The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 015: The Ward Girl

Anselm believed in work the way some people believe in weather.

"Hold it flat," he said, for the fourth time. "Flat. Not at an angle. You're driving a rivet, not killing a snake."

Ethan held it flat. He swung the hammer. The rivet went in crooked and the rib shuddered.

"Again."

It was an hour past dawn. The yard smelled of wet ash and fresh pine. The burned tar shed stood at the end of the lot like a black tooth, and the morning fog was still thick on the river. Ethan's hands were wrapped in strips of cloth, and every swing sent a bright, sour ache up his wrists. His shoulder throbbed where the gnawers had bitten him. The blisters on his leg had gone from raw to tight.

He didn't mind. It was a relief to hit something that didn't hit back.

Anselm took the hammer, struck the rivet twice, and the head sat flush. "Like that. Don't think so hard." He handed it back. "Fifty more. I'm going to the lumberyard. If a Warden comes, you're my apprentice from the country. Your name is Eli. You're slow."

"I can be slow."

"I noticed." Anselm stomped off through the gate.

From under the hull came a thin, muffled voice. "He's right about the angle."

"Go back to sleep, Tomas."

"I'm not sleeping. I'm resting my eyes, and critiquing."

Ethan swung. Missed. Swung again.

The pulse arrived a few seconds later.

It came from the fence, low and quick, a single light breath. Not a Warden, who would have come in a pair. Not a neighbor, who would have shouted. It stood at the gap in the boards with its weight on its toes, the way a person stands when they've been deciding for a long time whether to step through.

Ethan set the hammer down.

"I can hear you," he said, without turning. "If you're here to arrest me, you should have brought a lot more people."

A pause. Then a gloved hand pushed the board aside.

Seraphine Ward stepped into the yard.

She wore a plain grey cloak over her academy skirt, hood back, hair pinned in a hurry. Her cheeks were red from the cold, and her breath fogged in front of her in a ghost of white. Frost grew on the hilt of the rivet-hammer where her sleeve brushed it. She didn't seem to notice.

[Seraphine Ward. Human. Level 19. Surface attitude: Afraid. Resolved.]

"Dorian came home last night with burns and no eyebrows," she said. "He told the whole common room he'd lost you in the river. He's a bad liar. He always has been."

"He looked like he was trying."

"He was. That's the part that made me look." She stopped five paces away. "I followed his footprints in the ash on the road. They stopped at this fence. That's all."

"That's a lot."

"Not for me." She glanced at the burned shed, at the half-built hull, at the sooty bucket, and then at Ethan's bandaged hands. Something moved across her face too quickly to read. "You're working."

"It's my rent."

"I thought you'd be..." She stopped. "I don't know what I thought."

He didn't say anything. In the grey light, with her cheeks flushed and her hair coming loose, she looked like a girl he might have known once, a long time ago, in a different life. The tug came again behind his ribs, soft, like a hand on a sleeve, and went nowhere.

He kept his voice even. "Why are you here, Seraphine?"

"To tell you something."

"Then tell me."

"Voss moves tonight."

The words dropped into the fog like stones.

"My father hosted him for dinner," she said. "In the small dining room. I wasn't supposed to be in the hall, but I was. They didn't know. Voss said the north ward boats had been seen carrying hides. That a null was somewhere along the river. He said, Tomorrow night, before the freeze. My father said, Take the Stalkers." Her hands were clenched in her cloak. "Eight of them, Ethan. He said eight."

Ethan's stomach turned cold.

"Collared?"

"I don't know. I don't know what that means." She shook her head. "They're kept in the Ironkeep. He said he would bring them down the east road at dusk."

He nodded slowly. Eight Stalkers. Eight pulses he would have to read in the dark. Tomas, Anselm, the quiet box. The yard was nothing but wood and tar.

He ran the numbers in his head, the way he'd run them against the Slug. One Stalker had nearly killed him with all of his luck and a dagger. He was Level 3 now. He had a hook-knife, a bad leg, and a collar's imprint that was nine percent short of breaking. Even if the band were whole, even if he touched it to every Stalker in turn, he'd be on his knees before the third.

Fighting wasn't a plan. It was a funeral.

"Why are you telling me?"

"Because it's true."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the only one I've got." Her chin lifted. "You want me to say I'm sorry for the tower. I am. You want me to say I didn't know. I didn't, not all of it. But I know my father's name is on something that killed nine people. I read it in his study, and I didn't have the nerve to say so." She laughed once, short and thin. "I'm Level 19, I'm the best frost mage the academy's seen in ten years, and I couldn't make my mouth move."

"Your father signed the release order for the Stalker," Ethan said quietly. "The one that nearly ate me."

"I know."

"You knew before the exam?"

"No." The word came out cracked. "No. I swear to you. I found out after."

He studied her face, hard. He had no Appraise yet, just the window and its plain, flat surface reading. Afraid. Resolved. It didn't say whether she was lying.

But he had spent twenty years watching people, and he'd learned that liars never held their eyes this steady.

"You said it was always going to be this," he said. "On the stairs. Loud enough for the whole hall."

She flinched. "I said it so a man in the gallery would stop looking at you."

"What man?"

"I can't tell you." She wrapped the cloak tighter. Her breath trembled in the air. "He was watching. He'd been watching for a week. If I'd looked at you with anything but contempt, he'd have known. I can't explain it better than that. I don't have it explained yet myself."

Ethan said nothing. He thought of the slow, even breath on the landing above the gate.

"I should go," she said. "Someone will miss me at breakfast."

"Seraphine."

She turned at the fence, one hand on the board.

"Leave the ward before dusk," she said. "Take the old man and whoever else is with you. Don't wait for the east road, and don't trust the bridge. There's a bell in the north ward chapel. If it rings twice, they're already inside."

She pushed through the gap. Her boots crunched in the ash. Then, halfway out, she stopped, with her back to him and her shoulders very straight.

"Ethan."

"What?"

"If I told you something true, something I couldn't prove, would you believe it?"

He looked at her narrow back. At the frost spreading slowly along the fence board under her glove.

"I don't know," he said.

"That's fair," said Seraphine, and was gone.