Legendary Beast Tamer: Every Beast I Raise Makes Me Stronger

Chapter 126: THE SHORT LIST

The dead court lay grey with early light.

Cinder was at his back, already awake, waiting for him. Miasma sat on his leg, watching the rooflines, and Nyx was a pool of darkness hidden in his shadow.

He sat up, and they all came to him.

He’d never had anyone watching him sleep, waiting to be glad when he woke. He had it now, three times over. And a cat that slept more than he did.

He had one errand, and it was paper.

The conferral had come with a slip pinned to it.

Present the Token at the Association registry. This is the next assessment for Field Provision Seven’s admits.

He walked Cinder across the city at an hour he’d picked so most citizens would still be asleep.

That half worked.

He left her in the registry yard. She didn’t like it.

He liked even less her answer to "You’re too big to enter."

She just glared at him, asking him if he was sure about it, and he knew exactly what she meant.

"You’re right. Please don’t..."

She playfully pushed him toward the doors with her flank, keeping her victory and his flustered face.

By the time Aiden reached the doors, a crowd had already gathered at a careful distance, whispering about Cinder’s species and which Master Tamer owned her.

A pie-man had rolled his cart to the exact edge of the crowd.

Cinder put her chin on her forelegs, bored by the noise.

The pie-man sold pies and was having the finest morning of his commercial life.

He’s making money off her. He should share. No, really, why isn’t he at least offering her a pie?

He ignored them and went inside.

The territory desk was at the back of the hall, past ledgers he was sure clerks had been altering, padding, and falsifying for years.

The clerk behind the desk was a small man with a greyish complexion, both arms tattooed to the elbows.

"Name?"

"Aiden Vell."

The clerk did what everybody did now. Eyes to the white streak in Aiden’s hair. Eyes to Nyx and Miasma on his shoulders.

Then back to the paper.

He checked Aiden’s name against his ledger.

"Ah, the admit whose name is on everyone’s lips."

He reached beneath the desk and brought out the Token.

Brass. Aiden’s name was cut cleanly into it.

"There you go. I advise you not to lose it again. If you ever do, come find me. I’ll pull a few strings and get you a new one." He turned it over once, checked the mark on the back, and slid it across the desk, smiling.

"Here’s how it works for Field Provision Seven admits who passed the review. You claim one listed unincorporated territory and you hold it through first assessment. You have until the month ends."

"And if I don’t?"

"Your admission lapses. Lapsed admissions go back to review."

So Harken and Percival get another chance to legally take Cinder and me if I can’t get and hold a territory.

"What’s listed?" Aiden said.

The clerk turned a ledger around.

Three territories were available for Aiden to claim.

They ate the whole pie and left me the scraps. This is a day to hate pies, truly.

The Sunken Quarry, west. Flooded forty years back. Dark all the way down with every inch of it under water.

Aiden imagined Cinder in forty feet of standing water, Miasma drifting beside her, Nyx disappearing into the dark, and himself swimming after them.

Yeah, not working.

The second territory was a burned terrace in the high Ashwood, ringed on three sides by House Vane hunting licenses.

Oh, how surprising. A perfect territory for Cinder. A noose, listed politely.

The last territory was the Foggy Marshland. Northeast. No claim on it in sixty years.

"What about this one?" Aiden asked.

"Nobody wants it."

"Why not?"

"Nobody says."

"Can I see the file?" Aiden said.

The clerk pulled a folder from a drawer, and Aiden saw the problem before the man’s hand left it.

Every other file in that drawer had the same even layer of grey dust.

This one had none, and its tie had been freshly knotted. The loops were too neat for a registry clerk who handled dozens of files a day.

He asked who’d pulled it last.

The clerk turned the log around, unoffended.

The last signature on it was nine years old.

Nine years and not a speck of dust? No. Someone opened it recently and didn’t sign for it. Unless paper moves by itself.

He found three maps inside the folder, and very little else.

The three maps agreed on the outer boundaries.

They showed the same border stones, the same road entering from the south, and the same mile-wide stretch of grazing land along the southern edge.

Then he looked at what they’d drawn inside that boundary.

No two surveyors agreed on anything. Where one put a river, the next put dry ground. One drew a hill nobody else had seen. They couldn’t even agree on the size. The biggest map was a third bigger than the smallest.

"The boundaries hold," the clerk said. "It’s the middle that gives everyone enough of a headache that they refuse to talk about it."

Nyx slipped off Aiden’s shoulder and down his arm onto the counter and the clerk went completely still.

It put its face over the blank middle of the maps and stared into the paper.

It had stared into empty corners that way since the day it hatched.

This was the first time Aiden could point at what it was looking at.

The shadow under Nyx was darker than a lamp could make it.

I know that look. You found something in those marshes, right?

"One more thing," the clerk interrupted. "The Church has kept watch over that marsh for sixty years. They send someone out four times a year to inspect it and file a report."

"Look at what?"

"They’ve never said." The clerk shrugged. "And nobody at the Association has ever been paid enough to ask."

"I can’t let you take the originals, but we made copies of these maps for bold explorers." He pulled a copy off a stack and slid it toward Aiden without checking which map it was. "I hope this will help us build a pleasant cooperation, Tamer Vell."

Aiden closed the folder and retied the string, loop for loop, exactly as he’d found it.

Whoever opened this last can keep thinking they’re the only one who did.

He said goodbye to the clerk and left.

Outside, the pie-man had sold out and was already unloading a second cart.

He regrouped with Cinder and returned to the dead court. Same route, only louder.

"We pick the marsh," he told his pack that evening. "The quarry would drown you and the Ashwood is Vane’s back garden."

Cinder growled when he spoke about drowning and again when he said Vane. Wet ground held no interest for her, and like everyone else, she was fed up with the Vanes.

Miasma looked at him, trusting he’d picked the best place.

The cat... washed a paw on Cinder’s back.

I don’t even know why I’m asking for your opinion.

He turned to tell Nyx they were leaving.

His shoulder was empty.

Nyx sat across the court at the foot of the opposite wall.

Aiden crouched beside it and looked at the wall. The stones were old and wet at the base. Nothing painted on it. Nothing unusual about it.

It was just a wall.

He assessed which way Nyx faced.

Northeast.

The clerk said northeast.

Nyx had faced that wall last night too. Aiden had noticed it and thought it was on guard against the Witness.

Now he understood.

You don’t like the city. You picked the marsh yesterday, before I even knew it existed.