspell. Blackfeather, est 20 tons, moderately wounded on front right appendage. Containment efforts have failed. Immediate interdiction requested.

May the 100 Saints preserve you.

Since it's a seraph-hunt, Annalise switched to her seraph-hunting head, Anna, who is now getting a tour of the local perimeter from (and inflicting her bottomless reservoirs of patience and tact on) Simon il Teremi, acting interim undersecretary to Shaheill's "indisposed" corregidor, while Seth and the twins liaise with the professed Chief Hermandat, Simon's probably-niece-or-something Riccana.

Seth detached from the shadows and joined the twins. Riccana cast a look across the three unlit. “So you’re the Verdugo’s retinue?”

“And her children, yes,” Ofelia said. “And Seth’s her Seth.”

“She doesn’t have to worry about me.” Riccana tucked her helmet under her arm and unbound the messy bun beneath it. “I’m older than I look.”

“We know the feeling,” Ofelia said.

“I suppose you do.” Riccana inclined her head; her ginger hair cascaded in unruly ringlets. “Pardon me, sirs. Here I am talking like you might not all be twice my age.”

“We’re not,” Tiago said, at the same time as Ofelia said “We’re forty.”

“We’re not,” Tiago repeated.

Riccana had a pretty smile, even if (and this was new information to him) she was much younger than Seth’s preference.

“Pardon our Verdugo’s snippiness,” he said. “It was a long ride and she’s not in her right head.”

Ofelia released a humored hm. Riccana shook her hair out and pinned it up again, tighter this time. “I can imagine.”

“Do you have any idea why the blackfeather is coming for Shaheill?” Tiago asked. “If we know what it’s here for, we might be able to outthink it. They’re not exactly brilliant tacticians.”

“I don’t suppose you need to be, when you’re twenty tons,” Riccana said. “As far as what makes Shaheill special, it’s only a few streets over, sir, if it please you to see.”

Tiago tilted his head. “Lead on, Chief Hermandat.”

Here we are. The treasure of Shaheill.

“To be honest, everything is a few streets over when you’re in a place like Shaheill,” Riccana said, as they walked its wide, tidy streets. “We’re not exactly a destination.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Tiago said. “If you’re worth attacking, you’re worth defending.”

“I didn’t mean to put the place down. Lived here all my life, after all.” A stray strand of ginger hair slipped Riccana’s bun and into her heart-shaped face. She tsked and pinned it back up, and Seth was even more convinced that all my life could hardly be more than a pair of decades, if that. How’d a stripling end up the Chief Hermandat? “And we have this to our name.” She came to a wooden fence painted the same cheerful orange as her hair, pushed it open, and saluted. “Here we are. The treasure of Shaheill.”

Seth cast a curious look around the field into which they walked. The furrows in the ground were dotted not with crops or hedgerows but with domes of terracotta clay, each as tall as a man. “You’re growing clay?”

“Press your ear to it.” Riccana tilted her head against the closest clay structure. “Like this.”

Tiago mirrored her motion. His brows knitted. “What in the Saints’ name is that?”

Seth laid his cheek on the coarse clay. Within the dome something was clicking and popping. It almost sounded like a Prossimo popmite silo.

Riccana grinned. “That, milord, is rhubarb. The forced rhubarb of Shaheill. The Teremis have been growing it for decades. It comes up in the pitched dark, pushing out all pale from the ground an inch a day. Fast enough you can hear it.”

“You’re shitting me,” Tiago said.

“No, no, I’ve actually heard of this.” Seth listened harder. Another echoing pop. “Didn’t put the name to the thing until she mentioned it, but I knew a chef who swore by it. Sweet and tender. I always wondered how it’d be to cook with it.”

“Best rhubarb in the Plainlands,” Riccana said, with evident pride. “We grow all through the frost and harvest it by candlelight. It never sees the sun 'til it's on your fancy city plates.”

“You have time to work on the farm while you’re Chief Hermandatting?” Ofelia asked.

Riccana’s smile wilted. “Well—it’s a quiet town, usually. As I said.”

“Ignore my sister,” Tiago said. “She noses in. Gets it from Mother. You go on ahead and get your people to the muster hall. We’ll catch up.”

Ricanna saluted. “Sir.” She turned on her heel with perhaps a touch too much military formalism and set off through Shaheill’s mitelit streets, following the whispering, jostling flow of its citizenry.

“She’s rather cute, isn’t she?” Ofelia’s elbow prodded her brother. “And she called you sir, Tiago.”

“I am making it a gleaming-sharp point not to get attached to any of these people,” Tiago said. “A blackfeather. Here to murder everyone for what, rhubarb. Fuck my life.”

“It’s very special rhubarb,” Ofelia said. “Unlit, you might say.”

“You might.” Tiago frowned at the palisade that surrounded the town. Atop its wooden walkways, torches were lighting a circle of flickering fulmination around Shaheill. Like a ritual circle. “I’d hoped we might understand something about what’s coming. Some way to be cheeky. As though there was any reason for a blackfeather to come to a village other than to raze it to the ground.”

“So why?” Seth asked. “Why Shaheill?”

“We can wonder once we’re on the other side of this,” Tiago said. “If we survive it.”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...f-shaheill
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2544540/

Today, before they get to the matter of How We Kill It, there's a question of seniority to discuss.

“She’s rather short, for a CH,” Ofelia said.

“This thing’s the size of a townhouse,” Tiago said. “We’re all short.” He crossed past his sister, back to the muster yard’s concrete ring as its nervous irregulars filled it with supplies.

Seth and Ofelia followed him past precarious racks of two-story anchorpikes, a patchwork pile of surplus platemail, a hodgepodge of edged weaponry, and a heavy barrel with a splash of angry orange paint on its lid. This last item Tiago opened, and frowned into. “Is this all the powder we’ve got?

A blond hermandat, his armor close-fitted and meticulously polished, saluted beside the stock. “Yes, sir.”

“Do you have a powder cannon?” Ofelia asked.

The man’s shine dimmed. “We have rifles.”

“That’ll tickle it, anyway,” Ofelia said.

Tiago lifted a pane of polished onyx from the supply pile, its octagonal edge bordered in riveted steel. “And just this one animaxis?”

“Yes, sir,” the hermandat said. “Sorry, sir.”

Tiago returned it to its crooked place on the stack. “No, no, just… try not to go unlit, I suppose. We can only catch one soul.”

Sir, may I speak of something indelicate?

The shiny hermandat ahem’d. “Sir, may I speak of something indelicate?”

“It’s an indelicate night.”

“That woman is not the Chief Hermandat, sir. Our Chief vacated the village along with the Corregidor when the skywire came in. Riccana wasn’t next in line, either. She’s—”

“She’s what?” Tiago’s eyes narrowed. “What are you telling me this for? Who was next in line?”

“I was, sir. I’m the—”

“Why did you not speak up sooner?”

“I—well, I—she was insubordinate, and I was waiting for an officer to—”

“What order was she insubordinate to, little man?” Tiago’s glare was as black as a seraph cavern. “What did you tell these people to do, that she could overrule you in their heads? We’re all a day away from saving the entire territory or dying the worst possible way anyone can fucking die, and you think I’m about to lock up the only woman with the balls to do something about it?”

“I—forgive me. I thought you should be made aware.”

“It’s time for you to fuck off,” Tiago said.

“Sir—”

“Fuck off,” Tiago repeated. “Back to your post, or you can desert with your chickenshit CH.”

The tin soldier clanked fretfully back into line. Seth took up his former position at Tiago’s ear. “What are we thinking?”

“We’re thinking that skywire better catch wide and drag more bodies in.” Tiago scratched the wispy pubescent hairs on his upper lip. “Because if this is all we have to stop a blackfeather, we are fucked with a capital fuck.”

“I’m thinking that half-pint impostor scouring the town has caught my brother’s eye,” Ofelia said. “Sadly shadowed as it is. That was very gallant, Tiago.”

“Shut up, Feeli.”

“He’s got your inclination in reverse, Seth,” Ofelia said. “He enjoys looming over ladies.”

“The Legion should be here in force to stop this blackfeather, and they’re not, and she’s just a rhubarb farmer, and she and hers are standing in front of it anyway,” Tiago said. “If you want to hear I admire her bravery, then whatever. I do.”

“Admiring her bravery. Uh huh.” Ofelia leaned Seth’s way. “Do all Plainlanders keep their bravery in their round, perky butts, or is that just Shaheill?”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...we-kill-it
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2546330/