Chương 243: 44. Two Letters 1

By the time we reached the outer gate of Latpan's inner court, I finally understood something. Sometimes, hearing they've finally arrived doesn't make you breathe any easier. Because the first thing I saw wasn't even Jessi. It was chaos. Not the controlled, bustling kind of chaos the capital sometimes managed, where protocol somehow still held everything together at the seams. Latpan was never a place you associated with the word disheveled.

The stone city suspended in open sky, the black-and-gold towers, the aerial walkways slung between deep sky and sheer cliff, the morning light that seemed to follow an order of its own even as the wind blew — this place was built to be looked up at. It was not built to receive refugees. But right now, the plaza that served as the capital's formal approach had been torn open by a convoy that looked like it was actively falling apart.

The wagon wheels sat bent at angles that suggested one more jolt would snap them clean off. The wooden sideboards were either cracked or scored black with burn marks, as if someone had dragged them straight out of a half-collapsed fire in the dead of night and kept driving without ever stopping to ask whether that was wise. Every draft horse was foaming at the mouth, legs trembling so badly it looked like ten more steps would put them on their knees.

The escorts looked worse still — gaps in their armor, torn cloaks, bandages gone dark over shoulders and arms, ash, sweat, blood, and road-dust all smeared together until it was impossible to tell which marks were fresh and which had simply never been wiped away. That still wasn't the worst of it. The worst part was what the convoy was dragging behind it. Not a handful of straggling attendants. Not a few extra wounded picked up along the way. An entire trailing mass of people. Old men and women.

Mothers clutching children. Men bent under bundled packs. A boy missing one shoe, jaw set, still forcing his bare foot forward. A scattering of soldiers mixed into the crowd, still half in garrison gear. These people weren't following anyone. They had simply grabbed hold of the only thing still moving forward, and refused, absolutely, to let go. This was the first wave of refugees. No trumpets. No advance word. No margin left for anyone to prepare.

It had simply arrived, in the most undignified way imaginable, and crashed straight into the capital of the Dragon Kingdom. My steps slowed without my permission. Because I remembered what these same people had looked like leaving the harbor. It had been chaotic then too, and everyone had known the situation was as bad as it could get — but at least, back then, each person had still resembled someone retreating. They'd known what they were leaving, and roughly where they were going. This was different.

What I was looking at now wasn't a retreat. This was a rout. Running without stopping, looking back only to find that every place that might have let them catch their breath was collapsing behind them too, until there was nothing left to do but grit their teeth and keep moving. My chest tightened. My eyes finally caught a familiar shape in the wreckage. Jessi was climbing down from the lead wagon. She looked as though another whole layer had been stripped off her since I'd last seen her.

Not physically thinner, exactly — but the presence she always carried, the one that said no matter how bad this gets, I'll curse someone out first and figure out the rest second, had been ground down hard by exhaustion and the endless flight. Her coat was grey with ash. One sleeve bore a wide burn scar. Her hair, usually pinned back with ruthless precision, had come loose, a few damp strands stuck to her temple.

Her face was pale to the point of looking faintly green, the exhaustion under her eyes so heavy it made you wonder if sheer stubbornness was the only thing holding her upright. Even looking like that, she was still Jessi. Her first step onto the plaza was steady. Her gaze swept the square — the capital guards, the attendants scrambling to manage the refugees while clearly still half in shock — and finally landed on me.

"... Finally caught up to you." The moment she opened her mouth, I wanted to frown. Her voice was that hoarse, and she was still trying to act like nothing was wrong. At this rate, she was going to will herself into evolving into a dragon out of sheer stubbornness. I'd barely started toward her when Ignicia spoke first.

"Medics." Her voice wasn't loud, but it snapped every dazed attendant within earshot back to attention at once.

"Separate the refugees from the wounded immediately. Children, the elderly, and the critically injured go first. Requisition water and hot food from the outer city reserves now. Open a temporary receiving point in the north secondary plaza — don't let them pile up and block the main approach. Soldiers from San Juan get a separate roll call. Anyone still able to speak, hold them aside." She laid the orders out in a single breath, leaving no room for anyone to hesitate.

Several attendants froze for exactly one second, then bowed their heads, called out acknowledgment, and sprinted off. The panic that had begun creeping into the capital's air the moment the refugees arrived was, sentence by sentence, hauled back onto something that could function. This was the part of Ignicia that was genuinely frightening.

She could bite me awake at my own bedside the night before, tell me the next morning with a perfectly straight face that growing scales is completely normal, stop looking like a monkey discovering it's about to evolve, and then, one breath later, stand in the middle of the capital plaza and physically drag an entire collapsing situation back into order.

For the record: I still maintain that anyone capable of putting growing dragon scales and perfectly normal in the same sentence has absolutely no standing to mock anyone else for looking like a monkey. Jessi had clearly clocked that Ignicia was operating in full princess mode. Her eyes flickered, then came back to me. No — more precisely, to where I was standing. Because I wasn't standing out front alone. I had walked in right behind Ignicia. Close enough that no one needed much imagination to fill in the rest.

Her gaze paused there a beat, then dropped lower, as if she'd caught sight of something else. My stomach sank before I'd even looked down — I already knew she'd spotted the scale on the back of my left hand, the one I still hadn't quite learned to ignore. Then, the next second, Jessi smiled. Not her usual what stupid thing have you done now smile. Not mockery. Not schadenfreude. It was a smile so exhausted that even the corners of her mouth could only lift halfway — and yet unmistakably, distinctly relieved.

Like someone who had spent years watching a young master do nothing but cause trouble while pretending everything was fine, only to glance away for a moment and find he'd stumbled, somehow, into standing on his own two feet. That smile sent an inexplicable chill down my spine. Honestly, I think I'd have been more comfortable if she'd just insulted me outright. Being looked at with ah, you finally grew up eyes made me want to find a hole in the plaza and climb straight into it.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Jessi," I said, striking first to smother whatever awkwardness that was building.

"You can drop that expression — the one that looks like you're watching a problem child finally learn to feed himself. It makes me want to pretend I don't know you."

"Oh?" She arched an eyebrow. Her voice was nearly gone, but her tone still had enough left to cut.

"You're certainly in a position to say that now. Yesterday you were still the young master. Today you're walking in and out with Her Highness, and even your place in line has changed."

"..." I suddenly became very aware that the wind here was a little too loud. Because Ignicia was standing right there. And I didn't even need to turn my head to feel the quality of her gaze, radiating something perfectly calm and perfectly clear: if you can't field that one properly, I won't object to watching you burn to ash on the spot. As if that weren't enough, Jessi sighed, the picture of theatrical regret.

"Such a shame I wasn't here last night." She looked at me, forcing a glint of mischief through the exhaustion in her eyes.

"I could have witnessed the young master's grand coming-of-age moment."

"Jessi. That's enough." The voice didn't belong to me. It came from Alvira, stepping out from behind her. Her face wore its usual expression of comprehensive disdain, which not even a layer of dust could soften. Compared to Jessi, she looked marginally less likely to collapse in the next few seconds — but that was as far as the compliment went. The edge of her cloak was scorched. Two fresh gouges ran across one knee-guard.

Her hair looked like it had spent the entire journey arguing with the wind, and she generally resembled someone who'd just fought her way out of a battlefield where the client had refused to pay and still tried to haggle on the way out.

"We ran here to stay alive, not so you could watch him get roasted," Alvira shot Jessi a look, then turned her gaze to me, sweeping up and down once. Her expression grew considerably more complicated.

"... Although she isn't entirely wrong."

"Alvira, you too?" I couldn't help it.

"What did you expect?" She let out something between a snort and a sigh.

"The whole way here, I kept wondering whether you'd actually managed to talk your way from the harbor straight into the capital's core using nothing but your mouth. Clearly, I underestimated you." I wanted to argue. I gave it a moment's thought. I found I couldn't. Because on the merits, I was currently standing beside the Dragon Kingdom's princess, sporting a new scale on my hand, and about to be walked into a war council.

There was no version of it's not what you think that was going to cover that particular configuration. And Jessi's few lines of banter had, in their own small way, loosened the string in my chest that had pulled taut the moment I'd seen the state of that convoy. Briefly. Entirely at the wrong moment. But it's exactly in situations like this that you learn how rare, and how valuable, it is to have someone who still remembers to make a joke at your expense in the middle of all that grey. That brief ease didn't last.

Because Jessi's next sentence dropped the temperature of the entire plaza by several degrees.

"The Yanxia Imperial Army didn't stop at the Port of Isca Apubra." She didn't shout it. She said it almost flatly. And it was precisely that flatness that made it land like a block of iron dropped straight into everyone's chest. Even a nearby attendant, mid-motion helping a fallen refugee to their feet, froze and looked up. My brow came down at once.

"What do you mean?" Jessi pressed a hand to her temple, as if steadying her breath, or gathering up the images from the road.

"After we pulled out of the harbor, we made straight for San Juan, exactly as planned." Her voice was hoarse, but it steadied as she went on.

"You know what it is — the Dragon Kingdom's second-largest city, half a military fortress. Even with the port gone, I thought we could at least get our footing there, get the delegation and the people trailing us sorted, and figure out how to move everyone on to Latpan." She paused.

"Instead, on the second day after we entered the city, word came in. Yanxia was preparing to march on San Juan." I stared.

"The second day?"

"The second day." Jessi's eyes went cold.

"Too fast for a normal army advance. It felt less like a standard push and more like they already knew exactly where the roads were, exactly what to hit next, exactly where we'd most likely run once the harbor fell." The air around us sank. This had already moved past anything the enemy is very strong could explain away. Cracking the harbor was one thing. Reaching from Isca Apubra to San Juan that fast — fast enough to look pre-scouted — wasn't simply pressing an advantage. It was something else entirely.

Intelligence. Routes. Something that should never have reached enemy hands clearly already had.

"We didn't dare gamble on it," Jessi went on.

"The moment word hit the city, we took the earliest wagons out. What we could bring, we brought. What we couldn't—" Her gaze slid sideways, landing on the refugees. She didn't finish. She didn't need to. The answer was standing right there. Those who could keep up had made it all the way to Latpan. Those who couldn't were, presumably, still somewhere behind. My jaw clenched on reflex, fingertips going rigid.

For a moment I could almost feel a faint, uncomfortable heat pulsing beneath the scale on the back of my left hand — as if some emotion I hadn't yet learned to manage was quietly leaking out through that mark that wasn't quite human. Ignicia spoke beside me. Her voice was cold, and precise.

"San Juan is half a fortress. The Yanxia Empire couldn't have arrived with full siege equipment from the very start." Her eyes darkened as she added the rest.

"Assuming the garrison commander isn't an idiot." Somewhere nearby, I heard a capital guard draw a very quiet breath. Because that wasn't simply an insult. Ignicia had just set the two worst possibilities down on the table, side by side. Either San Juan's commander was incompetent enough to run a half-fortress like a roadside inn. Or — the enemy hadn't needed to probe for weaknesses at all, because they'd already known exactly how to walk in. Neither option did anything for the tightness in my chest.

And into that pressure, an inner-court guard pushed through the crowd, crossed to us, and dropped to one knee.

"Your Highness." His voice was steady, but the urgency underneath was impossible to miss.

"His Majesty the Emperor has summoned all strategists to the council chamber at once, to discuss the war." He turned to me as well, bowing his head.

"Additionally, by His Majesty's command, Lord Cedric is to attend." Something sank in my chest. Not just at the word war. At the way he'd named me, in this setting, in this exact fashion. It meant that, as far as the Emperor was concerned, I was no longer someone who could be left standing outside the chamber waiting for news. Jessi had clearly caught all of that too. Her eyes, greyed by exhaustion, found me again — and this time, the smile was clearer. Still tired. Still hoarse. But genuinely, unmistakably glad.

The look of someone who had spent years watching a young master cause nothing but trouble, and was now finally seeing him stand — not dragged there, not saved by luck, but arrived — at the place he was actually meant to occupy. Go, her eyes said, though the word never left her mouth. Then she opened it anyway, and was exactly herself.

"Looks like you get to sit in on war councils now." Jessi managed a weak laugh, her voice cracking like it might split in half.

"Young master. Your growth rate is genuinely alarming."

"If you call me young master one more time," I said, looking at her, "I will personally request that the physicians pin you to a bed and pour three bowls of bitter medicine down your throat."

"You'll have to get in line," Alvira cut in, coldly folding her arms.

"I want to do that more than you do."

"Hey."

"Hey what," she said, thoroughly unimpressed.

"You're the man of the hour right now. Try sounding like it. Don't be petty."

"You know, sometimes you genuinely make me miss enemies who at least had the decency to just come at me with a sword."

"Likewise." I had at least two more retorts loaded when Ignicia touched my elbow — lightly. Not a pull. Not a warning shove. Just a brief nudge. I turned to her. She wasn't smiling, and hadn't joined any of the last few exchanges. She was simply watching me, those red-gold eyes carrying nothing extraneous at all. But I understood. Time to go. Toward the side of this that was actually going to be trouble. I let out a breath and finally said to Jessi, "Go get some rest."

Jessi's eyebrow went up, then something in her expression softened — apparently satisfied I'd managed a line that finally sounded like an adult.

"Understood," she said.

"Don't you die in there either. It'd be very hard to explain — I go through all this trouble to get you to the capital, and then you turn around and come up one short."

"... The council chamber isn't an execution ground." Ignicia tossed that in, flat and unbothered, from beside me. Jessi glanced at her and still found the energy to laugh.

"Maybe not for Your Highness. For him, that's up for debate." I genuinely considered having someone haul her off to the physicians right then and force her into silence and rest. Unfortunately, acting on that impulse rarely made anything easier. So in the end, I gave the two of them one last look, turned, and followed Ignicia. I'd taken one step before I glanced back. The plaza was still chaos.

Refugees being sorted, a child crying somewhere, attendants shouting low as they ran, the snap of a physician's robes cutting through the air as someone hurried to fetch one — all of it tangled together in Latpan's cold, high-altitude morning wind. The capital's usual elevated, orderly dignity had been split open by this first wave of arrivals, and the crack was not a small one. Jessi was still standing in front of it. Covered in ash, covered in wounds, exhausted down to the bone. Still smiling.

Not because there was anything here worth smiling at. Because even in the middle of something this bad, she'd still seen one thing that let her breathe a little easier. Something caught in my throat. Because only now did I really understand — that smile hadn't only been about me. It had been a handoff. As if to say: All right. I got you this far. From here, it's your turn to stand on your own. I dragged my gaze back and followed Ignicia toward the council chamber.

She walked fast, her cloak cutting a clean arc in the wind, her red hair burning quietly in the morning light. I'd fallen half a step behind — until, as if sensing something, she slowed, just slightly. Just enough to let me fall into step beside her. I watched her profile and asked, quietly, "Were you slowing down for me just now?"

"No," she answered immediately.

"You answered too fast."

"That's because it was a stupid question."

"Ah."

"Besides," she added, mild as anything, "you're about to walk into a council of war. If you can't even keep up when I walk a little faster, the Dragon Kingdom's future is going to be very embarrassing." I was quiet for two seconds, then laughed, and couldn't quite stop myself. Of course. Still the same dragon. One moment, calmly redirecting an entire refugee crisis with a string of orders. The next, kicking me smoothly back into reality with a single sentence. This time, I didn't fire back the way I usually would.

I simply walked, quietly, a step behind her, toward the chamber where the Emperor had already gathered every strategist he had.