The Black Ninth came home to Fort Calder at dusk the next day, and the Empress was already there.
Ren saw her banners from a mile out. The crowned black flame, snapping on every tower of the fort, red against a red sky. Below them, on the road, a long column of Ember Guard in black armor stood at the gate in two neat rows, like they'd been waiting.
"She was supposed to be in Kharos," said Hob, riding beside him.
"She said she'd decided not to decide yet," said Ren. "Maybe she decided to come watch instead."
Behind them stretched the strangest column the fort had ever seen. Six hundred soldiers of the Ninth, filthy and bandaged and singing. Thirty two villagers in wagons. And five hundred Varenhal soldiers in gray, without weapons, walking in loose companies with Ninth sergeants beside them. Every one of them had sworn at Corran's Field. Most of them still looked like they weren't sure what had happened.
Tetsuo walked near the back, beside the villagers' wagons, with his shield on his back. He hadn't said a word all day.
The gate opened as Ren rode up.
Seo Hana was standing in it. She looked at him, and at the black banner on Garrick's spear, and at the five hundred gray soldiers stretching away down the road behind him.
"I was right about the Berserker," she said.
"You were right."
"Good." She stepped aside. "She's waiting. And so is the envoy."
***
The Empress had taken over the Marshal's tent.
Vex was there, standing by the brazier in his battered armor with his arms folded and his scarred face like stone. Two Ember Guards stood at the tent flap. Iskra sat behind the map table in black and red, with her chin on her fist.
And standing in the middle of the tent, in long white robes with a gold sunburst embroidered across the chest, was Mori Daiki.
He turned around when Ren came in.
For a moment, nobody said anything.
Ren hadn't seen him up close since the Hall of Judgment. Since he'd stood on the black floor in chains and listened to his best friend tell a king that he'd murdered a woman. Daiki looked older now. Thinner. There were dark smudges under his eyes like he hadn't slept in a week. His thumb was rubbing against his first finger so hard the skin was red.
Mori Daiki · Sage (Epic) · Level 27
Two Radiant Knights stood behind him with their hands on their swords. His escort.
"Captain Kuroda," said Iskra. "You know the envoy, I think."
"Yes," said Ren.
Daiki's mouth opened. Nothing came out. He closed it again.
"The Holy Kingdom of Varenhal offers peace," said Iskra. Her voice was light. Almost bored. "Fort Calder. Westmarch. Everything south of the Ashford hills, ceded to the Empire forever. Eighty years of war, ended with a signature." She tapped a scroll on the table in front of her. "Their price is you. Delivered alive, in chains, at the Ashford ford in two days' time. The High Seraph wishes to hang the Demon Hero at the Festival of Light, before the whole city, beside the woman who freed him."
Vex made a low sound in his throat that might have been a laugh.
"Envoy," said Iskra. "Is that a fair summary?"
"Yes, Majesty," said Daiki. His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Yes."
Iskra looked at Ren. Her pale eyes were unreadable.
"I'm told you have something to say to him," she said. "Say it."
Ren looked at Daiki.
He'd thought about this moment so many times. On the long walk south. In the cell under Solenne. In the Warden's tent, staring up at the hole in the roof. He'd thought about what he'd say. What he'd do. He'd imagined his hands around Daiki's throat more than once, and he wasn't proud of it, and he'd stopped pretending he hadn't.
Now that it was here, he found he only had one thing to say.
"Hello, Daiki."
Daiki flinched like he'd been hit.
"Sho gave you my message," said Ren. It wasn't a question.
"That you're saving me for last." Daiki's voice was barely a whisper.
"I still am," said Ren.
He turned to Iskra. "Is that all, Majesty?"
Iskra's mouth twitched. "That's all, Captain."
Ren walked out of the tent without looking back.
***
She came to find him an hour later.
He was on the north wall of the fort, alone, looking out over the Burnt Mile toward the Varenhal fires on the far hills. The wind was cold. Iskra climbed the last steps of the stair and came and stood beside him at the parapet without saying anything. She'd taken off the black and red again. Just a soldier's coat, and her short hair blowing.
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"You didn't hit him," she said.
"No."
"I thought you might. Vex had money on it." Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
"I said last," said Ren. "I meant it."
Iskra looked out at the fires.
"I'm going to accept," she said.
He didn't move.
"Publicly. In front of the envoy and the whole fort. I'll sign the treaty tomorrow morning. And in two days, Hana will take you to the ford in silver chains and hand you to the Radiant Order." Her voice didn't change. "And the envoy will ride home to Solenne and tell the High Seraph that the Ardent Empire is weak and tired and wants peace so badly that it will sell its best captain to get it."
"And then?"
"And then Varenhal will do what anyone does when peace is coming. They'll relax." She turned to look at him. "Vex will take twenty thousand men and hit Hollowgate at dawn on the day of the festival, while every soldier on those walls is getting ready to celebrate the end of the war. Hollowgate is the key to the north road. Take it, and Solenne is open."
Ren thought about that.
"And me?"
"You go to Solenne in chains, the way they want." Iskra's eyes were very steady. "Hana goes with you, as far as the ford. Then she goes the long way around with a few others and gets into the city by other means. Your knight prisoner says he knows how. On the morning of the festival, when they put you up on that scaffold next to your lawyer..." She shrugged. "I'm told you're good at getting out of things."
"You're using me as bait."
"Yes."
"For a city you've never seen. To save a woman you've never met."
"I'm using you as bait to take Hollowgate," said Iskra. "The woman is your business. I'm just making sure you can do your business and mine at the same time."
Ren almost smiled.
"And if it fails?" he asked. "If they hang me?"
"Then I've lost a captain, and I've got a peace treaty, and I've got Hollowgate." She looked back out at the fires. "Either way, I win."
"That's honest."
"You don't like it when I'm not."
They stood there in the wind for a while.
Ren remembered what Hana had told him, the first morning in the yard of Fort Calder. *Whatever she offers you, ask what it costs.*
"What does it cost?" he asked.
Iskra was quiet for a long time.
"Your word," she said finally, "that you'll come back."
He looked at her. She didn't look at him. Her jaw was set and her eyes were on the fires, and her hands on the stone of the parapet were gripping it a little too hard.
"I'll come back," said Ren.
He meant it. He found that he did.
Iskra nodded once. Then she turned and went back down the stairs without another word.
***
He planned it with Hob and Brannoc until after midnight, in the Warden's tent, with a map of Solenne that Brannoc drew from memory on the back of a supply ledger.
The vaults. The river gate. The guard rotations in the Hall of Radiance, which Brannoc knew because he'd written half of them. The Square of Saints, and the steps where the scaffold would be. Where the Great Lamp stood. Where the High Seraph would stand to light it.
"Who goes in?" Hob asked.
"Brannoc. He knows the way." Ren counted on his fingers. "Sable. She can open anything. Hana, because Iskra's ordering her to bring me back, so the iron will let her." He paused. "That's three."
"Four," said a voice from the tent flap.
Tetsuo stood there in the dark. He'd been listening. Ren didn't know for how long.
"She stood in front of me in that courtyard and told me to move," Tetsuo said. "So I moved. I watched them take her." His voice was very quiet. "I'm going."
Ren looked at him. Then at Brannoc, who nodded slowly.
"Four," said Ren.
***
Garrick took it worse than anyone.
"Chains," he said. He was sitting on an upturned crate outside the tent with his bandaged arm in a sling, and he said the word like it tasted rotten. "Silver chains. On you. And then you ride in a cage for a week through their whole kingdom while people throw things at you."
"Probably."
"And then they put a rope around your neck."
"That's the plan."
"That's a terrible plan," said Garrick.
"It's the only one where I end up standing next to Ogawa with fifty thousand people watching," Ren said. "Anywhere else, they'd see me coming." You are reading on novelping dot com, the official source.
Garrick glared at him. Then at Hob, who was smoking his pipe and saying nothing. Then at Sable, who had come out of the dark with a small leather roll under her arm.
"Tell him it's a terrible plan," Garrick said to her.
"It's a terrible plan," Sable agreed cheerfully. She sat down cross legged in the dirt in front of Ren and unrolled the leather. Inside, lined up in little loops, were a dozen thin steel picks, each one a different shape. "Open your mouth."
"What?"
"Your mouth, Captain. Open it."
He opened it. Sable peered inside like a dentist, then picked out one of the smallest picks, a sliver of steel no longer than his little finger, bent at one end into a tiny hook.
"Silver shackles from the Radiant Order," she said. "I've seen them. Six pin locks, stiff springs. Fancy, but cheap inside. This will open one in about the time it takes to sneeze." She held it up. "They'll search you. They'll search your clothes, your boots, your hair. They won't search between your back teeth and your cheek, because nobody does, because it's disgusting."
"How long do I have to keep it there?"
"Six days."
Ren looked at the little hook.
"You'll get used to it," Sable said. "I did. Nine months in a Kharos jail, and I had one in there the whole time. Never used it, either. Just knowing it was there kept me sane." She grinned. "Practice tonight. Lock and unlock. Over and over. Until you can do it without looking. Without thinking. When the moment comes, you'll have about one breath."
She showed him how. He did it badly the first time, and the second, and on the fifth try Sovereign's Instinct seemed to wake up and notice what he was doing, and suddenly the pick slid into the lock like it belonged there. He felt the pins lift, one, two, three, all six. The shackle fell open in his lap.
Sable stared at it.
"Okay," she said. "That's annoying."
"Is that good?"
"It took me two years to do that." She rolled up the leather and stood. "Do it a hundred more times anyway."
He did.
***
It was nearly dawn when the knock came on the tent pole.
Ren opened the flap. One of the Ember Guards stood outside, looking uncomfortable. Behind him, small and pale in his white envoy robes, stood Mori Daiki.
"He asked to see you, Captain," the guard said. "Alone. He's unarmed. We checked."
Ren looked at Daiki for a long moment.
Then he stepped back and let him in.
Daiki stood in the middle of the tent and didn't sit down. He looked at the cot with the short leg, and the stained center pole, and the map of Solenne on the back of the supply ledger, and Ren quickly folded that up and put it in his coat.
"I'm not going to tell anyone," Daiki said. "About whatever that was."
"Why are you here?"
Daiki's thumb was rubbing his finger again. He made himself stop. He put his hands flat against his white robes, like he didn't know what else to do with them.
"Sho," he said.
Ren went still.
"Somebody saw him writing a letter," Daiki said. "In the guest wing. The night they arrested Ogawa. In Japanese. The letter was already gone, but they found the pencil marks on the page underneath, and they took it to Ilvane." He swallowed. "She had him brought to the summoning chamber under the Hall. She said there was a mark on him. A Dominion mark. She could see it. She said it was like a hook in his soul, with your name on it." His voice started shaking. "So she started pulling it out."
"How?"
"With the circle. With the crystals. A little more every night." Daiki's eyes were wet. "We could hear it. In the guest wing. All of us. He screamed every night, Ren, and nobody did anything. Yui put pillows over her ears. Kenta laughed. I just sat there." He wiped his face. "It was still going when they sent me south."
Ren didn't move. Couldn't. He was thinking of a thin gray line on a status screen, in a meadow far to the north.
Sworn soul lost.
That was when it had finished. Yesterday morning. While he was standing over Kenta's body.
"Is he alive?" he asked.
"He was when I left. In the vaults. They keep him chained down there." Daiki wiped his face with his sleeve again. "He'd stopped talking by then."
"Why are you telling me this?"
Daiki looked at him. For the first time since the summoning, he looked Ren straight in the eye.
"Because I'm tired," he said. "I'm so tired of being the one who knows and says nothing."
He turned to go. At the flap, he stopped.
"Ren," he said. "There's something else. About the festival." His voice dropped. "Ilvane told the whole city there'll be three on the scaffold. Not two."
He looked back over his shoulder.
"She's going to hang Sho with you."