The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 013: Dorian's Hunt

"Stay here," Ethan whispered. "Don't open the box. Don't move."

"Where are you going?"

"Anywhere that isn't here."

He left Tomas in the dark under the hull with the candle snuffed and the salt ring unbroken. Then he crawled out the far side, crouched behind a stack of drying planks, and looked through a knothole at the fence.

Four of them stood at the gap in the boards. Three boys and a girl, all in academy blue, all with the polished look of people whose parents still paid for their boots. He knew every face. Piers, who liked to sit on people. Livia, whose water mark glittered at her wrist. Cade, a tall wind-awakener who laughed at everything.

And in front, grinning, fire mark glowing, Dorian Hale.

[Dorian Hale. Human. Level 14. Fire Awakener, Rank D. Surface attitude: Eager. Contemptuous.]

"I told you," Dorian said, not quietly. "The hide cart. Kessel's cousin owns this dump. Nobody else in the ward would be stupid enough." He cracked his knuckles. "Two hundred crowns, in a boatyard. I could cry."

"What if it's not him?" Livia said.

"Who else is it going to be? The Captain took him on a leash. The whole ward saw her." Dorian stepped through the gap. Heat shimmered off his shoulders. "Vale! Come on out. Don't make this embarrassing."

Ethan didn't breathe.

Twenty meters behind him, the hull. Under the hull, Tomas, the book, and the quiet box. Beyond the hull, Anselm's small house, with a pot of soup on the stove and a man inside who had begged not to be involved.

If Dorian burned the yard to flush him out, none of them would walk away.

So don't let him look at the yard.

He took the hook-knife out of his belt. He tightened his grip on the bag. Then, without giving himself time to think, he stepped out from behind the planks into plain view, thirty paces from Dorian, and raised one hand in a lazy wave.

"Morning," he said.

Dorian's grin widened. "There he is."

"Sorry about the mess." Ethan nodded at the fence. "It's a bit crowded. Want to take this somewhere with more room?"

"Like where?"

"The river."

He turned and ran.

The yard was a maze. Ethan knew mazes. He'd grown up in the lower ward, where every alley was a trap for someone slow, and Scurry did the rest. The moment he stepped into the narrow channel between two stacks of lumber, the world sped up. His legs worked on their own. His shoulders turned. He slid between a pair of sawhorses without touching either.

Behind him something went off like a thunderclap.

A line of orange fire sheared across the planks a hand's width above his head. Wood cracked. Splinters stung his neck. The smell of scorched pine rolled down the aisle.

"Run, Vale!" Dorian shouted. He sounded delighted. "Run! It's more fun!"

Wait.

Ethan skidded around the next corner and thought. Dorian was Level 14. He had a flame whip, a Rank D skill, and an ego that couldn't stand being ignored. Piers was big and slow. Livia could pull water, and there was a river thirty meters off. Cade would flank. The four of them could trap him in two minutes.

He needed to stop being the target. He needed to be the bait.

The path ahead split in two. Left toward the river and the open dock. Right toward the tar shed, where Anselm kept barrels for caulking hulls. He'd seen them from under the keel. Six of them, black, wooden, stacked in a pyramid, lids hammered shut.

He went right.

He pounded across the packed dirt, sawdust kicking up under his boots, and dove behind the stack of barrels. Panting. He pressed his back to the wood. It was warm from the sun and slick with old drips.

Footsteps. Piers first, heavy, wheezing. Cade's lighter tread, fanning left. Dorian came last, in no hurry.

"Little Vale," Dorian sang. "I can smell you from here."

"You smell like boiled pig," Ethan called back.

A flicker. The air hissed, and a whip of fire cracked across the top of the barrels. Hot droplets spattered his sleeve. He ducked, rolled, and drove the hook-knife into the nearest barrel at its base, a long gouge, shoulder-high.

Black tar began to pour.

It came out slowly, thick as syrup, rolling over the packed dirt toward the aisle. Ethan scrambled backward as it spread, nearly slipping. The smell was heavy and sweet and awful.

Dorian rounded the corner.

He stopped. He took in the barrels, the black pool, Ethan crouching ten feet beyond it with a knife. His smile twisted.

"Cute," he said. "You think I'm stupid? That's tar. You want me to light it."

"No," Ethan said. "I want you to not."

"Then why'd you-"

"Dorian, don't."

But Dorian was already raising his hand, pride burning in his face, and the air above his fingers started to glow. "I'm going to roast you," he said, "and then I'm going to take the reward and buy my mother a house."

The whip lashed out.

It hit the pool.

The sound was enormous, a flat crack like a sail tearing. Light stabbed Ethan's eyes. Flame blossomed across the tar, climbing, a wall of orange rolling toward the ceiling of the shed. The heat slapped him back against the planks.

Flinch.

One second. He couldn't move. He saw it all with perfect clarity, as if painted on glass. Dorian standing at the edge of the fire with his eyes wide, no longer smiling. A line of burning tar curling up around his boots. His sleeve catching.

Dorian screamed.

The second ended. Ethan's body came back all at once.

He was moving before he thought. Three running steps, a leap across the flaming edge, and he hit Dorian in the chest with both shoulders. They went down together, through the fire, through the door of the shed, into the packed dirt of the yard. Ethan rolled him, slapped at the burning cuffs, shoved him again.

"River!" he shouted at the others. "Where's the river?"

Cade stood frozen. Piers had both hands in his hair. Only Livia moved. She flung out an arm and a column of water rose off the bank, swung around, and crashed down over Dorian's shoulders.

Steam hissed. Dorian gasped, coughing, and sat up.

From the far side of the yard came a roar. "My tar! My shed! Gods above, you little rich brats!" Anselm barreled around the lumber stack with a bucket in each hand and murder in his face. He took in the burning shed, the soaked boy on the ground, the academy crests, and for one second he looked as though he might use a bucket as a weapon. Then he flung both at the fire.

"Water!" he bellowed at Cade and Piers. "Move your feet or I tell the Dean who burned a tradesman's yard!"

They ran for the river.

His eyebrows were gone. His left sleeve was a ruin. A patch of skin on his forearm shone red and wet. Dorian stared at Ethan for a long time, at the burn marks across Ethan's own hands, at the singed hair at his temple, at the old Stalker scar on his forearm, pink and ridged under the soot.

"You could have let me burn," Dorian whispered.

"Yeah."

"You could've just stood there. It would've been easy. Nobody would've known."

"I know."

"Then why didn't you?"

Ethan wiped the soot off his mouth. He had no good answer. He had the Hunger still humming under his ribs, and the taste of smoke in the back of his throat, and a pressing certainty that he didn't want to be a person who watched.

"I don't know," he said.