Rook lent him the money on Wednesday, at twenty percent interest.
“Monthly,” Rook said, without looking up from his book.
“Taken out of your ten percent before you ever see it.
If the east bank has a bad month, you have a bad month.” He turned a page.
“Welcome to business, stone-seller.”
Aren signed the paper.
Twelve gold crowns went into his pocket, then into Old Mag’s hand, then, in a small glass jar of grey crystals that smelled faintly of thunder, into the healer house in the lower city.
The nurse dissolved the first spoonful in warm water that evening.
Nell drank it, made a face, and said it tasted like licking a cold coin.
That night, for the first time since the Academy infirmary, Aren slept for six hours straight.
On Thursday night, the bells woke him.
It was not one bell.
It was all of them.
He sat up on his mattress in the dark and listened, and it took him a moment to understand what he was hearing.
The deep alarm bells of the lower city churches were ringing.
So were the bells across the river, on the east bank.
So were the bells of the merchant quarter, and the high silver bells of the great cathedral in the Upper Ring, where the noble houses had their city mansions.
And under all of them, slow and heavy, the great bell in the tower of the city guard was booming, over and over, a sound Aren had only heard twice in his whole life.
He went to the window.
Highcrest was spread out below the Academy hill, a dark map of roofs and towers and streets under a cloudy sky.
And in the dark, in different places all over the city, there were red lights.
Shimmering, tearing lights, like heat over a road.
He counted them.
One down by the docks.
One on the east bank, near the tanneries.
One in the merchant quarter, by the great market.
Two in the Upper Ring, one of them right beside the cathedral, much bigger and brighter than the others.
One in the old city outside the north wall.
And one far away to the west, near the river gate.
Seven Rifts.
In one night.
In the capital of the kingdom.
He had lived eighteen years in this city.
He had never heard of more than one Rift opening in a single month.
[Warning: Multiple Rifts detected.]
[Estimated ranks: F, E, E, E, E, E, D.]
He looked at the D.
It was the one in the Upper Ring, beside the cathedral.
The biggest light.
Not my business, he told himself.
Not my rank.
Not my district.
And for once, he believed it.
Professor Crane was waiting at the bottom of the stairs in the scholarship dormitory, fully dressed, with a lamp in his hand and his thin face very calm.
“Back to your rooms,” he said.
The students of Class D were crowding the stairs in their nightclothes, frightened, asking questions.
Crane did not raise his voice.
“By order of the Headmaster, all first-years will remain in their dormitories until morning.
The city guard, the Royal Knights, and the Academy’s instructors are responding.
You are Rank F.
You will be in the way.”
“My family lives by the docks,” someone said.
“Professor, my mother…”
“The city guard is responding,” Crane said again, in exactly the same voice.
“Back to your rooms.”
Mira was standing near the top of the stairs.
Her face was white.
She lived in the lower city too, two streets from the healer house, and her parents were still there.
She looked at Aren, and he knew exactly what she was thinking, because he was thinking it too.
“Stay here,” he said quietly, as he passed her.
“Aren…”
“They’re right.
We’d only be in the way.” He met her eyes.
“I’ll be in my room.
Stay here.”
She looked at him, then nodded slowly and went back upstairs.
He felt bad about it for about three seconds.
Then he went into his room, closed the door, opened the window, and climbed out.
He went down through the city on the roofs, where nobody would see him, and on the way he saw more of how Highcrest defended itself than he had ever seen in his life.
In the merchant quarter, the Rift by the great market was already surrounded.
The Hunters’ Guild had come out in force: twenty men and women in mismatched armor, mercenaries and monster hunters who lived off Rift cores, with a big red-haired woman at their head who moved with the heavy, easy power of a Rank C.
They had made a ring of spears and shields around the tear, and every monster that crawled out of it died before it took three steps.
In the Upper Ring, around the great cathedral, there was light everywhere.
Aren saw it from far away: the white and gold banners of the Royal Knights, at least fifty of them, on horseback.
The air around the cathedral flickered and flashed with skills he could not even name.
Something huge was roaring inside the D-rank Rift, and something on the other side was roaring back louder.
He felt the pressure from three streets away, like standing near a waterfall.
Rank B, his new instinct told him.
Maybe more than one.
The knights of the King did not play.
The Academy had sent its people too.
He saw a group of instructors and upper-year students running toward the west gate.
He recognized the old knight with the scarred face who taught swordwork in the east tower, and the quiet woman from the observatory, glowing faintly silver.
Then he reached the lower city, and it was different.
The Rift at the fish market was not surrounded by anyone.
It was smaller than the others, an F-rank tear the size of a door, spitting out grey winged fish the length of a man’s arm.
A squad of city guards held the edge of the square.
There were only eight of them.
But at their front stood a broad, bald sergeant with a short spear and a round shield, and every time a monster came at the line, he killed it with one quick thrust and stepped back into place.
He moved like a man who had done this a hundred times.
[City Guard Sergeant.
Rank D: Level 6.]
The sergeant had it under control.
He did not need help, and he certainly did not need a Rank E boy with bandages on his face getting in his way.
On the river side, Rook’s men had come out to guard the warehouses again, crossbows ready, but there was nothing for them to shoot.
They stood around smoking and complaining.
Aren went up Salt Lane on the roofs and looked down at the healer house.
The door was shut and barred.
Light came from the windows.
Through one of them, he saw the tired nurse moving between the beds, and in the bed by the far window, a small shape under two blankets, sitting up and looking out at the red glow in the sky.
She was fine.
Everyone on the street was fine.
The sergeant had it under control.
He sat down on the roof with his back against a chimney and let out a long breath.
He had run all the way down from the Academy ready to do something stupid, and there was nothing stupid to do.
It was a strange feeling.
In the stories he used to read, the hero always arrived just in time.
In real life, it seemed, the city mostly took care of itself, and the hero sat on a roof feeling foolish.
He was about to go back when he heard the guards talking.
There were two of them, young ones, standing guard at the bottom of the lane while the sergeant held the square.
They were not watching the Rift.
They were watching the east bank, across the river, where the seventh red light was glowing near the tanneries.
“That one’s nothing,” said the first guard.
“Captain says it’s barely an E.
It opened in the cellar of that collapsed dye house, the one that burned last spring.
Whole place is underwater.
Nothing’s come out of it.”
“So nobody’s going?”
“Why would they?
It’s in a flooded cellar on Rook’s side of the river.
The Hunters’ Guild will go clear it in the morning, when they’re done with the market.
Captain roped it off and left it.” The first guard spat.
“Waste of time, a Rift that small.
You’d be lucky to get ten cores out of it.”
Aren sat very still on the roof.
Ten cores, he thought.
Rank E cores.
In a Rift that nobody is going to touch until morning.
He had spent two weeks risking his life in the Old Quarry for one Quarry Brute at a time.
Every E-rank core was worth a third of a level to him and nearly a gold crown at Old Mag’s.
And across the river, a whole fresh E-rank Rift was sitting in a flooded cellar, roped off and ignored, because to the city guard and the Hunters’ Guild, ten cores were not worth a night’s sleep.
He stood up and went across the roofs toward the river.
The collapsed dye house stood at the end of a dead-end street on the east bank, in the part of the city that smelled always of chemicals and wet leather.
Half the building had fallen in a fire last spring.
The other half leaned against its neighbor like a drunk man.
A rope had been tied across the doorway, with a wooden sign hanging from it that said RIFT.
DO NOT ENTER.
BY ORDER OF THE CITY GUARD.
There was nobody there.
Rook’s men were all at the warehouses.
The guard was busy at the market.
Aren ducked under the rope.
Inside, the floor of the dye house had fallen into the cellar, and the cellar was full of black water.
In the middle of the water, half submerged, the Rift glowed faintly red, small and steady, no taller than a man.
The water around it was very still.
Nothing was coming out.He looked at it from the edge of the broken floor and made his list.
I don’t know what’s inside.
I don’t know how deep it goes.
Nobody knows I’m here.
If something goes wrong, nobody will come.
It was, he thought, exactly the kind of trade that made you rich or killed you.
He tightened the bandages around his face, checked his sword and his knife, and stepped down into the black water.
It was colder than ice.
It came up to his chest.
He waded toward the red light with his sword held above his head, and the water closed over his shoulders, and then the light closed over everything.