The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 042: Entry F*e

The Frozen Anchor smelled of wet wool and fried onions, and every table in it was full.

Ethan stood in the doorway with snow melting on his shoulders and watched the common room churn. Nobles' retainers in fur-trimmed livery. Hunters in battered leather, nursing mugs. A trio of students in academy blue arguing over a map. Everyone was talking about the Trials, and nobody was talking about anything else.

"No rooms," said the landlord, a bald, red-faced man with a leather apron. "Tell Davin I'm sorry. I've had forty requests since dawn." He eyed Tomas's blankets. "I've a hayloft over the stable. Four silver a night, a man, and you'll share with a goat."

"We'll take it," said Tomas.

"The goat bites."

"So does our mule."

The loft was cold, and the goat did bite. Ethan lay awake that night with his coat over his boots listening to the wind in the rafters and thinking about a rule on a wall.

Free entrants of no house shall not be admitted.

In the morning Tomas went out and came back at noon with a thin, greasy pamphlet and a glow in his eyes.

"The Frostmere Peerage Gazette," he announced, setting it on a barrel. "A scandal sheet. Nobody reads it, which is why it's accurate. I bribed the printer with a map of his own street." He licked a finger and turned a page. "Here. Houses of standing in the city for the Trials, by rank. First rank: Ward, Cross, Dorn, Hale, Ardane. Second rank, a dozen." He tapped the list. "And then, under 'houses in financial difficulty,' three names."

"Which ones?" Rhea asked.

"Harrow. Ashgrove. And Thornwick."

"What's wrong with them?"

"Debts," Tomas said, with relish. "Harrow's land is mortgaged to the hilt. Ashgrove's heir ran off with an actress. And Thornwick..." He ran a finger down the column. "Thornwick owes three thousand crowns to a creditor who wishes to remain anonymous. The gazette thinks it's a certain Lord Halbert Cross."

Ethan's head came up.

"Cross." He said it softly. "The Council treasurer."

"The same. Who, it seems, holds a great many of the minor houses by the throat." Tomas shut the pamphlet. "A man doesn't hold a house by the throat unless he wants something. And a man who's being held..."

"Might be open to an offer," said Rhea.

"Exactly."

House Thornwick had taken a narrow, tall townhouse on the Fifth Terrace, with a faded blue door and a family crest, a thorn tree under a crescent moon, chipped at one corner. A steward answered, grey-faced and stooped, and looked Tomas up and down as though counting the buttons on his coat.

"Lord Thornwick receives no one," he said.

"Tell him a cartographer with news about the Trials."

"Lord Thornwick has no interest in the Trials."

"Then tell him," said Tomas, in the voice he used on the cat in his shop, "that I have a boy who can win them."

The steward blinked. Then, with great reluctance, he stood aside.

Edric Thornwick received them in a library that had lost most of its books. Empty shelves ran up the walls. A fire burned low in a grate. In a chair beside it sat an old man in a quilted dressing gown with a rug over his knees, a face like a walnut, and sharp, humorous black eyes. His left foot was propped on a stool and wrapped in flannel. A cane leaned against his chair.

[Lord Edric Thornwick. Human. Level 8. True attitude: Wary. Amused. Desperate.]

"A boy who can win the Trials," Edric said. "I've heard that line from three charlatans and an actor. Sit, sit. Stop hovering. What is it you want?"

"A sponsor," Ethan said.

"Obviously. And what are you?"

"A null."

The room went very quiet.

Edric didn't move. He studied Ethan with those bright black eyes, from his stained hair to his scuffed boots, and a smile began to tug at the corner of his mouth.

"A null," he repeated. "Rank F. With a bounty on him, I'd wager, or you wouldn't be wearing walnut juice in your hair." He chuckled. "Don't look so alarmed, boy. I've been in this city sixty years. I know a disguise when I see one. Ask me what I think of it."

"What do you think of it?"

"Rotten," said Edric. "But I've seen worse." He gestured with a thin, knotted hand. "Tell me why I should put my name beside a wanted man's."

Ethan didn't answer at once. He looked at the empty shelves. At the cracked crest above the mantel, at the unlit candles, at the grey-faced steward lurking in the door.

"Because you're about to lose your house," he said.

Edric's smile didn't change. But his eyes did.

"Go on."

"Cross holds your debt. Three thousand crowns. He's called it in, hasn't he? Midwinter, by the Gazette." He kept his voice even. "He wants the title. The land. Maybe the name. You can't pay him, and you can't fight him, and nobody else in the city will take your side."

"That's a great deal to know about a man you've just met."

"I read a pamphlet."

A bark of laughter escaped the old man. It turned into a cough. The steward started forward, and Edric waved him back.

"I like him," he wheezed. "Where did you find him?"

"On the road," said Rhea, from the doorway. "He found us, mostly."

"Hm." Edric wiped his eyes. "The Trials' purse is a hundred crowns for the first round, three hundred for the second, a thousand for the third. The House of the winner keeps half. If you won, boy, I'd still be short." He tilted his head. "And yet you think I'd bother."

"I think you'd bother because Cross wants you gone." Ethan met his eyes. "And I think that anything that makes him angry is probably good for you."

Another long silence.

Then Edric Thornwick laughed again, softly, almost fondly, and reached for his cane.

"Show me," he said.

The Thornwick practice yard was a square of frozen gravel behind the house, hemmed in by a crumbling wall. The family's one remaining fighter was a lanky, square-jawed man named Veld, forty, with a missing front tooth and a Level 22 sword arm. He stood in the middle of the yard with a wooden blade and a look of grave suspicion.

"I'm to fight a null," he said. "With a stick."

"He's not to hurt you, Veld."

"I'm not worried about that, my lord. I'm worried about him."

Ethan stepped up. He had a practice sword in his right hand. His left hung loose. He let his shoulders sag. He gave Veld a nervous little nod and flinched, deliberately, when the man struck.

Don't win too easily.

It was the hardest fight of his life.

He had to lose his footing twice. He took three solid blows on the ribs and let each one land, showing a small, convincing wince. He gave ground when he could have pressed. And in the middle of it, almost in spite of himself, he saw Veld's hip turn, and his body moved, and the wooden sword in his right hand flicked up and touched the man's throat as lightly as a feather.

They both stopped.

Veld stared at him. "That's not a null," he said.

"It's a very careful null," said Edric, from the doorstep. He leaned on his cane, bright-eyed. "A thing I like in a man. Come inside, boy. I've a contract to write."

The Trial Registry sat in a cold marble hall beside the Ward Citadel, with a long oak counter and a line of anxious clerks. Edric led the way on his cane, in his best coat, which was patched at the elbows. Ethan walked at his shoulder with his head down, in a borrowed jacket bearing a thorn tree on the breast.

"Name?" said the clerk at the counter.

"Noel Thornwick," said Edric. "My sister's grandson. Kept back from society, regrettably, on account of his condition."

"His condition?"

"Rank F."

The clerk's pen stopped.

"A null?" he said. "In the Trials?"

"The Charter says 'awakened or no.'" Edric's smile was perfectly pleasant. "I took the liberty of reading it."

A silence spread down the line. Heads turned. A nobleman in a fur collar murmured something to his companion, and somewhere at the back, a woman gave a short, amazed laugh.

The clerk looked at the ledger, at the notice on the wall. He swallowed. Edric counted forty gold crowns onto the counter, one coin at a time, the last of whatever had been in his locked drawer. Then, with a stiff hand, the clerk stamped the form.

Behind the counter, a page boy in silver-blue livery snatched a sheet from the desk and bolted for the stair. Ethan watched him go, up the marble steps and out through the great doors, headed for the black citadel on the cliff.