The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 041: Frostmere

It took them nineteen days to reach the snow.

Ethan spent the first two of them staring at a window. Twelve unspent points hovered in the corner of his sight, patient as a dog at a door, and he turned each one over in his mind like a coin he was afraid to lose. On the third night, with the cart rattling over a frozen road and Bram snoring against a sack of oats, he finally sat up and did what Rhea had taught him.

Not what do you want. What do you want to be.

He put five into Agility. Three into Perception. Two into Strength. Two into Endurance.

[STRENGTH 13. AGILITY 20. PERCEPTION 18. ENDURANCE 18.]

The numbers settled. He felt them, as he always did, a quiet shift in the way the world moved around him. His hands closed on the reins with less effort. The wind moved against his face in distinct, readable currents. When he looked at a bird a hundred paces off, he could see the pale line of each feather.

"Better?" Rhea asked from the dark.

"Yes."

"Good." She yawned. "Try not to cut yourself on it."

On the eleventh day, the first flakes fell. They drifted down out of a white sky onto the backs of the mule and the cart and the three people who weren't quite asleep, small and soft and silent. Ethan caught one on his tongue out of habit, and it melted, and it was only cold.

Biscuit stopped in the road and refused to go on until someone gave him a blanket.

Frostmere came into sight on the nineteenth morning.

It sat on a frozen lake.

That was the first thing he understood. The city wasn't built beside the water. It stood on it, in terraces of pale stone stepping down from a rocky headland to the glittering surface, with bridges of ice arching between the islands and long white roads laid across the lake like ribbons. Towers rose from every level, thin and tall and blue-roofed. Banners hung from them, white on a field of silver, each bearing a single, delicate snowflake.

The Ward arms.

At the very top, on the cliff, stood a citadel of black rock. Its great gate was open, and from it a river of figures wound down the stairs: servants, soldiers, merchants, noble children in furs.

"The Ward Citadel," Tomas murmured, from under three blankets. "Four hundred years old. It's said the lake has never melted beneath it, not even in summer."

Ethan said nothing. He was looking at the banners.

Seraphine's house.

He'd been trying not to think about it. He had thought about little else for nineteen days. A girl on a staircase in white sleeves. I said it so a man in the gallery would stop looking at you. A frost-bitten fence post. A question he hadn't been able to answer.

"We're going in," Rhea said, quietly. "You're sure."

"I'm sure."

"You've got a face half the kingdom has seen on a wall."

"I've got a different face now." He touched his jaw, the heavy beard he'd let grow for a week. He had cut his hair short and darkened it with walnut stain. His nose was the nose it was. "And I've got a grandfather who sells maps."

"I'm your uncle," Tomas said, with great dignity. "Master Tomas Ash, humble cartographer. You are my apprentice, Noel. These two are my bodyguards, whom I hired on the road. I haven't paid them. They're deeply resentful."

"I'm not resentful," Bram said.

"You're resentful," said Rhea.

"A little," Bram admitted.

The gate guards wore silver-blue cloaks and carried long glaives with frosted blades. Their captain was a gaunt, bored young man who looked at their papers for a count of three and handed them back.

"Cartographer," he said. "Business?"

"The Crown Trials. I hear there is a great demand for maps."

The captain's face brightened. "There is. Ten days to the opening ceremony. Every inn in the city is full." He leaned in, lowering his voice. "If you're looking for a place, try the Frozen Anchor, on the Third Terrace. Landlord owes me a favor. Tell him Davin sent you."

"Most generous."

"Not at all." He waved them through.

They rolled onto the first bridge. The ice rang under the wheels. Ethan glanced back, at the guards, at the open gate, at the silver-blue cloaks. Nobody was watching.

The tension went out of his shoulders all at once. His heart was pounding.

The streets of Frostmere were a clean, bright maze of white stone. Merchants called out from heated stalls. Children slid across the ice on bone skates. Everywhere, banners hung in rows, and everywhere there were soldiers, in pairs and fours, not menacing but numerous, as if the city were holding its breath.

And on every wall, in blue ink on white parchment, the same notice.

THE CROWN TRIALS OF FROSTMERE BY ROYAL CHARTER, OPEN TO ALL.

He stopped the cart and read it.

Three rounds. Held on the Lake of Ward, before the people of the realm. Open to any citizen of the Crown, awakened or no, who is sponsored by a House of standing. The victor of the Trials shall be granted one audience before the Crown, and one petition, which the Crown shall hear in open court.

His mouth went dry.

Before the Crown.

"Rhea," he said. "Read the last part."

She read it. He watched her lips move. When she finished, she lifted her eyes to his. They had gone dark and bright.

"A petition," she said. "To the Crown. In open court."

"Not the Council."

"The Council sits under the Crown. They have for four hundred years. They don't like to remember it." She let out a long breath. "Ethan. If you won, if you stood in front of the King and told him what you know, he'd have to hear it. In front of the whole court. They couldn't stop it."

"That's why you wanted to come north."

"That's why I wanted to come north." A small, grim smile. "Nobody wins the Trials who isn't a noble or a prodigy."

"Or a null with a system."

"Or that."

A herald stood on a platform in the square, tall and thin in a white tabard, reading the rules from a long scroll in a clear, carrying voice. A crowd had gathered. Ethan drew the cart up behind them and listened.

"...entries to close at noon on the tenth day. Each entrant must register with a sponsoring House of standing, which shall vouch for the entrant's conduct and take responsibility for any damages. Houses of the first rank may sponsor three. Houses of the second rank, one. Free entrants of no house shall not be admitted."

"No house," Bram muttered. "That's the whole lot of us."

"By gods," said Tomas, softly. "A sponsor. We need a sponsor."

The herald rolled up his scroll and bowed. The crowd began to disperse, chattering. A girl in a fur-trimmed cloak laughed at something. A soldier stamped his boots against the cold.

Ethan stood in the falling snow, looking at the notice on the wall.

One audience. One petition.

For the first time in nineteen days, something warm moved under his ribs. It wasn't the Kindling.

"Then we find one," he said.

Rhea looked at the Ward banners snapping above the square, and then at him. "Easy," she said. "We only need a noble house that doesn't want us dead."