The Broken Pike

Leon Aster had always believed that if a man outweighed you by forty pounds, the courteous thing to do was let him think it mattered.

Across the scarred table, his opponent made that mistake enthusiastically.

The man was a dockhand by the look of him—thick forearms, shoulders like a wardrobe, beard wet with spilled ale—and he had spent the better part of a minute grinning at Leon as though the contest had already been settled by arithmetic. Around them, patrons of the Broken Pike leaned in with cups raised and coins scattered across the boards.

Leon grinned back.

“Ready?” someone shouted. The scrawny stable-boy that was serving as referee released their hands.

The dockhand surged.

Leon let his wrist bend half an inch.

The crowd roared approval for the larger man. Leon heard three fresh bets shouted over his shoulder and decided the half inch had been worth it.

Then he shifted his elbow, turned his shoulder, took the pressure through his back instead of his arm, and drove the other man's hand into the table hard enough to rattle every cup on it.

The Broken Pike erupted.

Leon stood with both arms spread as if he had personally arranged the applause.

“There!” he announced. “That's your problem.”

His opponent stared at his defeated hand.

“You're strong,” Leon continued, leaning over the table with the grave concern of a physician diagnosing a fatal illness, “but you pull like you're trying to drag a cart uphill. It's leverage. Shoulder forward. Keep the wrist straight until you want him to think you've lost it.”

“You bent your wrist.”

“Exactly. See? You're learning.”

Someone laughed. The dockhand muttered something impolite.

Leon clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make the man's drink jump. “Good match.”

Then he swept a few coins toward himself and raised his voice to the room.

“Who's next? Come on. I've got enough of your money to buy dinner, but not enough to buy a GOOD dinner.”

That was when the uniforms came in.

Leon noticed them because the room noticed them.

The Low Lanterns had many useful instincts. One of them was knowing when soldiers entered a tavern. Conversation did not exactly stop, but it bent around the newcomers. Men who had been sitting comfortably found reasons to sit straighter. A card disappeared under a sleeve. Someone at the bar suddenly became fascinated by the bottom of his cup.

Three of them.

The first was young. Too young, Leon thought, for the silver captain's bars on his collar, though he carried himself as if he had practiced wearing them in a mirror until they stopped feeling borrowed. Human. Noble-looking in the irritating way of people whose boots had probably never leaked.

The second was a Galapa, quiet-eyed and broad-shelled, carrying himself with the patient stillness of somebody who saw a lot more than he bothered commenting on.

The third made Leon forget about the other two for a moment.

She was slight compared with him, though that was true of most people. Young. Controlled. Military posture without the stiffness. Nothing about her seemed particularly theatrical, but the room just seemed to make space around her anyway.

Leon decided immediately that she was interesting.

The captain approached first.

“Mr. Aster?”

Leon took a drink.

“That depends who's asking.”

“Captain Sandore Greycastle. Strategic Office. We'd like to speak with you.”

Leon had heard the name Greycastle somewhere. Probably several somewheres. Engrassia had no shortage of old families whose ancestors had killed important people in famous locations.

He glanced toward the table, where a new challenger had been halfway to sitting before the soldiers arrived and was now reconsidering his courage.

“I'm busy today, commander.”

The young captain's expression tightened by perhaps the width of a fingernail.

Leon enjoyed that.

Then he looked past him at the woman again.

“But maybe she and I could have a nice private conversation.” He gave her his best smile, which had worked often enough that he saw no reason to retire it. “My place. Over drinks? Do you like wine?”

Nothing.

No blush. No irritation. No amusement.

Then, louder, for the benefit of the entire tavern, he added, “Seems like no one else is man enough to take me on, anyways.”

That earned him the reaction he wanted.

Grumbling. Swearing. A few shouted objections from men who had already lost money and others who had intended to lose it later.

Then the woman moved.

Not toward the door.

Toward the challenger's chair.

She dusted off the spilled ale and sat.

A gold coin struck the tabletop between them with a bright metallic click.

The captain raised both eyebrows.

“Lieutenant?”

She did not look at him.

Leon laughed.

Up close, she looked even less suited to the contest. Not fragile, exactly. There was something compact about her, something disciplined, but Leon had spent years learning what strength looked like in shoulders, forearms, stance, hands. He knew the difference between strong and merely trained.

Or he thought he did.

The lieutenant rested her elbow on the table.

“My coin against a fifteen-minute conversation.”

Leon grinned. “With you?”

“No.” Her eyes flicked toward the captain. “You're far too dull. With him.”

The tavern howled.

Leon slapped the table once and sat opposite her.

“All right, little lady. But don't think I'm going to go easy on you.”

He absolutely went easy on her.

At first.

Their hands locked.

Her grip was cool and firm, but not remarkable.

Someone counted down.

Leon applied pressure gradually, enough to make a show of it without embarrassing her too quickly.

Her hand did not move.

He added more.

Still nothing.

Leon stopped smiling quite so broadly.

The lieutenant's face had not changed at all.

He leaned into it.

For the first time, she gave ground—a fraction, perhaps less. Leon felt the old, familiar satisfaction of resistance yielding under muscle and technique. He shifted his shoulder and committed.

Then something changed.

It was not leverage.

It was not technique.

For one brief instant, green light flickered behind her eyes.

Leon had just enough time to think, “Oh, that's interesting.”

His hand hit the table.

Hard.

The impact sent a burst of pain through his knuckles and knocked two tankards onto the floor.

For half a heartbeat, the Broken Pike went silent.

Then everyone in it lost their minds.

Leon stared at his hand.

The knuckles were already swelling.

He stared at the lieutenant.

She released him.

Leon threw his head back and laughed.

Not because losing was funny.

Well. Not only because losing was funny.

Because he had spent the last several minutes assuming he understood the shape of the contest, and she had let him remain wrong until the exact moment she decided otherwise.

Patrons surged toward the table almost immediately.

Questions. Challenges. Congratulations. Someone wanted to know whether she had cheated. Someone else wanted to buy her a drink. A third man had apparently decided losing to her would improve his evening.

Leon expected her to enjoy it.

Why wouldn't she?

Victory was better when witnesses were present. Half the point of doing something impressive was ensuring enough people were around to tell the story incorrectly afterward.

But the lieutenant did not look pleased.

She did not look angry either.

She looked trapped.

The realization puzzled Leon enough that he almost missed the captain moving.

Sandore Greycastle lifted one hand.

A shower of sparks cracked into the air.

Not enough to burn anything. But flashing and popping loudly enough to draw every eye in the room.

“All right! All right!” he shouted. “Back to your drinks.”

The effect was immediate, if disappointing to the crowd. They broke apart with the resentful obedience of people who had been hoping for a second spectacle but did not want to be the spectacle themselves.

Leon looked from the captain to the lieutenant.

That was interesting too.

The young officer had noticed.

Not the victory. Not the strength. The discomfort.

Leon flexed his swelling hand and decided the fifteen minutes might not be entirely wasted after all.

“A deal's a deal,” he said.

They took a booth in the back where the room's noise became a wall instead of a conversation. Leon sat on one side. Greycastle and the lieutenant sat opposite him. The Galapa—Corporal Kameutsu, Leon learned—remained nearby, positioned casually enough that most people would not have noticed he was keeping curious patrons from drifting too close.

Leon noticed.

He had been drunk enough to enjoy losing, but the loss and the surprise had been sobering. He was not about to ignore these people now.

Greycastle began without ceremony.

There had been attacks on villages east of the city. Dunmere. Bell's Ford. Orrow Fen. Wolves, mostly, behaving wrong. Daylight attacks. Packs striking where easier food existed. Animals withdrawing together. Missing people. A patrol pushed back.

Leon leaned back against the booth.

The words Dunmere and wolves erased most of what remained of his good humor.

“Dunmere?”

“Yes,” Greycastle said.

Leon frowned.

He liked Dunmere.

Not in any grand, poetic way. It was a village. Villages smelled like livestock and wet timber and usually had more than one person who hated outsiders unless the outsiders paid for something.

But Dunmere had treated him well.

After Harrowdeep, half the village had insisted the job deserved a celebration. Someone's aunt had fed him stew until breathing became work. A farmer had produced a bottle of something that tasted like pears and fire. Children had asked whether the ruins were haunted until Leon finally told them yes, but only by the ghosts of Imperial tax collectors, which had frightened the adults more than the children.

“Anybody dead?”

Greycastle gave him what they knew. Killed livestock. Injuries. Missing villagers. No certainty yet on the worst of it.

Leon rubbed his thumb across his bruised knuckles.

The lieutenant watched him without seeming to.

“So why me?”

“You've been to Harrowdeep,” Greycastle said.

That made sense.

Harrowdeep sat between the settlements, an old imperial survey and storage complex built into a ridge. Leon had cleared the upper galleries months earlier for a paying client after predators started nesting there and making the roads unpleasant.

Nothing mysterious about it at the time.

Nothing coordinated.

“Place was mostly empty when I left it,” Leon said. “Empty of anything that mattered, anyway. Predators had taken over the upper rooms and were making trouble on the roads. Territorial, normal animals. Mean because I was in their den, not because anyone had taught them to be.”

Kameutsu's eyes sharpened slightly from where he stood.

Leon continued.

“There's an old survey door in the deepest gallery I could reach. Sealed from the other side. Wasn't part of the contract, so I didn't spend three hours trying to prove I could open a door somebody else had decided to close.”

That earned the smallest reaction from Greycastle. Leon could not decide whether it was approval or disbelief that he possessed restraint.

“Marked the safe routes in white chalk. Collapsed one bad tunnel on purpose. North face has another ventilation shaft cut, but the slope was too unstable to reach it safely when I was there.”

Greycastle listened carefully.

That, despite the uniform, began to move Leon's opinion of him away from irritating.

The captain explained that the Strategic Office suspected Remnant involvement, though they had no proof yet. Harrowdeep was not their confirmed destination. It was simply one possibility.

Leon thought about it.

Freshly cleared ruin. Close to several towns. Plenty of local wildlife to scare villagers away. Old Imperial construction. Rough country where patrols could spend a week missing a camp by under a mile.

“Could be,” he said. “If I wanted somewhere to hole up out there, I'd look at Harrowdeep. Doesn't mean that's where your people are.”

“They aren't my people,” Greycastle said.

Leon asked what else they had found. The answer was sparse, strange attack patterns, signs of cages and chemical work that other members of the detachment were examining. They had not brought the evidence with them.

Fair enough.

If the army was lying, it was a strangely modest lie. No claims of certain conspiracies. No speeches about duty. No demand that Leon serve because some officer had decided his time belonged to Engrassia.

Instead Greycastle reached under his coat and set a small purse on the table.

“We're leaving at first light. I want someone with us who knows Harrowdeep and the surrounding area. Help us investigate. If the trail leads to the ruins, help us clear them.”

Leon picked up the purse.

He weighed it once in his palm.

Good weight.

“What if the trail doesn't lead there?”

“You still get paid for your time.”

Leon opened the purse, glanced inside, and closed it again.

He had worked for less.

And if someone was hurting people around Dunmere, he did not particularly care whether the work came with his biggest payday to date.

“Done.”

Greycastle blinked, perhaps expecting negotiation.

Leon tucked the purse away.

“You offered enough.”

The lieutenant's eyes moved briefly to the swelling across Leon's hand.

He caught it.

“You break everyone's hand before you hire them?” he asked.

“No.”

A beat.

“Only the dull ones?”

“No.”

Leon grinned.

There it was again—that complete refusal to give him the reaction he expected.

He found himself liking it.

Or at least wanting to understand it.

The captain was young, polished, and plainly accustomed to people listening when he spoke. But he had noticed when his lieutenant wanted the crowd gone, and he had offered Leon work rather than orders. Definitely not the worst employer Leon had ever had. Not even close.

The Galapa remained mostly a question mark. Quiet. Watchful. Leon respected quiet people in principle, though he rarely understood why anyone would waste a perfectly good silence by not filling it.

Miuki was something else.

She had crushed his hand with a strength that did not fit inside her body and then made it look like hearing applause was far more difficult than the achievement itself.

That made no sense to Leon.

Winning was good.

Being seen winning was better.

He had spent too much of his life having other people decide what his strength meant. These days, if he did something worth remembering, he preferred witnesses.

Miuki had looked as though the attention itself were a danger.

Leon leaned back and watched her for another second.

He had been wrong about her strength.

He suspected that would not be the last thing he got wrong about her.

Leon prepared to get up from the table, but then he had one more thought. It was probably a bad one, but that had never stopped him from speaking his mind before.

“Captain,” he said, “I don't know much about what the Remnant has going on, but here in the Lanterns there is all kinds of information for sale. I know someone who might know something, but she's a bit… odd.”

The captain regarded him for a moment, plainly trying to decide whether this was some kind of con. Apparently satisfied that Leon was being serious, he nodded.

“All right. Who do we need to go chat with next?”

Leon swallowed. He wasn't the one running a con here, but with her, there was never any telling.

“Her name is Pixal. She's an information broker, among… other things. Remnant business has a way of becoming her business whenever she gets wind of it.”

Sandore's eyes narrowed at Leon's hesitation.

“Is she an Imperialist?”

“Uh… no.” Leon considered how best to put it. “Quite the opposite, in fact…”