The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 019: What Voss Wanted

"Do you know what you have done?" Voss said again.

His voice was a wet rasp. The cut along his jaw still bled, and every word seemed to cost him. He sat in the cold water with his back to the wall and one hand clamped to his ribs. The freed Stalker stood over him, silent, its chest mouth closed. Nobody moved.

"I've broken a collar," Ethan said.

The window hovered beside the wounded man, small and gold.

[Lucan Voss. Level 41. Vitality: 58 / 340. True attitude: Resigned. Afraid of something above him.]

Afraid. Of what? Not of Ethan. Not of the Stalker looming over him. The gold text didn't say.

"You've broken one of eleven hundred." Voss coughed, and a thread of red ran down his chin. "Do you understand what they hold back?"

"Tell me."

"Why should I?"

"Because I'm not going to kill you." Ethan heard Rhea shift behind him and kept talking. "And because you're bleeding, and your men aren't here yet, and I'd bet you'd like someone to hear it before you die."

Voss laughed. It turned into a cough halfway through.

"Clever," he whispered. "You're cleverer than your file said."

"There's a file?"

"There's always a file." Voss's pale eyes slid to Tomas, hovering at the mouth of the east channel with the old book pressed to his chest. "You've read it, old man. I can see it on your face. Tell the boy what the Seat is."

Tomas said nothing. His mouth worked. When he finally spoke his voice was thin.

"A place that must be filled."

"Yes." Voss closed his eyes briefly. "It's been empty for three hundred years. Do you know what happens when the Seat stands empty? The rifts open. The Tide rises, a little more each year. We've held it back with iron and ritual. With collars. With the blood of a few." He opened his eyes. "We tried filling it. Nine times, Mr. Vale. Nine candidates. Empty ones, null ones, with nothing in them to fight back. Every one failed."

"You killed them."

"The Seat killed them. We only brought them to the door."

"Or something in it did," Tomas said. His voice shook, but he stepped forward anyway, clutching the book. "The book calls it a vessel. It says the Seat doesn't fill, it takes. What sits in it, Inspector? What's waiting?"

Voss looked at him for a long moment. Something unreadable crossed his bleeding face.

"I don't know," he said at last. "That is the truth, old man. The Council doesn't tell me. I hold the key. I don't open the door."

It was the first thing he had said that sounded entirely honest, and it frightened Ethan more than anything else.

Ethan felt sick. The cold in the chamber seemed to soak up through his boots. He thought of the corridor, the bricked-up seal, the hands that had picked a stair for each of them to fall down.

"Tobin Kessel was nineteen," Rhea said.

Her voice was perfectly flat. She hadn't moved. She stood in the water with her sword lowered, staring at Voss with a calm that was far more frightening than rage.

"I know," Voss said.

"Say his name."

"Tobin Kessel." There was no mockery in it. He might have been reading it off a stone. "He was unsuitable. I regret it."

Rhea took a step forward.

"Rhea," Ethan said.

"He regrets it."

"Rhea. Please."

She stopped. Her sword hand was white to the wrist.

"Who else?" Ethan said, turning back. "Who sits on the Council? The roster had three names. Dorn, Ward, Cross."

"Eleven names," Voss said. "I'll give you the ones that matter. Maric Dorn funds it. Aldric Ward guards it. Halbert Cross keeps the books. The others vote, and they vote the way they're told."

"And Garrick Vale?"

The Inspector's mouth twisted.

"Ah," he whispered. "You want to know about your uncle."

Ethan went still.

"He was a witness, Mr. Vale. Twelve years ago. When the null corridor was first written into the Statute, Garrick Vale put his name beneath it as a respectable man of an old house. He asked what the clause was for." Voss coughed. "I told him it protected family dignity. He believed me, because he wanted to. That's most of what a conscience is."

"He knew."

"He never asked twice." Voss shrugged against the wall, a small, bitter motion. "I would say he's a decent man. Weak. I'd also say a decent man doesn't leave a letter withdrawing his nephew's allowance on the same night the Wardens close in."

The words went through Ethan like a hand through a curtain.

By dawn. The Vale name will no longer be extended to you.

"He was warning me," Ethan said slowly.

"Perhaps. Or protecting himself. You'll have to ask him." Voss smiled, thin and bloodless. "I never could tell with Garrick."

Footsteps.

Not Voss's. They came from far off, down the long tunnel behind the grate, a rhythm of boots in step and a metallic jingle of chains. Fifteen men. Twenty.

Rhea's head came up. "Wardens."

"Twenty seconds," Voss murmured. "I told you." He lifted his chin toward the sword at Ethan's feet. "Take it, if you like. It's a fine blade. You could finish me, and you could be a murderer before they reach you."

Ethan didn't touch the sword.

"No," he said.

"A pity. It would have made things simpler." Voss turned his head, slow and careful, toward the dark mouth of the channel where 117-B still lurked. "Carry," he whispered.

The command came out a ghost of a word, barely a breath. But the Stalker heard it. It slunk out of the dark, the collar on its throat gleaming, and hunkered beside the wounded man. Voss slid a hand around its neck and pulled himself onto its back.

"Kneel," he said, almost gently.

Ethan's knees went out from under him.

One second. The trace again, that terrible bowing sweetness. He pitched forward onto his hands in the water. By the time he could lift his head the Stalker had leapt, a black blur, to the lip of the roof hole where the dusk came through. Voss looked down from its back, a white face and a bloody jaw.

"Ask your uncle what he was paid," he said, and was gone.

Silence.

The water dripped. The footsteps grew louder.

The freed Stalker, 117-D, looked at Ethan for a long, strange moment. It had no eyes, but he felt the weight of its attention anyway, something huge and sad and cautious. Then it turned and slipped into the dark of the west channel and was gone.

Rhea crossed the water in four strides and dragged him to his feet. Her face was grey. There was blood on her chin where she'd bitten her lip.

"We leave," she said. "Now. Tonight. Before they find the sluice."

"Garrick," Ethan whispered.

"Later."

"He knew, Rhea."

"I said later." She jerked her head at the west channel. "Tomas. Move."

Tomas stumbled over a stone and Rhea hauled him up by the elbow without breaking stride. Ethan fell in behind them, his wounded arm tucked against his chest, the cold water slapping at his shins. His mind kept replaying the same few words. Ask your uncle what he was paid. It would have been easier if Voss had been lying. He'd spent years learning to tell when people were. He had learned nothing about this.

Behind them the tunnel filled with light. Lantern beams swung across the stone. A voice called out, shocked, and another answered.

They ran into the dark.