Chapter 111: The Lien

Chapter 111: Chapter 111: The Lien

Donald reached the Glass Field twelve minutes after the call.

He could have taken the lift down and a car across the city, but the morning was still gray and the streets between the tower and the Field were full of long shadows, so he tried the new skill instead. The first [Shade Step] put him in the shadow of a parked delivery truck, twenty meters from the tower’s door. The second put him under a bus shelter, and by the sixth he had stopped stumbling when he came out the other side.

[Shade Step: 40 Mana per use.]

[Mana: 108 → 68. Regenerating.]

At the edge of the Field, Damian was waiting for him with his hands in his coat pockets. He watched Donald step out of the shadow of a lamppost and didn’t seem surprised.

"New trick," he said.

"Something like that."

Damian looked at him for a second longer, then turned and led him out across the black glass without asking anything else.

Helena was kneeling at the center of the Field, where the glass was smoothest. She had drawn a ring of chalk symbols around herself, and inside the ring, on the surface directly above the anchor, was the mark. It was about the size of a dinner plate: a small circle with twelve short lines around its edge, cut cleanly into glass that Garrick had once failed to scratch with a diamond drill.

"Look at the edges," Helena said, without getting up.

Donald crouched beside her. At first the cut looked like any other carving, but after a while he saw what she meant. The edges of each line weren’t pushed down into the glass, the way they would be if someone had cut into it from above. Instead they were raised, curling slightly upward, as if something underneath had pressed through.

"It came from below," he said.

"From the anchor itself." Helena sat back on her heels. "Nobody walked onto this Field and carved anything. Damian is right about that. The mark was written from the other side."

"And the number?"

She held out her tablet, and Donald read the figure at the top of the screen.

[Dimensional Tear Anchor (Genesis City): Resonance 79.2%. Rising 1.2% per day.]

"Seventeen days," Helena said, "until it opens on its own. My turn needs ten. On paper, that’s enough."

"On paper," Donald repeated.

"Read the mark," she said. "Then you’ll understand why I called you instead of starting."

He raised his hand over the black sun and opened [Valuation Eye].

[Target: Lien Mark.]

[Holder: Paimon, the Crowned King.]

[Effect: Registers the Genesis City anchor as collateral owed to the holder.]

[Note: Any change of state to this anchor (opening, closing, or turning) transfers control of the anchor to the lien holder.]

Donald read the window twice, and the second time it made his stomach go cold.

"If you turn it," he said slowly, "it doesn’t become ours."

"It becomes his." Helena nodded. "I’d spend ten days and most of my core taking control of a gate under your city, and at the last second it would go to Paimon. He wouldn’t even have to come here."

"How did he do it from Hanseong?"

"The thirty-one anchors were sealed with one spell during the Breaking." Helena brushed chalk dust off her knees. "That was the work they stole from me, years ago: proof that the seals still share a single structure. Whoever holds one anchor completely can reach the others through it. Park Jae-won’s Guild holds the Hanseong lock alone, so Paimon holds Hanseong, and from Hanseong he can touch every sealed anchor in the world."

"Then why wait until now?"

"Because until a few days ago, this one wasn’t worth anything." Helena looked up at him. "Then you locked Aldmere and showed the whole world it could be done. Now an anchor under a city is an asset, and assets can be borrowed against."

Donald understood that better than she knew.

He moved his hand over the mark again and called the skill he trusted most.

"[Hostile Takeover]."

[Target: Lien Mark (Paimon).]

[Status: Held by an Abyssal sovereign.]

[Buyout Price: 48,000,000 System Credits.]

[Current Balance: 1,460,000 System Credits.]

[Insufficient funds.]

He closed the window, but the number stayed in his head.

---

The war room on the fortieth floor was quiet when Donald finished explaining. Aris had her tablet on the table in front of her and was already running numbers, while Evelyn stood by the window with her arms folded. Sylvia sat at the end of the table, closest to the door, and when Donald came in she had looked up at him once and then down at the table, and the corner of her mouth had lifted.

Evelyn had seen it, and she’d smiled too, but she said nothing about it.

"Forty-eight million," Aris said at last. "We can raise it, but there’s only one fast way, and you won’t like it."

"Shares," Donald said.

"Lady Reed paid seven million eight hundred thousand for point one two percent. At that price, one percent of TIG is worth about sixty-five million." Aris turned the tablet toward him. "To raise forty-eight, we’d have to sell a little under three quarters of one percent. That’s possible. Buyers would line up for it."

"So what’s the problem?"

"The problem is who’d be in that line." She tapped the screen, and a list of names came up, holding companies and investment funds from four different countries. "Half of these didn’t exist a year ago. I can’t prove who owns them, but I’d bet my office that some of them belong to Taeyang. If we sell shares this week, Paimon buys a piece of TIG with the money we use to pay off his lien. He’d get paid twice."

"And he’d get a seat at our table," Evelyn said from the window. "Like Reed."

"Reed told us what she wanted," Sylvia said. "These people wouldn’t."

Donald was quiet for a while. He watched the city through the glass behind Evelyn, the traffic moving along the Ring Road and the Wall standing gray beyond it, until at last he turned back to the table.

"How long can we wait?" he asked Helena.

She was sitting beside Aris with a cup of tea she hadn’t touched. "If I start the turn ten days before it opens, I need to begin with the lien gone by day seven. After that, the anchor opens on its own, and whoever holds the lien when it opens takes the gate anyway."

"Seven days," Aris said.

"Passive income is a hundred and fifty thousand a day," Donald said. "In seven days, that’s one million fifty thousand. Even with what I have now, it’s less than three million."

"So we can’t buy it in time," Evelyn said. "And we can’t sell shares without feeding him."

"No," Donald said. "But I don’t think Paimon wants the gate open either."

The others looked at him, and he took the cream-colored letter out of his jacket and laid it flat on the table, with the black sun facing up.

"He could have put this lien on the anchor any time after Aldmere," Donald said. "He waited until we came home, and he made sure Helena would find it before she started work. Then he sent me an invitation to his city to talk about the future of anchors." He tapped the letter. "He’s not trying to take the gate. He’s setting the price for a meeting."

Aris frowned at the letter. "And if he isn’t?"

"Then we’ll still have seven days to sell shares," Donald said. "But I’d rather know what he wants before I pay him anything."

Evelyn pushed herself away from the window. "You’re going to Hanseong."

"Tomorrow."

"Then I’m coming."

"You can’t," Donald said, as gently as he could manage. "Somebody has to hold the Wall, and if Paimon reaches through that anchor while I’m gone, you’re the only one in this city who can stand on top of it and fight." He looked at Helena. "Start preparing the turn anyway. Don’t begin until I tell you, but have everything ready."

Helena nodded.

"Damian stays with Helena," Donald went on. "Aris stays here and watches the share market. If any of those funds start buying TIG on the open board, I want to know within the hour." He turned last to the end of the table. "Sylvia."

She was already standing.

"I’ve never been to the Eastern Commonwealth," she said.

"Neither have I."

"Then it’s a good thing I can hide two people in my shadow now." She picked up her daggers from the table and slid them into her belt. "I’ll pack."

---

That night Donald sat alone at the desk in his room and wrote his reply on a plain sheet of TIG paper. It took him an hour, and in the end it was only four lines long.

To Chairman Park,

I accept your invitation. I’ll arrive in Hanseong the day after tomorrow, with one companion.

I found your mark on my anchor. We can discuss it when I arrive.

The Investor.

He folded it, sealed it, and gave it to the courier waiting in the lobby, and when he came back upstairs the System window was open in front of his eyes.

[New Quest: The Crowned King’s Table.]

[Objective: Remove the lien on the Genesis City anchor before Day 7.]

[Days remaining: 7.]

[Reward: 2,000,000 System Credits. Genesis anchor turn unlocked.]

Donald read it, closed it, and turned off the light.

Seven days.