Chương 85: Departures

He picked up his pack and went. The night was cold. The city had that quiet it got in the last hours before dawn, when the drunks had gone home and the bakers hadn't started yet. Kaito took the back streets Sable had walked him through the day before, kept his head down, and stayed off any lane wide enough for a waypost.

'Route,' he said.

'Two more streets west, then south along the palace wall to the servants' lane,' Sable said.

'The garden entrance is at the end of that lane. Aldric will have cleared the guards or he won't. If he hasn't, we back out and go straight to the cart.'

'Fair.' He walked. He kept the pack on both shoulders because a man carrying one strap looked like he was about to run. The servants' lane was empty. The garden gate was a plain iron door in the palace wall, and there was no guard on it. Aldric was standing on the inside, in a plain grey cloak, alone. He opened the door and stepped back.

'Come in,' he said.

'You have fifteen minutes.' Kaito came in. Aldric shut the door and set the bar.

'You knew about the classification,' Kaito said.

'I knew it was being drafted. I found out an hour ago it was signed.' Aldric started walking down a stone path between two low hedges. Kaito walked with him.

'I don't have a way to stop it. I can slow a lot of things in this kingdom. I can't slow the Compact when they've already routed a Level Three through my father's office and the two offices above his.'

'Then why am I here.'

'Because I owe you a thing,' Aldric said.

'And because I need one from you before you're out of my reach.' He stopped at a low bench. There was a small wooden box on it, plain, no seal. He picked it up and held it out.

'Open it later,' Aldric said.

'Not here. Inside is a token. Silver, a hand's-width across, engraved with the crown mark. It's a passage token. Every Arenval road warden and every border checkpoint is required to honor it as if the person carrying it were on crown business. It doesn't stop the Compact. But it stops every kingdom asset from cooperating with the Compact against you, and there are a lot of kingdom assets between here and any coast you might want.' Kaito took the box. It was heavier than he expected.

'What do I owe you for it.'

'One conversation, when I ask for it. Not now. When I ask.' Aldric looked at him levelly.

'You're going to see things I need to know about. Places I can't send my people. When you come back through Arenval territory, or when I send word — one conversation, honest, both sides. That's the price.'

'Done,' Kaito said.

'Good.' Aldric turned and started walking again.

'One other thing. Rael asked to see you.' Kaito stopped.

'Rael is here.'

'Rael is dying,' Aldric said.

'He rode from his compound an hour ago because he heard the classification came through and he wanted to say something to you before it wasn't possible anymore. He's in the small receiving room off the east cloister. You have four minutes.'

'You arranged this.'

'I arranged the door,' Aldric said.

'The rest of it was him.'

The receiving room was small and warm and had one lamp burning on a side table. Rael Ashfen sat in a chair by the lamp with his hands on his knees. He looked worse than he had at the vote. Not by much. Just enough that Kaito could tell the last three days had cost him something he wasn't going to get back.

'Sit down,' Rael said.

'I won't take long.' Kaito sat.

'The Regency was your work,' Rael said.

'It was your proposal.'

'It was the proposal I made after your file landed at the sixth bell,' Rael said.

'I know the difference. So do you. Don't waste our four minutes being modest about it.' He almost smiled. Not quite.

'I have soldiers. Four thousand of them. I know most of their names. When I'm gone the Regency seat holds their protection. That's what your file bought me. I want you to know I understand what it cost you to put it in motion.'

'It wasn't a cost,' Kaito said.

'It was the right thing to do.'

'Those are the same thing when it's your life,' Rael said.

'Not everyone's.' He reached forward and held out a hand. Kaito took it. Rael's grip was thinner than it should have been, but steady.

'I don't have anything to give you. I'm out of favors and I'm short on time. All I've got is a piece of advice, and you can take it or throw it away.'

'Take it.'

'Build something that lasts,' Rael said. He held Kaito's hand a second longer, then let go. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

'That's it,' Rael said.

'Go. My aide's outside. He'll show you back to the garden.' Kaito stood. He didn't know what to say, so he said the simple thing.

'Thank you, Commander.'

'Get out of my city, boy,' Rael said, and there was almost warmth in it.

'And stay out of the Compact's until you can walk back in on your own terms.' Kaito went. He was in the garden again in under two minutes. Aldric was gone. The gate was unbarred. He stepped out into the servants' lane, and a young woman was waiting there. She wore Syra's household colors under a plain cloak, and she carried a sealed letter.

'From Lady Syra,' she said.

'She said to give it to you before you left the palace grounds. She said you would understand why she didn't come herself.' Kaito took it.

'Tell her I do.'

'She also said,' the courier added, 'that this is a gift, not a claim. Those were her exact words.'

'Understood.' The courier bowed a shallow bow, turned, and went back the way she'd come. Kaito broke the seal enough to see the top line. It was a letter of introduction, addressed to three scholars by name, in Noxara. Precursor artifact specialists. He resealed it with the wax still warm and put it inside his coat with Aldric's box.

'She knew where I was going,' he said, quietly.

'She knew where I was going,' Sable said.

'She's been reading you longer than you've been reading her. And she's decided to be useful to whatever you find, at a distance, without ownership. That is a specific choice. File it.'

'Filed,' Kaito said. He looked up at the sky. The dark was starting to thin at the eastern edge, only a shade, but it was there.

'Bell,' he said.

'A quarter to five,' Sable said.

'You need to move.' He moved.

He met Domrek and Pell at the corner two streets from the western farm road. They were carrying their packs and one bundle each that Kaito didn't recognize — provisions, probably, bought at whatever price the pre-dawn markets were charging tonight.

'Cart?' Domrek said.

'On its way.' Pell was already walking.

'Brann said fifth bell sharp. He runs the gate on time because being late once gets you searched.' They fell in behind him. The farm road ran along the western wall for a quarter mile before it hit the gate. There were carts on it already — three, four, six — pulling into a line as the drivers checked harnesses and traded the small talk that men used to keep from looking nervous. Nobody looked at three men joining the tail of the line. Cart lines picked up passengers all the time when a driver was owed something.

Brann was a wide man with a beard and the specific squint of someone who had spent thirty years judging weight without a scale. He nodded at Pell, glanced at Kaito and Domrek, glanced at the empty crates in the back of his cart, and nodded again.

'Behind the second row,' he said.

'Keep your heads down until we're past the second waypost outside the wall. After that I don't care what you do.' They climbed in. The crates were empty and stacked so that there was a hollow space at the back, big enough for three men who didn't mind being close. Pell got in first because he'd done this before, and knew exactly how to sit so his weight didn't shift the crates. Domrek got in second because he was heaviest and needed to be against the front wall. Kaito got in last. The cart started moving.

Kaito could see a strip of sky through a gap in the top slats. That was all he could see. He listened. The gate crew was loud. There were maybe six of them and they were doing the pre-dawn work of waving carts through in the specific rhythm they used every morning, and they weren't hurrying. That was good. Hurrying meant something had changed. Not hurrying meant tonight was still an ordinary night to them. They pulled into the queue.

'Sable,' Kaito said, at nearly no volume at all.

'The thread-marker is still muffled,' she said.

'The gate crew has no active class scanners running. There is one person standing off to the side of the crew, twenty paces past the arch, wearing a plain grey coat.'

'Inquisitor.'

'Yes. Not the one from the south gate. A different one. She arrived here approximately forty minutes ago.' Kaito's heart did the thing hearts did when a plan started running out of margin.

'Can she read the muffle at that range.'

'Not through the crates and not through the noise of a cart line at gate change. She'd have to stop the cart and put her hand on the class notation to pick it up. She has no reason to stop this cart. She's watching for the wrong thing — she's watching for a man on foot, alone, moving fast. Not a produce cart on a regular route.'

'What if she looks anyway.'

'Then we deal with it,' Sable said.

'You have a debug skill. Domrek has arms. Pell knows the road behind us. None of those are ideal. All of them exist.' The cart moved up the line. Brann said something to the gate sergeant that Kaito couldn't make out. The sergeant laughed. Brann laughed back. There was the small metal sound of the sergeant's tally clip marking a cart through, and the cart moved again. The arch went dark over the strip of sky. Then it went light again. They were through. The cart kept rolling.

'She looked,' Sable said.

'At the driver. Not at the cart bed. She looked at Brann's face and looked away.' Kaito let out a breath he had been holding without meaning to. They rolled for a long time. Kaito didn't move. Domrek didn't move. Pell breathed the slow steady breathing of a man who had waited longer than this in worse rooms and had learned that waiting was a skill. Sable said, 'Second waypost cleared. You are outside the city's registered coverage envelope.

Your class notation is now reading as low-density registration, which is the notation format used by travelers on unmonitored rural routes. As of one minute ago, no Compact asset in Velhen can locate you by System query.'

'Say that again,' Kaito said, quietly.

'The last part.'

'They cannot find you,' Sable said.

'Not by System query. They will have to find you by footwork. Which they will attempt. But the eighteen hours Nara bought you have become something more useful.' Kaito closed his eyes for a second. Not sleep. Just the moment a man took when a thing he had been carrying set itself down. Then he opened them.

'Get us off this cart at the next split,' he said.

'Pell, that barn — is it before or after the four-way?'

'Before,' Pell said.

'Two miles.'

'Then we ride to there and disappear off Brann's paperwork. I don't want him remembered as the man who took three passengers past the split, when someone comes asking.'

'Good,' Pell said. The cart kept rolling. The strip of sky through the slats had gone from black to grey. Then a notification came, in the plain bracket format Kaito had learned to read at every level of a bad morning. [Architect. Location update logged: exit from monitored coverage envelope. Note: this observation is not shared with authorized parties. Classification of your file remains under internal review. Additional note: the entity referred to in your journal as Erebus is aware of your departure. It has not shared this awareness with any external party. It appears to be waiting.] Kaito read it twice.

'Sable,' he said.

'AXIOM just told me Erebus is watching us leave. And that AXIOM is choosing not to tell anyone.'

'Yes,' Sable said.

'It did.'

'Which of those is worse.'

'I don't know yet,' she said.

'Ask me at the barn.'