Chapter 123: Mira and the Guild [2]
Mira’s office was small.
A narrow window at the back, a work table covered in registers stacked in not-very-orderly piles, two chairs in front of the table, a chair behind it with an old cushion. A wooden cabinet locked with a key in one corner. A hook with two cloaks hanging behind the door.
Mira entered first. She closed the door when all three were inside. She placed the A-Rank parchment on the table, moved two stacks of registers aside, and sat behind it.
She gestured to the two chairs in front.
“Sit.”
Nathan sat carefully because of his ribs. Liaraen beside him.
Mira leaned her elbows on the table, crossed her fingers, and looked at Nathan.
“Let’s make something clear before we start. I’m not going to report you.”
Nathan looked at her.
“Why not?”
“Because reporting you is the easy decision and the wrong one. If I report you, I lose a Hunter who brought in information about a Draken practitioner operating undetected for two decades in a settlement my guild kept sending adventurers to without knowing they were walking into a trap. If I report you, the guild loses access to what Selene is going to find out over the coming months about the other small settlements. If I report you, you become the neighboring jurisdiction’s problem and I lose visibility on what you do. All three things are worse for the guild and worse for me. So I’m not reporting you.”
Nathan processed that.
“Alright.”
“But this doesn’t mean you got away with it. It means we’re going to renegotiate how we work starting today, and I set the conditions because you’re in a position of debt.”
“Go ahead.”
Mira uncrossed her fingers. She took a pen. She pulled a clean piece of paper from the right drawer of the table.
“First condition. You stop swapping parchments. If you want a mission above your rank, you ask me for it directly in private. I evaluate whether I assign it to you under the figure of ‘special rank authorized by reception,’ which is a category the guild has documented but almost never uses. If I say no, you don’t take it. If I say yes, you take it with official documentation that protects you. Do you accept?”
“I accept.”
“Second condition. Every time you come back from a mission, you give me a private verbal report before formally reporting at the counter. It doesn’t have to be detailed. But it has to include what actually happened, not the clean version for the registers. I decide what part of the verbal report goes into the official register and what part stays between us.”
“I accept.”
“Third condition. If during a mission you come across information that could affect the guild or other Hunters, you pass it to me before the Veil gets it. The Veil works at their rhythm. The guild works at another. If I receive it first, I can protect adventurers who are about to leave for affected zones. Do you understand the problem?”
“I understand it.”
“Do you accept?”
Nathan thought about it.
“I accept with one modification. If the information compromises the safety of a Veil person, I don’t pass it to you until the Veil can cover them. In those specific cases you wait. In all other cases you go first.”
Mira thought about it too.
“Modification accepted. Anything else you want to add on your side?”
“One thing. If I accept these conditions, you can’t use them against me later. If you change your mind down the line and decide to report me for the Karak Forest swap, the agreement we’re making now falls with me. It doesn’t work if you can reverse it.”
“Alright. I’ll write it.”
Mira took the pen. She began writing. For several minutes, Nathan and Liaraen watched her draft the document. She did it slowly, with the precise handwriting Nathan remembered from the first license verifications. When she finished, she passed the paper to Nathan.
Nathan read it.
The three conditions, his modification, and a final clause that read: Breach of this agreement by either party voids the implicit amnesty on the Karak Forest events and restores the faculty of formal report. Mira’s signature at the bottom.
Nathan took the pen.
Signed below.
Mira stored the document in the left drawer of the table and locked it with a small key she wore around her neck beneath the tunic.
“Done.”
Nathan nodded.
“Mira.”
“Yes?”
“I appreciate that you didn’t report me.”
“Nathan.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t get sentimental. It’s calculation. If at some point the calculation changes, the agreement does too.”
“I understand.”
“Good.”
Silence in the office for a few seconds. Liaraen remained seated beside him, without having opened her mouth since they entered. Mira glanced at her. Then back to Nathan.
“There’s another thing I want to ask you. Outside the agreement. If you don’t want to answer, don’t answer.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why did you come back to the guild? After everything that happened in Karak, after five days in bed at Selene’s house, with an elf acting as official guardian and the Veil network activating in seven directions because of what you brought back from the settlement, why do you come back to deliver a low D-Rank mission that’s officially considered a partial failure because the original Nightbrid were already eliminated when you arrived?”
Nathan looked at her.
For a few seconds.
Then he answered.
“Because if I don’t come back, the guild assumes I disappeared again. And the next disappearance you can’t cover without reporting me. I come back because I need to remain an active-license Hunter over the coming years. And I come back because if I don’t close this matter with you face to face, the next encounter is going to be with a director who doesn’t know me and who’s going to decide on paper without having context. I’d rather close it with you while I still can.”
Mira nodded.
“Alright.”
“Were you expecting another answer?”
“I was expecting you to mention Liaraen. For you to tell me something like ‘I come back because my guardian needs income’ or ‘I come back because I promised Selene.’ You didn’t mention her. You come back on your own account, for your own reasons, and the elf is a consequence of the decision, not the cause.”
Nathan looked at her.
“Correct.”
“Alright.”
Mira leaned back against the chair’s backrest. She placed her hands in her lap. She looked at Liaraen directly for the first time since they’d entered.
“My lady.”
Liaraen looked up.
“Mira.”
“Over the coming months, you and I are probably going to have to coordinate things about Nathan. Not as rivals of any kind. As the two people who have him close for different reasons. If at any point something I do seems to you to compromise what you’re building with him under the guardianship, tell me directly. I have no interest in playing against you, but I’m not going to guess your limits if you don’t explain them to me.”
Liaraen looked at her.
For several seconds.
Then she spoke with a frankness Nathan recognized as the kind she used when she’d decided not to filter.
“Mira. I appreciate the offer of direct coordination. I’m going to accept the terms with my own condition. If something I do seems to you to compromise the professional relationship you have with Nathan, tell me too. Nathan needs both of us for different things over the coming years. If one of us tries to block the other’s space, we lose both and so does he. I’d rather avoid that dynamic starting now.”
Mira nodded.
“Your condition accepted.”
“Your terms accepted.”
The two looked at each other for a few more seconds. Nathan saw something pass between them he couldn’t classify. It wasn’t hostility. It wasn’t friendship either. It was mutual recognition that the other was going to be present over the coming years and that the most efficient way to operate was with explicit limits rather than implicit ones.
Mira turned back to Nathan.
“There’s one more matter before you leave. The mission payment.”
“Alright.”
“Officially the mission was low D-Rank. Forty silver coins. But the parchment you brought as proof of completion is A-Rank, which puts me in an administrative problem if I register it that way. What I’m going to do is the following. I pay you the forty silver coins for the official mission. The A-Rank parchment I file as ‘mission abandoned by the original adventurer during external incident, subsequently recovered,’ which is technically true because Yorel left it on the road. And separately, under the category of ‘major incident report at guild request,’ I approve an additional payment of one hundred sixty silver coins for the information you brought about the Draken practitioner.”
Nathan looked at her.
“One hundred sixty.”
“One hundred sixty. The director is going to approve the payment without asking for details when I tell him it’s ‘rare doctrinal threat with potential regional impact.’ Those terms open the guild’s contingency fund without questions. Two hundred silver coins total. Does that work for you?”
“It works very well.”
“Good. I’ll give it to you in cash when you leave. To collect it you don’t have to sign anything additional; it goes against the agreement we already signed.”
Nathan nodded.
“Mira.”
“Yes?”
“Two hundred silver coins covers approximately six weeks of basic operation for me. It lightens the funding problem Selene and I were resolving.”
“I figured. That’s why I proposed it that way. It’s not charity; it’s that the guild can’t afford to lose you for six weeks due to lack of income. If during those six weeks you need light work to complete funds, tell me. I can find you F-Rank or low D-Rank things you can do without straining the ribs. Protected deliveries, perimeter verifications, assistance to less experienced adventurers. They pay little but they don’t kill you.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Good.”
Mira stood up.
Nathan and Liaraen too.
Mira opened the office door and walked them to the hallway. Before returning to the counter, she stopped two steps from the main room door.
“Nathan.”
“Yes?”
“One last thing, and it’s not part of the agreement. It’s personal.”
Nathan looked at her.
Liaraen at his side, very still.
“Go ahead.”
Mira looked at him for a long moment before speaking. When she did, her voice didn’t change tone, but the words came more slowly.
“During the months before you disappeared with the lady, you and I spent quite a bit of time talking. At the counter, in the dining room, a couple of times outside when we left at the same hour. I got used to those conversations. I liked them. When you disappeared for forty-four days without notice, it bothered me more than I showed you the day you came back. And when you came back with the elf, it bothered me too, though I understood quickly that the situation wasn’t what I’d built in my head during your absence. Over the last two months I’ve watched you operate and I’ve understood that you and I are probably never going to have the kind of relationship I’d imagined we could have. Which is fine. Life doesn’t owe you the specific result you build in your head. But I wanted you to know, because if over the coming years you notice that I maintain a specific operational distance with you, it’s not resentment. It’s the way I have of adjusting expectation to reality without resenting it.”
Nathan listened.
When she finished, he didn’t respond immediately. He waited two seconds. Decided.
“Mira.”
“Yes?”
“I appreciate you telling me straight. Not everyone does it like that. And so you know too: during those months I also enjoyed the conversations. What I didn’t have clear was whether the reading I made of those conversations matched yours or whether I was imagining more than there was. What you just told me resolves that doubt. And if you’re going to maintain operational distance over the coming years, I’m going to respect it. I’m not going to insist on recovering what you’ve already decided to close.”
Mira nodded once.
“Alright.”
“Alright.”
For a second, Nathan saw on her face something he hadn’t expected: a small relief. As if saying it had taken a weight off her she’d been carrying without knowing where to put it. Then the expression returned to the professional neutrality she used from behind the counter, and the moment passed.
“Nathan.”
“Yes?”
“Come by the counter when we go out. I’ll give you the money.”
“Alright.”
Mira turned. She opened the door into the guild’s main room. She went out first.
Nathan and Liaraen waited three seconds before going out behind her.