Chapter 115: Sealkeeper

Chapter 115: Chapter 115: Sealkeeper

Seo-yeon drove fast and well, without headlights, through streets so narrow that Donald could have touched the walls on both sides through the open window. She took them uphill, away from the river, and the further they went, the older the houses became, until at last there were no towers anywhere in sight and the only light came from the moon over the tiled roofs.

She stopped in front of a high stone wall with a wooden gate set into it, and got out without a word.

The gate was locked. Instead of using a key, Seo-yeon laid her palm flat against the wood and held it there, and Donald felt the mana move out of her, slow and careful. Lines of pale blue light appeared across the whole gate in a pattern too fine to follow, and then they faded and the gate swung open by itself.

[Target: Sealkeeper’s Ward]

[Grade: A-Rank. Duration: 15 years, 2 months.]

[Effect: Conceals all within from scrying, tracking, and ring-bound sight.]

"Fifteen years," Donald said.

"I made it the night my husband died." Seo-yeon held the gate for them. "It’s the only place in Hanseong he can’t see into."

Inside there was a small courtyard and a low house with a wooden porch. Everything was clean but very still, and when she opened the door and turned on a single lamp, Donald saw a workshop rather than a home. There were long benches covered with tools and half-finished mana devices, sketches pinned to the walls, and a narrow cot in the corner with a gray blanket folded on it. On the bench nearest the door, a cup still sat beside an open notebook, with a pen lying across the page.

"Joon’s," Seo-yeon said. "He liked to work here instead of in the tower. He said his father’s building was too loud to think in." She looked at the cup for a moment and then away from it. "I haven’t moved anything."

Sylvia went to the window and stood with her back to the wall, where she could see the gate. Donald stayed by the door.

"You have forty minutes," he said gently. "Tell me what you need me to know."

Seo-yeon took off her coat and laid it over the back of a chair. In the lamplight the blue silk of her dress clung to her as she moved, to the heavy curve of her breasts and the soft width of her hips, and for a moment she only stood there with her hands resting on the chair, as if she was deciding where to begin.

"Fifteen years ago, Taeyang was dying," she said at last. "There had been a gate war in the south, and the Guild had lost three hundred Awakeners and most of its money holding the line. My father-in-law was the strongest man in the Commonwealth, but strength doesn’t pay debts. He had six months before the banks took everything."

"And then someone offered to pay them," Donald said.

"A man came to the tower, a foreigner, very polite. He said he represented an investor who admired Taeyang, and he offered to clear every debt in exchange for nothing but a gift." She touched the third finger of her right hand without seeming to notice. "My father-in-law put on the ring that same night."

"When did your husband find out?"

"Within a month. Joon was an Artificer, like your Garrick. He studied relics for a living, and he saw the ring every day at dinner, and one day he understood what it was." Her voice stayed level, but her hands had tightened on the chair. "He tried to tell his father. He brought a cutting tool to dinner, a little thing he’d made himself, and he said that if his father wouldn’t take the ring off, he’d cut it off. My father-in-law laughed and poured him a glass of wine, and said they’d talk about it after they’d eaten."

Nobody said anything for a while.

"He was dead before the plates were cleared," Seo-yeon said. "The doctors said it was his heart."

Donald thought of the letter in his jacket, of the neat, careful line at the bottom of it. I promise you that no one at my table will offer you wine.

"Your father-in-law wrote my letter," he said slowly. "The real one. Not Paimon."

"He has a few hours, some nights, when the ring sleeps." Seo-yeon nodded. "Two weeks ago he had one, and he asked me for paper. He wrote that letter, and then he sealed it, and asked me to send it if anyone ever locked an anchor that the ring couldn’t touch. Then he forgot he’d written it." She looked at Donald. "When you bought your first lock in Aldmere, I sent it the next morning. The ring thinks it wrote the invitation itself. It’s very proud of it."

"And the lock?" Donald asked. "Your letter said your Guild holds the Hanseong lock alone."

"My Guild means me."

Seo-yeon turned her hand over, palm up, and a thin line of blue light rose out of her skin and ran down into the floorboards and away, down through the stone under the house, toward the river and the city and something far beneath it.

[Target: Hanseong Anchor Lock]

[Type: Single-holder seal (S-Rank).]

[Holder: Han Seo-yeon, under oath to Taeyang Guild.]

[Status: Held. Anchor dormant.]

"An anchor seal needs a living human holder," she said. "The ring can’t hold it, because the anchor rejects anything that belongs to the Abyss. So two weeks after Joon died, my father-in-law came to me with the ring on his hand and asked me to swear the oath. He said that if I didn’t, he’d let the anchor wake, and Hanseong would burn the way the south had burned." She let the light fade from her hand. "I swore. I’ve held it for fifteen years. Within a year Taeyang was the richest Guild in the Commonwealth, and the anchor went so quiet that people stopped believing it was there. I can’t leave the city, I can’t break the oath, and every day I run the Guild that killed my husband, because if I stop, the ring will find someone less careful to do it."

Sylvia had turned from the window and was watching her. She knew what it was to be held by an oath to people she hated, and Donald saw it in her face.

"What do you want from me?" he asked.

"I want my father-in-law to die as himself," Seo-yeon said. "Not as that thing. And I want to be able to walk out of this city without the anchor waking up behind me." She looked at him steadily. "I don’t know how you do what you do, Investor. But you bought two locks that didn’t belong to you, and you broke a ring in Aldmere that a Demon King had put on a man’s hand. You’re the only person I’ve ever seen do either."

Donald thought about it for a long time, standing in a dead man’s workshop with the moonlight on the floor, and at last he spoke.

"There’s a way to break your oath," he said. "I can’t tell you how it works, but if you were a member of my Guild, the oath would break the moment you joined. No ring could hold you after that."

Seo-yeon’s eyes widened slightly. Then she shook her head.

"If my oath breaks, the lock is unheld," she said. "And an unheld single seal wakes its anchor within the hour. You’d free me and burn Hanseong in the same breath."

"Not if the lock has a new owner before the hour is up."

He raised his hand toward the floor, toward the line of blue light that was no longer visible but was still there, running down into the dark under the city, and called the skill.

"[Hostile Takeover]."

[Target: Hanseong Anchor Lock]

[Status: Held under oath. Purchase available only when unheld.]

[Appraised Value (if unheld): 64,000,000 System Credits.]

[Current Balance: 1,760,000 System Credits.]

[Note: Transfer of this lock severs all ring-bound access to the anchor network through Hanseong.]

Donald read the last line twice.

If he owned the Hanseong lock, Paimon would lose his reach into every other anchor in the world, and the lien on Genesis City, which had been written through Hanseong, would have nothing left to hold onto. He wouldn’t need to buy the lien at all.

He’d only need sixty-four million credits, in a city where no bank would touch his money, in five days.

"Can you do it?" Seo-yeon asked. She was watching his face.

"Not yet," Donald said honestly. "But I know what it costs now, and that’s the hardest part."

Somewhere out in the city a bell began to ring, slow and deep, and Seo-yeon turned toward the sound and went very pale.

"The tower bell," she said. "That’s for me. He knows I’ve left."

She picked up her coat, and at the door she stopped and looked back at them, one hand on the frame.

"Stay here. The ward will hide you as long as I live, and nobody else knows this house exists." She hesitated. "My guard captain is a man named Kang Dae-han. If you see him, don’t speak to him, and don’t let him touch you. He wears a ring too."

Then she was gone through the gate, and a moment later they heard the small gray car start and drive away down the hill.

Sylvia let out a slow breath.

"Sixty-four million," she said. "In five days, with no banks."

"Sixty-two point two four, if you count what I have."

She looked at him. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"No," Donald said, and sat down at the dead man’s bench. "But it’s a number, and I can work with numbers."

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

[New Objective: Purchase the Hanseong Anchor Lock (64,000,000 Credits).]

[Days remaining: 5.]