Chapter 101: What You Are Worth

Chapter 101: Chapter 101: What You Are Worth

The Council Hall was quiet after dark.

A guard in white armor met Donald at the gate and led him through the outer courtyard, past the seven towers. Six of them had lamps lit in their top windows. Dragonheart’s tower was dark.

Donald had come alone, as the card asked. No mask. Aris had said that a mask at the First Seat’s table would read as an insult, and she was right. He wore a plain dark suit, with the Abyssal Impact gauntlet strapped under his left sleeve. Nobody searched him. That told him something too.

The comms bead in his ear had gone dead the moment he crossed the gate.

[Notice: Council Hall wards block all outgoing communication.]

So he was on his own.

The guard left him at a pair of tall oak doors on the second floor and walked away. The doors opened by themselves.

The room behind them was small, for a Council Hall. There was a round table set for two, a fire, and shelves of old books on three walls. A tall window looked down on Council Square. Standing at it, with his back to the door, was a man in a dark gray coat.

He turned around.

He was about sixty, lean, with silver hair cut very short and a narrow, pleasant face. He looked like a retired schoolteacher. On his right hand he wore a heavy gold ring with a flat black stone.

"Investor," he said. "Thank you for coming. I’m Edmund Harrow. Please, sit."

Donald sat down.

[Valuation Eye]

[Target: Lord Edmund Harrow]

[Title: First Seat of the Crown Council]

[Class: Enchanter (S-Rank)]

[Level: 91]

[Status: Calm. Curious. Very carefully guarded.]

[Note: Target has not lost a negotiation in 22 years.]

S-Rank. Level 91. And he was pouring the wine himself.

"I’m told you don’t drink much," Harrow said, filling Donald’s glass halfway. "I won’t insist. But it’s a good year."

Donald looked at the glass.

[Arcane Reading]

A thin layer of gold mana sat on top of the wine, almost too faint to see. It wasn’t poison. It was something gentler.

[Enchantment: Willing Ear (A-Rank)]

[Effect: Drinker finds the host’s arguments more reasonable. Lasts six hours.]

He picked up the glass and drank half of it.

Harrow watched him.

Nothing happened. Donald felt the enchantment touch his core, and then felt it slide off, the way water slides off oiled steel.

[Title Effect: Breaker of Chains. Mental influence negated.]

Harrow’s face didn’t change. But he set down the bottle a little more carefully than he’d picked it up.

"Interesting," he said. "So the title in the registry is real."

"You poisoned my wine."

"I seasoned it," Harrow said, without any embarrassment. "Everyone who sits in that chair gets the same glass. Most of them agree with me before dessert. It saves everyone time." He sat down across from Donald and folded his hands. "You’ll have to forgive me. I don’t often have to argue honestly."

"Then argue honestly."

Harrow smiled.

"Very well. Here is my honest position. Three months ago, Genesis City was a dirty little town with a corrupt Guild Master and no S-Ranks. Today it has the only free S-Rank in the country, a dimensional gate that you took away from the Crown by law, and a shield over it that our own scryers can’t see through. You beat Sterling. You beat Dragonheart. Two days ago, you beat a Demon King." He tilted his head. "That makes you the single largest problem on this Council’s desk."

"Problems can be solved," Donald said.

"Or bought," Harrow said. "I prefer buying. It’s cleaner."

He reached into his coat and laid a single sheet of paper on the table between them. It was a Council warrant, already signed by five seals, with two spaces left blank.

"Dragonheart’s seat is empty," Harrow said. "Someone has to fill it. Someone with money, and a Guild, and an S-Rank behind him. I can put your name in that seat by the end of the week. You’d be the Seventh Seat of the Crown Council. Your Guild would be a Royal Guild. Nobody would ever again send an assassin into your bedroom, because you’d be the one deciding who gets sent."

Donald looked at the warrant.

It was a very good offer. It was exactly what Sterling, Vane and Malcor had all failed to give him: legitimacy.

"And the price?" he said.

"Small things," Harrow said. "Your Valkyrie registers with the Crown, under your seat, as the law requires of every S-Rank. The Abyssal Gate comes back under Council oversight. Under your seat, of course. And you hand over the anchor in your basement."

Donald kept his face still.

"Yes," Harrow said gently. "We know about the anchor. Our scryers can’t see through your shield, but they can feel what it’s resting on. You’ve wired a Demon King’s door into your power plant, Investor. That isn’t yours to keep. It belongs to people who understand it."

"Like Helena Cross?"

It was a risk, saying her name. Donald watched Harrow’s face as he said it.

[Valuation Eye]

[Status: Surprised. Brief spike of fear.]

Harrow recovered almost at once.

"I’ve heard the name," he said. "A sad case. A brilliant woman who lost her mind after her husband’s accident. I believe she lives in Genesis City now. Teaching children, someone said."

"Not anymore," Donald said.

Harrow looked at him across the table for a long time.

Donald used the silence. He let [Arcane Reading] move from the wine to the man.

The gold ring on Harrow’s hand lit up in his vision. A thin, dark-gold thread ran out of the black stone, up his arm and into his chest, straight to his core. It was fine and strong, like a wire.

[Binding Detected: Crowned Pact (Contract, S-Rank).]

[Holder: Unknown entity outside this dimension.]

[Effect: Bound party’s decisions are steered by the holder. Bound party cannot remove the ring.]

Paimon, Donald thought. The King who buys men instead of reading them.

Harrow wasn’t just working for a Demon King. He was wearing one.

"You’re very quiet, Investor," Harrow said.

"I’m thinking about what you’re worth," Donald said.

Harrow laughed. It was a real laugh, short and dry. "That’s my line."

"I know," Donald said. "You wrote it on the card." He leaned back. "Here’s what I see, Lord Harrow. A man who’s never lost a negotiation. Who’s sat in the First Seat for twenty-two years. Who has more money and power than anyone in this country." He nodded at the ring. "And who can’t take that off."

For the first time, something moved in Harrow’s face. It was only for a second.

[Valuation Eye]

[Status: Fear. High. Hope: Faint.]

Hope. Donald hadn’t expected that.

Harrow put his right hand under the table, out of sight.

"I don’t know what you mean," he said.

"Breaker of Chains doesn’t only work on me," Donald said quietly. "It works on anyone in my Guild. Any contract. Any binding. Any pact."

Harrow didn’t answer.

Outside, far below, a bell began to ring in one of the seven towers.

Harrow turned his head toward the window. He listened. Then he looked back at Donald, and the pleasant schoolteacher’s smile came back, but his eyes stayed careful.

"That," he said, "is the Ceremony of Seals."

Donald’s chest went cold.

"The Ceremony is tomorrow," he said.

"It was," Harrow said. "I moved it to tonight. An hour ago. I had a feeling someone might want to visit the Archive while every eye in Aldmere was on the Investor’s dinner." He picked up his wine glass. "And I thought it would be safest to have the Investor sitting right in front of me while it happened."

Donald counted the bells. One. Two. Three.

Seven floors below this room, the Archive doors were opening. Six Guild Masters were walking down to file their papers. And Sylvia, Helena and Damian were back at the Kingsgate Hotel, two streets away, waiting for tomorrow afternoon, with no idea that the doors were open now.

He had no comms. He had no way out of this room that wouldn’t start a fight with a Level 91 S-Rank. And the doors would close in twenty minutes.

"Your team doesn’t know, does it?" Harrow said softly. "No. I didn’t think so."

He raised his glass.

"To honest arguments, Investor."