Yan Shoumei gave her a blank look. “Why would I care?”
“My Sage is even worse,” Calan put in.
Yerin thought they might be able to get along after all.
11
Maten Kei stood on her Thousand-Mile Cloud and watched the procession of survivors below her. Her sister was at the other end of the canyon, keeping an eye out from her own cloud.
Back at the Frozen Blade School, they had often been assigned to protecting civilians from stray Remnants or aura-storms or other threats requiring powerful sacred artists, so guarding a few hundred people as they fled to shelter was nothing new.
This crowd hadn’t faced any threat yet, but they had to be evacuated before the Wandering Titan woke. Kei and Teia volunteered for these escort missions whenever their team accepted such assignments. Saving people was more gratifying than slaying dreadbeasts or fighting bandits.
They didn’t care about the points, though their team leader certainly did. He scared Kei a little. She wondered if there was anything he wouldn’t do for points.
A flare of madra from Teia signaled her, and she floated up on her cloud, stretching out her perception. The earth aura was very strong in the land around Sky’s Edge, and this canyon was surrounded by clumps of trees that had been petrified by that aura.
Inside those trees, Kei felt someone waiting in ambush. Where there was one, there would certainly be more.
Though they were officially called “bandits,” these rogue sacred artists weren’t opportunistic thieves so much as they were desperate people who had been displaced by the flood of dreadbeasts. While most had sought shelter with the Akura clan factions, some had been unable or unwilling to for whatever reason. They stole what they could from evacuees and Akura patrols, but they were rarely a threat.
They wouldn’t likely have any Lords with them, but Kei couldn’t take chances with the lives of the ordinary people under her charge. She signaled a halt, then activated her message construct.
“We’ve found bandits at my current location,” she sent. “We’re going to double back and take the alternate route. We expect a delay of no more than eight hours.”
A construct fluttered off like a sunlight-colored sparrow. It would dissolve into a packet of madra and move much more quickly before re-forming at another construct that Lindon carried.
He wouldn’t like that their mission completion would be delayed, but he would understand.
The column of people had already begun reversing direction. She had expected to hear some complaints at the prolonged march, but the people were largely quiet. Either they were so tired that they couldn’t even muster the urge to complain or they knew the dangers of carrying on in their original direction.
No sooner had they all started marching the other way than her messenger construct returned. It burst into Lindon’s voice.
“I’m on my way.”
No further instructions.
Kei called a halt, and Teia flew over to discuss with her. Kei didn’t know what to say. How could Lindon’s presence change anything?
The two of them could handle combat with the bandits, but not without killing some of them. Unless it was a trap, and there were multiple Underlords hidden among the stone trees. Marching into unknown forces was a great way to die.
They both agreed that Lindon must be bringing the rest of the team.
Until he flew in on his green Thousand-Mile Cloud alone.
Kei stood on her own cloud, irritated, waiting for him to stop and explain himself. But, although he saluted to them as he passed, he didn’t slow down.
He dove straight into the trees.
He was going to kill them all.
Horrified, the sisters followed, pushing their clouds to maximum speed. As spirits flared in battle, Kei only hoped they weren’t too late.
Lindon was truly merciless. He was going to butcher these people. He…
Kei’s thoughts came to a halt as she landed, only seconds behind Lindon.
There were sixteen bandits, and they were all lying on the ground. Some were bound with simple constructs, others were groaning and helpless on the ground, and still others were in the process of surrendering voluntarily.
Lindon’s blue spirit chattered from its perch on his shoulder, and he flexed his hand of flesh as he listened. When he saw Kei and Teia, he ducked his head to them. “Pardon, but can you bring these people back?”
Kei swept her perception over them. Two were Underlords, and the rest were Golds. The Underlords were already bound.
It would have been so much easier to kill them. How had he done everything so fast?
Wordlessly, she nodded.
“Gratitude. I have to escort a mining team a few miles south of here. Is there anything else I can do to help?”
As he spoke, he slashed a line of black dragon’s breath across a dreadbeast a hundred yards away. It fell to pieces, and she knew he was going to grab its binding as he left.
Kei shook her head.
“Very good. Apologies, but I have to go now. I’ll see you tonight.”
Bowing slightly to them again, he swept off.
As she’d expected, he picked up the dreadbeast binding on his way out.
Grace dashed through the night, perception locked on her quarry.
She whipped her sword down, launching a Shadow’s Edge Striker technique after him, but he slipped aside. He followed some kind of illusion Path, and he was as slippery as those types always tended to be.
But when she finally got her hands on him, she was going to tear him apart.
He wasn’t an enemy or a bandit, but a sacred artist from a smaller sect who was supposed to be on her family’s side. But he was stealing from the cause.
More specifically, he was stealing from her.
He had presented himself as a courier, willing to take her natural treasures and dead matter back and turn them in on her behalf in exchange for a fee. Her void key was tiny, about the size of a picnic basket, so she would be able to earn more points if she emptied it.
Lindon’s fever for points was infectious. She found herself dreaming about the more expensive prizes and thinking up ways to save points.
And now this traitor had stolen twenty or thirty points from her team.
She fell from a short cliff, sure that she would land just in front of him, but he slipped away from her perception. As he had several times before.
This time, when she stretched out her spiritual sense, she caught someone else with them. That was a surprise; they were quite a way from Sky’s Edge, and most people took a break for the night. And this newcomer’s spirit was even harder to detect than the thief’s.
Until he removed his veil and she sensed his madra more clearly. It was pure.
Relief flooded her, followed by embarrassment. She had hoped to resolve this before anyone else on the team knew that she had lost some of their precious points.
Lindon’s large silhouette separated from the shadows, and he held a squirming sacred artist in his Remnant hand. “Pardon, Grace, but were you chasing her? Or do I owe her an apology?”
“Her?”
Now that Grace looked more closely, it was a woman. A girl, really; Grace would put her at sixteen or seventeen. Younger than Grace expected from a Truegold who wasn’t from a prominent clan. She was probably considered a genius of her Path.
Her previous appearance had also been an illusion to make her seem more masculine, and Grace hadn’t seen through it. If she’d gotten away, Grace would never have caught her.
The thief squirmed in Lindon’s grip, but she had a better chance of praying to the heavens for rescue than she did escaping from Lindon under her own power. “Let me go! These are mine!”