SSS Awakening: I Become The Strongest Breeding Knight

Chapter 110: 110. The Villain Held a Saucer and Apologized for the Inconvenience of Genocide

Garrick lifted his head. He’d gone still, and I saw his ears move the way a dog’s do when it hears something outside the window.

”Footsteps,” he said. ”Next door... Somebody’s in the next room.”

The five of us turned together.

There was a door in the north wall that I’d taken for a closet. It was half open now, and a thin line of lamplight lay across the floor.

Somebody had been standing behind it for a good while. And I had the nasty feeling that they’d been waiting for us to finish reading.

She came out with a teacup in her hand.

I don’t know what I’d expected.

Something taller, I suppose.

Maybe a figure in black armor, or a face carved out of ice, some kind of villain you could shout at with a clear conscience.

Instead, the woman who stepped into the doorway of the director’s office looked like a schoolmistress who’d been called out of the library to deal with a noisy class.

She was in her fifties, thin and straight-backed, with gray hair pinned up in a tidy knot and a pair of round glasses sitting on a sharp nose.

Her cuffs were stained with ink. She wore a plain gray dress with a high collar, and she held a saucer in one hand and a cup in the other, and she took a small, polite sip before she spoke.

”Ser Ravenshield, I presume,” she said. ”I did hope you’d read the whole file...”

”It’s much less alarming in order.”

Four black-armored knights filed in behind her and stood against the wall with their hands on their sword hilts.

They didn’t say anything. I noticed that they didn’t look at her, either, in the way that you don’t look at a stove when you know it’s hot.

”Director Varn,” said Laura, in a flat voice.

”Lady Lapisfield... A pleasure.” She nodded. ”I’ve read your reports on the Blackthorn Forest... very thorough.”

Varn set her cup on the corner of the desk, as if she were visiting a neighbor. ”And Commander Voss... You’ve kept well, for a man the road was supposed to have taken.”

Garrick didn’t answer. His knuckles had gone white on the crutch.

”I should say, first of all, that I’m not the person you’re looking for,” Varn went on.

She had a dry, precise voice, the kind that makes every sentence sound like a footnote. ”If you came to find the one who built all this, I’m afraid I’m only the one who writes it down...”

”I keep the ledgers... I’ve kept them for twenty-two years.”

”In my line of work, one learns a great deal, and one is not usually thanked for it.”

”You ran this place,” I said.

”I administered it... There’s a difference, although I’ve never found anyone who cared.” She tilted her head. ”You’re angry... That’s reasonable.”

”Would you like me to explain, or would you prefer to start with the swords? But well... I’d rather explain.”

”It’s quicker, and I’ve had a long week.”

I should have said no. I should have drawn my sword and ended it.

But Alicia, beside me, shifted her weight in a way that meant wait, and I realized that Varn wanted to talk because she thought it would work, and I wanted to know what she thought would work.

”Go ahead,” I said.

”Thank you.” Varn folded her hands in front of her. ”Energy crystals are finite, Ser Ravenshield.”

”That is the first fact... Every barrier in the kingdom is powered by a crystal, and every crystal is a stored quantity of something the earth produces very slowly.”

”We have been spending it for three hundred years as though it were water...”

”Nobody ever wrote down how much was left, because the answer was frightening, and the Council has never been fond of frightening answers.”

”So?”

”So I wrote it down.” She said it without any pride. ”In perhaps forty years, the kingdom will not be able to protect all its villages...”

”In sixty, it will not be able to protect half of them... This is not an opinion... It’s arithmetic.”

”And when the barriers begin to fail, somebody must decide which ones go dark first... The Council has already decided.”

”They did it years ago, quietly, in the form of a ledger... Villages with strategic value, trade value, or political value stay lit...”

”The rest do not.”

”That’s a monstrous thing to do,” said Alicia.

”It is a normal thing to do, Lady Ainzfield. And that’s what makes it monstrous.” Varn’s voice stayed level. ”I’m a clerk... I saw the ledger.”

”I couldn’t change what was in it... But I realized that the decision didn’t have to be made badly.”

”If the crystals were gathered in one place, studied, and used deliberately, rather than scattered across a hundred villages and burned for lamps and plows, then perhaps we could stretch what remained.”

”A new ledger... One that doesn’t waste anything.”

”By taking them from villages,” I said.

”By collecting them... Yes.”

”From villages that were still using them.”

”From villages that were going to lose them anyway.” She turned her head and looked straight at Garrick, and I felt the temperature in the room drop. ”Harrowmere was a rounding error in someone else’s ledger, Mr. Voss.”

”I’m trying to make sure the next village is not.”

For a moment, I thought Garrick would drop dead where he stood. But... He didn’t move.

And he didn’t speak. He just looked at her, and the look went on for so long that Holt, by the door, took half a step forward and stopped.

I think that was the moment I understood something about anger. There’s the hot kind, which comes up fast and wants to hit.

And there’s the other kind, the quiet kind, that comes up slowly from somewhere very low in the body and makes you extremely clear.

”You treat people like entries,” I said, ”and you call it what...? Saving them?!”

”I treat them as what they are... Numbers in a column.”

”Don’t you see that there were ninety-one graves in that valley.”

”Yes... I counted them too.”

”Then you know that every one of them had a name!”

”I know all their names.” Her face didn’t change. ”It’s why I keep the ledger, Ser Ravenshield.”

”Someone has to remember... Someone has to be accurate... You can despise me for that if you like.”

”But if you take my work away and leave nothing in its place, a great many more villages will go dark than the ones I’m accused of emptying.”

”That’s not how it works...!” Laura said coldly. ”You don’t get to rob a family to feed a bank!”

”Interesting phrase... I’ll note it.”

I heard a rapid clatter behind her in the corridor beyond the door, and a voice raised in an outraged shout that I’d know anywhere.

”...FOUR of them! Four! And not one of them can aim! It’s an insult to the profession!”

Varn closed her eyes briefly, like someone who has heard a plate break in the next room.

Sharon came through the far door first, with her sword in her left hand and her right arm held stiffly against her ribs.

She had a cut across her forehead that was bleeding into one eyebrow and a bruise coming up along her jaw, and she looked about as happy as I had ever seen her.

Behind her, a small blur of gold came flying down the last three steps of the stairwell, caught her heel on the top stair, and pitched forward headfirst into the room.

I think I stopped breathing...

Then Eveline tucked her chin, crossed her arms, hit the plank floor on her shoulder, and rolled up through the curve of her back like a wheel.

She came out of it on her feet, in a neat crouch, with her sword hand at her belt and her ears perfectly upright, as if she’d been rehearsing it all week.

There was a short silence.

”That was deliberate,” she announced.

”Obviously,” said Sharon.

”I wanted to see the room.”

”Of course you did.”

Eveline looked at me. And I looked at her.

Her face was streaked with soot, and there was a small cut on her cheekbone, and her eyes were enormous and shining with an expression I couldn’t read.

I felt my shoulders come down about three inches. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding them up since dawn.

”Thank god... you’re alive,” I said.

”I know.” She sounded faintly offended. ”I counted.”

”Good.”

”Sharon says I’m not allowed to die before breakfast.”

”I said no such thing.”

”You implied it.”