The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 032: Rift Gate Rules

"I've decided," Bram said again, and then he stood there in the corridor with his hat in his hands, looking as though the words had used up all his breath.

Rhea moved first. She crossed the room, put her shoulder against the door, and opened it all the way. "In. Quickly. Before the whole inn hears you."

Bram ducked under the lintel. The room shrank around him. He nodded to Tomas, who was clutching the book to his chest, and to Mira, who had pulled her knees up and was glaring at him over them like a cat on a ledge. His eyes came to rest on Ethan.

"I told you I'd think on it," he said. "Six nights I've thought. I haven't slept." He turned the hat in his fingers. "I'm not going to the Wardens."

Nobody moved.

"I went to the grey-coat's office on the second night. I stood outside the door for an hour. I had a name in my mouth and I couldn't say it." He rubbed his face with a broad scarred hand. "I thought about Wenna. About the healer's bills. I thought about how long I've been selling little pieces of other people to keep her warm." His voice dropped. "She'd be ashamed of me. I know she would. She's twelve, and she'd be ashamed."

"Bram," Ethan said.

"Let me finish." The old tank drew a long breath. "I don't know what you are, boy. I don't want to know. But you put two porters behind a cart before the first hound ever came. You walked out of a fight with nine corpses and not one word of credit. A man like that isn't what the posters say." He met Ethan's eyes. "So I'm keeping my mouth shut. I'll find another way to pay for her bed."

The window flickered beside his head, small and steady.

[Bram Holt. True attitude: Resolved. Ashamed.]

Ethan realized he'd been holding his breath. He let it go. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me. I did a very small thing very late." Bram waved a hand. "That isn't why I came, though. I came because I need a handler."

"A handler?"

"Iron Heron is finished. Selka told Hargo to take his axe somewhere unpleasant. She's got a charter in her name now, and she wants to use it." He jerked his thumb toward the window. "There's a gate opened on the south road two days ago. D-rank, an orchard of some kind. It'll hold open for a week. Selka and I are going in at dawn. We need a man to run the pack animal. And I'd rather it were you."

"Rank F can't enter a Rift Gate," said Rhea.

"No." Bram almost smiled. "That's the trouble."

"Section Six," Oake whispered, the next morning, and slid a thick volume across the desk. "Article Eleven. I've been looking at it since you told me."

The Guild hall was open but nearly empty, as it had been for days. A pair of hunters in the far corner played cards without speaking. The Warden office door was shut. Oake had rubbed his eyes red and kept glancing at that door as if it might speak.

"The Gate Regulations," he said. "Page one hundred and four." He turned it for Ethan.

Section Six. Entry to Rift Gates. Article Eleven. No person bearing a Rank F designation shall enter a Rift Gate of any grade, except as provided below.

"Except," Ethan said.

"Next paragraph."

Provision (c). Where a registered party requires the transport of loot, a Rank F individual may accompany the party within the Gate if and only if he is the lawful handler of a registered beast of burden, which shall be entered on the party's manifest as part of the party's property.

Ethan read it twice.

"A beast of burden," he said.

"A mule. An ox. A donkey." Oake's voice was a thread. "It was written two hundred years ago, when gates were bigger and parties carried more. Nobody's used it since the Guild started stocking carriers. The clause is still on the books."

"So I can go in. As long as I'm leading a donkey."

"As long as you're the registered handler. Your name goes on the animal's papers. If the beast dies, you don't get paid. If you die, the beast gets the share." He winced. "It's humiliating. You'd be on the manifest under 'livestock.'"

"I've been called worse."

"I know." Oake's small, tired smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "I thought you might say that."

A knock on the open hall door made them both look up. Mira leaned in the doorway, with her cap pulled low, a wide-eyed grin pulling at her mouth. Behind her, hitched to a post in the sun, stood a short, round, vaguely insulted mule.

"Meet Biscuit," she said. "Pol's. He's on loan. He bites."

They reached the gate before the sun.

It stood in a hollow south of the town, half a mile past the last farm, and Ethan felt it before he saw it. A low pressure in the air, like the moment before a storm. His skin prickled. The mule stamped and flattened his ears.

Then the road turned, and there it was.

The Orchard Gate was an arch of black stone, twelve feet high, that had no business existing. Weeds had grown up around its feet. Nothing in its shape suggested it had been built. It looked like it had pushed up through the earth, like a tooth through a gum, and set there, humming. Inside the arch, instead of the far side of the hollow, there was a glow. Pale. Greenish. A forest of thin glittering trunks, bending slightly, silent.

Glass trees. Hundreds of them. They caught the early light and threw it back in splinters.

Ethan's mouth went dry.

"Pretty," said Selka. She stood at the mouth of the gate with her bow already strung and a leather satchel across her chest, thin, tired, and unimpressed. "Don't touch the bark. Doran, I mean it."

"I wasn't going to," said Doran Fitch, very quickly.

They had assembled in the grey light, the five of them. Selka, as charter holder. Bram, shield on his back, grim as a gravestone. Doran, who had been told that without Iron Heron he was a fire mage with no fire to burn, and had come anyway in a state of sulky grace. A fourth hunter Ethan didn't know, a stout woman named Dessa Marrow, who carried a healer's satchel and a very heavy pack.

And him, with a mule.

"Manifest," said a Guild clerk by the arch, bored, ink-stained, half asleep on a stool. "Selka Roe, charter holder. Bram Holt. Doran Fitch. Dessa Marrow. Beast of burden, one, mule, name of Biscuit." He peered at the page. "Handler, Eli Gray. Rank F." He glanced up at Ethan. "You're listed as property, son. You understand?"

"I understand."

"Sign here."

He signed.

The clerk waved them through without looking up.

Selka went first. Bram next. Doran, with a last scowl. Then Dessa, then Ethan, tugging Biscuit's rope. The mule dug in his heels. Ethan clucked and pulled. The animal gave a long, aggrieved sigh and stepped forward.

The air in the arch was cold and thin. It smelled of ozone and wet stone. Ethan crossed the threshold with the mule's breath hot on his shoulder, and the world folded.

[Rift Gate detected. Rank D. The Orchard Gate.]

[Mission issued: Clear the Orchard Gate. Reward: undisclosed. Penalty for failure: undisclosed.]

He almost laughed.

"Of course," he murmured. "Undisclosed."

Above him the glass trees rang softly, all together, like a hundred tiny bells.