Dorian Ashgrove was eating breakfast when one of his vassals died.
He was sitting in the dining room of his house in the Nexus. It was one of the largest houses on the hill where the nobles lived, with tall windows and a floor of black and white stone. The table could seat 30 people. However, he ate alone at the end of it, as he did every morning. A servant stood behind his chair, and his steward, an old man named Hale, was reading him the news of the day.
"...and the Silkborn boy won his third challenge yesterday, my lord. He is now ranked 2,961st."
"I know, I was there." Dorian cut his meat without looking up. He was in a bad mood, and he had been in a bad mood since Arena 9. "Find something else to read."
He could still see it. The traitor’s son had walked past him as if he were a chair. He had done it in front of six of Dorian’s own people, and in front of half of Wildroot.
Nobody did that to an Ashgrove. People were afraid of Dorian, or they hated him, or they tried to please him, and he understood all three. But he didn’t understand a boy in a green scarf who simply refused to look at him.
He didn’t understand the beasts either. A boy with seaweed had no right to own a crab the size of a wagon and a monster that hid in the sand. Dorian’s trainer said that it had to be a talent for taming. Dorian didn’t care what it was. He only cared that people were talking about it.
’It doesn’t matter. Pell will bring me the moth girl’s allegiance this week, and that will make five vassals. Father said that if I had five before winter, he would let me sit at the table when Lord Pyrecrest visits.’
He was reaching for his cup when the letters appeared.
[Your vassal Pell Dray has died.]
[Vassals: 3]
Dorian stopped moving.
He read the two lines again. Then he opened his Status and looked at the list. There had been four names on it the day before. Now there were only three.
"My lord?" Hale said.
"Pell is dead."
His own voice sounded strange to him. He wasn’t sad. Pell had been a tool, and not a very good one. He was a commoner who cried too easily and laughed at the wrong time.
But Pell had been his tool. Dorian had found him, signed him and trained him. He had spent a whole year teaching that boy to break first-years, and now someone had killed him.
His surprise turned into anger so quickly that his hand began to shake. He threw his cup against the wall, and the servant behind him jumped.
"Who did it?" he shouted. "He was raiding a first-year with moths! They’re moths, Hale! They can’t even bite!"
"Perhaps the girl had help, my lord."
"Who would help her? She’s nobody. She has no house, and she has no friends, and she..."
He stopped.
He remembered the wall of names. He remembered a thin girl with a slate, who was standing beside a very large boy and a boy in a green scarf.
"No," he said quietly. "He wouldn’t dare."
Then the doors of the dining room opened.
-----
Dorian knew who it was before he turned around, because the servant had gone down on one knee.
Aldric Ashgrove didn’t look like a dangerous man. He was tall and thin, with the same gray hair as his son, cut very short. He wore a plain gray coat with no gold on it. He walked slowly, and he never raised his voice. Dorian had once heard him order a man’s death in the same tone that he used to order tea.
He was the head of House Ashgrove, and he was the only person in the world who truly frightened Dorian.
"Father." Dorian stood up so fast that his chair fell over. "I didn’t know that you were in the Nexus."
"I arrived an hour ago." Aldric looked at the broken cup, and at the wine that was running down the wall. He said nothing about it, and that frightened Dorian more than shouting would have. "Sit down, Dorian."
Dorian picked up his chair and sat.
A woman had come in behind his father. She was about 30, with brown hair tied back and a gray coat. Dorian had seen her a dozen times, and he could never remember her face afterward. Her name was Rhea Calder, and she found things for House Ashgrove. She found coordinates, debts and secrets. Dorian didn’t like her, because she never seemed afraid of him.
"Tell him," Aldric said.
Rhea opened a small notebook.
"Yesterday at sunset, Maverick Silkborn met Tamsin Bell on the plaza of arches," she said. Her voice was flat, like the voice of someone who was reading a list of prices. "They talked for some time. Then they went through the same arch. He came out four hours later, and there was blood on his sleeve. This morning, the Bell girl told her whole class at Wildroot that she has a liege now, and she gave his name."
She closed the notebook.
"Your vassal Pell went to that World last night, as he did every night, my lord. He didn’t come out."
For a moment, Dorian couldn’t breathe.
It was the salad. It was the traitor’s son, who had arrived on his hands and knees three weeks ago, dead last out of 21,307. He had taken the moth girl as his vassal, and then he had killed Dorian’s man.
"I’ll destroy him," Dorian said, and his voice shook with rage. "I’ll find his coordinates, and I’ll burn his whole..."
"You will be quiet," Aldric said.
He hadn’t spoken loudly, but Dorian stopped talking at once.
Aldric walked to the window and looked down at the white roofs of the Nexus.
"I want you to understand what happened last night, because you clearly don’t," he said. "A commoner took something that belonged to this house. He killed one of our vassals, and nobody saw it, so we can’t even accuse him. By tomorrow, every poor first-year in the Nexus will know that the Silkborn boy protects his people. And every one of our own vassals will know that we couldn’t protect ours." He turned around. "A seaweed has robbed us, Dorian. Do you know what Lord Pyrecrest will say when he hears about it?"
Dorian’s face burned, and he looked down at the table.
"There is a second problem," Aldric went on. "That boy shows up with beasts that aren’t his species, and he uses their skills. His potential is E, so his World will never be a danger to anyone. That’s the only reason the great houses are still laughing. But I don’t laugh at things that I don’t understand." His cold eyes rested on his son. "So you will fix both problems at once. You will challenge him to an official duel. You will make the stakes so high that he can’t refuse without looking like a coward. Then you will beat him where everyone can see it. I will make sure that anyone on Earth can watch your duel at home. And you will make him your vassal. After that, his World, his moth girl and all of his secrets will belong to us."
"Yes, Father."
"If you lose," Aldric said, in exactly the same tone, "don’t come home."
Dorian felt cold. He knew that it wasn’t an empty threat, because his father never made those.
"I won’t lose," he said. "I have 12 ash hounds at rank E+. He has a crab, some fish, and a thing that hides."
"He had only fish three weeks ago." Aldric nodded at Rhea. "That’s why she has a second task. I want to know how he does it. I also want his coordinates. I don’t plan to use them yet. I only want to have them."
Rhea nodded once. She didn’t write it down, and Dorian had the feeling that she never forgot an order.
When they had left, he sat alone at the long table for a while. The servant had started to clean the wine off the wall.
Dorian was angry, and he was humiliated. Under both of those feelings, there was one that he would never have admitted to anyone. He was a little afraid.
He pushed that feeling away. He was an Ashgrove with a potential of A, and the other boy was a traitor’s son with a plant.
That same afternoon, a new line appeared on the challenge wall of the Proving Grounds, in letters of fire.
[Dorian Ashgrove, rank 214, challenges Maverick Silkborn, rank 2,961.]