Chapter 393 - 392 - Realization of Knights
She had already turned back to the old man.
The conversation was over, and the conversation was over in a way that didn’t require announcement — she had simply resumed the previous priority, and Cassius was standing outside of it in the specific cold of a dismissal that had been delivered without the warmth of even acknowledging itself as one.
His fist closed at his side.
One of his unit, behind him, was looking at the Ktorian knights who were watching this entire exchange with expressions entirely hidden behind their visors. The expressions probably would not have been reassuring if visible.
Cassius turned.
Walked back to his unit.
"’Move,’" he said.
They moved.
The street to the tower was longer than it looked.
Cassius’s unit moved through it with the specific energy of men who were redirecting something that had been aimed at a target and had found the target unavailable. The arrogance had not dissipated — it had compressed, sharpened, the pointed quality of it focusing on the street around them as a substitute object.
Fellan’s horse stepped sideways as a woman with a market basket moved across the lane.
Stepped ’into’ her.
The woman stumbled. Her basket dropped. Potatoes — four of them, rolling across the cobblestones with the particular enthusiasm of vegetables that have found freedom.
Fellan didn’t stop.
His horse continued, and Fellan’s eyes didn’t drop to the cobblestones or the woman or the rolling potatoes.
The market street went — not quiet, exactly, but ’changed.’ The specific change of a place where people have been watching something and have just had their assessment confirmed.
A young man moved to help the woman.
An older vendor leaned out from his stall to look after the departing unit with an expression that had the quality of something being noted.
Cassius didn’t look back.
His unit moved through the street with the continued efficiency of men who had decided the street was a corridor rather than a place, its population furniture rather than people, and arrived at the base of the tower.
’’’
The tower entrance was — not what he’d expected.
No gate. No visible guards. The base of the tower had an entrance arch of dark stone, the grain of it faintly iridescent in the morning light, and before it was a small plaza of the same cobblestones as the rest of the street, worn smooth, with a wooden post at its center that bore a notice board.
Cassius dismounted.
He walked to the entrance arch.
His hand reached for the stone.
A window ’appeared.’
Not a window in the wall — a window in ’air,’ the specific iridescent rectangle of a system interface, glowing faintly gold, positioned directly in his field of vision with the patient certainty of something that had been waiting for him.
He stared at it.
Then read it.
’’’
’’[MILLBROOK TOWER — ENTRY AUTHORIZATION]’’
’’[VISITOR: CASSIUS, DIVISION AGENT — CROWN PRINCE LEO INTELLIGENCE ARM]’’
’’[CURRENT COMMUNITY CREDIT BALANCE: — 47]’’
’’[ENTRY THRESHOLD: +10 MINIMUM]’’
’’[AUTHORIZATION: DENIED]’’
’’[REASON: INSUFFICIENT COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTION. THIS TOWER OPERATES UNDER A CIVIC MERIT SYSTEM. ENTRY IS GRANTED TO THOSE WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE WELLBEING OF MILLBROOK AND ITS POPULATION. COMMUNITY CREDIT IS EARNED THROUGH DEMONSTRATED ACTIONS BENEFITING THE TOWN AND ITS PEOPLE.]’’
’’[YOUR CURRENT BALANCE REFLECTS RECENT ACTIVITY WITHIN MILLBROOK BORDERS.]’’
’’[TO INCREASE YOUR BALANCE: PERFORM ACTS OF GENUINE COMMUNITY BENEFIT. CREDITS CANNOT BE PURCHASED, TRANSFERRED, OR FALSIFIED.]’’
’’[HAVE A PLEASANT DAY.]’’
’’’
Cassius stared at the window.
It stared back, patient and glowing.
Behind him, the rest of his unit had dismounted, approached, and each received their own version of the same interface. He could tell by the silence — the specific silence of seven people reading seven variations of a negative number.
"’What,’" said Fellan, very quietly, "’the hell.’"
Rett was reading his balance.
"’Minus sixty-two,’" he said.
"How," said Jonah.
"The woman," Rett said. "The potatoes. And then she was trying to pick them up and you rode past her and—"
"’I didn’t hit her—’"
"’The system apparently noted the distinction,’" Rett said, with the voice of someone who was finding this more interesting than professionally warranted.
Cassius looked at his own number.
Negative forty-seven.
He thought about the street. He thought about Fellan’s horse. He thought about the way the market vendors had looked at them as they passed and the specific calculation he had not been performing at the time about what exactly was being recorded.
He looked at the tower.
At the stone of it, and the faint gold-green at the top, and the complete absence of any mechanism he could see that would explain how a building was running a civic merit ledger for visitors who had never registered with it.
"’Can we—’" Jonah started.
"’No,’" Cassius said.
"I was going to say, can we just—"
"’No.’"
Jonah closed his mouth.
Cassius looked at the tower for three more seconds.
Then he turned.
"’We’re going back to the street,’" he said.
"’To—’"
"’To earn some community credit.’" The words came out of his mouth with the precise quality of a man who had run a calculation and arrived at a conclusion he did not enjoy. "’Apparently.’"
The unit looked at him.
He looked back.
"’Move.’"
----
Tower, Upper Floor — Simultaneously
The bed was wide.
Helena had determined, over the preceding weeks, that the bed needed to be wide — wider than standard, wider than Viktor’s original configuration — and had communicated this to the tower via the carving tools she kept in her room and the three days she’d spent quietly modifying the frame. The result was a surface that could comfortably accommodate two very pregnant women lying side by side with space enough that their bellies, which were now of a size that required ’consideration’ in spatial arrangements, did not infringe on each other.
Side by side.
Both of them on their backs.
Mira on the left. Helena on the right.
Their bellies projected upward — Mira’s the high round dome of twins in the third trimester, Helena’s the lower broader swell of a single late pregnancy in a woman whose body had never done anything by halves — and both of them were breathing in the specific rapid shallow way of women who had been doing something for the last while and were currently receiving the ongoing consequences of it.
Viktor was between them.