The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 028: Pay Day

Six days later, the Ashen Road brought them back to Greywatch with their boots in tatters.

They came through the gate at dusk, caked in grey, and the town closed around them like a hand. Ethan's shoulders ached in a dull, deep way he'd begun to find comforting. The northern outposts had been a string of timber huts on bare rock. Soldiers who stared at the supplies as if they were bread from heaven. Nothing else had come out of the ash. Bram had walked at the head of the column the whole way and not once spoken to Ethan.

That was the worst part. Ethan would have preferred a hand on his collar.

"Pay day," Hargo announced, striding into the Yard behind the Guild hall with his axe over his shoulder and his chest out. "Line up, porters. Hunters to the left."

A Guild clerk sat at a trestle table with a ledger and a locked iron box. He counted silver into five stacks and handed Hargo the largest one with a respectful bow. Hargo weighed it in his hand and smiled.

"One hundred and twenty," he said. "Well earned. Selka, thirty. Doran, twenty-five. Bram, thirty. Myself, thirty-five." He divided the coins with a cheerful rattle. "And a tenth for the porters, as agreed. Twelve silver. Three of you. That's four apiece."

"Four," Wrenna said flatly.

"Less equipment wear, of course."

"What equipment?"

"The cart. The barrel. The sundry costs of two days' delay." Hargo looked wounded. "Do you imagine hounds are free? I've counted. Three silver off the top."

Ethan stared at him. In the corner of his eye the window flickered. [Hargo Dane. True attitude: Satisfied. Dishonest.]

"That leaves nine," Hargo went on, "so three apiece, give or take a copper. Take it up with the Guild if you disagree."

"Hargo," said Hal Dunning softly. "Wrenna has a fractured arm."

"Then she should have been quicker." Hargo shrugged. He dropped three silver into Hal's hand, three into Wrenna's, three into Ethan's. They were warm from his palm. "A pleasure, as always."

"Hargo," said a voice like gravel.

Bram stood at the edge of the circle with his shield on his back. He hadn't moved. His arms were folded, and his face was perfectly still.

"The porters held the cart under hound fire," he said. "I saw it. Two of them put themselves between the pack and the supplies. That's hazard rate."

"Bram--"

"Triple."

"That's absurd. That would be--"

"Triple," Bram said again, quietly. "Or I tell the Guild clerk what I saw at the hollow, with my own eyes. Where our leader was. For how long."

The yard went very still.

Hargo's face did something complicated. Red crept up his neck. He looked at Selka, who stared at her boots. At Doran, who found the clouds very interesting. At the clerk, who had stopped writing.

"Fine," he snapped. "Fine. Take your tenner. Take twelve." He flung another handful of coins at the porters' feet. "Don't expect to work for Iron Heron again."

"I wouldn't dream of it," said Wrenna, and picked up every coin.

Bram turned away without looking at anyone. Ethan watched his back until it disappeared through the gate.

The registration desk at the Guild hall was empty except for Oake, who sat with his chin in his hands and a candle guttering beside him. When he saw Ethan he sat up so quickly that his chair squealed.

"Gray," he hissed. "Come here. Quickly."

Ethan crossed the room. The hall was strange. Half the benches were empty. There was none of the roar he remembered, the shoving, the shouting. The few hunters who sat at the long tables talked in low voices and glanced sideways at the doors.

"I need to log your work," Oake said, loudly, for the room's benefit. Then, low: "Sit. Pretend to fill out a form."

Ethan sat.

"You're back," Oake whispered. "Thank every god. Do you know what happened?"

"The review?"

"Five days ago. At noon." Oake's hands shook on the quill. "They gathered the Rank F carriers. Fourteen of them. Tea, a few questions. They were taken into the back wing. The Wardens kept the door locked." He swallowed. "Six came out, after three hours. They looked well. They said they'd answered some questions about their health."

"And the rest?"

"They haven't come out."

Ethan's blood went cold.

"The Wardens say they were 'reassigned,'" Oake said. "To a Crown program. It's all very official. There was paper." He wiped his face. "Do you know one of them? Porter Tobb. A thin man with a cough. I registered him four years ago. He used to leave me a mint on the desk every time he renewed."

Ethan thought of the line in the Yard. Porter Tobb. True attitude: Afraid. He remembered the cough.

"He's gone?"

"They all are." Oake's lips trembled. "I didn't say a word. I stamped the forms."

"It's not your fault."

"It's exactly my fault." The clerk drew a shaky breath. "I can't do anything about it. But I can give you something. Something small. Let me explain how the ladder works, so you'll understand what they're counting."

He pulled out a clean sheet of paper and drew a line down the middle.

"Rank," he said, "is what you're born with. The crystal measures it at eighteen. F is no affinity at all. Then E, D, C, B, A, and at the top, S. Fewer than a hundred S-rank awakeners in the whole kingdom." He wrote the letters, small and neat. "Rank decides your badge. Iron for F, the carriers. Bronze for E and D. Silver for C and B. Gold for A and S. The Guild assigns work by badge. The Crown pays by badge."

"And level?"

Oake blinked. "Level is different. Level is what you earn. Kills, hunts, survival, how many years you've kept breathing. Anyone can raise their level, in theory. Anyone." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "In practice, the ones who raise it are the ones with the gift to survive. Rank decides who gets the chance. A strong F can be Level 30. Nobody will ever know."

"Nobody keeps track of Level for an F?"

"Why would they? We don't register it. A carrier has no reason." Oake looked up. "But the Wardens do. That's the thing. The Wardens keep a private ledger of Rank F carriers with unusual endurance. Unusual senses." He lowered his voice. "I think that's what the review is. I think they're looking for the ones who don't fit."

Ethan stared at the paper.

Unusual endurance. Unusual senses. He'd been carrying forty kilos without sweating. He'd heard hounds at forty meters.

They're looking for the ones who survive.

"Thank you," he said.

"Don't." Oake smeared his hand across his forehead. "Go home, Gray. Be a very ordinary carrier. Please."

Rhea was waiting in the room at the Rusty Ladle with a mug of cold tea and her sword across her knees.

She looked up when he came in, and her face did something he'd never seen before. It crumpled, just for an instant, with relief. Then she stood and gripped his shoulder hard and shoved him down into a chair.

"You're thinner," she said.

"I'm not."

"You are." She sat opposite. On the bed, Tomas lifted his head from the old book. His lens was crooked. His hands were stained with ink. "Did you hear?"

"Oake told me. Fourteen carriers."

"Six came out," said Tomas quietly. "And told the others there was nothing to fear. They looked well. They drank their tea." His ink-stained fingers tightened on the old book. "Nobody has asked whether they remember what they were asked."

Rhea's voice was low and steady. "Fourteen went in, Ethan. Eight didn't come out."