Chapter 33: A Vague Report

Chapter 33: Chapter 33: A Vague Report

They talked in the rail cemetery, among rows of rusted boxcars that hadn’t moved in twenty years.

Elias recalled Marcus and Tobin to save his mana. Tobin went with a reproachful look at Iris, still mourning the indignity done to his cleavers. Aveline stayed, standing a little behind Elias and to the left, her cracked shield on her arm. Iris sat on the edge of an open boxcar door with her boots dangling, dusted in glittering crystal, the three coins circling her fingers again.

"Start with what you are," she said.

Elias thought about Marcus’s rules. Nobody knows. But a deal was a deal, and she had held the iron when she could have run.

"A summoner," he said.

"Julian Ashford is a summoner. He calls spirits. Elementals, beasts." Iris tilted her head toward Aveline. "That isn’t a spirit."

"No. Mine call people."

"From where?"

"Other worlds." He watched her face. "At the moment they die."

The coins stopped circling.

Iris looked at Aveline for a long time. At the dented armor, the cracked shield, the old scar along her jaw. Aveline looked back at her, steady and unbothered.

"You died," Iris said slowly.

"At a mountain pass called Carrow," Aveline said. "Three spears. I’d held it since dawn so my king could escape. I was spending my last breath when he called me."

Iris didn’t say anything for a while. Somewhere far off, a freight train went by on the live tracks, its horn long and low.

"Then answer me something," she said finally, and she was asking Aveline, not Elias. "I had your summoner pinned to a tree. I had a knife at his throat. I wrenched your shield and tried to put you on the ground. And when that thing came for me, you crossed twenty meters to take the hit." Her voice was quiet. "Why?"

Aveline considered the question as if it deserved a real answer.

"Because he asked me to," she said. "The first week, in the Rat Warrens. He told me that whoever fights beside us, I guard them like I guard him. Whether he likes them or not." She glanced down at Elias, and something dry crept into her voice. "I don’t think he expected it to be you."

"I didn’t," Elias admitted.

Iris stared at him. Then she looked away, down the long row of rusted boxcars, and Elias saw her jaw tighten the way it had when Marcus said Lady, I’ve been shot at by better.

"That’s a stupid order," she said.

"Probably."

"It almost got your knight killed."

"It got you out of a hydra," Elias said. "Seems fair."

Iris slid down off the boxcar and dusted crystal off her coat. It didn’t help much.

"Here’s what’s going to happen," she said. "Director Crane sent me to find out what you are and whether you’re dangerous. I’m going to tell him you’re not hostile. I’m going to tell him I’m continuing observation. And that’s all I’m going to tell him."

Elias stared at her. "Why?"

"Because your knight took a hit for me." She glanced at Aveline, then back at him. "And because you stood under three glass heads so I could keep my hands up. I don’t like owing people." Her mouth twisted. "I really don’t like owing a porter."

"Assassin," Elias said. "Technically."

"Don’t push it." She stepped closer, and her voice dropped. "Listen to me, because I’m only going to say this once. Crane isn’t the problem. Crane is careful, and he’s fair, and he wants to understand you before he decides anything. But there’s a man on the council named Everett Marsh, and he’s been trying for a year to pass a law that lets the Association detain anything it calls an anomaly. No charge. No hearing. Just a room."

Elias thought about a photo on a wall in Garrick’s office: Garrick shaking hands with a silver-haired man in a council pin. He kept his face still.

"You’re an anomaly," Iris said. "Your knight is an anomaly. That video from Fifth Street has two million views, and people are already asking who the Masked Summoner is. The next person who comes looking for you won’t be me, and they won’t stop to ask questions. They won’t pin you to a tree. They’ll put you in a van."

"So what do I do?"

"Stop selling boss cores out of a duffel bag, for a start. Ozzie’s going to get you both arrested." She turned toward the rail tracks, and the old iron rails under her boots began to hum. "And get stronger. A lot stronger, fast. Strong enough that when they come, putting you in a van stops being an easy option."

She stepped onto the rail, and the rail lifted her, and she rode it off into the dark without looking back.

Aveline watched her go. "I like her," she said.

"She held a knife to my throat."

"She held it very well."

The next morning, Iris Blackwood walked into Director Crane’s office and laid a single sheet of paper on his desk. He read it twice. It took four seconds.

Subject: Elias Pierce. Assessment: anomalous, not hostile. Recommendation: continuing observation.

Crane looked up at her over his reading glasses. Crystal dust still glittered in her hair.

"That’s all?" he said.

"That’s all you need."

He looked at her for a long moment. He had known Iris Blackwood for ten years, and he knew exactly what it looked like when she was hiding something. He also knew what it meant that she’d decided to.

"All right," he said, and filed it.

The Hunter Association’s council met on the top floor of headquarters in a room with no windows, which Crane had always found fitting.

Seven councilors sat around a long table of polished black stone. Crane sat at the end, where directors sat, close enough to speak and far enough to be easily ignored. For forty minutes, they discussed budgets, guild licensing, and a dispute between two guilds over a harbor gate. Then Councilor Everett Marsh cleared his throat.

He was in his sixties, silver-haired, impeccably tailored, with a council pin on his lapel and a voice that never needed to be raised. He tapped his tablet, and the screen at the head of the room filled with a frozen frame from the Fifth Street video: a hooded figure diving off a platform.

"Two million views," Marsh said pleasantly. "Three, as of this morning. The public wants to know who he is. So do I." He folded his hands. "An unregistered awakened with an unknown class, operating in our city, suppressing gate breaks without license or oversight. If he can do that, what else can he do? And who decides when he does it?"

A murmur ran around the table.

"I’m reintroducing the Anomaly Containment motion," Marsh went on. "Any awakened whose abilities can’t be classified may be detained for assessment. For public safety. For his safety, too."

"The subject is already under observation," Crane said.

Every head turned toward him.

"By whom?"

"By the Lodestar." Crane slid a single sheet across the stone. "Her assessment came in this morning. Anomalous, not hostile. She recommends continued observation, and I agree with her."

Marsh picked up the sheet and read it. Crane watched his face and saw nothing at all.

"Your Lodestar is very young," Marsh said mildly.

"She’s also very rarely wrong."

For a moment, the two men looked at each other down the long black table. Then Marsh smiled, set the sheet down, and nodded graciously.

"Then we’ll wait," he said. "For now."

The motion was tabled. The meeting moved on to the harbor dispute.

An hour later, in the back of a black town car pulling away from headquarters, Councilor Everett Marsh took out his phone and scrolled to a contact he hadn’t called in three weeks.

He didn’t call. He typed.

Your porter has friends now. One of them wears armor. Crane is protecting him, and so is Blackwood. Whatever he saw in that cathedral, I’d fix it soon.

He pressed send.

Across the city, in a converted warehouse in the Dockside district, Garrick Holt read the message twice. Then he set the phone face down on his desk, beside a glass of something amber, and watched his own hand until it stopped shaking.