Chapter 70 - One month later

Chapter 70: 70 - One month later

- Adrien’s POV -

The clearing had not been a clearing when Adrien started. He was standing in the middle of it with Umbral Root in both hands, and around him there was about half a hectare of forest that had spent a month being used as target practice.

Trunks snapped at various heights. Ground that had been frozen and thawed so many times it had given up on being grass. Two trees that had come down entirely and that he had not bothered to move.

A month of this, every day, most of the day.

’Status.’

[Frost Lance | 1 Star | Refined 100%]

[Zap | 1 Star | Refined 100%]

[Ice Wall | 2 Stars | Refined 32%]

[Winter’s Reach | 4 Stars | Practised 88%]

[Lightning Bolt | 6 Stars | Novice 98%]

Adrien read down the list and let himself be pleased about it for a moment, because he had earned that much.

Frost Lance and Zap were finished. Both of them had reached the ceiling his Core allowed and refused to go a percent further, and there was nothing to be done about either one until he reached Three Stars.

’Which I haven’t. A month of this and the Core hasn’t moved.’

Ice Wall had climbed well. Winter’s Reach was two grades up and eating everything he threw at it, and Lightning Bolt was about to turn over into Practised and had taken most of the month to get there.

’The two big ones are slow, and I know exactly why. Four Stars and Six Stars on a Two Star Core. They’re above me, so every percent costs more than the last one.’

’Fine. Give it time.’

The month had not been only spells. Lucien had accepted the offer to spar the same afternoon Adrien made it, which had been faster than expected and had immediately felt like a warning. After that they went at each other in that clearing three or four times a week, and Adrien learned exactly what fighting a Ranger involved.

Mostly it involved never knowing where the man was. There had been days when Lucien walked out of the trees with a wound across his shoulder because Adrien had finally caught him with something. There had been rather more days when Adrien came out with a line torn across his arm from an arrow that had gone past closer than either of them had planned.

Amelia had been there for every single one of them, which was the only reason it had stayed a training exercise. She had made a habit of sitting on the same fallen trunk with her hands ready, watching two grown men try to kill each other for an hour before patching up whichever one had lost.

’She’s stopped complaining about it, which I choose to read as approval.’

Adrien dismissed the staff and started back toward the house, and Greymoor had stopped looking like Greymoor somewhere in the last few weeks.

The lower yard was full of men and had been since sunrise. Garrick had them in three groups on three different drills, and about half of the faces in that yard had been wearing Arquenay colours two months ago and were now wearing nothing at all until somebody finished sorting out uniforms.

The road was busier than the yard. Carts coming up loaded and going back down empty, all day, every day. The east barn had been rebuilt and had gone from a burned square to a working building with a roof on it, and behind it two new ones were half up.

There were Crown officials in the front hall, which Adrien had stopped reacting to. There were storehouses that had been standing empty since before he woke up in this body and were now full enough that his mother had ordered a second set built. And there were people camped in tidy rows along the lower field, families who had come up from the old Arquenay holdings and had nowhere to be yet.

’Two months ago this house had almost no one.’

Garrick found him on the way in. He came across the yard on his stick without any apparent difficulty and stopped in front of him, which was the sort of thing Adrien had stopped commenting on because Garrick did not enjoy it.

"My lord. Have you got a moment?"

"Yeah, what’s up?"

"I’ve finished separating them." Garrick nodded back toward the drills. "Soldiers I can rely on in one group. New recruits in another, and that group is considerably larger than I’d like. The old Arquenay officers I’ve kept apart from both, because a man who used to give orders takes badly to being handed a spear. And the ones who failed the evaluation are on the list your mother’s clerks are working through."

"How many failed?"

"More than you’d hope and fewer than I feared." Garrick shifted his weight. "I’ve started folding the reliable ones into existing units rather than keeping them in Arquenay formations. Mixed squads. It’s slower and it makes everybody miserable for a month, and in six months I’ll have soldiers instead of two armies standing in the same field."

Adrien nodded and did not offer an opinion on any of it, because Garrick had been organising men since before Adrien had a body in this world.

"How many do you actually trust?"

"Trust?" Garrick made a noise. "Fewer than I employ, my lord. A good deal fewer." He looked out over the yard. "Give me time, though. Most of them aren’t anybody’s loyal men and never were. They’re working men, and they’re here for the wages, and a soldier who’s fed on schedule and paid on the day he’s promised turns loyal faster than anybody wants to admit."

"Then feed them on schedule."

"Your mother’s already made that clear to the quartermasters. Twice."

Evelyne was waiting in the drawing room with a folder open in front of her, which by that point Adrien had learned to treat as a weather warning.

"Sit down. This one you’re not going to be able to sign your way out of."

"That’s an encouraging opening."

"We cannot keep running Arquenay from this house." She turned the folder round to face him. "I’ve sent officials, I’ve been through the accounts twice, and I’ve replaced four people who were treating the change of ownership as an opportunity. That works for a month. It does not work for a year."

"And the problem is?"

"The problem is that there’s a city out there with more people in it than everything Clairmont held before your father died, and they have seen their new lord exactly once." Evelyne folded her hands. "You rode in, you were there for a day, and you left. That was fine at the time. But now, we need to go."

Adrien put his shoulders against the back of the chair.

"They’ve had a month of clerks with our seal on their paperwork and no face to go with it. Villages are the same. If the only Clairmont they ever meet is a man with a ledger, then we’re the people who collect from them, and nothing else."

"We’ve held these lands a month, Adrien. We need to go and look at them."

"Alright."

Evelyne stopped, because she had clearly prepared a considerably longer argument.

"That was easier than expected."

"You were right the first time you said it." Adrien stood up. "I’d rather find out what I own before somebody else tells me what I own."

They left two days later. Adrien and Evelyne, with a small escort and nothing that looked like an army, because turning up at a city you had taken by force with soldiers behind you sent a message nobody needed. Garrick stayed at Greymoor, and had said so before anybody asked him, on the grounds that pulling him out of a reorganisation halfway through would waste the month he had already spent on it.

They came over the last of the high ground on the second afternoon, and Adrien pulled up his horse without meaning to.

The valley opened out below them, and the city lay in the middle of it with a river running along one side and roads coming in from four directions. Walls all the way round. Rooftops going back further than he could count from that distance, smoke going up from a few hundred chimneys, and traffic on every road he could see.

It was considerably larger than anything House Clairmont had held after his father died, and as of a month ago all of it belonged to him.