Chapter 161: A Place at the Table

The Guild's marble steps were behind them before Mira's smile had faded.

"Slow down," Leo said, jogging half a step to catch her elbow. "Please. Just—slow down a little bit."

"I have been slow, and when we go back, I'll have to stay slow for weeks yet. You need to keep up!"

Mira set the pace, walking into the middle of the Inner Ring's white-stone avenue and turning a full circle in the sun, taking in the spires and the yellow-tiled roofs, and then set off again with her chin up and her hand tucked into the crook of Leo's arm, steering him. Cal fell in behind them with Corinne. The wheelchair had gone into his silver ring when he doubled back into Innes' room, and its absence made the four of them look like ordinary young travelers.

He kept half an eye on the crowd. The memory of the Mycari ambush was still something he brought to mind regularly.

"There," Mira said, pointing across the road. "We saw it on the way in, but what is that place?"

"The Adventurer's Guild's coliseum," Cal answered. "They organize fighting events for sport in there. It helps keep the rowdier members of the guild in line, or so they say."

"How exciting! Can we watch a fight?"

"Some day… Right now, we need to get you back to Deadfall so you can return from your walk. It's been longer than you two typically take already."

"Ah…"

"Cal," Corinne interjected. "You owe us a spectacle now. You realize that, right? You can't simply tease a girl with a good time like that and then hurry us away."

Mira laughed at Corinne and agreed with her friend, stopping briefly in the road to twirl around once more and take it all in before continuing on. They enjoyed the long way back to the Larkspur Inn, where Cal and Corinne climbed the stairs to his rented suite while Leo and Mira lingered in the alley below. A minute later, he lifted the pair up and over the balcony rail the same way he'd lowered them down. After they entered the room, Cal watched Mira slump her shoulders before anyone had to say it. She lowered herself onto the edge of the bed and folded her hands in her lap, looking at the space in the middle of the rug where Cal was heading.

"Right," she said. "Back to it, then."

Cal drew the chair out of his ring and set it on the floor. Leo stared at it, before commenting, "I hate this, for the record."

"Sorry, buddy." Cal held out a hand to Mira and she took it, lowering herself slowly into the seat and feeling for the old position. "You remember the plan?"

"I remember. I'll protect your secret."

"Thanks, Mira. It's only for a few more weeks."

Leo was doing his mantra again under his breath, chanting "I hate this, I hate this," while Cal built the runes. The portal split the room, and beyond it lay the grove. The young baker took the handles as they said their goodbyes.

"Let's go," Mira declared to Leo, before looking back over her shoulder at Corinne and Cal. "We'll see you soon, okay?"

"Soon!" Corinne said, giving her friend one last hug.

Leo rolled Mira through, and Cal closed the portal to the grove.

The next week bled into the second. The runes that came home with him were a constant source of mystery.

Cal spread studying them out between hours of backlogged alchemy work from his room at the Hearthsong Inn, the dozens of glyphs held in [Perfect Memory]. He drew each one in the air of his suite with a wisp of Mana and named it under his breath, listening for the Mana-feel Innes had loaded into each stroke. Vitae. Mend. Oros. The list went on.

He set aside the urge to try and build a Spell. It was pointless to combine letters he could not yet read. Instead, he drew a single glyph—Lumen—in the air. To isolate its function, he built a simple diagnostic tool beside it: a square Control rune linked to the hourglass shape of a Continuance rune. He connected Lumen to the tiny frame and fed a pulse of Mana through the control glyph.

The rune flared and disappeared. In its place there was little to see with the naked eye, but his spiritual perception felt… something. For the briefest flash. Like the tiniest hint of static electricity, gone so quickly he couldn't tell if it had been real or not. He reformed the test dozens of times and focused his perception until he was sure he was replicating… whatever it was.

What a strange sensation. Innes called the spinal cord and the nerve strands "lumen" strands. Maybe this is something like the electrical impulses that travel the body's nervous system? I don't know what else it would be.

Eventually, he put the healing runes on a shelf in his mind and moved sideways, continuing his work to try and fully catalogue the runes at his disposal.

First, he began to take the one hundred seven runes of the portal Spell apart. Something he probably should have done when he was trying to reverse engineer the scrying portion, as opposed to just smashing together a bunch of trial and error with different pieces. He continued the treatment for Angelika Halmi's meteor, or as much of it as he had been able to catch through open senses and slowed subjective time when she'd cast it. Fragments only, but enough to identify a handful of runes he could isolate and study.

The Grubbies also got their share of his time.

He drilled them at night, after the alchemy and before sleep. Grubby I would slowly roll a coin over its knuckles in the air while Grubby II would try to flip a page of the book he was holding. Two magical hands, with his desire to implement two different yet simultaneous parallel Intents. Grubby I would halt or drop the coin the moment Grubby II was able to grab the page. Grubby II would often lose the paper when Grubby I needed to course correct. He worked at it night after night.

On the fourteenth night, he was mostly tired and mostly thinking about his reagents running low in his stockpile and mostly not paying attention to the drill at all when for a single half-second Grubby I rolled the coin deftly while Grubby II turned the page with articulate control. Two separate Spells doing disconnected and differentiated work, and Cal felt his own mind seem to shift slightly in the moment.

Then it was gone, and Grubby II dissolved into motes of Mana as Grubby I dropped the coin, and no amount of re-focus in the next hour brought the insight back.

Cal sighed and went to bed, but he was heartened to think he was on the right track.

The days built themselves around all this. The syl'thik bookshop continued to get his gold until he'd either purchased or scanned every book in the shop that wasn't under lock and key. He traded the loss of Cillian's ring for the growing library in his mind, with more provincial history and ecology, along with multiple volumes that covered different dwarven and elven languages and dialects. The dwarves at the tavern taught him their dice game and taught him their curse words and taught him, mostly, that he could still lose a night's sleep to good ale and better company. His spoken dwarven strengthened into something approaching natural fluency, and he considered the language near-mastered.

Aurelian's Concoction Compendium came out of the ring most evenings. Cal set up his laboratory in a corner of the suite Sashi had insisted he take, and he burned through Selara's and Aurelian's remaining reagents in a steady, disciplined march. Rack by rack, the potion stockpile in his void ring grew: healing draughts, Stamina tonics, Mana potions, and multiple types of utility drams and attribute enhancement elixirs. By the end of the third week, his reagent supply was running toward empty, and while he could easily restock supplies in Mirathra, part of him wanted to wait to return to Deadfall and support the local economy.

He was, in short, working hard, while the time to return to Deadfall drew close.

Corinne found him in the stables the next morning. He'd known she would. She'd asked the night before, in the pass-me-the-butter voice she used when she wanted something and didn't want to admit she wanted it. Naturally, Cal had said sure.

She arrived, spear in hand, wearing her training leathers.

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"Hi, Cal."

"Hey there. What's up?"

"I really, really need to hit something."

"Yeah, I kind of figured."

He drew his spear and took a low guard. She matched him without a word. They circled a couple of times, sizing each other up, before she charged him. A fierce young woman who had been working out her frustrations with spearwork every free evening for weeks.

Cal deflected the first thrust and turned it, and she absorbed the check and came back with a hard slash at his lead knee. He stepped over it easily. Although she was faster than she had been, the tier-gap wasn't something so easily overcome. He met the third exchange with a real intercept and riposte, making her back up two steps to reset.

"Better," he said. "Your tendency to—"

"Don't."

"Huh?"

"Don't worry about teaching today. Just… fight."

So, he did.

They exchanged blows for a solid three minutes before she stepped inside a touch too eagerly and he caught her by the wrist and turned her spear point down toward the packed dirt. She could have broken the hold right away, but she didn't.

"They asked me…" she trailed off.

"Who did what now?"

"Grandmuhmah and Grandpa. In a supplier meeting about the cured-meat contract from the northern farmers three days ago. They were negotiating with the man across the table, and then in the middle of it Grandmuhmah turns to me and asks me, 'what would you do, Rinny?' And so I told her, thinking nothing of it. And Grandpa nodded along and just… used what I said."

Cal let her wrist go and stepped back into guard as Corinne continued speaking.

"Halfway through my answer I heard myself and looked at the way they were looking at me." She reset her stance. "That made me think back to every luncheon. Every seating chart and aunt they've passed me to like a serving dish. This whole visit, Cal."

"Ah."

"Yeah, ah!"

She came at him again. This time he pressed her, and she gave ground for a dozen exchanges before she recovered enough to push back.

"What are your thoughts on the matter?" Cal asked.

"I knew Dad chose Deadfall to get away from Mirathra and the business. I didn't know that meant I was in consideration." She parried a thrust that would have tapped her ribs and slid off the parry into a real counter. "I love it, Cal. That's the awful part. I love the numbers. I love watching Grandma delight a room. I love the… the craft of it all. Serving a good meal to strangers and sending them off happy. Telling stories with the other customers. That's—that's family. That's home."

"It feels like there's a 'but' in there."

"But." She stopped fighting for a second and let her spear tip droop. "I love the road, too. I love this." She lifted the spear an inch. "The caravan. Getting hurt and getting back up and not backing down. Adventuring. Being out. And nobody told me I'd have to choose, but it kinda feels like I do. The hours they all put in… it's a lot, and I don't see having time to pursue both. I don't know which one I get to keep."

Cal lowered his own spear.

He was thoughtful for a moment. He could see her, all of her: the sixteen-year-old whose freckled face he'd first met in the stable loft, the young woman who'd walked out of an ambush carrying him and was now standing there with sweat soaking her linens and her hair coming loose. She was growing into someone. It was the strangest yet most normal thing in the world to watch, and for a beat that stretched too long he was somewhere else, sitting on a couch in a house only reachable through memory and telling Katie that no, she didn't have to choose her major yet. His mind was filled with the image of his daughter looking up at him and trusting him until he tore himself back to the present.

"You don't need to decide anytime soon."

"What makes you think so? They're my family, Cal. It feels like they need me."

"You're only sixteen, and your grandparents are D-tiers. From what I've read they shouldn't even be halfway through their natural lifespan yet. You have time, and two things you love and think you have to pick between, and I'm telling you that most of the time the picking is a trick the world plays to hurry you along when it's unnecessary. Your grandparents aren't wrong to look at you. They've seen your potential like anyone with eyes would. That doesn't mean you owe them an answer on your first visit to the city."

"They're not—they're not pressuring me, exactly. It's almost worse. It's like they've set a place for me at the table and they're just… waiting."

"All the more reason to not be so torn up about it, then. If the door's being left open, walking through is something to do in your own time." He stepped forward and set the butt of his spear on the dirt beside hers. She swallowed.

"When the time comes to choose, you get to be the one who decides which parts of your desires and dreams to keep. No one else." He booped her on the nose. "You."

Corinne stared cross-eyed at his finger as she slowly nodded.

"Yeah… okay."

"Good."

"Now come at me for real. You've been going easy."

"I have not."

"You have so."

He came at her for real.

Christoph's office smelled like the tray Sashi had brought in an hour earlier, with small pastries and a pot of something dark and spiced. She and Borin sat on either side of the table while Christoph and Cal worked through the pages a final time.

"A royalty structure," Christoph said, tapping the third clause. "You're certain?"

"Yup," Cal answered.

"A lump sum today should be considerably larger than the first few years of returns, I'm sure."

"True. But then, that's not what I want."

"You are washing your hands of this and leaving it to me. The temptation, were I in your shoes, would be to take the coin and be free of it entirely."

"I'm not looking to be free of you." Cal accepted the pen Christoph offered. "I'm just trying to monetize the idea and design as far as it goes, not run the business. A royalty means we're partners for as long as the chair sells. I'd rather have that than a buyout."

Borin made a rough sound from his chair that was almost a laugh. He looked at Sashi. "The boy talks like a businessman."

"He talks like a Hearthsong," Sashi corrected, warmly. "Cal, dear, another pastry?"

"Thanks, Sashi, but I've had three already."

"Then a fourth. You could use some plumping up."

He took another. Christoph slid the papers to him, and Cal gave the terms a final pass. The agreement granted the Hearthsongs exclusive rights to manufacture and distribute the wheelchair, using the blueprints he'd provided. It also secured his role in any future improvements and established the royalty structure he'd fought for and their lasting partnership.

With a straight face he was proud of, Cal reflected that he was about to sign papers to mass-produce a device whose original user was in her own house right now with legs that worked perfectly fine.

He signed.

Christoph signed after him, and then Sashi, and then Borin, who took the pen in a hand that could crush bones and moved it across the page one careful letter at a time.

"There," Christoph said. He rolled the top copy and sealed it with a drop of dark wax. "The Hearthsong Family is proud to formalize its first venture with a Valorn."

"The first," Cal replied, "and hopefully not the last."

"Indeed. We'll happily help support any more genius ideas of yours." Christoph winked.

Sashi stood and came around the table and gave him a hug, while Borin offered him a hand that Cal shook.

"You did good work in my kitchen," Borin said. "You did even better work outside of it. My granddaughter is safe because of you." He held the grip a second longer than a handshake needed. "You have a place here, Cal Valorn. Come back any time, for any reason."

Corinne met him in the stables at dawn. She had been up before him. A bundle of letters tied with a green cord was clutched in her hands, and she pressed it into his as he prepared to leave.

"Letters for Mom and Dad. Please don't read them."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

She stood in front of him with her hands in her cloak pockets and her chin lifted at the angle she used when she was about to be brave about something.

"Give me… another month, please."

"Whatever you want, Cor. I could check in more frequently than that if you think it will help?"

"I think I'll be able to survive a month with my family on my own, thank you very much. But feel free to visit anytime, mister portal mage."

Cal theatrically crouched down and checked the shadows, glancing all about as he spun like a top, looking for eavesdroppers.

"Shhh! That's not how you keep a secret—"

She ignored his shenanigans and hugged him, hard and quick, then stepped back before he could say anything else and jerked her chin at the road.

"Go on. Before you make it more weird."

Grinning his best silly grin, he turned and started off, side-eyeing her over his right shoulder and tossing her a lazy wave.

"Farewell, Corinne."

Half a day west of the city, off the road in a copse where no one could see, he cast [Portal] and stepped through onto a stretch of the Eastern Road he knew well from Corinne's first bounty and the tort fight with Kamari's team. The memory pained him, but he chose to reflect on their triumphs instead of their tragedy.

Closing the portal behind him, he let himself become, for the last stretch at least, the man he was pretending to be. Slightly hunching under the weight of his pack. Walking onto the shoulder to get his boots dirty. A traveler, coming home alone.

Alone was the shape of the lie that mattered. Most people didn't cross this stretch of forest by themselves and arrive whole, and the ones who did were the sort of men and women whose reputations arrived a day ahead of them. If a man like that had accompanied a discreet Mirathrian healer on a private call to Deadfall, well. That was exactly the kind of arrangement a healer like that would make.

He walked on and reflected.

Mirathra sat behind him, many doors still open. Cardea's delver program was one such door. The arena circuit was another. All of it deferred, all of it waiting on the condition he'd set himself: finishing the Golden Mortar renovations. Seeing Aurelian and Selara's shop through its transformation into Leo's bakery. Doing the thing he'd said he would before chasing the next goal.

He was richer than he'd gone out, although some of it was hard to measure. Losing Cillian's ring hurt, but it was hard for him to place a value on the runes he'd received instead. A second income stream was coming online too, helping to feed the glutton that was the Sovereign's Toll.

And then there was a particular door in Deadfall that remained open, which he intended to close soon. His last look through the scry-preview had shown him a slightly changed routine. Herod now rested a naked blade on a stand beside the reading chair, and runelamps burned in rooms that used to go dark. Word of four dead Mycari in a Mirathrian lane must have traveled home ahead of him, and perhaps the old lord had drawn the correct conclusion from it. It wouldn't make a difference.

Eventually, Deadfall's lights came into view as second dusk approached, and Cal made his way past the manors that abutted the side of the village furthest from the dungeon. It looked smaller than it had before, and that somehow made it more precious.

He shifted his pack and walked the last stretch down to the gate, spear slung over one shoulder and Nen'tae over the other. The guard at the post lifted his rune lantern, squinted, and broke into a slow grin.

"Well, look what the road dragged back in."

"Evening, legionary."

"Cal Valorn, as I live and breathe. Alone?"

"Yup. Been a long month of travel. It's good to be home."