The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 035: Loot and Lies

"Hold the mule still," Dessa said, "and tell me how you knew to close your eyes."

She said it casually, the way someone might ask for the salt. She knelt in the broken glass at the shore of the black lake with her satchel open beside her, picking pale blue shards out of Selka's forearm one at a time with a pair of silver tweezers. Selka sucked air through her teeth but didn't complain.

Ethan sat on an upturned crate with Biscuit's rope wound around his hand. He'd been waiting for the question for ten minutes.

"I didn't know," he said. "I guessed."

"You guessed."

"I thought, if it copies what looks at it, then maybe it can't copy what doesn't." He shrugged. "I read something like it once. In a book of tales. A mirror that kills whoever stares too long."

"A book of tales." Dessa dropped a shard into a tin dish. It rang. "And the running? With your eyes shut, across a lake, in a straight line, to the exact spot?"

"I'm good with animals."

"I keep hearing that."

"It's true."

"I'm sure it is." She finished the last shard, tied a strip of linen round Selka's arm, and sat back on her heels. Her pale eyes rested on him, level, a little too long. "I healed a man once who saw things before they came. A hunter. He told everyone it was luck. Nine months later the Wardens took him for a review, and I never saw him again." She snapped her satchel shut. "I only mention it."

Ethan said nothing. His heart had gone hard and slow.

"Dessa," Bram said, from across the clearing, in a voice like a closing door. "Leave it."

"I was only making conversation."

"Leave it."

She shrugged and stood. But as she turned away she gave Ethan a look that was less a threat than a quiet, careful warning, and he realized, with some surprise, that she had been trying to tell him something.

The Warden's heart lay in the middle of the lake, a smooth, silver oval the size of a fist. Bram waded out and brought it back. It hummed in his palm. In the green light it threw a wavering reflection across his face, and he put it in a leather pouch quickly, as if he disliked looking.

The orchard offered up its treasures slowly. Twelve glass hearts from the beetle nests, each clear as water, with a single drop of black at its core. A dozen pale blue shards that Dessa said would fetch a silver apiece from an alchemist. A little chest, half-sunk in the root rot, that held three rings and a dagger with a handle of living glass.

When the last of it was bagged, the mission window opened.

[Orchard Gate cleared. Mission complete. Reward: Level +1. Stat points: +3.]

Ethan put all six of his unspent points into Perception, Agility, and Endurance, two each, and felt the world sharpen another small, quiet degree.

"Let's go," Selka said. "The Gate collapses within two hours of the boss's death. I don't want to be standing in it."

They went.

The gate spat them out into the sun.

It was still morning. Ethan hadn't realized it would be. The hollow outside the arch was packed with people, a loose, buzzing crowd, Guild clerks and assessors, curious hunters, a vendor selling hot pies from a cart. The Guild had set up a trestle table by the arch with a scale and a ledger. A line of black-clad Warden guards stood to one side, and with them, hands clasped behind his back, was a tall man in a grey coat.

[Warden Liaison Hesk. Level 24. True attitude: Curious. Patient.]

Ethan felt his shoulders tighten. He let them slump. He bent his head, tugged the mule's rope, and let his breath come hard, as if he'd just run a mile.

"Party of Selka Roe, charter holder," the clerk said, in a flat singsong. "Name your clear."

"Orchard Gate, D-rank. Complete." Selka put the bag of hearts on the table with a thump. "Boss slain."

A buzz ran through the crowd.

"By whom?" the clerk said.

"By us."

"The party. Individually, who struck the kill?"

Selka hesitated. She glanced at Ethan. He gave the smallest shake of his head.

"Doran Fitch," she said. "Fire. He delivered the last blow."

Doran made a strangled noise.

"The mage?" The clerk looked at his ledger. "Level 18. That's his name, is it? Well, a good day's work."

"I didn't," Doran said, flushing scarlet. "I didn't, I mean, I only--"

"He did," said Selka, firmly. "He did very well."

"And the handler?" The clerk glanced at the manifest, and his mouth twitched. "Listed as livestock. Ha. One mule, one handler. Both accounted for?"

"Both accounted for," said Bram, in a voice that dared anyone to laugh.

Nobody did, except a man at the back of the crowd.

"A mule!" he roared. "A mule on the manifest! That's rich!"

Hargo Dane pushed his way to the front. His red beard was oiled and combed. He wore a fresh studded jerkin, and a pair of new hunters flanked him, brash and loud. His face was shining with delight. He'd heard the story, Ethan realized. He'd been waiting at the gate for it.

"Selka, Selka," Hargo crowed. "Fine company you keep. You had to hire out a mule handler to make your numbers. Tell me, did the donkey take the shares, too?"

The crowd laughed. A few of them, not all. It was an ugly kind of laughter.

"The mule took a tenth," said Selka coldly. "Which is more than you ever paid yours."

"Ah, but it was the mule who killed the Warden, I presume?" Hargo spread his arms. "Is that what you're telling us? The porter in the grey tunic stepped up and slew the boss?"

Dessa opened her mouth. Ethan caught her eye and looked at the ground.

She closed it.

"I thought not," Hargo said, with enormous satisfaction. "Doran Fitch, who's famous for lighting his own sleeve, slew the boss. And the mule carried the loot. A fine story! A little fantastical, but fine!"

More laughter. Real laughter now, easy and relieved. Ethan kept his head bowed and his rope short, and he let it wash over him like warm rain. It was perfect. It was better than he could have planned. Nobody would ever believe a handler had killed a Warden, because Hargo had made the very idea absurd.

Thank you, Hargo.

At the edge of the crowd, Hesk had stopped smiling. He wasn't looking at Hargo. He was looking at the mule, and then at the man holding the rope, and the faint line between his brows had deepened.

He didn't say a word. He took a notebook out of his coat and began to write.

The shares were counted in the afternoon, at the Rusty Ladle, behind a shut door.

Selka divided it into five heaps. One for herself, one for Bram, one for Dessa, one for Doran, who was still dazed. She pushed a fifth across the table to Ethan. It was nearly as high as the others.

"Selka--"

"Don't argue." She looked tired. "A handler's share is a tenth. I'm giving you a full one. You earned it."

"I'm livestock."

"You're a lot of things." Her mouth twitched. "Livestock isn't one of them. Take it, Eli. I'd say take the mule's, too, but I think he's already eaten it."

Ethan took the silver. It was heavy and warm. It felt, strangely, like a small honest weight in his hands.

When he stepped out onto the street, the dusk was coming in, red and quiet. A crowd was still drifting from the hollow, tired and talkative. He pulled his cap low and turned toward the stable.

"Hey," said a voice behind him.

He kept walking.

"Hey, you. Wait."

Hunter Corvin Marsh stood in the lane, a Level 17 man with a broad, sunburned face and a bronze badge on his shoulder. He'd been in the crowd outside the gate. He was frowning at Ethan, his head tilted, one finger pointed.

"I know you," Marsh said slowly. "I've seen that nose before."