Chapter 117: Every Way

Chapter 117: Chapter 117: Every Way

Kang Dae-han drew the tower for them on the back of one of Joon’s old sketches, holding the pen awkwardly in his left hand while his right lay wrapped in a strip of gray blanket on the bench beside him.

"Eighty-eight floors," he said. "The dining room is the top one. The vault floor is the eighty-seventh, directly below it, and it’s the only floor in the building the public lifts don’t stop at." He drew a square in the center of the floor and shaded it in. "This is the core. The Hanseong lock line comes up out of the anchor, through the bedrock, up the tower’s core, and ends in a room in the middle of the vault floor. That’s where Seo-yeon swore her first oath, and that’s where he’ll make her swear the second."

"Why there?" Donald asked.

"A personal oath on a lock has to be sworn where the lock line is strongest. The room in the core is the closest point to the line that anyone can stand on." Kang drew a ring of small crosses around the square. "Around the core is the treasury. Taeyang keeps its reserves in the building, not in a bank, because the Chairman doesn’t trust banks he doesn’t own. Mana cores, bearer bonds and gold, mostly."

"How much?"

Kang thought about it. "When I was last inside, which was six weeks ago, it was a little over forty million credits."

Sylvia looked at Donald across the table. He didn’t look back at her, but she saw him do the arithmetic.

"Guards?" she asked.

"Six ring-bearers on the vault floor at all times, all A-Rank like me. Twenty Lamplighters on the floors below." Kang set the pen down. "And the Chairman himself, at midnight. He never misses an oath."

---

Aris called back at eleven in the morning, an hour ahead of what she’d promised, and Donald took the call at the fish market again, behind the same stack of barrels.

"I’ve got your list," she said. "Some of it you’ll like, and some of it you’ll hate. Do you want the good parts first?"

"Just give me all of it."

"First, shares. Not on the open board, where Taeyang’s shells are waiting, but sold directly to people we trust, the way we did with Lady Reed." He heard paper moving. "I called her an hour ago. She’ll take another quarter of a percent at the same price as last time, which comes to sixteen million two hundred and fifty thousand. Harrow will take point one five, which is nine million seven hundred and fifty thousand. They’ll both clear today."

"That’s twenty-six million," Donald said.

"Second, the penthouse. Zenith Spire, 50A. We paid five million for it, and Evelyn hasn’t slept there since we moved into the tower. Third, the Crimson Lotus building in Sector 6, which we’ve owned since you bought the Guild and nobody uses for anything." She paused. "I don’t know what that one’s worth in a hurry."

Donald opened the window quietly, with the tablet still pressed to his ear.

[Asset Liquidation: Available Targets.]

[Penthouse 50A, Zenith Spire: 5,000,000 Credits.]

[Crimson Lotus Guild Hall, Sector 6: 2,400,000 Credits.]

"Seven point four for both," he said.

Aris didn’t ask how he knew. She’d stopped asking months ago.

"And fourth," she said, more slowly, "the Archangel Array. I’m only putting it on the list because you told me every way."

Donald said nothing for a moment. The Archangel had killed fifteen thousand of Azgalor’s army on the first night of the war, and it was the only thing over Genesis City that could stop a second army if one came out of the Glass Field. He didn’t open the window for it. He already knew he wasn’t going to sell it.

"Not the Archangel," he said.

"Good." Aris let out a breath. "Evelyn said you’d say that. She’s here, by the way. She wants to talk to you."

There was a pause and a rustle, and then Evelyn’s voice came on the line, close and low.

"You’re in trouble," she said. It wasn’t a question.

"Some."

"I can feel it through the tether. It’s been sitting in my chest since last night, and it hasn’t let up once." She was quiet for a second. "Do you want me to come?"

"I want you on the Wall," Donald said. "If this goes the way I think it will, Paimon is going to lose his grip on our anchor tonight, and he isn’t going to let go quietly. Whatever he still has under the Glass Field, he’ll throw it at you before the lien breaks."

"Then let him." He heard the smile in her voice. "Starfall’s been bored since Aldmere."

"Sell the penthouse, Evelyn."

"I never liked it anyway. It was too high up, and the bath was cold." Her voice softened. "Come home, Donald. Bring Sylvia home too."

"I will."

---

The money came in through the afternoon. Lady Reed’s payment cleared at one, and Harrow’s at a quarter past two, and Donald moved each of them onto the black data-card and from the card into the System ledger, without a bank in Hanseong ever touching a credit of it. At three he liquidated the penthouse and the Lotus hall, and watched the two buildings disappear from his asset list one after the other.

[Deposit: +16,250,000 Credits (Share sale: Reed Guild).]

[Deposit: +9,750,000 Credits (Share sale: Edmund Harrow).]

[Asset Liquidated: Penthouse 50A, Zenith Spire. +5,000,000 Credits.]

[Asset Liquidated: Crimson Lotus Guild Hall. +2,400,000 Credits.]

[Current Balance: 35,160,000 System Credits.]

He sat at Joon’s bench and looked at the number for a long time.

"Twenty-eight million eight hundred and forty thousand short," Sylvia said from the window. She had been doing the arithmetic too.

"And there’s a little over forty million in Taeyang’s treasury," Donald said, "sitting in a ring around the room where Seo-yeon is going to be at midnight."

Kang looked up from the bench, where he had been changing the strip of blanket on his hand.

"You want to rob the Chairman’s treasury," he said slowly, "on the night he’s standing in the middle of it."

"I want to take back what he owes," Donald said. "Fifteen years of Hanseong paying him for safety. That’s a debt too."

"And how will you carry forty million credits in cores and gold out of a tower full of ring-bearers?"

Sylvia smiled for the first time that day.

"My storage doubled last week," she said. "And I’ve never been asked to hold anything as interesting as a Demon King’s treasury."

Donald laid the plan out on the back of Kang’s drawing, step by step, and the others listened without interrupting.

Sylvia would take him into the tower through its shadow at eleven, when the sun was long gone and the floodlights on the tower’s lower floors made the building’s own shadow sharpest and darkest on the river side. Sixty meters at a time, she could carry them both up the outside of the tower in its shadow, from window ledge to window ledge, faster than any lift. On the vault floor, she would empty the treasury into her storage while Donald found Seo-yeon. When Seo-yeon signed the contract Aris had already sent to his tablet, she would become a member of TIG, her oath would break, and the lock would be unheld.

Then Donald would have one hour to liquidate the treasury and buy the Hanseong lock before the anchor woke.

"And the Chairman?" Kang asked quietly. "He’ll be there. With six ring-bearers. And with that." He nodded at the notebook inside Donald’s jacket, at the drawing of the blow sent back to the one who struck it.

"I know," Donald said. "That’s why I’m not going to hit him until I understand how the bill works."

Kang looked at him for a long moment. Then he picked up the pen again in his left hand and began adding something to the drawing, a narrow line running down the side of the core from the eighty-eighth floor to the eighty-seventh.

"A maintenance shaft," he said. "The Chairman has never used it. He doesn’t know it’s there. I was the one who had it built." He set the pen down. "I can’t fight with this hand, but I can still open a door for you. Let me come."

Donald looked at Sylvia, and she shrugged, which meant yes.

"All right," he said.

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

[Objective: Free Han Seo-yeon. Purchase the Hanseong Anchor Lock (64,000,000 Credits).]

[Current Balance: 35,160,000 System Credits.]

[Time remaining: 6 hours.]

Outside, the sun was going down over the river, and the Taeyang tower’s shadow had begun to stretch out across the water toward the old city.