Chapter 8 – The Best Tuesday in Years

【3º PoV】

The council chamber smelled like ink and old men.

Twelve advisors sat around a long oak table. Maps spread across the wood in messy overlapping piles. Tax scrolls leaned in tidy little towers. A pitcher of warm water sat in the middle, ignored by everyone, on principle.

Duke Reginald Vandermere had been awake for twenty minutes.

He had been bored for nineteen of them.

“My lord, regarding the eastern grain tariff—”

The Duke grunted.

(Kill me. Kill me right now. Send me back to the training hall. Send me to a barn. Send me anywhere with less paper.)

“My lord?”

“Continue.”

“The tariff has dropped by three percent, and the merchants of the inner ring are formally requesting—”

The double doors slammed open.

A guard sprinted into the chamber. His helmet sat crooked. His boots tracked mud across the polished marble. His cape was half-tangled around his neck, like a man who had lost a fight with a coat rack on the way in.

He skidded to a stop near the table.

Twelve advisors stared.

The Duke perked up.

“Speak, lad.”

“My lord.”

“Yes.”

“Demon sighted.”

A small, beautiful thrill ran down the Duke’s spine. The kind of thrill he had not felt since his last good bar fight. He sat up straighter. He cracked his knuckles under the table. The advisor next to him visibly considered changing seats.

“Where.”

“Outskirts. Eastern woods. Two hours by horse, my lord.”

“Class.”

“Lesser, my lord. The scouts called it a Class Three. Maybe a Class Two on a bad day.”

The Duke blinked.

(A Class Three. They sent a runner. For a Class Three.)

He stared at the guard.

The guard stared back, sweating now, like a man who had begun to suspect he had read the situation wrong somewhere around the front gate.

The advisors stared very hard at the oak table, in the deep collective hope that the table might split open and swallow them whole.

“Lad.”

“My lord.”

“You sprinted. Across the entire estate. Into a council meeting. To tell me. About a Class Three demon.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“In the woods.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Two hours away.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The Duke dragged one massive hand down his beard. The advisor next to him quietly slid his teacup six inches to the right, in case any of this turned out to be contagious.

“Lad. Are you new?”

“I am new, my lord.”

“That tracks.”

(A Class Three. I have killed Class Threes by accident. I once stepped on one in the dark. I thought it was a raccoon. The raccoon, when I found it later, was very offended.)

The guard cleared his throat.

“There is more, my lord.”

“Of course there is.”

“The scouts watched it for an hour. They said it was. Talking. To itself.”

“Talking.”

“Yes, my lord. Listing a name. Over and over.”

“What name?”

“Just the one, my lord.”

The Duke leaned forward. His chair groaned in the way only ancient noble furniture could groan.

“Whose.”

“Lord Alexander, my lord.”

The chamber went very, very still.

A single advisor coughed. Another adjusted his collar. The pitcher of warm water sat there and gave the silence a real effort.

The Duke processed this.

(A demon. Hunting my son. My useless, twiggy, late-for-breakfast, hypnosis-using son.)

(My son.)

A grin started at one corner of his mouth.

It spread.

It kept spreading.

By the time it reached the other side of his beard, two advisors had quietly stood up. One of them had begun edging toward the door. The other had folded his hands and begun, very quietly, to pray.

“My lord. We must dispatch a unit immediately.”

“No.”

“My lord—”

“No.”

“But the young master is—”

“In training.”

The head advisor’s mouth opened.

It closed.

It opened again, with the slow, tired despair of a man who had argued with this Duke for twenty years and had won, generously, three times.

“In training. My lord.”

“Yes.”

“With a demon.”

“Hannah is in the training hall right now.”

“My lord, with respect. Hannah is not a demon.”

“Have you met Hannah?”

The advisor went quiet.

(Fair point. Fair point, actually. Hannah on a Tuesday is, statistically, worse than most demons.)

The Duke leaned back. The chair groaned louder. Several knots in the wood gave up and quietly retired. He folded his hands behind his head and grinned up at the ceiling beams like a man watching the sunrise on his own birthday.

“A demon. For my boy. Today. On a Tuesday.”

“My lord—”

“It is like the gods heard me complaining.”

“My lord, the boy nearly fainted before lunch yesterday.”

“Yes.”

“He is, by all reports, weak.”

“Yes.”

“Frail. Possibly anemic. The cook says he eats like a small bird.”

“Yes.”

“He has, my lord, the upper body of a wet noodle.”

“Watch it.”

“My apologies, my lord. The dry noodle, then.”

The Duke roared with laughter.

It rattled the windows. The pitcher of warm water finally gave up and tipped over. Two advisors lunged for it at the same time. A third silently filed his resignation in his head and began composing the letter in clean, professional handwriting.

(My boy. A real demon. Walking right at him on a perfectly nice Tuesday.)

(He needs this. He woke up this morning a different person. He has the spark. He has the eyes. He has that stupid silver pinky ring his uncle left him, and somehow, today, that ring is doing things.)

(Three weeks ago, he cried because his eggs were too hot. Today he asked to train.)

(A demon would finish the job.)

The Duke smiled wider.

“Send no one.”

“My lord—”

“Pull back the eastern patrols.”

“My lord.”

“Quietly. So no one notices.”

“My lord, what if the boy is—”

“Make sure his path home from market crosses the eastern road.”

“My lord.”

“Pack him a snack.”

“A. A snack, my lord.”

“Bread. Cheese. Maybe an apple. Boys his age get hungry, and a hungry boy fights stupid.”

The advisor stared at him for a long, helpless second.

“My lord, I am begging you. The protocols. The succession. The—”

“Hannah goes with him.”

“Oh. Oh, thank the gods, my lord—”

“At a distance.”

“My lord.”

“A long distance. Honestly, more of a vibe than a distance.”

The advisor sat down.

He did not so much sit as slowly collapse, like a building given polite permission. His hand found the warm water pitcher on its side. He poured himself a cup. He drank it without looking, the way a man drinks something he has already decided not to taste.

(He will live. Probably. The boy has good instincts when he is scared, which is most of the time.)

(And if he does not live. Well. The orc adoption paperwork is still on my desk.)

The Duke chuckled to himself.

The advisor pretended not to hear.

“Lads. Listen.”

The advisors leaned in, despite themselves. They could not help it. The Duke’s voice, when it dropped, did something to a room that nothing in any contract could prevent.

“My boy is going to face a demon today.”

“My lord.”

“Alone. With nothing but a bad attitude, a stupid ring, and, as this fine council has so kindly informed me, the upper body of a dry noodle.”

He paused.

He grinned.

“And I am going to wait. Right here. In this chair. With this excellent warm water. To see what my boy does.”

He laughed.

It was loud. It was huge. It was the laugh of a man whose entire week had just been handed to him gift-wrapped on a velvet pillow.

The laugh shook the chandelier in the foyer two floors above. It rattled the council table. It made the praying advisor switch, mid-prayer, to a different god entirely.

Somewhere in the eastern woods, a small bird decided this was its problem now and relocated to a different province.

The Duke wiped a tear from one eye.

A real one.

(Today is going to be a good day.)

Outside the window, the morning sun climbed another inch up the sky.

Two hours east, in a stretch of trees no one was watching, something began to walk.