Chapter Eight: The Price of the Ride

One Day After Arrival – Eastern Freightway Gate

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Kavessra didn’t believe in welcoming parties.

It believed in paperwork, temper tantrums, and taxes.

Sasha Barnett stood beside the second wagon of the caravan, arms folded, tail flicking slow and sharp behind her. The Eastern Gate was a mess of iron grates, rust-stained railings, and enough lingering smoke to choke a treegod. Overhead, the aetherlines arced like sky-veins — pulsing blue-white through clouds thick with smog.

A steam vent ruptured nearby with a shriek like boiling bones.

“Charming,” she muttered.

Tella, the merchant leading the convoy, kicked the ground in frustration.

“They’re trying to charge us a double-entry levy. Two hundred extra credits.”

“Because?”

“Because the last time their inspectors let cursed grain slip through, and now we’re the plague risk.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow.

“Did you bring any cursed grain?”

“No.”

“Then don’t pay it.”

“You want me to growl at them? They’ve got cudgels, girl.”

She smirked — sharp and silver.

“Let me talk to them.”

Tella hesitated.

“You’re not on the manifest. Not even registered.”

“Exactly. Makes me the kind of problem they don’t know how to process.”

The enforcer at the gate — thick-necked, thicker-skulled — chewed a root stick with his jaw half-locked. His nameplate read Karris, and he looked like he hated his life professionally.

“You with them?”

“I’m the debt they picked up in Hollowgrove. Consider me cargo.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“You’re not on the manifest.”

“Neither’s your missing tooth, yet here we are.”

That made him pause.

“You wanna walk back to whatever ditch you crawled from, fox-girl?”

“Absolutely not. Took four wagons and three fungal infestations to get here. And don’t call me girl. I’ve seen more combat than you’ve seen soap.”

Karris squinted.

“You think you’re funny?”

“I don’t need to be. I just need to be right.”

She gestured lazily to the clipboards behind him.

“Thirty-seven entries today. I counted. Didn’t see you charge the Carrieth glassweaver.”

“That—He was—”

“Cursed grain doesn’t hide in mirror crates. But what about the Syzari merchant two entries back? That ward on her sleeve wasn’t listed. She paid in coin, didn’t she?”

His jaw worked like a stuck hinge.

“You implying something?”

“I’m saving your job. I shout once, and I promise at least three haulers in this line start sniffing through your logs.”

“You threatening me?”

“No. I’m your preventative maintenance plan.”

Silence.

A tram screamed overhead. Someone cussed in six languages. Another vent popped with a polite thump.

Karris finally grunted to his scribe.

“Stamp ’em. Let ’em through.”

The line exhaled.

Sasha didn’t — not until the first wagon creaked past the checkpoint and into the lower freight tiers.

Tella caught up, wide-eyed.

“You didn’t even raise your voice.”

“Didn’t have to,” Sasha said. “Bullies fold under well-informed sarcasm.”

“Well, I’m impressed. And mildly afraid of you.”

“Good. That makes two of us.”

Lower Tiers – Freight Docks

It took hours to reach their assigned drop.

A tilted ferrostone slab marked with half-erased hazard glyphs and surrounded by broken lamps. Sasha didn’t have to help unload — but she did.

Because she didn’t ride debts. She paid them.

She hauled crates of hollowbone flutes, sacks of dried rootmoss, and a thunder-toad that tried to spit curses. She dodged it. Barely.

One kid tried to lift a crate twice his size. Sasha stepped in, grunted, and steadied it with a shoulder and one steady arm.

“Thanks,” the boy muttered.

“Use your legs next time.”

Not unkind. Just truth.

When the last box hit the dock, she leaned on the wagon, catching her breath.

Tella handed her a canteen.

“You know you don’t have to keep proving yourself, right?”

“I do,” Sasha said. “To me.”

Tella nodded, like that answered everything.

“Most folks who land here don’t make it past day two.”

Sasha drank, capped the canteen.

“I only need one.”

As they packed up, she spotted a job flyer on a wall — weathered, torn.

RUNNER NEEDED. NO QUESTIONS. PAY IN SILVER.

She didn’t tear it down. Not yet.

But she memorized the district code scrawled at the bottom.

Evening – Perchwalk Overpass

Sasha found a perch over the city’s winding riverline — a ledge wide enough for feet and thoughts.

Below, Kavessra glimmered like a living wound.

Chaotic. Beautiful. Wired into the bones of itself.

She sat, legs dangling into nothing, and thought of Lana.

Of her mother.

Of the quiet forest she’d left behind — and the noise she’d chosen instead.

“Alright, Kavessra,” she whispered.

“Let’s see what kind of bite you’ve got.”

She smiled.

Because she had bitten first.

Behind her, someone tuned a broken string on a rooftop.

A growl turned melody drifted through the smoke.

Sasha didn’t turn.

She just listened.

The city was talking.

And Sasha Barnett?

She was ready to talk back.