Chapter 148: The Problem With Asking for Help

The next afternoon, Theoran looked at the book, and then at me, as though he were trying to work out which of us had come to see him.

I had brought it to his office, mostly because carrying it there meant I could give it back. The office looked as it always did: books on every surface, papers in the gaps between the books, the cane leaning against the desk, and a pot of tea that remained proof that age did not automatically produce wisdom. I sat opposite him with Dream Haven between my back and the chair and the advancement book resting on my knees.

"You brought it."

"Yes."

"I had begun to assume it was lost."

"Never."

"Have you read it?"

"Thoroughly."

Theoran leaned back. "Which parts?"

"The cover. Several times."

He looked at me. I kept my face serious.

"Five months," he said.

"The cover has depth."

"I see."

He lifted his tea and took a sip, and his expression did not change at all. I still didn’t understand how. Eighty-one years of drinking that tea had probably destroyed the necessary nerves.

"I read more yesterday," I admitted.

"How much more?"

"Enough."

"That word has become dangerous lately."

I didn’t answer, and he noticed, and set the cup down.

"Your advancement was confirmed?"

"D-Grey."

"Congratulations."

"Everyone keeps saying that."

"Would you prefer condolences?"

I considered it. "No."

"Then congratulations." He watched me adjust Dream Haven. "How does it feel?"

"Denser."

"The core."

"Yes."

"And otherwise? Any pain, any pressure in the channels?"

"No."

"Fatigue?"

"I couldn’t sleep."

His eyebrows rose a fraction, and I regretted saying it.

"Because of the advancement?"

"Because I started counting."

"Ranks?"

I looked at him. He smiled faintly.

"Your face answered."

I opened the book instead of replying. "Everyone slows down."

"Most people."

"That’s worse."

"Usually."

"D-Black to D-Grey took me months. SS is at least fourteen steps away."

His hand paused on its way back to the cup. I had counted again the night before, several times: D-White, the three C ranks, the three Bs, the three As, the three Ss, and then SS at the end of it. Depending on what the quest meant by reaching SS, it might be worse than fourteen. I had stopped asking, for the sake of my emotional health.

"The System..."

I stopped, and corrected myself. "My estimate hasn’t improved enough."

Theoran did not react to the slip. He rarely did, and I had begun to suspect that was a decision rather than an accident.

"How much time is left?"

"Less than four years."

He had known that, more or less. His face settled into something I couldn’t read, which was how Theoran’s face behaved when he wanted it to.

"Still immovable?"

"Yes."

"Then D-Grey didn’t change the problem."

"It made it easier to measure."

"Ah. Sometimes measurement feels worse."

"It is worse."

"No. The problem was already there. Now you can see the size of it."

"I preferred it blurry."

"Most people do."

He held out his hand for the book, and I gave it to him. Scraps of paper stuck out from the pages where I had marked them. Theoran raised an eyebrow at them.

"So you did read it."

"The useful parts."

"Meaning?"

"The fast advancements."

He opened it at the first marker and read the soldier, then the hunter, then the noblewoman with four cultivation days, without saying anything.

"What caught your attention?"

"A lot of them rested," I said. "More than I expected, anyway."

"In the cases you chose to mark."

"Obviously. A lot of them had hard physical lives before they started cultivating, too, or trained their bodies while they did it. And the ones who cultivated the most weren’t always the ones who advanced fastest." I hesitated. "I might be seeing what I want to see."

"You might," said Theoran. "But no, they weren’t."

I leaned forward. "You already noticed."

"I have had the book longer than five months."

"Unfair advantage."

"I have also read past the cover."

"Excessive advantage."

He closed the book. "Recovery matters. Physical conditioning matters. Sleep, food and channel health all matter."

"Then why are they written like footnotes?"

"Because none of them is a cultivation method."

I sat back. That was the whole difficulty, in one sentence.

"A soldier may advance quickly while marching every day," Theoran said. "That does not mean marching causes advancement. A hunter may recover unusually well because of years of conditioning, or his family, or his diet, or his circulation, or his instructor, or all of them at once."

"And the woman who improved when she cultivated less?"

"Is one student, recorded by one instructor who already believed in rest before she arrived." He turned back to her page. "Interesting. Not proof."

"That’s all?"

"What would you like?"

"An answer."

He smiled. "No."

"So people wrote down the same strange things for centuries and nobody tested them?"

"They tested them. The results varied."

"Human beings are extremely inconvenient."

"Frequently."

I sank lower against Dream Haven. Theoran opened the book again.

"You were looking for a shortcut."

"No."

He looked at me over the pages.

"Fine. A safe shortcut."

"That is still a shortcut."

"I prefer to call it efficiency."

"So does every cultivator who has crippled himself trying to reach the next rank six months early."

He didn’t soften it, and I was glad he didn’t.

"I know."

"I believe you do." He turned a few pages. "What interests me is that you noticed the background at all."

"Because everyone else ignored it."

"Not everyone. Researchers tend to study what they can teach." He touched one of my markers. "A circulation pattern can be copied. A breathing sequence can be demonstrated. Mana intake can be measured, and a pill can be prescribed. But how do you copy fifteen years of climbing mountains, or prescribe a childhood of farm work? And how do you decide whether a soldier advanced quickly because he recovered well, or recovered well because years of marching had already changed his body before anyone taught him to cultivate?"

I had no answer. It was an irritatingly reasonable question.

"So those details become background," he said, "even when they matter."

’Physical adaptation,’ I thought.

[Yes.]

The System had put it on its list months ago. I had heard the words and not understood them, and I still didn’t, not properly.

"Could I train my body more?" I asked.

"You already do."

"More, then."

His eyes narrowed. "No."

"That was fast."

"You have just asked whether adding more strain to your schedule might solve a problem partly caused by adaptation."

"When you say it like that..."

"I chose the order carefully."

"I have Stamina."

"You have an exceptional Stamina Constitution," Theoran agreed, "which is one reason you have survived some of your poorer decisions."

"That sounds positive."

"It was not intended to."

I looked toward the window, and he let me.

After a while he said, "You want a way for your body, channels and core to adapt faster without simply adding pressure."

"Maybe."

"That would be useful."

"Do you know one?"

"No."

"Does Selene?"

"She knows far more about channel development than I do, and she knows how to progress safely."

"Not fast enough."

"Not for your deadline."

My deadline, which belonged to me alone, even though everyone would share the consequences if I missed it. That seemed unfair, and I pulled Dream Haven tighter behind my back rather than say so.

"What about the Hermit?"

He set his cup down before answering. "No reply."

"You sent it?"

"Five months ago. It was delivered."

"Maybe he lost it."

"Possible."

"Maybe he read it and forgot."

"Also possible."

"Maybe he’s dead."

Theoran gave me a look. "Less likely."

"How do you know?"

"I asked myself the same question around the third month."

That was almost reassuring.

"Three kings couldn’t summon him," I said, "and you thought a letter would work."

"I thought asking cost very little."

I looked at him, and then away. Thirty points, a hundred points, and Penelope at the long table telling me the thirty had been mine. Asking had cost thirty. Not asking would have cost a great deal more.

"Fine," I said.

Theoran didn’t ask what I was thinking, which was one of the reasons I liked him.

"What did you write?"

"That one of my students has an immovable advancement deadline, unusual potential, excellent channel health, and a distressing relationship with common sense."

"You didn’t."

"No. The real letter was shorter."

"What did it say?"

"That you asked for help."

I went still. Theoran turned another page as if he had said nothing remarkable. Nothing about my potential or the countdown. Only that.

My throat felt tight, and I decided it was the dust from the book.

"That’s not much," I said.

"He seems to know you. He may consider it enough."

"And if he doesn’t answer?"

"Then he doesn’t." His voice stayed calm. "You asked me to help you find a path. The Hermit is one possible path. He is not the only one."

"What are the others?"

"I don’t know yet."

"That’s very inspiring."

"I am eighty-one. I stopped pretending uncertainty becomes wisdom when spoken dramatically."

I nearly smiled.

He closed the book and pushed it back across the desk toward me. I looked at it.

"No."

"It belongs to the Academy."

"Exactly. Keep it."

"You haven’t finished it."

"I understand the ending."

"Do you?"

"Everyone gets old."

Theoran sighed, and I picked the book up. It seemed heavier than it had on the way in, which was unfortunate, because I was fairly sure it hadn’t actually changed.

"Read the sections on recovery again," he said, "and physical adaptation."

"You said they aren’t a method."

"They aren’t."

"Then why?"

"Because for five months you have been looking at the end of the problem." He tapped the cover. "Perhaps it is time to look at what happens before the core advances."

Before the core advances. I had spent five months counting the ranks above me and none of that time looking at what had to happen underneath each one. The idea didn’t turn into an answer, but it caught on something and stayed caught, the way a splinter does.

Theoran watched me think it. He was about to say something when someone knocked.

"Come."

His assistant came in carrying a cream-colored envelope, heavy, sealed on the back with red wax. A crown had been pressed into the center of the wax.

Theoran straightened in his chair, and that, more than the seal, got my attention.

The assistant set it on the desk. "This arrived from the capital, sir. Marked for immediate delivery."

Theoran looked at the seal, and then at me. I looked at the seal too. In my experience, nothing good ever came in an expensive envelope. Usually it meant an invitation, and occasionally a responsibility dressed up as one.

I hugged Dream Haven closer and considered leaving before whatever was inside became my problem.

Theoran broke the wax and read the first line, and his eyes stopped moving.

I stayed.