Chapter 706: Words He Should Not Know

Chapter 706: Words He Should Not Know

Leon put the bulk of the party behind the ridge line with Vyra and did not take them any further.

"Vyra, keep the other twenty-four behind this rise," Leon said. "You have command. If we need to withdraw, take them to the last marker and contact the base."

"And you?" said Vyra.

"Me, Seraphine, Ira, Loriel, and Bai Heng." He glanced at the extraction master. "I want someone who can tell me what they’ve actually been taking."

Bai Heng glanced at the distant tents, then secured his lens cord beneath his collar and nodded.

The five walked into the basin in plain sight. Leon kept his presence at its familiar public level, the Peak Golden Core reading the Palace’s artifacts registered. Seraphine walked near his shoulder, with Ira and Loriel flanking Bai Heng.

Somebody in the tents had seen them before they reached the first crate.

A hanging strip of cloth stirred above the nearest shelter, embroidered with symbols Leon did not recognize. There was no Palace insignia on the stacked cases or the equipment beside them. He resisted the urge to look back toward the ridge; Vyra knew her work, and advertising the rest of the party would gain him nothing yet.

Bai Heng slowed beside a freshly cut crystal face.

"Keep beside Loriel," Leon told him quietly. "You’ll have time to examine it after we speak."

The old man lowered his lens and continued with them.

Fifteen people emerged from the tents. They wore gray leather coats with high collars and split backs, fastened with pale bronze fittings. Curved blades and short spears hung openly at their sides. One man carried a heavy crossbow whose unusual winding mechanism drew a low murmur from Bai Heng.

About half had thin blue lines extending down their foreheads from hairline to brow. Leon could see no painted edges. The markings appeared to lie within the skin.

Their leader was a tall woman with iron-gray hair and one of the blue markings. She stopped twenty paces away, looked over the five approaching strangers, and raised a hand to halt them.

When she spoke, the sounds were entirely unfamiliar. Her words rose sharply at the ends of phrases, separated by clipped syllables he could not even begin to parse.

Yet he understood her.

"This spring is ours. You’ve wandered onto a claimed site. Turn around and leave the way you came."

The meaning arrived as clearly as if she had spoken beside him in Moonfall. He could hear the impatience too, although he could not identify a single word carrying it.

Leon did not let anything show on his face.

Beside him, Seraphine spoke quietly. "Young Master, I understand her. But I don’t recognize the language."

"Neither do I," Leon said.

He deliberately used the language he spoke with the Palace disciples and watched her response.

"How long has it been yours?"

The woman’s brows drew together. She glanced at the man beside her, and he gave a slight nod. Whatever they had expected from Leon’s speech, the question had reached them.

It goes both ways.

Leon detected no obvious activation from either group. The effect might belong to an artifact he could not sense, or to the place itself. He had too little evidence to choose.

Useful. I’d still like to know what’s doing it.

For now, the woman was waiting for him to leave, and the men behind her had their hands on their weapons.

"Since we arrived," the woman said. "Which was before you."

"How long before?" Leon asked.

"Long enough." She jerked her chin toward the cut stone and the stacked crates. "We found it, we cleared it, we are harvesting it. That is how claims are made."

"You claim the whole spring because you found it first?" Leon asked.

"We cleared it. We hold it," she said. Her eyes went over the five of them and settled, briefly, on Leon’s apparent cultivation. Something in her face eased very slightly. "You are a small party and you are late. Go back and tell whoever sent you that the spring at the green basin belongs to the Harrowmark Expedition, and that anyone who comes to dispute it will be met."

Leon looked past her at the crates.

"Bai Heng."

Bai Heng raised his lens. "The thicker outer rings, Senior Brother. A substantial portion has been removed. See those grooves running toward the water? Their cuts cross several of them."

"Does that matter?" Leon asked.

"It might. If the grooves feed the outer beds, I’d preserve them until we’d measured a cycle." Bai Heng lowered the lens. "I’d need a closer examination to be certain."

Leon turned back to the woman.

"Does your expedition own the source, or have an agreement with anyone who does?" Leon asked.

"We don’t need anyone’s agreement."

He glanced at the uncut beds on their side of the basin. "Then you arrived first. That doesn’t mean I’ve agreed to leave the entire spring to you."

Leon wanted the spring, and he wanted to know how another expedition had reached it. Neither wish required pretending he would accept an order simply because it came from someone with more people.

The woman looked over his party again. Her gaze paused on Seraphine’s sword, then moved to Ira and Loriel. Whatever she made of their apparent cultivation, it did not persuade her to negotiate.

She glanced to her left, at a broad man with the blue line on his forehead and a curved blade already half-drawn.

He did not wait for anything further.

He came across the twenty paces fast — a real Golden Core, and a practiced one, the blade coming off his hip in a flat horizontal cut aimed to take Leon across the chest before he could raise his hands. There was force behind it. Something ran along the edge of the blade that made the air around it shimmer.

It never reached him.

Leon did not move his feet. He took the last pace of the man’s charge and folded it.

The blade entered the fold a hand’s width from Leon’s chest. Its path turned aside, carrying the strike through empty air beside him. The attacker’s shoulders followed his committed swing, opening his stance before he could correct it.

Leon shifted the space beneath the man’s forward foot. His footing dropped just enough to bring him onto one knee, arm still extended at the end of the failed stroke.

Leon closed the fold around his wrist and held it there.

The man pulled against the restraint. When his wrist did not move, he drove more energy into the effort, enough to crack the stone beneath his planted knee. Leon held him without adjusting his stance.

The basin went very quiet.

The other fourteen stood twenty paces away, watching their comrade struggle. The crossbowman had started to lift his weapon; now he held it awkwardly across his waist.

Leon still had both hands loose at his sides. The restrained man’s strength was nowhere near enough to trouble him.

Seraphine kept her attention on the remaining armed strangers, her sword still sheathed. Ira watched their leader with frank interest. Loriel glanced at the kneeling man’s wrist, then returned her attention to the line ahead.

The gray-haired woman looked from the trapped blade to Leon’s face. For the first time, she seemed unsure what to say.

"Now," Leon said, certain that she would understand him. "Let’s try that conversation again."