Chapter 169: Is that all

For a moment, nobody in the room moved.

Frost crept another handspan across the white stone. A dozen vines creaked in their pots.

Somewhere behind her pale veil, Lysandra Thorne drew a slow breath, and one of the little flames on Seraphine’s fingers jumped and went out.

"Did he just say it again?" Maelis whispered.

"He did," said Ilsa.

"He said it as though he were ordering tea."

"Maelis," Garrick said.

"I am only..."

"Be silent." The old man leaned a little more weight on his cane.

"Leon Allistar, the matter was put to a vote of this council before you left the ground. Eight of us voted no, and the answer was loud enough to break the furniture. Two of us wished to see you before we decided."

"I am one of the two," said Haldor Wynn. His voice was calm and dry, and his thumb never left the guard of his sword. "I wished to see your hands."

"And the other?" Leon asked.

A soft voice spoke from behind the veil. "I am. I wished to look inside you first."

’She means that literally,’ Medusa said.

’I know.’

’She has been knocking at your mind since you walked in. She is very polite about it. I have not answered.’

’Good.’

"The second vote is a courtesy," Garrick said. "It will not change the result. You do not deserve a seat at this table, boy."

"You do not even deserve to be in this tower, or in this Association, or in any place where honest people gather. Not after what you have done."

"Tell me what I have done," said Leon.

He said it mildly, as if he were asking for directions, and the old man’s eyes narrowed. Around him, the falling dust stopped drifting and began to press toward the floor.

"Ilsa."

"Teon Allistar," Ilsa Hartfrost said at once. Her voice was low and cold and perfectly steady, and the frost around her boots thickened into a crust of ice.

"He built the Roaring Lions into one of the most capable guilds in the world... I fought beside him more than once, and I would have trusted him with my life. He was your father, and you killed him!"

Leon said nothing.

"Seraphine."

Seraphine had stopped smiling.

"The Roaring Lions," she said. "A guild that stood for decades, and it is nothing but a ruin now. Half of its players are dead or scattered, and their families grieving."

"Bram."

The old man in the green cloak spoke slowly, like someone who was very tired.

"A million gold for your death," said Vesper Nox, another S-rank.

Her voice was soft and quick, and it came from the corner a half second after her lips moved.

"Ten thousand coins for a word about where you sleep. Your name is on every wall in the country, and you want to wear it on a badge."

"A badge!" Maelis burst out. His sparks were crackling all the way up to his elbows. "You want a badge! Do you have no shame at all?"

"You have not denied a word of it," Lysandra Thorne said softly.

"No," Leon said. "I have not."

"Why not?"

"Because it is not what I came here to talk about."

A heavy voice rumbled from beside the doors. It was the first thing that Orrin Stoneback had said, and it sounded like a boulder shifting in a riverbed.

"He does not look sorry," the giant said.

"I have not said that I was," Leon said.

He had meant it as nothing but a plain answer, but the effect was like dropping a lit match into a barrel. Seraphine’s fingers burst into full flame.

The air around Maelis crackled and rolled with a sound like frying fat. Even Haldor Wynn’s thumb shifted a fraction on the guard of his sword.

"He does not look afraid, either," Orrin added, in the same slow voice.

That was true, and Leon knew it. He was standing in a closed room with ten of the strongest players in the Association, every one of whom could level a city block, and he waited for something to stir in his chest.

He waited for a tightness in his stomach, or a cold feeling along the back of his neck. He had been afraid of far less than this, in the days when he had hidden in rented rooms and counted the exits.

Nothing came.

He understood perfectly well what ten S-ranks could do to a city.

It was only that he had once stood under a sky that had been torn open by a single man, and after that, a roomful of people with fire and frost in their hands seemed rather small.

’You should feel something,’ Medusa said.

’I am trying.’

’And?’

’I feel curious.’

She made a small, resigned sound in the back of his mind.

He let his eyes travel around the chamber once more, from the old man with the cane to the giant by the doors, and then up to the broken table in the center of the floor.

For a moment, he thought that there was something else in the room, a faint warmth in the air above the table, as quiet as a sunbeam.

But when he looked straight at it, there was only dust drifting in the pale light, and he let it go.

"The Association exists to stand between the world and the dungeons," Garrick said.

His voice had gone very quiet, which was worse than shouting.

"We stand there so that ordinary people can sleep at night. Every one of us in this room has buried friends for that duty.@

"You killed a man who did more for it than anyone here, and you have the nerve to stand in front of us and ask for a badge. There is no place for you in this Association. There never will be."

Leon looked at him for a long moment.

Then he laughed.

It was not a loud laugh. It was short and dry, and there was no cruelty in it, only honest amusement, like a man who has been told a joke that he finds slightly sweet.

"Is that all?" he said.