Chương 49: Chapter 48: What He Actually Wants

The line outside the side window ran twenty deep, spilling past a chalked sign nobody in the group had time to read closely before a shout from inside cut the crowd's noise short—another fight, apparently, already broken up and finished behind them.

"What's all this?" Lucien asked.

"Inscription tournament." Jorm didn't slow down.

"They're just registering for it right now. The actual tournament is in three days. Multiple teams of five Resonants will fight until only one team is left standing, with the winning team getting taken in by the Bastion."

"That sounds like a fantastic way to lose a limb."

"It is." Jorm didn't dress it up.

"Some people don't have a choice." Elma let her Field drift wide over the line as they passed. Nothing in the whole crowd registered above a whisper, and none of them seemed to notice her weighing them. The strongest among them barely matched Jorm's own numbers. Weak and sloppy. She hadn't known Resonants could be that weak.

"Can't believe people get that desperate," Vector said, trailing a step behind with his hands in his pockets.

"Sekar literally asked me to join him, once. It was the first time I met him." Jorm's head snapped toward him.

"He asked you? Personally?"

"Yup." He didn't sound remotely tempted by the memory.

"Said no, of course." They reached the tournament sign beside the entrance, more of the same, entry fees and rules Elma didn't stop to read, and Lucien came to a halt, jerking his head for the rest of them to follow him off to one side. Vector moved to trail after, and Lucien put a flat hand against his chest.

"Private meeting. You stay put, we'll be with you in a minute." Vector sighed, Repera settling against his leg.

"Hurry up, then, before I just go in without you." They put enough distance between themselves and him that the noise of the crowd would swallow anything short of shouting.

"So," Lucien said.

"What's the plan?"

"The plan."

"Yes, the plan. We're not going in there without knowing what your lead is. How are you planning on getting information from him?" Elma glanced back once to make sure Vector hadn't drifted closer.

"Sekar was the one who sent the assassin. I'll ask—" She stopped at the sudden change in her team's faces. Nobody moved for a second. Lucien blinked three times in a row, like his eyes were trying to process it before the rest of him caught up. Then he slumped down on the curb and put his head in his hands.

"I cannot believe this."

"And you brought us here," Silk said, low, "to make his job easier?"

"He doesn't know who we are." Elma held her ground.

"And we have backup." She tipped her head toward Vector.

"Him."

"You think a man like that doesn't have backup of his own?" Lucien's voice climbed.

"We need to leave. Think this through properly, because clearly nobody did that part yet."

"We're not leaving." Elma kept her voice level.

"We ask him. If he won't answer, we go, and we build a better plan somewhere that isn't here."

"Do you think he'll just let us go? We're considered missing now. If we aren't found, they'll assume you took us somewhere dangerous. He could bury the four of us in an unmarked field, and nobody would so much as raise an eyebrow in his direction." Silk let out a breath through her nose.

"He's right. We need something better than walking up and asking."

"We can build something better right here."

"Not here." Lucien scrubbed a hand down his face.

"Anywhere within his reach is the wrong place to be building a plan. If you actually have proof it was him, you could've taken it to Christa. Or Valerius. You didn't need any of this." Elma opened her mouth and found, for a moment, nothing behind it. He was right, in the narrow, technical sense. She had the hole in the wall. She had the device that had hid it. She could hand both to her father and let the machine of Veraxys grind forward without her. But that meant the hole got found.

Which meant someone asked who'd dug it. She looked at Jorm, who tilted her head slightly, not understanding the pause. If Valerius went looking for whoever had opened that gap in his own defenses, there was no version of that search that ended gently. No guarantee any maid walked away from it clean. No guarantee Jorm did. She'd already lied to her once, chasing Rita on her own, behind Jorm's back. That still sat wrong in her chest, heavier than she liked. She wasn't doing it twice. So what will you do?

the Other asked quietly. I don't know. Jorm cleared her throat into the silence.

"Can any of you actually play cards?" Lucien's brow furrowed.

"Cards?"

"No?" Jorm crossed her arms.

"What about dice?" The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"He's a gambler," Jorm said.

"A serious one. If you want him to do anything, answer anything, you beat him at a bet first. It's still dangerous, but less so than walking up and just asking."

"I play cards," Lucien offered.

"I'd say I'm decent."

"Decent isn't enough," Silk said.

"He'll want something in return if you lose. We can't afford to be the ones paying out."

"He's not stupid," Jorm added.

"You could count the bets he's lost, in his whole life, on one hand."

"Then it's not cards," Elma said.

"If you can get him betting on something else, something he doesn't already have a lifetime of practice at, that helps," Jorm suggested.

"You know an awful lot about this man," Lucien said, eyeing her. Jorm's smile came a half-second too fast to be entirely comfortable.

"He used to be friends with my father. That's why I can't come in with you. He'd know me the second he saw me, and the mask wouldn't help."

"You'll be safe here?" Elma asked.

"I'm fine. I come here all the time." She glanced past Elma's shoulder, toward where Vector was now visibly bored, spinning slowly in place on his mirror.

"You're the ones I'm not sure about. I don't trust him."

"I'll handle him."

"You sure you can?" Lucien asked.

"I am."

"You lot done yet?" Vector's voice dropped on them from directly above. He hung there upside down, standing on a mirror that reflected their shocked faces, his head tipped back as he peered down at them. Repera dangled from his arm beside him. Jorm let out a short, startled sound and stepped back.

"Not quite." Lucien recovered first.

"We need him betting against us on something that isn't cards. A game he hasn't already mastered."

"Betting? You want to beat Sekar at a bet?" Vector chuckled.

"Word is the man's never lost."

"You have a better idea, or are you just here to narrate?" Vector rubbed his chin, thoughtful for once instead of smug.

"It's not only about the game. Whatever you put up, it has to be something he actually wants." His gaze slid past Lucien, drifted over the tournament crowd still shuffling toward the registration window— —and landed on Elma. His mouth curved.

They finished going over the plan. Once everything was settled, they left Jorm and Repera outside. Jorm was visibly worried about them going in, while Repera lingered beside her, watching the entrance with an uneasy expression. The noise hit her before anything else. Dice rattled in bone cups, coins slid across wood, and somewhere off to the left, a table's worth of people roared at once, half in triumph, half in outrage, the two indistinguishable from each other.

The floor was a maze of tables, each ringed by its own small, desperate economy: cards, dice, a wheel spinning somewhere near the back, loud enough to carry over everything else. Nobody looked up as they passed. Elma kept her eyes on Vector's back as he led the way, threading them toward the rear of the hall. The plan was his, and it wasn't actually bad in isolation. What was bad was that it wasn't in isolation. Vector had another plan for himself.

Instead of making one bet, they were now going in to make two, which Elma knew would make them seem either suspicious or like amateurs. Lucien's words about Vector not being able to simply order the Silver Bastion to take him to Xenotopia seemed to have somehow convinced him that he couldn't lead the Bastion there, though, for some reason, he still believed Sekar could. Elma couldn't form a concrete opinion about this boy's intelligence.

He was going to make a separate bet of his own, one Elma knew Sekar wouldn't take, considering that Vector was barely more than a child. Even if he did, he couldn't simply take Vector and his sister there.

"Vector." He stopped, glancing back.

"Huh?"

"I can take you to Xenotopia." Lucien's head turned. Silk's did too.

"Your—" Lucien stared at her.

"The green roots. Those could reach there?" Elma nodded once.

"Well, I'll be damned." He said quietly. Vector's expression didn't shift into hope. It went flat instead, unconvinced, already halfway to annoyed.

"She's not lying," Lucien said.

"She's teleported me before."

"Twice, now," Silk added.

"That's wonderful." Vector's mouth curled, thin.

"I can teleport too."

"No." Elma held his eyes.

"I can go anywhere in this world."

"You think I'm an idiot. Prove it."

"I will. Not here. It only works in certain places." It was true, and simpler to say that. In the whole of Kandal, as far as she'd ever managed to map it, there were only two places that held clusters of the Shepherd's Veins. The estate and the Sun Temple. Vector studied her a beat too long.

"So you're telling me this now so I don't put my own offer on the table."

"It would only complicate things. He won't take your bet. And if he somehow did, he can't give you what you're asking for."

"And what guarantees you that he'll take yours?"

"We're asking for an answer. You are about to ask him to hand over a piece of Veraxys's actual military strength, to get you and your sister home." Elma let that sit.

"There's no version of that he says yes to." Vector's shoulders dropped, all at once, the fight going out of his posture the way it had on the mirror.

"I'm not lying to you," Elma said, quieter.

"If you want proof first, we can turn around right now. I'll show you."

"Oh, for—can we just get through this," Lucien muttered, dragging a hand down his face. Vector kept looking at her, something working behind his eyes.

"Why didn't you say any of this before?"

"It's not something I let people know."

"So why now."

"Because I don't have another option left. And it's not free. You still help us in there."

"I've never even heard of something like this existing."

"Then whoever's keeping it quiet is doing their job well."

"Yeah." Something flickered across his face.

"Maybe a little too well."

"So," Lucien said, glancing between them.

"Are we doing this or not?" Vector exhaled, long.

"Fine. I'll trust you." He fell back into step beside her, though something in his voice had gone flatter than before.

"Hope you know what you're asking me to give up, though." Elma didn't, actually. Whatever chance he thought he was walking away from, she couldn't see the shape of it.

"I'll keep that in mind," she said instead, and left it there. They pushed deeper into the room, the noise and smoke and the mingled reek of spilled wine and unwashed coats thickening around them the further they went, until the crowd thinned out entirely and a wall of heavy velvet curtains rose ahead of them, dark red, drawn fully shut, muffling whatever was happening behind them to almost nothing. Elma didn't need anyone to tell her. He was in there.