The Royal Messenger
In which the season ends, and the next one begins.
The royal messenger arrived on a sunny morning, three weeks after the summoning, and the horn that sounded at the town gate was not the cult's horn. The horn was brighter, more official, the kind of horn that meant important person coming, and Kenji was in the market square teaching Lian a new spell when he heard it and his stomach dropped the specific way a stomach drops when a deployment notice arrives in the middle of a Tuesday morning.
The messenger was a young man in the king's livery, on a horse that was clearly the best horse the royal stables had to offer. He had a sealed letter, and he had explicit instructions: deliver the letter to the "Strange Sage" of Oakhaven, and wait for a response.
The Strange Sage. That was what they were calling him now. The name had started in the southern markets, spread through the trade routes, and had somehow made it to the capital. Kenji did not love the name. He did not love the way the messenger looked at him, either, with the cautious respect of a person who has been told to deliver a letter to someone important and is not entirely sure what important looks like.
The letter was from the king.
[Object: royal letter, sealed, authorized]
[Source: King Theodore, central kingdoms]
[Compiler note: this is a formal invitation. The system is, in a small way, paying attention.]
To the Strange Sage of Oakhaven,
Reports from the south speak of a mage who has done the impossible. A clock that runs. An aquifer that waters the town. A firewall that held against the cult. A portal that was closed by will alone.
I am told that you treat magic as mathematics, and that you have a student, and that you have made my captain of the guard smile. I am told that you are a foreigner, and that your name is Kenji, and that you do not say no when there is a problem to be solved.
I have a problem. Several problems, in fact. The southern kingdoms are paralyzed. The cult is spreading. The treasury is being drained by nobles I cannot name. I need a person who can debug the kingdom.
You are hereby summoned to the capital. You will be given lodging, food, and a position at court. You will not be required to fight, but you will be required to think.
If you refuse, I will not be offended. The summons is an offer, not an order. But I would very much like to meet you.
Yours in hope,
Theodore, King of the Central Kingdoms
Kenji read the letter three times. Then he folded it, put it in his pocket, and went to find Elara.
She was in the guard house, doing paperwork. She looked up when he came in, and saw his face, and said: "The messenger."
"The king."
"The king wants me at court."
"Yes."
"Does he know what I am?"
"He knows you are a foreigner who does the impossible. He knows you have an apprentice. He knows you made his captain of the guard smile." She paused. "He also knows that I am his captain of the guard, and that I have been including you in briefings, and that I have been including you in my life. He sent me a separate letter. He told me to come with you."
Kenji stared at her. "He told you to come with you."
"He said, and I quote, 'I would not be sending for the Strange Sage if I did not also want his Strange Captain.'"
"He called you my Strange Captain."
"He did. It is a terrible nickname. I have decided to keep it."
[Compiler note: this is the senior engineer who has been asked to onboard a junior. The system is, in a small way, paying attention.]
[Compiler note: the captain is, in a small way, ahead of the developer.]
Elara stood up, walked around the desk, and stood in front of him. She was still a head shorter than him, but her presence made up for it. She looked at him with the expression she had worn on the walls at midnight, the expression of a person who is afraid and has decided to be afraid out loud.
"I have been captain of this town for seven years," she said. "I have defended these walls. I have lost six guards. I have watched this town become a beacon. I have watched you become part of it. I have watched you become part of me."
She paused. The room was very quiet.
"I am coming with you," she said. "To the capital. To court. To whatever comes next. I am coming because you asked me to walk the walls at midnight, and I did, and I am still afraid, and I am not alone. I am coming because the king called me your Strange Captain, and he is not wrong. I am coming because I have decided, after seven years of being afraid alone, that I would rather be afraid with you."
Kenji looked at her. He thought about all the things he had learned in this world. He thought about Pip, alone for decades, looking for someone. He thought about Lian, willing to leave the academy to learn something new. He thought about Orven, paying the healer for a stranger. He thought about Seraphina, deciding to stay. He thought about Elara, on the walls, in the moonlight, telling him she was afraid.
He thought about the through-line. The phrase that had become, somehow, the spine of his life in this world.
"Okay," he said. "We will go together. We will debug the kingdom. We will be afraid together. We will figure it out."
She smiled. It was the second full smile he had seen from her, and it was, like the first, like watching the sun come up.
"Okay," she said.
He kissed her. It was not a dramatic kiss. It was a quiet one, in a small room, in a small town, at the end of a long season. Pip orbited overhead, pulsing, amused. The pulse felt like: "Finally."
Kenji sent back: "Yeah. Finally."
The day passed. The decision was made. The journey to the capital would begin in a week. The summons was answered. The king's offer was accepted.
That night, Kenji sat on the roof of the guild hall, with Pip on his shoulder and the two moons overhead, and he thought about everything that had happened in the last three months. The aquifer. The firewall. The siege. The summoning. The horn. The fragment. The king. Elara.
He thought about Malachar, who was waiting in the south, who was not happy, who was about to become a much bigger problem.
He thought about the through-line. Any sufficiently well-defined problem is solvable.
He was about to find out if it was true at the level of a kingdom.
"System status," he said softly.
[System: stable]
[Compiler: v0.2.0]
[Local threat: contained (the cult is broken)]
[Regional threat: emerging (Malachar is not happy)]
[Harem: 2 (Elara, official; Lian, complicated)]
[Pip: orbiting]
[Mood: cautiously optimistic]
[Next priority: go to the capital, debug a kingdom, do not get assassinated]
[Probability of success: unknown]
[Compiler note: this is the senior engineer who has been asked to onboard a junior kingdom. The system is, in a small way, hoping the developer is ready.]
"Deploy," he said.
The night went on. The moons rose. Somewhere to the south, in a stone chamber, the presence that was Malachar was thinking. The structured mage had done something it had not expected. The structured mage had used a function that the presence itself had written, once, a long time ago, when it was still human, when it still believed that bugs could be fixed.
The presence was not happy. But it was, for the first time in a very long time, intrigued.
"Bring him to me," the presence said, to the empty chamber. "Or break him. Either will do."
The chamber was silent. The presence waited.
The night went on.
Orven, who was packing the message that was not his, who was going to deliver it to the king himself because the system had decided, in a small way, that Orven was the one who could be trusted with the delivery, looked up at the moons and thought, in the dry language of a merchant who had been warned three times and wounded once, that the strange foreigner was going to be fine. Orven had been a merchant for thirty years. He had seen a lot of people go to the capital. Most of them came back. Some of them did not. The strange foreigner, Orven thought, was going to come back, and the strange foreigner was going to bring the captain with him, and the strange foreigner was going to do something the kingdom had not yet imagined, and the system was, in a small way, going to let him.
Orven tied the message into his belt. He did not read it. He did not need to. The message was the third warning, and the third warning was, in the driest possible language, the warning that was going to be heard.
The night went on.