The new meeting space was more drafty than the Map Room, which was scorched, covered in blood and guts, and somehow still holding Yistopher’s prisoner. The top of the south-eastern turret was chosen as a replacement for its outlook, lack of putrid odour and the fact that the majority of the Remnant leadership refused to climb down from its safety.

  I leaned over the battlements near the rope we’d climbed across, looking out over the grounds and the stirring city. I’d been banished to where I couldn’t cause any more headaches, while the adults talked about what would happen next. My senses stretched farther and clearer through the air and stone beneath my fingertips, yet I hardly enjoyed the strengthened presence of mana.

  The steady march of shield walls, spear thrusts and spells had turned to more solemn work. The troops not holding the gates and the retaken fortifications outside the city limits were distributing rations, setting up tents, and treating the wounded. Naimeen, the healer from Petrick’s group, stood out amongst the uniformed army and knight healers as she strode between cots. They were set out in neat rows on the grass away from the growing pile of ghoul bodies that an unlucky group was collecting to burn.

  Our dead were treated with far more care, lined up on leathery tarps near the still-standing portion of the fence. I was glad a second tarp covered the remains since the few glimpses I had caught made my skin crawl. To die with so many healers nearby, with a body intact enough to recover, meant the person was entirely torn apart. Six knights and triple that for the army and militia soldiers lay along the tarp, despite all the precautions. However, the most significant number of dead were civilians who were unaccounted for, remaining as a tally next to a list of the missing.

  Each new sight of a reuniting family or a mourning soldier dragged my reflections every which way. The shield bearer from Oteli’s squad was under the tarp, the only casualty of the Drasdan knights, having been pulled by her ankle into the horde. Hauser was there too, but his passing didn’t stir my sympathies. Most of the other casualties were from the castle ghouls or occurred when infested buildings were cleared without enough healers.

  My head hurt from how many times I tried to reorganise events to make the tarp unnecessary or less crowded. But every new scenario was plagued by its own drawbacks, except one, so far—finding and detonating the dragon’s breath while inside the coven’s base. But for that, I’d need the knowledge I had now back then.

  “Valeria?” Faraya asked, and I turned towards the centre of the turret where she stood with the other leaders.

  They’d elevated a stone table from the flooring for them to stand around, the shape of which had taken more than a few minutes of arguing. A circle had been settled on, which the groups pressed in around with as many numbers as they could squeeze: Tometh and his adjutant, Arardish and his auctioneers, General Kylepo and his aides, and Faraya.

  Yistopher was the only other representative up here for the knights, since mages were in high demand.

  “Yes?” I asked, still sour about the banishment.

  “Explain to this… gentleman why you are unable to sign on behalf of Drasda,” she said.

  Before I could open my mouth, Arardish spoke up with the same defence as the last half hour. “Are you denying she’s a Riker? If not, I fail to see how this backtracking would not sully the duke’s good name.”

  “The agreement stipulates requesting help, our arrival and liberation of your broken townlet is another matter that requires recompense,” General Kylepo said, relying on a separation of tasks as his argument. His original approach had been to rip up the piece of paper, but a simple spell had stitched it back together.

  “We may feel you are trying to extort us before the deed is done,” Tometh said, earning a glare from me. “If we don’t give in, you will leave us for dead.”

  “I’m happy you understand your predicament,” General Kylepo said. “So accept our reasonable trade terms and we can push onwards.”

  “And we have already compensated you,” Arardish said, shaking the piece of paper with my name scrawled on it. “Perhaps we can offer Valeria the chestplate we have as an additional thanks.”

  “I’ll take it,” I said, my smile faltering at the glare from Faraya and the general.

  “Valeria… shut the fuck up,” Faraya said, fists clenched and huffing between each syllable.

  I held my tongue since the conversation was going well for me. The anger and curses flung my way were disheartening, but they were helping my goals of making sure Arardish didn’t demand the inn once he found out what was underneath. Or was he shameless enough to reverse his argument completely?

  “Maybe we should rip up the agreement, it is after all only signed in pencil by a child,” Tometh said, the traitor. “A more secure one with the general in mana-infused ink would be better for us. Perhaps the embassy could be in a more prestigious place, and we could give looting terms in line with our senior teams?”

  He wanted the tunnel for himself, or was he after something else?

  General Kylepo unfurled a list handed to him by an assistant, taking notes for the meeting. “We would be happy to start with a nullification of the tax on importing these items from you.”

  Arardish accepted the list with Jacora reading over his shoulder. “Gold, silver, crystal, alcohol, mana saturated materials… absolutely not.”

  Arardish pushed his head away. “We can talk of silver and some vintages of certain spirits. Not elven, of course.”

  “I would prefer no changes to our current tax system and would rather bring in the duchy’s help in clearing the capital. How about adding the right of first purchase to liberated territory?” Tometh asked.

  “You have no right to bargain on our behalf,” Jacora spat, turning on the captain.

  “Arardish, why don’t you explain who has the command of the knights?” Tometh said without looking to their side. “And while you’re at it, I’m sure you could also impress upon the profiteer that his whole system is built on our cooperation.”

  Arardish placed a hand on the business owner’s shoulder to drag him back to their side of the round table. But that didn’t stop his mouth from running away from him. “Our sales keep this place movin', and those sales depend on our ability to control all goods coming out of the capital.”

  “That’s the problem,” Tometh said. “You depend on plundering, when our goals should be on liberation.”

  “I don’t see why we should put more of our troops in danger and sacrifice more lives,” General Kylepo said, turning towards Jacora. “Unlike you people, we do not trade lives for gold.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re asking for now?” Arardish said. “To give you a gold value for the sacrifice you’ve undertaken.”

  “Compensation for coming to your aid without the promise of anything in return,” Faraya interjected.

  “When we conquer the capital, this will once again be the centre of a fractured kingdom, and you’ll want favourable terms on land and trade,” Tometh said.

  “You don’t speak for us. Neither of you do,” Jacora shouted at Tometh and Arardish. “There is no more crisis. No more emergency powers. You’re all overpaid captains who get to act like barons because we pay for you and your soldiers' employment.”

  Arardish turned to calm the man. Tometh tried to return to negotiating with Faraya despite the noise, but she and the general had huddled for a debate over the two sets of offered terms.

  I seized the forgotten agreement from the table, more air magic than plant for the processed and flattened pulp. I turned it face down on the uneven battlements and pulled a wooden pencil from the table. It was cumbersome writing with the gauntlet on, but I made do.

  Yistopher, who had been silent during the discussion without any authority or incentive of his own, wandered over to make sure I wasn’t creating trouble.

  “What’s the word for roe paid after someone retires?” I asked, my pencil resting beside three scratched-out words.

  “A pension?”

  “Thanks.”

  Remnants pay out half the pension of those killed, I wrote and slid it to the side to show Yis

  He nodded. “Fair.”

  No taxes on items extracted from the capital by Drasda.

  “Add ‘transported to Drasda and sold in Drasda’ to the end of that one,” he said.

  “Do you think this would be a good place to train knights?” I asked, trying to give Tometh what he wanted while keeping the inn. “You’ve all been practising spells meant to slaughter people without a care here.”

  Yistopher turned back from where he’d been watching the argument behind us. “I suppose.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Drasda supplements the defence of the capital walls with two five four squads, I wrote with input from Yistopher, holding up his fingers in front of my face.

  “It would be an easier sell if you gave up the embassy thing and returned the relics,” he said. “We can make you more efficient armour.”

  I frowned. Valeria Riker returns the armour, but the embassy stays at the Marchland Inn.

  “We’re keeping the inn,” I said.

  “Our only benefit in your proposals is the looting, which is useless if they don’t let us into the capital.”

  “Which is why we need the inn… the witches used it to go back and forth between the capital and the city,” I whispered.

  Yistopher’s eyebrows furrowed, and he leaned closer after checking our surroundings. “Who else knows?”

  “Tometh does, that’s why he wanted joint ownership. It wasn’t only to get around the laws so I could possess some random inn.”

  “We could sell it back to them using the original contract,” Yistopher said.

  “Or we could take advantage of it and be the duchy that helps retake the royal palace and everything inside,” I said.

  “We can’t be seen looking like we’re trying to reinstate a monarch. The rest of the duchies will unite against us. After the Fall, the dukes rewrote the prerequisites for monarchs from a royal bloodline and its bonded pair of enchanted items to a majority vote by them. They may see this as us trying to use the old laws, because if one wanted to be pedantic, then the dukes had no authority to rewrite the royals’ decrees.”

  “They thought no one would be able to obtain them or that the rems would get to them?” I asked, picturing a crown and staff pairing a ghoul used.

  Yistopher nodded. “Both. There are plenty of distant relatives to the old king, more and more each generation.”

  “We could sell access to other duchies?” I asked. “Enough so that those we don’t sell to wouldn’t be a threat.”

  He shrugged. “This isn’t something we can decide. Hand me what you have so far.”

  I wrote down one last stipulation regarding the inn, changing the wording to reference the land rather than the building and handed the paper to him.

  “Do you think this Tometh wants to govern? He seems the more responsible type than the leeches beside him.”

  “Maybe,” I shrugged. “He was almost voted in as commander.”

  “Stay here.”

  Yistpher walked away and drew Tometh from the sidelines of the shouting match, showing him the conditions. He looked over at me with a raised eyebrow and then searched the table for the pencil I’d taken. I waved it to grab his attention and chucked it across the turret.

  He and Yis went over the points and started writing, crossing out and talking under their breath. I pulled myself up to sit on the battlements and leaned back to bask in the light, my motivation to talk more dissipating.

  General Kylepo and Faraya stopped their discussion and turned to where the two men were with worried looks.

  “What do you have there, sir?” General Kylepo asked, drawing Jacora and Arardish’s attention.

  Tometh handed the paper to Yistopher, who looked unhappy to be made the centre of attention. “Drasda keeps the inn as an embassy so as to ‘foster better relations between neighbours.’ We will jointly own the land with the Revivified Remnants of the Capital. Drasda will assist militarily until they are able to handle the outbreak, or until the end of winter. Drasda will loan six full squads of knights, of which a third need to have completed training. The RRC will reduce the taxes on all items retrieved by Drasda to a flat 5% from the varying 25-50% as long as we also clear the area we loot of ghouls.”

  “And Valeria can keep her armour after this is over,” Tometh said, lips curling upwards. “If we make it 7%.”

  “We’ll get you better armour,” Yistopher said, before I could speak, but I didn’t have the energy and simply nodded. “This is all preliminary, of course, pending the approval of Duke Riker.”

  “That's all well and good,” Arardish said. “But it's meaningless because we don’t agree.”

  “Drasda will also recognise this city and Commander Tometh’s governance over it, elections of land owning citizens to be decided at a later date.”

  And the shouting reignited, from all around the table.

  …

  The boarded door of the Marchland Inn had been pried open, not by claws but by tools. People streamed in and out laden with foodstuffs, crockery, and furnishings. A woman carried a bag of flour over her shoulder while a child pulled a half-empty sack of root vegetables out from the side gate, joined by another group exiting with a mattress between them. I waited by the doorway for a break in the throng of looters pushing in with Yistopher on my heels.

  Getting tired of waiting while everyone pushed past to get to the building’s, until a few hours ago, unmolested provisions, I dove in. Yistoper’s more imposing figure waded through without issue and met me near the basement door to the side of the busy lobby.

  “It's already empty,” said a man who had picked through the pots and pans. He tried hiding them behind his back. “Or are you here for other reasons? I was told the owners won’t be around anymore. I can put them back.”

  Before I could answer him, another man in the background caught my eye. A wicker basket in his arms, with vegetables from the garden, was the person who had stabbed me in the side for my mare.

  My eyes tracked him through the slits in my helmet as I thought through magic to use in the crowded room. I had every right, every means and opportunity to throw him across the lobby or slice open his palms. I was sure if I told Yistopher, he’d have something less violent, like a dungeon cell to add.

  “Doesn’t seem like there's much point to stopping you now,” Yis said, scanning the empty lobby looted of its furniture.

  I clenched my fist, the gauntlet’s steel fingers creaking together. Yet I relaxed my hand with a drawn-out sigh without acting. I wasn’t angry enough to hurt him, but I should have been. He’d hurt me for my mare, and I wasn’t a little girl who had to accept that anymore. All it would take was a flicker of mana to harm him back, proportionally to what he’d done to me.

  “This way,” I said with a heavy sigh, leading Yistopher through the cellar door.

  “I’m sure we can talk to the new regime about restocking this place,” Ysitopher said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Mhm,” I hummed, not correcting his assumption. “What if the duke doesn’t agree to it?”

  “After working with the past and present duke, I can safely say they’d go for it,” he said. “Especially if this tunnel is still open.”

  We stepped into the room with the large safe, and three armed youths crouched around it.

  “Fuck off,” one said without looking, a metal rod jammed into the safe door. But her friend, who had turned at our approach, tapped her on the shoulder forcefully. Once all three were looking at us with wide eyes, Yis tilted his head towards the exit.

  We stood to the side as they shuffled out without their spears and daggers, and I locked the door behind them. I turned to Yistopher with a smug smile, ready to entertain his questions on where the tunnel entrance was located.

  “That’s quite clever,” he said, staring at the safe.

  “You can sense it?” I said in dismay.

  I wasn’t going to get to open the safe either, as he formed a staircase in the stone below us to the ladder shaft.

  “While down here on the same level, yes. However, even the most perceptive mages would ignore it once their senses brushed over the iron from above.”

  I grumbled, skipping past him down the new stairs to climb the ladder.

  “Do you know how they made it?” he asked, climbing in after me.

  “No, but I think it's older than the inn.”

  Yistopher cast a light orb between us that left shadows below me as I climbed down into the darkness to the bottom. Once my boots were on solid ground, I let loose the mana pulse flying foxes used down the tunnel, and my eye twitched as it bounced back with details of rock and dirt. There was one significant discrepancy, and I walked over to it as Yistopher climbed down behind me.

  “What was—Don’t touch that!”

  I picked it up, pinched between my fingers as I held it up for Yistopher to see in the light. The cursed needle the Elder had tried to prick me with was still as potent as it was the last time I saw it. “It needs blood to activate… I think.”

  My read on cursed items, once an essential means of avoiding daily misery, was getting rusty.

  “Do you want to keep it?” I asked, holding it out to him.

  Yistoper backed into the ladder. “...No.”

  I held it to the wall and packed stone around it so none of the needle was exposed, and dropped it in a pocket.

  “Don’t sneak up on anyone with that thing on you,” he said. “People will assume the worst.”

  I gave him a mocking salute and started the long walk under the capital.

  Yis was silent for long stretches of the tunnel, using that time to come up with innocuous questions about my time here, gradually extracting more details from me with follow-up queries. He quickly learnt not to ask any yes-or-no questions. Otherwise, I gave him just that and no more.

  “You want to know if I’ve any sympathies for the witches?” I asked, after the fifth thinly veiled attempt to ask.

  “It's a fair concern,” he said. “That others may have.”

  I kicked a loose stone into the darkness ahead. “But not you?”

  “I know you’re a good person; you wouldn’t be a part of a group that would do this.”

  I scoffed and laughed off the false compliment, and considered telling him about planning to throw someone across a room only a short while ago. “I hate that word, makes me want to choke whoever uses it. But, I’m a good person, so you’d let me get away with that, right?”

  Yis hummed. “I’m concerned that’s the longest sentence I’ve gotten out of you so far. Any particular reason for the strong feelings?”

  “No,” I said, not willing to go through or remember all the times someone had used the reasoning of ‘good’ for their actions.

  Blessedly, Yistopher stayed silent for a short while.

  “Do you think we should have brought others?” he asked.

  “Who? Everyone’s either busy or shouldn’t know about this yet.”

  “Not sure… I don’t like doing this with only the two of us. What if the whole coven is still there, or they left the door open for ghouls?”

  “Oh,” I said, realising why he was acting so nervous. “We’re close. That’s the warding runes talking, trying to get you to think it's too dangerous and should turn back.”

  He scoffed. “I think I’m a little old to be affected by a few trinkets.”

  “They’re definitely not trinkets,” I said, reaching the end of the tunnel and climbing up without hesitation.