39 | The Man From Corran

Vandry Kolm came into Greyfen on the Tuesday cart from Corran, and the town knew within the hour, because a 5th Stage Adept walking into a river town does not go unnoticed by anyone who has ever had to run from one.

Soren was in Vail's yard when the word came through, delivering Vesper's second letter, and he felt it before anyone said a name.

<<Loraine: Something arrived. 5th Stage. It is not trying to hide.>>

Where?

<<Loraine: The tannery. Whoever it is walked in the front, in daylight, and has not left.>>

Iyla found him at the blue door twenty minutes later.

"He's tall," she said. "Taller than anyone has a right to be. Grey coat, Consortium cut, and he didn't ask anyone directions, which means he'd been told exactly where to go before he got here."

"Name?"

"Kolm. Vandry Kolm." She folded her arms tight. "My father's had dealings with Consortium enforcers before, years back, and he went white when the name came up over the counter this morning, and my father does not go white."

Loraine.

<<Loraine: A Consortium blade for hire, 5th Stage Adept, sent for by name and paid for specifically. Brannick did not simply buy protection. He bought someone who has done this exact job before, in other towns, for other desperate men, and who is very good at it.>>

What's the job?

<<Loraine: Finding you. Or finding whoever the town believes you to be, which for now is a difference that protects you, and which will not protect you forever.>>

"He's not going door to door," Iyla said. "That's what's got everyone frightened. Brannick's men used to be loud about it. This one just walked to the tannery and hasn't come out, and nobody knows what he's doing in there, and not knowing is worse than shouting."

"How long's he staying?"

"However long it takes, I'd imagine. They don't leave until the job's done or the money runs out, and Brannick just spent eighty crowns, so." Iyla's jaw was tight. "You should stop coming here."

"I can't stop coming here. I've got a standing weekly errand."

"Then stop doing things." She said it low and fast, glancing at the door. "Whatever's put four men in the ground, stop. Let it be quiet for a while. Let Brannick think whatever he wants and let this Kolm get bored and go home."

Soren didn't answer straight away, because he was doing arithmetic he didn't like.

Loraine. If I go quiet, what happens?

<<Loraine: Brannick keeps Petrin, if he still has him. He keeps paying Kolm by the week, which he can barely afford, until either the money or his patience runs out. And somewhere in that stretch, Kolm starts working outward from the tannery instead of waiting in it, because that is what a hired blade does when nothing comes to him.>>

And if I don't go quiet?

<<Loraine: Then you are testing yourself against a 5th Stage Adept while you are Peak Apprentice, and I would remind you that "at best" has been doing a great deal of work in every sentence I have said to you for two months.>>

Iyla was watching his face.

"You're not going to stop," she said. It wasn't a question.

"I need to get stronger before he finds me," Soren said. "That's not the same as not stopping. That's buying the only thing that actually helps."

"How much stronger?"

"A whole tier," he said. "I've got the way. I just haven't done it yet."

...

He took it in the grain loft, at midnight, with the ladder up and Ottilie already gone to bed believing whatever Marda had told her this time.

<<Loraine: Peak Apprentice. This is the wall. There is no draught for this one and there was never going to be.>>

I know.

<<Loraine: If it fails, it does not simply fail quietly. A rejected breakthrough can shatter a core. I want that said once, clearly, before you swallow it.>>

Say it once, then.

<<Loraine: I have said it. Proceed.>>

The pill went down like a swallowed coal, and for about four seconds nothing happened at all, and then his Core came apart.

It did not feel like growth. It felt like being unmade and put back together in a shape with more room in it, and it hurt in a way that had no location, because it was happening to the boundary of what he was, not to any single part of him.

<<Loraine: Hold. Do not fight it. The wall is not something you push through, it is something you let happen to you.>>

He stopped trying to control the shape and let it choose one.

<<RANK: Adept Mage, 1st Stage.>>

<<Milestone. Award: 1 Legendary Ticket, 1,200 FP.>>

He lay on the floor breathing like he'd run somewhere, and above him, both halves of the system came online at full strength at the same moment.

<<Loraine: ...Oh.>>

<<Lilith: ...>>

Lilith?

There was a pause unlike any she had ever taken.

<<Lilith: Give me a second. I haven't had all of myself in one place in two months.>>

Take your time.

<<Lilith: I said a second, sweetheart, not an apology.>>

Then, all at once, like a door thrown open:

<<Lilith: Oh, I can see everything now. The whole catalogue, Covenants, actual working Covenants, not the shell of the idea I've been describing to you like a woman describing a meal from memory—>>

<<Loraine: She is going to do this for a while.>>

Soren lay on the boards and laughed, and it hurt his ribs, and he didn't stop.

Loraine. Before anything else. Did I get a milestone for Peak?

There was a silence of a very specific quality.

<<Loraine: ...No.>>

No?

<<Loraine: I was occupied. You reached Peak at twenty past seven in the morning after a wall that took most of a night, and I had, in point of fact, just told you the most personal thing I have ever told a host, and it did not occur to me to also do arithmetic in the same breath. This is unusual for me. I dislike it.>>

<<Lilith: She's embarrassed to admit she didn't show you.>>

<<Loraine: I am correcting an oversight. Standby.>>

<<Retroactive Milestone: Apprentice Mage, Peak.>>

<<Award: 1 Epic Ticket, 800 Fp.>>

Total?

<<Loraine: 2 Legendary, 2 Epic, 5 Rare, 1 Uncommon. 2,950 FP.>>

Soren sat up against a grain sack.

Pull the new Epic.

<<PROFOUND GRADE ROLL.>>

<<ITEM: QUIETUS.>>

<<GRADE: REFINED.>>

<<CURSE TAG: NONE.>>

<<A contact toxin. A drop is sufficient. Onset is delayed long enough for the user to disengage before the target reacts; effect is severe incapacitation or death within several minutes of onset. Can kill an Adept Mage with the full dose>>

<<Boon: If coated on a weapon, the entire poison will move into the bloodstream of the person damaged by it.>>

<<Boon: Vanishes after some hours from the bloodstream, leaving the evidence of a 'quiet' death..>>

<<The higher the rank, the more doses needed. Losses Effect from Expert Rank.>>

Soren looked at the small dark vial sitting in his palm for a while.

Loraine.

<<Loraine: I know what you are thinking.>>

Piercing Palm needs range and the knife a clear swing. If I can coat the blade, this needs just a nick.

<<Loraine: It needs a nick and a reason to run afterward, which you have not had a use for until this exact week.>>

I'm not doing anything with it yet.

<<Loraine: I did not say you were. I said you now understand why you might.>>

He put it away.

<<Lust Covenant System: Fully Operational.>>

The rose panel unfolded in full for the first time, warm and complete, and underneath it sat a catalogue that went on for longer than Soren had patience to scroll.

Lilith. The reading thing. The one that shows me what a woman actually is.

<<Lilith: Lover's Ledger.>>

That the real name?

<<Lilith: ...No.>>

A pause, and something in her voice went briefly, genuinely uncertain.

<<Lilith: I don't actually remember what it used to be called. I've tried. It's just gone, and I'm blaming the merge, because the alternative is that I've simply forgotten something about myself, and I don't enjoy that as an idea.>>

<<Loraine: That is the first time she has admitted not knowing something.>>

<<Lilith: I named it after myself. Lover's Ledger. It's better than whatever it used to be, I'm sure of it, I just can't prove that to you.>>

It's a good name.

<<Lilith: I know it is. Try it on somebody.>>