Chương 195: Chapter 192 [Silus Spots The Lie]

Silas was heading for the courtyard, pipe in hand, when he noticed one of the idiots Krell liked to keep in his employ. Nothing separated this one from any of the others, all just as useless as the last — except for the knife he was carrying, which caught Silas's eye. He changed course toward him without much thought, pipe still unlit in his fingers.

"Where did you get that?" The guard looked down at his own belt as though he'd forgotten it was there. A large man, thick through the shoulders. Muscle, not much else, the sort Krell kept for jobs that didn't need much thinking.

"This? Bought it off a trader in the market. That old guy, Camdon. Good stuff too, cheap as anything." He grinned, pleased with himself.

"Stall's cleaned out already, though. Sold everything in a single bell. If you want one, you'll have to wait for him to come back through." Silas held his hand out, and the guard passed it over without question. He turned it once, testing the fold, the balance of it in his palm, and the pipe he'd been holding a moment ago went into his pocket, forgotten. It looked better than most blades he'd seen carried by the Core's own guards, better than half the ones he'd seen on their superiors.

Nobody round here was capable of making something like this. Strange. Where had that old bastard found it?

"Was this the only one he had?"

"No, had a few. All the same as this one."

"Find this trader," he said, handing it back.

"Now. Tell me where he has gone." The guard did not ask why. He returned within a half bell, slightly out of breath.

"Left already, boss. Few moments ago. Heading north, out the main gate." Silas took three more men and went after him. They caught the company not far past the outer district, wagons still loaded and moving at an easy pace, no urgency in it at all. Silas rode up alongside the lead rider, an older man, grey through the beard, and watched his face for the half second before the mask settled properly into place. There. Just a flicker, gone as fast as it came, replaced by an easy, practiced sort of pleasantness.

"A word, if you don't mind," Silas said.

"Of course." Camdon reined in, unbothered on the surface, though his eyes had gone carefully neutral.

"Something I can help with?"

"Those knives you sold this morning. Fine work. Finer than anything the smiths in this city turn out." Silas kept his tone light, curious, nothing more.

"My lord takes an interest in quality craftsmanship. He would like to know where he might find more of it." Camdon did not hesitate long enough to be obvious about it.

"Came off a smith down south. Lives rough, out in the hills near Bracken Hill, forested country. Something of a hermit, truth be told. Doesn't much like company, but he'll sell to anyone who makes the trip and doesn't mind his manner." Silas listened, and didn't believe a word of it. A story built to satisfy the question, not answer it. Vague enough to survive a casual check. Specific enough to sound like it wouldn't need to. He had told a few himself, back when he had needed to.

More than that, though, the story didn't hold together. If this southern smith had been supplying him all along, the goods should have shown up the last time Camdon passed through, not appeared out of nowhere on a visit he hadn't even been due to make. Instead the man had gone north on his usual route, turned round within days, and come straight back to sell everything he could as fast as he could before leaving again. That wasn't a man selling off an existing supply. That was a man who'd found something new.

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"Very well," Silas said.

"My thanks." Camdon nodded once, already easing his horse forward, and Silas let him go. He sat there a moment, watching the wagons roll on, working through it properly now. North was where the man had actually come from. North was where he was going straight back to, without pause, without even a night's proper rest in his own bed by the look of the pace they were keeping. Whatever he had actually found, he had not found it south of anywhere.

"Boss?" One of the men at his side, waiting.

"Follow him," Silas said.

"Quietly. I want to know who he meets, where he goes, anything you can learn of this client of his."

"We'll sort it," the man said. Silas watched them ride off after the wagons, already fairly certain how that would go. Loud, clumsy, the kind of tailing that got noticed by anyone with half a mind to look for it. Suited him fine. Let them get noticed. Let whoever Camdon answered to spend their attention watching three of Krell's men blunder about, while Silas made his own way north entirely unremarked upon. He was not a known face outside this city, not really.

Krell kept him close, mostly out of sight, an advisor rather than a public figure, and that anonymity had never once felt like an asset until just now. He turned back toward the guardhall to make his own preparations.

Getting past Stonehall's gate took three days of quiet preparation before he was ready to try it. The border villages, he had learned quickly enough, did not take kindly to strangers who arrived with too many questions and not enough reason for being there. So he gave them a reason. A younger son of the Core, he told the gate guard, tired of the politics and the crowding further south, looking for somewhere quieter to make a life.

The guard looked him over once, decided he was not worth the trouble of turning away, and pointed him toward the elders' hall for anyone wanting to settle. Silas thanked him and went to the tavern instead. It did not take long. The place was busy enough that nobody paid him much mind, a stranger nursing a drink in the corner, listening more than he spoke. He caught the name within moments of a new group's arrival, the leader loud enough to hear every word. Monkhaven.

He had never heard it before in his life, and by the third or fourth time it came up he still was not sure he believed half of what he was hearing attached to it. Portals, someone said, doors a man could simply walk through and come out somewhere else entirely. An invasion, beaten back, one of theirs cutting down a mountain giant faster than most men could draw a blade properly.

Something else, some black mist that stole a man's sight and hearing both, and warriors who had stood against the old wolf himself, Kai, and matched him blow for blow. Silas kept his face still through all of it, though every fresh detail landed harder than the last. It read like the kind of story told to impress children, or fools, and yet nobody telling it seemed to think they were exaggerating.

He heard it again from a different table an hour later, close enough in the particulars that coincidence stopped being a reasonable explanation. Then, near closing, two men at the bar began talking about a trip one of them had made that very day. Through the portal itself, apparently, straight into the place. Buildings unlike anything built round here, they said, metal structures standing taller than any keep, and glass, proper glass, in every single window without exception.

Mages, they said, practicing openly in the streets as though it were nothing at all. To anyone else, this would sound like a tale spun to make the teller sound worldly. Silas would have laughed it off himself, on any other night, in any other city. But it was not one drunk telling one story to one gullible listener. It was everywhere he turned his ear, told the same way by people who had no reason to lie to each other, let alone to a stranger they had not even noticed was listening.

Whatever this Monkhaven actually was, it was the source. He was certain of that much now. The knives were just the tip of the spear and he planned to find out everything he could. He finished his drink and sat with it a moment longer, turning it all over in his head. If this was real, it could hand his master exactly what he'd been waiting years for. Silas meant to be the one who brought it to him. It would take care, handling this properly.

He rose from the table and set the empty cup down, already planning his next move.