CHAPTER 133

  THE LAST CALL

  Dusk had the city in its throat when Hans finally opened his eyes. Sleep left him like a debt paid off—clean, reluctant, absolute. His hand went on habit to the sword beside the bed and found the weight he wanted. Relief came slowly and privately. “Damn,” he said to the room, to himself. “I was way over my head.”

  The blade drank at him, steadying. The numbers in his head—his aura—had crawled from sixty-two to sixty-six over two fights where he’d pushed too far and come back raw. Disappointment sat heavy in the chest of a man who measured himself in marks and margins. “Thought I’d be past seventy grade,” he muttered. “This is disappointing.”

  He reached for the dimension pocket Reina had given him before—another artefact with markings of Swans. His fingers brushed inside, the Knapbinder—the dwarven belt snug and familiar—then something colder. The Eclipse medallion hummed, he took it out in his palm, a pale light that seemed to breathe through the metal.

  “So,” a voice spoke from inside the object. Familiar as a bruise, a voice Hans had known but not Theodred.

  “Who is this?” Hans asked, maintaining his pretence since his only way of contact was the fourth-ranked Knight and Captain of Eclipse.

  “The deal was a defeat, obtaining the ninth rank,” the voice said, flat and cruel. “You were to beat only Rudolf. Prove your worth. I don’t like people who can’t follow a fucking order.”

  Hans sat up. The bed creaked. “Tomorrow I’ll defeat Martys Clandor too,” he said, embracing the armour of formality he set for Theodred’s demeanour—a knightly cadence clinging to a man who knows no compromises.

  The voice laughed, the sound like coins skittering down a drain. “You can’t defeat him. His sinister—” He added the word like a flavour—“surpasses all. There will be no duel with honour. There will be a brawl of bloodlust.”

  Hans let himself smile. It was small and dangerous. “Who said anything about a duel?” His voice thinned and darkened into something the city had learned to answer with silence. “I’m going to leave my honour under my bed for this one. This will be my debut as a member of Eclipse.”

  “You think I’ll still pick you up?” The voice was a blade with a name—Xandor—softly smug. “Someone who can’t follow basic instructions.”

  Hans felt the old ache of being seen through a glass he could not break. He heard Xandor’s confidence and it made his hands itch. “Just instinct,” he then cut the connection clean.

  “The fact you called meant you are coming. You aren’t the only one who knows the original me well. I too, know you well, Xandor. I’m not the one who you can fool twice. I’ll use you and toss you to crows.”

  Hans stood at the window and opened it. The evening smelled like fresh and rivery—a contrast to the busy city that hosted Knight Convention.

  “So tomorrow is the day— I must prepare some contingencies.” He came down and exited the establishment.

  Below, three warlords lingered in the wash of the artefacts, their armour reflecting the evening lights like predators’ teeth. They were assigned to his stay befitting the new ninth ranked and the arrangement was loud in its silence.

  Even when they warned him not to leave, saying their duties and post were restricted to that place only, they can’t protect him past the mansion.

  He let the thought sit a beat, then another. Better the risk tonight than the certainty of a head on a spike in the morning.He folded his coat over his arm, put the medallion inside the dimension pocket, and left the establishment with a small, practised smile.

  Outside, the city tightened. He encircled the huge colosseum, hidden to common but many trained eyes tracked him. “You guys must be underestimating me.”

  He ran the circuit slowly, not for muscle but for memory—routes, exits, the stone’s little scars. He listened to the city like a man learning to read a map in another’s handwriting.

  It took him quite a while, but he did finish by dinner time, and none could find anything but him taking a quick sprint around the Colosseum—like he was stretching.

  “Man, it’s been quite a while since I felt like a mage,” he mumbled.

  Theodred’s finesse lived in him like a second shadow—long, quiet, and impossible to point at—and for a moment, Hans let that persona lead.

  He drifted down the street where he had first walked before the Knight convention had set the world on fire, the establishment of great houses and nations: Parv and Clandor were set against one another like chess pieces.

  He was thinking of quietly making his exit, but he met someone who shouldn’t be there. Or more of, never will participate in Arat’s scheme in killing him.

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  “Are my days over?” he asked the lean man standing in front of him. “Since when did you start wagging for the Imperials, Ser Homar?”

  “Don’t play at ignorance,” Homar’s voice was low, a knight without a single blade but several arrows ready to be summoned in any moment. “You came. Not I.” He pointed, his feet crossing the designated land of Parv in Indu soil.

  He added, “But since you are here, and growing fast. Arat will be off my back for quite a while if I put you out of your misery right now. Give me one reason not to snap your neck. Since you have already given me one for opposite by setting your foot inside.”

  “Why one! I can give you three,” Hans said, his voice utterly confident. “First—you don’t serve Prince Hans, for whom this fiasco is going on.

  “Second,” Hans continued, warming to the lie that was almost true, “I am more useful alive. I can get you the Eclipse right on the silver platter. My ambition needs an army, and they got one. By the time I’m done with them. They’ll be sitting ducks for you to shoot.”

  “Not interested. I’m a man who enjoys hunting ferocious predators, not ducks.”

  “You may not be, but your Arat is. Tell him to back off his cheap tricks; it’s hurting the honour of Parv. And it will continue to do so. Because I’ll survive now and I’ll later too. And third— I don’t want to tell you.”

  “I don’t want to know either.”

  Homar had no interest in mind games. He added, just for his amusement.

  “Since you insist on living, here’s a hint: the duel has already begun. You might not see morning, whether you hide or not. You won your bout with Dijkstra because you bled and rebuilt, regaining your aura and stamina. I don’t know how you did that, and frankly, I don’t care either. It was a spite, perhaps a fluke. I can—no one can guess, but I’m sure it was a one-time thing. You didn’t show anything else in your fight with Rudolf. It felt like that old fool let you win. Your cards are exposed. You have nothing more to show. You won’t best Martys. His spirit is enough to crush an upstart like you alone. You’re not the Knight who can win tomorrow.”

  Hans smiled thinly. The thought rode up like a sardonic pulse. Yeah, that’s why the one facing Martys tomorrow will not be Theodred but Hans Parv Atelier.

  He let the secret sit inside himself.

  Homar watched him for a long second and then, as if satisfied or bored, stepped back into the doorway and was swallowed by the dark.

  Hans breathed in deeply. “Tomorrow will change everything. There’s no going back after this,” he said to the night, the sentence more of a promise.

  “What’s no going back?” A voice rushed from behind, a familiar tone.

  “Congratulations, Chris.” Hans offered, dry as a sleight. “Rank sixty?seven—”

  “Way to rub salt in my wound, friend.” Chris smacked his back hard, in resentment or jealousy, not clear.

  But he didn’t come alone. Three others trailed him: the uninterested girl who kept her eyes like closed books, and the Clandorian siblings, bright and bullseye painted on their backs.

  Looking at them, Hans recalled how badly he had treated Allynna back in Concordia. And even after that, she wanted to be like him, admired him. Man, this is disturbing—and I’m a hypocrite.

  He stared at her for a little too long. “You are goofing out without guards this late at night—”

  “What guards, Theo!” she insisted, “I’m with rank 67 knight—”

  “Yeah, sixty-seven means sixty?six knights are stronger than him,” Hans replied. “What will you do if one of them decides he wants to off you?”

  “Come running to you, I guess—you are the ninth ranked afterall.”

  “Flattery won’t work here, Allynna.”

  “It’s not flattery if that’s a fact.”

  Haa! We are definitely linked. He gave up, turning to the disinterested girl. “What’s up with Lady Winters?” he asked the rest in the usual jest.

  “Leave her be.” Allynna pulled his hand. “Let’s just goof around for more.”

  She pulled her here and there and Hans let her.

  “You sure about fighting Martys Clandor?” Chris whispered in his ears, but it was enough for royal siblings to hear. By blood, he was their uncle. So whichever side loses tomorrow, it was bound to hit badly for them.

  Hans noticed that and responded. “You asked the same question when I was readying to fight Dijkstra—how it turned out?

  An odd and familiar confidence. Startled Chris and delimira alike.

  Hans continued, “The same will happen—”

  “Enough about that.” Allynna dragged him with the cheerfulness of someone who refused to be small. They drifted through the market lights—laughter, nudges, paper lanterns turning the night into a theatre that had no real plays left in it.

  For a while, he let the company press out the dark—let the simplicity of jest and petty squabbles be armour.

  But Homar’s warning had teeth, and teeth found the edge. His detection—muscle memory more than magic—picked at the air. At first, it was little things: a shadow that held a breath too long, the brush of a cloak where a cloak should not be. Then the presence multiplied into a pressure that couldn't be ignored.

  His smile thinned. “I need to rest before tomorrow,” he said suddenly. The sentence was small but final. One by one, he handed Chris and Delimira off toward Concordia like passing a lantern. Only Allynna and Riftal left.

  His spectators were increasing each passing moment. He could not wait any longer. “Go on, first Riftal,” Hans urged. The elven prince moved inside obediently like an innocent boy. “A minute, Allynna,” he said, catching her by a gentle pat.

  “What?” She coquettishly lingered around him.

  “Become the next queen,” he stressed seriously. “You have it in you. Clandor will thrive under a forgiving and thoughtful ruler like you—forge your allies, become their strength so they’ll become yours. This—this will probably be the last time you see me.” He smiled a farewell.

  Before she could say something, he shoved her through the Clandorian inn’s door with the gentle force of someone closing a chapter.

  She staggered, blinked, and the light swallowed her face.

  “Goodbye, kid,” he said, putting his hood on, and then he melted into the street like smoke pulled by a breeze—no flourish, no dramatic retreat, only the quiet unmaking of a man who was soon to disappear from this world.