Chương 187: 22. Traitor Within 3

In the end, Ignicia didn't hold the public inquisition on the dock. Honestly, I'd half expected her to plant herself on the pier and spend the afternoon dismantling the port's entire administrative structure in front of a live audience. But she gave Haerdin one last look—the magnanimous variety, the kind that says I'm choosing to leave you one layer of dignity—and we were escorted inside. A small building adjacent to the harbor district.

Originally, I suspected, a duty room for officers needing temporary space to argue. Thick plank walls, low beams, two crates of rope and oilcloth shoved into a corner that someone had clearly meant to move and never gotten around to. One long table, several chairs, a brass lamp hanging from the center beam—burning well enough, but somehow failing to reach the shadows in the corners, which had that particular quality of harbor darkness that made you feel like something was listening from them.

The moment the door closed, the room felt smaller. Not from overcrowding. From weight. Every person had brought something in with them—residual heat from cannon fire, the salt-smoke smell of battle, rank, suspicion, and the specific gravity of accusations that hadn't finished landing yet. All of it compressed into a room designed for paperwork. Haerdin stood to the left of the long table, nearest the head, but not sitting.

His face had recovered some color, but his posture was still impeccable—the kind of rigidity that comes not from strength but from refusing to let the last piece of composure go. I watched him and understood: what he feared most at this point wasn't being reprimanded. It was the possibility that when the next person walked through that door, one wrong look might mean he didn't walk out again. Ignicia had taken the position at the far end of the table. Not seated.

Standing, back to the wall, as though she'd simply decided that the room's center of gravity belonged under her feet now. Her cloak was still unsettled—edges damp with seawater and smudged with ash—which somehow made her look more dangerous, not less. Not the elevated figure of court portraiture. Something that had walked off a battlefield and hadn't finished putting the war away. I moved, almost without thinking, to stand half a step behind her right shoulder. Pure instinct. Not protocol.

But in a room like this, where you stood was a declaration of allegiance. As for Marro— He made absolutely no attempt to look innocent. With the harbor district sealed, he and his crew weren't going anywhere. So the one-eyed old fox simply invited himself in, drifted to the wall nearest the door, and assumed the posture of a man who had decided: since I can't get back to my ship anyway, I might as well watch and see who has the worse day. His crew matched the energy. One stood with arms crossed.

One had compressed himself into a corner, doing a credible impression of a shadow. One had already developed the expression of a man quietly hoping someone was going to get hanged. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. … Blackbeard Bay upbringing. The habit of betting on other people's disasters didn't wash out. The door opened again. First to enter was the harbor district border defense commander.

The kind of man you could identify at a glance as trouble for anyone who got in his way. Mid-thirties to early forties, shoulders broad, neck thick, uniform buttons straining against what appeared to be permanent barely-contained impatience. He came through the door with his face already announcing: whatever this is, it had better be worth my time. He looked at Haerdin first—a look that contained zero comfort and considerable you had better have a reason I don't want to flip this table.

Then he looked at Ignicia and me, deepened his frown, and grudgingly positioned himself on the opposite side of the long table. Left side: Haerdin. Right side: the commander. Center: conspicuously empty, like a seat reserved. No one spoke. Marro scratched his jaw by the door. I could hear the faint crackle of the lamp flame. Then, from outside, came a sound. Not footsteps. The muffled, heavy beat of wings folding. Several people looked up simultaneously. Even the commander tightened his jaw another fraction.

The tower garrison had arrived. The door opened a second time. A gust of high-altitude cold came in first, carrying the mineral edge of dragon-scale. The figure that followed was armored—not ceremonially, but with the no-excess functionality of active military kit. Chest plate, arm guards, leg protection, all standard issue, edged with fine inlaid dragon-scale patterns that were decorative only in the sense that they had been placed there by someone who considered everything a potential weapon.

Most striking was the full-face visor—narrow eye-slit, features completely obscured. She entered, and her first look went directly to Ignicia. Not to Haerdin. Not to the commander. Not a glance toward any harbor official. She simply stopped, came to attention, and delivered a salute so precisely executed it bordered on severe. The room shifted again. Haerdin represented harbor administration. The commander represented the garrison.

But this person, just dismounted from a dragon's back, represented something more direct and considerably less diplomatic. Military authority. After the salute, she reached up and unfastened her visor. The sound of metal clasps releasing was very clear in the silence. She lifted it free. I went still. Because the face that emerged wasn't what I had been expecting from a tower garrison general. She was younger than the rank suggested.

Her features were distinctly East Asian in character—clean jaw with no softness to spare, eyebrows like two ink-brushed blades angled into her temples, and eyes that carried the particular coldness of someone accustomed to looking down from height at sea, at enemy ships, at the dead. If Haerdin was a document going pale, and the harbor commander was a powder keg that had been kicked, then the general who had just walked in was a drawn blade—out of its sheath, not yet swinging, waiting.

She dropped to one knee and bowed her head.

"Your Highness." Her voice was clear and precise—not a single wasted tremor in it.

"I am Lei Lian, Tower General of the Yinglong Guard, sea-suppressing dragon cavalry of Iskaaprubla Port, Dragon Kingdom." She delivered the entire introduction without sparing so much as half a glance toward Haerdin or the harbor commander. That wasn't rudeness. It was the calculated decision of someone who had concluded that until Ignicia gave her orders, neither of those men was worth the expenditure of attention. I stood behind Ignicia and quietly filed the entire scene away.

The room wasn't large, but the positioning had become painfully clear. By the door: Marro and his crew, like seabirds that had spectated their way straight into the eye of a political hurricane. Left side of the table: Haerdin, still pale, still maintaining perfect posture, still losing the battle to look like a man with options. Right side: the harbor commander, radiating the specific fury of someone whose day had just gotten considerably more complicated.

And at dead center: Lei Lian, fresh from the dragon tower, high-altitude wind still clinging to her armor. As for Ignicia— She leaned on no one. She simply stood at the front, surveying the assembled arrangement with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had just finished laying out a board and found every piece exactly where she wanted it.

"Good," she said. Her voice wasn't loud, but every spine in the room drew fractionally straighter, as though an invisible fingertip had traced lightly down each one. The corner of her mouth lifted.

"Let's begin."