Aldric Ashgrove learned that Rhea Calder was dead while he was reading his morning letters.
The words appeared in front of his eyes without warning, as they always did.
[Your vassal Rhea Calder has died.]
He set the letter down on his desk very carefully, so that his hand wouldn’t shake. Then he looked at the line until it faded.
She had sworn to him 10 years ago, when her World was rank E and her family owed his house more than she could ever repay. She had never failed him. She had been the best hunter that he had ever owned.
She had taken 11 hired fighters into a sea, and none of them would come back. He didn’t need to ask. If even one of them had come back, Rhea would still be alive.
Outside his window, the gardeners were raking leaves from the lawn of the estate. He watched them until his breathing was slow again. Then he made himself think it through.
It had cost him a fortune and the best agent that he had. But he still knew something that nobody else in the Ten Houses knew. That boy had a weed that could take any beast in any World. Now he could also kill a rank C hunter in his own sea.
Aldric was afraid, a little. He was also more certain than ever that he had been right. If the boy could do this at 18, with a World of rank E, what would he be able to do in 10 years?
His son didn’t know any of it. Dorian had been shut in his rooms for weeks, sulking because Evergrove had dropped him from its team. Aldric had decided not to tell him. Dorian talked too much when he was in a temper, which was all the time now.
At noon, a messenger in dark red came to the door. Lord Pyrecrest wished to see him that afternoon.
-----
The house of the Pyrecrests stood on Earth, on the side of a mountain that had once been a volcano.
It was built from black stone, and the stone was warm to the touch, even in winter. Aldric had been inside it many times, but he had never liked it. Every corridor felt as if a fire were burning somewhere behind the walls, waiting to be let out.
Lucan Pyrecrest received him in a long room with a window that looked down on the valley. He was standing when Aldric came in, as he always did. He looked like he was about 80, thin and straight-backed, in his long coat of dark red. His red hair still had no gray in it, and it was tied at his neck. Outside, it was raining, but the rain turned to steam before it could touch the glass near him.
There was someone else in the room. A young man with long red hair sat on a bench in the corner, reading a report. He didn’t look up.
It was Cassian, Lucan’s son and heir. Aldric bowed to him as well. Cassian nodded without lifting his eyes from the paper.
"Sit down, Aldric," Lucan said.
Aldric sat. Lucan didn’t.
"Two things have reached me this week, and I would like you to explain both of them." Lucan’s voice was quiet and very dry. "The first is that a man using your son’s name broke an Orphan World with more than 200 people on it. House Frostmere had to hear the case in open court. Three students died, and one of them was sworn to House Sunspire. Lady Sunspire has written to me about it twice."
"My son trusted a fool," Aldric said. "He has lost his place on Evergrove’s team, and I’ve told him to stay out of sight until people forget."
"Good. The second thing is that 11 fighters of rank D were hired in the Nexus last month, but none of them have been seen since. Their families are asking questions. People say that a woman in a gray coat hired them, and that the woman in the gray coat works for you."
Aldric had prepared for this all morning, so he answered smoothly.
"She did. I sent them to deal with a boy who has become a nuisance to my house. He killed my son’s vassal and the son of a house that is sworn to mine. He humiliated my son in front of Earth. I wanted to remind him of his place." He let himself sound a little ashamed. "It didn’t work. The boy was stronger than I expected, and my hunter is dead."
He said nothing about the weed.
Lucan looked at him without speaking. Aldric made himself sit still under that look. Eight years ago, he had held a door for this man. He knew exactly what Lucan was capable of.
"Which boy?" Lucan asked.
"Silkborn."
In the corner, Cassian turned a page.
Lucan’s face didn’t change, but the room grew warmer, and Aldric felt a thin thread of fear. Outside the window, the rain turned to steam a little farther from the glass than before.
"Corwin Silkborn’s son," Lucan said slowly. "The one we left alive."
"Yes, my lord."
"I’ve seen his name on the Ladder, but I didn’t think about it." Lucan turned toward the window. "A boy with a potential of E doesn’t matter. That’s why we left him. He was supposed to stay at the bottom and remind people what happens to men who say the wrong things."
"He isn’t staying at the bottom," Aldric said.
"No. I can see that."
Lucan didn’t speak again until the rain had thinned. Then he said, "Leave him to me, Aldric. You’ve done enough. Don’t send anyone else."
It was an order, so Aldric bowed his head to it. He had expected it, and it didn’t matter. Lucan didn’t know what the boy really was, but Aldric did.
As he walked out through the warm black corridors, he was afraid of only one thing. Lucan would report this. He always did, to the man whom Aldric had seen once, eight years ago, in a house that was about to burn. If that man ever learned what the weed could do, he would take the boy for himself, and nobody would be able to stop him.
So Aldric would make sure that he never learned it.
-----
When Aldric had gone, Lucan sat down at his desk.
He did it slowly, which was rare for him. Cassian noticed it, because he noticed everything about his father. He had been trained to.
Lucan took a sheet of black paper from a drawer and began to write. Cassian couldn’t read the words from his bench. He could only see the first one, because his father wrote it larger than the others and then underlined it.
The word was Keeper.
Cassian didn’t know what it meant. He had never seen his father write a report to anyone. Lucan Pyrecrest was a Sovereign, and people wrote reports to him.
He looked down at his own paper. It was Emberhall’s report on a first-round duel between Edric Vane and a boy from Wildroot. The instructors had written it on the day of the duel, but Cassian had barely glanced at it then. Four days ago, Vane had brought it to him again, in the yard of Emberhall, while the tournament team was being chosen.
"Read it again," Vane had said. "Wildroot will send him to the tournament. He’s the only first-year I’ve fought who made me feel stupid."
Cassian had watched the boy once, in the recording of his duel against Dorian Ashgrove. He had decided that the boy was clever and that his potential was E, so he had stopped thinking about him.
Now his father was writing to someone whom Cassian had never heard of, because of that boy.
"Silkborn," Cassian said aloud.
It was the first time that he had ever said it.