SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

”That’s a good speech,” Trafalgar said. ”You’ve had two years to practise it.”

”I’ve had longer than that.”

Rhavel let the third lance go. It didn’t fall or shatter; it simply stopped being there, unmade back into wherever the man kept it, and his empty hand dropped to his side.

”I’m done,” he said. ”You can see that I’m done. I’d rather not waste what’s left waving something I can’t lift.”

Trafalgar stayed where he was, eight paces out, Maledicta low and loose in his grip. He was breathing hard, and he was by an enormous margin the healthier of the two of them.

Under the plates his body was still working. The break in his forearm had closed into a dull hot ache, the hip was sealed, and there was a rib somewhere that grated when he turned.

Rhavel was not fading by the minute. Rhavel was emptying.

”Sit down before you fall down,” Trafalgar said.

”If I sit down I won’t get up.”

”Okay. Then stand there and talk to me.”

”Sixteen men, you left two alive to kill them later on.” Rhavel’s head moved slightly. ”Don’t look like that. You were right. They came at you. I’d have done the same thing.” He shifted his weight and something in his chest made a wet sound. ”I just wanted to know whether you’d lie about it.”

”Would that have told you anything?”

”It’d have told me what kind of man drowns a ring.”

Trafalgar let that sit, because it wasn’t a sentence anybody says by accident, and then came at it from the side.

”What’s in the warehouse?”

”No idea.”

”You’ve killed sixteen people over a building and you don’t know what’s in it.”

”That’s right.” He said it without any embarrassment. ”I was told it was mine to deal with, so I dealt with it. I never asked. If you ask, you get told, and once you’ve been told, somebody has to think about you later.”

He’d known it since the first parry. Rhavel Sorn was a hand. Very good, very expensive, and attached to an arm he couldn’t see from here.

”Then who told you?”

”Not going to happen.”

”You’re bleeding out on a pile of brick.”

”I’m aware.” Rhavel almost smiled. ”That’s why it isn’t going to happen. If I give you that, it stops being my death and starts being other people’s, and some of them have families here. I signed onto that a long time ago.”

”Noble words from a man who sealed two crossings so nobody would hear about tonight.”

”Yeah, it is.” Rhavel breathed, and it whistled through the channel in his chest. ”I stopped pretending I was a good man a long time ago. You don’t need to do it for me.”

Trafalgar changed the angle again.

”Then give me something that costs you nothing. You’re going to die in about four minutes and you’ve clearly already decided that’s fine. Give me one thing.”

Rhavel thought about it, and that was worse than a refusal, because it meant he was deciding what was safe rather than whether to speak at all.

”Emric Varn,” he said.

”Who’s that?”

”The man who used to sign for that building.” The commander’s mouth did something unpleasant. ”Go and find him. Take your time. He’s been in the ground about a year.”

”You’re giving me a dead man.”

”I’m giving you what I said I’d give you, which is something that costs me nothing.” His hand had gone to his own chest, pressed flat over the worst of it. ”I’ll tell you one more thing and then I’m finished, because I don’t think you understand what you’re standing in.”

”Go on then.”

”The man who gave me the order doesn’t know either.”

Trafalgar went very still.

”He doesn’t know what’s in that building?”

”He knows more than I do. He doesn’t know all of it. Nobody does.” Rhavel looked at him properly for the first time since the fight ended. ”That’s not carelessness. That’s how it’s built.”

”Meaning what?”

”Every man in the line knows the one above him and nothing past that. Walk it upward for a year and every name you get will be somebody who was told, same as me.”

’Layers. Local hands at every level and nobody who can see the whole of it.’

”You’ve been used,” Trafalgar said.

”Probably. I’ve done fifteen years of work I’m not going to describe to you, and you can call that whatever you like.” His voice was thinning at the edges now. ”It doesn’t matter. You came down here to fix a family that isn’t yours, you’ve torn a hole in it instead, and you still don’t know one name that means anything.”

”I know yours.”

”You do. And I’ll be a dead commander with no orders in writing anywhere, which is the entire point of me.” He coughed, and it took a while. ”I told you at the start. This was never yours to touch.”

”Last chance,” Trafalgar said. ”Who signed?”

Rhavel Sorn looked at him for a long moment.

Then his remaining hand moved, slowly, and went inside the front of his coat.

Trafalgar saw the shape come out and knew what it was before his mind supplied the word. Too small for a weapon and the wrong proportions. A squat cylinder with a hinged brass lever along one side, and a thumb already hooked over the lever.

He had seen that class of thing twice in his life, both times in Morgain engineering yards, both times attached to something that came down afterwards.

”You asked what’s in the building,” Rhavel said. ”Nothing. Not in about six seconds.”

Trafalgar was already moving.

He poured everything into his legs and hips and spine at once and the chamber tore past him. [Godstep] Five metres closed into nothing, Maledicta came up over his shoulder with the air already vibrating along the edge, and a rising hum went out through the ruined dark as the mana gathered.

[Morgain’s Last Dusk]