The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

The fractured crown atop the splinter’s prong caught the first weak rays of dawn.

It pointed north.

By sunrise the market held hammers and medics and carriers, all with broken things bound to their backs and all heading north toward the places where broken things were fixed. Grand Meridian had weathered the road, but it was a weathered city now. All west-facing windows were smashed out. Half the ballroom roof was caved in. Black scorch lines crossed the marble lobby where the bridge had been torn.

Austin Veyron stood on the roof of the Freehold with the Crownforge splinter wrapped in white cloth.

Even bundled, it tugged on him.

DEVOUR wanted the metal. It wanted the power the fractured mark contained. It insisted the threat in his hand was safer than the threat it left outside his body.

He ignored it and watched the north horizon.

Veyra joined him with two mugs of bitter tea in hand. ”You have been watching the same clouds for an hour.”

”They are moving.”

”They are clouds.”

He took the mug. Her knuckles brushed his, a small contact that made the hunger quiet for half a breath.

”The splinter is moving through them,” he said. ”The road begins where the hills turn to ash.”

Veyra leaned against the railing. ”Then we go when the city can spare us.”

”Not like the Emperor goes. Not with people lined up behind one command.”

”No one is asking for that.”

Down below, a crowd had gathered near the lobby boards. Route volunteers. Families who had lost rooms in the siege. Fighters with frightened, determined faces, looking north.

They were asking for something.

Not a crown, Austin Veyron told himself. A plan.

He went downstairs.

Elena had turned the damaged reception desk into a temporary planning table. The transfer book sat open between maps. Marcus stood with Nahlia and three scribes while Kesra sat on a crate against the wall with her repaired shoulder wrapped in clean linen. The borrowed sword had been traded in for a plain steel spear.

Sable entered last. The room quieted around her, not from fear so much as from the memory of what she had once been.

Austin Veyron did not sit at the head of the table. He took an empty spot beside the maps.

”The Ash Meridian is not a response mission,” he said. ”We do not rush north because a shard tells us to. We stabilize Grand Meridian first. We send scouts who volunteer, with clear return routes and no hidden debt.”

A route runner near the door raised her hand. ”What if we find the Crownforge before we are ready to fight it?”

”Then we learn where it is and return.”

”And if it attacks?”

”Then the people on the ground decide what keeps them alive.”

Marcus smiled faintly. ”That will irritate anyone who wants a clean chain of command.”

”Good.”

Kesra tapped the shaft of her spear on the floor. ”The Crownforge will not wait. Its keeper does not think like the Emperor. She does not need worship. She needs material.”

Sable’s gaze sharpened. ”Ash Matron.”

Kesra nodded. ”She kept the old forge pits beneath the northern burns. If the splinter is active, she knows the First Feast road failed. She will either seize the chance to build her own network or destroy it before the Emperor can reclaim it.”

Nahlia traced the map with one finger. ”What can she make?”

”Crowns,” Sable said quietly. ”Not symbols. Living command tools. They turn names into bindings.”

The room went still.

Austin Veyron looked at the white routes Elena had drawn between the city and the northern border. ”Then the scouts do not give names to anything they find.”

Kesra gave a dry laugh. ”That is good advice in the Ash Meridian. It is also impossible advice. The people there trade names for water.”

”Then we offer another trade.”

An alarm bell rang from the north gate.

Rin’s voice came through the relay. ”Movement in the ruined rail cut. One target. Fast. It is carrying Emperor marks.”

Austin Veyron’s hand moved to the wrapped splinter.

”Scout team,” he said. ”Volunteers only. Veyra, Rin, Kesra, Sable, Calder, Maelis. You know the risks.”

No one answered with a salute.

They answered by standing.

The rail cut lay past the city’s northern wall, where old tracks vanished beneath the windblown ash. The target had left deep claw marks in the dirt. It was running south, not north, as though it had fled the Ash Meridian and then changed its mind.

Rin crouched beside a broken signal post. ”It is wounded. One leg is dragging.”

Kesra studied the marks. ”Forge scout.”

”What does that mean?” Calder asked.

”It means it will be armored under the skin and terrified of cages.”

They found her in a stone underpass.

The demon was tall and thin, wrapped in layered iron plates fused to her arms and ribs. Ash-gray horns curved back from a woman’s forehead. Her eyes glowed orange in the shadow. A black road brand burned across her cheek, but it had been cut through with something sharper.

When she saw Sable, she screamed and charged.

Metal blades unfolded from her wrists. She closed the distance in a blur, aiming for Sable’s throat. Veyra blocked the first strike. Sparks burst across the underpass. Rin’s arrow hit the woman’s shoulder, but the armor swallowed it.

”Do not kill her!” Kesra shouted.

The scout drove Veyra back with a savage second blow. Austin Veyron moved in, white root chain snapping across the concrete. The scout caught it, yanked him forward, and tried to drive a blade under his ribs.

DEVOUR woke.

Austin Veyron caught her wrist.

The unstable core inside her armor beat against his palm. It was almost begging to be eaten. One pull would end the fight. One pull might tear the road brand apart with it.

He saw the terror in her orange eyes.

”You are not with the Emperor,” he said.

”Liar.”

”He marked you too.”

The scout hesitated. Veyra used the opening to knock one blade wide. Kesra stepped into view with her spear lowered.

”Look at Sable,” Kesra said. ”No crown. No chain. Look at me.”

The scout’s gaze found the broken collar at Kesra’s throat.

The fight drained out of her in an instant. She collapsed against the wall, armor scraping stone.

Sable approached slowly. ”Your name?”

The woman laughed without humor. ”If I tell you, the Matron will hear it.”

”Not through us,” Austin Veyron said.

She studied the group, then spoke a single word.

”Taryn.”

The road brand on her cheek flared. Calder caught his breath as the contestant mark on his wrist answered it.

Taryn’s eyes widened. ”The road is waking north of here. The Matron has fed the Crownforge with prisoners. She is not rebuilding the Emperor’s kingdom. She is making one that will not need him.”

Ash blew through the underpass.

Elena’s relay token lit at Austin Veyron’s belt. The north gate had seen no second wave, but the outer scouts reported fresh black birds circling beyond the ridge. Someone in the Ash Meridian had felt the scout’s road brand break.

Austin Veyron gave Taryn his canteen, not a chain or a promise he could not keep. ”You come back with us. A medic treats you. After that, you decide whether you stay.”

Taryn accepted the water with shaking fingers.

Austin Veyron glanced at the city behind them, then toward the horizon where the splinter’s pull had begun.

The next war would not arrive at Grand Meridian’s gate.

They would have to walk into it.