Chapter 167 There Were Only Ever Two Cards

Chapter 167: Chapter 168: There Were Only Ever Two Cards

[Hey guys, expect longer Chapter from now on]

Daniel waited for the clearing to punish him.

It didn’t. No alarm rang. No examiner dropped out of a tree screaming cheater. Somewhere to the east a man was yelling for his mother, and somewhere to the west something exploded with a very expensive-sounding boom, but nobody was looking at the cracked tree or the boy in golden armor drooling into the grass.

"Huh," Daniel said. "That was easy."

He held up the two cards, one in each hand. Seven and seven. Same grey paper, same black ink, same bent corner where the young master had gripped his too hard while shouting about his fortune.

The moment the cards touched, they glowed.

Light crawled over the paper like fire along a fuse. The two cards slid into each other, folded, and became a single palm-sized plaque of dull bronze. Two lines of text burned into its surface.

[Pair Seven: Cleared]

[Time Remaining: 4 hours 12 minutes]

"Four hours," Daniel muttered. "I could take a nap."

He leaned back against the tree, set the plaque on his chest, and closed his eyes.

He lasted nine seconds.

"You sat under a tree," a voice said above him, "for forty minutes."

Daniel cracked one eye open. Lyra stood over him with a smoking pistol in each hand and her hair singed on one side. Behind her lay a very large, very unconscious man in a very scorched vest, a card sticking out of his belt.

"Plan," Daniel said. "Not nap. Plan."

"You were snoring."

"Strategic snoring."

Lyra holstered her guns and dropped to her knees beside him. Up close she smelled like gunpowder and the lavender soap Lily kept in the washroom. She pressed her own card against the big man’s, and the same bronze light swallowed both. "Number twenty-three," she said, holding up the plaque. "He kept dodging, so I shot the ground until he ran out of ground."

"Romantic."

"It was terrifying."

"For him. For me it was romantic."

Lyra’s ears went pink. She hid it by poking him in the ribs, hard. "How did you even do it? I watched from the treeline. You pulled out three cards. Where did you get three cards?"

"I didn’t."

"You did. I counted."

"You counted the same two cards three times." Daniel grinned. "There were only ever two. Mine, and his. I lifted his off his belt the first time he said ’Golden Dragon.’ After that, I just showed them to him in a different order and let his brain do the rest."

Lyra stared at him. "That’s cheating."

"Elder Jian said no cheating. He never said anything about being bad at keeping track of your own stuff."

"That’s a technicality."

"Technicalities are my favorite kind of law."

Lyra opened her mouth, closed it, and finally laughed, the bright, helpless laugh that had made him smile since the first carriage ride. "You are the worst man alive."

"Top three, at least."

A gust of wind rolled through the clearing, and Paul dropped out of the air onto the grass with all the dignity of a wet cat.

His coat was torn. His hair was a disaster. There was a perfect red handprint on his left cheek.

"Don’t," Paul said.

"I didn’t say anything."

"You were about to."

"I was about to ask if you got your plaque."

Paul held it up between two fingers. Number eighty-nine. "I got it. My partner was a woman named Rosalind. She refused to fight me until I told her I wasn’t the Paul, the handsome wind mage from all the rumors. Then I admitted that I was, so she slapped me for lying at the registration desk."

"You didn’t lie."

"I know I didn’t lie! Then she asked for my autograph. Then she slapped me again for looking smug about it. Then she let me win."

Daniel nodded solemnly. "A complicated woman."

"She cried when I took her card."

"Tears of joy?"

"Tears of something."

Lyra buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking. Daniel patted Paul’s shoulder with great tenderness. "I’m proud of you. Truly. Now, where’s Brick Head?"

The three of them looked at one another.

Lyra’s smile faded. "Did anyone see him after the five minutes started?"

"I assumed he was with you."

"I assumed he was with you."

"I assumed," Daniel said, climbing to his feet, "that he’d make it fifty steps before doing something stupid. That was optimistic."

They followed the screaming.

It wasn’t hard. Two hundred meters north, past a dry creek and someone’s abandoned lunch, about thirty participants had gathered at a respectful distance, the distance people keep from a forest fire or a very large bear.

In the middle of the clearing stood Brick Head.

At his feet lay eleven men, stacked like firewood. Every one of them was unconscious. Every one of them was missing a card.

Brick Head beamed when he saw them. His nose was bleeding. One eyebrow was gone. In one enormous fist he held a rumpled fan of paper cards.

"Daniel! Look! I’m winning!"

Daniel closed his eyes for a long moment. "What did you do?"

"I did what you said!" Brick Head said proudly. "You said find the person with the same number as me. I don’t know numbers. So I asked everybody."

"You asked everybody."

"Politely."

"How politely?"

Brick Head thought hard. "First I asked. Then they said no. Then I asked with my fist."

A man in the crowd said, in a very small voice, "He asked me eleven times."

Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose. "How many cards do you have?"

Brick Head counted on his fingers, lost his place, and started over. "Lots?"

Lyra took the fan and flipped through it. "Four. Nine. Nineteen. Sixty. Another nine..." She stopped. Her eyes slid to the pile of unconscious men. "Daniel. Check the one on top."

The man on top was skinny, with a mustache and a fresh black eye. Even unconscious, he clutched a single card to his chest with both hands, like a newborn.

Daniel knelt and gently pried it free. He turned it over.

Forty-two.

Silence.

"Brick Head," Daniel said slowly. "This is your partner."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"The one I hit first?"

"Yes."

Brick Head’s face lit with pure, uncomplicated joy. "I’m amazing!"

"You’re a disaster."

"A winning disaster!"

Daniel fished Brick Head’s own card out of the man’s pocket, since of course Brick Head had lost it somewhere along the way, and pressed the two together. Light crawled across the paper. The cards folded into one.

[Pair Forty-Two: Cleared]

[Time Remaining: 3 hours 31 minutes]

A ripple went through the watching crowd.

"Four of them already..."

"Under two hours..."

"The one in the middle never even moved."

Daniel tucked Brick Head’s plaque into the idiot’s pocket and smiled at the onlookers like a man hosting a very small party. "Don’t mind us. We’re just lucky."

He made it three steps.

Then something cold touched the back of his neck.

Not a breeze. Steel. A blade as thin as a whisper rested against his skin just beneath his ear.

"Don’t turn around," said a woman’s voice, low and level. "The Golden Dragon Clan would like a word."

Lyra’s pistols were out before Daniel could blink. Paul’s wind roared awake, tugging every leaf in the clearing toward them. Brick Head raised a fist and opened his mouth to ask a question.

"Everyone, relax," Daniel said calmly. "I think this is a woman."

"It’s a knife, Daniel!"

"A knife held by a woman. Very different situation."

The blade pressed a little harder.

From the corner of his eye he caught a flash of golden armor trimmed in black, a long dark braid, and eyes like cold river water. She was tall, maybe a year or two older than Lyra, and she wore the expression of someone who had never once lost an argument and didn’t plan to start.

A translucent screen blinked into existence in front of his face.

[Affection Level: Su Wan: -35%]

[Notice: Negative affection detected. Bond impossible at current level.]

Daniel stared at it.

"Negative thirty-five," he whispered. "It can go negative?"

"What are you muttering?" the woman asked.

"Nothing. Just admiring your knife work."

"I am Su Wan," she said, "personal guard to the young master of the Golden Dragon Clan. You humiliated him. You robbed him. You struck him in front of a thousand witnesses."

"To be fair, he hid in a bush and called it strategy."

The blade pressed harder. Somewhere across the clearing, tiny and distant but unmistakable, a voice shrieked: "MASTER IS THE BEST! FLUFFY IS CHEERING!"

Su Wan’s eye twitched. "Who is that?"

"My fan club," Daniel said pleasantly. "They’re very loud. They’re also not allowed to fight, so you’re safe. Mostly."

"I do not fear slaves."

"Wrong word. They’re my family."

"Then your family will watch me take your plaque," Su Wan said, "and then your apology, on your knees."

Daniel considered this. He considered the knife, the armor, the cold eyes, and the nice line of her jaw. He considered Lyra’s guns pointed at the back of her head, and the very real possibility that Lyra would pull the trigger if he said what he was about to say.

He said it anyway.

"Counteroffer," he said. "Dinner."

Silence. Behind him, Paul made a noise like a dying kettle.

[Affection Level: Su Wan: -36%]

"It went down," Daniel breathed. "By one. That’s... honestly progress."

Su Wan opened her mouth to answer.

A horn blasted across the forest.

It rolled through the clearing like thunder, so deep and so loud that birds burst from every tree at once. Every fight stopped. Every blade froze. Every head turned toward the distant stage, where a tall white-haired figure stood at the podium with one hand raised.

Elder Jian’s voice carried over the whole forest.

"Attention, all participants. The five hours were a lie."

The forest went dead silent.

"The first test ends," Elder Jian said, "now."

Su Wan’s blade trembled against Daniel’s throat. All the color drained from her face.

Because the young master of the Golden Dragon Clan was still lying unconscious under a cracked tree.

And his card was in Daniel’s pocket.