Draus called the meeting before dawn, which told me, more than anything Sela had said the night before, exactly how seriously he was taking it.
“Sit,” he said, when I came down to find the whole company already gathered around the pushed-together tables, mugs of something hot in front of people who didn’t usually drink anything before noon.
“We’re talking this through properly, all of us, because if this turns into a problem, it’s not just your problem. It’s the Coinhouse’s.”
“I can leave,” I said immediately.
“If this is a Coinhouse problem because of me, I can just—”
“Sit,” Draus said again, not unkindly, but with enough weight behind it that I sat.
“Nobody’s running you out of here before we’ve even had the actual conversation. Let’s have the conversation.”
Borin set his mug down hard enough to rattle the table.
“Drevmoor Inquisitors don’t waste shoe leather on rumors. If one’s quietly asking around Hollow Ferry about a Driftborn arrival, that means someone already filed a report worth chasing. Question’s not whether he’s real. Question’s how much he actually knows yet.”
“He knows there was a crater,” Tamsin said, ticking points off on ink-stained fingers like she was working through a proof.
“He knows it was a Driftborn arrival. He may or may not know about the Ridgeback kill on the Hollow Ferry road, depending on whether anyone from that caravan talked, which — given how merchants love a good story — I’d assume yes. What he almost certainly doesn’t know yet is the specific detail that actually matters.”
“Two Divine bestowals,” I said, quietly.
“Two Divine bestowals,” Tamsin agreed.
“That’s the line. Everything before that line is ‘unusually strong Driftborn, worth watching.’ Everything after it is ‘Sealed, worth a formal Imperial file and a squad to go with it.’ As long as that specific number stays off any official record, you’re a curiosity. The second it gets confirmed, you’re a case number.”
“So the actual question,” Draus said, “is whether we can keep that number off any official record long enough for Rose to get strong enough that the number stops mattering as much as the person carrying it.”
[The Ledger notes that this entire table is, with admirable efficiency, having the exact conversation the Ledger has been quietly dreading since approximately Chapter Two. The Ledger has opinions about how that conversation should go. The Ledger has decided, for once, to keep them to itself.]
“It’s listening in,” I said.
“Of course it is,” Draus said, like that was simply the world’s current operating condition now, and went back to the actual point.
“Here’s what I’m not willing to do: hide you in a back room and hope the problem loses interest. That’s not a plan, that’s a slow leak waiting to happen. Here’s what I am willing to do.” He spread a worn map across the table, weighting the corners with two mugs and a knife.
“There’s a contract sitting on the guild board that nobody’s taken yet because it pays well and nobody wants the risk — a flooded ruin two days west, old pre-Imperial vault, something’s nesting in the lower levels and the local lord wants it cleared before it gets curious about the surface. Three days out, unknown number of days inside, no Imperial waystations anywhere near it.”
“You want to get me out of the city,” I said.
“I want to get us out of the city,” Draus corrected.
“Get some distance between you and whoever’s been asking questions in Hollow Ferry, give you a place to actually push your limits without an audience that reports to an empire, and come back in two weeks with you strong enough that ‘Sealed’ stops being a death sentence and starts being a problem the Inquisitor has to think twice about pursuing personally instead of just filing paperwork about.”
Sela leaned back, arms crossed, the corner of her mouth pulling into something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“Also it pays extremely well, and Borin’s been complaining about the wagon axle for a month.”
“Also that,” Draus admitted, entirely unashamed.
I looked around the table — Borin still nursing his ribs and looking, somehow, more annoyed at the idea of an Empire threatening one of his people than concerned about it; Tamsin already flipping through a notebook for whatever theory she had on flooded ruins; Sela checking the edge on a blade she’d already sharpened twice that morning out of pure restless energy — and felt the same warm, unguarded thing settle into my chest that the dinner table had put there two nights ago, except heavier now, more deliberate, the specific weight of people choosing to stand somewhere on purpose instead of just happening to be standing there.
“Okay,” I said.
“Flooded vault. Unknown nesting thing. Two weeks, give or take, away from prying eyes.”
“That’s the plan,” Draus said.
“What’s actually down there?”
“No idea,” Tamsin said, far too cheerfully for the content of the sentence.
“Guild notice just says ‘something large, possibly multiple somethings, last survey team didn’t finish the survey.’ Which is either an exciting opportunity or an extremely bad sign, and I genuinely cannot tell you which until we’re standing in the water finding out.”
[New Quest Available: The Sunken Vault]
[Difficulty: Bronze-rank, contested — last assessment team did not return a full report]
[The Ledger notes the word “unknown” appears three times in this contract’s official description. The Ledger has filed a great many contracts with that word in them. It has never once seen that word followed by good news.]
“Encouraging,” I said.
“It’s never encouraging,” Draus said, already folding the map back up.
“It’s just paid well enough that we go anyway.
Pack light, pack dry clothes, and Rose — ” he paused at the door, looking back at me with something steadier than the easy charm he usually led with — “whatever’s down there, you don’t have to prove anything to me.
You already did that on the Hollow Ferry road.
Just come back.”
“I generally try to,” I said.
“Good track record so far. One death total, and that one wasn’t even my fault.”
He laughed — short, real, the same surprised sound I was starting to actively look forward to pulling out of him — and the whole table started moving at once, the specific brisk energy of people who’d just turned worry into a packing list because that was the only useful thing to do with it.
Behind us all, quiet and constant and entirely unbothered by the conversation it had just listened to in full, the Ledger kept its second page exactly where it had started keeping it: open, and growing, and saying nothing about what was written on it yet.