Chapter 254: Rest Day (2)

“I am Ryuken’s terrifying daughter, who used to violently steal green apples from this exact market at age nine.” She stopped abruptly in front of a rickety wooden stall selling something steaming wrapped in broad green leaves. “Old Shen caught me every single time. He made me sweep his entire stall for an hour as punishment. He never once snitched to my father.” She pointed at the steaming display. “Two of those.”

The stall owner, who Vane wildly estimated was approximately eighty years old and seemingly carved entirely out of weathered driftwood and pure, unfiltered opinion, narrowed his dark eyes at Vane.

“Who is this one,” the old man demanded. It was not unfriendly, but it was incredibly direct.

“Western student,” Ashe replied easily. “Ryuken is currently attempting to teach him.”

Old Shen stared at Vane for a long, heavy moment. It was the specific, terrifying assessment of a man who had watched monsters walk out of Ryuken’s compound for decades and deeply understood exactly what it meant when the old man actually chose to teach someone. He slowly handed over the steaming, wrapped parcels.

“Do not break any of my merchandise, westerner,” Old Shen grunted.

“I will do my best,” Vane said evenly.

“He said exactly that too.” Old Shen jabbed a crooked finger at the empty air where Kaito presumably was not standing. “Shattered my entire display cart in his second year. He paid for it in gold, but it still absolutely counts against him.”

Ashe was already unwrapping hers and taking a massive bite.

They eventually ended up sitting on a roof.

It was not by any grand design, but simply by the organic logic of the market’s twisted geography. The stall selling the heavily spiced grilled meat on iron skewers was conveniently located right next to a brick building with a rusted external staircase. That staircase led up to a second-floor storage level, which conveniently possessed a wooden ladder granting access to the flat roof. Ashe had clearly been up here hundreds of times before. She walked straight to the eastern corner with the clearest, unobstructed sightline of the towering mountain and dropped down, sitting with the comfortable unselfconsciousness of a girl returning to her favorite childhood hiding spot.

Vane sat heavily beside her, groaning slightly as his bruised ribs protested the hard clay tiles.

The massive mountain fortress loomed directly above them, its dark, iron-colored stone violently piercing the thin morning clouds that had settled partway down the jagged range. From this specific angle, the compound looked entirely different from how it felt on the inside. From the inside, it was a suffocating, isolated training space. From the sky, it was a tactical military structure. From down here in the dirt, looking up, it was something organic that had aggressively grown, accumulating centuries of bloody history in its scarred surfaces.

Ashe was chewing the grilled meat without looking at it. She was staring up at the fortress with the exact same complicated, hollow expression she had worn in the outer ring on their very first evening.

Vane finally unwrapped the fish the vendor had forced upon him. It was cold, heavily smoked, and undeniably incredible.

“Do you miss it when you’re trapped at the Academy,” Vane asked quietly.

She chewed slowly, keeping her eyes locked on the mountain for a long moment before answering. It was not her usual, rapid-fire register. She was usually brutally direct, completely skipping the thoughtful pause.

“Yes and no,” she finally murmured. “In the exact same way I deeply miss the Academy when I’m stuck here.” She took another bite. “I used to think that meant I didn’t fully belong anywhere. That I was broken. Now, I think it just means I belong to both of them, which is vastly different from belonging to neither.”

Vane looked up at the black stone of the mountain.

“The name is infinitely heavier here,” she confessed, her voice dropping. “Razar. Back at the Academy, it is just political currency. It is a weapon I can wield. Here, it is a living history that these people actively remember from long before I was even born. Old Shen knows things about my dead grandfather that I don’t.” She looked down at the half-eaten parcel in her hands. “That is deeply uncomfortable. But I am also incredibly glad it exists.”

Vane thought about this. He thought about the rotting gutters of Oakhaven. He thought about what it meant to be from a place that was completely, utterly gone, not because the physical city had actually changed, but simply because the desperate, starving boy he had been there was not the violent weapon he was now. He had no Korreth. He had no grumpy old man who had known his family for thirty years and fondly remembered his childhood embarrassments. He had nothing but ghosts.

“There is nowhere I could ever go back to like this,” Vane admitted softly. It was not spoken with self-pity. It was just a cold, accurate tactical assessment.

She turned her head and looked at him. “I know.” She looked back at the fortress. “That is exactly why you keep moving violently forward, Vane. Because for you, there is only forward.”

A heavy, comfortable silence settled over the clay roof.

Far below them, the chaotic market moved with its own loud, desperate logic. The sprawling noise of it reached the roof as a general, comforting hum of life rather than individual, distinct voices. Somewhere nearby, a merchant was aggressively arguing about the price of iron with the theatrical, screaming outrage of a man who had no real objection to the price but considered the violent negotiation a mandatory part of the transaction. A laughing child was desperately chasing something small and fast through the maze of stalls.

“Lancelot didn’t come down,” Vane noted into the quiet.

“No.”

“He is probably standing on the eastern defensive wall.”

“Almost certainly.” She finished her food and wiped her hands on her pants. “He doesn’t know what to do with physical spaces that aren’t strictly meant for training or waiting for orders. To him, everything in the universe is either a specific task or a holding pattern.” She stared down at the bustling market. “I used to be deeply annoyed by it. Now, I just think it is exactly what happens when a human being has never once been given a single hour of time that didn’t have a bloody purpose attached to it.”

Vane thought about Lancelot standing completely alone on the eastern wall in the dead of night, methodically checking the dark sky the exact same way he checked everything else: perfectly, mechanically, and without a single shred of apparent emotional investment in the actual result.

“We should bring him with us next time,” Vane said firmly.

She shot him a highly skeptical look. “He absolutely will not come if you just ask him.”

“I know.”

“So how, exactly, do you plan to manage that.”

“We casually leave the compound at a specific time, and we leave a trail he can choose to follow if he decides he wants to.”

She thought about this absurd tactical maneuver. “That is incredibly, shockingly patient of you.”

“It is highly tactical,” Vane corrected smoothly.

She made a sharp sound that was the very beginning of a genuine laugh, violently suppressed before it could fully arrive. “Right.” She stood up and aggressively dusted off her knees. “We have three more specific stalls I need to hit before the afternoon training window. The ancient spice merchant near the south gate has a specific blend that Ren doesn’t stock at the Academy, and I have literally been thinking about it for a solid month.”

Vane groaned, his ribs aching, and forced himself to stand up.

“You are still carrying the dead fish,” she reminded him cheerfully.

He looked down at the greasy paper parcel in his hand. “The massive honor of the guest.”

“Exactly.” She was already swinging her legs over the edge to reach the roof’s rusted ladder. “Do not drop it on the way down, westerner.”

He didn’t drop it.

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