Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

Richard’s words hang in the wrecked hall, heavier than the smell of spilled drink.

I don’t blink. "I know. And if I thought you were stupid, I’d have already left you to bleed your pride out on this floor. You’re not. So listen instead of growling."

His jaw works once. The threat doesn’t leave his eyes, but it stops climbing.

"You’re under heavy OXI Bleeding. Zoe’s hurt. Walking the Red Squid alleys with the two of you in this state makes an easy target. You don’t move well, you don’t react well, you burn OXI worse than the laundry shop on the corner, and you can’t afford to get pulled into another brawl. If someone comes after you on the way, I’d have to solve it fast, and fast would end with me bleeding OXI too."

Richard looks at the front door. "And staying here is safe?"

"Safer than it looks. The people you hurt have the right to strike back at you while you’re under penalty, but that right covers attacking you, not wrecking your property to get to you. If the door’s open, they walk in and take their hit, even inside the tavern, and the system won’t blink. If it’s locked, the only way in is to break it down, and that’s an offense of its own. It doesn’t take away their right. It just makes them pay a penalty to use it."

"And that helps? It’s never happened before, so I wouldn’t know."

"It helps. You’re already bleeding. The last thing you need is a fresh brawl on top of the one you’re paying for, and most people in Red Squid do their math before they swing."

Richard goes quiet.

He hates the answer. I see it in his jaw, in the hand closing slowly over his knee, in the way his eyes go to Zoe before returning to me. But Richard isn’t stupid. Pride slows his reasoning; it doesn’t destroy it.

"So I get locked inside my own tavern."

"For twenty-four hours. Rest, use the vials when you need them, and don’t open for anyone who isn’t me, Oliver, or someone I send with an agreed line."

"What line?"

I think for a second. "Say Maela needs more clean vial necks."

Richard lets out air through his nose. "That sounds like something a man who actually opened a factory would say."

"That’s the idea."

Zoe has been listening to all of it in silence. Her visible eye moves from the door to Richard, then to me. There’s fear in it, but also a quiet stubbornness much like his.

"I can take Zoe now," I say. "Leave her at the factory. There’s security, a makeshift room, food, and my people. She sleeps there until the penalty ends. Then I come back for you."

Richard looks at his daughter. For an instant, he seems to accept it. "Go," he tells her. "It’s better."

Zoe shakes her head. The motion is small. Not dramatic, but final.

"Zoe."

She tightens her fingers on the broom, so hard they go white. "No."

Richard closes his eyes.

I step closer, stopping before I crowd her space. "Zoe, this isn’t abandoning him. It’s just getting you out of the line while I come back for Richard. He’ll have LDP, locked doors, and enough money to sustain the penalty. I’ll be back tonight."

She looks at me with the one uncovered eye. "And if they come back?"

"That’s why I want to take you."

"And if they come back while he’s alone?"

The question carries no challenge. Only fear.

I could answer with logic. I could explain that Richard is a Diver, that locked doors help, that my return is a matter of hours. I could use authority. It might work.

And that’s exactly why I don’t.

"Then you want to stay."

She nods. "I do."

Richard opens his mouth to argue, but stops when he sees her face. Maybe he understands it along with me. For Zoe, leaving first might be safety. It might also feel like one more time she was pulled out of somewhere while men decided what would happen to her father.

"All right," I say.

She blinks, surprised.

"But the rule holds for both of you. Door locked. Lights low. No answering provocation. If someone knocks, you don’t open. If they try to break in, you stay away from the entrance and Richard uses the comm to call me before doing anything."

Richard breathes deep. "I can do that."

"Add me to your party. I can’t add you back and reply, because mine is full, but I’ll get your message on the comm. You only get one message; the system disconnects you on the second for lack of reciprocal connection."

The honesty seems to tire him more than any pretty promise would, but he nods and does it.

I leave the five vials near him, Zoe’s set aside, and teach her to build a door brace from loose boards. Not to stop a real break-in. To slow it, make noise, buy time. Sometimes time is the only wall a person can afford.

She follows the lesson with a focus that’s almost painful, repeating each step with her hands until the brace seats clean against the frame. When she finishes, she looks up at me as if waiting to be told she did it wrong.

"Good," I say. "Better than most grown Divers would manage."

She doesn’t answer, but the broom-white tension leaves her fingers.

Before leaving, I stop at the entrance. "I’ll be back tonight. I’ll stay here with you until the penalty ends."

Richard doesn’t thank me. Not with words. He just holds the look long enough that the sentence isn’t necessary.

Zoe gives another small smile. This time she doesn’t hide it so fast.

I step out into Red Squid with the smell of alcohol and wet wood still clinging to my hands, and I wait until I hear the brace drop into place behind me before I move.

On the way to the Oathmark, I feel eyes following me. Some faces turn away too fast when I look. Others don’t turn fast enough. There’s no telling if they’re curious residents after the commotion, people hungry for news of Richard, or scouts for whoever lost teeth at the Central Tavern.

I memorize the faces I can. A man in a brown hood near the dried-fish stall. A woman with a yellow scarf pretending to pick out needles. Two young men leaning on a damp wall, too quiet for their age.

Maybe they’re nothing.

But in Red Squid, nothing kills too.

I’m almost at the Oathmark when the brown hood pushes off the fish stall and starts walking the same direction I am, unhurried, matching my pace exactly.

I don’t slow down. I just open a path in my head for the version of the evening where I don’t make it to the academy at all.

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