Chapter 51: Lombard Row

Deep into late autumn, eight or nine o'clock in Greyhaven carried a bit of a chill, but the air was crisp and bracing.

Fewer pedestrians were out on the streets at this hour, but the traffic hadn't thinned at all—still loud, still busy, with that big-city flavor.

Nathan and Wren walked together, Wren chatting brightly about the novel she'd just been reading. Nathan naturally knew Spellpeak's plot inside and out—he'd reread it who knows how many times—and once started, he couldn't stop.

Wren said, a touch wistful: "This book's so good—putting it down just now almost hurt. Will you lend it to me?"

Nathan hesitated briefly, then agreed: "Sure! I'll bring it to school for you tomorrow."

Wren brightened right up. The two of them walked to the edge of Elderrow; Nathan wasn't planning to go in and was just about to say goodbye when a fire-red sports car came driving out of Elderrow.

Elderrow wasn't a pedestrian-only street, but modern transport on it was rare—the street honestly wasn't long, and a round trip on foot took twenty or thirty minutes at most.

This was the first time Nathan had ever seen anyone drive on Elderrow. The fire-red sports car emerging from it looked perfectly ordinary to Nathan's eyes—but to ordinary people, a sports car would just appear there, almost absurdly, out of nowhere.

A passing Buick minivan swerved in alarm and nearly clipped a roadside billboard; just as its driver rolled down the window ready to argue, the fire-red sports car pulled up beside Nathan and Wren instead. The driver lowered her window, gave a light laugh, and said: "Well if it isn't Wrennie. You've got yourself a boyfriend? And you never introduced him to Kestrel."

The owner of the fire-red sports car was a stunning, glamorous beauty—the kind that checked every box in a man's imagination: a generous bust, an exquisite face, tall and long-legged, plus a streak of defiance and wildness, like a living flame radiating dazzling magnetism, drawing every eye in the vicinity.

The Buick's driver, laying eyes on the glamorous beauty, dropped all thoughts of arguing—instead offered a very gentlemanly greeting, angling to leave a good impression, and only then restarted the car and rolled slowly away.

Wren giggled, showing zero embarrassment at being teased, and waved warmly: "Kestrel! When did you come back to Elderrow? Didn't you hate the environment here and move to that apartment on Lombard Row?"

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The glamorous beauty didn't answer Wren—just as Wren hadn't answered hers. She stared at Nathan for a while, flashed a bright grin, and asked: "So you're Nathan? The little guy who awakened the Yggdrasil Line?"

Nathan wasn't immune to a beautiful woman's charms—but the question rubbed him the wrong way, and his attitude went cold on the spot. He gave a frosty snort, with zero interest in answering.

"The name's Kestrel. Like Lucan, I also do work for certain foreign companies. Pity you're carrying too much trouble right now—Sister can't afford to touch you. Otherwise, how would that wolf cub ever have gotten the business?"

Kestrel took Nathan's attitude in stride. Having given her name, she started the car and merged back into the bustling traffic.

Nathan gave a small blink. He'd assumed his cooperation with Lucan was a complete secret—turns out it was an open secret. Wren read his mind and thoughtfully supplied: "Lucan is in the intelligence business. Any intelligence, he'll put up for sale—so your deal with the Raging Gale has already been sold off dozens of times. Even I know about it..."

Nathan was floored. "Doesn't he work for the Raging Gale? How can he have zero professional ethics?"

Wren snorted a laugh: "You'll figure out what kind of person Lucan is soon enough. He's not a bad guy—but never, ever trust that guy to keep any secret."

Nathan chalked that up as a lesson learned and felt he understood bloodborn a little better. Remembering the glamorous beauty just now, he couldn't resist asking: "So who is this Kestrel? You seem pretty close with her."

Wren smiled brightly: "There aren't that many bloodborn in the whole world—apart from the ones in retreat and the ones too weak for anyone to notice, most bloodborn all know each other. Kestrel's also an old fixture of the bloodborn world, so of course I know her well. She's a broker too, but with her formidable strength and her actual principles, she's dozens of times better than Lucan in the trade. If you ever need to partner with someone on anything, Kestrel is far more reliable than Lucan."

Nathan's impression of Kestrel wasn't great, and the glamorous beauty seemed inclined to keep her distance from him too. The woman had actually said he carried too much trouble to touch—that made Nathan think a layer deeper, and he had a feeling she knew some secret or other.

Nathan watched Wren disappear into Elderrow, feeling deeply once again how little he still knew about the bloodborn world. After a moment's hesitation, he called Lucan and set up a meeting for tomorrow.

Nathan hadn't found the other ascendant seeds yet, but Goldspear Thistle was as ordinary as it gets—he planned to make good on that contract first.

Lucan sounded thrilled on the phone. He set the time and place, then chatted with Nathan a while about the recent hot topics in the bloodborn world before hanging up, clearly reluctant to let the call go.

Nathan put down the phone, faintly wistful, and murmured to himself: "Have I basically skipped ahead into the adult world?"

Cutting multimillion-dollar deals with foreign companies, pulling down a huge advance—strip out the bloodborn backdrop, and it's a textbook business transaction. A few days ago, Nathan's head was full of far more pressing things and it hadn't really registered; but today, seeing that female bloodborn in her sports car, he suddenly realized how thoroughly adult his doings had become.

Nathan fingered the gold sigil ring in his pocket and was suddenly seized by the urge to shop. Instead of heading into Elderrow for the bloodborn subway, he hailed a cab on the street and gave the driver Coronation Avenue.

Nathan obviously wasn't actually going to Coronation Avenue—he wanted Lombard Row.

Lombard Row was the most commercially flourishing of Greyhaven's eighteen bloodborn residential zones—a street that cut across the Old Palace's main spine, running parallel to Coronation Avenue.

The Greyhaven Wardens' Office sat right on Lombard Row, and thirty percent of Greyhaven's bloodborn population was concentrated here.

Unlike Elderrow, which kept its antique old-street character, Lombard Row had both the most ancient architecture and the most modern style—ancient palace halls and modern skyscrapers interlocking, so that every bloodborn who set foot on the street got that layered, time-mottled feeling, as if each step were wading through a different river of time.