Satyr’s Children | Book 1: Siren
“Ali! It’s been ages!” Amid the bustle of the Guild hall, a woman in a cap wandered towards Ali.
Ali set down the cup in her hand, but for a moment she could not recognize the woman standing before her.
She was an owl-like young matron, round as a dumpling, with a plump, heart-shaped face. Her eyes were unusually large, and the freckles scattered across her face were even denser than Julchan’s.
Do I know this woman?
“I’m Aeliana! The baker’s daughter! I live down Kiln Alley behind the Guild!” The young woman gave a birdlike giggle and pulled off the white linen cap from her head, revealing straw-like dark-blond hair that made her look even more like a mottled barn owl now.
“I can’t believe I ran into you here, Ali! Happy Dawnlight Festival in advance! Our bakery’s having a holiday sale—buy two little rolls, you get one for free—”
Apparently oblivious to Ali’s awkwardness, she casually brushed the flour from her skirt and squeezed into the seat opposite her.
“Hardly ever saw you after graduation. How have you been lately?”
“… All right, I guess.” Ali had no idea how to respond. “Um… would you like some barley water?”
Was I close to Aeliana in some way?
She quickly searched her memories.
No… Nothing. It was as though she had never seen this face before.
“Thanks girl!” Aeliana accepted the wooden cup without the slightest hesitation and gulped down a mouthful. Then, as though suddenly remembering something, she set the cup down and lowered her voice, barely containing her excitement. “You know what, they caught the man who killed Young Master Bert! Good riddance! I heard he saw a ghost before he died—he was frightened to death!”
“Yeah… They got him.” Ali answered quietly.
“A bunch of customers at my bakery said they’d actually seen Bert in the Forbidden Zone… Looks like Young Master Bert finally came back from the dead to avenge himself!”
She was… delighted. The man’s death had comforted her. It had comforted many in the Northwatch as well. At last, the fury of the masses had somewhere to settle, even if they knew perfectly well that the person responsible for Bert’s death was far from the only one.
But it was enough. A scapegoat with a gruesome death had bled dry, and the toe had been paid. People finally felt that they could once again look their lord who had lost his son in the eye without shame.
“Oh, right! One of my customers said they saw the lord’s carriage heading toward Highland Street. He must have gone to visit House Zhao. Personally, I don’t think this is over. The killer was just a pawn. There’s bound to be someone behind him. The lord visiting to the Zhao’s has to be about figuring out how to fish out this ‘real mastermind’…”
No, that’s not what happened. It was Zhao Yunyao. She took poison.
Ali said it silently to herself.
“It’s just that… Dawnlight Festival is almost here, and things keep happening one after another… That’s just… bad omen, you know… Do you think the lord is worried there’ll be another incident during the festival?” Aeliana blinked and lowered her voice even further. “My cousin who serves in the guard said they’ve increased the number of undercover watchmen lately… There have to be ‘rats’ in the city.”
Zhao Yunyao wasn’t dead. But neither could anyone wake her.
Argentum came by. He spoke with Solin in hushed tones in Yunyao’s room for a short while before hurriedly leaving again. His expression was grave. He said he had to make a journey far from the Northwatch to confirm something related to the poison—something that had to be understood. According to him, the source of the poison lay neither in the Northwatch nor in Yeelan. He seemed to have already begun to suspect a particular person far away, and all that remained was to confirm his suspicion.
As for the carriage, the people inside had actually been Julchen and Claret, not Lord Morningdew himself, but they had indeed brought the lord’s orders:
Argentum was to investigate the source of the poison. The task of tracking down whoever had poisoned Yunyao in the Northwatch, meanwhile, was entrusted to David and Solin, who had only just distinguished themselves through their recent accomplishments. It was a dangerous kind of trust. It meant they could mobilize forces that normally remained hidden, but it also meant stepping deeper into increasingly murky waters.
As for Triton and Ali, the lord had made an arrangement that appeared protective on the surface, yet carried a more complicated meaning. They wouldn’t need to get involved in the filth of the conspiracy unfolding before them. Instead, they would return to the Trailblazers’ Guild and “assist” House Morningdew in the continued custody and interrogation of a very special prisoner—Rusty, while the process would be personally overseen by Miss Claret Morningdew.
On the surface, it looked like an elder’s attempt to shield two young people from direct danger. But everyone present understood what it really meant. It was no different from placing a key capable of unlocking secrets from the past into the hands of the person most familiar with the lock. And from beginning to end, the two children would remain under the close watch of House Morningdew.
This was one of the rare moments when Ali genuinely felt that she belonged to the upper echelons of the Northwatch’s society.
“… Speaking of my customers, I see every single one of them as a clever little schemer.” Aeliana leaned her upper body across the slightly greasy tabletop and moved closer to Ali.
“The blacksmith, Old Jay, is always haggling with me over prices. What can I do? Prices always go up before a festival. I need the money if I want to buy the best oil and spices and make those rich, flaky pastries everyone likes. Every time I try to talk to him about anything else, he’d say he’s in a hurry and tells me to hurry up with the bread. Oh come on, give me a break!”
“And that ‘Miss Poppy Seed’ who keeps stealing customers from me? Now she’s constantly worried that political instability will affect business. Hmph, with all that free time, she’d be better off figuring out how to make dough rise. She’s been muttering about politics all day long, and she’d already burned several batches of bread. If her family didn’t grow poppies, that little shop of hers would’ve gone down ages ago!”
“My cousin with his job for life, on the other hand, is terribly diligent. Man, he’s no young man anymore, yet he still refuses to get married. That’s what it’s like when you’ve got a government job, I suppose—happy ever after, nothing to worry about. Every day after work, he’d go straight to the tavern and drinks himself senseless with his good-for-nothing friends, the ones who are either out patrolling the streets or standing guard for some lord. Then he comes home boasting about whatever ‘inside information’ he heard.”
“I heard that House Zhao’s eldest daughter hasn’t left the house at all since Young Master Bert died. And now that the lord himself has gone there, maybe something has happened to her too. Someone in the guard said the Morningdew estate summoned a physician in the middle of the night, and the physician never came back out either…”
“Think about it. The killer died, and then the lord went straight to the Zhao family… That timing is just too perfect. Did the killer say something before he died that implicated House Zhao? Or perhaps… Could House Zhao be the next target? How horrible…”
“But those officials seem awfully calm. That gentleman who always comes sneaking into Kiln Alley with his head covered up just to spy on his ex-wife and child, whenever he waits at my shop for the child to come out of school, he’s as calm as one can be, as though the whole world has nothing to do with him. Of course, maybe he’s just pretending. Or maybe he’d already taken care of all his problems. Ah, those officials and nobles… they’ve got guts and minds with twice as many twists and turns as us ordinary folks, don’t they?”
Indeed, with the Dawnlight Festival approaching, Polaris of the Kingdom of the Kingfisher was trying, under the lord’s will, to preserve the appearance of light as the darkness around it grew larger and deeper. Yet in the places the candlelight could not reach, different threads of information led toward different kinds of darkness. Everyone had been given a role, and one by one, they stepped onto a chessboard laid out by the lord himself—a game of survival, truth, and power.
“Ali?” Aeliana had finished her entire cup of barley water. Now she was staring at Ali without blinking, her black eyes bright and round.
“Ah… hmm?” The baker’s daughter’s wide eyes made Ali feel a little uneasy. “I’m listening…”
“Have you heard the news?” Aeliana wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“… What news?”
“How could you not know? Maria is getting married!” Aeliana suddenly brightened. “Oi, yesterday, when I was delivering bread to The Boiling Stew, I ran into her and her husband! She married into such a good family! Her husband is a gentleman from the royal capital! And he’s so—handsome!”
No. Not here. Not now.
Ali tightened her grip around the wooden cup, its rough rim sinking painfully into her palm, while every single freckle on Aeliana’s excited, glowing heart-shaped face seemed to celebrate the marriage with nothing but pure, uncomplicated joy.
Yes. Maria would be married next month. Ali had secretly gone to check on her home several times. Every time, the signal from the window had indicated that she was safe. But as for how to get her out, Ali still had absolutely no idea.
“Oh, really? That soon?” Ali lifted her eyes.
Despite her best effort to keep her voice under control, it came out slightly sharper than usual.
“So…”
She paused, rolling the words that bastard around the tip of her tongue before replacing them with a safer opetion.
“What does her fiancé look like, then?”
“Oh, he dressed beautifully!” Aeliana let out an exaggerated sigh as she depicted the man.
“He’s a Siren gentleman who looks to be somewhere in his forties, quite well-preserved for his age. What’s that saying again? ‘Even with his hair gone white, a man can still have his charm!’ His eyes are heterochromatic, one red and one blue, like the finest gemstones! No wonder he’s from the royal capital—he even has fine silver powder dusted over his fin-ears! And the way he speaks, that accent, that tone… goodness! Though he is a little absentminded. He dropped his handkerchief while walking and didn’t even notice. I’ll have to think of some way to return it to him someday…”
Red and blue eyes? That was not very common in the Northwatch.
Ali lifted her cup, hiding her slightly pursed lips behind a sip of water.
“What about Maria’s little brother? Did you see him too?”
“No, I didn’t. But after the wedding, surely their whole family will go back to the royal capital and live happily ever after!” Aeliana said it as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Happily ever after? The whole family? With that old bastard?
Ali almost let out a cold laugh, but forced herself to focus on the information instead.
“When is the wedding, then? Are they still holding it here in the Northwatch?”
“Probably the last day of Wolf Moon.” Aeliana tilted her head as she thought. “That’s… the day before the Awakening Festival. Oh my, Ali, you really do care about her.”
“… She’s an old friend, afterall. Maybe she’ll give me an invite and share some of her happiness with me, you know.” Ali lowered her eyes and lightly scraped her nails along the wood grain of her cup.
She needed to say something, anything, to steer the conversation away from the name that was making her chest tighten.
“What about you, Aeliana? How have you been? Are your parents well?”
“Me? There’s nothing much to say about the little old me…” Aeliana shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance, the motion so broad it was almost as though she meant to shake off something invisible.
“I never wanted to become a Trailblazer, so I got married right after graduation. My husband is the miller’s son, so marrying him was the best for both of us. My old man… he isn’t around anymore. He died of a fever last year.”
She paused. Her tone was as matter-of-fact as though she were talking about someone else’s life, but the light in her round eyes dimmed for a moment.
“At least he left us early, just saying. I’d just given birth to my youngest daughter at the time. Unfortunately, she died seven days after she was born, turned into a cold little doll right in my arms.”
Aeliana tugged at the corners of her mouth, trying to make something like a smile.
It did not quite work.
“Ah… if my dad had lived long enough to watch his favorite granddaughter die, it probably would have broken his heart. Funny, isn’t it? She came into this world almost as though she were only here to give her grandfather one last reason to smile before he left. She made a little tour in the family, and then—poof! She’s gone, too.”
Ali froze.
Fever? Was it typhoid, or something else?
Only then did she suddenly realize how different the deaths Aeliana spoke of so casually were from the teeth and claws of the monsters she and her family faced in the Forbidden Zone. It was a slower, more ordinary, and far more inescapable kind of devouring, taking place in warm beds and rooms thick with the smell of herbs.
Aeliana had already shed whatever remained of her girlhood. Not merely because of the way she dressed—the matronly linen cap, the flour dusting her skirt—but because of the almost deliberately breezy way she spoke about death. They were the same age, and yet something had already placed an entire world between them.
Ali felt a strange distance open up between them, even a trace of… fear? No, she wasn’t afraid of Aeliana. She was afraid of the noisy, clingingly persistent adult world that Aeliana represented.
“But it’s all right now. My baby girl has people to look after her in heaven.” Aeliana paused, then brought her hands together in a small gesture of prayer. “And if the Yeelanese were right, and reincarnation really does exist, I’ll burn a stick of incense for them at the Dawnlight Festival. I’ll pray for them to be born into good families next time, so they won’t have to endure people looking down on them again, and won’t have to live in poverty.”
Ali’s heart sank.
Reincarnation? Being reborn?
No, Aeliana. Dead means dead. No one knew where the soul goes—heaven, hell, or somewhere else entirely. But if a body was neither buried nor burned, it would simply rot until, three days later, the stench became impossible to approach. And cremation will do nothing more than leaving behind a handful of ashes, with a few bones that had not burned cleanly, which then had to be deliberately crushed into smaller pieces.
The words turned over and over in her throat, cold and hard. But when she looked into Aeliana’s eyes, struggling so desperately to keep their light alive, Ali said nothing.
Those were the “common sense” of a Trailblazer, the things one learned by staring directly into the cruelty of the Forbidden Zone. Here, they seemed unbearably cruel and completely out of place.
All she could do was force out, in a dry voice, “I’m sorry. My condolences.”
Then she raised a hand and asked the server for two more cups of barley water.
Perhaps last year, when Ali had first entered the Forbidden Zone alongside Triton as an independent Trailblazer and nearly screamed her head off at the sight of a few grotesquely shaped slime monsters, Aeliana had lost both the father she always depended on and her newborn within the span of a single week.
How did she get through it? Kneading dough during the day, keeping the books, caring for the children she still had, lying in a bed that perhaps still carried the scent of her infant every night…
Ali could not imagine it. She and her brother could always get injured. They suffered pain. But the wounds would eventually heal, and if one mission failed, they could always take another and do it right.
But what Aeliana had lost were people who would never come back, a piece of her life torn away by force, yet the days still had to go on, as the dough still had to rise.
“It’s all right, Ali. It’s all in the past now.” Aeliana once again put on her practiced smile—the one she used to deal with customers.
“You know what? I’m really glad I ran into you today. Ever since my father passed, my man’s been doing the work of two people. He’s so busy running between the mill and the shop every day that he can hardly step away. So it’s been a long time since anyone is willing to listen to me talk for this long.”
No one had been willing to listen to her?
Ali was taken aback.
Has Aeliana… always been a talkative person?
She desperately searched her memories, but all she could find was a vague figure in the corridor of the Guild school, the hem of her clothes dusted with flour. Everything about this human girl was blurry. But why, then, could Aeliana recognize her at a glance, and even remember her name? Was it because the Siren scales on her face were so conspicuous? Or perhaps, as the child of a Rank Silver Trailblazer, she had always stood out a little at school?
Ali felt… shame. It was as though in Aeliana’s eyes, the Trailblazer Aliferous Featherflight had always been a vivid living person who deserved her full attention. While to her, Aeliana had been nothing more than a hazy shadow somewhere in the background of her memories.
“Aeliana, is your shop… still on Kiln Alley?” Ali asked, trying to pull her drifting thoughts back to the present.
“Of course. Same place as always, east of the public well in the middle of the street.”
The moment Ali started talking about the bakery, the light returned to Aeliana’s eyes, and her back straightened almost unconsciously. It was the kind of radiance that appeared only when she spoke of her own little “territory.”
“It’s not a grand place, but we have our own mill, so I don’t have to stand in line at the public ovens. The bread comes out cheap and delicious. You see, my mother can watch the older children at home now, so I can come out to make deliveries too. Yesterday I delivered to The Boiling Stew, and today I even made it to the Guild’s kitchen! Sometimes the kitchen staff would feel sympathetic to how hard I work, so they’ll pack up some leftover snacks for me as an extra tip…”
“Aeliana…” Ali quietly interrupted her animated chatter.
“What is it, Ali?”
“You’re quite amazing.” Ali raised her eyes and looked straight into Aeliana’s bright, wide eyes. Each word of her came slowly, with absolute seriousness. “You’re an incredible person.”
“… Huh?” Aeliana froze.
The unexpected, unadorned praise hit her like a little pebble, making her hand jerk a bit. She almost lost her grip on the cup as the amber barley water sloshed precariously around its rough rim, nearly spilling over her flour-white apron.
“I…” Ali opened her mouth, then decided to finish what she had started.
“I’ll burn a stick of incense for you too at the Dawnlight Festival. I’ll pray to you and your family… to stay safe and happy in the new year. I see you already have a child, and now that you’re a mother… But to me, you… you’re just a little girl like me. So I hope that Aeliana… can be happy every day, just like a little girl should.”
“…Me?” Aeliana looked at her for a long, astonishing moment.
The bright shell she had built around herself as a “baker’s wife,” a “shrewd young woman,” a “mother who held her family together”—all spun-sugar sweetness and practiced composure—seemed to crack ever so slightly beneath those childish words. For just an instant, a long-buried sadness belonging to the vague shadow of a girl from long ago flickered through the opening.
But then she smiled again. This time, her smile was different from every smile before it. It was not the easy familiarity she showed her customers, nor the deliberately carefree expression she wore when speaking of the past. There was a gentle kindness in it that felt strangely unfamiliar to Ali. It was the expression of an elder looking upon someone younger, touched with affection, indulgence, and the faint wistfulness of someone who had already walked much farther down the road.
With that expression, she looked at Ali—another “young girl like her” who lived in an entirely different world.
“… Oh, silly.” Aeliana’s voice was as soft as freshly baked white bread, soothing Ali as though she were a child. “I hope that in the new year, you’ll be even happier than I am, darling.”
The afternoon sunlight streamed through the tall windows of the Guild hall, falling across half of Aeliana’s body and outlining her plain dress in a soft, fuzzy golden rim. It also warmed the lingering scent of flour and yeast on her clothes, making it richer—a comforting, homely fragrance that drifted over in delicate threads and filled the air.
Aeliana set down her empty cup, slipped a hand into the large pocket of her apron, and rummaged around for a moment before pulling out a small cloth pouch. She untied it with brisk, practiced movements.
Inside were several golden-brown, glossy little balls of pastry.
Without giving Ali any chance to refuse, she stuffed them into her palm with the same firm insistence a mother might use when stuffing snacks into her children’s pockets.
“No, I can’t take these! They’re expensive. You could still sell them—” The pastries had soaked the palm of Ali’s hand with warm grease through the cloth, and she instinctively tried to push them back.
“Are you really going to let me drink two glasses of your barley water for free, Ali?” Aeliana raised an eyebrow. That crisp, no-nonsense briskness of a businesswoman had returned, though it still came wrapped in that gentle “elder” warmth. “When you run a business, the last thing you want is to owe someone a favor.”
As she spoke, she casually reached out and affectionately brushed her knuckle against the tip of Ali’s nose.
“There. Just try them first. If you like them, come buy some from my bakery next time. Or give me a little notice ahead of time, and I’ll go deliver them to you.”
With that, she seemed to have finally reached the end of her brief rest.
With almost ceremonial care, she put her little linen cap back on, tied the strings, adjusted it until it sat properly, and tucked away her straw-colored hair beneath it.
Then, as though a fleck of flour had somehow gotten into her eye—or perhaps the sunlight had simply caught her too sharply—she quickly raised a hand and rubbed her eyes hard with the back of it.
“All right. Now I really should be on my way.” When she lowered her hand, Aeliana’s smile had returned to its usual shape, though the corners of her eyes were touched with a faint, almost imperceptible redness. “My man should have brought home the ingredients for dinner by now.”
“I’ll see you around, Ali.”
She turned and disappeared into the flow of people moving through the Guild hall. The retreating figure of that ordinary working woman, apron tied around her waist and cap on her head, left an extraordinarily deep impression on Ali.
Ali remained where she was, fresh pastries sitting in her palms. Their warmth seeped through her skin, little by little, until it reached somewhere deep inside her heart.
Suddenly, Ali felt an overwhelming urge to run after her. As though if she could reach that flour-dusted hand, the girl she had missed all those years ago would turn around and finally remind her of what she looked like when she was a child.
But Aeliana had already walked too far, for too long. So long that she had forgotten, forever, how to smile like a little girl again, or how to greet her as a carefree maiden.
The young Siren returned to the table with a lingering sense of loss, only to notice a delicate silk handkerchief hanging from the edge of the bench where Aeliana had been sitting.
Oh, didn’t Aeliana mention that she’s supposed to return a lost handkerchief to someone a few moments ago?
How come she left it behind? Had it slipped out when she took the pastries for Ali?
Hmm, looks like she would have to stop by Aeliana’s bakery before heading home this afternoon.
Ali leaned down and picked up the thin piece of fabric, which had a few crumbs from the pastries clinging to it.
Embroidered upon it in vivid red and blue thread were two elegant initials—
“L. C.”
Lucian Corundum.
It belonged to Maria’s fiancé.
