"You don't bring me easy problems. Fortunately, I have an answer to this one."
I straightened a little. The movement pulled at my side.
"What?"
"Negotiation."
"With my father?"
She passed me and returned to her office. I followed more slowly.
At the district map, Mira moved aside a requisition pinned over the southwestern corner. Beneath it, an inked road curved away from Grenzheim toward a series of ridgelines. A small square marked the end.
"The expedition site."
Mira traced a red boundary around the surrounding hills.
"The garrison district," she said. "Including its outlying roads, observation grounds, and the western escarpment. All of it is included in your territorial grant."
I looked from the square to the boundary.
"The dungeon is on my land."
"Yes."
I stared at the map.
Mira opened a drawer and brought out a thick file.
"The Academy submitted its supply requests through this office before you arrived. Water, fodder, storage space, laborers. They have been preparing the expedition for months."
"Before there was a local lord."
"Exactly."
She found a page and laid it on the desk.
"Their authorization permits excavation and recovery. It does not erase the claims attached to the land. Previously, those claims went directly through the Crown's administration. Your grant transferred the local interest to you."
"How much?"
"That depends on what they recover and how it is classified. Military stores, scholarly material, valuable salvage. Different rules apply. The Academy will argue that almost everything is scholarly material. Your father will argue that almost everything was recovered at his expense."
"And I get whatever survives the argument."
"If nobody represents you, you get whatever they remember to mention."
I lowered myself into the chair again.
Mira turned the page toward me and tapped a paragraph near the bottom.
"The expedition must maintain a record of recovered property. A lawful claimant may appoint representatives to witness that record, identify disputed finds, and ensure that nothing subject to their claim leaves without acknowledgment."
"Soldiers?"
"An escort appropriate to the danger of the site."
"They can refuse me access to their research."
"They can restrict you from interfering with it," Mira said. "That isn't the same as refusing you access to your property or land."
"My father won't appreciate the distinction."
"The Academy will. Especially when your notice is copied to the garrison administration and its own authorizing office."
I looked up.
"You've already thought about this."
"I've spent the last three weeks sorting out which obligations became yours when somebody in the capital drew that red line."
I leaned over the document.
I didn't need permission to join House Hexenzeit's expedition as a son seeking favor. I needed to arrive as a separate authority with a claim they couldn't quietly dismiss.
It wouldn't stop Roderich from being Roderich.
But it would make the Academy decide whether it wanted to be involved.
"Can I stop them opening the gate?"
Mira's expression sharpened.
"Their authorization predates your grant, and it remains valid."
"Even if the site is dangerous?"
"Then you would need grounds for a safety objection. Actual grounds, submitted to the people empowered to assess them." She held my gaze. "Do you have those?"
"Not anything they would accept."
"Then don't begin by demanding a right you can't enforce. Begin with the one you have."
"An inspection party."
"A recovery observer and protective escort," she corrected. "Use the proper description. It will save us an argument."
"You're a lifesaver."
"Bureaucracy," Mira said, gathering the pages, "is the one weapon this town never ran short of."
She pulled a clean sheet toward her.
"I'll draft the notice and transmit it today."
"Have they reached the site?"
"Not yet. Their last supply request came from the approach road. Heavy equipment moves slowly there, especially once it leaves the old paving."
Mira glanced toward the bell on her desk.
"I'll have the road posts log them as they pass. You'll know when the column approaches."
The communications room occupied the back of the ground floor.
A technician stood beside a bank of brass housings, recording connection times in a ledger. He recognized me and put the pen down.
"My lord."
"I need Iron Cross High Command. Personnel deployment."
"Do you have an existing connection reference?"
"No."
He hesitated.
"What should I give as the purpose?"
"A request for Knights."
His eyes moved toward my right sleeve before he caught himself.
"For an expedition," I added.
He began adjusting the regulators.
The first operator transferred me. The second asked for my commission details. The third had apparently read the newspapers.
"Lord Kaspar. We have been awaiting an update on your condition."
"Then this is efficient. I'm alive, and I need an escort."
A pause.
"How many?"
"One field section. Experienced personnel. Ruin exploration, confined fighting, independent judgment."
"Your existing command—"
"Is holding the ground we just took."
Dorn and Britta were still south. So were the other surviving Knights, working alongside Thom's people while the engineers struggled to extend the defenses.
I could pull them away. I had the authority, and it would still be a waste of them.
"What is the proposed destination?"
"The Academy excavation within the Grenzheim district. I am attending as the territorial claimant's representative."
I heard paper moving.
"That expedition is sponsored by House Hexenzeit."
"I'm aware."
"Does the mission include an anticipated confrontation with house troops?"
"It includes keeping my property from disappearing into somebody else's wagons. The town hall is preparing the relevant notice."
Another pause.
"Send the written request through the garrison channel. We will need the legal attachment."
"You'll have it today. I need people, not an acknowledgment that my request has entered a drawer."
"I understand, my lord."
"Do you?"
His voice lost some of its formal smoothness.
"Yes. We have a lot of requests for the Knights who remain available. Most of the people submitting them have also read about your ridge."
"Experienced personnel," I repeated. "Not whoever has the cleanest uniform."
"I have that written down."
It would have to do.
Brennan found the practice sword before I managed to use it.
He stopped in the infirmary doorway and looked at the wooden blade across my knees.
"No."
"I haven't done anything."
"I would like that to continue."
"It's wood."
"So are crutches. I notice you didn't request one of those."
I closed the prosthetic around the grip.
The fingers moved too quickly. Wood creaked.
"I need to train."
"No. You need to heal. Training comes after, and I decide when after is."
We stared at each other.
Finally, he conceded.
"Seated work. Slow movements. No strikes against anything. If the fitting starts pulling, you stop."
"That sounds reasonable."
"It sounds reasonable because I'm the one saying it."
He took the wooden sword from me.
I opened my mouth.
"I'm having the grip wrapped," he said.
The next morning, I began.
I had expected the unfamiliar weight to be the worst part.
It wasn't.
My old hand had made adjustments I had never needed to think about. A slight easing of the little finger. Pressure beneath the thumb. A turn through the wrist that began before I decided where the edge should go.
The prosthetic did exactly what I told it.
Unfortunately, I did not know everything I had once been telling my hand.
I raised the sword.
The elbow moved first. The wrist followed too late.
The point dipped.
I corrected it, overcorrected, and brought the wooden tip against the bedpost.
The knock was small.
Brennan stood in the doorway. He had been waiting behind the wall.
"Seated. Slow. No breaking my things."
By noon, the padding beneath the fitting was damp with sweat. My shoulder ached. I could move the blade through the first half of a cut, but changing direction made the wrist hesitate.
I set the sword down.
The next few days passed without much improvement.
The prosthetic obeyed simple commands, but the moment I tried to make them part of a sword stroke, the arm fell behind. The elbow locked too early. The wrist turned too late.
I repeated the same cut until the padding beneath the fitting grew wet. I brought the sword into guard, and the metal fingers crushed the wrapped grip so hard the wood creaked beneath them.
By the third day, I stopped trying to fix the cut and started counting.
The elbow locked early every time. The wrist was late by the same beat every time. The fingers clamped on the same part of the grip. A weak arm fails wherever it gets tired. This one failed in the same places, in the same order, as if every command reached it a fraction late and a little garbled.
That wasn't my skill. Something between me and the metal was losing part of what I sent.
I couldn't fix that from an infirmary bed. I needed another option, one that I could do in the next days.
I had tried it in the Coliseum and deserved another shot. I transferred the wooden sword to my left hand.
The first guard felt like speaking a foreign language.
I understood what I wanted to say. My body knew the meaning. But every part of the sentence came out in the wrong order. My shoulder rose too high. My wrist bent inward. My feet tried to arrange themselves for a right-handed cut while the blade waited on the opposite side.
Everything required thought.
Grip, elbow, point, weight.
The first cut was slow and ugly. The second was worse because I tried to make it faster.
The arm was untrained. Awkward enough that every movement had to be assembled one piece at a time. Still, it was faster at learning.
I raised the sword again.
That night I sat on the edge of the infirmary bed and could not make myself lie down.
The garrison was quiet. Footsteps passed in the corridor once, twice, then nothing.
My right arm ached.
My left arm hung at my side like wet rope. The muscles trembled even at rest. I had spent the day asking it to become something it had never been.
I closed my eyes.
I could still see Henrik's eyes.
I should have been faster. I should have ended it before he had to choose.
The thought was useless. I knew it was useless.
It didn't help. My mind offered no solace.
Did God put me here? Or did they?
I opened my eyes.
I did not know who had brought me to this world. I did not know if the prayer I had whispered some nights had reached anything, or if it had echoed off stone and died in the dark. I did not know if the Sins had heard it and laughed.
But I remembered my father. He would have prayed anyway.
I slid off the bed.
The floor was cold under my bare feet. My thigh pulled as I lowered myself, and I went down on one knee.
The prosthetic hung at my side. I brought my left hand up and did the sign of the cross.
I don't know if You put me here.
The thought came slowly, assembled one word at a time.
I don't know if You're the one listening. Maybe it's them.
The wind hit the window.
Last time, when dad died, I stopped praying because it felt like talking to an empty room.
My left hand pressed harder against my chest.
I'm sorry. But I need to believe in something.
He believed in You. So I'll believe too.
I lowered my head.
Please. Give me strength to fight one more day. Not because I deserve it. Because there are people I still have to protect, and I can't do it alone. I'm tired. This is more than one man is supposed to carry.
Use me. Even with just one hand.
The room stayed silent.
I stayed on one knee for a long time.
Then I got up, sat on the edge of the bed, and waited for morning.
On the fourth day, High Command's confirmation arrived.
Five Knights had been assigned. They were already traveling south.
I read the message and handed it back.
"Send word to Mira."
"Yes, my lord."
"And ask her if the notice went out."
"It has. The Academy acknowledged receipt yesterday."
"House Hexenzeit?"
The clerk consulted the second sheet.
"No reply."
I returned to the practice room Brennan had reluctantly allowed me to use. It had an empty floor, a chair against the wall, and no other patients for me to disturb.
The orderlies had removed the breakable lamp.
I stood with the sword held low.
My thigh could manage a short step. I kept forgetting the distinction until the old wound reminded me.
Right foot forward. Settle the weight. Raise the point.
Every hour spent training it made the next hour less difficult.
When Brennan found me standing, he leaned against the doorway.
"You have an impressive talent for making a medical instruction feel negotiable."
"I'm not striking anything."
"You're sweating."
"That happens when people stand."
"Sit down."
I sat.
He inspected the fitting, then the leg, then my face.
"You're improving," he said.
By the fifth morning, I could draw the wooden sword with my left hand, bring it into guard, and return it without scraping the grip against my coat.
I sat afterward with the wooden sword across my knees and flexed my left hand. The living fingers ached from gripping too hard. A tremor ran through the forearm whenever I tried to hold the point steady for more than a few breaths.
A knock interrupted the exercise.
A town-hall runner waited outside with a folded message.
"From Mayor Mira."
I took it with my left hand.
The expedition had been sighted at the final road post.
"They think the first group will reach the site before nightfall," the runner added. "The wagons will take longer."
"And my Knights?"
He shook his head.
I folded the message.
"Tell Mira to keep watching. Nobody approaches the expedition on my behalf yet."
"Yes, my lord."
"Did the Academy say anything besides the acknowledgment?"
"No further message."
I could already imagine the document sitting on a camp table while people argued over whether ignoring it constituted an answer.
Brennan found me fastening my coat.
"No."
"I'm going to the rest house."
"For what?"
"To wait for my escort."
His eyes narrowed.
"The escort for the expedition you've been pretending not to prepare for?"
He checked the padding beneath my sleeve one final time.
"No fighting."
"I'll have Knights with me."
"That was also true when they brought you here."
I had no answer to that.
He let the sleeve fall.
"Have the fitting checked every day. Keep the wound clean."
"I will."
Brennan stepped aside.
The afternoon passed without them.
I waited at the rest house, where the yard had been cleared of the wrecked equipment we had left behind before the attack.
Somebody had scrubbed the floor inside. The room looked larger without swords on every table and Knights arguing over which damaged component might survive another journey.
Henrik had sat near the hearth with his greatsword across his knees.
The chair was empty.
I went back outside.
A garrison messenger came near sunset.
"Carriage on the north road, my lord. Iron Cross credentials at the gate."
"How many?"
"Five."
I stood too quickly. My thigh tightened, and I waited until I could walk without showing it.
The carriage arrived several minutes later.
I walked toward it, already arranging the briefing in my head.
The carriage shifted as somebody moved inside.
A voice came through the open window.
"If you insist on taking up the entire bench, the least you could do is stop complaining about the bench."
A much deeper voice answered.
"It's too small."
"It has been too small for weeks. I doubt telling it again will help."
I stopped.
The door opened.
A lean man stepped down first, wearing leather rather than plate. Short blond hair. Pale gray eyes. He looked at the yard, the windows, the roofline, and finally me.
Ghost.
Behind him came a man in mismatched armor with a curved sword at his hip.
Idris saw me and began to grin.
"No," I said.
The carriage rocked again.
Roen unfolded himself through the doorway, one enormous shoulder at a time. The iron slab he called a sword followed in his hand.
Konrad climbed down behind him, his armor road-stained but maintained with the same care I remembered.
Last came Brandt.
Dark hair. Scarred face. Bastard sword.
He lifted his own metal hand a fraction.
"Heard you needed Knights."