I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1464: The Legion Fields

The dawn over the Legion Fields did not bring light so much as it turned the sky the color of boiled turnip.

A heavy frost clung to the grandstands, where ten thousand citizens and off-duty legionnaires had been packing the wooden benches since before the stars faded. Below them, spread across two miles of churned dirt and frozen gravel, the Sixth Legion stood in silent ranks. Their black-and-silver banners stirred and snapped in the river wind, and each cohort was marked by the heavy iron wolf-heads atop its pikes.

Rian stood at the front of the Eleventh Squad with his hands tucked loosely into his coat pockets. His black uniform was clean. Baletta had scrubbed the forest blood out of it with cold water and stiff lye, though the frayed seams at the collar still showed.

Beside him, Han kept shifting from boot to boot, puffing out quick white clouds of breath. "Look at them," Han whispered, nudging Doron. "The front rank... all of them carrying tower shields with silver trim. That’s real steel, Doron. Not the pig-iron scrap we get at the Keep."

"Shut up, Han," Doron muttered, keeping his eyes flat and fixed ahead.

Behind them, Commander Vanessa stood alone with her hands clasped behind her back and her spine as straight as an iron rod. She had not lit her pipe. She wore her old garrison coat, its cloth faded from red to a dull brick-brown and its brass buttons pitted by ten winters of salt-mist.

A trumpeter on the dais at the center of the field blew one long, harsh note.

Herald Vane stepped forward. He was a round man in a tunic of white silk, with the crimson lion of the Imperial Line embroidered across his chest, and he carried a broad roll of vellum. He unrolled the scroll with a sharp crack that echoed off the high stone walls behind the dais.

"By the decree of the Imperial High Command and the will of the Starward Court," Vane bellowed, and a small brass resonance rune at his throat threw his voice across the whole field. "We give notice of the clearing of the northern valley! Where eleven thousand abominations gathered to threaten the central roads, the Crown records the success of Legion scouting and vanguard maneuvers!"

The crowd in the grandstands went entirely silent for two heartbeats.

Then a voice tore loose from the upper benches. It was a carter’s raw, raspy roar, and it cut straight through the cold morning air.

"Legion scouting my arse!" the man screamed. "It was the black-haired boy! It was Rian!"

The spark caught at once. A chant erupted from the cheap seats and came rolling down the wooden tiers like a rockslide.

"Rian! Rian! Rian!"

Herald Vane’s face went as red as a beet. He raised both hands and flapped them for quiet, but the chant only grew louder as the off-duty border guards and the carters along the perimeter fence took it up. The name bounced off the white granite face of the Luminance Spire and came back down again, until the whole basin of the Legion Fields beat with it, one deafening pulse after another.

Rian didn’t move. He didn’t wave. He only tilted his head slightly and let his eyes travel across the crowd.

’Well,’ he thought dryly. ’The Imperial publicity department is going to have a hard time spinning this one.’

An official in golden robes hurried down the steps of the dais toward Commander Vanessa. He didn’t offer a scroll of honor. He didn’t offer a purse of silver. Instead, he handed her a small, flat slip of grey paper sealed with a blot of black wax.

"For the lost stables," the official said flatly, not even looking her in the eye. "And the twenty-four draft horses unaccounted for during the retreat from the outer postern. The quartermaster has docked the Keep’s spring grain allocation by fifteen percent."

Vanessa took the slip without a word. She folded it once and tucked it into her sleeve. Then, at last, she snapped her thumb across the bowl of her pipe until a thin line of black smoke curled up into her face.

As she drew on the bitter herb, her eyes drifted to the back of Rian’s head, to the square shoulders beneath it and a posture that belonged to no seventeen-year-old sellsword she had ever met. For a moment, a memory from twenty years ago stirred.

Her aunt’s girl. A fiery, red-haired runaway from the Isha’r clan, who had stolen a horse in the dead of night and fled south, screaming that she would rather burn in a ditch than be sold to a forge-house. The Isha’r had vermilion hair and fire in their veins. This boy’s hair was black as pitch, but the stubborn, unyielding set of his jaw was the same.

Vanessa watched his hands. Ten thousand people were screaming his name, and those hands still hung loose in his coat pockets.

’No,’ she thought, exhaling a long plume of grey smoke. ’I’m not asking. Some things are healthier left under the rug.’

While the crowd kept chanting, Rian’s perception, which he held strictly within three paces of his skin, caught a sudden, razor-sharp prick of cold.

He didn’t turn his head. He only let his eyes shift sideways.

Standing among the Imperial entourage, two steps behind the Grand Marshal, was a man in plain, unpolished steel armor. A single number was inlaid on his breastplate in dull gold: 42.

A double-digit Numbered Knight.

The Knight ignored the crowd and the banners alike. His eyes stayed on Rian, weighing the width of his shoulders, the balance of his stance, and the flat, empty look in his dark irises.

’They’re comparing notes,’ Rian thought, following the stare back to its source. ’The Keep’s reports reached the inner ring faster than the carters did.’

Farther up, high above the frozen mud of the fields, a solitary figure leaned against the stone balustrade of a grand marble balcony that jutted from the inner wall.

He wore no velvet mantle, no crown, and no polished plate. Instead, he wore a simple leather arming doublet, with his snow-white hair tied back by a strip of dark cord, and his crimson eyes watched the roaring crowd below.

Prince Regulus, the Fifth Prince, the Battle Master. The heralds did not read his name, and no one announced him. He simply stood in the shade of the archway with a goblet of water in his hand, watching the black-haired boy who had turned the Emperor’s parade into a spectacle.

Down on the mud of the fields, as the review began to break up and the cohorts turned to march toward the river docks, a runner squeezed through the ranks.

He wore the gold-and-white tunic of the Luminous Order of El Fach, and his chest bore the emblem of an open eye ringed by twelve radiating sunbeams. He stopped three feet from Rian, dipped his head in a clipped bow, and held out a square envelope of heavy, cream-colored parchment.

It was sealed with a thick drop of gold wax, stamped with the unmistakable impression of a roaring lion’s head.

"Rian the Mercenary," the messenger recited formally. "A summons from the Luminous Order of First Dawn. You are requested at the Luminance Spire before the midday hour."

Han peeked over Rian’s shoulder with wide eyes. "The Church of El Fach? What does the Imperial Church want with you?"

Rian turned the envelope over in his fingers. He broke the wax seal with his thumb and unfolded the single slip of vellum inside.

By the authority of the High Priest and the Keepers of the Star:

Rian Artemis, acting Captain of the Eleventh Squad, is summoned to the High Altar of the Spire.

Come to receive the blessing of the eyes.

Rian folded the vellum, slid it into his coat pocket beside the free-company charter and the Sixth Legion’s recruiting notice, and looked up at the needle-sharp white tower rising into the grey clouds.

Then he let out a long tired sigh.