Chapter 2: Buy Low

The healer house opened its doors at dawn, and Aren was already waiting outside when it did.

It was a narrow stone building at the edge of the lower city, close enough to the old Rift scar that the air always smelled faintly of burnt metal. Most of the patients inside had the same illness as Nell, and most of them were poor, because that was how Rift sickness worked. It went after the people who lived near the places where the world had cracked open, and the rich never lived there.

The nurse at the front desk was the same tired woman from the night before. She glanced briefly at his swollen nose and said nothing about it, which he appreciated more than she would ever know.

"She slept a few hours," she told him. "That’s good."

"Thank you."

"Your friend came by an hour ago. The girl with the brown hair." She checked her book. "She paid for this week."

Aren stopped walking.

"She asked me not to tell you," the nurse added. "So I’m telling you. You should know who your friends are."

’Mira. Of course it was Mira. But with what money?’

Nell was sitting up in the bed by the window, wrapped in two blankets and reading a book with no cover. She was small for twelve, with short dark hair and a face that was mostly eyes. The grey shadows under her skin were lighter this morning, and on days like this you could almost forget she was sick.

She looked up and frowned at him. "What happened to your face?"

"I slipped."

"On a fist?"

"On several." He sat on the edge of the bed. "How are you feeling?"

"Bored. The nurse took my other book because she said it was too scary for children." She held up the one in her hands. "This one’s about a farmer. He has a cow. That’s the whole story so far."

"Maybe the cow does something later."

"The cow had better do something later!"

She studied him over the top of the page with the look she had worn since she was four, the one that always made him feel like the younger of the two. "You look sad. Did something happen at school?"

In his other life, Aren had lied to clients, partners and his own mother, and he had been very good at it. He found he didn’t want to use any of that on Nell.

"Some people think I did something bad," he said. "I didn’t. It’ll be fine."

"Okay." She went calmly back to her book. A moment later, without looking up, she reached over and laid her small cold hand on top of his, and she left it there until the bell rang for the end of visiting hour.

He walked slowly back up the hill to the Academy with numbers running through his head.

Mira had covered one week, which left three more weeks of treatment to find, plus forty gold crowns if he wanted to stay a student. He had three silver coins, no family, no sponsor, and no reputation except the one he had earned yesterday as the Academy thief.

And he had a blue screen that wanted him to help the person who had done this to him.

He had spent most of the night lying awake on his thin mattress, testing it. It answered when he thought at it, though it never said a single word more than it wanted to.

[Primary Anchor: Vivienne Ashgrave.][This Anchor is locked and cannot be changed.][Anchor slots: 1/1.][Returns are paid when an Anchor grows through the Host’s investment.]

He hadn’t chosen her. When he asked why the System had chosen for him, it didn’t answer. When he asked what counted as an investment, it gave him the same reply three times in a row.

[Anything given. Anything risked. Anything that helps.]

’Wonderfully vague. In my old life, the vague contracts were always the ones that ruined you.’

Still, the core of it was clear enough. He had to help Vivienne Ashgrave grow, and she had to keep hating him while he did it.

The second part, at least, looked easy.

First-years trained their mana sense in the east garden every morning. None of them had awakened yet, so there wasn’t much they could actually do with their power. They sat on cushions on the grass with a focus stone or a pendant in their hands and tried to feel the energy moving around them. The Awakening Ceremony was in six days, and everybody said that a sharper mana sense before the ceremony meant a stronger class after it, although nobody had ever managed to prove it.

Aren arrived late and quietly took a cushion at the far edge, by the hedge, where the scholarship students always sat. Heads turned as he passed. Someone whispered thief, and someone else laughed. He ignored them both and sat down.

Across the garden, under a white canopy, Vivienne Ashgrave sat with her circle of friends.

She held a silver pendant on a thin chain, a training focus with a pale blue stone in the middle, and her eyes were closed. Even before her awakening she was obviously the best in the garden, and the air around her seemed calmer than everyone else’s. Two girls from minor houses sat at her sides, and Darius Holt sat close enough to look as if he belonged there, although she never once looked at him.

Aren watched her for the whole hour without seeming to. He watched how she held the focus and how she breathed, and how every few minutes she rubbed her thumb along the chain, as if it bothered her.

When the instructor clapped to end the session, everyone stood, stretched, and drifted toward the main building. Vivienne rose with her friends, and as she did, the thin silver chain slid off her wrist and dropped silently into the grass beside her cushion.

She didn’t notice. Her friends didn’t notice either, and Darius was far too busy talking to notice anything at all.

Aren noticed.

He got up and casually crossed the garden. It was a long walk, and by the time he reached the white canopy, half the first-year class had stopped to watch the thief walk up to the Ashgrave heir. He bent, picked up the pendant, and held it out.

"Lady Ashgrave. You dropped this."

The garden went quiet.

Vivienne turned around. Up close, she was even more striking than she was from a balcony, with her silver hair pinned up neatly and grey eyes that didn’t seem to blink very often. She looked at the pendant, then at his face, then at the bruises on his face.

He smiled at her. It was a good smile, polite and warm, and in another life he had closed a hundred deals with it.

One of her friends laughed. "Look at that! The thief is returning something."

"Probably checking whether it’s worth stealing first," said the other.

Darius stepped forward with his hand already curling into a fist. Vivienne raised two fingers without looking at him, and he stopped as if someone had yanked a leash.

She took the pendant from Aren’s hand. Her fingers didn’t touch his.

"You’re smiling."

"It’s a nice morning, my lady."

She studied him. He had expected contempt, or perhaps amusement. What he got was closer to irritation, the expression of someone who had followed a recipe to the letter and somehow ended up with the wrong dish.

"Don’t," Vivienne said quietly.

Then she turned and walked briskly away. Her friends hurried after her, and Darius gave Aren one long look that promised another visit to the floor before he followed.

[Investment recorded.][Vivienne Ashgrave. Hostility: 94% -> 96%.]

’Well. That part works perfectly.’

Mira caught him behind the library that afternoon, which was where she always caught him when she wanted to yell without an audience.

"Have you lost your mind? Did Holt hit you so hard that something fell out?"

"Good afternoon to you too."

"Don’t." She crossed her arms. She was a head shorter than him and had always stood as if she were taller. "The whole class saw you. You walked up to her like a dog bringing back a stick! Everyone knows her family’s men searched your room, Aren. Everyone!"

"I know."

"Then why?"

He couldn’t tell her about the System, or the other life, or the blue screen in the rain. He could hear exactly how it would sound. I’m helping her because a magic window told me to. Mira already had twenty demerits because of him, and he wasn’t about to convince her he had lost his mind on top of it.

"I need to stay at this school," he said instead. "For Nell. Making the Ashgraves angrier isn’t going to help me do that."

Which was true. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

Mira stared at him, and some of the anger slowly drained out of her face. What replaced it was worse. It looked a lot like disappointment.

"I paid for this week," she said. "At the healer house."

"I know. The nurse told me." He swallowed. "Mira, I’ll pay you back."

"I don’t want you to pay me back. I want you to not do that." She jabbed a finger toward the east garden. "I stood up for you in front of the whole Academy yesterday, and today you’re her lapdog!"

She stalked off before he could answer, and he didn’t try to stop her.

That night he sat on his mattress in the cold scholarship dormitory with the window open and the city lights spread out below. Somewhere in the Ashgrave wing, Vivienne was probably sitting at a desk with a silver pendant in front of her, wondering why the boy she had ruined had smiled at her.

The blue screen opened on its own.

[Primary Anchor progressed: Mana Sense threshold reached.][Source: Investment recorded this morning.][Return generated.][Host has not awakened. Returns cannot be released to an unawakened body.][Return stored. Stored returns will be released at the Host’s Awakening.][Awakening Ceremony: 6 days.]

He lay back and stared at the cracked ceiling.

So the returns were real, but he couldn’t touch them yet. Everything he invested before the ceremony would sit in the dark until the day he put his hand on the crystal. He couldn’t cash out or change his mind. He could only keep buying and hope the whole thing held.

’Six days, three silver coins, one furious best friend, and a sister who needs more than a week of medicine.’

And somewhere above him sat the best asset he had ever owned, alone in her room, hating him a little more every hour.

He closed his eyes and started making a list of everything Vivienne Ashgrave would need before her awakening.