I left Doyle’s office with a temporary contract. He had also handed me a cheap mobile phone and a handful of coins.
I let the Umbra go out of the armour on the front step and stood there in what was underneath it, which was three years of nothing and a shirt the gate hadn’t been kind to.
A pause.
This will not do.
The Umbra didn’t disperse. It came back down over my shoulders instead, heavier than it had any business being, and stopped being armour on the way.
It settled as a coat. Long and black, structured through the shoulder, and it went on moving for half a second after I stopped.
I put a hand through the front of it. Wool, or near enough. Warm on the inside, and the weave took the light the way the edge of Nadir took it.
“This is real.”
Of course it is real. I made your sword out of the same thing. Umbra is not a trick. It is a material. If you give it long enough and pay attention, it will hold a shape.
“And this is for?”
Aesthetic necessity. You cannot walk into a place like this dressed as a peasant. It also looks good. Do not fight it.
The town was quiet. Low brick rows ran off in every direction under a flat grey sky.
We passed a parade of shops. A street performer stood on the corner, playing an electric guitar through a battered amplifier.
I felt Azazel go completely still in my chest.
What is that?
“Music,” I said. “A guitar.”
I know what music is. That is not our music.Ours is arranged for specific occasions. That sounds like he is improvising.
“He probably is.”
You can do that here? Just make it in the street for no occasion?
“People do it for money. Or just for fun.”
Azazel didn’t respond. I stood there and listened.
Before the gate, I would have walked past without noticing the sound. Now an Elysian prince was hearing a guitar for the first time through my ears. The sheer novelty of it anchored me to the pavement.
The song wasn’t even good. I dropped a coin into the open guitar case anyway.
Play more of it later.Other kinds. I want to know how many kinds there are.
We walked another block and stopped outside a small corner shop. The glass doors slid apart automatically as I approached.
A proximity ward! Step back. The entrance is trapped.
“It’s a sensor,” I said. “It opens the door for you.”
That is a ridiculous waste of mana.
“It uses something called electricity.”
I walked inside. The shop was bright and lined with crowded shelves. I walked down an aisle stacked with brightly coloured packets of crisps and sweets.
Your world has no rationing.
He studied the rows through my eyes.
There is no guard. Why are the locals not fighting over the supplies?
“Because there’s enough for everyone.”
A massive digital screen played an advertisement for a soft drink near the till. He demanded to know if we worshipped the glowing bottle.
I bought a can from the fridge and let him taste it through me. He declared the carbonation was a physical attack and respected it.
I pulled the cheap phone out of my pocket and turned it over once, testing the weight of it, a small rectangle of glass and light playing back moving pictures at a touch.
This looks something like the household spirit. Smaller. Uglier. The same basic idea, though.
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“Do you know anything regarding the household spirit?” I said, keeping my voice down.
No. A pause. It kept me alive for a long time, and it never once told me why it bothered to do so. You have now heard everything I know about it.
I called the system window anyway, out of habit. It came readily enough. The numbers sat where they always sat, saying what they had said in the forest.
I asked it, under my breath, who it answered to. The window closed instead of replying. It managed to make even that feel friendly.
We stepped back out into the grey afternoon. We reached a pedestrian crossing a few minutes later.
A red light glowed on the metal pole opposite us. Cars moved past in a steady blur of noise and exhaust. I stopped at the curb.
Why are we stopping? The prey is moving fast, but you can clear that gap.
“They aren’t prey. They’re something called cars. People travel inside them.”
The light on the pole turned green. The cars stopped behind a painted white line.
They stopped for a light?
He sounded baffled.
You drew a line on the ground and the metal beasts obeyed it.
“It’s a rule. Everyone agrees to follow it so nobody dies on the way to work.”
Your world is deeply strange.
We crossed the street and passed a small community park. Children were running across a patch of rubber ground.
Two of them swung back and forth on metal swings. Parents sat on wooden benches nearby, holding paper cups of coffee.
What drill is this?
“It isn’t a drill. They’re playing.”
Playing.
He turned the word over.
They are small. They should be running stamina drills. The tall ones are just sitting there with their guard down.
“There’s nothing to guard against here.”
That is a terrible way to raise a weapon.
“They aren’t weapons. They’re just children.”
Azazel didn’t answer. He watched a girl jump off a swing and laugh. He stayed quiet until the park was out of sight.
Then both of us rode a train just to go somewhere and come back. The commuter trains nearly broke his mind. It wasn’t the speed. It was the schedule.
Your people built a machine that is never late, and then you got bored of it. I have watched lords executed for being late. He sounded deeply offended on the machine’s behalf.
“The seats are uncomfortable.”
That is my point. You have nothing real left to fear. You invented small things to worry about.
He wasn’t quite wrong.
In Elysia, everyone fights.
His tone flattened.
I love fighting. But fighting and training stopped being fun a long time ago. I think I just wanted to see what the fighting was for.
We kept walking.
A dog on a leash earned his quiet respect when I explained it was a predator kept for companionship. When we passed a group of laughing teenagers, he went silent again.
He noted that he had forgotten what it sounded like when nothing was wrong with anyone.
We stopped in front of an Association warning board near the station. It listed nearby gate activity and threat levels. Most pedestrians walked right past it.
Explain that.
“It’s a public warning board. It tells people if there’s a gate nearby and how dangerous it’s.”
What is a gate?
I stopped walking.
“You’ve been inside one for fifteen years.”
I have been inside a room with no doors in it. I assumed that was what it was, because that is what it was. Something in him had gone very deliberate.
“Something opens in the air and stays open. There’s a space behind it that isn’t here, and things live in the space. Leave it long enough and they come out on their own.”
And nobody built it?
“Nobody knows. It just started happening.”
You post it on a wall. For everyone?
“Yes.”
He didn’t answer that for half a street.
Where I am from, during a war, the location of a thing that could take a column apart was the most expensive information in the country. You have it on a board by a train platform.
“Because there are a lot of gates now. There didn’t used to be. When the first prominent ones showed up decades ago, nobody knew what they were.”
And now?
“Now there’s a system for it. The Association manages the ranks and tracks the hunters.” I pointed at the board. “That’s why Doyle listed me as a D-rank. It goes up to S.”
“The ones the gates bring through. Are they part of this system too?”
“If any of them are walking around out here, nobody’s put them on a board.” I paused. “Nobody here knows where the gates come from. Most people stopped asking decades ago.”
No one understands what it is for. He fell quiet. Your world treats the most dangerous thing in existence like a train schedule.
We kept walking.
You said you are a D-rank. What else are you? They must have a word for what a man does.
“Paladin. The word goes on the card under the rank.”
And now?
“The card says D-rank and nothing else.”
That is not an answer to the question I asked.
“I know.”
Doyle had told me plainly what he was doing. Standard registration scans the core, my division doesn’t. He had said it across a desk with a cigarette in his hand and no particular ceremony.
What he hadn’t said, and what I worked out somewhere between the guitar and the warning board, was that the arrangement only held while nobody had a reason to look.
Good.
“That isn’t the word I’d have picked.”
Because whatever they wrote on that card would have been wrong. There is no page in their building for what you are.
He sounded incredibly smug about it.
The sun began to set. The streetlights flickered on.
Earlier today. The deer.
Azazel sounded curious.
The old core is gone, and by your own account the warmth left it years before the rest did. The pull is still there. Explain that.
I walked half a block before answering.
“There’s nothing to explain. It was never the magic.” I watched the streetlights come on ahead of us. “The healing came from the core. The knowing what to do never did.”
You hunters are taught this?
“No. It isn’t a hunter thing. It isn’t a mana thing either. It’s just there.”
Azazel was quiet for a long time. He didn’t offer a dry observation.
Nobody taught me that. Not one of my instructors, in fifteen years of instruction.
His voice was careful.
I keep waiting for it to turn out to be a trick.
“Give it time. Everything else was.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
I pulled it out. The screen showed an incoming call from Doyle. I answered it.
“I need you at the London Association headquarters,” Doyle said. “Go to the local office immediately. I’ve a cab prepared for you. Do not waste any time, or you’re dead.”
The line went dead.
I put the phone away. The quiet evening was over. I turned around and started walking fast toward the local office.