Chương 25: 10-1:Official Post, Burrow, and Northerners

Before entering the official waystation, we had two essential tasks to complete. First: conceal the carriage—which currently functioned as a mobile advertisement reading "WEALTHY TRAVELERS, PLEASE ROB US" in letters visible from three kingdoms away. Second: transform Matthews from someone who looked like he'd personally stepped off an Imperial wanted poster into a human being who might conceivably be served hot soup without triggering a manhunt. The first problem was relatively straightforward.

Matthews's reaction to our deep-blue luxury expedition carriage was exactly what I'd expected. He stood in the snow, staring at this collection of equipment that looked less like emergency transport and more like the fever dream of an aristocratic heir whose brain had been compromised by prolonged exposure to frost. Two seconds of silence. Then:"... Where did you acquire this."

"Quest reward," I answered without changing expression.

"Complimentary bonus." I terminated the topic immediately. It wasn't that the story was unexplainable. It was that explaining it would require covering the church, the bandits, the nun, the bounty, and the extended backstory of why our party included a woman whose cognitive processes had been entirely monetized. That wouldn't be conversation. That would be voluntary psychological self-destruction. Fortunately, the solution was simple: have Lucas turn it back into a crate of rotten apples.

Every time I watched my hard-won, theoretically valuable luxury carriage get magically compressed into a container of pathetic produce that wouldn't tempt the most desperate thief, I experienced a complex emotional response. Something like watching your ancestral heirloom sword being used to chop pickled vegetables, while being expected to nod approvingly because it's more practical. Lucas crouched in the snow, inscribing his array with the ceremonial gravity of someone officiating a royal coronation.

His lips moved through the incantation. A moment later, the carriage—which had been reflecting torchlight with completely inappropriate enthusiasm—shuddered, warped, and collapsed into a crate of apples that had clearly given up on life. Jessi stood with her arms crossed, watching with sustained professional disappointment.

"Every time I see this technique, I'm more convinced you studied the wrong discipline entirely. Forget magic—you should have specialized in creative accounting fraud."

"This is a highly applied concealment array!" Lucas protested immediately.

"Not accounting fraud!"

"Right. Advanced accounting fraud."

"Do you possess even minimal respect for academic disciplines?!"

"Of course~" Jessi's response was perfectly natural.

"I deeply respect the parts that generate revenue."

"..." I was beginning to suspect that at least fifty percent of Lucas's debt-driven expulsion from the Academy had been stress-induced by prolonged exposure to people exactly like her. The second task proved more complicated.

"Speaking of which, old man—you planning to just stroll into an official waystation looking like that?" Jessi circled Matthews with the casual assessment of someone evaluating livestock, gaze traveling from his weathered, scar-mapped face to the severed iron shackle on his wrist. Her tone carried the breezy casualness of someone asking about dinner plans.

"Even when I was completely broke, I at least made myself look like a qualified beggar. These days, even poverty requires presentation management."

"That's not presentation," I said flatly.

"That's cosmetic modification of criminal equipment."

"Little young master, it's called survival intelligence."

"I call it being a public health hazard." Matthews didn't engage with either of us. He glanced once toward the distant wall outline barely visible through the blizzard—calculating distance and timing with automatic efficiency—then looked down and began methodically wrapping the conspicuous shackle remnant in cloth strips, pulling his sleeve over the binding, and adjusting his weathered cloak. Few movements. Practiced to the point of invisibility.

The kind of practiced that comes from concealing scars, marks, and identities enough times that the process no longer requires conscious thought.

"No problem," he said simply.

"By the calendar, we're near the end of Frost-Month. In a few days, the border fortresses enter their busiest season."

"Busiest how?" I looked at him.

"Peak season for taverns, waystations, smugglers, garrisons—and body collectors." His voice maintained the same temperature as a weather forecast.

"When it gets busy, nobody has time to carefully examine every face." Lucas, clutching his apple crate, went several shades paler.

"Body collectors count as... peak season economics?"

"It's the North." Jessi shrugged with the equanimity of someone who had made peace with mortality as a market force.

"In some regions, the dead are just another link in the supply chain."

"Could you stop delivering mortality statistics like a market analyst?" I rubbed my temples.

"Would you prefer I frame it as tragic poetry?"

"I'd prefer complete silence." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. She smiled at me—the kind of smile that was eighty percent provocation and twenty percent something that the northern wind had made look more alive than it had any right to. I was increasingly convinced this woman generated body heat exclusively through the friction of irritating other people.

Lucas finished the concealment work, dusted snow from his hands, and adopted the expression of someone who had once again saved the situation through insufficiently appreciated expertise. We mounted the Ravens' horses without further delay and rode toward the waystation's swinging lamp. I had barely settled into the saddle when Jessi materialized beside my horse, one hand braced against the flank, half her weight lifted off the snow.

"Little young master~""What."

"You look surprisingly credible on horseback."

"I'm nobility. This is baseline competency."

"Is it~" Her eyes curved with the specific brightness she reserved for calculating market value.

"So if I ever need emergency funds, could I package you as 'Premium Equestrian Young Lord' and arrange high-end rentals?" I looked down at her.

"Do you want to be tied behind this horse and dragged into the waystation?"

"Absolutely not." She shook her head with complete seriousness.

"My face represents significant financial assets."

"Your audacity is the significant asset."

"See? You really do understand me~""That was not a compliment."

"I know~" Her smile widened.

"But hearing it from you still sounds nice." This woman could provoke a saint to violence. Erina mounted the gentlest horse with quiet grace. Lucas achieved his saddle through a process that could generously be called determined scrambling, one arm wrapped protectively around the false apple crate throughout.

Matthews was already mounted and adjusted before the rest of us had finished arguing, sitting like a piece of old iron that had grown there—the kind of silhouette that looked more native to northern wind than to human company. We rode into the night. I had assumed northern waystations were simply built with thicker walls. This assumption proved laughably naive. The accurate description: northern waystations typically leave only their entrance above ground.

The actual settlements—where people survived winter, survived the Month of Silence and the Month of Perpetual Night—weren't on the surface at all. They were underground. The locals called these places Burrows. The waystation before us looked exactly like what it appeared to be: a modest wooden structure with snow-buried roof, wind-scoured planks, and a copper lamp swinging at the entrance. The kind of place where you'd expect to find two soldiers, a crooked table, and a pot of beans that had boiled too long.

My expectations weren't entirely wrong. The interior contained exactly two soldiers, one table, two chairs, and essentially nothing else. The soldiers displayed a distinctly northern quality of lethargy—not the sly negligence of southern officials, but a profound, philosophical indifference. The kind that suggested even if demons were actively consuming people outside, they would finish their soup first and address the situation in proper order. The larger soldier didn't fully raise his head.

He simply extended one hand across the table with the energy of someone who had performed this gesture several thousand times.

"Identification tags." We placed our iron tags on the table one by one. He picked them up. Examined each slowly—with the measured pace of someone determining whether these objects merited the expenditure of his evening's remaining mental energy. When he reached Lucas Ponti, he paused. His gaze moved from tag to Lucas himself, conducting a thorough assessment.

No malice—purely the professional evaluation of someone confirming that this particular disaster-prone individual was the genuine article rather than a thief who had recently introduced the original owner to a snowdrift. Lucas endured the scrutiny with visible discomfort, producing a strained laugh and instinctively clutching his pack—containing the lead-sealed box—tighter against his chest. When the soldier reached my tag, he actually stopped.

"Rosa?" He finally raised his eyes, looked at me, then turned toward the older, more experienced soldier behind him.

"Hey—isn't Rosa the northeastern border mar—""Don't ask. It's that family." I cut him off before he could finish. The soldier held my gaze for half a second longer, visibly swallowing a question that was clearly impolite but equally clearly fascinating. I appreciated the restraint. Tonight was not the night to answer 'are you the disinherited bastard' in a northern waystation.

The large soldier produced a noncommittal grunt—either acknowledging the situation or expressing that aristocratic scandals were too commonplace to merit curiosity—and gestured toward the far end of the room once he'd finished checking tags.

"Through there." There was an iron cage. Cage was technically accurate but generously understated. The structure more closely resembled equipment designed for transporting coal, iron ore, or—with sufficient creativity—several frozen corpses. Heavy bars on all sides. A floor that returned hollow echoes underfoot. Connected to an arrangement of pulleys, chains, and levers whose engineering I could observe but not immediately comprehend. I stared at it for two seconds.

"... This isn't the actual waystation, is it."

"Welcome to the mouth of Burrow Number 144." The large soldier yawned with the cadence of someone reciting safety instructions they'd delivered hundreds of times.

"Keep your head, hands, and feet inside the structure. If any become detached during transit, recovery is not our responsibility."

"You could have mentioned that before we got in!" Lucas protested immediately.

"I'm mentioning it now, aren't I?" There is something uniquely infuriating about that logic. We filed into the cage. The iron gate slammed shut behind us with the finality of a decision that couldn't be reversed. The large soldier took hold of the lever outside, offered a smile of genuine, unhurried warmth.

"Enjoy the descent." The cage dropped. Not began descending. Dropped. I am prepared to swear that whatever remained in my stomach from the ruins made a serious attempt to exit via my throat. Iron chains screamed in both ears. Wind drove through the bars with personal conviction. The sensation was less civilized vertical transportation and more invisible giant grabbing us and shoving us toward the earth's core.

"——UWAAAAAAAH?!" Lucas achieved complete structural failure first. He hit the floor approximately one second after the drop began, spread-eagled, becoming a trembling, vocal puddle of sentient mud that somehow maintained lecture capacity even under these conditions.

"Dwarven engineering! This has to be Dwarven engineering!! The load specifications, the pulley ratios, the—""Your commitment to academic analysis during a life-threatening experience is genuinely admirable!" I had one hand locked around the bars and the other preventing my body from achieving unintended horizontal momentum, shouting over the wind.

"Remind me to have that engraved on your headstone!"

"Cedric..." A trembling voice from my right. I turned. Erina had her hand locked around mine—fingers tight, face paler than usual, lashes trembling with small involuntary movements. For someone whose previous experience hadn't included industrial descent mechanisms, this was apparently a significant adjustment. I closed my hand around hers without thinking.

"It's fine—we probably won't actually die from this—" Mid-sentence, I recognized this as structurally deficient comfort.

"Favoritism, little young master~" Jessi had both hands welded to the opposite bars, hair being destroyed by the wind, somehow maintaining the emotional bandwidth to provide commentary. Her eyes curved with an expression that had no business being that entertained.

"Is Miss Erina's hand particularly soft and warm? That grip looked very natural~" Erina seemed to register only then that she was still holding my hand. Her ears went immediately red. She pulled back with speed.

"S-sorry, I wasn't—""Don't apologize." I addressed her first, then turned to level a look at the woman treating near-death as entertainment.

"If you looked like you were about to externalize your soul, I might consider extending the same courtesy." Jessi produced a sound of elaborate theatrical regret.

"I'm afraid not. This face represents substantial financial value. Can you afford the liability if terror damages it?"

"Survive the landing before quoting insurance rates!" She sighed with the specific mournfulness of someone watching a profitable opportunity pass by. Then Matthews spoke.