Chương 43: Chapter 41: Debriefing (2)

Dasten approached the doors, rolled his left shoulder once, regretted it immediately, and pushed his way inside. The Vazaag's office was larger than most people expected and plainer than most nobles would have preferred. Shelves covered one wall, most of them filled with scrolls, maps, and sealed document cases. A long table stood to the left, while the Vazaag's desk sat near the windows overlooking the city. Sir Ganisaar was seated behind that desk, writing on a scroll with steady, deliberate strokes.

He looked older than he had the last time Dasten had seen him. The lines around his eyes were deeper, and the morning light made the wrinkles across his face harder to ignore. A chair near the desk was occupied by Krizak Malvek. Of course he is present for the debriefing. The old advisor sat with both hands resting on the head of his cane. His gray hair had been cropped close to his skull, and one ear was missing completely, leaving behind a smooth patch of old scar tissue.

A stranger might have looked at the cane, the missing ear, and the age in his face and decided Krizak belonged in a retirement home. That stranger would not have lived long enough to correct the mistake. Krizak's eyes were sharp, cold, and fixed on Dasten the moment he entered. Dasten ignored him as much as possible. He also noted the guards. Not the visible ones, because there weren't any. That was the point.

But six mana signatures sat hidden around the room, tucked behind layered concealment formations worked into the walls and shelves. One near the left bookcase. One behind the map cabinet. One above and slightly behind him, probably in the crawlspace between the ceiling beams. Another near the window, very still. SABLE. They were hidden well enough that most visitors would never know the Vazaag was guarded by anything more than old wood and polite procedure.

An average Siurim might sense a little pressure and dismiss it as the office's security formations. Dasten had worked this duty before though. He knew exactly where to stand if he ever needed to kill someone who had reached the desk in the wrong way. Not that he had any intention of testing the guards' alertness himself. Not today anyway. Sir Ganisaar finished what was writing before he set down his pen. Only then did he look up.

"You're late, Dasten." Dasten rubbed the back of his head with his good hand.

"Yeah. Sorry about that." Krizak's cane struck the floor hard enough to crack the quiet.

"Such insolence," the old advisor growled.

"You've been in this line of work long enough to know better than to speak to your superiors like that." Dasten glanced at him and wondered whether there was a polite way to tell the old bastard to fuck off. Probably not. He was still considering the impolite options when Sir Ganisaar spoke again.

"Leave it, Krizak." Krizak's mouth tightened, but he went silent. The Vazaag's gaze returned to Dasten. His eyes paused on the blood-stained bandages around Dasten's arm and shoulder.

"Tell me what happened," Sir Ganisaar ordered.

"How did the mission go?" Dasten straightened a little.

"The mission succeeded," he said.

"Firza's transshipment dock won't be useful to anyone for a while. The baron was assassinated with all signs pointing to Vamir having a hand in it. The bridge spanning the massive river was completely burnt and destroyed, and it'll take a few weeks to months to get the waterway cleared for navigation, depending on how much resources Sartrene put on it.

The dock itself was destroyed in a separate explosion, and the local commander sent by Arkazaan should spend the next month trying to explain why all the transport infrastructure and the baron he was sent to protect ceased to exist in a single night." Sir Ganisaar's fingers rested on the desk.

"Casualties?"

"On their side? Enough, though I tried to keep the body count low as per the mission parameters." Krizak's mouth twitched. Dasten ignored him.

"On ours, none. As you can see, I'm still standing."

"Were you seen?" the Vazaag asked.

"Not in Firza." Dasten shifted his injured shoulder and regretted it at once.

"I took the northern extraction route through Sartrene, stayed off any major roads, and should have crossed back without trouble. But an Arkazaanian patrol found me before I reached Varrenian territory." Krizak leaned forward slightly.

"Found you how?" Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Dasten's jaw tightened.

"Because I had been running for nearly two days after fighting my way out of Firza, and I stopped to rest somewhere a foreign patrol had no reason to be."

"You were careless!"

"Hardly. I was exhausted."

"Those are often the same thing." Dasten looked at the old advisor for a moment. The bastard wasn't wrong. That made it worse.

"It was a squad of four Siurim," Dasten continued.

"I killed one, injured two badly enough that they won't return to duty soon, and the fourth decided surviving and getting a report back to his superiors was more important than finishing the fight." Krizak gave a dry laugh.

"Then Arkazaan will certainly update your entry in their bounty books." Dasten frowned.

"That's what you took from all this?"

"It is the most amusing part."

"The useful part," Dasten said, "is that they found me far enough from Firza that they can't prove a direct connection. All they can say is that they caught a Korsivir Siurim crossing through Sartrene without permission. That gives us enough room to deny everything."

"It also gives them room to suspect everything," Krizak said.

"It's Arkazaan. They already suspected we might do something like this before winter starts - long before I left Korsivir." Sir Ganisaar raised one hand before Krizak could answer.

"Enough. Dasten's assessment is correct. Arkazaan may complain, but suspicion alone gives them nothing they can use openly." Krizak's fingers tightened around the head of his cane.

"He should have avoided the patrol entirely. Failing that, he should have wiped out all four before any of them could report back." Dasten stared at him. The worst part was that he understood the logic. He had been in SABLE long enough to understand exactly why Krizak thought that way. If possible, Dasten would indeed have killed all four. He had done much worse to enemies on missions that never made it into official records.

But hearing Krizak say it like he was discussing bad weather made Dasten want to break the man's cane over his head.

"I was in no condition for that," Dasten said.

"I had already fought twice in Firza, used up my replenishing pills, and ran most of the way back without taking a minute to sleep. Killing one and forcing the others to retreat was the best I could manage." Krizak opened his mouth.

"What's done is done," Sir Ganisaar said. Krizak stopped. The Vazaag looked back at Dasten, and his gaze moved again to the bandages around Dasten's arm.

"Go to the hospital after this."

"Sure."

"That was not a suggestion." Dasten gave him a tired smile.

"Yes, sir." Sir Ganisaar leaned back in his chair.

"Good. Now, as for the reason I pulled you out of SABLE." The smile disappeared. Dasten had known this was coming. He had been thinking about it since he first received the order. He had thought about it while infiltrating Firza, while escaping through Sartrene, while fighting the Arkazaanian patrol, and while filling out Ruzina's cursed gate form. He still didn't understand it.

"I don't know anything about teaching fresh graduates," Dasten said.

"I've led veteran squads of SABLE operatives. I've trained soldiers who already knew how to stay alive. But academy graduates? Most of them barely qualify as real Nourim."

"Which is why they need an instructor."

"They need someone who knows how to teach children. I'm not that person."

"They need someone capable enough to keep them alive until they become capable of protecting themselves." Dasten fell silent. Krizak watched him with an expression Dasten disliked. It was too sharp. Too interested in the outcome of this conversion.

"I was satisfied in SABLE," Dasten tried again. Sir Ganisaar looked at him for a long moment.

"No, you were useful in SABLE."

"That's usually the point."

"But you were not satisfied." Dasten's throat tightened before he could stop it. He looked away first. The Vazaag did not press. That was one of the more annoying things about Sir Ganisaar. He rarely forced a knife into a wound. He simply let the person remember the wound was there.

"You have spent almost a decade searching for Musaal," Sir Ganisaar said at last.

"It's time to let go." The name struck harder than it should have. Dasten's fingers curled. Musaal Ginaaz. His teammate. His friend. The man he treated as his brother, once, in every way except blood. The man Dasten hated more than anyone now.

"If he is alive," Sir Ganisaar continued, "he has hidden well enough that SABLE has not found him after a decade of searching, counterintelligence has not found any traces of how or when he was turned, and none of our foreign informants have given us anything reliable." Dasted clenched his fists.

"He's alive. I know he's alive!"

"You don't know that."

"I'll believe he's dead when I see the body." Krizak made a small approving sound. Dasten ignored him again. Sir Ganisaar's face remained calm, but there was something heavy behind his eyes.

"Dasten—""Don't." Dasten forced the word out before the Vazaag could say whatever gentle thing he had prepared.

"I know what you're going to say."

"Do you?"

"You're going to say it wasn't my fault."

"It wasn't your fault." Dasten laughed once. There was no humor in it. The office seemed quieter after the sound faded. Even the hidden guards did not move. Nearly a decade had passed, but the memory remained clear enough to make his stomach twist. They had been young then. Newly promoted Tarim, proud of themselves, and still stupid enough to think graduating from academy early and climbing ranks fast made them ready for anything.

Their instructor had taken them on an A-rank retrieval mission beyond Varrenia's border. Dangerous, but clean. That was what he had said. Difficult enough to test them, simple enough that an experienced instructor could keep the mission under control. And for most of it, he had been right. They had killed the target, retrieved the sealed scrolls, avoided three enemy patrols, and crossed back into Varrenian territory laughing about what they would eat once they reached Korsivir. Then Musaal had drawn his sword.

Dasten could still see the first strike. Their instructor had been walking ahead, one hand resting near the pouch where the scrolls were secured. Musaal had been beside him. No warning. No reason given for the betrayal. No hesitation. Just steel through the back. For one terrible heartbeat, Dasten had not moved. His mind had refused to accept what his eyes were showing him. Musaal was their teammate.

Musaal had shared food with them, trained with them, slept beside them in the field, dragged Dasten out of a flooded tunnel once when both of them were too young to understand how close they had come to dying. Musaal couldn't have done that. He simply couldn't have! Then Musaal turned toward Nivafi, their third teammate, and Dasten still thought he was trapped in a nightmare. Only when she screamed in pain did the world start moving again. Dasten drew his sword and attacked.

The fight was short, ugly, and nothing like the sparring matches they had spent years having against one another. Musaal knew him too well. Dasten knew Musaal just as well. Every feint felt familiar. Every dodge came half a breath before it should have. Dasten put his sword through Musaal's chest anyway, after getting enough wounds that he wasn't that far from death either. For a moment, he had thought it was over.

Then Nivafi dropped with a knife buried in her leg, and Dasten knew she wouldn't survive long without help. Their instructor had stopped breathing in the dirt nearby. And Musaal should already have been dead by the strike. He wasn't. So Dasten had to choose whether to save the only teammate he had still left in the world, who only had moments to live without help or to go after Musaal who was somehow still trying to get back up again. It wasn't a real choice.