Chương 26: Chapter 15.5: Do Not Panic

Talvek signed Bellan's bill before he asked me a question. His name crossed the bottom of the slip in a narrow controlled line, followed by an instruction that the cost be charged to town defence rather than The Cataract. Bellan sanded the ink, tore away her copy and made him wait until I finished the draught. By the time we left, eighteen iron of healing belonged to his office and my sixty-six iron pieces remained inside the pouch beneath my shirt. The walk to the garrison crossed less than two streets.

Talvek kept half a pace ahead without offering his arm, though he shortened whenever my boots failed to match him and chose the covered walkway beside the barracks yard. He carried the severed latch in its cloth. I carried the sheathed skinning knife, a list of Bellan's restrictions and the weight of the grave still pulling through my right shoulder. His office occupied one corner of the barracks beside a yard churned into brown water by boots and cart wheels. A desk filled most of the room.

Patrol notices, ferry reports and requisitions had been arranged into separate stacks, each held down by a different piece of equipment that had failed: a split buckle, a snapped arrowhead and a rusted hinge pin. Talvek placed the cut latch beside them, then set Halra's account square with the desk edge.

"Sit, Vey." I sat where he pointed. The hunter's axe was still at The Cataract, leaving the chair beside me empty. Talvek noticed my glance towards it.

"The weapon remains secured in your new room. Halra confirmed it carried no blood from the attacker. Your knife and the latch are evidence; the axe is currently only a poor choice inside a bedchamber."

"The coat mattered more."

"Then begin with the coat." He opened a clean page and wrote the date, room and my name before looking up.

"Use order, positions and exact words. Leave conclusions for the end." I gave him the room as objects because objects remained easier than fear. The latched window. The knife beside the pillow. The axe against the wall near the door. The elf's left hand on my chest and her right at my throat. The crimson line around my wrist, the broken water jug, the table driven into her knees, the coat clasp opening when I needed to leave her something to hold. Talvek interrupted only to fix distance or sequence.

"How many paces from bed to window?"

"Which wrist?"

"Was the line attached to her hand or formed between you?" Each answer entered the report with less drama than Lysa's account and more empty space. He did not call the elf a creature. On the first line he wrote one female Crimson Elf, identity unknown.

"Her words," he said when the physical account ended.

"She told me to stay asleep. Later she said my soul was extraordinary." I rubbed my thumb along the knife sheath.

"Near the hearth, she asked what he had left in me." Talvek's pen stopped.

"Who is 'he'?"

"She never said."

"Did you understand the reference?" The crock had answered beneath its lid. Red light moved through clay, the charcoal around my wrist tightened and the elf looked towards the hearth with the first fear she had shown. I could have placed the crock on Talvek's desk and made the report complete. His office would classify it, store it and put a guard beside whichever shelf received it. The window above that shelf would remain ordinary glass.

"I thought of the ritualist in the forest," I said.

"He marked me before he died. She might have sensed the same thing." Talvek watched me over the report.

"Might have." He wrote the phrase exactly, leaving enough room after it for the answer I kept.

"Did she search the room or touch your pack?"

"She touched me from the moment I woke. If she wanted an object, she never had time to take it." That answer held because the crock had remained beside the hearth rather than inside the pack. Talvek added another line, sanded the page and turned to the cloth bundle. The severed latch lay in two pieces when he opened it. One side carried the old warped break where I had forced it closed; the other showed a bright cut narrow enough to reflect the window.

"Halra believes a fine blade divided this," he said.

"No prying at the frame. No sawing. The roof watcher found three slate scratches above your room and a line tied around the western chimney. She prepared the entry before last night."

"Lysa heard movement for three nights."

"Her times are in the report." Talvek aligned the two halves without touching the cut face.

"The town watch checked the roof twice and found nothing. That is a failure of position and procedure. Captain Halra will change the roof circuit. Garron will receive timber and iron for the window from the defence store." The admission came without apology. He recorded the failure, assigned the repair and moved to the next line because office was the only form in which he could afford responsibility.

"What did the system advance?"

"Desperate Counter. Iron mid to iron late during the fight, then Copper early after the fall." If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. Talvek's expression tightened.

"Copper early in an active ability while you remain Iron mid."

"Bellan said the system change happened while the elf drained my mana."

"Bellan reports bodily consequence. I am asking what the ability now does." I reached for the system wording.

"It finds failures in balance, grip and focus when I am trapped, injured or controlled. At Copper, it can use the pressure of restraint or draining to make an escape." Talvek set the pen down.

"And how do you practise it?"

"I don't."

"Those conditions are how it receives practice." He pulled Pell's earlier registration sheet from a thin file and laid it beside the new report.

"Every time somebody gains control of the exchange, the ability is reinforced. You have two active slots at Iron rank. Axe Strike occupies one. Desperate Counter occupies the other. Both are now ahead of your bodily rank, but only one has a recognised path into disciplined combat."

"Desperate Counter kept me alive."

"I have entered that fact three times." Talvek tapped the attack sequence: bed, floor, window.

"The concern is what it requires before becoming useful. Every advancement condition listed here begins after position has failed. Injured. Outnumbered. Disarmed. Restrained. Drained. An ability built on those conditions can become extremely effective while teaching you nothing about preventing them." I looked at the three places Talvek had marked in the attack sequence. Desperate Counter had found a route beneath the boar's charge, through the hunters' weight and inside the elf's grip.

Each time, danger had already taken the useful tools from me before the ability answered. It had risen fastest because I kept giving it the same material.

"Can it evolve?" I asked. Talvek paused before answering.

"No evolution is recognised in the Strath field register. That does not prove the system has none. It proves the army has failed to produce one worth teaching. Axe Strike is different. Committed weapon forms can merge with guarded movement, footwork or controlled force once both paths reach compatibility." He opened another thin booklet and turned it towards me. Columns divided rapid, standard, advanced and perfect advancement, followed by notes too compressed for me to understand at a glance.

Under rapid, one line had been marked twice: no evolved abilities; reduced rank gain.

"The system will let you reach Copper with no evolved abilities," Talvek said.

"It gives less when you do. More slots, weaker gain, poor cohesion later. One evolved line removes that penalty. Two improve the result. You are close enough to Iron late that choosing the shape of your abilities has stopped being a distant concern."

"I do not have an evolved line."

"You have the beginning of one if Axe Strike gains something it can join." He stood and unlocked the narrow cabinet behind his desk. A dull-edged short sword hung inside beside a battered buckler and two leather-wrapped training rods.

"You also have no empty active slot. Learning a guarded form requires abandoning one of the abilities you already carry." The cost was easier to understand when made that plain. At Iron, I could keep the axe and the thing that saved me after failure, or keep the axe and create an empty space for something that might stop failure earlier. Copper rank would eventually open more room. Reaching it through a path the system considered poor would reduce what the rank gave me before those extra slots arrived.

Talvek removed the short sword and handed it to me hilt first. The weapon weighed less than the hunter's axe head, with balance gathered close to my hand instead of pulling through the end of a haft. Old nicks crossed the dull edge. The leather grip had been replaced cleanly, though the pommel sat a fraction loose and clicked when I turned my wrist.

"Appraisal?" Talvek asked.

"Bellan forbade it until tomorrow." He accepted the restriction without complaint.

"Then use your hand. Where does the weapon pull?" I extended it cautiously.

"Almost nowhere. The weight turns near the guard."

"Which means recovery is shorter. The sword is a sidearm, not a replacement for your axe. Your axe remains useful where you can commit space and weight. This exists for rooms, shield lines and the half-step after a missed blow." He chose one training rod and moved the chair against the wall.

"Stand slowly. Bellan has prohibited combat abilities, so today you use none." My legs held when I stood. Talvek placed my right foot, shifted the left half a boot backwards and turned my hips until the blade covered the line between us. He corrected with the rod rather than his hands, tapping my elbow down, moving the point away from the ceiling and knocking my front knee outward each time it collapsed towards the centre.

"You are setting for an axe strike," he said after the third correction.

"Both hands expect a haft. Your shoulder prepares to carry weight that is absent, so the point wanders before you move."

"The sword feels unfinished."

"The sword feels light. Finish the movement yourself." He raised the rod towards my shoulder in a slow visible line.

"Move the edge across, let the contact pass outside your arm, then return the point between us. No strike." I met the rod too hard. The blade knocked it aside and continued until my wrist turned, point opening towards the wall. Talvek touched the rod to my chest before I recovered.

"You won the first contact and surrendered the second." He repeated the line. I reduced the force and moved too late. The rod reached my shoulder, and Desperate Counter tightened beneath my ribs before the leather made contact. My weight dropped. My left hand came up to seize the striking arm while the sword prepared to drive from below. Talvek stepped out of reach and lowered the rod.

"There." The ability stayed ready after he stopped, holding his grip, stance and distance as parts of an opening that no longer existed. My fingers ached around the sword.

"You told me not to use it."

"You did not choose to." He returned to the desk and wrote one line beneath Bellan's restrictions.

"That is the problem I needed you to see. Desperate Counter is Copper early and already answers before you decide whether the exchange requires desperation."

"Then I abandon it now?"

"No. Bellan has forbidden ability use until first bell, you are mana-depleted, and I will not supervise a permanent slot decision while you are struggling to remain upright." Talvek set the training sword across the desk.

"Tomorrow, Bren Maddock leads the first river circuit. He will demonstrate guarded movement before he permits any abandonment." He took a patrol roster from the unfinished stack and entered my name beneath Bren's in the same narrow hand used for Bellan's bill. Beside it he wrote supervised, day duty, restricted until first bell, then sanded the ink before I could mistake the entry for a suggestion.

"Report at first bell with your axe," he said. He slid the battered short sword across the desk until its loose pommel clicked against the sheath of my skinning knife.

"Carry this as well. Bren supervises the slot decision. You abandon nothing before he gives the order."