Chapter 395: The Price of a Spear

Chapter 395: The Price of a Spear

Verrick checked Glitch again on Monday morning, a week after the course had finished. Jin had brought the movement notes he’d kept since then: incline work, turns, the way the drake settled his weight after a stop.

The notes matched what Verrick saw in the yard. He watched Glitch walk and brace, felt along the shoulder joints and nodded.

"Holding well," he said. "Keep the maintenance feed as we discussed. Flicker too."

Flicker was hanging sideways from the perch rail, trying to reach a loose thread on Jin’s sleeve. Verrick looked at her and smiled.

"She seems pleased with herself."

"It’s been a good week for her."

Jin took both beasts back after the check. The report told him about Glitch’s real condition. The rest of the decision waited on his private screen.

That night, he opened Glitch’s panel again.

[Controlled Sync — Glitch]

[Stored development: sufficient]

[Recipient readiness: good]

[Transfer within safe capacity: available]

[Projected result: Rank 2, 1-Star → Rank 2, 2-Star]

On Tuesday morning, he closed the door of the larger private handling bay he’d booked for the transfer. Glitch settled beside the padded wall while Flicker watched from a freestanding perch. Jin moved the water bucket out of reach of the drake’s tail before sitting down.

He leaned against Glitch’s shoulder with a hand on his neck, as he had for the breakthrough. The Sync didn’t need the contact. They both liked it.

He pressed confirm. The transfer was slower than Flicker’s, and heavier. Jin felt it through his hand before he felt it through the bond: a deep, slow warmth gathering in the plates under his palm, as if a stove had been lit somewhere inside the drake.

Glitch’s breathing deepened. His eyes half closed. His tail swept once across the straw, slowly, and stopped.

[Transfer in progress]

For several minutes, Glitch did nothing but breathe.

Then the warmth faded, and Glitch let out a long breath that blew straw across the floor.

[Controlled Sync — complete]

[Glitch — Rank 2, 2-Star]

[Quality: Gold (Low). Skills unchanged.]

Glitch lifted his head and looked at Jin.

Jin waited until his breathing and the warmth through the bond had settled before asking him to stand. Glitch rose smoothly, nosed Jin’s sleeve and leaned into his hand with enough force to move him sideways.

"Steady."

The drake drew back. Jin scratched beneath the edge of his jaw, grinning despite himself.

The difference showed more clearly in the yard on Wednesday. Glitch pushed off harder than intended during a short trot and carried too much speed into the turn. He corrected before reaching the fence, then looked back at Jin.

They walked the turn again. By the third attempt, Glitch was easing his effort earlier instead of trying to lose all the speed at once. The following days brought small adjustments like that: the force of a brace, the push needed to move a weighted pad, where to begin slowing.

He was still Glitch. When Jin put a feed bowl down, the new care disappeared from his first eager step and had to be remembered halfway there.

On Wednesday evening, after practice, Jin sat on the feed crate and looked at prices.

The Engine still held eight Platehide Newt scutes and four Seepstone Clusters from the Weeping Gallery.

It also held the ram’s horn segment and two hides, and six nodules whose uses beyond avatar development he still needed to investigate.

He’d sold manifested ambusher scythes and husk silk before. This time he had several possible materials to compare before spending Coins.

The online listings looked wonderful.

Platehide scute, prime grade, 4,500 Credits.

Seepstone, raw cluster, 6,000 Credits.

He knew better than to believe them. Those were asking prices, from sellers with shops and reputations. What he’d actually get from a dealer would be less, after grading, condition, and her fees.

On Thursday, he went into the commercial district and walked round three dealers with his phone in his pocket and no materials in his hands. He asked them what they’d pay for a prime Platehide scute, if he had one.

Two thousand, five hundred. Two thousand, six hundred. Two thousand, seven hundred and fifty, from the woman who’d bought the scythes, provided it came in clean and whole. Less her assessment and handling.

He walked home doing sums.

Each scute would cost a thousand Coins to manifest. The Seepstones would cost more. And Coins weren’t nothing. They bought Lives.

They went into the note in his phone with the heading Family, which said forty thousand, and which was going to need a great deal more than that.

The scutes weren’t doing anything in storage. He’d already decided he’d keep four of them, in case there was ever a reason to use them in the Engine. The other four he had no plans for at all.

He kept the Seepstones, horn and hides pending further appraisal. The nodules would stay too, until he knew more about their real-world uses.

[Physical manifestation: Platehide Scute ×4]

[Cost: 4,000 Coins]

On Friday afternoon, he carried four grey, overlapping plates the size of dinner plates into the dealer’s shop in a canvas bag.

She turned each one over under her lamp, tapped it with a little hammer, and listened.

"Prime," she said. "All four. Nice." She checked the batch details with him and set the plates beside the scale. Once the grading was done, her offer matched the figure he’d worked out after fees. He accepted payment to his account.

[Materials sale — net to holder: 10,000 Credits]

Outside, he checked the transfer notice and folded the empty bag. Ten thousand Credits was worth a trip into town, and he still had the materials he might need himself.

On Thursday night, he’d also brought his expedition accounts up to date.

The two grotto runs, twenty thousand. The first ibex, twenty-five. The other two, fifty. The ledges, twenty-five. A hundred and twenty thousand earned across the expeditions.

Sixty went into the family line.

Family: 40,000 + 60,000 = 100,000 / 10,000,000.

Sixty went to operating funds, minus the four thousand for the scutes.

A hundred thousand. One hundredth of the amount he needed. He looked at the new total for a while before closing the note. At least it had six digits now.

On Saturday, he went to see about a spear.

The weaponsmith’s shop was a narrow forge at the end of the tack street, with racks of plain, unpainted weapons along the walls and a broad, grey-haired woman behind the counter with burn scars on both forearms.

She took the borrowed training spear, weighed it in her hands and handed it back.

"Show me how you hold it."

He showed her. She adjusted his grip twice, moving his hands further apart.

"Who’s it for? What are you fighting?"

He told her about Crowe’s group, and about stepping out and having nothing to follow it with. Then he told her about Glitch, and the training stave catching on his horn.

She looked out of the window at Glitch, who was lying on the cobbles outside the shop, taking up most of the street.

"Shorter than a field spear, then," she said. "So you can turn beside him without hitting him. About your height, a hand more. Weight forward, toward the head, so it wants to point at whatever’s in front of you."

She took a scrap of paper and drew on it. "Replaceable head, forged from stock rated for Rank-Two work. Reinforced ash shaft. The fittings can be repaired separately, so a damaged end doesn’t mean paying for a whole new spear."

She wrote a number underneath.

"Forty-eight thousand," she said. "That’s a proper Rank-2 weapon. Made for your hands, not off the rack."

She tapped the drawing. "Will it hold up at Rank 3? Depends what you’re hitting. For a while, maybe, against the softer things. You’d want a better head by then."

Jin looked at the number.

He remembered his parents finding fifty thousand Credits for Glitch’s egg. He’d known what that money represented even before he opened it. The number on the smith’s drawing was close enough to make him pause.

Now the regular support from First-Class helped cover his costs, and both his parents were working. Elsa’s academy allowance was almost the same as his. At Sunday dinner she’d mentioned setting some aside, then asked if that was all right. He’d been glad she had the choice. She had no idea how much easier her own security made things for him.

He could think about a spear, for himself, without anyone at home going short.

"Can I take the drawing?" he asked.

"Take it." She folded it and handed it to him. "Come back when you know."