Chapter 332: Lip Service (1)

Misha’s pen stopped moving.

"Two days until the boat. You are telling me the forest on our outer approach is already practicing erasure protocols against something we have not formally engaged."

"Yes."

Thora rolled one shoulder, the decision already settling into her stance.

"Then we don’t treat the crossing as a clean departure into someone else’s problem. We treat the belt as a live edge. If a runner from that band shows at the outer post before we leave, we take the information even if we cannot take the bodies on the boat."

Sira sat up on the bench, boredom finally burned off by the shape of the report.

"And if nothing shows? We just sail to the Giants while the trees behind us learn how to hide devil-stink in glass pits?"

Kane met her eyes across the table.

"We sail with the monitoring flags active and the outer posts warned. I left a mark in the old dialect. Sky breaks. Ask for the axe. Whether they use it is their arithmetic. Ours is the island and the clock."

Firlia had already started writing on a fresh sheet.

"I will send a notice to the outer watch before full dark. No panic language. Observation and receiving protocols only."

Misha nodded once, sharply.

"Do it. Kane, brace stays on for the night unless the system says otherwise. Full clearance confirmation tomorrow. Everyone else stays on departure prep. Gear, provisions, the two elven commanders briefed without turning it into a city-wide story. The forest can keep its warm stones for two more days. After that, we are on open water."

Kessa’s tail flicked once against the chair leg.

"If those painted cowards show up at the post asking for the axe, I want to be the one who meets them. Fear is useful. Panic is not. Someone should explain the difference before they board anything of ours."

"You can have the conversation," Kane said.

"If they arrive."

Griselda’s voice came quieter from the window.

"The charms bother me more than the ambush. Crude work that still implies teaching. Something is moving knowledge through the belt without showing a full face."

"Which is why the flags stay up," Kane answered.

"We do not chase it into the trees two days before a Giant threshold. We log it, we warn the posts, and we close the southern hole first."

The meeting broke the way their meetings usually did.

Misha already assigning the next written tasks, Thora checking the compact axe’s edge as if the forest might walk into the yard before morning, Firlia leaving with the outer-watch note, Kessa muttering about painted fools, Griselda remaining at the glass a moment longer before following.

Sira lingered just long enough to catch Kane’s eye, orange hair bright under the lamp, expression unreadable in a way that promised she was not done with him for the evening.

Dinner was quieter than the morning meal had been.

The older maid, whose name Kane still could not hold in his head, brought roasted bird, bread, and a stew that did not stare back.

Thora put meat on his plate without comment.

Misha ate while reviewing the harbor list one final time.

Sira stole from Kessa’s side of the platter until Kessa threatened to use the new gauntlets at the table.

Firlia sat with her notes stacked neatly out of the gravy’s reach. Griselda finished first and left for a sweep of the yard wards.

Conversation stayed practical: boat load order, which elven commanders could keep their mouths shut, whether the residual brace would tolerate sea spray without complaint.

No one reopened the forest report.

When the plates were cleared, Kane stood.

"Bath. Then sleep. Clearance check at first light."

Thora grunted agreement.

Misha waved him off without looking up from a column of numbers. Sira said nothing at all, which was its own kind of warning.

The private bath was already hot.

Kane stripped the brace carefully, set it within reach, and sank into the water until the heat worked into the dull ache along his ribs and the left forearm.

For a while he did not think about Giants or yellow eyes or extraction locks.

He thought about the child’s charm on the empty bedroll and the way the scarred woman had said things that make stones warm and animals go quiet.

The belt was learning. Learning implied a teacher.

A teacher implied the fifty-day clock might be optimistic.

He dried, pulled on light trousers, left the brace off for the night under the system’s provisional tolerance, and walked back to the side chamber that had become his.

The door shut behind him.

He sat on the edge of the bed to set Mjoldr within reach and had just started to run the day’s residual numbers when the door opened again without a knock.

Sira came in like a thrown spear.

She crossed the room, put both hands on his shoulders, and shoved him back onto the mattress hard enough to make the frame complain.

Before he could get a full sentence out, she had climbed up after him, straddled nothing in particular, and shaken her ass in a bright, deliberate little roll that made the whole performance impossible to mistake for anything except what it was.

"Sira—"

"You have been doing serious faces and forest reports, and we sail with the flags active for the entire evening," she said.

"I waited through Thora. I waited through Misha’s administrative demolition of your morning. I held elves and harbor lists. My window is now."

Kane pushed up on his elbows, half annoyed, half already losing the argument.

"If you tear something I need for a Giant threshold—"

"Then lie there and do not tear it." Sira’s grin was sharp and happy.

She shook her ass again, slower, watching his face.

"You can be annoyed. I can still collect. Those are compatible states."

She slid off the bed before he could order her out, grabbed his knees, and pulled him forward until he was sitting on the edge with his feet on the floor.

Her hands worked the ties of his trousers with the practical speed of someone who had planned this during dinner.

When she got them open, she wrapped her fingers around his cock, found him already responding despite the annoyance, and looked up with open satisfaction.

"See. Your mouth says schedules. This says I was right to lock the door."

"You did not lock the—"

Sira took him into her mouth, and the rest of the sentence died.