I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1463: Priced In Gold

The mess hall in the auxiliary barracks smelled of stale grease, old pine smoke, and the damp wool of sixty soldiers trying to dry their coats over two small iron braziers.

The Eleventh Squad had taken the corner table. Rian sat at the end of it with his back to a timber post, working methodically through a slab of salt-cured pork that tasted mostly of brine and ash. He let the squad argue. He ate, kept his eyes on his plate, and listened to the capital talk around them.

”They’re giving us three coppers a day,” Han said, jabbing a greasy spoon toward the central hearth. ”Three. The carters at the gate get five just for hauling turnips, and we walked forty miles through the dark to haul eleven thousand dead Hunters out of a gorge.”

”We didn’t haul them,” Doron said flatly from his corner, without looking up from his porridge. ”The Captain killed them. We just stood there and looked stupid.”

”My point stands,” Han snapped. ”Three coppers! And now some officer with a silver lion on her collar walks in and says the Sixth Legion wants to buy us whole? What is the Sixth offering?”

”Forty silver a month for infantry,” Baletta said quietly, her eyes moving over the crowded benches. ”Fifty for scouts. Double rations on the march, and the standard imperial pension if you lose a leg.”

Jalsket let out a low whistle. His hair ran from dull black to a streak of pale silver, then settled back again. ”Forty silver? Good stars. You could buy a house in Hollin’s Ford for two years of that.”

”If you live two years,” Commander Vanessa said.

She stepped out of the shadow of the doorway with her unlit pipe clamped between her teeth and her heavy cloak dripping melted frost onto the flagstones. She didn’t look at Rian. She hooked a three-legged stool over with her boot, sat down on it with a grunt, and snapped her thumb across the pipe bowl until a thin line of black smoke climbed toward the rafters.

”The Sixth isn’t buying soldiers to sit in a guardhouse,” Vanessa continued, drawing on the pipe. ”They’re buying meat for the Northern Continent. You go with Captain Vaertia, you’re not guarding a wall. You’re sailing into ice and dark to clear ground for the Emperor’s flag.”

At the words Northern Continent, Nyssira went rigid.

It happened without a sound. She was sitting beside Pam with both hands wrapped around a wooden cup of weak tea when her shoulders locked.

A heartbeat later, blood ran from both her nostrils, spilling over her lip and down her chin and dripping heavily into her lap. The cup tilted in her fingers, and tea crept across the planks. She didn’t scream. Her eyes rolled back until only the whites showed, and her whole body shook in small, hard jerks while her throat worked around a breath that would not come.

Pam caught her before her forehead hit the table.

”Got her,” Pam grunted, hooking her small hands under Nyssira’s arms and dragging her backward off the bench with the ease of long practice. ”It’s fine. Just the air. The capital air is bad for her head.”

”That’s not the air,” Baletta whispered, and her hand dropped to her sword hilt.

Rian watched. He kept his Shingan locked down tight behind his dark irises, so that no stray pulse of essence could reach the high towers outside, but he didn’t need the Demon Eye for this.

He could see the threads of the Transcendent constraint pulled taut across Nyssira’s chest, squeezing the breath out of her. It was a compulsion rooted in soul-law, laid on her to kill her the moment she tried to speak of her home, or heard its name without the strength to resist it.

He swallowed his pork, picked up his cup, and took a drink of cold water.

’Nasty piece of work,’ he thought dryly. ’What is even going on in these people heads?`’

Before Baletta could ask anything else, the heavy oak doors at the end of the hall swung wide. Cold morning air rushed in and scattered the grease smell, and on it came the measured clatter of iron-shod boots.

A man in the turquoise-trimmed robes of the Wardens stepped into the mess hall. He was an old chaplain of Turquaise with a face lined like dry riverbed clay, and he carried a heavy brass censer that trailed a thin, sweet smoke of burning mountain thyme. Two junior priests followed him with a long roll of parchment held between them.

The hall went quiet. Bench by bench, the soldiers of the North Guards got to their feet, boots scraping against the stone. Vanessa rose with them, took the pipe out of her mouth, and stepped back from the table until her shoulders found the far wall beside the second brazier.

Chaplain Vaelen didn’t look at the officers. He walked straight down the center aisle and stopped at the Eleventh Squad’s table, where he unrolled the parchment. His voice rang clearly off the damp rafters.

”By the grace of Turquaise, Keeper of Boundaries and Warden of the Line,” Vaelen intoned, in a voice worn deep by fifty winters on the wall. ”We name the dead of the Keep. Private Corin. Corporal Marek. Sergeant Oakes. Sentinel Vance... thirty-two names written in the ledger of the north, whose blood held the stones when the kingdom turned its face.”

He paused, lowered the parchment, and turned his pale grey eyes on Rian.

”And we give thanks to the man who stood where the line broke,” Vaelen said loudly, dipping his head toward the black-haired boy. ”Rian the Mercenary. The man who held the line when the dark came through.”

A low murmur ran through the barracks.

At the back of the room, beside the brazier, Commander Vanessa watched without a word. No chaplain named her. No church gave thanks to the woman who had held the Castle Keep for twelve years on split spears and rotting flour. She put the pipe back between her teeth and drew on it until the bowl glowed red, and a muscle jumped once along her jaw. Then she looked away.

Rian didn’t bow back. He only tipped his chin half an inch.

”The line was already held, Chaplain,” Rian said flatly. ”I just cleaned the yard.”

The old priest’s white brows climbed a fraction.

Before he could reply, a horn blared in the outer courtyard. A rider in the leather dust-cloak of the Church of Davon spurred his horse right up to the open doorway and didn’t bother to dismount. He was sunburnt to the colour of old saddle leather, a pale scar split one of his eyebrows, and the spurs on his boots were still caked with road mud.

”Which one is the sellsword?” Orlo called out, while his horse snorted white steam into the cold air. His eyes found Rian’s black uniform and stayed there. He dug into his saddlebag and sent a heavy, wax-sealed scroll spinning end over end across half the hall. It landed on the table with a thump, right beside Rian’s half-eaten pork.

”The Riders of the Endless Plain see you, boy,” Orlo said, flashing a grin full of white teeth. ”Davon’s child! A free-company charter, signed by the High Preceptor. No imperial taxes, no legion orders. You take fifty men, pick your own contract, and the Church takes only a tenth of the plunder.”

Han’s mouth fell open. ”A free-company charter? They’re giving out charters now?”

”They’re giving charters to boys who kill eleven thousand Hunters,” Orlo laughed, wheeling his horse around in the tight courtyard. ”Think on it, Mercenary! Davon’s road is always open!”

He kicked his mount into a canter, and the ring of hooves faded down the cobbled street.

Rian looked at the scroll for a moment. Then he nudged it clear of the grease with one knuckle and went back to his pork.

By evening, the bells of the Crown City had begun to ring.

They rang from the high balconies of the Starward Court, deep bronze notes that rolled over the roofs of Reimhold like thunder and set the shutters humming in their frames.

From the window of their temporary quarters, Rian watched the streets below fill with thousands of citizens. Nobles in silk, carters in wool, and shrine-servants in white robes all went down on their knees in the muddy avenues, their hems soaking in the same brown muck, every face turned toward the white tip of the Luminance Spire as dusk settled over it.

They raised their hands to the sky, and their voices rose together in one enormous chant.

”To the Last Blessing,” the crowd sang, thousands of voices folding into a single mournful drone. ”To the dying light that watches over the worthy... hear our prayer...”

Rian stood by the wooden shutter with his shoulder leaning against the frame.

He listened. Not with his ears, but with the quiet sense that lay beneath his system voice. Under the chant he could feel a low hum of essence rising up through the stone avenues, drawn in toward the Spire and then on past it, into a vast, hidden network that ran the length of the continent.

He let out a short breath through his nose.

’The Last Blessing,’ he thought. ’They think they’re praying to the dead stars. They don’t even realize they’re talking straight into Ul’s hijacked line. Every prayer, every devotion, feeding the very thing that locked their gods in a cage.’

A sharp knock sounded at the door.

Peaker stepped inside carrying a small, square letter wrapped in heavy crimson silk and sealed with the lion of the Imperial High Command.

”Captain,” Peaker said quietly. He held the letter out in both hands, and he didn’t let go of it until Rian’s fingers had closed on the silk. ”It just came from the inner keep.”

Rian took the letter, snapped the wax with his thumb, and unrolled the thick vellum.

By order of the Grand Marshal and the Legions of Reimgard:

The auxiliary unit designated Eleventh Squad, North Guards, and its acting commander, Rian the Mercenary, are ordered to present themselves for formal review at the Legion Fields.

Dawn tomorrow.

Rian folded the note, tucked it into his belt, and turned back to the window, where the bells of the stolen system were still ringing across the city of ashes.

’Well,’ Rian thought, narrowing his eyes slightly at the high walls of the inner keep. ’Time to go see what my father’s parade looks like.’