Chương 39: A Fragment, and a Name

Onbu was waiting when I woke, which told me, before he'd said a single word, that whatever came next wasn't simply a farewell.

"One more thing," he said, "before you cross my sand again and I go back to guarding it for however many more centuries this takes." He studied the bracelet a long moment, something careful behind his ancient gaze.

"That fragment on your wrist will open the threshold. It will not, on its own, satisfy whatever waits past it." I went very still.

"My grandfather's letter said the same thing. Find the remaining fragments, if I could."

"Then your grandfather understood considerably more about what he was protecting than most men manage in a lifetime of trying." Onbu inclined his head, slow and deliberate.

"I do not know how many pieces the key was broken into, or by whom, or why. I know only that the fragment you carry hums differently than a complete key would thinner, incomplete, the way a single note hums differently than the chord it belongs to."

"Do you know where another piece is?"

"I know a name," Onbu said.

"Nothing more, and I offer it cautiously, because the last time I spoke it aloud to anyone was considerably longer ago than you'd find comfortable hearing. Alfredo Van." The name landed with a weight I hadn't expected.

"The Vortexian elder. Supreme Realm."

"You've heard of him."

"In passing. A rumor, mostly. Nobody I know has actually met him." I turned the name over, memory supplying the scattered fragments Dororo had once mentioned in an offhand comment about the continent's rarest cultivators.

"Why him?"

"Because centuries ago, before he withdrew from the world the way old, tired power eventually tends to, Alfredo Van spent considerable effort collecting relics that answered to no one's authority but their own." Onbu's expression didn't change, but something in his voice sharpened, careful and precise.

"I cannot promise he holds a second fragment. I can promise that if anyone on this continent does, and isn't already working directly against you, the odds favor him over every other name I could offer instead." I filed the name away carefully, alongside everything else the past two years had taught me to carry without dropping.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," Onbu said.

"Reclusive men who withdraw from the world rarely do so because they've grown fond of visitors." Dororo was waiting in his study when I finally made it back to the academy, three days later, sand still clinging stubborn to the hem of my cloak despite every attempt to shake it loose.

"You look considerably more intact than I expected," he said, not looking up from the spread of notes covering his low table.

"I'll take that as a good sign."

"The threshold's open. I'll need to cross it properly, eventually, but not alone, and not unprepared." I dropped into the seat across from him, Ember immediately abandoning my shoulder for the warmth of the nearest candle.

"Onbu gave me a name. Alfredo Van." Dororo went still in a way that told me the name meant something to him too.

"The Vortexian ghost," he murmured.

"I'd wondered, once or twice, whether he actually existed or whether the Vortexian family simply enjoyed the mystique of claiming a Supreme Realm ancestor nobody could verify." He shook his head slowly.

"If Onbu named him directly, I'm inclined to trust it considerably more than I trusted the rumors."

"You've been busy too," I said.

"While I was gone."

"Busier than I'd like." Something in his voice shifted, careful now, the dry humor draining out of it by degrees.

"I found a reference, finally, to your curved-blade friend. Not a name whoever he actually is has been considerably more careful about that than the Nightsky Sect ever managed to be about anything. But a title, old enough that I nearly missed it entirely, buried in a ledger of contracts nobody was ever meant to read twice." A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"What title?"

"A Collector." Dororo said the word carefully, like it cost him something to hand it over.

"A go-between, historically someone who arranges debts between mortal power and considerably less mortal patrons, and personally ensures those debts get paid, one way or another, regardless of how the debtor feels about the arrangement by the time it comes due." He met my eyes.

"Elder Fen's bargain. The Nightsky Sect's ambitions. Possibly even whatever happened to that missing student. If I'm reading this correctly, all three might trace back to the same kind of hand not the Choir itself, necessarily, but something that trades in exactly the currency the Choir has always seemed to value most." Something cold settled into my chest, familiar now in the particular way dread becomes familiar after enough repetition.

"So he's not working for the Choir."

"I didn't say that." Dororo's expression stayed carefully neutral.

"I said I don't know yet. Collectors, historically, served whoever could afford their particular services. That could mean the Choir. It could mean something else entirely, using the same old, patient methods for reasons that have nothing to do with your bloodline at all." He rubbed at his eyes beneath those dark lenses, exhaustion finally showing through the careful composure.

"I intend to find out which. Carefully. From a considerably safer distance than the room you apparently walked directly into."

"Duly noted," I said, echoing his own words back at him, and something like a tired smile crossed his weathered face despite everything sitting heavy in the room around us.

"Two leads," he said.

"A fragment, and a name for the thing that's been quietly eating away at everything around you since before you were born. Not bad, for three weeks I spent mostly staring at ledgers instead of sleeping properly."

"Two leads," I agreed, "and considerably less time than either of them probably deserves before something forces my hand again." Ember chirped once from its perch by the candle, small and warm and utterly unbothered by the weight settling over the room, and I let myself, for one brief moment, simply be grateful that forward progress real, earned, two-handed progress finally felt like something within reach instead of a rumor I was chasing through other people's careful, half-answered silences.

"Alfredo Van first," I decided.

"If the Patriarch knows how to reach him, that's where we start." Ellia found me at dinner, exactly where I'd hoped and half-expected she would, and slid into the seat across from me with a look that suggested she'd already heard some version of the story before I'd finished sitting down.

"You're alive," she said.

"And apparently in one piece, which I'm choosing to take as a personal victory given the promises you made before you left."

"Barely," I admitted.

"Onbu doesn't test gently."

"Good. I'd have been more worried if he had." She studied me a moment, something more serious threading beneath the easy tone.

"So. What did three days of nearly dying teach you this time?" I told her not everything, not yet, but more than I'd given her before. The threshold. The fragment. A name neither of us had expected to hear outside of half-believed family legend.

"Alfredo Van," she repeated, something careful crossing her face.

"My father's mentioned him exactly twice in my whole life, and both times he changed the subject before I could ask a second question." She frowned, turning the name over the way I had.

"If Onbu sent you looking for him specifically, he's not sending you toward an easy conversation."

"When has anything about the last two years been easy?"

"Fair point." A ghost of her old teasing returned, brief and welcome.

"I'll talk to my father. If anyone can actually get you an audience with a Supreme Realm ghost story, it's him." She hesitated, then added, quieter, "Let me come with you. Wherever this next part takes you." I hadn't expected the offer, and something in my chest tightened at the plain, uncomplicated honesty of it.

"It might not be safe."

"Nothing you do is safe, Len Fan. I stopped expecting safe from you somewhere around the duel." She held my gaze, steady despite the risk in the offer.

"I'd rather stand next to the danger than keep hearing about it secondhand after the fact. That's not a request. That's me telling you how this is going to work from here." I didn't have an argument left that I actually believed in, and something in me tired, grateful, considerably less alone than it had felt in weeks didn't particularly want to find one.

"Alright," I said.

"Together, then." Her smile, when it came, was worth considerably more than the risk either of us was about to walk into — and for once, sitting there across a dinner table that had seen considerably more secrets than either of us had ever meant to bring to it, the weight on my shoulders felt like something I no longer had to carry entirely alone.