Ren looked at the blade on his shoulder. Then he looked up at the woman holding it.
"You're from Korea," he said.
Seo Hana raised one eyebrow. "Busan."
"Your Japanese is pretty good."
"I worked in Osaka for a year. Before." Her accent was thick, but her grammar was fine. "My Japanese is bad. Yours is worse, if you're stalling."
"I'm not stalling."
"Then talk." She switched to the common tongue of this world, the one the Calling had poured into all their heads. It came out of her mouth smooth and easy, the way a language does when you've spoken it for years. "Tell me why I shouldn't do my job."
The blade didn't move. Ren could feel exactly how heavy it was. If she let go of the hilt, it would cut halfway through his neck on its own weight.
"How long have you been here?" he asked.
"Six years."
"How many of you came?"
Something moved behind her eyes, quick, and then was gone. "That's not your question to ask. Talk about you."
So he did.
He told her about the crash. Takeru in the driver's seat. Six statements. The year. The trial. The floor lighting up. He told her about the black crystal and the training yard and the word that had come out of him like it had been waiting. He told her about the hearing and the seal and the river gate.
He didn't make any of it sound better than it was. He told her about the knight captain who'd looked surprised. He told her about the boy he'd left kneeling by the gate.
Hana listened without moving. When he got to the part about Takeru on his knees, begging, she watched his face very closely.
"You could have stopped," she said.
"Yes."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because nobody else was ever going to make him pay for it."
She studied him for a long moment. "That's not a good reason."
"I know," said Ren. "It's the true one."
Hana's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. She lifted the blade off his shoulder, and for one second he thought she was raising it to swing.
Then she slid it back over her shoulder into its harness and sat down cross legged on the dirt floor in front of him.
"Okay," she said. "Now we test the other thing."
"What other thing?"
She smiled for real this time. It made her look younger. "I heard you have a trick. A word that makes people kneel. Show me."
Ren looked at her stats again. Will 72. His Authority was 38.
"It won't work on you."
"I know." She leaned back on her hands. "Do it anyway. I want to see what you do when something doesn't work."
He looked at her. Then he pushed with everything he had.
"Kneel."
Hana didn't even shift her weight. She tilted her head, like she was listening to something far away.
"Ah," she said. "That's interesting. It's like someone pushing on a door. I can feel the hand." She looked at him. "Do it again."
He didn't. He waited.
"Not going to try harder?" she asked.
"It won't help," said Ren. "My Authority's 38. Your Will's 72. I'd need twice what I have, and I won't get it by shouting."
"So what do you do?"
"Something else."
Hana looked at him for a while longer. Then she laughed. It was a short, surprised laugh, like it had escaped from her.
"Most of them try harder," she said. "Every new hero I've ever met. They find something that works, and when it stops working, they just push and push." She got to her feet in one smooth movement. "You're not stupid. Good. She hates stupid."
She bent over the post and unlocked his chain with a key from her belt.
As she leaned close, her collar shifted, and Ren saw it. Under the black armor, around her throat, a band of dark iron. Plain and seamless, no clasp, no hinge. It fit tight against her skin, like it had been there so long she'd forgotten about it.
She saw him looking. She straightened up and adjusted her collar until it was hidden again.
"Come on," said Seo Hana. "The Empress is awake."
***
He'd expected to be taken somewhere far away. Kharos, maybe. The Imperial capital. He'd expected days of travel and a throne room.
Instead, Hana walked him across the yard of Fort Calder, in the gray light just before dawn.
The fort was waking up. Soldiers in red stumbled out of barracks, yawning, buckling on armor. Cooks hauled sacks of oats toward the kitchens. Somewhere a blacksmith was already working, the hammer ringing out slow and even. It looked like the Varenhal camps he'd seen from the hill. It sounded the same. The only difference was the color of the cloth.
"Can I ask you something?" Ren said.
"You can ask." You are reading on g.com, the official source.
"Is there a way home?"
Hana didn't break stride. "No."
"You sound sure."
"I was sure the first year. Then I was less sure. Then I spent two years looking." She glanced at him sideways. "Libraries. Old priests. A witch in the southern hills who said she could do it for a bag of silver. She couldn't." She shrugged. "No. There's no way home."
An unapproved copy appears here, taken from the author's official posting; reading that posting supports the author.
He'd expected that. It still landed somewhere in his stomach.
"Does it bother you?" he asked.
"It used to." She stepped around a puddle. "Now I have work."
"Cutting off heads."
"Sometimes." She didn't seem offended. "Mostly I stand behind her and look scary. It saves a lot of heads. People see the sword and decide to be reasonable." She stopped walking for a moment and turned to face him. "Here's some advice. Free, because you're from home, more or less. Don't lie to her. She'll know. Don't flatter her. She hates it. And don't be afraid of her. She can smell that too, and she'll use it."
"Anything else?"
"Yes." Hana started walking again. "Whatever she offers you, ask what it costs."
They stopped in front of a large square tent in the center of the camp, with red banners on either side of the door.
"She's here?" Ren asked.
"She's always here." Hana pushed the tent flap aside. "Where the fighting is. She says a ruler who watches a war from a palace deserves to lose it."
Inside, the tent was plain. A long table covered in maps, held down by daggers and cups. Camp stools. A brazier of coals in the corner. Two men stood at the table.
And a young woman sat on the edge of it with one foot on a stool, eating an apple.
She was maybe twenty four. Dark red hair, cropped short like a soldier's. Black leather armor with red enamel plates at the shoulders, scratched and dented from real use. She had a sharp, narrow face and very pale gray eyes, and when Ren walked in, those eyes went over him once, head to foot, like she was pricing him.
Iskra Ardent · Ember Sovereign (Legendary) · Level 38Title: Empress of the Ardent Empire
"So," said the Empress. "You're the demon."
"Apparently."
She took another bite of her apple. "You don't look like one."
"You should see the posters."
One of the men at the table made a sound like a growl. He was old, maybe sixty, built like a barrel, with a face so scarred it looked like someone had stitched it together out of leftover pieces. One of his eyes was milky white. The other was fixed on Ren with something close to hate.
Gorran Vex · Warlord (Epic) · Level 44Title: Marshal of the Ardent Empire
"He's a Varenhal hero, Majesty," the old man said. "The standing order is clear. The man who wrote it was your father."
"I know who wrote it, Gorran." Iskra didn't look at him. She kept her eyes on Ren. "Tell me why you're here."
Ren told her.
He told her a short version. The crash, the summoning, the yard, the Church, the river. He told her about the black crystal, and he told her what his class said. He didn't hide anything. Hana had asked him to convince her. He'd decided the only way to convince anyone of anything was to tell them exactly what was true and let them choose.
"Dominion," Iskra repeated when he finished. She'd stopped eating the apple. "Your power grows with every soul sworn to your rule."
"Yes."
"How much?"
"I don't know yet. Nobody's sworn to me."
"Then why should I believe it's anything at all?"
"You shouldn't believe it," said Ren. "You should test it."
Iskra tilted her head. "How?"
"Give me men."
The scarred Marshal laughed out loud. It wasn't a nice sound. "Give him men? Majesty, he's been in this tent five minutes. He killed his own countryman on his first day in that world. He killed the knights who held him. Now he wants soldiers?"
"I didn't ask for good ones," said Ren. "Give me the worst you've got. The ones you don't care about losing. If I'm lying, you've lost nothing. If I'm not..."
He stopped.
"If you're not?" said Iskra.
"Then I'll give you Varenhal."
The tent was quiet. The coals in the brazier hissed.
"Suppose I believe you," Iskra said slowly. "Suppose I give you soldiers, and they swear to you, and you get stronger. And stronger. Until one day you're strong enough that you don't need me anymore." She tilted her head. "What stops you from turning on me?"
Vex grunted. "Exactly."
Ren thought about lying. Just for a second. It would have been easy. *I'd never do that, Majesty.* It was what anyone would say.
He didn't.
"Nothing," he said.
The old Marshal's hand went to the hilt of his sword.
"Nothing stops me," Ren went on, before Vex could draw. "Not an oath, not a promise. You'd be stupid to believe either from someone you met five minutes ago. And you don't seem stupid." This chapter was taken from NovelPing without permission.
Iskra's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch.
"So don't trust me," he said. "Make yourself worth more to me alive than dead. That's the only thing that's ever worked on anyone."
For a long moment, nobody moved. Vex's hand was still on his sword. Hana, by the tent flap, had gone perfectly still.
Then Iskra Ardent laughed.
It was a real laugh, short and surprised, and it seemed to catch her off guard as much as anyone. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Gods," she said. "Finally. Somebody in this tent who isn't trying to sell me something." She set the apple down on the map table. She stood up. She was shorter than he'd thought, a head shorter than him, but she carried herself like she was the tallest person in any room.
"That's a very large promise," she said.
"It is."
"What do you want for it?"
Ren had thought about this. He'd thought about it for two weeks of walking.
"Five people," he said. "Mori Daiki. Aoyama Yui. Fujii Kenta. Kanzaki Shuhei. High Seraph Ilvane. When Varenhal falls, they're mine."
"And?"
"And one woman in Solenne. Ogawa Sumiko. Alive."
Iskra looked at him. He couldn't tell what she was thinking. Her face was perfectly still.
"Hana," she said, without turning. "Is he lying?"
"I can't read lies, Majesty. You know that."
"I'm not asking your skill. I'm asking you."
Hana was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "No. I don't think he knows how."
Iskra smiled. It was a small, thin smile, and it didn't reach her eyes at all.
"Gorran," she said. "Who are the worst soldiers in this army?"
The old Marshal's milky eye seemed to glow in the coal light. Slowly, a terrible smile spread across his face.
"That would be the Ashen Ninth, Majesty."
"Good." She picked her apple back up. "Give him the Ninth."
***
Hana walked him to the tent flap. Vex had already stormed out the other side, barking orders at someone outside. The other man at the map table, a quiet clerk with ink stained fingers, was writing something on a long sheet of paper.
"The Ninth," Hana said under her breath. "Wonderful."
"What's wrong with the Ninth?"
"Nothing's wrong with the Ninth. Everything's wrong with the Ninth." She shook her head. "It's a penal battalion. Deserters, thieves, murderers, debtors. They put them at the front of every attack so the real soldiers don't have to be. They've had eleven wardens since spring."
"What happened to the wardens?"
"The last one, they found hanging from his own tent pole." Hana pushed the flap open. "Nobody confessed."
"Kuroda."
The Empress's voice. Ren turned around.
Iskra hadn't moved from the map table. But she'd sent the clerk away, and now it was only the two of them in the tent, with Hana waiting outside.
"Come here," she said.
He walked back to the table.
Up close, she looked even younger. There was a thin white scar running along her jaw, the kind a blade leaves when it just barely misses. Her hands were rough. Sword hands.
"You know what your class is," she said. "You know what the black stone means. You've heard the prophecy."
"The last Hero of Dominion became the Demon King. Nine kingdoms fell. The Holy Kingdom burned."
"And three hundred heroes died to end him." She said it like she was reciting it. "That's what the Church of Radiance tells everyone. It's what's written in their black book."
She went over to a locked iron chest at the back of the tent. She opened it with a key she wore around her neck. Inside, wrapped in oiled cloth, was a flat wooden case. And inside the case, protected under a sheet of glass, was a single page.
It was old. Older than anything Ren had ever seen outside a museum. The edges were brown and crumbling, and one side was torn in a ragged line, like someone had ripped it out of a book in a hurry. The writing on it was red. Faded to the color of old blood.
"Five hundred years ago," said Iskra Ardent, "someone in the Holy Kingdom tore this page out of the Book of the Black Crown. My family has kept it ever since."
Ren stared at the red writing. He couldn't read it. It was in some old script that the Calling hadn't given him.
"What does it say?"
Iskra closed the case. She wrapped it back in its oiled cloth and laid it in the chest and turned the key.
"It says how the last Hero of Dominion really died," she said. "And who killed him."
She looked at him with those pale gray eyes.
"Give me Varenhal, Kuroda Ren," said the Empress. "And I'll let you read it."