Chapter 314: The Collector’s Writ, Payment in Full

Kael’s shouting stopped when the first prisoner began screaming.

The young scavenger was sitting beside a stack of confiscated shields when the brass band around his wrist suddenly turned red. He grabbed it with his other hand and tried to pull it off. The band tightened instead, biting into his skin.

"Help! Somebody get it off!"

All along the shoreline, more bands began to glow. Men who had surrendered their weapons scrambled to their feet, pushing against the guards. A woman dropped her bowl of stew and fell to her knees as a pale thread of light stretched from her wrist toward the largest dropship.

Valerie hurried down the loading ramp. "Everyone stay where you are! Guards, don’t strike them. Get the wounded away from the ships!"

"They’re running!" one guard shouted.

"They’re being pulled," she snapped. "Look at their hands!"

Sebastian turned on Kael, who stood chained beside the ramp. "Start talking."

The Warlord’s eyes followed the glowing bands. For the first time since his defeat, the man looked genuinely frightened.

"The Court’s collecting its fee," Kael said. "I thought the payment would only come due if we won."

"What fee?"

"Passage. Equipment. The survey charter."

Merrit came running from the cargo hold, carrying a yellowed document covered in tiny black writing. "He pledged the crew," she said, breathless. "All contracted personnel. Every one of us."

Sebastian stared at her. "He used his own people as collateral?"

Kael looked away.

"You unbelievable bastard," Valerie said quietly.

A sharp metallic clicking came from the brass cabinet. The instrument inside had begun spinning, feeding pale lines of light through the deck and out toward the trapped prisoners. Three glass bulbs on its face filled slowly with red liquid.

Galleon rushed past, his beard bouncing against his chest. "Nobody break that machine! The first thing I checked was its release circuit. It’s rigged to finish the collection if somebody smashes it."

Sebastian stopped with his fist already raised.

"You’ve got terrible timing," he muttered.

"I know. It’s one of my gifts."

Outside, the pale lines tightened. Three prisoners slid helplessly across the mud toward the ship. Their guards seized their shoulders and tried to hold them, but their boots dug long trenches in the dirt.

Aelion lifted both hands. Green light flowed from his palms and curled around the prisoners’ feet. The natural current slowed them, though the Elf’s face twisted with effort.

"I can hold them for a moment!" he gasped. "Not all of them!"

"Then don’t," Valerie ordered. "Pick the ones being pulled first. Everyone else, move behind the stone wall. Wraith, find out where those threads lead."

The assassin slipped beneath the dropship through a maintenance hatch. He carried a lantern in one hand and a knife in the other. There was no stealth spell, no helpful map hovering before his eyes, just a cramped steel passage dripping warm coolant onto his neck.

"I miss my inventory," he muttered as he crawled through a puddle of oil. "I’d like to store this entire evening somewhere unpleasant."

Above him, the ship began shaking. The red bulbs in the cabinet were almost half full.

Merrit spread the charter across an empty crate. Valerie bent over it, reading quickly. Sebastian stood behind her, holding his splinted arm against his chest and trying not to think about how badly it hurt.

"There’s a substitution clause," Valerie said suddenly.

Merrit leaned closer. "Where?"

"Here. Settlement by property of equivalent registered value."

Kael shook his head. "You cannot afford it. Those people are worth more than the contents of your entire town."

"They’re people, not inventory," Valerie answered without looking up.

Galleon tapped a greasy finger against the document. "The Court doesn’t care about that distinction. It cares what the machines think is worth something. What did you register as transport assets?"

Merrit hesitated. "The five dropships. Their engines, fuel stores, armor plating, and mounted weapons."

"And what are they worth?"

"More than the debt, if the survey cabinet is included."

Galleon’s smile vanished. "You’re telling me I have to give away five perfectly good ships?"

"They’re not perfectly good," Merrit replied. "One is leaking coolant and another is missing an engine."

"That’s called a project!"

A violent jolt rocked the deck. A brass hook punched out of the floor beside them, followed by a thin mechanical arm that unfolded in three sections. Its polished fingers snapped around the corner of the charter.

A dry voice came from inside the cabinet.

"Collection underway. Interference will incur an additional fee."

Sebastian grabbed the mechanical wrist with his good hand and slammed it against the iron railing. The arm bent, sparks spraying from its elbow, but a second limb immediately pushed through the floor.

"Of course there’s a service charge," Sebastian growled.

Galleon struck the second limb with his sledgehammer, pinning it against a support beam.

"Wraith!" he shouted down the hatch. "Find the collector’s coupling! We need to change the collateral feed before this thing counts everybody!"

"I found it!" Wraith called back. "Big black drum. Lots of cables. Smells like burnt hair!"

"Don’t cut the red ones!"

A pause.

"There are six red ones!"

"Then don’t cut six of them!"

Valerie snatched a pen from her ledger and wrote across the charter, naming each dropship, its cargo, and the survey cabinet as substitute property. She shoved the document at Kael.

"Sign."

"You can’t force me to transfer coalition property."

A cry rose from outside. The first prisoner had reached the ramp, his heels scraping over the metal as something dragged him toward the cargo hold.

Sebastian took Kael by the front of his armor and hauled him forward until their faces were inches apart.

"Your men are about to disappear because of a deal you made," Sebastian said. "You can sign, or I can leave you beside them and let your business partners collect everyone together."

Kael’s mouth opened, then shut. He stared at the screaming boy on the ramp. Finally, with his uninjured hand, he seized the pen and scrawled his name.

The cabinet gave a harsh chime.

"Amendment received. Awaiting collateral connection."

"Wraith!" Galleon bellowed. "Move the black coupling onto the hull bus! The thick copper bar to your left!"

Metal scraped beneath their feet. Wraith swore, followed by a heavy clang.

"That’s not a copper bar! That’s a support bracket!"

"Your other left!"

"I only have one left!"

"Then use it correctly!"

A sudden surge of white light flooded the loading ramp. The boy’s feet lifted off the ground. Aelion cried out and fell onto one knee, his magic shaking around him.

Sebastian released Kael and rushed outside. He caught the boy by the back of his shirt and dug his boots into the mud. His injured shoulder screamed as the pull nearly tore his arm from its splint.

"Galleon!" he shouted through clenched teeth. "Any day now!"

From below the deck came a tremendous CLANG.

The pale thread attached to the boy’s wrist snapped away. It whipped back toward the ship and buried itself in the hull plating. All along the shore, hundreds of glowing bands went dark.

The five dropships groaned as thin cracks of violet light opened underneath their keels. Heavy chains of light wrapped around the machines, tugging them slowly off the ground. The ships’ landing legs tore free of the mud. Water poured from their open compartments.

Galleon emerged from the hatch, filthy and furious, with Wraith directly behind him.

"There goes my entire salvage yard," the dwarf said miserably.

One by one, the ships slid upward into the violet cracks. The largest vessel went last. Its brass cabinet gave a final ring before disappearing with the rest of the stolen fleet.

Kael dropped onto the mud, staring at the empty lake. His army was alive, but he had no ships, no weapons, and no claim to show for the invasion.

"You just paid my debt," he said.

"No," Valerie replied, folding the signed copy of the charter and putting it in her ledger. "I bought the right to decide what happens to these prisoners. There’s a difference."

Aelion helped the rescued boy to his feet. The boy looked from his unmarked wrist to Sebastian’s splinted arm.

"Why would you do that for us?" he asked.

Sebastian started to answer, but a clear, deliberate knock sounded from the other side of the stone border wall.

Three knocks. A pause. Then three more.

Wraith drew his knives. Valerie turned toward the gate.

Standing outside was a neatly dressed woman in a dark green coat, holding a black leather case beneath one arm. Behind her hovered a narrow silver doorway that hadn’t been there a moment earlier.

"Good evening," she said, glancing at the ruined shoreline. "I’m from the Charter Court. Who here authorized the transfer of five registered vessels?"