Chương 30: 12-2. Interlude, Negotiation, and Scout Regiment

When Commander Valdorin dropped from the platform in a single fluid motion—cloak carrying frost through the air behind her—I managed to drag my brain approximately halfway back from the paralysis it had been operating under. Then I watched her walk toward us.

"Apologize with me when she arrives. Non-negotiable." I said this through my teeth, voice barely audible, directed at Jessi. Jessi, maintaining her position with half her shoulder against mine, received this information without any indication of remorse. She tilted her head with an expression of genuine puzzlement.

"Why me? The one staring with complete absorption from breastplate to lower back—wasn't that you, little young master?" She kept her voice light and precisely targeted.

"What does that have to do with me~?"

"... You—" I was prepared to state, with full conviction, that if I died young it would not be in a dungeon or on the northern snowfield. It would be from accumulated exposure to Jessi's commentary causing fatal cardiovascular failure. But this was not the moment. Valdorin walked without hurry and without a single unnecessary pause. Not the gait of nobility or knighthood—the movement of someone who had spent long enough having people move aside that it had become the ambient condition of her existence.

With each step, the air around her seemed to drop another degree. I was not going to test whether she had noticed our momentary lapse in protocol. Before she reached us, I caught Jessi's wrist and pulled her down into a half-kneel beside me.

"My sincere apologies, Commander." I lowered my head, holding my voice as steady as possible.

"The discourtesy was mine. If there is accountability to be taken, I'll receive it in her place." I had prepared for a cold dismissal. Possibly public humiliation. What I received was a short, faint sound—too controlled to be a laugh, too present to be nothing. I looked up. Valdorin stood directly before us, looking down. That face—half cold clarity, half old fire—was considerably closer now, more overwhelming in its eldritch pressure. But her eyes carried no anger.

Only an assessment that was clean enough to be sharp.

"Do you have a healer in your party?" she asked. I failed to process this immediately.

"... Pardon?"

"We've just returned from beyond the border." Her voice was level—presenting facts with no interest in decoration.

"Significant casualties. If you're willing to lend assistance, I'll remember the favor." I held the sentence until it resolved. Not accusation. Not punishment. She had walked over because she had seen a cleric in our group. I turned instinctively.

"Erina—would you be willing?" Erina stood half a step behind me, hands folded in her sleeves. She looked at me, then at Valdorin, and gave a small, quiet nod.

"... If it's Mr. Cedric's request." The voice was small and soft. And I couldn't shake the feeling there had been a beat more pause in that response than usual. Before I could examine that thought, Jessi's shoulders moved slightly beside me.

"Little young master~" She pressed her voice down to something only I could hear, warm with suppressed laughter.

"Someone looks a little unhappy, I think~""Jessi." I had barely finished producing her name when a short, clear, very precise sound occurred. Thwp. Jessi shifted sideways. She turned slowly. Erina withdrew her foot with complete composure, ears showing no color whatsoever.

"I apologize," she said with devastating sincerity.

"I wasn't watching where I stepped." I came genuinely close to producing an audible reaction. Jessi stared for a moment with actual surprise—then laughed quietly, rubbing her leg.

"Oh my..." Her voice was, if anything, more entertained.

"So Miss Erina does have a temper after all~" Valdorin ignored our minor chaos entirely. Her gaze moved from Erina back to my face, resting there for several seconds—the quality of someone matching a vague outline against a specific memory.

"... Rosa?" Her voice dropped slightly.

"Are you from the northeastern border marquis household?" Something tightened in my chest. The question arrived quietly but landed with more precision than any of her previous looks. I was silent for a moment. Then answered quietly:"Yes." The word sat in my mouth with unexpected bitterness. So I added: "At least—I was." She looked at me and did not immediately reply.

Those profoundly mismatched eyes revealed almost nothing—they simply received the statement and the person who had made it, filing both away somewhere internal for later consideration, offering no verdict in the meantime. After a moment, she spoke with measured formality.

"We're making camp in the open ground behind the Adventurers' Guild." Her voice carried the stripped efficiency of someone accustomed to issuing orders.

"Once the wounded are settled, if you're still here, I'd like to speak with you." I hadn't finished forming a question about her intentions when Valdorin stepped forward and drew me to my feet. Her grip was steady. And cold. Not the ordinary cold of low body temperature—the eldritch cold of someone who had spent years holding weapons in wind and snow until warmth had become something they allocated to other things and stopped expecting for themselves.

She looked at me with the composed formality of someone conducting state business.

"Valdorin von Eberswalde," she said.

"Guardian of the Northern Long Wall. Daughter of the Border Marquis. Commander of the First Beyond-Border Expeditionary Investigation Legion." The title was long enough to engrave on a monument. And every word of it carried more weight than I had anticipated. I straightened as much as I could manage, attempting to look like someone who still remembered how courtesy functioned.

"Cedric Rosa," I said.

"Son of Akloss Rosa, Marquis of the Northeastern Border."

"Illegitimate son." Jessi supplied this addendum from beside me without any preliminary warning whatsoever. I closed my eyes. Drew a long, deliberate breath. Excellent. This woman had never once missed an opportunity to remove approximately three years from my life expectancy with surgical precision. I suppressed the impulse to turn and deliver a response I would regret, opened my eyes, and directed a look at her that communicated my complete feelings on the matter.

Jessi received this with weaponized serenity, stuck her tongue out at me, and arranged her expression into the portrait of someone who was merely reporting observable facts and couldn't understand why anyone would object. Valdorin looked at us both. Her gaze moved from me to Jessi's face, and then—almost imperceptibly—the corner of her mouth shifted. Not a smile. More like something interesting being quietly filed away alongside the other information.

"Understood," she said. She released my hand, turned, and walked away—leaving behind frost and the faint metallic trace of blood, like a blade that had been returned to its sheath after a long campaign, temporarily at rest. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. I stood watching her silhouette disappear into the black-armored soldiers and the Burrow's stygian green light, and understood one thing with complete clarity.

Tonight was not going to be quiet. Valdorin finished speaking without lingering. She simply lifted her chin toward one of the black-armored soldiers behind her.

"Lead them," she said. The soldier lowered his head and responded immediately, with the speed of someone whose bones had been smoothed flat by military discipline. He turned and indicated for us to follow. I was still composing something that might salvage my earlier 'if you wish to hold us accountable' from sounding entirely like a final testament—when Jessi stepped up beside me as though nothing had happened, reached over, and brushed nonexistent dust from my shoulder with practiced ease.

"Let's go, little young master~" Her voice was light, her tone as reliably infuriating as ever.

"It's rare for a commander this lethally attractive to come personally to borrow personnel. Stand there much longer and I'll start wondering if you're actually hoping to go with her."

"I'm currently calculating whether donating you to the medical camp would qualify as charitable giving, and whether any of the clerics there could treat whatever's structurally wrong with your mouth."

"I'm afraid not." Jessi sighed with theatrical regret.

"My mouth is a divine gift. Beyond treatment."

"I think it qualifies more as divine punishment," Lucas muttered from beside us. I came genuinely close to feeling a moment of long-absent camaraderie with him. Jessi turned to look at him with sudden sweetness.

"Academy boy, you're being surprisingly brave tonight~" Lucas closed his mouth with impressive speed. Situational awareness, at least, was functioning when it mattered. We followed the soldier across the circular platform outside the lodging house, moving toward the broader open ground behind the Adventurers' Guild. Along the way, the tension that had been drawn wire-tight by the fourth bell was being replaced by a different kind of order—busier, rougher, and considerably more blasphemous in its organized chaos.

Ropes dropped from upper levels. Stretchers moved at a run. Voices called for clearance from a distance. The scattered lamp-fires that had been clinging to the iron walls were now burning in crooked lines of light, illuminating Burrow 144 like a massive mechanical corpse that had been forcibly cut open to expose its working interior. The air—already carrying oil smoke, rust, and livestock—had acquired something newer and considerably more immediate. Blood. Not a small amount of blood.

The smell rose from below mixed with cold air, striking the back of the neck like a basin of ice water drawn from the edge of a charnel field. Erina's pace slowed fractionally. I looked back. She had both hands clasped at her chest, drawing a quiet breath—the specific preparation of someone making themselves ready for what was coming. Her nerve was actually considerable. More steady, in its own way, than certain members of this party who had considerably louder opinions about their own resilience.

The difference between Erina and Matthews was that Matthews had stopped being afraid because he had seen too much. Erina still knew she would be afraid—and walked forward anyway. That kind of person was usually the most difficult. And the most remarkable. Valdorin was not walking with us. She had taken a separate path with another group, moving quickly toward the open ground ahead. The hem of her cloak swept across the obsidian floor, still carrying unmelted frost.

From a distance, she looked like a longsword pulled from ice that still carried the memory of blood. I was unfortunately very aware that Jessi had not stopped watching me.

"Say it," I said quietly.

"Nothing much." She answered with lazy ease, one finger wound through the end of her hair.

"Just not used to seeing the little young master this quiet. When the commander announced her pedigree back there, I almost expected you to stand at attention and start feeling nostalgic for the aristocratic life you can't go back to."

"What I'm currently nostalgic for is the period before you were standing next to me talking."

"Liar." She tilted her head toward me, smile carrying genuine mischief.

"You stopped breathing for a full second back there."

"Her face is alarming."

"Oh~" The drawn-out syllable carried very specific implications.

"So if the other side hadn't been burned, you would have stopped for two seconds? Is that what we're establishing?"

"Jessi."

"Fine, fine, I'm done." The words were entirely unconvincing given that her eyes hadn't reduced their amusement by any measurable degree.

"I've already seen what I needed to see." I declined to ask what she claimed to have observed. In Jessi's hands, things she had seen clearly were invariably framed in ways I had no interest in hearing. Matthews had been walking slightly ahead of the group, apparently maintaining an automatic perimeter assessment. Just before we entered the camp area, he spoke without turning.

"If she proposes cooperation—don't agree immediately." I paused.

"You think she will?"

"Just returned from beyond the border. Significant casualties. Made a point of remembering your name." He said this with the flatness of someone reading a tactical assessment.

"That kind of person doesn't come over for conversation." Practical. Accurate. Delivered with Matthews's characteristic distaste for anything that didn't serve a battlefield function—even the concept of conversation carried faint contempt. I walked in silence for two steps, then asked the question that had been forming.

"If she does propose something—how do we set the terms?" Jessi laughed almost immediately.

"Oh, the little young master is finally asking the right questions~" She clasped her hands behind her back, steps light with the energy of someone heading to an enjoyable appointment.

"Simple enough. First we find out what she wants from us. Then we decide what she has to offer in exchange. Money, intelligence, routes, passage rights, safety guarantees—everything is negotiable."

"That sounds like you're planning to auction us as a complete package."

"Nothing so dramatic." She glanced at me sideways, mouth curving.

"The primary merchandise stays with management."

"I'm asking you to speak in complete sentences that convey actual meaning."

"My meaning," Jessi said with elaborate innocence, "is that if she only wants to borrow Erina for one night of field medicine, that's a favor. But if she wants to bind our entire party to her Investigation Legion on an ongoing basis, 'I'll remember this kindness' isn't adequate compensation." This was, inconveniently, correct. I had half-expected her to immediately orient toward whoever seemed most likely to produce gold. It turned out she was, in this specific domain, more clear-headed than I was.

No—that framing was wrong. The more accurate version: she understood so precisely that money and risk were twins that she never actually lost her head where it mattered. Lucas, carrying the lead box, had been slightly elsewhere mentally—but he surfaced at this point with an unexpected contribution.

"I think—if it's a cooperation arrangement—beyond compensation, we should request intelligence sharing." We all looked at him. Lucas cleared his throat, visibly recovering energy now that the conversation had entered territory he understood.

"They're the First Beyond-Border Expeditionary Investigation Legion. That means they've encountered more ruins, dungeons, and pre-civilization remnants than any standard adventuring party. If we could obtain even a portion of their records—survey documents, waypoint locations, confirmed hazard zone markers—""Stop." I raised a hand.

"That condition sounds less like proposing cooperation and more like trying to marry into their military archives."

"Knowledge is critically important!"

"So is survival." Matthews added this without inflection.

"And first confirm that if you actually obtained those materials, you wouldn't immediately get yourself dropped into another pit from excessive excitement." Lucas muttered something under his breath—probably another defense of knowledge as a fundamental value. Jessi sidled toward him with the expression of someone who had just found this interesting.

"The Academy boy does have a point this time, though~" She smiled pleasantly.

"If they genuinely want to bind us, money isn't enough. Minimum: route maps, passage rights, and—ideally—first selection rights on anything recovered from ruins we enter together."

"That's extortion," I said.

"Little young master, that's uncharitable." She turned to look at me.

"I'm securing our future. You're not actually planning to lead everyone through the northern wilderness on one ancestral sword and a handful of Copper Slag until we freeze to death, are you?" The argument was too sound. I couldn't locate a useful angle of attack. Matthews added the final point.

"One more condition," he said. We all looked at him.

"No binding contracts. No direct military jurisdiction. Option to withdraw when necessary." He paused, voice carrying the flat weight of someone reading text from a gravestone.

"When you work with front-line people, the most common outcome is that you think you're a guest until you look up and find you've been entered into their expenditure ledger." That sentence produced a moment of silence across the group. Even Jessi didn't respond immediately. She looked at Matthews for a moment, then produced a quiet sound.

"Veteran, the things you say at moments like this always sound remarkably like final words."

"Because the people who survive," Matthews said, "are the ones who memorize final words." I filed this away quietly. And began thinking seriously about whether—if Valdorin actually made an offer—this group of ours could extract something worth having without selling ourselves in the process. The open ground behind the Adventurers' Guild came into view ahead. Open ground was generous—it was simply a platform slightly wider than the surrounding ones.

At this moment it had been entirely consumed by temporary military infrastructure. Black-armored soldiers, overturned supply sleds, blood-soaked bandaging cloth, half-dismantled cargo crates, fire basins burned white with sustained use, and a row of field medical shelters assembled from heavy cloth, salvaged tent canvas, and iron framing—all pressed together across the available space. Sound from every direction: groaning, orders, fabric being cut, hot water poured into basins, the percussion of metal instruments.

The smell of blood was considerably heavier here—dense enough to taste the iron bitterness at the back of the throat. I watched two soldiers carry a stretcher past at a run. The person on it had one arm hanging outside the frame, fingertips blackened halfway—frostbite, necrosis, or something else entirely. Erina's steps stopped. Not retreat—the stillness of someone who had just pulled a line taut inside themselves. She turned to look at me. Her expression was very quiet.

"I'm going ahead." I nodded.

"Be careful." She nodded once, then seemed to remember something—her gaze swept briefly across me and Jessi, and she added, very softly: "You two... please don't cause trouble again."

"Again?" I raised an eyebrow without thinking. Erina didn't answer. She simply pressed her lips together. Jessi laughed immediately.

"Did you hear that, little young master?" She crossed her arms, voice unhurried.

"She's already categorizing you and me together."

"That sentence sounds like an insult."

"Because it is an insult," Lucas said quietly from beside us. I was genuinely beginning to wonder whether everyone in this party had collectively developed spines the moment we descended into the Burrow. Erina ignored our exchange entirely. She drew a breath, gathered her skirts, and walked quickly toward the medical shelters.

A young soldier in a basic medical coat—hands already stained with blood—saw the holy seal at her chest and reacted with the expression of someone witnessing a miracle arriving at the exact moment needed. He ran toward her. They exchanged a few words, and Erina was led into the innermost shelter, the one with the most light. Her silhouette was swallowed by the moving figures almost immediately. I stood watching for a moment, and something strange moved through my chest.

She was the youngest among us, the one who looked least like she belonged anywhere near this kind of place—and yet in moments like this, she was more solidly present than any of us.

"What~?" Jessi had materialized at my side again, her tone carrying its characteristic quality of amusement that never preceded anything innocent.

"Is the little young master reluctant to let her go?"

"I'm calculating the probability that she'll come out and spiritually cleanse you as a secondary task."

"That won't work." Jessi shook her head with great seriousness.

"If I get cleansed too thoroughly, you'll be lonely."

"I'll live longer."

"Living too long is boring~" She tilted her head slightly, smiling with the particular expression of a fox that has identified exactly where the trap is and is deciding whether to step in anyway.

"Having someone to argue with makes the days feel like days, don't you think?" I was preparing a response when someone called from ahead. More precisely: called my name.

"Mr. Rosa." I looked up. The soldier who had led us here was standing a short distance away, face still carrying traces of ash and blood that hadn't been fully wiped, posture straight in the manner of someone who had run over from somewhere else and was operating on borrowed time.

"The Commander can't step away yet," he said.

"She's asked me to arrange a waiting area for your party. Any cooperation discussion will take place there as well." I exchanged a look with Matthews. Here it is. Everything we'd discussed on the way over had just become concrete. Jessi touched my arm lightly—a small, precise gesture carrying the message: don't be careless. Every word from this point carries weight. I exhaled. Nodded.

"Lead the way." The genuinely complicated part of tonight, I suspected, was only just beginning.