Chương 90: 37-1.Cute Time for Girls

Cliff Fort, as the name suggested, was a fortress built upon a cliff. Anyone who assumed from this that it was merely some lonely citadel perched on a mountainside, however, would be making a spectacular error in judgment. From the Saint Barbara Cliffs in the north, stretching all the way down to King's Harbour and along the shores of Lake Mimi, the entire expanse fell within the Capital's boundaries.

And that was before accounting for the rumour that virtually everyone had heard yet almost no one could properly explain — that the Capital itself was built upon the ruins of an Old Civilization city. Consequently, underground ruin expeditions beneath the Capital remained, to this day, an extraordinarily popular enterprise.

Every year, scores of people with more ambition than survival instinct descended into those depths, hoping to excavate ancient magical devices, lost documents, or simply enough gold to rearrange their circumstances overnight. As for me? My sole aspiration today was that no one else would try to block our path. I had the carriage prepared before dawn. The horses were fed, wheels inspected, shafts and harnesses checked twice over.

We had managed to sleep under a proper roof last night, which meant departing early and covering as much ground as possible today. Rather than remaining in Raddale to play strategic games with the Wave Garrison, I wanted our entire party behind actual walls, actual gates, and under actual authority that people respected. Naturally, we were stopped at the checkpoint before the city gates. Deliberately. Conspicuously. Without even the pretense of subtlety.

First, a guard crouched beside our wheel, tapped it with his knuckles, and announced with a deeply concerned frown that our night-travel carriage lacked the required illumination fixtures and therefore violated regulations. Lucas had barely processed this when another guard circled to the opposite side, claiming our axle spacing didn't match the format recorded in our entry registry and required complete re-verification. I stood to one side, listening to this performance, and nearly laughed out loud.

The third guard achieved genuine artistry in his audacity. He pointed at the tiny observation mirror mounted on the carriage's side panel — barely fifteen centimeters across — and solemnly declared that the mirror surface showed a hairline crack, likely placing us in violation of the Capital's vehicular safety standards. Looking at his absolutely earnest face, I felt a powerful urge to ask whether they had drafted these regulations in a tavern the previous evening.

The entire routine was indistinguishable from street thugs manufacturing excuses for extortion. This wasn't an inspection. This was a stall. As though they were buying time for someone else to arrive. I crossed my arms and watched them orbit the carriage — prodding shafts, kicking wheels, demanding travel documents they had already examined — and found my irritation settling into something colder and more patient. Because at this point, losing my temper would accomplish nothing.

If they dared stall us this openly, they weren't acting on personal initiative. Someone behind them had given orders. The only relevant question was whether that someone would arrive before their window closed. The answer came quickly. A sharp, synchronized rhythm of hooves rang out from the stone road behind us. I turned to see a formation of private soldiers in dark livery cutting through the crowd with efficient, bordering-on-brutal precision.

At their head walked a man of considerable years, his hair combed with mathematical exactness, wearing the unmistakable attire of a senior household steward. The cut was impeccable, the fabric understated — but that particular quality of understatement cost considerably more than ostentation and made no effort to disguise the fact. He reached the checkpoint without breaking stride.

"For the glory of His Majesty, my friends." He offered a slight smile, his voice carrying the polished warmth of someone who had just stepped away from a formal tea service.

"I am Vincent. Head Steward of the House of Blackwell." The guards' expressions underwent immediate and comprehensive transformation. Not surprise — the specific look of people who had just discovered they'd been kicking solid steel. Vincent didn't spare them a second glance. He simply accepted several documents from the attendant behind him and placed them, one by one, with perfect composure, onto the inspection table.

"This is a First-Class Transit Authorization, countersigned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs."

"This is a deployment token issued by the Tideguards."

"This is the formal letter of invitation from the House of Blackwell." One sentence. One document. Placed with unhurried precision. With each addition, the color drained further from the faces across the table. Finally, Vincent raised his eyes to the man who had been scrutinizing our observation mirror and addressed him with a courtesy so absolute it was practically surgical.

"Pray tell, is there any additional documentation you require?" Standing nearby, I nearly supplied the obvious answer. Probably just a death certificate for yourself and a burial permit. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Honestly, any single item from that collection would have been sufficient to flatten a room full of objections. I had written discreet very clearly in my courier message.

My dear sister had responded by taking the concept of discretion and grinding it systematically into the pavement. Julian and his decorative knighthood could arrive with reinforcements now and it wouldn't matter. The guards abandoned their objections with remarkable speed. Apologies flowed. The gate opened with impressive promptness. Even the registry ledger was handled with ten times the efficiency they'd managed moments before.

When Lucas gathered the reins again, his perpetual deathbed expression actually showed signs of life. Our carriage convoy, escorted by a formation of ducal private soldiers, rolled into the city with the unhurried confidence of people who had always intended to be there. That was when I understood what the Capital actually meant. Not just wider streets or taller buildings. The ground itself seemed to communicate: This place and everywhere else are not the same world.

The paving stones were laid with obsessive precision, smoother under our wheels than the interior courtyards of most noble estates. Rows of magical stone lanterns lined the avenues — not a handful of decorative fixtures, but continuous lines extending beyond sight, as though someone had decided to cut the night into neat geometric sections with pure light. Every district maintained absolute boundaries.

Which streets led where, which roads required transit papers, which intersections admitted which classes of residents — the rules were inscribed in stone pillars, iron placards, and the eyes of patrol units. Lower City residents remained in the Lower City without legitimate cause to venture elsewhere. Upper City residents could theoretically go anywhere, though one suspected few ever found occasion to visit what they would describe as beneath them.

As our carriage continued deeper, I spotted a tower in the distance — impossibly vertical, seemingly committed to puncturing the sky itself. The Royal Mage Tower. Even from this distance, its height defied reason. Rumor claimed senior mages could step through portals at its summit and emerge anywhere in the world — or beyond it. I had always filed such claims under legendary nonsense, but a city that could maintain such legends as accepted fact was already accomplishing something that demanded explanation.

Further in lay the diplomatic quarter. Human kingdoms, coastal federations, northern clans, even certain powers whose names appeared primarily in merchant gossip — all maintained compounds here. Banners, crests, architectural styles, each distinct yet all compressed into the same city, like someone had collected fragments of the entire world and arranged them on a single table. Beyond that, barely visible, rose the outline of King's Harbour. The First Royal Fleet maintained permanent anchorage there.

Not ceremonial vessels for display — actual war-capable ships that secured the Capital's maritime lifelines. Even from this distance, I could distinguish mast after mast rising from the harbor in dense formation, an immobile forest of timber and canvas. I leaned against the carriage window, feeling something approaching absurdity. Days ago we had been rolling through Angel City's mud. Now our wheels pressed against the cleanest — and most efficiently predatory — stones in the empire.

The carriage finally stopped before an estate. An estate. Inside the city. I had encountered aristocratic establishments before and thought myself reasonably prepared. The sight before me still demanded a moment of honest silence. High walls, iron gates, a tree-lined approach so geometrically precise it seemed designed for something other than human habitation. The main house's spires were visible from the entrance — this wasn't an urban residence.

Someone had carved out the finest portion of a country estate and transported it, intact, into the heart of the Capital. The gates opened. We rolled through. Five minutes later, we reached the main entrance. Five minutes. Inside the grounds. I sat listening to wheels crunch over manicured gravel and dressed white stone, watching trees and sculpted gardens pass with parade-ground precision, and concluded this had transcended wealth. This was authority used as construction material.

When we finally stopped, I exhaled slowly and looked up at the manor house. Imposing. Dignified. Respectable to a degree that made my teeth ache. When the heavy oak double doors opened before me, the ambient sounds following our group seemed to simply switch off. The hall was vast, its tall windows behind obsidian benches dividing morning light into clean, quiet rectangles that fell across floor and carpet edges. In that enormous audience chamber, no one coughed unnecessarily, no one spoke surplus words.

Even Jessi — whose mouth normally treated silence as something requiring immediate correction — had, for once, swallowed whatever commentary she'd prepared. And she was seated there. Victoria Rosa von Blackwell. My half-sister. Duchess of Blackwell. She hadn't risen. She hadn't made any particular gesture. She simply sat with composed uprightness on that bench — and somehow the entire room felt as though it had been constructed around her presence rather than the other way around.

Her formal gown was deep blue, severely cut, the fabric substantial. Cuffs and collar finished without a single unnecessary detail. It wasn't designed to draw admiring glances — it possessed a different quality entirely, the weight of something that required no admiration to justify itself. The Rosa family crest was pressed in dark gold at her chest, so understated it bordered on austere, and precisely for that reason carried more authority than most gilded displays.

Her indigo hair was gathered with minimal ornamentation, held by a single antique fastening at the side. Her features remained as I remembered — clean, precise, the kind of face that prompted thoughts of discernment before beauty. Those eyes suggested someone rarely given to misjudging what she observed. She looked at me first. Then let her gaze move, slowly and deliberately, across the people behind me. In that moment I could almost feel Olivia go fractionally still.

My sister's assessment of her was neither discourteous nor hostile — if anything, properly composed — but it carried unmistakable weight. A clear, methodical evaluation. When her attention reached Adeline, it lingered exactly one beat longer than the others. One beat. Sufficient to communicate that she required no explanations and had already formed reasonably accurate conclusions about what I had collected during my travels. Behind me, Jessi had achieved the statistically improbable feat of remaining silent.

Alvira stood with lips pressed together, quietly composed. Even Matthews had straightened his posture by a perceptible degree. Not fear. More the instinctive response of people who recognized genuine authority and automatically filed away the rougher habits they'd developed elsewhere. My sister's attention returned to me.

Her expression had maintained careful neutrality throughout, but as she looked directly at me, something in the precise sharpness behind her eyes eased — not into dramatic warmth, but into something I had recognized since childhood. A particular variety of resigned tolerance. The look of someone who had assessed a situation completely and decided to manage it anyway. The look of someone who could determine, from a single glance, that I had once again made everything considerably more complicated than necessary.

"... You have had a difficult journey, Cedric." Her voice wasn't raised, yet it made the room quieter. The tension I had been carrying since before Raddale finally, partially, released. Because I understood what that sentence meant. If she was willing to say it first, it meant that within these walls, at least, I would not be immediately called to account. She looked at me steadily, one fingertip tapping against the carved bench arm with the rhythm of someone who had already reached certain resigned conclusions.

"You have been away from the Northern Reaches for some time," she said, the faintest thread of familiar exasperation running beneath her composed surface.

"And it appears you had absolutely no intention of making that time restful for me." From anyone else, that would have been reproach. From her, it was so familiar it might as well have been her standard greeting. I was briefly tempted to point out that this time, genuinely, the trouble hadn't started with me. I refrained. Because attempting innocence in front of her had a reliable history of making everything worse. She raised one hand slightly, gesturing us forward.

"Sit," she said.

"You are here now. Whatever chaos awaits outside can wait." She looked at me once more as she said it. No theatrical affection. No performed favoritism. Just one clear communication: You made it back. I'll manage what comes next.