Free Web NovelChapter 20: The Information...
Nathan tore a piece of bread in half and handed the larger portion to Liaraen.
She took it without comment about the relative sizes of the portions, which Nathan registered as a small diplomatic victory. An hour ago, that same girl would have made a specific observation about how the commoner kept the inferior portion by protocol, or something similar. Now she simply took the bread. That was progress.
They were both sitting on the alley floor, backs against opposite walls, the box between them serving as an improvised table.
Liaraen had wrapped her feet in a piece of cloth Nathan had sacrificed from his cloak so she’d at least have some protection against the stone ground.
The cloak was now slightly shorter.
Liaraen hadn’t thanked him verbally for the gesture, but she’d accepted the cloth with a tilt of her head that, in her cultural system, functioned about the same.
"Alright," Nathan said, chewing. "I’m going to tell you what I know. You’re going to tell me what you know. And we’re going to see if together we can reconstruct enough to not die tonight."
"Acceptable," Liaraen said.
"I’ll start. Two days ago, without a Seal, without money, without hope, I arrived in Greywall looking for work at a guild. They rejected me for not having a Seal. A hooded man in an alleyway offered me one. I accepted. It turned out to be a Seal that doesn’t appear in any official Pantheon record."
"Mmh."
"The Class the System assigned me is SSS — Extinction."
Liaraen stopped chewing.
She stared at Nathan for a moment.
"Repeat that."
"SSS. Extinction. Grim Reaper."
"That doesn’t..." Liaraen paused for a second. "That doesn’t appear in the elven records either. SSS Classes are historical. The last one recorded in our archives was forty-two years ago. A witch from the southern forest who ended up destroying three villages before dying of natural causes—which our library specifically describes as ’fortunately for everyone involved.’"
"That doesn’t reassure me."
"It wasn’t meant to reassure you. Continue."
"My Seal is shaped like a door. Empty. Nothing on the other side."
Liaraen looked at him a moment longer.
"Pull up your sleeve."
Nathan hesitated.
Then relented. He pushed up his right sleeve. Showed the mark.
Liaraen studied it for several seconds with the specific attention of someone who had been trained from childhood to recognize sacred iconography from multiple kingdoms.
"That mark," she said finally, "isn’t from the human Pantheon. It’s also not from the elven Pantheon. It’s not from the dwarven Pantheon. It’s not from any of the minor spiritual traditions I’m aware of."
"Yeah, that’s what I was told."
"Who told you that?"
"A used clothing vendor. Two days ago."
"A used clothing vendor who recognizes religious iconography that my fourteen years of formal instruction don’t recognize."
"This city has more depth than it appears to."
"It appears that way."
Liaraen was quiet for a moment. Processing.
"Continue your story, Hunter."
"The ambush on the road. Six people. Four dogs. Two bearers with Draken Seals. I killed all of them."
"All by yourself."
"All by myself. A skill called Soul Pulse. It works against humans when they’re confirmed lethal threats. The Class has built-in morality that enables or blocks it depending on context."
"A Class with its own ethical criteria."
"Something like that. Yes."
"That’s..."
"Disturbing?"
"I was going to say theologically complex. But also disturbing." Liaraen bit off another piece of bread, chewing slowly. "Continue."
"On the body of the ambush leader, I found a note. It had a wax seal with the same symbol my contractor Brenwick told me his assistant would be carrying to receive me. Which means Brenwick and the ambushers share an organization or are coordinated."
"Brenwick is a Greywall merchant."
"Yes."
"What did he look like?"
"Burgundy tunic. Fifties. Rings on three fingers. Careful accent."
Liaraen went very still.
"What?" Nathan asked.
"I know him. Not personally. But I know the pattern. There are three merchants operating routes between Greywall and the eastern ports that match that description. Of the three, two are officially registered with the Kingdom’s Merchant Company. The third isn’t registered—he operates with a provisional license renewed each year, and my father has him marked in our private archives as a person of interest for six years due to unproven suspicions of trafficking young elves toward the southern continent."
Nathan stopped chewing.
"Your father has a private file on Brenwick."
"My father has private files on anyone who represents a potential risk to our house’s political integrity or to elven citizens traveling through human trade routes. It’s standard practice among major Houses."
"And you know the names of the marked ones."
"I know the patterns. Not always the specific names. But your Brenwick matches with enough precision that the margin of error is low."
"And if it’s him, what does that mean?"
Liaraen was quiet for a second.
"It means my capture wasn’t opportunistic. It was targeted. It means someone knew exactly which elf they wanted, where to find me, and how much to pay for the operation. It means the organization that financed this has contacts inside the Northern Kingdom capable of leaking personal information from the major Houses. And it means that when my father discovers what happened, it won’t be a rescue expedition. It will be a silent war between Houses. Ours against whoever paid."
"And is that something humans in the kingdom are going to notice?"
"Eventually. When merchants operating with provisional licenses start disappearing. When certain commercial offices close without explanation. When certain names stop appearing in the records." Pause. "My father has the patience of a river, Hunter. But the river also carves the rock."
*Good. Excellent. Liaraen’s trafficking is a node in a much larger network. Brenwick is a link.*
"There’s something else," Nathan said. "On the road, after the fight, I sensed something in the Gray Forest. Something large. Non-living. And it reacted to me. Like it had noticed me."
Liaraen frowned.
"Non-living means what exactly for your Class?"
"Things that were once alive and no longer are, but aren’t dead in the full sense. Undead. Specters. Something bigger than I know how to describe."
"How much bigger?"
"Large enough that its signature is detectable from several kilometers away."
Liaraen went very still.
"Hunter."
"Yes."
"In elven tradition, certain ancient places on the continent have what we call Latents. They’re entities that have been in partial hibernation for centuries or millennia—usually because someone sealed them or because their natural context was broken. Latents aren’t aggressive in their normal state. They only react to very specific stimuli. Your Seal, your Class—they’re exactly the kind of stimulus a Latent would register as kindred to its nature."
"Kindred how?"
"Kindred in the sense of same origin."
Nathan was silent.
*Same origin.*
*The Seal was given to me by a hooded man connected to the erased god of the Pantheon. If the Gray Forest presence reacts to that as "the same," then whatever’s in the forest is also connected to the seventeenth god.*
"That’s useful information," Nathan said, controlled.
"Information my father would have paid well to have. And considering you’re telling me for free, I’m mentally adding it to the calculation of how much my family owes you for my rescue."
"I’m not keeping count."
"I am. One of the two people in this conversation has to, and it’s clearly not going to be you."
"Acceptable."
---
Liaraen split a honey bun in half. She passed the smaller portion to Nathan, which he correctly interpreted as a deliberate joke in elven noble language, and accepted the portion without comment.
"My turn," Liaraen said.
"I’m listening."
"I was captured in the sacred forest north of our capital. I was on a field expedition with two guards and my botanical tutor. It was a documented, authorized outing with appropriate escort for my rank. The attackers were six. Three with visible Seals, three without. They killed my tutor first. The guards after. They sedated me and put me in the box before I could process what was happening." Her voice maintained formal cadence in every word, but the formality was now more like armor than habit. "They had detailed information about the expedition route. That only comes from inside the house’s administration."
"Internal betrayal."
"Yes."
"How long were you in the box?"
"I don’t know precisely. The sedation makes time calculation difficult. I estimate between four and six days."
"Were you fed?"
"Minimally. Water twice. Bread once."
*Four to six days. Bread once. And she still maintained perfect aristocratic posture when I opened the box.*
"Liaraen."
"Yes?"
"You don’t have to hold the aristocratic face with me."
"Excuse me?"
"You’ve been talking for half an hour with the exact voice of someone giving an official report. You don’t have to do that with me. I’m not going to take notes. I’m not going to pass the report to anyone. I’m not going to judge the quality of your composure. You were in a box for four to six days. It’s reasonable to be wrecked inside. I would be."
There was a silence.
Liaraen looked at him for several seconds.
Her face maintained perfect composure.
But something in her eyes changed.
"Hunter Nathan."
"Yes."
"I appreciate the gesture. And I’m going to politely decline it. My composure isn’t for you. It’s for me. If I break it now, in this alley, I’m going to have to rebuild it later, and I don’t have the space or the time for that. If we reach a safe place where I can afford the luxury of processing what happened, I will process it. In the meantime, the aristocratic face stays in place."
"Accepted."
"But the offer is appreciated. Sincerely."
"Sincerely noted."
Liaraen bit into the honey bun.
And as she did, her free hand tightened slightly against the edge of the box. A small tremor that hadn’t been there a minute ago and that she’d probably been holding back since she’d woken up.
Nathan saw it.
He didn’t comment.
But internally, he filed the information under the category of *things I’m going to need to remember later.*
