Chapter 74: Something Worth More

Both the terror of the Crimson clan and the Dark Beasts of the Calamity Forest had left every soul in that hall with a trauma of its own.

It showed everywhere. Beneath the great chandeliers, whose light spilled gold across polished marble and silk banners bearing the crests of the Seven Pillars, the noble houses had broken into knots of low, urgent argument.

Servants stood frozen along the walls with their trays untouched.

Into that unrest, Helia began to walk.

She moved slowly, unhurried, her steps light against the stone, toward the one man in the room who understood she was up to something and could not yet see what.

Retave stood biting the edge of his thumb, the habit of a man who has run out of room to maneuver. He knew, now, that Helia was exploiting a gap in what he himself knew: something about this expedition into the Calamity Forest that no one had ever thought to tell him.

The expedition itself did not surprise him. The forest still held more unmapped ground than anywhere else on the continent, and those few who knew it spoke of monsters that wielded Dark Mana, packs of them, prowling in the deep dark beneath the trees.

How many there were, or how many kinds, no one alive could say.

But to a merchant like Retave, the monsters were never the point. Monsters were a cost, a risk to be priced and managed.

What mattered was the simple fact that the land had never been fully claimed, and that untouched territory meant treasure and resources equally untouched by human hands.

He knew better than most how rich that forest must be. His own Orihalcum mine, dug deeper year after year, ran steadily toward a source that lay somewhere beneath the Calamity Forest itself.

"Brother," Helia said, so quietly that only he could hear. "If you step back this time, I’ll keep the secret of your Orihalcum mine safe from Father. For as long as you never speak of the Pocket Orb again."

Retave had not noticed her cross the distance at all. She was simply there at his shoulder, her lips beside his ear, her voice soft as a hand on his throat.

He flinched, only slightly, at her sudden nearness. But it was what she had said that truly rattled him. How did Helia know he owned an Orihalcum mine? It was a secret he had kept from his father and from the empire itself.

Helia’s face, meanwhile, had come alight. She had dragged every eye in the hall toward a newer, larger fire, and she carried herself now like a woman who had already won this tense standoff against her brother.

Even Varka had let his head sink into one hand, lowering himself heavily back into his chair as though the weight of the room had finally caught up with him, to mourn a hall of nobles who could not stop quarreling.

Retave took in the whole scene, and something settled in his mind, cold and clear. Helia was far more cunning than he had ever allowed himself to believe. He turned his stare back on her.

"Tell me how you learned of my mine, Helia."

He whispered it back, keeping his voice low beneath the growing noise of the hall.

"Tell me who leaked the Pocket Orb’s secrets, and perhaps I’ll give you what you want. That foolish boy will keep his word, I’m certain of it."

Helia was, in truth, every bit as curious as he was about who had fed Retave that information. She was sure Lucian would never have breathed a word of it. Yet Retave did not know the answer either. The mysterious sender remained a shadow to him, and he was not about to admit it.

"Then let me change my question." His eyes narrowed. "Why did you propose the expedition into the Calamity Forest to His Majesty? What are you hunting for in there?"

The question landed sharply. Helia had not expected her brother to shift his focus so quickly, and so precisely.

Retave was certain of one thing: Varka would never have conceived of reopening the Calamity Forest on his own. Varka knew, as well as anyone, that raising the subject would tear open old wounds among his own allies and his own people.

And Varka had tried before. Years ago, he had led a small party into the forest himself.

Not far past the treeline, they had met a monster standing more than 230 feet tall, a creature whose sheer bulk looked formidable enough on its own, and which proved capable of slipping through shadow as easily as water.

By the time that first expedition limped free, Varka’s little company had nearly been wiped out.

Ever since, the empire’s people and its nobles alike had urged him never to press deeper, especially since that region lay so close to the Black Castle, the seat of the Crimson clan.

So Varka must have had some enormous reason to change his mind after all these years. And Retave suspected, with a certainty he could not quite justify yet, that the reason had been discovered, and shaped, entirely by Helia.

"Answer me that, and I’ll withdraw from tonight’s debate completely. I’ll even order my people to leave your campaign alone for the next several months."

It was a striking concession, delivered without a flicker of his usual smile, and it gave even Helia a moment’s pause. Retave was offering to step back, and to keep his hands off her for months to come.

The offer was, of course, tempting.

"Very well. But what I can give you is incomplete. I can only tell you that something lies there, something so valuable that its worth exceeds the entire Calamity Forest."

Retave found her words nearly impossible to parse.

Yet the mention of something that valuable set his mind turning at once. Was it an object, or a living thing, that could truly outweigh an entire forest? His curiosity swelled. Everything that came out of the Calamity Forest already carried a great price.

If Varka believed in such a thing, perhaps it was true.

Still, he judged that what Helia had given him was thin, far thinner than what he had put on the table.

Then, one by one, the heads in the hall turned toward Amelia, who had risen from her seat. Her face was grave as she looked at Varka, and the pale blue of her formal attire seemed to cool the air around her.

"Your Majesty... forgive our boldness, but all of us gathered here need an explanation from you at once."

She was not alone. Many of the nobles hoped the Emperor would speak into the chaos, for a decision to enter the Calamity Forest was no small thing, and none of them had been consulted.

"Mother."

Alicia and Cecilia turned to look at Amelia with worry etched across their faces, their tempers clearly stirred, much as Irvine’s had been.

"What was the Emperor thinking, deciding this so suddenly?" Cecilia said. "Haven’t they learned their lesson from those strange monsters in the Calamity Forest?"

"The Black Castle of the Crimson clan still stands in there. We’ve never managed to destroy it, not even now. So why are they suddenly bold enough to try an expedition?"

She said it without caring who might hear, even though it sounded very much like open defiance of the Emperor. Many of the nobles still did not know what Varka truly intended.

"Sister, calm down. Let’s watch how this unfolds first."

Beside them, Alicia was working to steady her sister temper, careful not to bring fresh trouble down on her family.

Lucian, standing a little apart from them, felt a strange prickle of déjà vu at what Cecilia had just said.

"You said Black Castle?"

"You don’t know?" Cecilia turned to him, faintly surprised. "The Black Castle is where the Crimson clan lives. It’s in there."

Her answer carried the assumption that Lucian did not truly understand what the Crimson clan was, though she was sure Alicia and Amelia, and the Winter family generally, would.

It was not a strange assumption.

The Calamity Forest was vast, running along the western coast where House Faeren had once made its home, and stretching all the way north into the lands the Winters ruled.

The Crimson clan’s domain sat near the western border, close to the forest’s edge. By geography alone, House Winter held far more information about the Crimson clan than any other house.

"Sister, of course he wouldn’t know," Alicia said gently.

"He isn’t from there. Only a few lords from the west and the north even know that the Black Castle stands inside the Calamity Forest."

Alicia’s mention of the castle stirred something loose in Lucian’s memory, and the noise of the hall seemed to drop away.

A black castle... in the middle of a forest?

He remembered it clearly now.

The people of House Lysandra.

The black winged creature chasing him through the dark. And himself, running with everything he had left, toward a black castle.

What is the Emperor really after in that castle?