Chapter 198: How…

The summons came an hour before dawn.

Yeon was awake when it arrived. He had not slept properly since the night the Roaring Lions burned, and he had given up pretending that he would.

He was sitting in the dark of the guest rooms that the Association had given him, with a glass of wine that he had not touched and a window that looked out over the sea, when the knock came at the door.

"Master Thokas asks for you," said a quiet voice from the corridor. "And for Lord Pale Smoke. He asks that you come at once."

Yeon set the glass down.

"At once," he repeated.

"Yes, sir."

"It is not yet morning."

"Master Thokas did not say that it was."

He rose, straightened his collar, and went.

Pale Smoke was already waiting in the corridor.

He was an S-rank now, newly promoted, and he wore the rank as casually as he wore his coat. He gave Yeon a short nod.

"Do you know what this is about?" Yeon asked.

"No."

"It is the middle of the night."

"Heads do not keep our hours," said Pale Smoke.

They walked together through the long halls of the tower, past guards who bowed as they went by, and down a staircase cut into the rock.

The air grew cooler as they descended. At the bottom was a plain wooden door with no handle. It opened before they reached it.

Thokas was sitting in a room with no furniture but a single chair.

He had pulled the chair to the center of the floor, and he sat in it with his elbows on his knees and his fingers loosely laced.

A single lamp burned on the wall behind him, and it threw his shadow long and thin across the stones. His black and white hair hung over his face. He did not look up when they came in.

"Sit," he said.

There was nothing to sit on. Yeon looked at Pale Smoke, and Pale Smoke gave a very slight shrug. They stood.

"No?" Thokas murmured. "Very well. Stand, then." He lifted his head at last, and his coal-black eyes moved from one of them to the other.

"I have news. I wished to give it to you myself, before you heard it from a servant."

"What news?" asked Yeon.

"The Association has agreed to the boy’s terms."

Yeon did not understand at first. He thought that he had misheard, or that the man was speaking in some kind of riddle. "Which boy?"

"Your brother."

The word dropped into the room like a stone.

Yeon felt his face go still. It was a trained stillness, a thing he had learned at his father’s table, and for a moment it held.

"I... do not have a brother," he said.

"No?"

"A bastard that kills my father, can never be a brother but a traitor and an enemy." Yeon said, clenching his fists.

Thokas sighed, ignoring what Yeon just said before continuing.

"He is a member of the Association," said Thokas, "or he will be, in a few days."

"I do not..."

"He walked into the council hall yesterday morning. He asked for a rank, and he was told that it could not be given."

"He fought ten of our S-ranks, one after another, and he beat every one of them. Then he asked again." Thokas leaned back, and the chair creaked. "And this time he was told yes."

Pale Smoke’s haze flickered. It was a small change, and nobody saw it.

"Fought," Yeon said slowly.

"Yes."

"Ten S-ranks."

"Yes."

"That is a lie."

"It is not."

"It is a story. It is something that Milda has made up, to..."

"Garrick Dole is ideas now." said Thokas, in a mild voice, " The council dome has been split in two. Would you like to go and look at it? I can have a guide sent."

Yeon said nothing.

"Something like that couldn’t be called a fight... more like a one sided beating." Thokas added.

"A beating...," Yeon repeated.

"Yes."

"From him."

"From him."

"How? How did he get so strong?" Yeon demanded. "He has nothing. He had nothing a year ago, and a year is not enough time to build this kind of strong... it shouldn’t be."

"I have trained every day since I was awakened... I have had the best teachers in the country. I am the one with the S-rank talent."

"I am sure that you are."

"Then how?"

"He carries a shield," said Thokas. "A legendary item..."

"The Council threw everything it had, and all of it was returned to the sender." He lifted one shoulder. "You may call that talent, or luck, or whatever you like. But I would not call it nothing."

"A shield... a legendary item?!" Yeon said in shock.

"Yes."

"B-but how... how... how..." Yeon muttered, unable to wrap his head around what he just heard.

"I don’t know, perhaps ask Garrick, his corpse that is."

Yeon opened his mouth, and found that he had nothing else to say.

The silence lasted a long time. Yeon stood with his hands at his sides and his eyes fixed on the flame of the lamp, and the muscle in his jaw jumped once, and then again.

"What rank?" he asked at last.

"I am sorry?"

"What rank did they give him? Say it."

Thokas smiled, a thin dry smile that cracked his lips a little more. "SSS."

Yeon laughed.

It was a short, harsh bark of a laugh, and it echoed strangely in the bare room. He put a hand to his mouth, as if he were trying to stop it, but it came out again, and then again, and then it was no longer a laugh at all.

"SSS," he said. "The rank that White held. The rank that does not exist."

"It exists now."

"He is a D-rank!"

"He was."

"He has a talent that a child could laugh at! I was there. I was in the room when the crystal read it! My father looked at that boy as if he were something that he had found on his shoe. He threw him out in front of the whole guild..."

"And you laughed," said Thokas pleasantly.