Chapter 459: Old Soul

"S-rank," the old soul said simply. "I reached S a hundred and twenty years ago. I have not pushed for SS. I do not need to. S is enough for what I do."

The kitchen was quiet for a moment.

Bruce had thought of the old soul as deep, as patient, as skilled. He had not specifically thought of them as strong. S-rank in the soul realm was very strong. S-rank was an Elder of Xiltra, by the city’s official hierarchy. S-rank was the tier just below the Nonagon. And the old soul was running a three-table eatery in the food district, cooking flame-mane flank for hunters who brought it to them, with no apparent interest in any of the privileges their rank would have entitled them to.

He understood, suddenly, why the older awakened soul at the table outside had been sitting there alone with a small bowl. Not a customer. Probably a friend. Probably a peer of some kind. The old soul’s regulars were probably not all what they looked like.

"Why are you telling us this?" Bruce asked.

The old soul looked up from the pot.

"Because you asked," they said. "And because you have just begun hunting in Xiltra, and you have already drawn the attention of certain souls in the city, and you should know that not everyone who is interested in you is dangerous. Some are. Some are not. I am not. I tell you this so that when others approach, and they will, soon, you have one data point of what not dangerous looks like."

Bruce, Kael, and Theron were all very still.

"How do you know we’ve drawn attention?" Kael asked, carefully.

"Several of my regulars came in today after you were at the Guild this afternoon and mentioned a new F-rank party that took a spine-roller alpha. Word moves fast in Xiltra. Faster than three days of hunting should produce." The old soul lifted the alpha flank pot’s lid for a moment, adjusted the heat, and replaced the lid. "Tomorrow afternoon, after your hunt, you will likely be approached by someone. Possibly by several someones. I do not know exactly who. I know one or two of the patterns."

"And those are?" Bruce asked.

"The first pattern is the factional offer. Someone from a faction, there are several in Xiltra, ranked by power and reputation, will offer you membership, sponsorship, protection. The terms will vary by faction. Some are honorable. Most are not. The wording will sound flattering. You should be slow to accept any factional offer in your first month."

"Understood."

"The second pattern is the patron offer. Someone from the Spire district, the higher-rank residential area, where the wealthier and older awakened souls live, will offer you patronage. Funding, equipment, training, in exchange for your loyalty and a share of your hunting income. Patron offers are not always bad. But they bind you to one source of support and make you dependent. You should be very slow to accept patronage."

"Understood."

"The third pattern is the bounty offer. Someone will offer you a contract that pays significantly more than standard Guild work. The work will be specific, usually a particular beast or a particular location. The pay will be tempting. The risk will be higher than you can yet evaluate. You should not accept bounty work for at least another rank or two."

"Understood."

"The fourth pattern is the quiet observer. Someone will simply watch you. Not approach. Not offer anything. Just watch. Possibly for weeks. This is the one to be most careful of, because it suggests an interest that doesn’t need anything from you yet."

Bruce nodded slowly. "That’s the one I was already worried about."

"Then you have good instincts." The old soul stirred the alpha flank again. "Trust them. The others you can handle by saying no politely. The quiet observer requires you to learn who they are and what they want before you do anything."

"Why are you helping us this much?" Bruce asked. It was the question he had been wanting to ask for several minutes.

The old soul looked at him for a long moment.

"Because two hundred years ago," they said, "I was new to this city, and someone like me told someone like you what I am now telling you, and it saved my life. And the chain only continues if I do it too."

Bruce considered this.

He had been a surgeon for forty years before he had been any of the other things he had become. He understood the chain the old soul was describing. Most of what he himself had learned in surgery had been passed down to him by older surgeons who had taken the time to teach when they had not needed to. He had passed it down in turn to younger surgeons whom he had not strictly needed to teach. The chain was real. It existed in every craft.

"Thank you," he said. He said it the way he said important things, quietly, without flourish.

"Mm," the old soul said. "Eat the alpha flank tomorrow. Come at the same time. The price will be sixty points per person, which is more than my standard meal, because the preparation is much more involved. You’ll find it worth the cost."

"We will."

"Good night, hunters."

"Good night," Bruce said.

The three of them paid for the night’s meal, the standard cuts, the soul-clarifier cups, with a small extra for the kindness, and stepped out into the deepening blue-gold of Xiltra’s evening.

They walked back to the rooming house through streets that were quieter than they had been on the way to dinner.

Kael was unusually silent.

He had been the noisiest of them for three days. Tonight, after the meal and the old soul’s quiet warnings, he walked beside Bruce with his hands in his pockets and his face turned slightly down, thinking. Theron, on Bruce’s other side, was looking at his spatial ring with the same wonder he had been showing since the afternoon, but now also, Bruce noticed, with a new attention to the streets around them, watching for the quiet observers the old soul had warned them about.

"Bruce," Kael said, eventually.

"Mm."

"The old soul is S-rank."

"Yes."

"S-rank and they run a three-table eatery."

"Yes."

"That means," Kael said slowly, "that very strong souls in this realm do not all want to be powerful. Some of them just want to do their work."

"That’s a useful thing to know," Bruce said.

"It changes how I think about the climb."

"How?"

Kael was quiet for a moment.

"I had been assuming," he said, "that the only point of getting stronger was to be stronger. To climb until I couldn’t be pushed around. To reach the top because the top was the top. And there was nothing wrong with that as a plan, but it was a plan that wanted nothing except more of itself." He glanced sideways at the warm window of a small shop they were passing. "The old soul has stopped at S because S is enough to do what they love to do. Stopping at S didn’t end them. It freed them."

"Are you thinking of stopping?"

"No. Not now. Not soon. But I am thinking that climbing forever is not the only shape this could take. That at some point I might find a thing I want to do more than I want to keep climbing. And that finding that thing is not the same as giving up." He paused. "I have not had that thought before tonight."

Bruce walked beside him for a few steps.

"It’s a good thought," he said.

"Yes."

"You had it because you ate the old soul’s food and listened to the old soul speak. That’s how those thoughts come. Not by trying. By being in the presence of someone who has settled their own version of the same question."

"Mm."

They walked on. The city’s evening lanterns had brightened as the natural pale light shifted. Souls were moving home from their day’s work, slowing their pace, settling. Somewhere a few streets over, a small group of voices was singing, Bruce could not hear the song, only the harmony, and the city took on the soft texture of a place at the end of one of its many ordinary days.

At the rooming house, the three of them stowed their gear in the room.

Bruce took his small ring off his finger, examined it, and put it back on. He emptied his frame’s leftover gear into the ring, the soul-seal paste, the spare hide bindings, the smaller butchering blades. The objects went in and the ring’s small interior accepted them and they were there, neat and accessible, an inventory in a pocket-sized space.

He felt the satisfaction of a working person who had bought a tool he had wanted.

Theron lay down on his bed and was asleep within minutes.

Kael sat on his own bed for a while, looking at his hands. He held a small flame between his fingers again, as he had this morning, and watched it. He was quieter than he had been in days. Bruce did not interrupt him.