Chương 198: 27. Running Errands 2

Running toward the dragon tower, I finally felt the full weight of port closure. Back at the scaffold, the residence, the cellar—events had hit in sequence, no space to process. Now, away from corpses and fire, the reality landed. Iskaaprubla Port was a city held by the throat. Every intersection had garrison soldiers. Half the shops were forced shut, the other half peering through cracked shutters with expressions calculating whether they'd have heads by morning.

From the piers came waves of cursing—why can't we leave, by what authority—each wave compressed under louder voices. Dragon shadows continued overhead. Normally, dragons suggested majesty, authority, power. These shadows conveyed exactly one message: Try to run and fall from the sky. I jogged and coughed, throat still carrying the Governor's residence bouquet of charred wood and accelerant. The fire-ward talisman was back in my pocket—it had not included lung-cleaning features.

Every breath reminded me: you are human. Extended dragon proximity does not confer fire immunity. … Watching someone handle glowing iron like a warm cup was genuinely damaging to normal self-perception. I rounded rising stone steps and the dragon tower appeared. Grey-white, built on high rock overlooking the harbor. Narrow and tall, dark metal ribbing its exterior—a spear driven skyward. The landing platform was wide enough for multiple dragons, flanked by signal poles and bronze bells.

The wind flag snapped taut, looking structural. The atmosphere was tighter than expected. The usual military energy—we are very busy, you should not be here—had become something genuinely wound. Armored cavalry moved with purpose. Couriers ran with document tubes. The gate guards had hands on weapons before I was within ten paces. One frowned seeing me. Not entirely unfair.

I currently looked like explosion debris: smoke-stained coat, scorched sleeve, boots carrying Governor's residence ash, general presentation of someone recently recovered from structural collapse. Add human and foreign during active lockdown, and I understood the reception.

"Halt." The left guard's voice was flat.

"Tower is under lockdown. No entry without authorization." I stopped, consciously avoiding weapon-drawing gestures.

"I have authorization." The second guard's look communicated: you had better.

"Show it." Minor problem. What I had was Ignicia's verbal instruction and a face suggesting recent fire exposure. Neither constituted documentation. Then rapid footsteps from inside. A young dragon rider jogged out, saw me, and his expression shifted.

"Wait." He raised a hand to the guards.

"I know him." Both guards looked over. The rider studied me, trying to reconcile this ash-covered human with someone he'd seen beside the princess earlier. With visible reluctance:"He's the human who was with Her Highness." My eye twitched. The human who was with Her Highness. That made me sound like roadside pickup rather than diplomatic envoy. I cleared my throat.

"Cedric Rosa. Emergency envoy of the Kingdom of Eckhaus." The rider's tone adjusted marginally.

"…Yes, Envoy." He paused, choosing words.

"Her Highness sent word earlier. If you came, you were not to be stopped." So she'd preserved some dignity for me. I nodded.

"I'm here on Her Highness's instructions to collect her seal and use the priority dispatch line—messages to the capital and my delegation." Both guards' expressions shifted subtly. Not doubt—more like: so this ash-covered human is actually functional and working for the princess. I understood. If I were them, I'd wonder whether the Governor wasn't the only one behaving unusually today. The rider gestured without further questions.

"This way." You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Following him in, I couldn't resist asking quietly:"Do I look that bad?" He paused, turned.

"…If you're asking whether you look like someone who recently exited a fire—yes."

"Honesty is virtuous. Not always comfortable."

"Apologies."

"No—this is better," I sighed.

"At least you said it. A certain dragon skips like and defaults to treating me as refuse." His mouth moved almost imperceptibly. Then his regulation expression returned.

"Her Highness's trust in you exceeds most expectations," he said. I looked at him.

"Including yours?"

"… Including mine." I found I liked this one. Inside was busier than outside. Ground level: access control. Upper levels: constant courier flow. People moved with scrolls, rangefinders, focused energy of a place processing more information than designed for. Everyone who saw me looked twice. Some from surprise, some wariness, some clearly calculating how a foreign human had gone from person near the princess to person carrying the princess's seal in one afternoon.

If looks could file inquiries, I'd have been interrogated thirty times. The rider brought me to a third-floor dispatch room. Inside, a senior female official stood behind a long table organizing message tubes. Deep blue uniform with silver trim, hair arranged without a strand displaced, expression conveying: The building could be collapsing and I would still require properly formatted documentation.

She looked up as I entered, gaze pausing on my face first, then the scorch marks on my sleeve, finally settling on the young dragon rider who'd brought me in.

"This is?"

"Lord Cedric Rosa, emergency envoy of the Kingdom of Eckhaus," the rider answered.

"Here by Her Highness's direct order to collect her seal and dispatch messages to the capital and the Eckhaus delegation." The official's eyebrow moved—barely perceptible, but it moved.

"Content of the orders?"

"Port closure confirmed. Governor deceased. Governor's residence burned. Blue-sealed iron chest recovered." I continued myself.

"Additionally, Her Highness instructed me to send urgent dispatches to the capital and my delegation, to prevent them from assuming I've gone missing or been—" I caught myself mid-sentence. The official watched me quietly. I cleared my throat.

"—or been delayed by other circumstances." Close call. I'd nearly quoted trafficked by the princess verbatim. That would have been career-ending. Something flickered in the official's eyes—as if she'd watched me swallow something considerably less diplomatic than what came out. She didn't ask. This was exactly what made people like her both terrifying and invaluable: they knew precisely which sentences to process and which to let pass into oblivion.

"Her Highness's temporary seal." She retrieved a small metal stamp from a locked box behind her and placed it on the table.

"The tower's priority line is available. The capital dispatch requires dragon cavalry express. The delegation message can go simultaneously via tower relay and port courier—double coverage." I blinked.

"Both channels?"

"We cannot afford to waste time," she said with perfect composure.

"If your delegation genuinely doesn't know your whereabouts, the difference between them learning half a night earlier or later is considerable." I found myself warming to this woman. Cold delivery, but exceptionally functional.

"Then I'm in your capable hands." She nodded and slid two sheets of prepared vellum across the table.

"Please write." I stared down at the paper and felt a wave of surreal displacement. Today had been: naval bombardment, pier arrests, near-suffocation in a burning building, watching a Governor vomit black blood on a scaffold. And now I was sitting in a dragon tower dispatch room doing correspondence. The whiplash was so severe I briefly didn't know who to blame first. I wrote the capital dispatch first. Didn't need length—every word required weight. Ignicia Dracunia returned to Dragon Kingdom.

Iskaaprubla Port Governor Haerdin confirmed accepting bribes from Yanxia Empire and sea-dragon forces. Governor's residence destroyed by targeted arson. Dragon Kingdom coastal defense deployment suspected compromised. Port sealed, full investigation underway— Each sentence felt like signing my name to a storm that hadn't fully broken yet. Then the delegation letter. This one came slower.

Because the moment I put pen to paper, I realized how much had accumulated—the mountain pass, the Ravens, Blackbeard Bay, the auction platform, Marro, the naval engagement, dragonships, sea-dragon gunboats, Haerdin, the fire, the chest, the military map. I held most of it back. Wrote only what needed to be said. This wasn't the time for narrative.

It was the time to tell my people: I'm alive, and what's happening here has crossed the threshold from diplomatic incident into something requiring an entirely different category of response. When I finished, the official took both letters, scanned headers and signatures with professional efficiency, and processed them without hesitation. The capital dispatch went into a silver-clasped dragon-seal tube, handed immediately to a waiting courier rider.

The delegation message was copied for tower relay summary, the original prepped for port courier station. The young rider accepted the capital tube and looked at me.

"You're certain the contents are accurate?" I managed a tired smile.

"I'd much prefer they weren't." Unfortunately, nothing that had gone wrong today involved my handwriting. The official returned Ignicia's seal to its box, then slid a small wooden token across the table.

"Temporary passage identification," she said.

"Any checkpoint in the port tonight will process you with minimal delay." I took the token, then heard myself ask:"Do you handle situations like this for Her Highness often?" Her hands paused for exactly half a heartbeat. Then, with absolute neutrality:"No." I nodded.

"So her first day back and you're already receiving the intensive practical course." This time, the official actually looked up at me. Her gaze was mild, professional. But underneath, almost invisible, was something that looked like exhaustion.

"Lord Envoy," she said with perfect diplomatic composure, "if Her Highness returned like this every time, the Dragon Kingdom would likely have been rebuilt from the foundation three times over by now." I nearly laughed out loud. So it wasn't just me. Even the most composed administrative officer in the dragon tower had opinions about Ignicia's approach to homecoming—seal the port, burn someone, raid a residence, all before sunset. Everyone simply possessed the survival instinct to phrase it more diplomatically.

The messages were dispatched. Tower bells continued their distant resonance. Dragon shadows swept past windows at regular intervals. The post-closure tension held the entire building like a drawn bowstring. I knew this wasn't a moment to breathe easy. The capital and delegation had been notified, but what would actually determine how many snakes got pulled from this port tonight was happening below—Ignicia, Lei Lian, the harbor commander, and Marro's crew, now officially earning their keep.

I pocketed the wooden token and turned toward the door. The young rider held it open, then spoke quietly.

"Lord Envoy."

"Mm?"

"Are you—truly here just to deliver Her Highness's messages?" I stopped and looked back at him. It wasn't an interrogation. He was genuinely trying to understand how a foreign human had been swept into a political storm of this magnitude in a single day and was still standing here, ash on his collar, answering questions. I thought about it. Then gave the most honest answer I had.

"Truthfully, I'm not entirely sure myself." He blinked, caught off guard by the candor. I waved once.

"But there's one thing I'm certain about."

"What's that?" I pushed through the door, dropping the words over my shoulder.

"Nobody's getting any sleep tonight." Then I descended the tower's spiral stairs, walking back into the sealed port—baring its teeth and nowhere near finished with us.