Chapter 73

I would have liked to say that in the two weeks that followed the meeting between Ser Joss and Lady Yalindra, I had rallied the townsfolk and petitioned Ser Joss to change his mind, ousting the House Firthholm invaders. But that’s not what happened.

Instead, life went on with a burdensome weight resting upon our shoulders. The guard — whose name was Marcus — that kept bothering Mum had come by the outpost trying to talk to her twice since the meeting between the two Houses. Both times, Gramps had sent the creep on his way, but the asshole clearly didn’t understand the word ‘no’ and was becoming a problem. Gramps had once told me that those who took an interest in Mum just needed a ‘jolt’ to come to their senses. Marcus had received multiple, yet the bastard kept returning for more. He had even taken to coming by the outpost most nights — often with another guard — where he would sit and drink. Gramps couldn’t kick him out without offending our new overlord.

The entire time the soldier's gaze would be glued to the kitchen door as he tried to lay eyes on Mum. She had, in turn, folded in on herself. Her normal, bright charm was hidden beneath a hunched form like she was trying to hide or protect herself — which is exactly what she was doing.

Seeing my Mum so withdrawn had continued to stoke my anger, and, with no viable outlet, I had been thrashing my body into exhaustion every day with my training. I had almost hurt Brin in my frustration during sword practise, and George had worked me to the bone afterwards as though trying to exhaust my rage. He had failed.

Small benefits had come from my anger, with two Paths hitting the next tier as a result. Their notifications were easily brought up, which I did in an attempt to distract myself from the fury still bubbling in my belly.

You have advanced the Tier of your Path! Path of Balance IX (5003/5000)

Reward: +1 Unallocated Stat

You have advanced the Tier of your Path! Path of Hatchets V (512/500)

Reward: +1 Strength

Even seeing my numbers go up, and the additional Unallocated stat assigned to Gifted, was not enough to lift my horrible mood. It was getting to the point where I was worried one of us would lose our cool and do something drastic. The only question in my mind was if it was going to be Gramps burning the offending dirtbag to a crisp — or me while he was asleep with a borrowed kitchen knife.

My thoughts might have been more than a little hyperbolic, but they were a reflection of my growing frustration. I also wasn’t restricting my anger to the soldier. Lady Yalindra had so far failed to rein in the man under her command. Her silence — in my eyes — was tacit approval of his behaviour. That made her just as culpable.

Cooling my heels in my room, I sat in the corner going over the problem from multiple angles. Around me, my Royal Cloak of Shadows shifted, a blanket of night concealing me in the darkness. I had spent the last two weeks working feverishly on the Skill until my aether channels felt singed.

Worried I would permanently injure myself, I had asked Gramps about the sensation. He had warned me not to use the Skill for longer than ten minutes at a time but that if they were only feeling singed it would be fine. He’d even acknowledged that continually using the Skill in short bursts might show a marginal improvement in my aether channels. Not enough to get them to the next grade but perhaps enough to use the Skill for longer. Improving the Skill would help as well but, in two weeks of use, it had only gone up by a single point.

My mind went back to the problem of Lady Yalindra and her creep of a guard. I wanted them gone, but I was just a five year old kid. There was no way for me to physically force them and, as much as I hated them, I hadn’t worked my way up to actually considering murder as a viable option. Even if I could get away with it — and that was a big fucking if — it would be a dark path to start considering murder as my first option. I pushed it back to second — for now.

So, what should be first? I didn’t know what I didn’t know. My issue was a serious lack of intelligence. Not my mind — that was sharp as a tack — no, it was the information kind. I needed to know more so I could brainstorm some options. For that, I needed to do something that would also make Mum sad. I was going to sneak out into the dark, alone, and infiltrate Lady Yalindra’s fort.

With my decision made, I released the Cloak of Shadows and waited. A quarter of a candle should be long enough to let my aether channels recover. While I waited, I swapped out my Path of Hatchets — losing a little progress — for my Path of Infiltration. I had no idea how valuable the infiltration would be, but even if I lost the progress later, it seemed worth including the Path as at least it should make getting the steps back easier.

Once the faint feeling of fire beneath my skin had abated, I crept out of my room. I avoided using any Skills for now, relying instead on my natural talent and experience at being a sneaky, little shit. No sounds came from Mum’s or Gramps' rooms so I crept down to the kitchen. Avoiding the squeaky stairs was second nature by this point, and I chose to unlatch the window rather than use the barred door.

Landing on the ground outside, my boots made a quiet but satisfying thud against the dirt. I pulled my dark, fur coat tighter to ward off the cold and double checked the wooden toggles that held it close wouldn’t rattle. Then, I tightened the drawstring of my dark, woolen pants and made sure the bottoms were tucked into my boots.

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Satisfied I was prepared, I hugged the edge of the outpost and silently moved east towards the House Firthholm fort. As I reached the edge of the outpost, my eyes swept across the intervening ground and sky. I lamented my lack of a night-vision potion to truly assess my surroundings — particularly the cloudy sky above. Still, I had faith in my Cloak of Shadows.

Aether flowed into my channels as I called on the Skill once more. The night wrapped around me like a second layer of clothing. I added Muffled Steps which further increased the pressure on my channels, the light burn growing worse by the second. With no time to waste, I dashed quietly towards the wooden fort, a blot of darkness sliding across stone in utter silence.

Reaching the fort wall, I found plenty of handholds in the hasty gaps of the wood — my little fingers perfectly suited for the task. I wanted to use Controlled Grip to assist, but was worried that my aether channels wouldn’t be able to handle three Skills at once with my Royal Cloak of Shadows in the mix. Thankfully, I didn’t need it with a climb this easy. I was an incredibly fit five year old — further enhanced by additional stats from the many Paths I had progressed and completed.

If anyone nearby had eyes to see, I assumed I must have looked like a large, black spider racing up the side of the fort. Peeking over the lip of the wooden palisade, I took in the layout of the House Firthholm bastion — the lesser Bastian in this instance.

There were four separate buildings. The largest was an open air stable that housed each of the horses in a separate stall with a wooden roof shielding the steeds from the worst of the weather while keeping in some of the heat. For the most part, the animals looked asleep, and the two that I thought were awake hadn’t noticed me. Not far from the stables was a large, wooden building in the shape of a rectangle with a flat roof. An idiotic design once winter came with how much snow would pile up on top, but maybe they would have improved the building to stone by then. Either way, I was pretty sure that was the barracks. The last two buildings were of similar size, but only one had smoke pumping out of a chimney. I guessed the other — far chillier — building was some sort of storage.

Which meant the wooden construction with a chimney was likely Lady Yalindra’s quarters. That made it my first target.

Of course, nothing was easy, and there were two of the Firthholm soldiers standing guard by the entrance to the fort. As I watched, one of them peeled off and did a circuit of the fort. I followed his progress, wishing he would move faster as my aether channels began to shift from a tingling irritation towards a burning problem. The guard’s loop included all the buildings except for directly behind the stables which hugged the eastern wall.

When he had completed his patrol, I carefully levered myself over the top of the palisade and quickly climbed down to the ground. Reactivating Muffled Steps and with the Cloak of Shadows still clinging to me — my aether channels screaming for a break — I sprinted around the inside edge of the fort until I reached the stables. Scrambling silently up the side of the structure as fast I could — I rolled onto the roof and into the deep shadows cast by the wooden wall of the fort. Only then did I release my Cloak of Shadows.

My aether channels needed time to recover, and I needed somewhere to wait it out while they did. I was fairly confident that even with something like a Perception Attribute, I would be almost impossible to spot where I was hiding in the dark — or so I hoped.

As my aether channels cooled, I cast my senses inwards towards my aether core. Unsurprisingly, I had almost half of my aether left. Cloak of Shadows — while hell on my channels — was incredibly cheap to use thanks to my Potent Shadow affinity. In fact, I had probably burned through more aether using Muffled Steps than I had Cloak of Shadows during my infiltration.

The cool air on my face and the gentle whisper of the wind through the nearby trees threatened to lull me to sleep. My five year old body wanted to acquiesce, but my mind was strong. I pinched myself a few times to maintain my focus.

Half of the time my aether channels needed to recover had passed when I heard a door open. Lifting my head up slightly, I saw Lady Yalindra march out of her ‘home’ and head for the barracks. She yelled something inside, and a moment later, a half-dressed soldier stomped outside before the two surreptitiously headed towards the storage shed.

I didn’t know what she was up to, and I didn’t really want to know. All I could focus on was how I might not get another chance like this tonight. Her home was unoccupied and unlocked. But my aether channels weren’t ready, the gentle burn not having abated and I had already pushed it longer than Gramps suggested. I wasn’t about to risk my future as a mage by using the Skill again so soon.

With worry in my stomach but courage in my chest, I climbed down from the stable without any of my skills active. One of the horses perked up as I stepped next to its stall but it clearly considered me beneath its notice as it made a gentle huffing noise and looked away.

Glancing around and seeing no guards on patrol, and the doors of the storage building still open, I quietly jogged across the intervening distance between the stable and Lady Yalindra’s home. Her wooden door was still slightly ajar, and I quickly opened it and slipped inside, making sure to leave it exactly as I found it.

The room was lit by a shuttered lantern hanging just inside the entrance from a metal hook. Opposite me, there was another open door that clearly led to her bedroom based on the pile of furs on a raised, wooden frame. The room I found myself in looked like it was meant to function as an office. There were two large, wooden chests bound with metal and padlocks along one wall with a large, roughly hewn desk opposite them. Atop the desk was clutter, including a few stacks of paper, a couple of books, and an inkwell with a large feathery quill hanging out of it.

There were also a couple of metallic devices with lines of silver along them that I took to be enchantments of some sort. What they did, I had no idea. Finishing off the relatively bare room were two newly crafted bookcases. They were mostly bare of books, but not entirely, and where they met in the corner was a pocket of shadow I could potentially make use of.

I was just about to start looking at the paperwork on the desk when I heard the sound of footsteps outside.

Oh shit, I thought, as I made a mad dash towards the space between the two bookcases — calling on my Cloak of Shadows even as my channels burned.