The eastern pier at dawn was a brutal place. It sat at the lowest edge of the island's foundation, accessible by a steep stone staircase cut directly through the bedrock. It slled of freezing brine and the chemical sting of sky-leviathan fuel. The vessel Kaito had secured was moored at the far end. It was a massive, hulking thing built for function, its thick hull plating the dark iron color of surviving bad weather.
Ashe sat on a wooden cargo crate. Her arms were crossed tight. Her jaw was locked. She had been awake since before the carriage arrived, and the freezing hours had only sharpened the bitter set of her mouth.
Vane stood near the rusted pier railing. His travel bag sat by his boots. He took slow, carefully asured breaths. His fractured ribs ground together with every inhale, a persistent, bright fire he had been forcing down for the last hour.
Footsteps echoed down the stone stairs.
Ryuken strolled onto the pier first. He was whistling a tuneless lody, his step terrifyingly light for a man who had kidnapped soone an hour prior.
Lancelot was a silent half-step behind him.
Ashe pushed off the crate.
Vane turned. He braced a hand against his injured side.
He activated the Usurper on reflex.
[Target: Lancelot]
[Rank: 4 (Mid Sentinel)]
[Authority: None]
[Danger: Extre]
The sa read as always. Vane held the prompt in his vision, watching the boy walk down the damp pier in plain traveling clothes.
His mind flashed through the data. Nyx in a coma. Five Sentinels dismantled. The tallic slide of a sword drawn only in the final thirty seconds. Lancelot had walked out of that blood-soaked courtyard, gone to help Anastasia, and placed first on the combined board without breaking a sweat.
Ryuken had asured Vane in two seconds. He had asured Lancelot in ten. That vast disparity in assessnt ti said everything about the terrifying gulf between them.
Lancelot stopped. His flat red eyes found Vane. They held contact for a fleeting second, then imdiately shifted to analyze the leviathan's hull.
There was no hostility. No smirk about the courtyard. No primate posturing or social tension. Just the mild, detached calculation of a machine mapping a new space. The anomaly living inside Lancelot simply did not react to the world like a human being.
Vane gritted his teeth and looked away.
He bent down and hoisted his heavy bag onto his shoulder. A sharp spike of agony shot through his ribs. He bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste copper.
Ashe intercepted her father.
She marched straight up to him, her spine rigid. She practically dragged Ryuken six ters down the pier behind a mooring post, out of easy earshot. Vane leaned heavily against the railing and watched.
He could not hear the words, but the shape of the fight was obvious. Ashe's shoulders were tense. She chopped her hand through the air, demanding answers.
Ryuken just stood there. He listened with his hands clasped behind his back, rocking slightly on his heels.
When she finished, he spoke. One brief sentence.
She responded sharply.
He spoke again.
Vane watched the fight completely drain out of her. Her posture crumbled. The argunt was over. She had gone in ard with a point she believed in, and Ryuken had casually handed her a fact she could not dispute.
Ashe stood frozen for a mont. Then, slowly, she turned her head and looked at Lancelot.
Lancelot ignored them entirely. He was tracking the movent of a deckhand on the ship.
Ashe looked back at her father. She whispered sothing. Ryuken gave a cheerful nod. She turned and walked back.
She stopped beside Vane. She kept her eyes glued to the rusted tal of the leviathan.
"He said if he had to pick one of us," she said. Her voice was hollow. "He would pick Lancelot."
Vane swallowed hard. He said nothing.
"He said in terms of pure martial talent, there is no comparison." She delivered the words like a physical blow. "He said you have more to learn, more to grow. That your potential is real."
She took a shaky breath.
"And then he said Lancelot is the third person in forty years who made him stop mid-session. He told Lancelot's talent is in a different category entirely. I told him Lancelot has no more room to grow than you do. He said growth and talent are not the sa thing."
Vane thought about two casual fingers resting lightly on his spear shaft. He thought about Ryuken needing Expert-range output just to survive a spar.
"He's right," Vane said. The words tasted like ash.
Ashe stared at him.
"Lancelot is in a different category," Vane said, his voice hardening. "That's not an opinion. That's the evaluation courtyard."
She searched his face. "You're not bothered by that."
"I'm bothered by it. I'm just not wrong about it."
She looked away. The leviathan's massive engines began their startup cycle. A deep, bone-rattling hum vibrated through the wooden pier. Kaito appeared at the top of the steep gangway, checking the headcount.
"Twelve weeks is a long ti," Ashe murmured over the engine noise.
"Yes."
"A lot happens in twelve weeks."
She looked down at the dark, churning water below the pier.
"It does," Vane agreed quietly.
She snatched up her bag. Her knuckles turned white. She marched toward the gangway without another word, conceding to a reality she hated. Kaito stepped aside. She disappeared into the dark hull.
Vane looked at Lancelot. The boy had not moved an inch. He was simply waiting his turn to board.
Vane sighed, the anger settling into a heavy exhaustion. He walked to the gangway. He put his boot on the first tal rung and stopped.
He turned and glared at Lancelot. "Twelve weeks," Vane said.
Lancelot slowly turned his head. "Yes," he stated.
They stared at each other across three ters of rusted pier. There was absolutely no irony or tension in Lancelot's blank face. He was a piece of matter standing on a wooden dock, waiting to board a tal vessel. That was sufficient.
Vane turned his back on him and marched up the gangway.
Ryuken practically skipped up the incline last. The heavy tal gangway retracted with a screech. Kaito spoke a command into a brass tube. The leviathan's engines roared, a violent vibration that Vane felt deep in his cracked ribs.
The massive vessel lifted.
The damp pier fell rapidly away. The island's ancient, scarred foundation ca into view, followed by the dark underside of the academy itself. They broke above the cloud line. The academy shrank into nothingness below.
Vane stood rigidly on the windy upper deck and watched it go.
He thought about the unopened boxes sitting on his shelf. He thought about the two short, exact ssages he had sent in the dead of night, and the instantaneous replies. Valerica and Isole were awake. He held that heavy, unresolved guilt in his chest. He refused to decide what to do about it yet, because deciding required being sowhere he was not.
Lancelot appeared on the deck a few minutes later. He walked to the railing and looked straight up at the sky. He did not look at Vane. He did not look back at the island.
Vane glared at him once, then turned his eyes back to the empty horizon.
The leviathan pushed east. The sun painted the distant ocean in a blinding, flat gold. The crossing would take ten days. Twelve grueling weeks waited at the end of it.
User Comments
0 comments from readers