Legendary Beast Tamer: Every Beast I Raise Makes Me Stronger

Chapter 123: THE LOUD WAY HOME

By the third day, grass and weeds grew across the flat plains beside the road.

Aiden’s legs had recovered, but he kept riding. Cinder covered ground far faster than he could on foot, and the month was almost over.

Cinder carried him down off the fringe, onto the cart-track that ran west toward the city.

She kept her flames as low as a Solari Blaze Dancer could manage. It barely changed anything.

She was too big now, mostly made of flames. Asking her to be subtle was like asking the sun to rise grey.

Alright. Now I travel with a landmark.

The first traveler they met on the cart-track was a peddler with a loaded mule. He saw Cinder’s flames around the bend and led his mule down into the ditch.

He didn’t shout or stare. He simply waited for them to pass, keeping his eyes down.

Every person Aiden met on the road reacted the same way.

Vane’s men didn’t waste time.

Nyx stopped riding on his shoulder during the day. It ran along the edge of the road and moved ahead through the bushes, checking shadows as it always did.

Miasma rode his collar and watched the travelers. She was looking for anyone who might hurt them.

The cat rode on Cinder’s back, sitting in her flames, and watched nothing at all. It had decided long ago that the world was a staring contest, and that it had already won.

The waystation stood where the cart-track met the main road. It had a low building, a yard, a water trough, and a keeper who thought he’d seen everything that passed by.

Aiden stopped because although his beasts found their own food, they still needed water.

And because he’d learn more standing still at a waystation than passing one.

He slid down and let the keeper get a good look at him.

The keeper looked at Cinder’s flames, then at the young man with white in his hair leaning against her.

"You’re him," the keeper said. It wasn’t a question.

"Depends who’s asking. And what he’s worth this week."

"Word came through four days back. Man with a white streak, beast of fire, down off the Peaks." The keeper kept his distance and his voice even. "Then two days ago, House riders came through. They weren’t asking because they’d heard a rumor. They knew. Same questions. Where’s he headed?"

Two days. Vane reached the House fast.

And now they’re looking for me on the road.

They must have missed us in one of the kiln villages.

"What did you tell them?"

"That I hadn’t seen you. Hadn’t, then." The keeper shrugged. "Telling them now costs me a customer and gains me nothing. Nobody on this road loves House Vane."

He nodded slowly at Cinder, as if checking whether she was going to bite him.

"They weren’t the only ones asking. There was a man through yesterday. Not House." The keeper wiped his hands. "He had an Academy seal and the manner of a fellow who reads rules at people for a living."

He went inside the building. He came back with a paper and held it out at arm’s length.

"He left this. For the waystations to put up. Your name’s on it."

Aiden took it.

Of course it’s paper.

Harken learned cold and steel wouldn’t work, so he stopped trying to beat me with either.

He reached for the one thing that’s beaten me my whole life without drawing a blade.

It wasn’t a bounty.

He frowned at the seal. It wasn’t Harken’s official seal or the enforcement office’s.

It was still Vane’s. Unofficial. Younger.

Percival. Who’d stood in an Academy yard a season back and watched a lamplighter’s sewer beasts defeat his noble Griffin.

He hadn’t shouted about it. His brother would be shouting at his men’s incompetence now.

He’d gone quiet. He’d gone to a clerk.

The paper was a summons.

Field Provision 7. Aiden Vell must present himself at the Academy’s east annex, with any bonded creature in his charge, for registration and assessment. No later than the turning of the month.

On pain of being struck from the rolls.

That’s the thing I have to do anyway.

Then he read the middle again.

Registration and assessment.

A report is a clerk and a form. You show your slip, they write a line, you leave.

Assessment is a room. Assessment means they get to look at her as long as they want, ask her to do things, and write down what happens.

Nobody orders an assessment under Field Provision 7. Somebody has to ask for it.

Percival hasn’t stopped me reporting. He’s added an assessment.

Harken failed to capture us. So his brother won’t try.

He’ll make us walk in ourselves. Through the gate, on a summons I never planned to refuse, into a room full of men whose whole job is reading what a beast is.

He’ll let them find out for him.

A cold feeling settled in Aiden’s stomach despite Cinder’s heat at his back.

Maybe he could hide how strong she really was. Keep her flames low. Show the proctors only a Solari Blaze Dancer weaker than the one they’d likely read about.

Keep their interest low. Give them nothing worth looking into until they walked away.

Before they found her avatar form.

That was impossible now.

A room of professional assessors is the worst place in the world for a beast with a human avatar form. They’ll dig until they find it.

And Percival is walking me into it with a seal and a date.

The only other choice was to vanish. Be struck off, and be hunted as the man who refused the Academy with an unregistered Tier Three beast.

I’ve spent my whole life finding ways to make things work.

I’m standing at a horse-trough and I can’t find one.

"Bad?" the keeper asked.

"The Academy wants to register my dog," Aiden said.

"Your dog..."

The keeper glanced at the fire dancing around Cinder as she drank from his trough. Steam boiled off the water and fogged the whole yard white.

"They’ll need a form with broader columns," he said.

It surprised Aiden enough that he let out a short laugh.

Broader columns. You have no idea.

Cinder pressed her head against him.

Once. She didn’t try to speak. He had told her not to, at least not where men could see her avatar.

So it was just the press, and the heat behind it.

I know you’re not scared of them and that you like acting weak even less.

But we just have to convince the Academy that you’re a very large, very bright, and very ordinary dog.

He folded the summons into his coat and looked west down the main road.

Toward the city.

"Come on," he told her. "We’ve got a date with a clerk and about forty proctors. I’d bet good meat Percival would lean against the back wall, watching to see what we turn out to be."

I spent my whole life learning to be someone nobody looks at.

Now the only thing worse than being looked at is not showing up.

He climbed onto her back and rode the loud way home, toward the one room in the world he’d have given years to walk into quietly.