Morning came cold and damp inside the cave. The fire had burned down to a thin bed of grey ash. I sat up from the pile of pine needles, muscles stiff, ribs still aching from yesterday's goblin fight. Silas was already awake. He was sitting cross-legged on the cave floor, surrounded by a semicircle of smooth river stones, each one the size of an apple. His pipe hung unlit from the corner of his mouth. He was staring at the stones with the intense, unfocused expression of a man doing mental arithmetic. "Morning," I said. "Is it?" He glanced toward the cave entrance, where grey light was seeping in. "Right. Yes. Morning. Good." He pointed at the semicircle of stones. "Sit down." I sat. Silas picked up one of the stones and held it out to me between his thumb and forefinger. "Remember what the ugly little fellow did yesterday? With the sword?" "Earth magic through the blade," I said. "Exactly that." He dropped the stone into my palm. "Do it. Push your fire into the rock. Not out of your hand. Use your mana like you're... painting a wall. Or drowning a kitten." He waved his hand vaguely. "You get the idea." I closed my fingers around the stone. I pulled mana, the way I always did — through the left hand, letting it pool in my palm. Then I pushed. The mana slid off the stone's surface like water off oil. I tried again. Harder. The stone grew slightly warm, but the heat was radiating from my hand, not from the rock itself. "You're throwing it," Silas observed, picking at his teeth with a splinter. "Stop throwing it." "I'm not throwing anything." "You are. You're going—" He mimed a pushing gesture. "—like it's a ball and the rock is a wall. That's Academy thinking. Fire goes here, fire goes there, fire is a thing that moves. It doesn't move, mate. You don't move your skin, do you? It's just there. On you." He reached over and tapped the stone in my hand. "This rock is now your finger. Your fire is your fingerprint. Don't push it. Just... be it. Be angry at the rock. Be hot. Be the rock, but hot." "That doesn't make any sense," I said. "Course it does." He grinned. "Try again." I tried. And failed. And tried. And failed. For forty minutes. Silas smoked his pipe, fed his goblins scraps of dried meat, reorganized a shelf of vials, and hummed the same off-key tune he'd hummed on the walk in. On the forty-something attempt, I stopped trying. I was tired. Frustrated. My fingers ached. I just squeezed the rock, furious at it for existing, wanting it gone, wanting it broken, wanting it to stop being cold in my grip— The stone cracked. A thin fracture line split across the surface, and when it fell apart in my palm, the broken edges were glowing faintly orange. Hot enough to sting my skin. Silas appeared at my shoulder, peering down at the two halves. "There it is," he said quietly. Then, louder, cheerful: "Lovely. Now do it again. With the next one. And the next one. And about five hundred more after that, and then—" He tapped my hammer, leaning against the cave wall. "—you try it with something useful." I picked up the next stone. * * * I left the cave around midday with raw fingertips and a bag of cracked rocks behind me. Most of my attempts after the first success were failures. Maybe one in ten stones cracked. But that one in ten was real. The heat wasn't coming from my hand anymore. It was coming from inside the stone. The walk back to Ashford took two hours. I entered through the south gate, showed my Mercenary token to the bored guard, and headed for the compound. Renn was sitting on the steps of the barracks, carving a piece of wood with a small knife. When he saw me, his easy grin didn't appear. That was unusual. Renn always grinned. "Hey," I said. "Hey." He kept carving. Didn't look up. "So. Where've you been?" "Walking." "Walking." Renn tested the word like it tasted funny. "Walking. Sure. Good walk? Scenic?" "What happened?" I asked. Renn finally looked up. He folded the knife and tucked it into his boot. He glanced left and right — nobody in earshot — then dropped his voice. "Your buddy Greyve came by yesterday. While you were out walking." My stomach tightened. "What did he do?" Renn leaned back against the steps, affecting casual. He was bad at it. "Nothing dramatic. Very polite, actually. Came to the office, spoke with Veyra for about twenty minutes behind closed doors. Then he left. Big smile on his face." "And?" "And he filed a formal complaint. Through the Guild. Says you left the compound without an active contract and without informing your commanding officer." Renn pointed at me with his whittling knife. "Which, you know... you did." I said nothing. "Three of those," Renn continued, holding up three fingers, "and you're out. No badge. No protection. No nothing. Just a guy with a hammer and a lot of problems." "Thanks for the warning," I said. "Don't thank me. Go see Veyra. She's in a mood." He picked up his piece of wood and resumed carving. "A bad mood." * * * Veyra was in the small office behind the mess hall, the one with a single window and a desk buried under contracts. She was writing something when I entered. She didn't look up. "Close the door," she said. I closed it. She kept writing for another ten seconds. Then she put the pen down, folded her hands, and looked at me with the flat, empty expression of a woman calculating how much trouble I was worth. "Do you know what I had to do today, Marshal?" "No." "I had to sit across from Greyve and listen to him explain, with a copy of the Guild charter on the table between us, why one of my fighters left the compound without authorization." She tilted her head. "And I had to sit there and agree with him. Because he was right." "I went for a walk," I said. "You went for a walk." She repeated it the same way Renn had. Like the words were made of something suspicious. "You went for a walk, on the same day that I told you — I specifically told you — to not give him opportunities." She stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the training yard. "One more of these, and I need to start spending favors to make them disappear. Two more, and I can't. Three, and you're out of my company, out of the Guild, and out of my problem. If I'm being honest?" She glanced back at me. "That third option is starting to look pretty clean from where I'm standing." "I understand," I said. "Do you? Because you keep saying that, and then you keep doing whatever you feel like doing." She sat back down. "Get out. Take a contract tomorrow. A real one. Stay visible, stay useful, stay boring. That's your job now. Being boring." I left. * * * The corridor between the mess hall and the barracks was empty. Late afternoon light cut through the high windows in dusty golden bars. I was walking toward my bunk when a voice came from behind a stack of supply crates. "Marshal." I turned. Idris was standing in the shadow of the crates, half-hidden. He was holding a leather-bound notebook tight against his chest, the way he always held things — like someone might snatch them away. His eyes darted to the corridor behind me, checking for witnesses. "Can we—" He gestured vaguely upward. "Up. The roof. Quieter." We climbed the service ladder to the flat roof of the storage building. The view was the compound walls and, beyond them, the grey slate roofs of Ashford fading into the evening haze. Idris sat on the low wall, knees together, still clutching his notebook. "I heard about the complaint," he said. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at his own boots. "Greyve." "News travels fast." "In a Guild compound? Everything travels fast." He opened his notebook, then closed it again. Fidgeting. "I need to tell you something, and I need you to not... react. In a way that's visible. If that's possible." "Talk," I said. Idris took a breath. He finally looked at me — quick, nervous, then back to his boots. "When I was at the Academy — Second Circle, about three years in — a man came to see me. Well-dressed. Said he represented a minor house. House Verant. Small, ambitious, no a lot of money, trying to claw their way up. He said they were... looking for talented mages who might want more... flexibility. Than the Academy offered." He was picking at the leather cover of his notebook, pulling at a loose thread. "I said no. Obviously. I left the Academy for my own reasons, not to trade one leash for another. But the point is..." He looked up again, and this time he held my gaze. "House Verant. That's who Greyve works for." I felt the information land like a stone dropping into still water. "How do you know?" I asked. "His crest. The clasp on his cloak — most people think it's decorative. It's not. It's House Verant's sigil, turned sideways." Idris tapped his notebook. "I remember details. It's what I do." "So Greyve is their man in the Guild." "Their man everywhere," Idris corrected quietly. "They can't afford to buy a mage. Too expensive. But an unregistered, undocumented mage with no family, no patron, and no options?" He was looking at his boots again. "That's... cheaper." I stood at the edge of the roof, looking out at the darkening city. "You're being blackmailed," Idris said softly. "To be acquired." The wind picked up, carrying the smell of river water and chimney smoke. Below us, mercenaries were filing into the mess hall for dinner, laughing about something. Normal evening sounds. "Why are you telling me this?" I asked without turning around. Silence. Then, almost too quiet to hear: "Because someone should have told me, back then. And nobody did." He stood up, tucked his notebook under his arm, and walked to the ladder. He paused with one foot on the top rung. "I don't know what you're going to do with this," he said. "Just..." He adjusted his grip on the notebook. "Be careful." He climbed down and was gone. * * * That night, the barracks were loud. Some fighter from 2nd Company had won a bet, and there were bottles going around. Renn was in the thick of it, telling a story about a cave spider the size of a horse — which, knowing Renn, meant it was probably the size of a large dog — and waving a chicken leg for emphasis. I lay on my cot with my eyes closed. The board had changed. Greyve wasn't playing for himself. He was playing for House Verant. Killing Greyve wouldn't end anything — they'd send another. Running wouldn't help — they'd flag me with the Magistrate. The legal path was a wall. The criminal path was a noose. Silas was a chance. A door of a kind. Not a safe door. Not a clean door. But a door that led somewhere, and the room I was in was getting smaller by the hour. I needed time. Time to learn. Time to build the weapon that was apparently already built inside me. Silas said someone had perfected my channels years ago. Someone had poured enormous skill and effort into making me what I was. And then — what? Thrown me away? Lost me? Or hidden me. I opened my eyes and stared at the dark ceiling. The barracks noise washed over me like rain on a rooftop. Meaningless sound. Tomorrow I would take a contract. I would be visible. I would be useful. I would be boring. I would smile at Greyve if I had to. And at night I would crack rocks until my fingers bled. Two lives. One face. I closed my eyes and slept.

Chapter 18: Someone Else's Game