Ren lay perfectly still with the knife at his throat.
"Sho," he said.
"Don't move." The voice was soft and a little shaky. "I'm serious. I'm really fast now. Like, really fast. I'll do it before you finish the word."
"Which word?"
"You know which word." The blade pressed a little harder. Ren felt a thin line of warmth slide down the side of his neck. "Everyone in Solenne knows which word. Kenta won't shut up about it."
Ren's eyes were adjusting. He could see the outline of Sho now, crouched beside the cot. Small and thin, the way he'd always been. In high school he'd been the kid who sat in the back of every class and drew in his notebook and never talked unless someone talked to him first. He was wearing dark gray now, close fitting, with his face wrapped in a black scarf up to the eyes.
Ren still couldn't read him. Read the Field slid off him like water off glass.
"You've got a stealth skill," Ren said.
"Veil. It's my best one." Sho's voice cracked a little on the last word, like he was proud and embarrassed about it at the same time. "I walked right through the front gate. Twenty guards. Nobody saw me."
"That's impressive."
"Yeah, well." The knife didn't move. "Ilvane said if any of us killed you, she'd send us home. The first one. Just them. She found a way, she said. In the old books."
Ren lay still and thought about that.
"Sho," he said. "The night we arrived, Ilvane told Judge Moriyama the Calling only opens one way."
"She said she found a way since."
"In two weeks."
Sho was quiet.
"Did she tell you in front of Ogawa?" Ren asked. "Ogawa Sumiko. The lawyer."
"No. Why?"
"Because if it was true," said Ren, "she wouldn't have minded who heard it."
The knife trembled. Just a little. Ren felt it shiver against his skin, and he knew what that meant, because he'd felt Takeru's sword tremble the same way in the yard. Doubt. The moment a person realizes they're standing somewhere they don't want to be.
He didn't wait for the next moment.
"Kneel."
Sho folded.
He didn't fall. There was nowhere to fall. He just crumpled sideways off the edge of the cot like his bones had gone soft, and the knife dropped out of his hand and stuck point first in the dirt floor. Ren sat up and picked it up.
At the same moment, the tent flap tore open.
Garrick filled the doorway. He was barefoot and shirtless, holding a hatchet in one hand, and his eyes were huge. "Warden!"
"I'm fine."
"I felt..." Garrick put his free hand on his chest. He looked at Sho on the floor, gasping, and then back at Ren. "I was asleep. And then I wasn't. It was like a bell going off."
Ren looked at him for a long moment. Through the bond, he could feel it too. Garrick's pulse, fast and hot, like a fist pounding on the inside of a door.
So it went both ways.
"Thank you, Garrick," he said. "Go back to bed. I've got this one."
The big man looked at Sho again, hard. Sho, still on the floor, flinched.
"I'll be right outside," Garrick said, and let the flap fall.
***
They talked until the sun came up.
Ren lit a candle and sat on the cot. Sho sat on the dirt floor with his back against the center pole, the one with the stain on it. He'd pulled his scarf down. He looked exhausted. He looked about fourteen.
"How'd you find me?" Ren asked.
"I didn't. I was with Kenta and Kanzaki at the river. After you got away, we all rode back to Solenne. Kenta broke two chairs." Sho rubbed his face. "Then Ilvane called me in by myself. She said I was the only one who could get across the lines without being seen. She gave me a horse and a map and the thing about going home." He shrugged. "On the way down, I heard the Demon Hero walked into Fort Calder. Everyone on the other side of the Burnt Mile is talking about it. So I came here."
"To kill me."
"To try." Sho almost laughed. "I'm Level 16. I thought that was good. Then I got here and I saw you'd done that to Garrick. The big guy. Everyone in the camp was talking about it."
Ren turned the knife over in his hands. "Sho. Kanzaki told me something at the river. He said Ogawa confessed to helping me. He said they arrested her."
Sho looked up, confused. "Ogawa? The old lawyer?"
"Yes."
"She's fine." Sho blinked. "At least, she was when I left. Eight days ago. She's been teaching the lay judges to read the common script. Moriyama too. She does it in the library every morning." He frowned. "Kanzaki said she was arrested?"
Ren didn't answer.
He sat very still on the edge of the cot. He'd been carrying it for eleven days. Every mile. Every morning. A small woman in a gray cloak on a scaffold in a white city. He hadn't let himself put it down, because he couldn't know.
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He let out a long breath. It came out shaky. He hadn't known it was going to.
"Kanzaki doesn't lie," Sho said slowly. "He's like, famous for it. In the guest wing, everybody calls him the Robot."
"He lied to me."
Sho was quiet for a while. Then he said, "He's been weird. Since the river. He doesn't talk to anyone."
Good, Ren thought. And then was surprised at himself for thinking it.
"Why'd you sign it?" he asked.
Sho didn't pretend not to understand. He looked down at his hands.
"Takeru's dad sent people to my parents' house," he said. "Two men in suits. The morning after. They didn't threaten anybody. They didn't need to. They just sat in our living room and drank my mom's tea and talked about how hard it must be, running a small business. How expensive. How one bad thing could ruin everything." He swallowed. "My dad's shop is in Takeru's dad's district. They didn't have to say anything else."
"So you said I drove away."
"So I said you drove away." Sho's voice went small. "I'm sorry, Ren. I know that doesn't... I know. But I am."
Ren looked at him for a long time. The candle burned down.
"I believe you," he said.
Sho looked up, surprised.
"It doesn't change what you did," Ren went on. "But I believe you're sorry. And I believe you were scared." He stood up and held out the knife, hilt first. "Here."
Sho stared at it. "You're letting me go?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you're not who I'm angry at." Ren kept holding out the knife until Sho took it. "Go back. Tell them whatever you want. Tell them you couldn't get close. Tell them the truth, if you want. I don't care."
Sho stood up slowly. He slid the knife into a sheath at his back.
"Aren't you going to make me swear?" he asked. "Like the big guy? I heard about that too."
"An oath you make with a knife at your throat isn't worth anything," said Ren.
Sho hesitated at the tent flap.
"Anything you want me to tell them?" he asked. "A message?"
Ren thought about it.
"Tell Daiki," he said, "that I'm saving him for last."
Sho nodded. He pulled the black scarf back up over his face. And then, between one blink and the next, he was simply gone, and the tent flap was swaying in the gray morning light, and Ren couldn't remember seeing it move.
***
The Ninth started drilling that afternoon.
It started with the swords. Old Hob had not been exaggerating. Ren went through the battalion's armory, which was a single tent with a leaking roof, and found exactly two hundred and twelve blades, most of them rusted, a third of them cracked, a handful of them so old they had a different king's face stamped on the pommel.
"We can't fight with these," said Ren.
"Nobody expects us to," said Hob. "They expect us to die with them."
Sable was sitting on a barrel at the back of the armory, cleaning her fingernails with a knife. She didn't look up.
"The quartermaster's depot is on the other side of the fort," she said. "Inside the walls. Four hundred new swords came in last week. Straight from the forges at Kharos. I saw the wagon." She inspected a fingernail. "They're for the Seventh Foot. But the Seventh Foot is on leave until next month."
Ren looked at her.
"I'm just saying," Sable said. "Somebody might borrow them. If somebody had a warden who'd say he didn't know anything about it."
"I wouldn't say that," said Ren.
"Why not?"
"Because it wouldn't be true." He thought about it. "I'd say I told you to do it."
Sable stopped cleaning her nails. She looked up at him with an expression he couldn't read.
"You'd take the blame," she said. "For me."
"It's my battalion."
The next morning, there were four hundred new swords stacked in neat rows in the armory tent. Nobody came to ask about them. Ren never found out how she'd done it, and he never asked.
That night, Sable came to his tent. She didn't kneel the way Garrick had. She sat down on the end of his cot, uninvited, and stuck out her hand.
"Look," she said. "I've been in the Ninth for two years. I've seen eleven wardens come and go. You're the first one I've ever thought might actually make it. That makes you the best bet in the camp." She shrugged. "I always bet on the best odds." You are reading on g.com, the official source.
"That's not a reason to swear."
"It's my reason," said Sable. "Take it or don't."
He took it.
Oath offered: Sable, Cutpurse (Rare), Level 19.Accept?
Yes.
Another door opened. Another candle in the dark. Quick and bright and restless, the way Sable herself was.
Old Hob came the night after that. He didn't make a speech. He just sat down by the fire across from Ren, finished his pipe, and said, "Thirty years I served under officers who lied to me. You're the first one who didn't. I'm too old to waste time on anyone else." Then he put his hand on the ground.
Sworn souls: 3.
***
For a week, Ren drilled them.
He didn't know anything about armies. He'd never so much as played a strategy game on his phone. But Hob did, and Hob talked, and Ren listened, and something strange happened when he listened.
Sovereign's Instinct had always worked on weapons. On stances. On the shape of a fight. Now, standing on the edge of the practice field watching three hundred people try to hold a line, Ren discovered it worked on this too. A formation was just a bigger stance. A battalion was just a bigger sword. He could see where the line was weak before it broke, the way he'd seen where Takeru's swing would go. He could see which squads were drifting, which corners were thin, where a charge would hit if one came.
He told Hob. Hob fixed it. By the end of the week, the old colonel was looking at him differently.
"Who taught you that?" Hob asked, on the fifth day.
"Nobody."
"Somebody did."
"I just see it," said Ren.
Hob looked at him for a long time. Then he spat on the ground and said, "Huh," and went back to shouting at the second company.
And the Ninth felt it too.
Ren could see it in how they moved. Command was only five percent, but five percent was a lot when you added it to everything at once. Strength, speed, toughness. The soldiers in the front rank, the ones closest to him, held their shields a little longer before their arms gave out. The ones on the flanks ran a little faster. A man named Dobbs, a Level 12 Footman who'd been in the Ninth for desertion, lifted a log over his head on the fourth day that he'd failed to lift on the first, and stood there holding it, staring at his own arms.
"Something's different," Ren heard one of them say, by the fires that night. "Since the demon came. I don't know what."
"I feel stronger."
"You're imagining it."
"Then why can I do this?"
By the end of the week, they'd stopped calling him the demon behind his back. They'd started calling him the Warden.
***
The orders came on the seventh day.
Vex's aide brought them, handkerchief over his nose again. He handed Ren a sealed letter and left without saying a word.
Ren broke the seal and read it standing by the main fire, with Hob reading over one shoulder and Sable reading over the other.
The Ashen Ninth will cross the Burnt Mile on the third night from today and destroy the enemy supply depot at Halden's Ford. Burn everything. Take nothing. Return by dawn.Gorran Vex, Marshal.
"Halden's Ford," Hob said quietly. "That's eight miles behind their lines."
"Is it guarded?"
"Eighty men, last we heard. Maybe a few Church knights." The old man folded his arms. "It's a real target. I'll give the bastard that. Hitting it would hurt them." He shook his head. "But eight miles in and eight miles back, in one night, on foot? With three hundred men who've never fought together? He doesn't expect us to come back."
"I know," said Ren.
"So what do we do?"
"We go." Ren folded the letter and put it inside his coat. "And we come back."
That night, he lay awake in the Warden's tent and thought about Halden's Ford. He went over Hob's maps in his head. The roads. The river. The distances. He was so deep in it that at first he didn't notice the light.
It was coming from right in front of his face. A screen. Black letters edged with deep violet. The same color as Garrick's oath, and Sable's, and Hob's.
He sat up.
Oath offered: Nakano Sho, Shadowblade (Rare), Level 16.Distance: 61 miles.Accept?
Ren stared at it.
Sixty one miles. North. On the far side of the Burnt Mile, on the road to Solenne. Sho had walked out of this tent a week ago with a knife and no promises. Somewhere on that road, alone, in the dark, he had stopped and knelt.
The letters glowed patiently in the dark.
Accept?