Chương 86: Chapter 85 — Punching Up

Two days home, and the castle smelled like a clan again. Woodsmoke from three chimneys instead of one. Bread, because Hazel had decided the returning wounded deserved better than travel rations and had commandeered the ovens on the first morning. Under it all, faint but constant, the green-and-mineral smell of Rowan's treatment room — crushed herbs, boiled linen, the sharp vinegar tang of whatever he swabbed wounds with — drifting down the corridor every time its door opened, which for two days had been often.

Rowan had worked through the first night without sitting down. Bramble first — Ant had watched Thomas walk the bear in with a hand buried in the fur of his neck, steering him like a man delivering evidence, and watched Rowan go over every rib with both hands before he finally looked up.

"Bruised. Tired. Nothing broken, nothing bleeding inside." He'd rubbed the bear's ear the way he did with all of them, like they were his.

"He's going to be absolutely fine, Thomas. Fine and hungry. Now go sit down before I have to catch you." Thomas had gone quietly to pieces in the doorway anyway and pretended it was the dust. Then Kalsar's side, unwrapped, cleaned out, and restitched.

"Whoever bound this in the field did their best," Rowan had said, halfway through, in his mildest voice, "and their best is why I'm cutting it out of the scab. Hold still." Kalsar had held still and absorbed the rest of the commentary in silence, because every word of it was earned. Then Rebekah's hip. Then six Kithren, one at a time, each of them cleared or scheduled or dosed. Raven had met the carriages at the gate on day one, upright, arms folded, thunderous.

"A war," she'd said.

"You had an entire war."

"You were concussed," Kalsar had said, climbing down.

"I've fought concussed."

"Aye, and that's exactly why you stayed here." He'd walked past her into the yard, and she'd followed him the whole way to the keep.

"An ambush. A prison break. Giant snakes." She'd counted them off on her fingers at his back.

"And an evolution. The first one in — what, ever? Anyone's lifetime? And where was I? In a dark room. Being told not to read."

"You're welcome," Kalsar had said, and kept walking. Two days on, she'd worn the worst of it off. Shrike rode her shoulder around the yard again and she'd taken over the watch rotation without asking anyone, which was her way of saying she was glad they were alive. Lem, for his part, had slept precisely until the second morning on the road and then simply been awake — up on the carriage rail, nose into the wind, fur rippling through colors like the weather couldn't make up its mind inside him.

Rowan had checked him anyway and found a fox in perfect health.

"He wore himself empty, that's all," he'd said, scratching Lem behind the ears and getting a small curl of warm wind around his wrist for it.

"Sleep fixed it. Twelve hours would have done the job — eighteen made sure of it. If there'd been an injury hiding under the tiredness I'd be worried. There wasn't. He's fine." Then, to Rebekah, gently, because he'd noticed what her hand had been doing for three days: "You can stop checking he's breathing now. I promise he is." I like him, Mahkir had observed, watching Lem investigate the well, the woodpile, and Vulcan's tail in rapid succession. He's an idiot.

That idiot's rain is half the reason we're all still breathing. I said I like him. On the third morning, Maren called the clan to the map room. The map room now had a lock, a heavy iron thing that looked slightly embarrassed to be there, and she made a point of turning the key in front of everyone before she started talking. She'd clearly been sitting on all of it for two days, waiting for everyone to be well enough to hear it, and it came out of her in a rush.

"Okay. Three things. First — the claim went through. I sent the registration over the clan hall's line the morning we got back, Bramholt processed it, Cerlan confirmed it yesterday, and—" she stopped, took a breath, and let the grin out anyway.

"We're a medium clan. Officially. As of yesterday. Two registered territories." Duncan whistled. Sam looked at Duncan, then at Maren, and asked the question his brother was too busy whistling to ask.

"That's good?"

"It's good. I mean — most medium clans have a hundred members and decades behind them, and we're at the very bottom of the list by a long way. But we're on it. And this clan didn't even exist yet when they wrote most of that list." She caught herself before it ran away from her and turned a page she wasn't reading.

"Second — the brightvein. It's sold. Both crates, inside two days." Hazel's head came up from whatever she'd been turning over in her hands.

"To whom?"

"A mineral broker in Bramholt. Kalsar put me onto him — he doesn't ask questions, and he pays for the privilege of not asking them." She hesitated, and for a second she looked like someone about to confess a crime.

"I checked the figure three times. I made him write it down. I still didn't believe it walking home." Maren said the number. The room did various things with it. Ray put a hand over his heart.

"And most of it's already spent." She said it fast, before the noise could turn into plans, and her eyes went to Ant for half a second on the way through — asking after the fact, the way she'd been doing everything for two days.

"I know I probably should have waited. But the chances weren't going to. Thomas — I've hired you eight workers out of Bramholt. Builders, two carpenters, and a man who's guarded gates for a living. Fixed contracts — hired help, not clan members. They answer to you, and if any of them turn out worth keeping, we can talk about that later. They'll be ready to travel when you are." Thomas had his own ledger out before she'd finished the sentence.

"And with the rest of it," Maren said, and she couldn't keep the corners of her mouth still any longer, "I bought two portals." The room stopped.

"Portals," said Duncan.

"Portal portals. Step-through-the-shimmery-doorway portals."

"Yes, real ones! They're made in one place that I know of, and they cost—" she waved a hand at the ledger, "—well. That's where the money went." She raised the same hand into the immediate eruption.

"Before the questions start — a portal can only be attuned to a single place. You set it once and that's where it goes, you can't repoint it later. So one goes here, one goes at the holding, and stepping through either one puts you at the other. Base to base, both directions, and that's all they'll ever do. Nobody's popping to Bramholt for lunch." She turned to Thomas, and this was the part she'd been saving, the whole reason for the grin.

"They arrive within the week. Once they're standing, the holding isn't days away anymore. It's a step." Thomas sat back slowly. Then he came forward again, and the ledger was open, and he was talking faster than Ant had heard him talk about anything that wasn't Bramble.

"That changes the whole build. All of it. I was planning for a place that had to stand on its own for weeks — deep stores, double walls before anything else, beds for a full garrison." He was already crossing things out.

"If Rowan's a step away, if supplies are a step away — I put the wall crew where the storehouse crew was going, I bring the gate forward a whole—" he caught himself, looked up at Maren, and said, with more feeling than Ant had heard from him in a month, "You bought us a door. Between our two homes." If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"I did," Maren said, and went slightly pink.

"Third thing after lunch," Maren said, closing the ledger.

"Go eat." Hazel caught Ant's eye on the way out and tilted her head toward the forge, and that was all the invitation it was ever going to be. The forge smelled of coal dust and quenching oil and the cold-iron smell that never left the place even when the fire was banked, and under it now, something new — a faint mineral sweetness off the brightvein crates stacked against the back wall, like rain on hot stone.

Hazel let Ant and Mahkir in, looked both ways down the yard with the unhurried caution of a woman checking her sightlines, and barred the door.

"Right." She dragged a stool over with her boot and sat.

"I asked you a question back at that camp, and you've had three days to chew on it. So let's have it. Why did that sword answer you?" Ant had rehearsed pieces of this on the road, in the yard, lying awake the first night home. All of it dissolved now that the door was actually barred. He looked at Mahkir. Mahkir looked back, ears forward, and said nothing, which meant your call, which Ant already knew. He didn't have to start at the beginning.

She'd had the beginning for a long while — the failed chip, the screen that ran on its own, the system with no hardware behind it. All the founders had it. What she didn't have was the part he'd kept back from everyone.

"You know about the system," he said.

"What I never told you — never told any of you — is what the gem did."

"The gem from the vortex." Hazel's eyes narrowed.

"The one that vanished."

"It didn't vanish. It went into me." He heard how it sounded and pushed on anyway.

"Through me. It took me apart for about a minute and put me back together, and when the screen came back up there was a tab on it that hadn't been there before. Magic. With a pool of mana behind it. A hundred and fifty of it, and it's mine, Hazel — not borrowed through the bond, not carried in equipment."

"And the fire?" Hazel said.

"At the camp. I watched you burn a man's blade out of his hand."

"The fire's Mahkir's. Flame Fist channels it — that part's honest." He'd been standing the whole time; he sat down on the anvil's stump because his legs had opinions.

"But the mana that pays for it comes out of me. That's what the sword felt." He turned his palm up, empty.

"You said runework answers a human's own magic and nothing else. Hand to hilt, Hazel. I'm not carrying somebody else's. It's mine." Hazel hadn't moved for the length of it. Hadn't reached for anything to fidget with, which for her was a state of emergency. When he finished she sat in the quiet of the banked forge for a long moment, and then she said, "Show me." Ant drew Soul Render.

The screen came up as his hand closed on the grip, unbidden, the way it did when it judged a thing worth confirming: [Flame Fist — Activate? Cost: 30 mana. Current: 150/150.] He'd never seen the cost written out before. Every other use had been mid-fight, the skill grabbed and spent faster than reading. Thirty. Five uses from a full pool and then he was dry. He filed it, said yes to the screen, and put the fire down the blade.

Flame ran the fuller from guard to point, and in the middle of the scoring, one rune caught. Gold. Steady. Burning its own light against the fire's orange, holding it, like a struck note held past the end of the song. Hazel got up off the stool very slowly. She came close, closer than anyone sensible stands to a burning sword, and bent over the rune with her hands clasped behind her back like a woman at a museum who does not trust herself near the exhibits. She looked at it from the left. From the right.

She held a bare palm out toward it, near enough to feel, and watched the gold light play over her own fingers.

"Three hundred years," she said, mostly to the rune.

"Three hundred years since anything alive could feed one of these. And there's a farm boy stood in my forge doing it." She straightened up.

"Put it out before you cook my crates." The fire went. The rune held gold a moment longer, then dimmed through amber to nothing, reluctant about it. [120/150], the screen noted, and folded itself away.

"Right." Hazel went back to her stool, and Ant could see her already working through it, the way she worked through a repair — one piece at a time, in order.

"First things first. Nobody hears this from me. Not Kalsar, not Maren, nobody — not until you say so. And I'm not doing you a favor, lad, I'm being sensible. Kris knew what that rune was the moment he saw it. If he knows, other people know. And anyone who understands what a channeling blade is won't come after the sword." She pointed at him.

"They'll come after you."

"I understand."

"Second." She waved a hand at the sheathed blade.

"That's one rune lit out of — what, a dozen? Your fire skill woke a fire rune. So what wakes the others? Wind? Water? Whatever else magic used to come in?" She leaned forward, elbows on knees.

"This is guesswork, mind, so take it as guesswork. But if you ever learn another sort of magic, I'd put good money on another one of those marks lighting up to meet it. Worth remembering, if the chance ever comes." Mahkir's tail had gone still, which meant he was actually listening.

"And it might explain the thing that's bugged me since the day you brought it in," Hazel went on.

"The bonuses. Plus one, plus one, plus five — I've forged better than that myself, and whoever made that sword was so far beyond me it's embarrassing. It never added up. Why would a master put work like that into a blade and leave it weaker than forge stock?" She shook her head once.

"Unless it isn't finished. One rune awake and it still reads as common. Wake more of them, and maybe the whole thing grows with you. Maybe the grade climbs, same as a Kithren's does. I can't prove a word of that. But it's the only answer I've got that fits." I have always said the sword was showing off, Mahkir put in. Lying low is a kind of showing off, if you do it for long enough. Ant relayed it. Hazel snorted.

"Your Kithren and I agree on something. Mark the date." She stood, unbarred the door, and stopped with her hand on it.

"For what it's worth," she said, not turning around, "I've spent my whole life reading about the age that made steel like that, wishing I'd been born early enough to see it." She pulled the door open onto the yard's noise and light.

"Seems I didn't miss it after all. Come on. Maren's third thing." The third thing was waiting on the long table in the hall, in the form of a single stamped letter that Maren held up like evidence for the prosecution.

"From the clan hall. It arrived this morning, and there are two parts to it. This one I didn't get to choose." She unfolded it.

"First — being a medium clan comes with obligations. We've been assigned patrol routes: a stretch of the Bramholt road, plus the approaches to both holdings. Regular sweeps, and they're our job now, not the hall's. We've also been moved up the vortex lists. No more picking the easy postings — medium clans get given the higher-grade vortexes in their territory, and there are already two on the list with our name next to them."

"That's the price of the land," Kalsar said.

"Fair enough."

"Second." Maren turned the letter over.

"We've been entered into the Clan Arena competition. Entered, not invited — it comes with the classification. It starts next week in Bramholt. Every medium clan in the region sends its Kithren, and the matches are grade against grade — common fights common, rare fights rare, epic fights epic. Each clan can put two into each bracket." She set the letter down.

"From what I can gather it's half sport, half showing off. Clans use it to prove what they're holding. It's where reputations get made — and where people start paying attention to you, for better or worse." The table talked over itself for a moment.

"Two per bracket," Duncan was already saying.

"Two. Have you seen what we're holding—""What are the rules?" Rebekah cut across him.

"Fights to what — yield? Blood? And do we fight beside them, or do they go in alone?"

"They fight, we don't," said Maren.

"Kithren only on the sand — we're at the side, giving commands. The rest, yields and rounds and all of it, comes in a rules packet at registration."

"A magnificent exhibition of avarice," Ray declared, to the room at large, and then, when Rowan opened his mouth, "—and I mean avarice," before the correction could land. Rowan closed his mouth, faintly disappointed. Kalsar let it run, then put one hand flat on the wood, and it stopped.

"Every clan that matters will have people in those stands," he said.

"By now half the region's heard something about what happened at that camp, and they'll all want to know if it's true. Silverwing keeps eyes on the arenas. So does whoever sold Shell Razor those snakes, I'd wager my other rib on it." He looked down the table at Ant.

"Your call, clan leader. We can stay home and stay a rumor. Or we go and show them." Ant looked around the table. Duncan grinning. Sam quiet and certain. Rebekah with one hand on Lem and one eyebrow up. Hazel, arms crossed, three crates of brightvein between her and the outfitting of everyone in the room. Xylock's silhouette filling the doorway behind Kalsar because no chair in the castle had ever fit him, six arms folded in two patient rows. Well? Mahkir said. His tail had started moving again. You heard the man.

Common fights common. You want this. I want, Mahkir said, to be watched.

"We compete," Ant said.

"And we win." Duncan's fist hit the table.

"Now we're talking. Who goes in?"