"Absolutely not," said the Divine Sage.
He was standing in the doorway with a pot of something green in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other. The Reaper stood behind him in the hall. Encrid had a strong feeling the Reaper had chosen to stand there because it was further from the spoon.
"I haven’t said anything yet," Encrid said.
"You don’t have to. He told me." The Sage pointed the spoon over his shoulder without looking. "North. To the Maren Ridge. On foot. With your channels held together by my thread and good luck."
"I’ll go slowly."
"You’ll go nowhere." The old man came in and put the pot down on the table so hard that some of it splashed. "Do you know what I said to you on the fourth day? Six weeks before you touch your Star. Three before you lift a sword. It has been three and a half weeks since you opened your eyes. You can walk to the plum tree and back if you lean on the wall. That is not a man who goes north. That is a man who goes to the privy and is proud of it."
"I’m not going to touch my Star."
"You’ll want to. The first time someone threatens you on the road, you’ll reach for it without thinking, and every channel I’ve sewn shut will tear open again."
Encrid did not argue with that, because it was true.
The Sage stared at him for a long moment. Then he pulled the chair out from the table and sat down heavily, as if his knees had made the decision for him.
"Why?" he asked. "Tell me properly, why do you want to go north now?"
Encrid thought about how much he could say.
He could not tell the old man about the dragon or the system. But he could tell him the rest, and the rest was true.
"There are eight thousand people on that ridge who walked out of the north because I told them to," he said. "Some of them were convicts. Some were soldiers who left their posts. My sister brought a legion across half the Empire without orders. Every one of them did what I asked. Now the Crown is deciding what to call them, and the only person who can explain why they did it is supposed to be dead."
The Sage listened without moving.
"And the cushion," Encrid went on, more quietly. "You saw the floor. You knew it wasn’t a lamp."
"I knew."
"It’s something I took from the Wall’s vault. It’s old, and there’s something inside it that is very dangerous. I can’t tell you more than that." He met the old man’s eyes. "It’s getting worse. I can’t stop it, and I can’t let it happen in a house where a girl sleeps on the other side of the wall."
The Sage looked at him with those pale, sharp eyes for a long time. He did not ask what was inside it.
"So you are leaving for two reasons," he said, "and both of them are other people."This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
"Yes."
"I hate that kind of reason. It’s the only kind that ever works on fools." He rubbed his face with both hands, leaving a faint green smear on his cheek. "Fine. Then listen to my terms, because I won’t say them twice."
He held up one stained finger.
"You rest every hour. Not when you’re tired. Every hour. Tired is too late for you."
A second finger.
"You drink the green one every morning. I’ll make you enough for a month. It tastes worse cold, and I’m glad you would suffer."
A third.
"You do not carry anything heavier than your own coat until I say so in a letter. And you will not touch your Star. If someone puts a knife to your throat, you let this man deal with it." He jerked his thumb toward the Reaper. "That is what he’s for."
"And the fourth?" Encrid asked, because the old man still had one finger half raised.
The Sage lowered his hand.
"The fourth is that I’m not coming."
Encrid had expected that.
"Somebody has to stay with the girl," the Sage said. He did not look at the Reaper as he said it, but his voice changed a little. "Her Star is growing the right way for the first time in her life. It’s a delicate thing. Like a sapling that’s been bent for years and is finally standing straight. I want to watch it while it does. And I am much too old to go walking north after an idiot."
The Reaper had come into the room. He stood beside the table, very still.
"You would stay?" he asked.
"I just said so. Weren’t you listening?"
"Your name keeps more people away than my blades," the Reaper said slowly. "No one who knows who you are would lift a hand in a house where you sit."
It was the truth. There was even a saying that one could afford to make an enemy of the Necromancer King, but never the Divine Sage. Not because the Sage was particularly powerful, but because when someone needed to be stitched back together in a way no one else in Astralis could manage, he was the one they went to.
"So I’m a scarecrow now."
"A very respected scarecrow."
It was the closest thing to a joke Encrid had ever heard the Reaper make. The Sage looked at him with such disgust that Encrid had to hide his mouth behind his hand.
"Then you’re coming with me?" Encrid asked the Reaper.Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
"Yes. And not only for you."
He sat down on the edge of the window seat.
"I have other business in the north." He paused. "I have been thinking about what you said. About the five."
Encrid waited.
"Before I leave, I will tell each of them where I am going," the Reaper said. "And I will tell each of them a different place."
Encrid stared at him for a moment. Then he understood, and something cold and pleased moved in his chest.
"Five places," he said. "Five different lies."
"Yes."
"And if anyone comes looking for you, or for me, or for this house, you’ll know which lie they heard."
"Yes."
The Sage looked from one of them to the other.
"I knew it," he said. "I knew I should have stayed in my garden. You two are going to get along terribly well."
He stood up, picked up his pot, and went to the door. There he stopped.
"Two days," he said. "I need two days to make the medicine, and he needs two days of eating properly before he walks out of that gate. If either of you leaves sooner, I will follow you north just to say I told you so."
He left. The smell of pine and something bitter drifted after him.
When the Reaper had gone too, Encrid looked at the stone hearth.
[ Containment: 88% ]
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