Kael sat with a steaming cup of coffee, glancing through the window at a pair of doves.
His eyes were distant, one finger tapping absently against the side of the cup.
"Sorry for being late. Got caught up in some things." Syleena pulled out a chair and sat down opposite him.
Kael looked at her and tapped the newly woven crest on his cape. "Looks like we're equals. Or almost. I'm still a noble."
Syleena's eyes moved to his shoulder.
A man and a woman reaching toward a floating crown, both so thin their ribs threatened to break through the skin. She recognised the crest immediately.
"How?" She whispered.
She had schemed, killed, and spent nearly every waking moment for almost two years trying to secure a patron. And now he sat across from her calling them equals, having not only reached her status but also built a clinic that treated the entire first layer and a mote shop that actually sold. It almost made her own achievements feel underwhelming.
"Congratulations." She murmured, turning her gaze to the doves. "Which department?"
"Refinement."
"Of course." Syleena scoffed. He had even landed a patron in the department she had wanted.
She thought in silence for a moment. "So what do you want?"
Kael straightened. "Sylvia and Luke are safe, like we agreed. Were there any problems?"
Syleena shook her head. "No. Just a stalker, but I made him forget about them."
"Good." Kael pulled out a white card. "Take this and burn it. Then request that he kill the information pathway Luminaire you mentioned. I'll pay."
She narrowed her eyes. The original deal had been for Kael to do the killing himself.
"Is he trustworthy?"
"Very. As far as business goes."
She pocketed the card.
"You recently got back from the north, right? I hope you had nothing to do with the Pale Ones scandal."
"No."
She leaned back and let her head fall, ash brown hair spilling over her shoulders.
She let out a low doubtful hum. "I just thought I'd let you know…" She tilted her head. "that I've never seen the high council this heated."
"So I've heard."
—
Kael dropped into the sewers with his old coat draped around his shoulders, and made his way to the auction. He found an empty seat at the back and sat down. There was at least a hundred people attending it now.
Sielle auctioned off mote after mote until the final half hour arrived. Then independent Luminaires began walking up on stage to offer their own motes.
"I'm selling a rank one mote known as Stone Coffin. It's used to store materials, reaching all the way from..."
She talked about where it fell short and where it excelled. How she'd improve it, and so on.
Kael's gaze grew colder the longer he listened.
He had deliberately told Sielle to stop selling it at auction to prevent its normalisation. If everyone knew of it and owned one, they would start to feel safe around it despite it being a Soul pathway mote, and inevitably grow careless using it.
Kael had given Luminaires the benefit of the doubt to stay somewhat silent considering its origin. Still, he had somehow managed to underestimate the stupidity some of them possessed.
Just as the Luminaire was about to move on to a demonstration, Sielle noticed Kael in the crowd.
He clenched his fist and cleared his throat.
"It seems we'll have to cut today's auction short."
Luminaires rose from their chairs and waved their arms with loud complaints. Sielle did what damage control he could, but this would leave a dent in his reputation.
When the room had emptied, Sielle walked up to Kael.
"You're back."
"I am, yes."
Sielle produced two heavy bags of mindstones and handed them over. "Almost twelve thousand." He turned to leave.
Kael stood, and sent them to the Stone Coffin. "Wait."
Sielle halted. "I can't possibly know what they're about to sell when they step up."
Part of it was true. Motes were what made Luminaires Luminaires. Revealing one was personal, and a risk in itself. But...
"They're about to sell it anyway. Make them tell you beforehand."
Sielle looked over his shoulder. "That's not how it works. None of the other auctioneers do it. It would kill business."
"Then ban the sale of Soul pathway motes."
"Can't do that either. At least thirty percent of the mindstones I just handed you came from the exposure Stone Coffin got through individual auctions."
There was a short silence.
"You're already earning more mindstones than any Luminaire of your rank. Greed is getting the better of you, Sielle."
Kael watched his retreating back in silence.
"What's the name of the girl who tried to sell it?"
"She goes by Em. That's all I know."
Kael walked out of the auction and went deeper into the sewers. He hadn't outright threatened Sielle, but Sielle was smart enough to understand he had to stop before Kael actually did.
He turned a corner and found a girl sitting on the cold stone beside a small fire.
"Em?"
She flinched and looked up at him. "Oh. You startled me." She laughed a little. "Yes, I'm—"
Kael's boot met the side of her head and slammed it against the wall with a sickening crunch, a blossom of grey matter and crimson across the stone.
He carved out her heart and tossed the body into the sewer water.
"Successor…" He muttered to himself, washing his hands.
It was already difficult to gather enough hearts for the number of Stone Coffins that sold, and now he was about to have far more eyes on him. He needed a new way to obtain them.
He glanced over his shoulder once before disappearing into the dark again.
Lumi landed gracefully on his shoulder as Kael pushed the cover back on. She had found him within minutes of leaving the sewers.
Kael started down the street and stepped into a bakery, where he bought a piece of bread for them. Then passed a couple of stone buildings and entered a library.
"Luminaire advancement. Luminaire advancement."
His fingers trailed the spines of books as he searched.
It had never left his mind that his river of Will had started to produce sound. From rank one to early rank three it had been dead silent, with the sole exception of Point Aegis rolling past. So why was he hearing it now? And what did it mean? His working theory was that the closer you got to advancement, the more alive your inner realm became. First sound. Then, who knew? Perhaps the river became a sea.
He had never found anything on it, however. Not because he had stopped reading, but because there was a genuine lack of information past rank three. It was almost as though the noble families gatekept it knowingly. Which was within their rights, and fully understandable. It simply meant a more controlled group of people advanced past the Burden of Dreams.
There was another question on his mind. Why was Lumi's inner realm also producing sound? Could Dreadbornes, like humans, have ranks? It made sense and it didn't. They had inner realms, so it should be possible. But if advancement really was based on deepened understanding of your pathway, the idea collapsed. They were intelligent, but they weren't human. Then again, it wasn't entirely impossible that they operated on a completely different system.
His finger paused on a book.
'Did I pick one up from the Valthorne family?'
Even to this day he hadn't fully managed to go through everything he had gathered from their library. If he had to guess, he had read at best a third of everything he had.
Unable to find what he was looking for, he picked a novel at random and sat down near the window. His eyes moved across every word, but he struggled to focus.
He squinted and massaged his temples.
"You're doing a number on me Lumi."
Awfully interested, she too, scanned every word in the book, which led to Kael seeing pages on top of pages. And while he was considerably good at multitasking, he was still human.
"No reading then." He placed the books back and started down the stairs just as a golden haired man walked through the door.
As the man was about to pass him, Kael caught him by the shoulder.
"Do I know you?" The man asked, surprised.
"Darian?"
A flicker of recognition crossed his face. "Kael...?"
Kael clamped a hand over his mouth.
'Right, he knows me as Kael.'