Blake returned to his apartment. He only had a few days left before he had to depart, and he planned to make the most use of them as he could.

  His first order of business was trying to advance to Foundation two. Asserting his will on his echo, trying to compress and smooth it and build a protective shell of power around it. Where before, he’d only been able to compress his arm at once before losing willpower, he found himself able to spread the compression to his echo’s shoulder, then to its chest, before it spread too thin and popped back out of compression.

  He kept practicing throughout the days, and as the time drew closer, he grew more and more desperate. He searched the streets for answers, looking down on the people going about their business beneath his apartment window, but none of it accomplished anything.

  He only saw what he’d seen thousands of times before. People who weren’t interested in changing their lives.

  There were some, of course, who went about their business with more vigour, some who cast sideways glances at the cultivators, but not enough of them.

  From each one who seemed to hate the cultivators, he felt a tiny, miniscule stream of Honour—surely derived from worth. But they didn’t know him. It was simply a subconscious flow of power.

  When he grew too frustrated trying to compress his echo and find a source of willpower, he turned to his new staff.

  It trembled, like something had been locked inside it. Was it an enchanted staff itself? Did that mean it had an echo of its own? Or was it just made with such powerful materials that even he could sense it?

  He extended his awareness to the staff, trying to look inside it. He’d never been good with his senses, though, and he wasn’t far enough through Foundation to try that.

  “River?” he asked, the evening before he had to leave. “How did you socket your echo into mine?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, prancing up onto his old nightstand before curling up like a cat. “Blake needed help, so I helped. I felt a call to Blake. Blake needed to heal, so I lended what help I could.”

  Blake nodded. “Alright, so it comes from a time of need. Any idea what kind of echo a staff might have in it?”

  “It does not feel the same,” River said. “It feels ready to hold an echo, to form one, but it does not have one of its own yet.”

  “How would I give it one?”

  “What if the white-eyed man—”

  “Wind-Eyes?”

  “—gave that staff to Blake while it was incomplete, with the intention that Blake would finish it?”

  Blake nodded. The staff was still missing one critical component. Something that would work with him. Something aligned with his aspect, preferably. “The Monarch’s core…” he breathed. “We need to use the Monarch’s core to finish the staff.”

  “But the Path Paladins have it. Blake does not.”

  “Then I think we need to speak with them before we arrive.” Blake cast her a grin. “Sleep well, because tomorrow, we’re going to Mergewatch as fast as we can.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Blake climbed out the broken window of his apartment and stepped onto the window-sill, then triggered the Serpent’s Cloak and launched himself off. The wall cracked behind him, but he shot forward, soaring between buildings. A few more leaps, and he crossed the Blended District fence, racing toward the mists.

  He crossed over the mist-rigs, moving as fast as he could. They whipped beneath him in a second.

  “I’d always wanted to do that,” he whispered to River.

  She poked her head out of the backpack, her watery head rippling like a dog’s fur in the wind.

  When they reached the mists, he slowed down slightly, then turned to take a more direct route to Mergewatch. Reaching it in a day was a bit too optimistic, but he wasn’t going to take any chances and risk missing the duel.

  It took three days to reach Mergewatch, which, given how far he was from it, he counted that as a win. The Trade had begun yesterday, but he still had two weeks, and he was arriving just in time.

  It hadn’t changed much since he’d last visited, except now, snow capped the logs on the outer palisade, and icicles hung from the eaves of the houses within.

  He approached the gates and whispered, “River, can you hide?”

  “Hiding,” she confirmed, then ducked down into his backpack.

  There were two guards outside the gate, both wearing Green Bear armour. There was no way he was getting into Mergewatch without giving himself up, not if he went through the front door. He could always purposely get himself caught, but he had other matters to attend to first.

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  They weren’t going to let him in willingly, and they’d probably try to arrest him. He had to announce himself to as many people, so Heron would look like a coward if he didn’t face Blake.

  He veered to the side, slipping out of the column of approaching guests, then ducked behind a windswept snowdrift that angled in the same way as the mountain the city was built on.

  After a few seconds of sneaking, he got himself around the wall, then with a single leap from the ‘Cloud Body’ half of the Serpent’s Cloak, he launched himself over the wall and landed softly on the rooftop of an old longhouse.

  First, he needed to find the Path Paladins. He didn’t know exactly where they were staying, and he didn’t have Ethbin to help locate them, but surely, they would be guarding the prince. In turn, he would be staying at the Mergewatch Grand Inn.

  What were the chances they’d booked the same grand suite that Ulfreld had?

  Blake jumped softly from rooftop to rooftop, still using the Cloud Body phase, until he could spring over to the inn. Old pipes and wires from before the Integration ran up its walls, and he climbed on them, navigating over to the right balcony.

  There were a few of the large suites in a row, so he clung to the outside of the balconies, staying low and peering through the rooms’ windows until he spotted something he thought he could work with.

  When he reached the third room over, he spotted Prince Arald’s red cloak hanging on a hook on the wall. It meant he had the right room.

  He swung his legs up onto the balcony, but before he could step inside, a hand shot out and snatched his neck, reaching from an alcove just beside the balcony door. Reccán’s apprentice.

  “Nice try, fiend-Blend,” the young man said. “You may have a strong personal veil, whatever you’re doing to hide from our senses, but you still breathe too loudly.”

  Blake’s eyes shifted toward the apprentice. At first, his heart had nearly thrown itself out of his chest, but it slowed when he realized that, despite the apprentice’s efforts, his grip really wasn’t that tight. Or Blake’s neck was just a lot stronger than the boy was used to. Although he couldn’t see the apprentice’s rank seal, something told Blake that the boy wasn’t all that strong.

  Calmly, Blake said, “I need to speak with your master.”

  “Oh, you’re going to, alright. Come this way.” The apprentice threw open the balcony door, then tried to toss Blake to the ground in the middle of the suite. Blake only stumbled in halfheartedly, but he stayed standing.

  “Reccán, sir?” Blake asked. “Master Paladin?”

  “Here,” Reccán said. “Keep your voice down. The prince is sleeping.” He tilted his head toward a bedroom, an offshoot from the suite’s main living room.

  “Sorry, sir,” Blake said. “Wait, it’s the middle of the day. Why’s the prince sleeping?”

  “He has had a trying few weeks, and has been training hard to please his father,” Reccán said. “That is all I will say. What are you doing here, boy?”

  Blake winced. “Well, you know, I do still have to duel Heron—”

  “What are you doing here, in this room, snooping on the prince we’ve been tasked with protecting,” the apprentice said.

  “Ah.” Blake scratched the back of his head. “I was kinda wondering what happened to the Monarch’s core.”

  Reccán almost laughed. “You’re not here for the prince?”

  “Did you truly think I was going to try to kill him?”

  “I didn’t know what you were going to do.”

  Blake crossed his arms. “Well, don’t just go believing Heron Silverbeard about whatever he says. No, I’m innocent, and so were the rest of the hunters he slew. I need the strength to avenge them.”

  “No one will believe you, no matter how much proof you have,” the apprentice said. “It’s your word against Silverbeard’s.”

  “They understand power,” Blake countered. “And they’ll feel free to support me when I defeat him. They’ll listen when I show them the proof.” He patted his backpack.

  Reccán considered for a moment, then nodded. “Indeed.” He held up his finger, revealing a storage ring, then snapped. The Monarch’s core appeared in his hand. It was about the size of a bowling ball, and it was black glass marbled with orange streaks. “I have bound the Monarch’s echo to this core.”

  “It belongs to the prince,” Reccán’s apprentice said.

  “Rules of the hunt,” Reccán corrected him. “It belongs to whoever slew the beast. That was not Arald.”

  “It wasn’t me either,” Blake pointed out.

  “Without you, Arald would not have split its neck. Without you, the hunters would have died, and the beast would never have been vulnerable to our attacks. But then, I suppose, it is I who struck the killing blow, and the core and echo are mine to give to whomever I please.”

  Blake said nothing. He tapped his foot in his boot.

  “Do you promise me that you’ll use it to defeat Silverbeard?” Reccán asked.

  “Yeah.” Blake replied. He held out his staff and gave it a quick whirl. “It’s missing something.”

  “If I gave you the whole core right now, you would destroy the staff,” Reccán said. “No, you must integrate it slowly. You don’t have time for that. Nor do you need it all at once.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Reccán held the core up with one hand, then drew his sword-length baton from the other hand. Neon green runes flared up along the eight octagonal faces. With a flash of movement, he swung it like a sword, cleaving off a tiny face of the core with an ear-grating screech.

  “So much for not waking the prince…” Blake muttered.

  “Will you take it or not?” Reccán bent down and picked up the slice of the core he’d cleaved off.

  “We’re just going to help him, master?” the apprentice asked.

  “My gut tells me it’s the right thing to do,” Reccán replied. He held the slice out to Blake.

  Bowing his head, Blake took the slice. “Thanks, sir.” It was perfectly smooth on the outside, but the inside of the slice was smouldering hot, either from friction or something about the runes on Reccán’s baton. “How do I use it?”

  “A core is made of condensed and solidified mana,” Reccán replied. “In the Monarch’s case, it was void-aspect mana.” He leaned closer. “Judging by the Kinghaven sand imbedded in that staff, that weapon was designed to absorb the fundamental profundity of the aspect from the mana. But whoever made this staff hadn’t even started imbuing an aspect into the sand—that’s what Kinghaven Sand does, it absorbs aspects and isolates them while dispelling the energy they were trapped in. Beast cores are especially good at trapping mana and aspects.”

  Blake tilted his head. How long had Wind-Eyes been planning on giving this staff away? Aloud, he asked, “Will it help?”

  “It will improve your alignment to your staff and help it form an echo of its own, but that will take time. In the short term, it will improve the staff’s mana conductivity.”

  Hopefully, that also included Honour conductivity.

  Blake grinned. “Then it’ll help me deal with Silverbeard.”

  “For your sake, I hope so. If you win, I will give you the rest of the core and the echo trapped within. But for now, you had better leave, before Prince Arald finds out you were here.”