The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 011: Two Hundred Crowns

The hide cart smelled worse than the drain.

Ethan lay flat under a pile of raw cowhides with his knees pulled up and his bag clutched to his chest. Each hide was cold and slick and stiff at the edges. Flies walked on his neck. Somewhere to his left, a carter named Wolt muttered to a mule, and Rhea's boots tapped along beside the wheel.

She had paid Wolt in silver and promises. She hadn't told him who was under the hides. He hadn't asked. In the lower ward, people got old by not asking.

"Keep still," Rhea said, low, not turning her head. "Wardens on the corner."

Ethan stopped breathing.

Stalker's Instinct had already told him. Two steady pulses ahead, a third behind, standing near a lamppost. One of them was pasting something to the wood. He heard the brush slap, the scrape of a flat hand smoothing paper.

"Two hundred crowns," a woman said, somewhere near. "For a null."

"Ten years of rent," a man answered.

"He's got to be dead already. Nobody lives through that."

"Then why's the Warden posting him?"

The cart rolled on. The mule's hooves clopped on cobbles. Ethan counted the turns. Left at the dyer's, right at the cooper's. Another crowd. Another poster, and another, until it seemed every wall in the ward had grown his face.

Through a gap between two hides he caught one of them. Black ink, a broken nose, a mouth drawn a little too grim. The artist had made him look dangerous. He almost laughed. Nobody who had known him for twenty years would have called him that.

"Captain Kessel."

The cart stopped.

A Warden's voice, male, young, polite in the way of someone who has been told to be. "Pardon, ma'am. The Inspector has asked us to check every wagon leaving the north ward."

"Inspector Voss may check my cart when he buys my boots," Rhea said. "It's hides, Warden. Rotten ones, for the river dump. Want to look?"

A pause. Ethan heard the flies. He heard a wet, thick sound as someone lifted a corner of the top hide.

"Gods." A cough. "No, that's, no. Go on."

"Wolt, move."

The cart lurched. Then something hit the wooden side, hard. Bang.

Every muscle in Ethan's body locked.

Flinch.

A sword hilt, he realized. The second Warden had rapped the boards, checking for hollow sides. Ethan lay completely rigid under the hides, eyes wide, lips parted, not even breathing. One second. Two. Hands rattled the cart's edge. Someone lifted the hide above his shoulder.

Light fell across his hand.

Then the hide dropped again, flapping. "Smells like a grave," the Warden said. "Go."

The cart rolled on.

Ethan let out a breath that shook all the way down. For once the Flinch hadn't killed him. It had made him look exactly like a dead cow.

"Don't say anything," Rhea muttered.

"I wasn't going to."

"You were going to be pleased about that. I could hear it."

He was a little pleased. He kept it to himself.

The boatyard sat where the river bent east, behind a rotting fence and a stack of rain-black planks. A half-built hull leaned on wooden props in the middle of a yard of sawdust. Beside it, a squat man with forearms like barrels was hammering rivets into a rib. He didn't stop when the cart pulled in.

[Anselm Kessel. Human. Level 9. Surface attitude: Reluctant. Loyal.]

"Rhea." He didn't look up. "Not today."

"Anselm."

"I mean it. I've had Wardens in the yard twice since breakfast. Counting my planks. Asking about my taxes." The hammer rang. "Whatever you've brought me, I'm not signing for it."

Rhea climbed down. Ethan slid out from under the hides and landed hard on his heels, dripping, covered in tallow and flecks of dried blood. He stood there with the reek of the cart still coming off him.

Anselm finally looked.

His eyes went from Ethan's face to Rhea's, and the hammer lowered.

"No," he said. "No, no. Not him. That's the boy off the poster. That's two hundred crowns, standing in my yard."

"He's not a poster. He's a favor."

"I only owe you one favor."

"This is the one."

Anselm set the hammer on the rib and wiped his palms on his apron. He was breathing like a man who has run a mile. "Rhea, you're a captain. You've got a pension coming. If the Warden finds him here, I lose the yard. You lose the badge. He loses his head."

"I know."

"Then why?"

She didn't answer right away. She looked at the hull, the long curved ribs of it, then at Ethan. When she spoke it was quiet and flat.

"Because he's alive, Ans. Nobody else walked out of that corridor."

Anselm's mouth worked. He glanced at Ethan again, longer this time, as if trying to see what it was that made a null survive. Then he swore and kicked a plank.

"Under the hull," he said. "There's a space between the keel and the cradle. I use it for the good rum. It's dry. Don't touch the rum."

"Thank you," Ethan said.

"Don't. Just don't." He turned his back, picked up the hammer, and started riveting again, hard. "Gods, Rhea. You're going to get us all hanged."

By dusk, Ethan had scrubbed off the worst of the cart. The space under the hull was cramped but dry, and it smelled of tar and wood shavings. Anselm had thrown in a blanket and a wedge of cheese and left without saying anything else. Out by the fence, a lantern flickered. Rhea sat on an upturned bucket with a cup of tea gone cold in her hands, watching the river slide by.

Ethan crawled out and sat beside her on the sawdust.

"Will you go back?" he asked. "To the tower?"

"In the morning." She turned the cup in her hands. "I'm still on the roster. If I disappear, they'll know I'm with you. If I go back and keep my head down, I can read what they read."

"That's dangerous."

"It is." She said it flatly. "I'm not going back as their captain, though. I'm going back as yours."

He didn't have anything to say to that. The river made a small noise against the bank. Somewhere in the ward, a church bell tolled the hour, thin and far, and he flinched without freezing, just a twitch in his shoulder.

"You're getting better at that," Rhea said.

"At being scared?"

"At being scared and not dying."

"You don't have to do any of this, you know," Ethan said. "You could still walk away. Nobody has seen you with me."

"Don't tell me what I don't have to do." There was no heat in it. "I've been telling myself that for four years."

She lifted the cup, thought better of it, and put it down. "I haven't told you everything. About why I came looking for you."

"You said the nine nulls."

"I said nine." Her voice was quiet. "I never said which one was number six."

Ethan turned to look at her.

She was staring at the water. Her face was perfectly still, the way a lake is still the moment before it freezes.

"Tobin Kessel," she said. "Nineteen years old. Fell down the lower stairs the night he failed the crystal. The tower's report says he slipped." She set her jaw. "He was my little brother."