Twenty-two percent wasn’t much.
But Damian had already learned, over the last few months, that the difference between a plan that worked and one that blew up in your face rarely came down to the size of the advantage.
It came down to knowing exactly where to apply it.
He found Borin three days after the fire, and not by chance — nothing Damian did anymore was by chance — but because he’d memorized the time the guard walked the castle’s most isolated patrol, a service corridor near the back of the kitchens that almost nobody used after dinner.
“Prince Damian,” Borin said, startled, his hand going automatically to his sword hilt before he recognized who was standing in the shadow.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone. Not after what happened in your room.”
“I know,” Damian said.
“That’s why I’m here.”
Borin frowned, with the wariness of a man who’d spent his whole life being used by people with more power than him, never getting anything back besides orders to keep serving.
“What do you want, kid?”
“I want to know what your loyalty is worth,” Damian said, no wasted words, because wasted words were a luxury he couldn’t afford anymore.
“Not the part that belongs to my father. I already know that part isn’t for sale. The other part.”
The silence that followed lasted long enough for Damian to count his own heartbeats.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Borin said, finally, but his voice carried a tremor too small to be convincing.
“I do,” Damian answered.
“I know you have a sick daughter living with your sister in the lower city, because a royal guard’s pay doesn’t cover the medicine she needs, and pride won’t let you ask for help from anyone who might use it against you later. I know that, over the last two years, you’ve taken at least three small bribes from minor nobles to look the other way on things that meant nothing to the kingdom. And I know that doesn’t make you a bad man. It makes you a man who needs money more than he needs pride.”
Borin stood still long enough that Damian, for a second, thought he’d miscalculated everything — that the man was about to shout, call over other guards, report the bastard for veiled threats against an officer of the King.
Instead, Borin took a step back, leaned against the corridor’s cold wall, and laughed — a short, humorless laugh, the kind that only comes from someone who’s just been cornered by a truth they weren’t expecting to hear.
“How do you know all that,” he asked, and it wasn’t a suspicious question anymore.
It was a defeated one.
“I pay attention to things nobody thinks are worth the effort,” Damian said, the same line he’d used on Marcus Thorne months ago, because it was still true.
The deal, when it finally came together, was simple enough to fit in a single sentence, and complicated enough to take nearly an hour of whispered conversation in an empty service corridor to get there.
Damian didn’t have enough money to buy anyone’s loyalty — not yet.
But he had information, and information, he’d already learned, was worth more than gold to whoever knew how to use it.
He knew the name of a healer in the lower city who treated respiratory illness with a rare herb imported from the south, cheaper and more effective than anything sold by the palace’s licensed apothecaries — a minor NPC who, in the game, only ever showed up in an optional quest almost nobody bothered finishing, because the reward item was considered too weak to be worth the effort.
Too weak for a player hunting legendary gear.
Not too weak for a man with a sick daughter and a salary that didn’t cover the basics.
“In exchange,” Damian said, “I only ask for one thing. When someone tries to kill me again — and they will, probably soon — I need you to be on duty at the right moment. Not to defend me openly. That would draw too much attention, too fast. I just need you to see what happens, and to remember having seen it.”
Borin looked at him for a long moment, calculating — not with Damian’s speed, but with the slow, careful kind of calculation of a man used to deciding things that actually mattered for his own life.
“You’re asking me to be a witness,” he said, slowly.
“Not a protector. A witness.”
“A witness is worth more,” Damian said.
“A protector can be bribed, corrupted, or simply killed before he makes a difference. A witness, once they’ve seen something, can’t unsee it.”
Borin stayed silent a moment longer.
And then, for the first time since Damian had woken up in this world, someone besides Kael looked at him not like he was talking to a seven-year-old, but like he was talking to someone who’d already lived long enough to understand exactly the weight of what he was asking.
“Deal,” Borin said.
“But if this costs me my post, or worse, I won’t protect you again.”
“Fair,” Damian said, and for the first time in weeks, felt something that almost resembled hope.
The second attempt came twelve days later, faster and more careful than the first, exactly as Damian had predicted.
It wasn’t fire this time.
It was a shove — supposedly accidental — at the top of the spiral staircase leading to the servants’ quarters, at the exact moment Damian was descending alone, late at night, on his way back from one of his increasingly frequent meetings with Kael in the library.
He felt the hand on his back before he saw who it was.
Felt the floor vanish beneath his feet. New chapters come out on g.com first.
And, for one second that seemed to last longer than any other second of his entire life, he thought this was going to be the moment where thirty years of knowledge advantage meant absolutely nothing against the simple physics of a twelve-step fall down stone stairs.
He didn’t fall.
A heavy hand caught his arm at the last possible instant, pulling him back to the railing with enough force to leave a bruise, but not enough to actually hurt him.
“Careful, Prince,” Borin said, his voice loud enough to echo down the whole corridor, loud enough for anyone nearby to hear.
“These stairs get slippery at night. Someone ought to put up a warning here.”
Damian looked up.
At the top of the staircase, a shadow disappeared too fast for him to confirm a face — but not fast enough to stop Borin, who’d been standing there for hours, exactly where Damian had asked him to be, from clearly seeing who had just shoved a seven-year-old prince down a flight of stairs.
Damian never found out exactly what Borin said, or to whom, in the days that followed.
He didn’t ask.
Part of the advantage of having a witness, he was learning, was not needing to know the dirty details of how the information traveled afterward — he only needed to know that it traveled, and that his own hands were nowhere visible in any part of it.
What he did learn was that, a week later, Roderick was transferred — not publicly punished, not formally accused of anything, just transferred — to a border garrison three weeks’ travel from the capital, under the official justification of “needing military experience before coming of age.”
Nobody mentioned Damian’s name in connection with the decision.
And that was exactly how he wanted it.
That night, sitting in the temporary room that was starting to feel a little too permanent, Damian reviewed the last twelve days with a kind of cautious satisfaction he still wasn’t sure he was allowed to feel.
One piece removed from the board.
Without me having to touch it.
Second piece to worry about: Darius, who just lost his tool and doesn’t yet know that I know it was his tool.
Third piece, still without a clear shape: Kael, who remains both the best ally and the biggest risk in this entire castle, and I still haven’t decided which one weighs more.
He closed his eyes, listening to the distant sound of someone arranging a new straw bed in the room next door — his own still smelled too much like smoke to sleep in.
Days until the Players Arrive: 10,849