SSS Awakening: I Become The Strongest Breeding Knight

Chapter 57: 57. The Man Who Held Up the Beam Before Remembering Who He Was

For a long time, Garrick didn’t move...

”Her name is Tilly,” I said. ”Her mother told Hallis what happened.”

”After your chains broke... when you slammed your fist into the street and the crack went toward the stable, part of the roof came down.”

”Tilly was under it... She says a giant man with a red light in his chest caught the beam in both hands.”

”She says he held it up and told her to run, and then he turned around and went back to roaring at everyone...” I glanced at him. ”She thinks you were a hero.”

Garrick’s jaw tightened.

”Too bad that I didn’t see it,” I said. ”I was busy with my shield.”

”I didn’t know what you’d done until the mother told it... But that’s why you asked about her, isn’t it?”

”In the cell... You weren’t trying to manipulate anyone.”

”No,” Garrick said, hoarsely.

”You remembered holding up the beam.”

”I remembered... that I couldn’t stop.” His voice cracked. ”I was in the middle of it!”

”I wasn’t myself... The crystal had me, and I was swinging, and I looked down and there was a child under the beam!”

”I thought I’d bring this whole city down on top of her. I’ll do exactly what they did to us. And my arms moved before I thought about it.”

I set the drawing carefully on the floor and slid it under the bars, and then I took my hand away and waited.

Garrick looked at it for a very long time.

Then, slowly, with fingers that shook so hard I could hear the chains rattle, he reached down and picked it up.

He didn’t say anything.

He held it close, with both hands, and stared at the crooked red figure with the star on its chest, and I saw a tear run down the long scar on his cheek and drop onto the paper.

I looked away, out of respect, and studied the wall.

”Her name is... Tilly,” he said, eventually, to no one in particular.

”Yes.”

”I asked about a child I didn’t know... because I wanted one thing in this kingdom to still be unbroken.” He wiped his face with the back of his wrist, clumsily, because of the cuffs. ”You came here to get something out of me...”

”You’re being kind about it.”

”I came here to give you the drawing.” I looked at him. ”What you do with it is up to you.”

”That’s not true, and you know it.”

”Fine... It’s mostly true.”

He let out a short, rough breath that might have been a laugh. Then he straightened his back, folded the drawing into his shirt, and rested his head against the wall.

”I’ll tell you what you want,” he said. ”Not because I owe you, but because... I’m tired of carrying it.”

”I was born in a village called Harrowmere,” Garrick said.

I didn’t speak. I’d learned long ago that the best thing you can do when somebody has finally decided to talk is to make yourself as small as possible.

”It was on the far northern border... about three weeks’ ride from Elarion.”

”It was a little place... Maybe two hundred people lived there.”

”We raised sheep and grew barley, and every winter... the monsters came down from the hills, and every winter the barrier held them off.”

”You’ve seen the crystals in the towers... the ones that keep the city safe. We had a smaller version.”

”A single crystal, on a stone pillar in the middle of the village, about as big as a man’s fist... It was all that stood between us and everything outside.”

”It was powered by the royal allotment.”

”Every village on the border got one... A fixed share, delivered four times a year in a locked chest.”

”The crystals were rated... and the shipments were logged, and nobody ever questioned the numbers.” He gave a hollow laugh. ”I was a young knight when I left...”

”I went to Elarion, and I rose through the ranks... and I became a commander of the crystal guard, because I believed in what it did.”

”I thought... I was protecting the people who needed it most.”

”What happened...?”

”One winter, about five years ago... our delivery didn’t come.” He stared straight ahead. ”I was in the capital on a duty rotation, and I didn’t know...”

”My sister... Lena... wrote to me. She said the crystal at Harrowmere had grown dim.”

”The elders wrote to the Council, asking for the shipment, and the Council wrote back that it had been redirected due to urgent needs of the realm.”

”A month later... the barrier went out.”

He closed his eyes.

”There were about forty people dead when I got there... They’d been caught in their homes.”

”The monsters came down at night, from the northern slopes... and the barrier wasn’t there to stop them.” His voice dropped to almost nothing. ”Lena was one of them... and she was seventeen years old.”

”She’d gone out to move the sheep into the barn, and... she... didn’t make it back.”

The lantern flickered. I kept my eyes on the floor.

”I wrote to the Council... I wrote seven times, in my own hand, with my rank and my service record.”

”I asked who had authorized the redirection, and where the crystals had gone, and why a village of two hundred people had been left to die...?!”

”But in the end... I never got an answer. Not even once!” He punched the floor. ”Then the fucking... seventh letter came back unopened.”

”I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it more than I could say.

”Don’t be... You weren’t there.” He opened his eyes. ”I stayed in the guard for a few more years...”

”I looked at the logs, at night, when nobody was around... I found the pattern.”

”It wasn’t only Harrowmere... It was a dozen villages, one at a time... all on the border.”

”Their shares were quietly reassigned, and the crystals went into the high district, into the towers where the nobles lived.”

”The border was the cheapest place to cut.”

”That’s what you meant in the street,” I said. ”About the villages being sacrificed...”

”I told you the truth, and I... still believe it.” He shook his head. ”Then, a few months ago, a man came to me...”

”He wore black armor with no insignia, except the mark on his shoulder, the circle with the jagged edge.”

”He said he knew what had happened to Harrowmere... and that he could give me a way to make them pay.”

”And so... He gave me the red crystal.”

”Corvane.”

Garrick looked at me sharply. ”You... know the name?”

”Only recently... I didn’t know he had one until last night.”

”He never gave it to me... He called himself the quartermaster.” He stared at his hands. ”He said the crystal would let me strike the high district where it hurt.”

”He said that if Elarion felt, for one night... what Harrowmere had felt, the Council would finally be forced to listen.”

”Let the city taste what your village tasted... That’s what he told me.”

”And you believed him...?”

”I wanted to.” His voice broke. ”God help me, I wanted it more than anything...”

”I knew it was a cruel thing to do... I knew there were children in that city.” He starts shaking. ”But I’d buried forty people with my own hands... and I thought... maybe... this is the only language they speak.”

”But... it wasn’t.”

”No.” He looked up at me, and his eyes were red. ”I realized it too late... when the crystal was on my chest, and I couldn’t take it off... It was feeding on me.”

”Every time I used it... I felt less like myself and more like a weapon that someone else was pointing.”

”I understood, in that plaza, that the man who’d given it to me never cared about Harrowmere... I was just a tool.”

”A very expensive one, and a disposable one.”

”I really am sorry to hear that... my condolences to everyone.” I took a slow breath. ”But... Garrick, do you know what Phase Two is?”

He went still.

”I... heard the words,” he said. ”Even though I wasn’t supposed to.”

”I was waiting in a back room before the attack... while the quartermaster talked to someone in the corridor.”

”I only caught pieces... I heard Phase Two and I heard Greywater, and I heard him say that the shipment had to arrive before the next moon.”

”That’s all... I don’t know what it means, and I don’t know who he was speaking to.”

”Greywater,” I repeated. That was the ford.

The same ford we’d be crossing in two days.

”There’s one more thing.” Garrick’s mouth twisted. ”He told me... before he left, that if I failed, someone would come to collect me.”

”He said it like it was a kindness... At the time, I thought he meant to rescue me.”

”And now?”

”Now I understand what collect means...”

I thought about the appendix in Hallis’s office, with its pale gray ink and its tidy instructions. I hadn’t wanted to be the one to tell him.

But I figured he deserved to hear it, and I’d rather he heard it from me.

”They’re ordering me to transfer you to the Tribunal in the capital,” I said. ”I’m supposed to leave tomorrow at dawn... with Alicia, and a wagon.”

”The route they’ve picked goes through Greywater.”