Chapter 668: A Better Celebration

Hajin shoved open the guildhall’s long room expecting three empty chairs where yesterday’s beaten rankers should be sulking.

Instead Darven stood at the roast platter, jabbing a fork at Juna like it was still his spear.

"The second drive was the best exchange of the whole match," he insisted, "he dragged me across the shield and I bit like a trout."

"Wrong," she tore a drumstick free and aimed it straight at his chest, "the best exchange was the wrist catch, and this leg is mine."

"You were on a balcony."

"Watching, which beats getting swept."

’Oh hell no, they actually showed up, and now they’re fighting over my fight.’

"Uh, hello, winner standing in the doorway," Hajin spread both arms wide like a street performer begging coins, "anyone want to clap, cheer, throw a flower or something?"

Rumi and Nari clapped exactly twice each, perfectly out of time, while Loccy waved a bread roll at him.

Across the long table, Ilsen sat beside Ferra and kept turning an untouched cup slowly between her calloused archer’s fingers. She lost her bow to the staff yesterday, yet her questions stayed on the timber instead of her own string.

"Resin through the grain, then beeswax over it?" Ilsen traced the length of an imaginary pole across the tablecloth, "it cracked across my wrist and never even flexed."

Ferra crossed her arms and leaned back until her chair creaked in protest, "Resin first, wax second, cord grip last, and the bastard held three hundred pounds before I let anyone swing it."

"Then I lost to good joinery."

"You lost to a clone reading your feet, the joinery just didn’t break," Ferra grunted, though her cheeks went faintly pink.

’Huh, Ferra’s blushing over carpentry praise, I’m writing this day down somewhere.’

He found his chair beside Juna and dropped into it like a man who earned every cushion in the hall.

At the head table, Guildmaster Allen sat behind a recorder’s ledger and kept writing while the room ate around him. He came down from the capital branch to keep the Council’s record, and his pen never stopped even for gravy.

"The individual demonstration goes in as new evidence," he said without looking up from the page, "the ranking review is a separate sitting, so do not expect a number with your dessert."

"No number?" Hajin clutched his chest like someone just stabbed him through the heart, "not even a little ’nobody alive can touch him’ carved over the door?"

"Fifteen Shards lost to you on chalk," Allen dipped his pen again without granting the joke a glance, "which does not make you fifteen Shards, and it certainly does not make you first."

"Yet," he drawled.

Darven raised his cup from the platter end and laughed loud enough to rattle spoons, "To yet, then, and put my rematch on the record."

"He’s going to be unbearable now," Juna muttered around her drumstick.

"Going to be?" Loccy snorted.

Half the room lifted their cups, and Hajin soaked in every clink like warm sun after a long winter.

’Forget a crown or a proclamation, people who lost still came to eat, damn, that’s better.’

[ IronVanguard: The guy he disarmed is toasting him, that’s real respect ]

[ HearthKeeper: Look at that table, the whole household is here ]

[ Seoul_Tactician: Allen keeping the ranking separate is the right call honestly ]

[ ashley(mod): Reminder, no placement was announced, the review is still pending ]

Loccy cleared a space between the soup and the pickles, then started arranging bread with alarming seriousness.

"Reenactment time, I’ve got the whole field in rolls," she announced, slapping down a long loaf, "this beauty is the clone."

"Why is my clone the size of a wedding loaf?"

"It carried the staff, so it gets the crust."

"Then where’s me?" Hajin leaned over the board and squinted at the crumbs suspiciously.

Loccy pointed at one shriveled dinner bun sitting in a puddle of gravy, "Right there, looking worried."

"That’s slander, I want a bigger bun, I demand a recount!"

"Bet you fifty silver the bun stays small," she snickered, flicking her long ears.

Rumi pushed three pickles into a triangle around the loaf and solemnly named each one after a beaten challenger aloud. Nari promptly knocked the pickle Oric over with her spoon, insisting that her version finally showed the clone’s sweep correctly.

A child’s hand reached across the board while the two sisters kept arguing about spoons and pickles.

Nyra lifted the pickle Oric with grave care and set it on Hajin’s plate beside his bun.

"There," she told him quietly, "now you won something to eat."

He stared at the pickle, then at her, and lost every argument he ever planned to make.

"Okay, that’s the best prize anyone gave me all week, thank you."

Vella tapped her ladle against the soup pot without bothering to turn around, "And he eats the soup before the pickle, rules are rules."

The noise climbed again after the second platter arrived, and Juna’s tail began twitching against the leg of his chair. He caught her eye and nodded toward the side door, and they slipped out together into the quiet courtyard outside.

Cool air met them with lamplight and the smell of wet stone after evening watering.

Juna leaned on the well rim, favoring her ribs, and chewed the last of her drumstick in silence.

"Thanks," he said.

"For what?"

"For staying up there and letting it be mine, you could’ve argued for the field."

She flicked one ear back and huffed at the dark water below, "My ribs argued for the balcony, I just listened to them."

"Still, you didn’t make it a contest between us."

"Idiot, there’s nothing to contest," she muttered, cheeks coloring as she stared at the well, "you won, I watched, and I liked watching."

’She liked watching, okay, everybody stay calm and don’t ruin this.’

He moved beside her and let his shoulder rest against hers, keeping weight off the bruised side of her ribs. Juna leaned into him after a moment, and her tail curled slowly around the back of his knee in answer.

"First chicken portion tomorrow is yours," he murmured into her hair.

"It was always mine."

He laughed softly and pressed a kiss to her temple, and she let him stay there without a single complaint. They lingered beside the well until the noise inside softened enough to call them back toward the crowded long room.

Ferra waited near the lamp when they returned, the stolen route folio open on a clean cloth.

Rumi caught its thief yesterday, and the man swore his buyer wanted nothing at all except one obsolete road mark. Ferra held a lens carefully above the binding’s worn leather, refusing to lift the old stamp from its stitched seam.

"Maker’s stamp, old, probably older than anyone in this room," she grunted, tapping the cloth beside it, "and under it, look."

Hajin bent close and found the triangular brand pressed beneath the faded maker’s lettering.

"Same brand as the map inside," he breathed, "pressed right under the maker."

"Same spacing on the edges as that cylinder from the nest," Ferra told the table, "I won’t name a maker, but I’ll say they match."

Juna’s ears pricked forward at once while her tail went perfectly still, "The nest ravine sits on the old herd road north, the one migration road that still runs whole."

[ TacticalNerd: Wait, the stamp hides the same triangle as the survey ]

[ ShadowMage44: Juna’s hunt and the stolen folio point at one road, oh this is good ]

Hajin looked from the folio to the cylinder’s wrapped shape, and his tired smile turned openly hungry.

’One surviving road, two clues pointing straight down it, and I just finished dessert.’