The S class Guide belongs to the Duke

~Chapter Nine~

The hand on her shoulder was warm and friendly, and Elewisa nearly screamed anyway.

She spun so fast her hood slipped. A young man in a black coat stood grinning down at her, sharp-featured, dark hair tied at the nape, the edge of a B-Class mark showing on his wrist. Nevan.

"Easy," he said, lifting both hands. "I don't bite. But you, my dear, are one of the worst spies I have ever met. You hid behind a barrel. A barrel, with half your skirt hanging out the side."

"I wasn't spying."

"Then what were you doing in a training yard full of armed men?"

"Fetching water."

Nevan looked at the barrel, then at her empty hands. "With what?"

"I got lost."

"In a mansion you've served at for years?" He tilted his head. "Half these men can crack a wall with one punch. If a practice blade slipped, nobody would have found you until supper."

Her mouth opened and nothing useful came out. Her cold still sat in her chest, a thin rattle under every breath, and her scalp ached where Petra's fingers had been. She lowered her gaze to her boots. "I'm sorry. I was curious. About them. The Ravenguard."

Everyone in the manor had whispered the name since the black coats rode in. Fifteen Espers who had closed a B-Class gate without losing one of their own, if the kitchen maids were to be believed.

"Curious," Nevan repeated, delighted. "About fifteen Espers who have not smiled once since they arrived."

"Of course."

Elewisa kept a straight face.

"You are a terrible liar, you know."

"I know," she said miserably.

"But I quite like you." He was still grinning when a shadow fell across them both.

"Vice Captain." The speaker was lean and hard-eyed, Lieutenant Marek by the stripe on his sleeve, and he looked at Elewisa the way a man looks at a stain. "Is this why the drill stopped?"

"She's just lost, Marek. There's nothing to it."

"A maid is standing on a live drill line." Marek stepped closer, and she backed up until the crates met her spine. "Do you know what you interrupted? Forty minutes of formation work, ruined because you could not keep your feet away from the training grounds."

Across the yard, the count's knights had stopped drilling. They stood in their rows of Hailan blue and watched, and a few of them did not bother to hide their interest. Sir Brannic, the red-bearded one, folded his arms and said nothing, but his eyes had gone flat and hard.

"I did not mean to," Elewisa whispered.

"Meaning has nothing to do with it." Marek raised his voice, pitched so the knights could hear it too. "We share this ground by courtesy, and the count's men seem content to let maids wander between live blades. If she is hurt, it is the Duke's unit that answers for it. Not the count's guard. Ours."

"Then keep your own people off our half," one of the knights called back.

"She is one of ours, you black-coated—"

"Enough," Nevan said, stepping between them. "Marek, she's just a girl who got lost. A warning is sufficient."

"Then you should know better than to coddle her, Vice Captain."

Elewisa glanced across the yard at Cedric, eyes wide and pleading. Cedric stood with his arms folded and his face unreadable. He did not move.

"Look at me when I am speaking," Marek said, and reached for her arm.

Brannic jerked his chin at the youngest knight beside him. The boy bolted for the manor at a dead run.

A hand closed around Marek's wrist before his fingers touched her sleeve.

Caius stood behind him, golden hair disordered, chest heaving as if he had crossed the grounds without stopping once. "That is enough, Lieutenant."

"Master," Elewisa breathed. She caught his sleeve in both hands. "Please. I am fine. It was my mistake; I will apologise; please don't do this."

He looked down at her. Her fingers trembled against the blue wool, her eyes enormous, and for one moment every word he had gathered on the run across the grounds wavered. Then he straightened. She was his responsibility. A host could not watch a guest's man lay hands on his household and say nothing, not with his own knights watching.

"She belongs to House Hailan; that means she is under my protection," Caius said, calm and clear enough for every man in the yard to hear. "If she had made a mistake, then she will answer to me. House Hailan has always taken responsibility for its people. We do not hide behind other people's names, unlike some."

His gaze slid to Cedric, and the corner of his mouth lifted. Behind him, a ripple of approval went through the knights.

Cedric had not moved, but something about the line of his jaw had changed. He was looking at the small hand knotted in the count's sleeve, and the sight sat badly with him in a way he could not name. He did not like it. He had no reason to.

"Prove it," Cedric said.

"Prove what?"

"That your house takes responsibility." He walked toward them, unhurried. "She interrupted my men's training and caused a ruckus. Let her make it right. Let her serve me for as long as my business keeps me in your manor."

"What?" Elewisa said.

She looked up at him properly for the first time. The same tall frame she had half seen at the riverbank, the same cold eyes, and she had told him then to keep out of her master's affairs. Now he wanted her at his elbow every day.

"She is unwell," Caius said stiffly. "I have ordered her to rest."

"She hid behind a barrel for ten minutes." Cedric's smile was thin and cold. "I see nothing wrong with her."

"Your Grace."

"Unless the count cannot keep his word in front of his own men?"

A muscle jumped in Caius's cheek. He could not refuse. Not here, with the Ravenguard on one side and his own knights on the other, not without proving the very thing the Duke had accused him of.

Elewisa saw it. She saw the way his shoulders locked, the way his hand curled at his side, and something in her chest went quiet and certain. He had given her a night and a meeting. She would not be another weight on his back. And if she was honest, it might even be a mercy. A week inside the Duke's rooms was a week away from Petra's buckets and Petra's assaults.

"It is all right, master." She let go of his sleeve and stepped forward. "I will do my best as a maid of House Hailan."

She bowed to Cedric, low and careful. "I will attend you from this day, Your Grace."

Caius exhaled through his teeth. "I have a condition," he said. "She is my personal maid, and I will not release her. She keeps her duties to me. She serves the Duke a few times a week, and no more."

Cedric considered him. Then he grunted, a single flat sound that might have meant yes.

Nevan let out a breath he had clearly been holding and muttered, to no one, "Someone is going to need a very large drink."

That night the lamp in Cedric's room burned low, and the file lay open on the desk where Nevan had left it.

Elewisa. Nineteen years old. Orphaned at six in the Caelmark Gate Outbreak, both parents lost in the outbreak . Taken into the household of House Hailan as a ward and then as a maid. No registered class. No marks. Nothing to remark on at all.

It was the file of an ordinary, pitiable girl.

He read it again, slower, and the words began to blur. Caelmark. The word dragged something loose, and the lamplight tilted.

Smoke. The smell of antiseptic and blood in a canvas tent. Rows of cots with people on them who were not moving, a man begging for water, a healer running. A small boy stood near the entrance with his father's coat dragging on the ground, because his father had said Stay here and don't move.

In the corner, a girl sat with her knees pulled to her chest. Her shoulders shook. She cried the way children cry when they have understood too much, quietly, with her whole body. The boy took a step toward her, and another. He crouched. He reached out a hand.

She began to lift her head.

The memory snapped shut.

Cedric sat very still. Then the pain came, a hot iron driven slowly beneath his ribs, and his fingers whitened on the edge of the desk. He dragged in a breath and managed one clear word through the link.

"Nevan."

The door opened a moment later. "Captain?"

"Send word to the inn." He straightened, his voice even through gritted teeth. "Tell them I'm on my way."

In the registry hall across town, Elewisa stood in a hooded coat in the back of the line, hands buried in her sleeves.

The mark under her collar was hidden for the next few hours. She could have walked past any examiner and they would see only a plain girl. She wanted to see what they would do to the rest.

The Awakened Registry was cold gray stone, a long hall lined with clerks at high desks and a glass plinth at the far end where a pale stone glowed. She remembered being brought here at nine with the other maids for the mandatory testing. A bored clerk had pressed her hand to the stone; it had stayed dark, and she had been sent home. Back then she had been nothing at all.

A girl a little younger than she was stepped up to the plinth now. Her mother stood close behind, twisting her apron. The girl laid her palm on the stone.

It flared a bright, steady blue.

"D-Class Guide," the clerk announced. A heavy gray seal was pressed to a ledger. A bracelet of dull metal was fastened around the girl's wrist before she could speak. "Registered under the Crown. Assignment proceedings begin at dawn. An officer will collect her."

"Collect her?" the mother said. "Where? For how long?"

"For as long as the Empire requires."

Two men in imperial gray had already appeared at the girl's elbows. The girl looked at her wrist, then at her mother, as if her own hands belonged to someone else. Her mother's cry rang through the stone hall.

Elewisa's stomach dropped. A bracelet, a seal, a dawn collection. Registration was not safety. It was a leash. She was moving before she had decided to move, shoving her way through the line toward the door.

"You. Hood." A guard turned. "Name and ticket number."

"I'm sorry."

She turned to leave.

"Stop right there."

She ran. The cold air hit her chest and the rattle in her lungs turned to a cough, but she did not slow. His boots pounded behind her — she cut through a fruit seller's stall, ducked under a laundry line, slid on wet cobbles around a corner and into a lane she had never seen. For one horrible second his hand grazed the back of her hood and she thought she was caught. Then the footsteps faded.

She leaned against the wall, gasping, and looked up.

Paper lanterns hung across the alley, glowing amber and green. People talked in low voices under them. A woman sold steaming buns from a cart. A broad man with a scarred jaw sat on a barrel with a sword across his knees. Over a wide door hung a hand-painted sign that read *Free Hall*.

"What is this place?" she asked the bun seller, still catching her breath.

The woman looked her up and down. "Never been?"

"No."

"It is for people who would rather not be counted. No registry here, no Crown bracelets, no questions." The woman shrugged. "It is not against the law, so there is no need to be scared. The Empire has tried to close it. Twice. The Hall has friends in rooms you and I will never see."

"What do people do here?"

"Take work, mostly. Missions come through the board inside. Guides and Espers who want coin without a collar." She handed over a bun. "But the door does not open for just anyone. The Hall takes people of value. Walk in with nothing to offer and you will be walking right back out."

"Value?"

"A blade, a skill, a secret worth the price. Something the Hall can use. And you swear the vow at the desk. What you see inside stays inside, or you will not like what the Hall does about it." She tilted her head. "Do you have something to offer, girl?"

Elewisa stared at the door. Missions. A place where she could find Espers who needed guiding, and no one would ask what she was or why. After the hall she had just fled, it was the first door in two days that did not feel like a trap.

She had one thing to offer. She just could not say it aloud.

"How do I register?" she asked. "Here."

"Table at the back. Ask for Tam."

The broad man with the scarred jaw stepped off his barrel and blocked the doorway. He looked her over slowly, hood to boots. "Name."

"I don't have one to give."

"Good answer. What do you have to offer?"

Her throat went dry. "I don't know yet. But I would like to find out."

For a long moment he said nothing. Then he stepped aside. "Then we will find out soon enough. Go on."

Inside, the hall was warm and loud. A board covered one wall, pinned over with slips of paper in a dozen hands. At the back, behind a grated window, a gaunt clerk with ink on his fingers did not look up.

"First time?"

"Yes."

"Then you know the rules. Vow first." He slid a small iron token across the counter and a slip of paper beside it. "Press your thumb to the seal. What happens in the Hall, stays in the Hall."

She pressed her thumb to the seal. It stung, a bright prick, and a thin line of red bloomed against the iron.

"Pick a handle. Name does not matter. Class check next. The stone reads what you're worth, and the Hall decides if you stay." He jerked his chin toward the table beside him.

On it sat a device the size of a bread loaf, made of dark crystal veined with silver. Mana stone — the kind that fell out of gates when they closed, a reader of classes, rare, expensive, and unforgiving. It hummed faintly against the wood.

"Palm flat over the top. It reads you in a breath."

*\[Warning: External reader-stone detected. Concealment duration: 2 hours remaining.\]*

Elewisa swallowed. The mark was hidden. It could not betray her now. She had told herself that on the way here. She stepped up to the table and lifted her hand, fingers trembling, and held it above the stone.

The humming stopped.