Jack had been a guard for eleven years before the Landing, posted to three lords and one city council, and not one of them had made him feel like the job was worth a damn past the paycheck. Lord Harold was different, and that wasn't sentiment — it was just what he'd observed.
He'd watched Harold work on that bomb. Watched him push past whatever a good alchemist could do and keep going on something Jack didn't understand. The mana coming off him had pressed against Jack's chest, and he could feel the density against his own mana. He'd been around strong alchemists. He knew what one looked like when they were grinding. Harold had ground past that, past whatever came after that, and somewhere on the other side of all of it had just — kept working.
Jack didn't need to understand why or how. But he finally found someone he could do his job for.
He posted Rast at the wagon's rear door, put Corvin and Marsh facing outward at the far corners, and that was usually enough. Most people stopped at ten paces, read the mood, and turned back. The ones who didn't were the entitled ones.
The first was one of the minor lords.
"Not right now."
"It'll only take a—"
"Not right now." Jack didn't move. The man left.
The second was a message from Alchemist Finn.
"Leave it with me."
"He said personally—"
"Leave it with me." Jack held out his hand. The herald left it and went.
The third was Lady Maren, who had a question about tomorrow's plan.
"Colonel Hale."
"I tried Hale, he sent me—"
"Colonel Hale," Jack said, "is your commander. Not the Count. Go back."
She went.
The fourth was Tribune Tran, with a ledger under one arm and a clipboard in the other. He believed that organizational authority was a natural force of the universe, like gravity.
"Guard Commander. I understand the Count is resting, and I respect that, but I am missing supplies, it's time-sensitive, and if I don't find—"
"The morning."
"The morning." Tran looked at his clipboard. Back at Jack. "And in the morning, who should I—"
"Colonel Hale." Jack's voice had not changed tone in four attempts, and it did not change now. "Your actual commander. Not the Count. If Colonel Hale sends you back here, tell him I said he can come himself and explain why a supply allocation needs to wake up a man who spent the last few days preventing all of us from dying."
Tran left. Jack watched him go.
Rast appeared at his shoulder. "How many's that?"
"Eight today."
"Betting pool in the second century has you at ten before midnight."
"Tell them to go to hell, or they can join me for morning PT," Jack said pleasantly and went back to watching the road.
The column kept grinding north. The wagon creaked over the busted road, and Harold did not move once on the cot inside, and Jack stood the post until his relief came up at the third watch, and when they did, he gave them one sentence of instruction.
"Nobody gets in. I don't care who they are or what they're carrying."
He walked off before they could ask follow-up questions, and when they saw him again, he was setting up his sleeping pad right next to the wagon.
The fire was in the lee of a ruined stone wall at the camp's eastern edge, far enough from the column that the noise had softened to a low continuous murmur, and Finn had set up a work table close enough to the flames to see by because he needed to get the Rampback's harvestable tissue into sealed cases before it lost potency. He was elbow-deep in the chest cavity when the others started drifting over, and he talked without looking up because the work didn't stop for conversation.
"Seven active channels at minimum," he said, probing. "Possibly eight — the explosion compressed the left side, I can't feel it cleanly." He shifted his fingers, and the firelight threw his arm's shadow long across the paved stone. "On Earth, this anatomy doesn't exist. The mana channels must be the reason — the whole creature runs on them."
Henri was sitting on the far side of the fire with his elbows on his knees, coat still buttoned to the collar despite the heat, and he hadn't spoken since Finn started.
"So I've got two," Caswell said, dropping onto a section of wall. "My mana goes out to my hands through two channels, yeah?"
"Two if you count the passive stability thread," Maren said from further down the wall, not looking up from her notebook. She was writing in small, tight columns. "Passives run through capillaries alongside the main channels. We've all got those running constantly, whether we use them or not. Only when we are channeling actively do we use our main ones."
"Right." Caswell looked at the Rampback. "That thing had seven, and I've got two."
"Two for you on a good day," Finn snorted, withdrawing his arm and reaching for a cloth. He'd spent most of his reserves on healing potions after the fight — the legion had taken losses at the ritual sites, and it showed on every face in camp. He turned the cloth over.
"When Harold was creating that bomb, it pushed me a couple of steps back; I wasn't expecting it. He must have more himself. And that was after watching him work on the mana penetration potions, which were already—" He shook his head. "That was already an exhilarating experience, and I got the account for the other alchemist in town. What he did tonight made those look like a warmup drill."
Fitch was standing at the fire's edge with his wrapped arm held close to his ribs, staring at the Rampback. "Okay, so how big is the gap actually?"
Finn thought for a moment. "You know the difference between a stream and a river?"
"Yeah."
"His mana is the river. Ours are the streams." He set the cloth down. "Not just volume. Speed. Depth. The pressure behind it. The water's purity."
Fitch stared. "That's — okay that's actually kind of terrifying."
"Bit, yeah."
Caswell picked up his mug, found it empty, and held it toward Renna without looking. Renna passed hers over without looking up from the map she was annotating.
Caswell glanced at Henri. "You want a drink, mate? We've got—" He looked at the bottle on Finn's work table. "Some kind of camp spirit. Smells like floor cleaner, but it ain’t bad after the first sip."
Henri looked at the bottle. Then at Caswell. "No, merci." His voice was very level. "I do not drink spirits from an unmarked camp bottle."
"Mate, just say you're a prude."
"I have standards."
Caswell looked at him slyly. "That’s the same thing."
"If there were wine—"
"There's not."
Henri looked back at the fire. "Then I am fine."
"You were in the field against him," Maren said to Henri, still not looking up from her notebook. "How did it compare to all of this?"
"Not against him directly," Henri said. "His subordinates, mostly."
"And?"
Henri picked at the edge of his thumbnail. The firelight caught the tension along his jaw. "I believed I was prepared. I had information. I had done a thorough analysis of the engagement variables." He stopped. "I was not prepared."
"What was it like?" Fitch asked. "I've only done skirmishes before this. Small stuff."
"Like—" Henri paused. Started again. "In chess, when you realize mid-game that you have been playing the wrong game entirely. That your opponent has been operating under different rules, and you look back and see — every choice you made, every move you were certain about—" He turned his thumb over. "He had arranged for me to make those choices. Most of what I thought I was deciding, I was deciding because he had already ensured I would." He paused, his hand moving to the hilt of his rapier, resting there without gripping. "I was not an opponent. Not really."
"Smart bastard," Caswell said.
"He was not even angry," Henri said, quieter. "I expected anger. Some acknowledgment. A worthy adversary, something." He shook his head. "He was already past it. Already planning the next thing. I do not think I registered on him at all." He rubbed at the mustache he'd been working on. "It is a strange feeling. To realize you were never the threat you believed yourself to be. And now I am a prisoner."
Dalen was sitting at the far end of the wall with both hands around a mug of beer — Harold's recipe, brewed at the Landing and brought in his pack — and he'd been watching the treeline rather than the fire. He hadn't said anything yet.
Brennig was standing a little apart, the way he usually did. The coal-end of his cigar traced a small orange arc when he lifted it.
Caswell, without looking, held his hand out toward it. Brennig moved it three inches further away.
"Come on."
Brennig took a long, slow pull and said nothing.
"One drag."
"Non."
"I'm injured."
"Just your chest."
"Yeah, exactly." Caswell kept his hand out. "My chest is injured. Cigar smoke is medicinal."
"For your chest."
"Oui. Si. However, you foreigners want me to say it."
Brennig considered this for one second and moved the cigar two inches closer. Caswell's hand closed on it immediately.
Fitch watched this happen with a smile and let it go. "What I keep thinking about," he said, "is when we first got here. He'd already had jobs for all of us. Already worked out what each of us could do and where we'd fit." He looked at his wrapped arm. "I've been a lord for eight months. Before that, I was barely out of school, still figuring out how to do laundry without my mum nagging me about it. I think a couple of days out. He thinks in years."
"Decades," Maren said. "Look at the programs he's already running. The timeline on those isn't reactive planning."
Finn threw an arm up. "Decades, yes, but that's my whole point. I understand he's regressed but I can't get my head around how much difference it still makes. What did he do the first time through this shit? What's sitting in his head that doesn't show on any perk screen?"
Renna had been quiet behind her map for a while. She set the corner of it down and looked at the fire instead, at the thin orange stripe the flames threw through a gap in the old wall, moving when the wind shifted. "He didn't pick us for our skills," she said. "I thought that's what I was bringing. My surveying, my cartography — I thought I was the expert walking in." She turned the map over in her hands. "He already had programs for all of that. He knew of things in my territory before I could explore them." She looked at the firelight moving on the stone. "He picked us for who we are. That's much harder to do." She glanced at Caswell. "I find that more interesting than the mana question, honestly. Makes me want to paint something.” She looked around the camp and began to hum while working on her map.
"No offense taken," Caswell said, passing the cigar back without being asked.
Henri had been quiet for a moment. He looked at the fire and then said, carefully, "I do not question his capability. I have experienced his capability firsthand, and I have no illusions about it." He paused. "But I find myself wondering — and perhaps this is impertinent — whether it is wise for all of this to rest on one man." He gestured at nothing specific. "The settlement. The forum. The programs. Us. All of it running through him." He picked at his thumbnail again. "What happens when he is wrong? Even the best plans—"
"He went into the Verdant Forest," Caswell said, not unkindly. "That's what I heard. Took a risk most lords wouldn't touch and came out with something nobody else had. I sure didn’t know about relics before him. That's a hell of a gamble."
"Exactly," Henri said. "And I respect the gamble. I am questioning the decision to make it. He is a single point of failure." He looked at Maren. "You see it too."
Maren had closed her notebook. "It's a legitimate risk assessment. Every critical system running through one person who is — by his own account, from what I understand — not entirely stable. If something happens to him—"
"The whole thing collapses," Fitch said, quieter than he meant to. He looked at his boots. "I've thought about that. I didn't want to say it, but I've thought about it."
A log shifted in the fire. Sparks rose and went dark.
"I just want to know the contingency," Caswell said. "That's all. I'm not — I'm in. I'm here. I just want to know what happens if he's wrong about something, because he's going to be wrong about something eventually, and I don't see the backup plan."
Dalen set his mug down on the wall.
Not loudly. Just set it down and looked at the group, and something in the set of his jaw said he'd been listening for a while.
"Lady Renna," he said.
She looked up from her work.
"You found a specific ingredient that no one else had even heard of, yet it was integral to his plan? Do you think he recruited you for your surveying or art? No, he knew you had a way about finding special things in trials."
She opened her mouth, closed it.
"You." Dalen looked at Brennig. "You found a hidden tunnel. Stumbled onto it, right? Lucky break." He tilted his head. "Or he'd already known you would find something if there was something to find. Sure is a coincidence, huh."
Brennig said nothing.
"Fitch." Dalen turned. "He sent you to the stable master. Told us all to explore the town and see what we could find, but you went there. What came out of it?"
Fitch shifted his weight. "A training method. For the horses. The stable master had a technique to give me after I solved a couple of problems for him, I just — I thought it was a coincidence that I was the one—" He stopped.“And you.” He looked at Henri. “Are universally reviled amongst humanity.” He threw his arms up widely, and his eyes looked wild in the firelight. “You attacked the famous potion lord. But what happened on the wall…” He waited a moment for an answer he never received. “You saved more than a few men closing that breach. The Legion greets you now. Did you notice? More than a few saulted you today. I don't know what his eventual plan with you is, or even if he has one. But I know you have a role to play.”
Dalen picked his mug back up. "He's not perfect. He went into the Verdant Forest, and that was a risk — I watched him march out of that forest with a battered column of troops; it cost him something. He makes mistakes. Plenty of them, we are here because he made mistakes, and what happened. Half of us helped fix those mistakes." He looked at Henri. "You're asking what happens when he's wrong. I'm telling you — you're what happens." He looked around the fire, upset.
"He came to my hold," Dalen said, quieter now. "I was useless. Settlement was falling apart, I was holding it together with hopes and prayers. Harold came personally, looked at what I was doing, and helped me fix it for nothing except some time." He turned the mug in his hands. "Then he personally made enough potions to heal all of my people. And his people all helped in their own ways." He shrugged, a small, tight movement. "Question what you want about the man. I'm done questioning him."
Nobody said anything for a moment.
Renna was looking at the firelight on the stone again.
Fitch said quietly, "The stable master thing was just a coincidence th—"
"I think… that's Lord Dalen’s point," Maren said. She was looking at her closed notebook. "It is obvious Harold is planning for more than we are aware of."
Henri picked at his thumbnail. He didn't argue. He just looked at the fire.
Elroy and Jenkins came around the ruined wall from the north end of camp with the confidence of two men who were very much on duty and ignoring it. They found the fire and the collection of lords around it, and both of them stopped at the same moment.
"Evening, My Lords," Elroy said.
"Evening," said most of the fire. Henri glanced up, then back at the flames, without comment.
Jenkins surveyed the group — Finn with gore to his elbow, the new lords, Henri, Dalen at the far end — and leaned slightly toward Elroy. Elroy was already leaning back.
"Pull up a rock," Caswell said. "We were just talking about Harold."
Elroy and Jenkins looked at each other for about half a second.
"About Lord Harold?" Elroy said.
"Yeah. You've been around him more than most of us. Any insight?"
"We've got a thing," Jenkins said. "Thing we need to get to."
"You just arrived."
"That's how it goes sometimes, My Lord." Elroy straightened up and hitched his belt. "You have a good evening."
"You're not curious?" Caswell said. "Finn's breaking down his mana architecture. Henri's giving us the full picture from the other side."
Elroy looked at him, "Lord Harold pulled us out of a dying village, put us in a good legion, gave us kit and perks we'd never have seen otherwise. More than a few women have kissed me since then." He hitched his belt again. "I don't gossip about him behind his back. I'd say everything I've got to say to his face, and I'd say it louder."
Jenkins was already half a step away. "Good night, My Lords."
Caswell watched them go. "Huh," he said.
"Didn’t expect that from them," Fitch said.
"I wasn't going to say anything bad."
"I don’t think they care, dude."
Jenkins fell into step with Elroy at the edge of the sentry circuit. "Parker?"
"Obviously," Elroy said. "Those idiots just made our night."
Parker was at the supply wagon on the column's west side with a lamp and a manifest, and he didn't look up when they arrived. "What?" he said, already annoyed.
"Oh, nothing," Elroy said. "Just. Lords are having a fire circle about Lord Harold. Finn, Henri, all the new ones. Lord Dalen."
Parker set the manifest down. He looked at the lamp. He reached under the wagon seat, produced two cups and a flat bottle, poured without measuring, and held both out.
Elroy and Jenkins took them. Elroy raised his. "You're a good man, Guard Commander."
"A legend," Jenkins agreed. "Songs will be written about you."
"History doesn't know shit," Parker said, taking the bottle back while the two retreated quickly.
He stood there with the manifest in his hand, lamp throwing yellow light across the page.
"Goddammit." He put the manifest down, corked the bottle, and walked toward the fire.
He heard them from twenty feet out — Finn's voice going technical, Renna saying something quiet, Maren cutting in before the answer finished. Henri's silence stood out; he normally worked to own a room. Caswell was talking, so nothing unusual.
Parker came around the wall. The group looked at him.
"Heard you lot were pissing on Jack's boots all day," he said. "Man's been turning people away all day, and you're the ones who did it." He looked around the fire. "Hope it was worth it."
A short silence.
"We weren't trying to—" Fitch started.
"Didn't say you were." Parker stayed standing, hands in his jacket pockets. "What's the problem?"
"No problem," Caswell said. "Questions. Harold was asleep all day while everyone else was fighting, and we wanted to understand a couple of things."
Parker snorted. "And, you think you’re entitled to it?" Parker said.
"Well…not in those…terms exactly."
"He spent the night making a bomb that blew up an army, kept the legion alive, and is still doing it because we are only alive right now because of all the potions he's made for all of us." Parker looked at Caswell. "That's why."
"Right, yeah, I — I know that. I was there."
"Then what's the actual question?"
Finn said, "His mana architecture. The control on the bomb work. I watched it, and I want to understand how he managed that level of channel complexity while depleted."
"Right. Ok, some potion junk." Parker looked at Henri. "And you?"
Henri met his eyes. "They were asking how I came to be where I am."
"Uh-huh." Parker looked around the group. "Anyone else?"
Dalen looked up from the end of the wall. "I'm not here with questions." He turned the mug between his hands. "I came because there was fire, and it was warm. The rest of you are making it complicated."
Parker almost smiled. He looked back at the group.
"Right," he said. "So. Who wants to get in the sparring circle tomorrow morning?"
Caswell sat up so fast he nearly knocked his mug off the wall. "Me. Absolutely me."
"No one," Parker said, rolling his eyes. "It was a threat, not an invitation." He looked at Henri, who had taken a small but very definite half-step backward. "Glad we're clear on that." He crouched at the fire, picked up a stick, and pushed one of the logs over. The fire caught the new angle and jumped. "Anyone want to tell me what you're actually here for, or are we doing this the long way? You all obviously have some gossip going around, and I would be remiss in my duties if I wasn’t included." He spat to the side near Fitch, who edged away.
Brennig spoke from where he was standing. "I saw what was in the tunnels." He glanced up at the group. "You all didn't." He looked back at the fire. "Children. Adults with — things done to them before they died." He turned the cigar stub between two fingers. "No version of that is a political problem. No version of that is a faction we work around." He pressed the stub against the stone until it went cold. "They die. All of them."
The fire popped. The sentry circuit passed thirty yards out, boots on frozen ground.
Caswell reached over and put a hand on Brennig's arm for a second, and Brennig let him.
"I know," Caswell said, quieter. "I know. I mostly just wanted to ask him about the mana control. That's what I came here for." He gestured at the conversation. "Not dismissing any of this. I just — I feel behind, and I want to catch up."
Renna had closed the map. She was looking at the firelight on the wall again, the thin orange stripe moving with the wind. "It's not about catching up," she said, softer than the conversation had been going. "I thought I was bringing expertise. He already had expertise. What he didn't have was us specifically." She looked around the group — Caswell, Fitch, Maren, Brennig, Henri, Dalen. "I keep thinking about what Dalen said. We're eating. We're warm. People respect the work we do. More importantly, our people's lives have improved." She looked back at the fire. "I don't know, I find that — I find that more moving than anything else."
"I see," Parker said. He was still crouched at the fire, stick in both hands, looking at the coals. "So…Riddle me this, Batman, eight months in — highest perk quality any of you have actually confirmed?"
"Epic," Maren said.
"Yeah, that Lord Ferris, reportedly," Fitch added. "Never posted it though, so."
"Epic's the top I've seen confirmed." Parker looked around the group. "You all want to know more about Harold and why he is the way he is.”Caswell nodded furiously while Fitch was a little more subdued about it. Maren looked on with interest.
“Harold's starting stone is legendary. His starting trait is legendary." He watched their faces drop and kept going. "Most of you came to him wanting something today. He has made himself available to you before this. In my opinion too available." He looked at Caswell. "Mana control questions." At Renna. "Surveying data, mapping access, what does he owe you?" At Maren. "Next phase, timeline, operational planning — and you don't give up control easily, so that's a tension point you're still working out." At Henri last. "He's kept you close on purpose. You know why. You're still asking questions anyway."
Henri held his eyes for a moment, then looked at the fire.
Parker turned the stick. "He grew up here," he said. "Different timeline, sure. But then he survived twenty years before he wound up back at the start, and that's all of what you know. But there is a lot you don't know.” Everyone was looking on with interest now, even Finn had stopped his work.
Most of it is what you'd expect — hard years, good years, figured out the system." He paused. "Then there's a stretch at the end he doesn't give you exact numbers on. The number changes when you ask, and it's not a subject you push. I don’t think he knows either."
Maren started to say something. Fitch touched her arm — barely contact — and she stopped.
"Other lords took him," Parker said. "For his alchemy. He'd built perk chains and compounds nobody else had, and he wouldn't hand them over, so they tortured him until he did. Then they kept him working because he was useful, and in whatever state he was in, he kept trying to improve the work, and in his madness and in their dammed own, they let him because of the better product." He looked at Caswell. "Those body improvement potions he gave you."
Caswell had gone still. "Yeah."
"That’s the early result of his work." Parker looked at him. "You want to know where those came from?"
"No," Caswell said, flat and quiet. "I don't."
"Right."
Parker stood. He looked around the group — Caswell with his mug, Renna with her map in her lap, Fitch quiet, Maren's notebook closed, Brennig with the dead stub, Henri staring at the coals, Dalen steady at the end of the wall.
"He's put the weight of all of humanity on his back. Every settlement, every forum post, every crafter workshop, every program. He believes it's his responsibility because he’s the one who's been sent back, and nobody's talking him out of it because trust me, we have tried." He looked at Brennig. "He's put humanity — in all its ugly shit — on his back, and you know better than anyone here what that looks like."
Brennig looked at the stub in his fingers. He didn't look ashamed, exactly. He didn't not look ashamed either.
"So when he needs to sleep, he sleeps. When he says jump — I jump. When he says take some lord's territory—" Parker looked around. "I'm in, right up until the moment his madness wins." He paused, elbows on his knees, looking at the coals. "And make no mistake. He's mad. He hides it well, but watch long enough, and it slips. Works with Bethel twice a week. It's helping. He's getting better. But after years of what he went through—" He spread his hands. "How would any of you do?"
Maren opened her notebook. The pen was already in her hand.
"Don't," Fitch said, low.
She looked at him.
He shook his head, just slightly.
She closed it.
Parker stood. He looked at Finn. "You want alchemy access." At Caswell. "You want to spar." He looked at Caswell. "And you're going to keep wanting that until it happens, I know." At Renna. "You want—"
"I know," Renna said. "I know what I want."
"Think about what I said first." He dropped the stick into the fire. "If I know him, he'll be up before most of you."
He walked back toward the column, boots steady on the frozen ground, and didn't look back.
The fire cracked and settled.
Nobody said anything for a while.
"Legendary," Caswell said eventually, to the fire. "Bloody hell."
Dalen finished his mug, set it on the wall, stood up, and looked at the group for a moment. "Good night," he said, and walked back toward his section without hurrying.
Renna watched the firelight move on the stone wall for a while longer. Then she folded the map properly and put it away.
Finn went back to the work table. His hands found the tools automatically, and he looked down at the opened anatomy of the Rampback and didn't say anything.
Brennig held the dead stub between two fingers, then put it in his coat pocket.
"Right," Caswell said, to no one in particular. He looked into his mug. Still empty. Had been empty for twenty minutes. He looked at Henri. "Sure, you don't want any floor cleaner?"
Henri looked at him for a long moment. "...Pour it."
Caswell smiled and reached for the bottle.