Book 3, Chapter 70

People milled around the memorial, sometimes talking quietly in small groups, but mostly just sitting there alone in the crowd. Rue had expected some celebrating, but she supposed everyone was still too raw. It wasn’t just Zahmed’s death, either. Despite everything they’d done to protect themselves, there wasn’t a person there whose aura was wholly intact.

It’s hard to jump for joy when your clothes feel like sandpaper and your joints are full of steel shavings, she thought to herself as she watched Galdred hobble across the lawn.

Sorin was one of those people sitting by himself in the shade of the wall, his eyes closed and his expression that carefully maintained neutral he always defaulted to. Sometimes, she wondered what exactly had prompted him to adopt that quirk of personality, but she doubted he’d tell her if she asked.

Galdred sat down next to Sorin. Neither of them spoke. Nobody turned to watch, but they were all aware of what was happening, and it didn’t escape Rue’s notice that the already muted conversations were dying off.

“I don’t blame you,” Galdred finally said a few minutes later. “We all knew it was dangerous. Fighting the void... I mean, we’re already doing the impossible. It’s a miracle that only one person died. I just wanted you to know that, whatever anyone else said, Zahmed’s death wasn’t your fault. He wouldn’t have blamed you, either.”

There’d been a few arguments over that. Some climbers were of the mind that Sorin had been reckless, that he should have waited for more people to get to the second rift. Zahmed’s sacrifice had only been necessary because of Sorin. It wasn’t a universal opinion, but they’d lost four climbers from the high family groups over it.

It doesn’t help that he’s a block of ice. If he was a bit more personable and actually socialized with anyone, they’d have an easier time thinking of him as a person. If we lose one person a rift closing the other eleven, that’s still fewer casualties than Samael’s strategy gave us. And we’re winning. All he had was an indefinite stall.

By all rights, they’d been ridiculously successful, but Zahmed had been everyone’s friend. Charming, handsome, generous—he’d been the heart of any team he’d been on. Maybe if it had been someone else who’d died, people would have taken it better. It was hard for Rue to say; she didn’t really know them that well.

“Thank you,” Sorin said, still not opening his eyes.

“No thanks necessary. You did nothing wrong, and we’re still with you. In fact, we’ve got climbers from all our families coming out of retirement and climbing again, just to get up to rank 24 to help. News that we closed two rifts has spread. People are starting to believe it’s possible to win against the void again. The old-timers are talking themselves hoarse reminiscing about the old days.”

Old days? It’s only been a decade.

Admittedly, it hadn’t made much of a difference to Rue’s rung of society. Only the best of the best made it past Floor 25 anyway, or at least that was how she’d heard it told. That was probably why it didn’t feel like much had changed, though Od had assured her that there were differences that she was just too young to remember.

Galdred levered himself to his feet, dusted off his pants, and gave Sorin a nod. Then he walked away, and, slowly, the murmured conversations resumed. Maybe it was just Rue’s imagination, but she thought things seemed a little less subdued than before.

* * *

Sorin returned to his workshop and, finally alone, released the sigh he’d been holding back all afternoon. He understood the resentment, misplaced though it was. Zahmed’s death had been his own fault. He’d sacrificed himself to allow Sorin to finish cutting the guardian off from its rift, but it hadn’t been a necessary sacrifice.

They could have retreated. There had been other options. Zahmed had just been too impatient, too full of himself and drunk on his own glory to see that. Sorin had taken advantage simply because it would have been wasteful to let a competent climber die for nothing, not because it was the only way to achieve victory.

But criticizing the man at his own memorial wasn’t just tasteless, it was counterproductive. It wouldn’t have accomplished anything except driving the wedge in deeper, and their little coalition falling apart now would all but guarantee the void’s resurgence. So, Sorin had bitten his tongue all afternoon, put in an appearance and stayed out of everyone’s way, and thanked God it was behind him now.

I think I’d rather go fight another behemoth. Too bad this isn’t going to be the last memorial. If this is how people here treat losing a member of the team, our assault force is going to completely fall apart the first time we take actual losses.

He could only hope that the supposed upcoming climbers would help replenish their already dwindling ranks. The Hellion crew was stoic and steadfast in their duty, if nothing else, but high family climbers accustomed to nothing but victory weren’t adjusting well to the reality that the void didn’t even pretend to play fair.

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Sorin tried not to let the behaviors of the few color his opinion of the rest, but it was thoroughly discouraging to see people who should have been intimately acquainted with death reacting so poorly to the loss of a single climber.

Shaking his head, he flopped down on his couch and glanced over at the wall. Fifty or sixty sheets of paper were tacked up there—his notes on internal soulprint construction. Surprisingly, modification of existing soulprints still bound to their tokens had been the easier ruin to crack. He’d grossly underestimated how hard it was to hold a framework steady, and having that part done beforehand was a huge boon.

It should have been just like free casting a soulprint. It was all the same principles, just using tower-anima instead of his own. The only difference was that instead of releasing the magic to make a burst of fire or soften stone to mud, he needed it to crystallize into the pattern. It was the difference between making a mold to pour iron into and forging the sword directly. Superficially, it seemed similar, but it really wasn’t.

Sorin wasn’t about to give up. If he could figure this out, he could do anything he wanted with his build. There’d be no more scrounging up rare soulprints to use as components, no more farming monsters and hoping for the best. His ceiling would be whatever his soulspace could hold, not what he could find or buy.

That probably wouldn’t make much of a difference in the short term. With his physical prowess already bolstered by a B-rank soulprint, there wasn’t really much left to improve there, and the void didn’t care how versatile or powerful his spell casting was. But once the threat was ended, he’d be climbing as high as he could.

Given the state of the average climber in the red tower, Sorin despaired of the idea of having a full team that could keep up with him. For the foreseeable future, he suspected he’d be climbing solo, but that wasn’t a viable plan, not for reaching Floor 100. At some point, even with the mosaic, being five or ten ranks above the floor he was climbing wouldn’t be enough.

Thus his focus on creating the perfect build unrestrained by soulprint availability. It wasn’t going well, but he was sure it was possible, so he wasn’t going to give up trying. And it wasn’t just for him, either. Making his own soulprints was a step in the road toward generating new soulprints bound to external tokens that others could absorb. That just might be the edge needed to arm a full team for the challenges on the other side of the Void Wall.

He was pulled from his work by a person walking down the hall. Normally, he ignored that, but since he was the only one in any of the nearby bedrooms, that meant the visitor was here for him. Composing his face once more, he opened the door just in time to startle Zindra.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi...”

“Can I help you?”

“Uh... No, I was just... There’s some merchant here to see you.”

What?

“Did they say who?”

At that question, a sly smile crossed her lips. “Said they knew you and wanted it to be a surprise.”

Bradford, maybe? I don’t think we’ve worked with anyone else on a regular basis in months, unless she means one of Yoru’s contacts. But they’d go to him, not—Wait. No.

He’d all but given up finding her. It had been months and months with no progress. He’d figured she’d either died or was hiding out on some random floor somewhere. Observer billowed out around Sorin, no longer constrained to give himself some peace from the constant stream of information, and it took only a moment to confirm his suspicion.

“Ah, I see. Thank you, Zindra.”

The smile transformed into a pout. She’d obviously realized he’d ruined the surprise. “You’re no fun, you know that? I bet you were the kind of kid who snuck into the closet to snoop on your gifts a week before the holiday, weren’t you?”

“What gifts?” he said with a snort. “You high family climbers...”

“What about us?”

“Never mind. It’s not important. If you’ll excuse me, I have to get going now.”

“You’re in a rush all of a sudden,” Zindra teased. “Hot date?”

“I don’t think I’ll be up for a date for another week, at least.”

“Yeah, fair enough. Hey, does it feel like your kneecaps fell off when you walk, too?”

“Every single step,” Sorin confirmed.

“Good to know you’re as human as the rest of us then.” She nodded. “At least we’re all suffering together.”

Sorin managed to disengage himself from the conversation with some muttered pleasantries as he walked past Zindra, and she finally let him go without further argument. A minute later, he entered the main foyer and found his visitor waiting for him.

She looked about as he remembered—early forties, in fantastic shape, and with that almost predatory gleam in her eyes every time she looked at him. If there was one thing he couldn’t forget, it was that.

“Well, well, I almost couldn’t believe it when your name started circulating around, but here you are. You’re really in charge of this insane scheme?” Lorvaine asked.

“‘In charge of’ might be stretching things. I am... involved in a leadership role, for whatever that’s worth,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

“I heard you’ve been looking for me.”

“For months now. What kept you from answering?”

“Because I’m not a fool,” she told him bluntly. “A man who’s got not one but two high families pissed at him starts telling everyone under the tower’s shadow my name. Thanks for that, by the way. It was loads of fun roughing it out in the middle of a random floor for months until the heat cooled off.”

Ah... Crap. She’s right. I put her in a lot of danger without thinking of the consequences. She didn’t have the resources to protect herself, and it’s not like I could have sat on Floor 0 babysitting to keep her safe.

Something must have shown on his face, because she reached up to pat his cheek. “It’s fine. I know you weren’t trying to get me in trouble. But since you made peace with everyone and got this little project going on, I figured it was probably safe for me to poke my head up above ground now.”

“Lorvaine... Sorry, I really just... I didn’t think—”

“I am quite aware that you didn’t think,” she said dryly. “But it’s over now. Instead of worrying about it, how about you spend a little time thinking how you’re going to... mmm... make it up to me.”

“Oh, I think I have an idea or two,” he said. Then a flash of pain shooting down his spine interrupted him. “But, uh... It might be another week before I’m in any shape to act on them.”

Lorvaine just gave him a fond, slightly exasperated sigh. “What are we going to do with you?”