Chương 272: 55. Muster 1

Those fifteen days at Three Rivers Fortress passed faster than I'd expected. Not the lazy kind of fast, where you blink and realize time slipped by while you were comfortable.

The kind where each day shoves you forward by the collar—today hauling a bucket of soup to one side of camp, tomorrow delivering a sack of smoked meat to another, the day after that getting mentally assaulted by a bunch of carpenters who also happened to be mages, until you started doubting the very concept of magic—and by the time you finally manage a full breath, you look up and find the calendar has rolled forward a dozen pages without asking.

The strangest part was this: I actually, gradually, found my footing in the rhythm of the place. Not the rhythm of Three Rivers Fortress itself. The garrison's attitude toward our Dragon Kingdom contingent stayed exactly what it had been from the start: they'd cooperate when cooperation was called for, hand over what was owed, but whenever they looked at us, there was always that half-inch of reserve held back behind the eyes. Not malice. Not calculation. Just an honest inability to trust us all the way. Fear.

Plain, simple, and easy enough to understand precisely because it didn't bother pretending to be something else. What actually started making room for me first were Lei Lian's six hundred dragoons—and whatever thin thread of presence I'd worn into the place through sheer repetition. And Ignicia, I think, was the first one to see it. On the evening of the seventh day, I was heading toward the dragoon tents with two canteens of bitter tea and a bag of freshly traded roasted beans.

I'd just rounded the short slope at the outer wall's corner when I found Ignicia standing at the top of it. No formal armor today—just that dark, practical coat she favored for moving around, hair tied back, a half-read camp inventory rolled up loosely in one hand. She was looking out over the outer camp below. The dragoons' training ground. The roost. The rows of temporary tents. The people moving between them—carrying buckets, hauling baskets, going back and forth. One of whom was me.

She'd probably seen me coming for a while already, because the moment I reached the top of the slope, she spoke first.

"You're starting to look more and more like a camp errand boy." I looked down at what I was carrying. Two canteens of tea. One bag of beans. A bundle of medicinal herbs strung from my belt that I'd picked up for Yozora on the way.... Okay. Hard to argue with that.

"Better than looking like an outsider everywhere I go." I shifted my grip to keep everything from tumbling. She turned her head slightly, and those red eyes—softer in the evening wind than they usually were, more like fire settled back into its sheath—looked at me.

"So you know you looked like an outsider at the start."

"Isn't that obvious?" I said.

"I was an outsider."

"Still are."

"... You really don't believe in leaving anyone a graceful exit, do you."

"I'm stating a fact." Her voice was as level as a weather report. But she paused, and looked back down at the tent area below.

"You just don't look like the kind of outsider who's going to break something anymore." I blinked, half a second behind. Coming from anyone else, that line wouldn't have been much. Coming from Ignicia, it was practically a commendation. Close enough to one that I didn't quite know what to do with it.

"... Should I be moved right now?" Stolen novel; please report. Her reply was cool as ever.

"You can hold off on the self-congratulation."

"I knew there'd be a blade waiting at the end of that."

"Because you've been running over to Lei Lian's side too often lately."

"Is that something you need to regulate?"

"I'm not regulating it." She looked at me, expression unchanged.

"I'm reminding you that getting comfortable and overstepping aren't the same thing." The wind came up the slope, lifting a few strands of her red hair across her forehead. I heard what she actually meant without needing her to spell it out. She wasn't jealous. She wasn't pulling rank for the sake of it. She was telling me: this place isn't the Dragon Kingdom. Not everyone here can afford to relax the way people do around a campfire.

Lei Lian's riders had started letting me sit with them because I'd made myself useful enough over the past week that they'd stopped counting me as dead weight—but the rest of the garrison watching us from a distance wasn't going to extend the same courtesy. I nodded.

"I know where the line is."

"You'd better." Her eyes dropped to the bean bag in my arms.

"Who are those for?"

"Second squad." The answer came without thinking.

"They had watch last night, so they're on rest rotation today. The one with the scar through her eyebrow mentioned the wind was brutal and she wanted something to chew on." She was quiet for a moment.

"You remember all that."

"What else would I do—bring the wrong thing every time and get mocked for it collectively?"

"You already get mocked regularly."

"You didn't need to say that out loud." The corner of her mouth moved. Very slightly. Barely enough to qualify as a smile. But I saw it. And with it came a strange feeling I hadn't expected—something like the realization that these past days of trying to find my footing in this fortress hadn't only been visible to me. From somewhere a little higher up, someone had been watching the whole time. Someone who, unfortunately, was constitutionally incapable of just saying so.

After a moment, she added, almost as an afterthought: "Go on. The tea's still hot." I glanced down instinctively—and only then noticed that both canteens had a layer of wind-cloth wrapped around them. Without it, the heat would have bled out completely somewhere along that stretch of exposed path. I stared at them for a second, then looked back up at her.

"... You wrapped these?"

"Ask me one more time and I'll say no."

"Understood. I'll shut up."

"Get out of here."

"Yes, Your Highness." As I walked back down the slope, the weight of her gaze stayed on my back for a few seconds before it finally withdrew. And I had to admit— that very particular combination of clearly watching while pretending not to care at all was so completely, unmistakably her. Also genuinely inconvenient. Because it made it very hard not to look back. On the night of the twelfth day, I ran into her again on the city wall. The wind was strong.

The Mages' Guild's work site still glowed with a few working lanterns—from a distance, the newly erected rings of timber and stone had taken on the rough silhouette of a gate, though it hadn't been activated yet. The outer camp had gone quieter than the daytime, broken only by the measured footsteps of the night watch and the occasional dry rustle of dragons shifting their wings. I hadn't been able to sleep. I'd come up to the wall for the wind.

When I got there, Ignicia was already leaning against the parapet, looking out at the dark road below. She heard my footsteps and didn't turn around.

"Why are you wandering around again?"

"That question is starting to sound like your standard opening line whenever you see me."

"Because you genuinely wander around a lot."

"I call it a perimeter check."

"I call it insomnia."... Right. She had me there, again. I walked over and stood beside her, following her gaze out into the dark. Beyond a few scattered watch-fire points, there wasn't much to see—just the vague shapes of road and river channel pressing against the night.

"What are you looking at?" I asked.

"The road."

"What's interesting about the road?"

"It's been two weeks." She said it plainly. But that single sentence pulled something tight inside my chest. Two weeks. Olivia. And everything she was bringing with her—the people, the provisions, the wagons, the advance forces that would push Three Rivers Fortress's capacity well past its usual ceiling. I was quiet for a few seconds.

"Do you think they'll arrive on schedule?"

"If Olivia is still alive, they will." Not comfort. Not hope. Something colder than both. A trust that didn't need warmth to hold its shape. I couldn't help a small laugh.

"Somehow, as an assessment of Olivia, that still manages to sound like a compliment."

"It is one." She finally turned her head and looked at me.

"She's not like you."

"... Do you just keep a reserve of those ready to deploy whenever an opportunity opens up?"

"If I don't, you float."

"Well. Thank you for maintaining my ballast."

"Don't mention it." The wind scraped along the wall, pressing her coat flat against her legs. Standing beside her, something surfaced.

"Did you already know?" I asked.

"Know what?"

"These past days—running around the fortress, working my way into the dragoon tents, watching the Guild workers fight each other, building up whatever thin presence I've managed to carve out in this place—" I paused.

"Did you know the whole time?" She looked ahead. A silence. Then: "Did you think you were being subtle?"

"... I suddenly don't want to hear the answer." Her voice stayed flat.

"You weren't particularly graceful about it."

"Hey."

"But the direction was right." I turned to look at her. She still wasn't looking at me. Just watching that road, the one that disappeared into the dark without showing you where it ended.

"You're not one of these people, and you won't become one quickly. But you still needed to give your own people a reason to leave some space for you by the fire." She paused, then added quietly, "You've done that now." I went genuinely still. Not because the words were beautiful. Because she didn't say things like this. Not normally. Not out loud. Which meant that when she did, they landed with the full weight of everything she usually kept back.

I'd been about to say something—something that would have been, ideally, neither too stupid nor too undignified—when she dismantled the moment with surgical efficiency.

"That said, if this goes to your head, I'll have you strung up on the transit gate frame to air out tomorrow."

"... I was genuinely almost moved just now."

"That's your problem." Good. That was right. If she'd let the atmosphere sit any longer, I'd have started wondering whether someone had slipped a dream-weaving spell into my evening tea.