Chapter 51: The Deal Is Off

Kael reached back over his shoulder.

Pulled Mira’s spear from across his back . He’d been carrying it since the road out of Valdris, since he picked it up from the ground where it had fallen when they took her, through Crestfall and the array and the Remnants and the mountain slope and the trading post and the road south.

He held it out.

Mira looked at it.

At the spear she’d carried since before she could remember. The one her family had given her, the one with the wear patterns on the grip that matched her specific hand, that she’d used in every fight she’d been in since her first Gate clear.

She looked at it for a long moment.

Then she looked at Kael’s face.

Then back at the spear.

She took it.

Her hand closed around the grip with the particular certainty of something returning to the place it belonged and both the thing and the place knowing it.

Kael looked at the compound wall above them. At the guard sounds moving back toward the northwest corner.

“We’re not going back over the wall tonight,” Mira said. Not a question. She’d already done the math.

“No,” Kael said. “Tonight you stay here. Tomorrow we finish this.”

She looked at the main hall entrance across the courtyard. At the light visible under the door. The sect master, somewhere inside, having a normal evening while Mira sat against the south wall of his courtyard.

Kael looked at the main hall entrance across the courtyard. At the light visible under the door.

“The deal is off,” he said. “He broke it first.”

Mira said nothing.

He looked at her.

She was holding the spear properly. The grip right, the weight balanced, everything her body knew how to do with it still there even after weeks in a dojo courtyard. But her hands were not as steady as they should have been and her shoulders were carrying something that proper hunter’s posture didn’t leave room for and the particular set of someone who had been through what she’d been through and was now performing readiness rather than feeling it was visible to anyone who knew what to look for.

She was not in condition to fight.

She was forming like she was.

Which told him everything he needed to know about who Mira was as a person and also meant he needed a plan that didn’t depend on her being at full capacity.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Get some rest tonight.”

She looked at him with the expression of someone about to argue.

She looked at the spear in her hand. Ran her thumb along the shaft the way you ran your thumb along something you’d been afraid you’d never hold again.

“Tomorrow,” she replied. Her jaw was set. Her eyes had moved from the flat country beyond the crying into something harder and more deliberate . The particular expression of someone who had finished grieving and started deciding. It wasn’t rage. It was quieter than rage and considerably more dangerous.

“Tomorrow…,” Kael said.

He looked at the compound wall. At the northwest corner. At the outbuildings along the far side of the courtyard where the distant voices had gone quiet for the night.

Sleeping here was not an option. Enemy territory, unknown number of sect members inside the main hall, and a guard rotation that would eventually produce someone who looked at the south wall at the wrong moment. The courtyard was a place to pass through, not to occupy. He just came to check on Mira if she was still alive.

He looked at Mira.

“Stay put,” he said quietly. “Don’t do anything tonight. Don’t try to move. Just rest.”

She looked at him. “And tomorrow….”

“Tomorrow I will come back.. trust me,” he said. “Through the front end this once and for all.”

She looked at the main hall entrance. At the light under the door.

“He’s Gold Realm,” she said.

“I know,” Kael said.

She held his gaze for a moment. Looking at the black robe with the red markings. At the new sword. At the ring on his left hand running warm in the dark courtyard.”He’s changed..”.

She didn’t say you can’t win.

He appreciated that.

“Rest,” he said. “You’re no good to anyone running on empty.”

She looked at the spear across her knees. Nodded once. The tight economical nod of someone conserving everything they had left for when it would matter.

He stood up. Looked at the compound wall. Counted the timing in the back of his head.

The gap was coming.

He went back over the wall when it opened and dropped into the treeline without a sound. Found his position against the wide trunk. Sat down with his back against the bark and his new sword across his knees and the ring warm against his finger in the forest dark.

“She is the kind of person,” Seradhiel said quietly, “who goes down into the valley anyway.”

Kael looked at the compound wall thirty meters away through the trees. At the south wall on the other side of it where Mira was sitting with her spear and her jaw set and three weeks of loss behind her eyes that hadn’t broken her.

He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t need to.

He closed his eyes and slept.

_ _

Kael walked out of the treeline at dawn.

Not through the gap in the northwest rotation. Not over the wall. Down the tree line path to the main road and straight to the front gate of the Ring Seeker dojo like he was expected.

He was, as it turned out.

The two guards at the gate saw him coming from fifty meters and neither of them moved to stop him. They looked at each other with the particular expression of people who had been given instructions about a specific scenario and were now watching that scenario arrive on schedule.

One of them went inside.

Kael stopped at the gate and waited.

The morning light was coming through the forest canopy in the way it always did at this hour. Columns rather than sheets, the denser tree cover around Ring Seeker territory filtering it into something that felt more deliberate than natural. The ambient Essence in the compound had the same quality it had yesterday. Deliberate. Settled. A sect that had been here long enough to shape the land around it.

Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!