Chapter 23

  Vin stared into the deep ruby red of the wine in her crystal goblet. The light of the hearth fire danced within the liquid, casting sparkling reflections onto the walls of the lower salon. She had expected iron chains, the cold sweat of a dungeon wall, and perhaps the stinging pain of a whip wielded by a vengeful interrogation specialist. Instead, she sat in an armchair made of butter-soft calfskin, its upholstery seemingly swallowing her whole, feeling the soothing warmth of a crackling fire on her cheeks.

  The lower salon was a hidden jewel of the Sothar Palace. The walls were paneled with dark walnut wood, and the shelves reached the ceiling, filled with knowledge that would be considered forbidden or lost elsewhere. It was a paradise compared to the drafty taverns where she had spent the last few years in hiding, or the moldy guesthouses of the border towns. Vin knew that Thivan loved this place; it had been his sanctuary back when they still dreamed together of Caleon’s future. The fact that he had her brought here of all places was either a cruel reminder of what she had thrown away or a last remnant of sentimentality that he refused to admit to himself.

  Maira sat only a few meters away at the massive reading table. In this luxurious setting, the cleric looked like a dark spot on a white canvas, but she didn't seem to mind. She was completely absorbed in a book she had found in the cellar library—a massive volume bound in human skin (or something very similar) entitled “Lexicon of Creeping Corruption.”

  Vin watched as Maira turned the yellowed pages with almost tender precision. Why such a specialized work on plague lore and pathological magic would be in a prince's private library was a question Vin preferred not to ask. Thivan had always been obsessed with understanding all threats before they manifested.

  Arik, on the other hand, could do little with books or wine. The Ash Warrior was restlessness personified. He refused to sit. Instead, he paced along the edge of the carpet, his bare feet making almost no sound on the parquet. He examined the mechanical clocks on the walls and the ornate sculptures, but his gaze always returned to one point: the exit.

  There stood the two details that reminded Vin this was no peaceful evening visit.

  The two Arcane Guards blocked the heavy double doors with an unshakability that bordered on the grotesque. While most Arcane Soldiers in the palace already appeared fearsome, these were the elite of the elite: the King's personal guard. Their armor consisted almost entirely of pure, polished Atherium, shimmering in a constant golden light. The plates were joined so seamlessly that not a single weak point was visible. In their hands, they held halberds with shafts made of black ironwood and blades so large they towered two heads above Luken—who was truly not a small man.

  On their journey, Luken, Maira, and Vin had often believed they were among the most powerful mortal beings on Tirros. They had slain monsters, defied legions, and pushed the boundaries of magic. But in the face of these two silent giants, that impression turned to dust. These guards were no longer human; through years of arcane infusions and the coupling with their Atherium harnesses, they had become living fortresses.

  Vin knew that Thivan wasn't the only one who possessed such monsters. On the first continent, there were perhaps five or six rulers who could afford the immense maintenance of such a company. It was said that a single one of these guardsmen could wipe out an entire regiment of ordinary knights without his pulse even quickening.

  But instead of just feeling fear, Vin felt something else: hope. A small, glowing spark of hope that Caleon might have a chance against Reyn after all changed to a fire of hope. If these guardsmen stood at the front, even a Lord of the Storm would think twice. Reyn was powerful, yes, but he was a tactician. And no tactician in the world voluntarily ran into a wall of Atherium halberds.

  The silence in the room eventually became too much for Vin. The crackling of the fire and Maira’s occasional page-turning made her nervous. She needed a reaction. She wanted to know if a spark of humanity still existed behind those golden visors.

  She rose slowly, wine goblet still in hand, and walked toward the door with deliberately casual steps.

  Arik halted his movement and watched her with narrowed eyes. Maira didn't even look up from her book but murmured softly, "Save your breath, Vin. They have less soul than my viruses."

  Vin ignored her. She stopped about two meters in front of the guards. The light reflections from their golden armor almost blinded her.

  "Beautiful armor," she began, putting on her most charming smile—the one that had often earned her information or free entry in the taverns of the underworld. "Thivan always did value aesthetics. Isn't it terribly hot in there? I mean, with this fire... you must be sweating like crazy, right?"

  No reaction. The guards did not move a millimeter. Not even the faintest rattle of a breath could be heard behind the visors.

  Vin took a step closer, being careful to stay out of the reach of the halberds. "Listen, boys. I know you have your orders. But we’re actually on the same side. I was once... well, almost your queen. We don't have to be so formal. What's the situation in the North? Have the golems of House Wolfsgrund held the line?"

  Again, nothing. The Arcane Guards stared straight ahead, their mirrored visors reflecting only Vin's own increasingly uncertain face. It was like trying to flirt with a statue.

  "You really are the tough guys, aren't you?" she tried again, this time with a slightly annoyed undertone. "You know, I’ve heard the Sothar Guard is famous for its eloquence. Or did Thivan have your tongues cut out so you wouldn't blab his secrets? That would be so typical of him. Control down to the last detail."

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  In that moment, the guard on the left moved. It wasn't a threatening gesture, just a minimal shift in weight. The halberd struck the marble floor with a dull, metallic thud. The sound was so unexpectedly loud that Vin involuntarily flinched, spilling a small splash of wine onto the carpet.

  A voice that sounded like the grinding of granite slabs emerged from behind the helm. It was not human; it was distorted by the magic of the armor and deeply resonant.

  "Step back, Lady Vin. Your presence is tolerated. Your proximity is not."

  Vin took a deep breath. Okay, so they did speak. But the coldness in the voice was worse than the silence. It was the voice of an instrument, not a man.

  "Lady Vin?" she repeated softly, a bitter smile stealing onto her lips. "The fact that I’m still called that here is nothing short of a miracle. Very well, I’ll step back. But tell me just one thing: do you think he’s ready? Thivan. Do you think he’s ready for what’s coming for him?"

  The guard no longer responded. The moment of communication was over. The statue was a statue once more.

  Vin sighed and returned to her chair. She sank into the cushions and finished the rest of her wine in one gulp.

  "I told you," Maira commented dryly, without lifting her eyes from the Lexicon of Corruption. "They are bound to the cores. Their thoughts are the rhythms of gears and mana streams. They are just waiting for the command to kill."

  "Perhaps," Vin said, staring back into the fire. "But they are here. And as long as they are here, this palace still has a chance."

  Arik came over to her and leaned against the back of her chair. He was the only one of them who wasn't afraid of the silence. "They are strong," he said quietly, his voice rough like ash. "But even they burn when the fire is hot enough. We shouldn't trust in them. We should trust in Luken."

  Vin nodded slowly. Luken was upstairs with Thivan. The half-demon and the broken king. She could hardly imagine how that conversation was going, but she knew that the future of Tirros was currently hanging by a silken thread being spun in the Trophy Room.

  She closed her eyes and tried to enjoy the warmth of the hearth, but in her mind, she saw only the violet lightning in the North and the cold gold of the Guard. The lower salon was a beautiful cage, but it was still a cage.

  -

  Behind the mirror-smooth visors of pure Atherium, where Vin suspected only the unapproachable coldness of statues, a completely different reality reigned. The communication of the Royal Guard was not a dull roar across battlefields, but a high-frequency, magical weave of thought impulses and data streams.

  At the moment Vin slumped back into her chair in disappointment, a telepathic message flooded the mind of Idas, the guard who had just spoken.

  "Why did you speak?" asked Castor, his combat and watch partner, with a severity that swept through their shared conscious space like a lashing wind. "We have clear protocols, Idas. We are to guard them, maintain the integrity of the room, and engage in no small talk with subjects under arrest. Especially not with one who has already betrayed House Sothar once before."

  Castor was the elder of the two, if one could still speak of age regarding two men whose bodies were almost completely fused with the alchemy of their armor. Their connection was deeper than that of ordinary soldiers; they were brothers whose nervous systems had been synchronized during the Arcane Transformation. They shared not only the field of vision of their helms but also the biometric data of their bodies.

  Behind his closed visor, Idas raised an eyebrow in wonder—a tiny movement of flesh and blood that remained entirely invisible to the outside world. Yet, within the internal network of the Guard, every stirring was transparent.

  "I did not engage in small talk," Idas countered calmly. His mental tone was objective, almost clinical. "I issued a command. She breached the critical distance of two meters. Protocol dictates a verbal warning before physical coercive measures are initiated. I merely maintained efficiency."

  Silence reigned in the ether for a moment. Their armor’s sensors continued to scan the room uninterrupted: Maira’s heartbeat was steady and slow, almost unnatural for a human; Arik’s muscles were coiled like tensed springs; Vin, meanwhile, was consuming an above-average amount of oxygen due to her nervousness.

  "Your facial expression changed for 0.67 seconds," Castor informed him dryly. In his mental focus, a recording of Idas’s face inside the helm lit up. A tiny twitch at the corner of the mouth, a nuance of amusement at Vin’s pathetic attempt to flirt with them. "Your pulse rose by three beats per minute when she called you 'tough guy.' You are being negligent, brother."

  Inside the armor, they were not soulless machines, even if the world saw them as such. The Arcane Guard consisted of men who had made a radical choice. The Atherium in their veins extended their senses and accelerated their reflexes to a superhuman level, but it did not erase their identity—it preserved it within a cocoon of duty and technological perfection. They still felt heat, cold, and irony, but they had learned to hide these stirrings behind a curtain of unshakable discipline.

  Idas sent back an impulse of acknowledgement, though he couldn't quite suppress the mental equivalent of a grin. "She is persistent. I’ll give her that. Thivan had... interesting taste back then."

  Castor was about to call him to order again, but the absurdity of the situation—two of Tirros’s most powerful warriors, guarding a thief and a necromancer like immobile gods while arguing over nuances of etiquette—broke through his own rigid facade.

  Then the two brothers laughed heartily, as quietly as possible. Outwardly, not a sound was heard, not even a tremor of the golden breastplates. Only a minimal hum, inaudible to the human ear, betrayed that life existed there. It was a deep, brotherly understanding grown over decades of shared service.

  "Concentrate," Castor finally urged, letting the laughter fade in the ether. "The King and the Paladin are concluding their conversation. I sense the energy shift in the upper floor. The portal is reacting to Thivan’s emotions."

  Idas became serious again instantly. The data streams in his visor updated. "Understood. Moving to Alert Level Two. When the Paladin enters the room, we watch his aura. I don’t trust this 'half-demon' as far as I can throw my halberd."

  "Neither do I," Castor agreed. "But if Thivan trusts him, we will too—until he gives us a reason to atomize him."

  They returned to their absolute silence. Two golden sentinels blocking the exit, unapproachable and fearsome. Vin continued to watch them with a mixture of hope and unease, completely unaware that the "machines" before her had just shared a private joke at her expense.

  At that moment, the floor of the salon trembled. It was no ordinary tremor, like one caused by a golem. It was a deep, magical infrasound rising directly from the palace foundations. The glasses on the table rattled, and Maira looked up from her book for the first time.

  Castor and Idas reacted simultaneously. Their halberds lit up with an intense blue, and their visors scanned the floor.

  "It begins," Castor transmitted to his brother. "The seal is faltering."