Ren didn't say anything. He just waited. He'd learned that from her, actually. In their meetings, when he'd said something she didn't like, she'd sit there and let the silence go on until he filled it.
This time, she filled it.
"My class," she said. "Arbiter. It has a skill called Weigh the Word. When someone lies in front of me, I feel it. Here." She opened her right hand against the bars. "Like a stone. Heavier the bigger the lie."
"And?"
"And yesterday, Mori Daiki told the king you were driving." Her voice cracked. She steadied it. "It was the heaviest thing I've ever held."
Ren looked at her open hand for a long moment.
"So now you believe me," he said.
"Now I know." She shook her head. "That's worse. Believing would have been my job. I didn't do it. I read your file for eight minutes and decided, and I spent a year pretending that wasn't what happened." She took a breath. "A lawyer who doesn't believe her client is just another witness for the prosecution. That's what I was."
Ren didn't tell her it was all right. It wasn't. But he didn't tell her it wasn't, either.
"Why are you here, Ogawa-sensei?"
She glanced up the corridor. Then she pulled something out of her cloak and held it up. An iron key on a leather loop.
"The guard on this corridor owes money to half the city," she said. "I asked him if he had debts and he said no. Very heavy. I gave him my watch. It's gold plated, from my husband, before he died. He's going to say it was stolen from his belt while he was at the privy." She almost smiled. "He's not a good liar. I don't think anyone will check."
She fit the key into the lock. It turned with a clunk.
"There's a young priest," she went on, faster now. "Brother Ferren. He was in the room tonight, at the ritual. He came to the guest wing afterward and threw up in the courtyard. I asked him some questions. He answered all of them honestly. He's very frightened." She swung the door open. "Under this hall there are old vaults. The Church uses them to move things they don't want seen. They lead to a gate on the river. Ferren drew me the way."
She pressed a folded square of paper into his hand. Then the key again, for the chains.
Ren unlocked his wrists. The silver chains slid off and hit the floor. The soft pressure on his chest disappeared, and he hadn't realized how much it had been leaning on him until it was gone.
He unfolded the paper. A rough map in pencil. Stairs, corridors, a long tunnel, an arrow pointing to a square marked river gate. Underneath, in Ogawa's tight handwriting: South along the river road. The Empire is two weeks on foot.
"You're telling me to defect," Ren said.
"I'm telling you there's nowhere in this kingdom you'll be safe," Ogawa said. "At dawn they'll either finish that seal or kill you. I heard the knights talking. They've already built the scaffold."
Ren folded the map and put it inside his shirt.
"Come with me."
"No."
"If they find out you did this..."
"They won't. Not if I'm still here tomorrow, asleep in my bed, looking surprised." She pushed her glasses up her nose. "I'm fifty three, Kuroda-kun. I'm Level 1. I'd slow you down and get us both killed in a week. And you need someone on this side." She hesitated. "Someone who can hear the lies."
He studied her face. She was right. He didn't like it, but she was right.
"Then ask me something," he said.
"What?"
"You're letting a man out of a cell who killed someone yesterday. You should know what you're letting out." He stepped through the open door, into the corridor. "Ask."
Ogawa looked at him for a long moment. Then she closed her right hand into a loose fist, the way you'd hold something you were about to weigh.
"Will you hurt anyone tonight who doesn't try to stop you?"
"No."
She waited. Then she opened her hand. It was empty and light.
"All right," she said quietly.
"One more thing," Ren said. "Watch Hasegawa Tetsuo. He came down here tonight. He's started asking questions."
She nodded once.
Ren turned toward the stairs. Then he stopped and looked back at her. A small woman in a borrowed cloak, gripping the open door of a cell in a world neither of them understood.
"Thank you, Ogawa-sensei."
She didn't answer. But she smiled, a little, for the first time since he'd known her.
Then he was gone up the corridor, quiet as a shadow, and she stood alone for a moment in front of the empty cell before she pulled the door shut, and locked it, and walked back to her room to lie awake and wait for the bells.
***
The vaults under the Hall of Radiance were older than the Hall.
Ren could tell. The white stone gave way to gray, rougher and darker, cut by hands that hadn't cared about looking holy. The ceilings got lower. The air got colder. Water dripped somewhere he couldn't see, and every few dozen steps he passed an alcove stacked with crates or barrels or long shapes wrapped in canvas he didn't stop to look at.
He moved fast and quiet, Ferren's map in one hand and a torch he'd taken from a wall bracket in the other. Sovereign's Instinct didn't just work on swords, he was learning. It worked on his feet. On his breathing. He knew where to put his weight on the old stairs so they wouldn't creak. He knew how to hold the torch low so the light didn't run ahead of him around corners.
It was like his body had been waiting his whole life for someone to explain it.
The tunnel at the bottom of the map ran straight for a long time. He could hear the river before he saw anything. A deep, steady rush, like wind through a forest. The air started to smell like mud and moss.
Then he saw light ahead. Not torchlight. Gold.
He stopped and pressed himself against the wall.
The tunnel opened into a wide stone chamber with an iron gate at the far end. Through the bars, he could see black water moving fast under a sliver of moon. And in front of the gate, in a loose half circle, stood four Radiant Knights with lanterns hung from their belts and swords already drawn.
This chapter's source is the author's NovelPhoenix posting; it was reproduced here without permission, and reading there supports the author.
They weren't standing guard. They were waiting.
Of course they were. Ilvane had seen the seal stall at seventy one percent. She'd looked at him the way you'd look at a dog that had bitten through its leash. She hadn't put all her faith in a bribed guard and a locked door.
Ren opened Read the Field.
Radiant Knight Captain · Level 26Radiant Knight · Level 23Radiant Knight · Level 22Radiant Knight · Level 21
He was Level 1. Unarmed. The brand on his chest was still raw.
He thought about going back. There was nowhere to go back to.
He set the torch down against the wall, and he stepped out into the light.
The captain saw him first. He was a tall man with a close cropped beard and a scar across his chin. He didn't shout. He just smiled, like this was exactly what he'd expected.
"High Seraph said you'd come this way," he said. "Kneel, hero, and this doesn't have to hurt."
"Funny," said Ren. "I was going to say the same thing."
He looked the captain in the eyes and pushed.
"Kneel."
It hit the man like a falling wall. His knees buckled. He caught himself halfway, one knee down and one foot planted, his face going red with strain.
Not all the way. His Will was higher than Takeru's. But it was enough.
The other three knights hesitated. Just for a breath. They'd never seen their captain go down like that.
Ren was already moving.
He crossed the floor in four steps. The nearest knight swung at him, a fast, clean cut, a Level 21 soldier who'd trained for years. Ren saw it coming the way he'd seen Takeru's swing in the yard. He stepped inside it and drove his elbow into the man's throat and caught the sword as it fell from his hand.
The brand on his chest exploded.
White fire. Everywhere. It ran from his heart down his arms and into his fingers, and every muscle in his body screamed at him to drop the sword. Pain when raising a hand against the Church of Radiance. His vision went white at the edges. His knees started to fold.
The second knight came at him from the left.
The seal wanted him on the ground. It wanted him to kneel, open his hands, and wait. He could feel it pulling, patient and warm, like a voice telling him to lie back down and go to sleep.
Not again.
Ren pushed. Not out this time. In. Straight into the brand, with everything under his ribs.
Something cracked.
He felt it more than heard it, a sharp snap deep in his chest, like a bone breaking in reverse. The white fire went out all at once.
Seal of Grace: Broken.Title gained: Oathbreaker of Radiance (Hidden).
He brought the sword up and met the second knight's swing halfway.
It didn't take long after that.
Sovereign's Instinct read every move a heartbeat before it came. The knights were good. They were trained. But they fought like men who'd been taught a hundred forms, and Ren fought like a man who knew every form already and was choosing which one to use. The second knight went down with a cut under his arm where the mail didn't cover. The third one took a cut across the thigh that dropped him screaming. The captain finally forced himself to his feet just as the Kneel ran out, roared, and charged.
Ren met him in the middle of the chamber.
They exchanged three blows. On the fourth, Ren let the captain's sword slide down his own blade, turned his wrists, and opened the man's guard. Then he drove his sword in under the captain's breastplate.
The captain looked down at it. Then up at Ren. He seemed surprised more than anything.
He fell.
Ren stood in the middle of the chamber, breathing hard, blood running from a cut on his cheek he didn't remember getting. Around him, the lantern light swung on the walls. One knight lay still. One was crawling toward the tunnel, dragging his leg. The first one, the one Ren had elbowed, was on his knees by the gate, clutching his throat and staring.
He was young. Younger than Ren. Barely eighteen, maybe.
He didn't reach for his sword. He just looked at Ren with wide, wet eyes and shook his head, very slightly. Please.
Ren had told Ogawa he wouldn't hurt anyone who didn't try to stop him.
He walked past the boy, took the key ring from the captain's belt, and opened the river gate.
The System chimed, over and over, a string of notifications stacking up so fast he couldn't read them. He'd look later. He stepped out onto a narrow stone ledge over the black water. The river was loud and cold and fast.
Behind him, somewhere far above, a bell began to ring. Then another. Then all of them.
Ren jumped.
***
By dawn, half of Solenne had gathered in the square below the Hall of Radiance.
The bells had rung all night. People had come out of their houses in nightclothes to ask what was happening, and the answers had grown with every street they traveled. A hero had murdered another hero. A hero had killed a dozen knights. A hero had walked out of a locked cell like smoke and vanished into the river. By sunrise, some people were saying he'd grown horns.
Mori Daiki stood near the front of the crowd with the rest of the summoned and wished he were anywhere else.
The priests had woken them at first light and brought them down in a group. They hadn't said why. Now Daiki stood between Kenta and Rina on the bottom step of the Hall, with the whole city staring up at them, and felt sick.
Above them, on the high landing, the great doors opened, and High Seraph Ilvane stepped out into the sun.
The crowd went quiet so fast it was like a wave pulling back.
She wasn't alone. Yui walked out at her side, dressed head to toe in white and gold now, her hair pinned up under a thin silver circlet. Behind them came Kanzaki in a black coat with a sunburst sewn over the heart. Daiki didn't know where he'd gotten it. He didn't know when Kanzaki had stopped wearing his suit.
"People of Solenne," said Ilvane. Her voice carried across the whole square without her raising it. Some trick of the Church, Daiki guessed. Or some skill. "Two days ago, the light answered our prayers. Twenty heroes came to us from beyond the world. Twenty champions to end this war."
The crowd murmured.
"But the light is not the only power that answers prayers." Ilvane lifted a hand. "Among the heroes came one whose stone ran black."
The murmur turned to something else. Daiki heard the words go through the crowd like a fire through dry grass. Old people turned pale. A woman near him made a sign over her chest. Someone at the back started praying out loud.
They knew. Every one of them knew what it meant. The summoned were the only ones who didn't, and Daiki understood, suddenly, that he never wanted to.
"His name is Kuroda Ren," Ilvane said. "On his first day among us, he murdered the Sword Saint, Saionji Takeru, in front of the king's own knights. Last night, he slew two brothers of the Radiant Order and fled into the dark. He carries the mark of the Black Crown."
She paused. The whole city held its breath.
"From this day, let every soul in Varenhal know his true name. He is no hero of the light." Her voice rose for the first time. "He is the Demon Hero."
The square exploded.
People screamed. People wept. Somebody started chanting it, Demon Hero, Demon Hero, and others picked it up, louder and louder, until the words were bouncing off the white walls of the Hall like thunder.
Yui stood at Ilvane's side with her hands folded and her chin lifted and her eyes shining, and Daiki realized with a slow, cold horror that she was enjoying it.
He looked away. His eyes slid across the steps, across Kenta pumping his fist and Rina crying and Sho staring at nothing.
And landed on Hasegawa Tetsuo.
Tetsuo wasn't chanting. He wasn't looking at Ilvane. He stood at the end of the line with his arms folded, and he was looking straight at Daiki.
Just looking. Like he was trying to work out what something was worth.
Behind him, half hidden by a pillar, Ogawa Sumiko stood very still with one hand closed into a fist.
Daiki looked at the ground and didn't look up again.
***
Twelve miles south, the river spat Ren out onto a mudbank under a willow tree.
He crawled up out of the water and lay on his back in the reeds and breathed. Every part of him hurt. He'd been tumbled down rapids in the dark, slammed into rocks, dragged under twice. His fingers were blue. His cheek was bleeding again.
He was alive.
The sky above him was going pale and pink. Birds he didn't know the names of were singing in trees he didn't recognize. Somewhere far behind him, so faint he almost thought he was imagining it, bells were still ringing.
He opened his status screen and finally read what had been stacking up all night.
Level up. Level 2.Level up. Level 3.Level up. Level 4.Level up. Level 5.Level up. Level 6.Title gained: Oathbreaker of Radiance (Hidden). Resistance to holy magic increased.
He read his stats. Every number had climbed. His Authority had gone up by five. He flexed his blue fingers and felt the difference already, a quiet strength under the cold.
Then one more line appeared. It was new. It hadn't been in the stack. It came in slowly, like the System had heard something and was deciding what to do about it.
Epithet recognized by 4,000+ souls: The Demon Hero.
Ren lay in the reeds and looked at it for a long time.
They'd called him a murderer for a year. A drunk. A liar. A coward who killed a nurse and blamed his friends. He'd hated every one of those names, because none of them were true.
This one was different.
They'd given it to him because they were afraid of him. Because a whole kingdom had looked at what he was and decided it needed a name big enough to hold it.
He sat up. He pushed the wet hair out of his face. He looked south, down the river road, toward a border he'd never seen and an Empire he knew nothing about.
The Demon Hero.
He decided he liked it.
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