Chương 135: Chapter 128

Cale Ellara had turned the kitchen table into a command post. There was a list. There were times. There were three or four different restaurants, twenty-seven different events, and a hundred and seven different topics, circled, listed, and ranked most to least interesting. I have been in dungeon raids and actual wars that took less planning. I was starting to rethink this whole casual courting thing. Picture the scene for a second.

My sixteen-year-old sister had forced a stylus into my hand and a blank page interface in front of me and was briefing me like the finest strategic mind ever assembled. I was going to have to look into her post-Arclight options, military strategy or the like, because she clearly had the head for it. I should have had her planning my operations. Even the ones I was technically not running anymore.

"You are actually writing this down," Rade said.

"You are giving me a location, a time, and an objective," I said.

"I write those down. That's just polite planning."

"It's a date, not an extraction."

"We'll see. How do you know a date won't turn into an extraction? It isn't as if you can see the future. And stranger things have happened." Rade snorted.

"Oh, please, what stranger things have happened to you? Besides one of the most beautiful girls in our school walking up to you at random and asking for a date, I doubt you've experienced anything weirder than that." I thought of the 150-year-old chieftess of the Omazon who had offered to be my wife and basically have a collective marriage with most of her tribe. Yeah, that definitely counted as something stranger, but I probably didn't need to tell Rade about that.

And can I say that this whole planning for cording thing seemed like a whole lot of work? It was the morning of the third day, and the date was set for the one after. Ellara and Rade were still arguing logistics.

"I still say he should take her on a boat ride. Go down to Azurea, get one of those pleasure cruisers. The sunsets down there are unreal. The girl's face is basically a made for a Lattice Reel cover. Can you imagine the photo ops, sunset light, that copper hair against the water? Knowing her, she'll wear something form-fitting with plenty on show. I'm not sure you could build a better scene." Ellara rolled her eyes.

"Are you trying to date her or paint her portrait?"

"Plenty of men paint a girl a picture."

"Not girls like that." I let them fight, because honestly it was so far out of my depth I had run out of things to say. I just wanted to walk around the frickin' lake. Oh, maybe go back to the farmer's market. Chocolate. When was the last time I went over to get chocolate? Strawberries. Man, I want some strawberries.

After a great deal of debating, compromising, and a fair number of tears, mostly Rade's, we had a sequence of events, a restaurant, a change point, a pathway, a list of conversation topics, and eventually the point where I was supposed to go ninety-ten. But only if she was feeling it. Apparently, the 90/10 was a kissing protocol. I was learning all sorts of new things. To their credit, they took my suggestions into account, and I did not have to make a single call or arrange a single booking myself.

The restaurant Ellara settled on is, apparently, quite fancy. I can't say I feel at ease in very fancy places. The last time I was somewhere like that, I got proposed to. Twice, actually, within 48 hours Twenty-four hours before the date, Ellara sat me back down at the kitchen table. Her holographic interface bloomed into the air as she started in, and I sat up and gave it my proper attention.

"For a girl like that, for a first date, we are going for shock and awe, baby. You cannot take Siobhan Morrigan just anywhere. She is the campus belle. She is not as famous as someone like Thessaly the Scion, or Princess Talena, or even strike that. She's more on the lines of Akeme Yamato. If we are getting technical""You're calling that a technical question?" Ellara chose to ignore me, which I found very rude "Siobhan Morrigan has more than her share of admirers, and her father is as famous as anyone alive.

There is an expectation attached to her, and on the first night you meet the expectation. You do not get creative on the first night."

"Remind me why we cut the walk around the lake," I said.

"It's a good lake." This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Rade and Ellara looked at each other.

"It's too basic. O ye of little faith." Rade spread his hands.

"A guy can run a date however he likes. If it were a girl who'd be charmed by a walk and a good talk, then that is the whole play, cheap and honest and effective. But that is not who asked you out. Here at school it is softer than the real world anyway, everyone eats in the same halls, nobody is counting. Siobhan is not a dining-hall date. She reset the board the second she crossed the café to reach you. She has a standard. Night one, you match it."

"Now, I have this outing budgeted to the last credit. I have some savings set aside for you, Cale, and there's an offer on the table to cover the rest. We are going to be smart about all of it, because Siobhan is going to know we don't have much to our name, and she is going to appreciate the effort. If she doesn't, she isn't worth your time, though a girl like that usually does." Ellara braced for it.

"Wait, why would I need to borrow money from you?" I said.

"Cale, we've been over this. You just cannot walk into these places. These are the sort of restaurants that don't print prices on the menu," Rade said. I put a hand up. I might be short on a lot of things. Currency is not one of them. There are not many perks to being the Ghost of the Wastes, but financial independence is one of them. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a card.

An emerald crystal, set with the insignia of a bank in Metidae, which is more or less the central banking authority for both Blocs, Eastern and Western alike. Metidae is one great valley, a Plane and Dominion that has somehow stayed neutral across the entire span of its recorded access to the Nexus. It holds one of the ancient gates, older than the schism between the Solaran and the Orthodox Church. The card itself was A small parting gift from my master. They did not need to know that part.

Ellara and Rade looked at each other, looked at the card, and looked at each other again. Ellara spoke first.

"Is that what I think it is?"

"If you think it is a top-tier card from one of the most exclusive banking houses across the known Nexus, then yes. It is exactly what you think."

"Brother, you are seriously going to tell me—" She stopped, looked at Rade, looked back at me.

"You and I are going to have a long talk later."

"I am reminded of a great philosopher. Jordan was his name. Jordan the Great. And Jordan once said that if you ask him no questions, he will tell you no lies. I have always lived by those words."

"You just said you would lie to me if I asked you a question."

"Oh, dearest sister. I said no such thing. What an outrageous thing to suggest." My little sister glared at me while I smiled. Rade put his hands up and framed an invisible poster in the air between us.

"Man. I should write your autobiography. I bet it's fascinating." I rolled my eyes.

"My biography reads like a horror show, not a historical romance." Ellara's eyebrow climbed.

"Where did you learn 'historical romance'? And where did you find time to read?" I had walked into that. I weighed a lie, decided against it, and paid for the decision at once.

"There is a landing site on the World Tree Lattice I found when I couldn't sleep," I said.

"Moyle Mode. People post stories on it, a few chapters at a time, daily or weekly. I found it the other night, after I put away all those ridiculous clothes we bought. There's one called The Emperor and His True Bride. I believe the correct category is historical drama."

"And to my point, the title is dramatic. Sister Yi and Brother Yuan were meant to marry, and then they realized they might be siblings, and then it turned out not really. Sister Yi's twin, Sister Yao, has always loved Brother Yuan and never found the nerve to say so, except she had already been with him once in a drunken fever, and she may or may not have been carrying at one point. We are supposed to find out at the end of next season. Brother Turtle is the genius behind all of it.

People with that much innate talent really make me jealous." My sister and Rade stared at me like I had lost my mind. Or they might hit me. I think they were leaning towards hitting me. The silence continued this time had a different flavor.

"You, my friend, have layers." Rade savored each word.

"I wonder what this whole school would say if it came out that the mysterious Cale Arcanus reads, what was it, serialized romance."

"Historical drama."

"On Moyle Mode."

"It's well written." Ellara had both hands pressed over her mouth. Rade looked like a man who had found buried treasure and could not decide which coin to lift first.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay. Do you read overpowered fantasy fiction? Because if you are on Moyle Mode and you have not found overpowered fantasy fiction, we have serious work to do."

"What is overpowered fantasy fiction?" Rade shut his eyes like the question hurt him somewhere physical.

"Oh, my friend. I have so many things to explain to you." I looked down at my slate. It now read: pay for everything, pace the spending, meet the expectation, do not be afraid of physical contact but do not be aggressive with it, and if you avoid it completely she will decide you don't like her, which you do not want. This seemed like a great deal of work. I felt a sudden appreciation for Thessaly's and Chieftess Threnna's directness about what they wanted. You want something, you say so.

If you can have it, good for you. If you cannot, you move on. Nothing in Kordar required a slate. When the Omazan wanted you, they told you, at volume, in front of everyone, and the only pacing involved was how fast a man could decline a collective marriage without starting a war. Blunt. Legible. I understood every rule in that valley, which is more than this table could offer. I owed them a visit, in truth. It had been too long.

There is one child there, Bea, who would take my silence as a personal insult and welcome me back, when I finally showed my face, with a fist to the sternum and a demand to know where I had been. She would be furious, and utterly adorable the whole time she did it. She still messages my World Tree Lattice account nearly every day. Mostly just hellos, pictures, once a funny snake she found. Good lord, kids are cute.

"Brother, if you don't start paying attention, I am going to hit you," Ellara said.

"Okay, little sister. Okay. I'm listening," I admitted.

"Focus. This is important." She tapped the restaurant a final time.

"Reservation is at eight. Wear the coat. Do not bring a weapon."

"I will not bring a visible weapon," I said. She chose not to fight me on it, which was the smart play. I picked the stylus back up and added reservation, eight, coat, no visible weapon under the rest, because a briefing is a briefing.

Across the table Rade was already writing my autobiography behind his eyes, and Ellara was pretending she had not enjoyed a second of this, and somewhere across the island Siobhan Morrigan was getting ready for a night she had scheduled herself and handed to me like a gift I was not permitted to refuse. I had walked into worse rooms than a good restaurant. Probably.