Chapter 1468: Blue Orchid

The boots that stepped into the auxiliary barracks courtyard were made of supple blue calfskin, and not a fleck of the capital’s slush had touched them.

Count Pyrrhus walked with his hands clasped behind his embroidered cloak. His eyes swept over the damp timber walls, the drying laundry, and the two iron braziers smoking in the corner, and his thin nostrils pinched against all of it with the ease of long practice. Behind him walked two house guards in heavy breastplates of blued steel, their collars stitched with the white orchid badge of his clan.

The Eleventh Squad sat around the low pine bench near the armory door, scraping cold porridge from tin bowls.

Pyrrhus stopped five paces away. He did not look at Rian, nor at Baletta or Han. His eyes went straight to Iren, who was polishing his short sword with a grease-stained rag.

"Get your kit, Iren," Pyrrhus said, in the crisp, clipped voice of the central estates. "The carriage is at the outer gate. The patriarch has tolerated this border farce long enough."

Iren did not drop his rag. He did not look up right away either. He ran the wool twice more down the flat of the blade, wiping away a smear of grey tallow, and only then set the sword across his knees.

"I have a contract, cousin," Iren said quietly.

Pyrrhus huffed a short breath through his nose. "A contract with a garrison that doesn’t exist? The North Guards are being disbanded or absorbed into the vanguard cohorts by fortnight’s end. You are a scion of the Blue Orchid. You do not sleep in a carter’s shed eating salt pork with sellswords."

"He eats what we eat," Han grunted, setting his spoon down with a clatter against the wooden bench. "And he fights better than any of the silk-ribbon boys you’ve got standing behind you."

One of the guards laid a gloved hand on his hilt, but Pyrrhus raised two fingers, and the man went still at once.

Pyrrhus finally turned his head. His cold grey eyes slid along the bench until they landed on Rian.

Rian sat at the end of the bench with his back against the timber post, his black uniform coat unbuttoned at the collar. He was paring a small yellow apple with a rusty pocketknife, taking the peel off in one thin, unbroken strip that curled down toward his boot. He looked plain, thin, and entirely unbothered.

Yet as Pyrrhus stared at him, the noble’s throat went tight.

It was the way the boy held his shoulders, the utter stillness in his chest, and the unblinking darkness of his eyes. Pyrrhus had seen that alignment only once before, in the high mountains of Ryugan. The white-haired monster who had turned both his army and the imperial army into red slush.

Pyrrhus took a half-step back, his fingers twitching inside his cloak.

’No.’

He forced his pulse to settle.

’That monster had white hair and eyes like spilled like a boundless ocean. This is just a sellsword from the northern wall.’

Still, he did not step any closer to the bench.

"You are the acting Captain," Pyrrhus said, turning his words on Rian. "I am Count Pyrrhus of the Blue Orchid. I am reclaiming my kinsman. Discharge him from your roster."

Rian did not cut another slice of apple. He turned the knife in his fingers and pointed the dull tip at Iren.

"Ask him," Rian said evenly. "He’s the one holding the sword."

Pyrrhus’s jaw clenched. "Iren!"

Iren stood up from the bench. He did not look at his cousin’s fine velvet cloak or at the two guards in blued steel. He looked at Baletta, who only looked back at him, then at Doron, who sat as silent as a stone, and finally at Rian.

He sheathed his short sword with a clean click.

"I’m Eleventh Squad," Iren said, his voice carrying across the quiet courtyard. "I go where the Captain goes."

"You fool," Pyrrhus hissed, red blotches climbing up out of his collar. "You throw away your family name for a nameless mercenary who won’t survive his first month in the capital?"

He stepped forward and reached out a gloved hand to grab Iren’s shoulder. Rian did not even stand up. He simply snapped his wrist and sent the pocketknife spinning through the air.

The small blade thudded deep into the oak post six inches from Pyrrhus’s fingers and quivered there, humming.

Pyrrhus froze.

"The boy said no," Rian said softly, his voice flat as a flagstone. "And my knife slips when people start grabbing my soldiers."

The two house guards dragged their swords halfway from their scabbards, steel scraping against brass. At the same time, Commander Vanessa stepped out of the armory doorway with her pipe clamped between her teeth and a broad iron ring-cleaver propped on her shoulder like a yoke.

"Count," Vanessa said, letting a thin line of black smoke curl from the bowl of her pipe. "This is an active military quarter. Draw three inches more of that steel and I’ll have the gate sentries lock you in the lower cell for disturbing legion muster."

Pyrrhus swallowed hard, his eyes cutting from Vanessa’s ring-cleaver back to Rian’s dark irises. He pulled his hand back and smoothed the front of his velvet cloak with two quick strokes.

"Very well," Pyrrhus said, his voice thinning into a sneer. "Keep your sellsword, cousin. See what his protection is worth when the court turns its face."

For a moment, he lingered. "The Fifth Prince has taken an interest in the boy who killed eleven thousand Hunters," Pyrrhus said, and for the first time since he had walked in, he smiled. "Prince Regulus does not care for church reviews or legion parades. He prefers to test his steel in private."

Pyrrhus turned on his heel, his blue calfskin boots clicking against the flagstones as he marched for the courtyard archway with his guards close behind.

"Don’t keep him waiting, Mercenary," Pyrrhus called over his shoulder. "His Highness is not a patient man."

When the gate slammed shut, Han leaned across the bench and stared after it. "The Fifth Prince? Rian, Regulus is the one who leads the trial spars for the high vanguard. They say he broke three Sages last winter just demonstrating a single sword form."

Nobody answered him. Baletta, who had never had a kind word for Iren, shifted a little further down the bench until her elbow was nearly touching his.

***

The invitation came that night.

A runner left it on the barracks step. It was a heavy, flat case of black-lacquered wood, bound with gold thread and sealed with red wax pressed into the shape of a leaping lion.

Northern carried it out to the courtyard. The braziers had burned down to a dull orange, and his pocketknife was still standing in the oak post where he had left it.

He snapped the gold thread with his thumb and slid out the small slip of heavy parchment inside.

Across it, in bold, sweeping strokes of crimson ink, ran a single line:

Come armed.

’Regulus.’

He set the name against the roster of the Reiki royal line he carried in his head.

’The Fifth Prince. The Battle Master. The one standing on the balcony yesterday, watching the crowds chant my name.’

Northern folded the parchment and tucked it into his coat pocket beside the Astrinite token, the free-company charter, and the Sixth Legion notice. Then he worked his pocketknife loose from the oak post and wiped the blade on his sleeve.

’Come armed. At least my brother has good manners.’