Twilight came on like a soft decision. The grass along Novaterra's west edge hissed in a friendly way; the watchtower stretched; the scorpion Thorn sat under her shade cloth like a smug cat. Elara stood at the line with her shield hung easy on her arm, voice low and precise.
"Same drill," she said. "We burn totems, we hold our edge, we don't get clever." đ
Aiden walked the perimeter onceâshoulders he could not clap, names he tried not to forget. Calder touched the fence with two fingers and murmured something that made the wood seem less interested in splinters. Jory ran the horn scales under his breath like a boy tasting new teeth.
The night tested them politely. A hiss, a scuttle, three goblins who had not met caltrops yet learned geometry the hard way. A bead-totem glimmered in a bush and died with a crack into three tear-shaped piecesâAiden hated that it always did that. Thorn spoke onceâthwackâto remind the cave that the sentence here ended with period, not exclamation.
"Back one," Elara breathed, and the wall moved back one, tidy as handwriting. No casualties. Two punctures. One recruit discovered a personal dislike of thornbushes and gained a story he would pretend was brave later. đ
The boots did not return.
"Good," Elara said to the line and the dark. "Stay boring."
Aiden slept four hours in slices. When morning lifted the lid off the sky, the [System] offered its neat summary, smug as a clerk:
[Morning Brief â Novaterra] ⢠West Hollow: Dormant (pressure eased) ⢠Caltrops: Field #1 intact; Field #2 laid (west) ⢠Wall Corner I: 12% â 15% (Rubble fill rising) ⢠Forge: Spearheads #1 fitted; Hinges #2 complete ⢠Riversong: Boats (2) afloat; market stable đ ⢠Silverbrook Detachment: Road swept; "Red Hal" avoiding broom ⢠Trade Meet: Today (Neutral Knoll) ⢠Morale: Resolute đ
He closed it and breathed like a man who meant to go smile at a fox and not flinch.
They set out midmorning: Aiden, Elara, Venn with his tidy ledger, Garran (the older Soldier with the dignified limp), Bryn (scar through brow, forest-sense), and Hale (Militiaâgood eyes, better ears). Five escorts and a lord, as agreed.
"Signals again," Aiden said at the half-gate-that-would-be-a-gate.
Jory saluted with embarrassing crispness. "Two for polite retreat, three for impolite, four for 'fox lies,'" he recited. Elara's eyebrow warned him about the last one. He tried to look solemn and succeeded for almost a full second. đŤĄ
Mara sent them off with bread, curt advice, and the kind of look you give boys leaving for a festival with a new haircut and a bad plan. Calder touched Aiden's sleeveânot a blessing (rules were rules), but it felt like one. Hadrik hammered something in the forge that sounded approving.
They took Founders' Way east until the grid became idea and the idea became open land. Grass rolled in patient waves. No trees, by design. The Neutral Knoll rose like a polite question against the skyâlow, round, ringed by the most boring bushes Mara had insisted they find. The air smelled like dry sun and old rain.
Lucien Duvall was there first.
He stood on the knoll with the stance of a man posing for a coinârelaxed, elegant, hands visible, smile that did not show teeth. His cloak fell just so. Five escorts fanned behind him: a standard-bearer with a fox pennant; a woman in scale with a lance and the cool of a glacier; a scholar-type in neat gray with an armful of tubes (maps?); an archer in green; and Renard, the rogue with fox-bright eyes and an easy slouch that had nothing to do with laziness. Renard flicked a coin along his knuckles as if it were part of his circulation.
Aiden's stomach tried to have opinions. He told it to hush and stepped up with Elara half a pace to his right.
"Lord Duvall," Aiden said, steady. "Novaterra greets Dominion."
"Lord Aiden," Lucien replied in the kind of French-accented velvet that made courtiers forget they were thirsty. "You chose a very sensible hill." He took in the ring of bushes with a faint, amused nod. "My compliments to whoever hates ambushes."
"Mara," Aiden said. "She also hates undercooked stew and coins that think they're clever."
"Ah," Lucien chuckled. "We will get alongâor we won't." He inclined his head. "Elara of the Silver Order. I've heard of your type. Extinct, I was told."
"Rumors travel badly," Elara said, dry as iron.
Renard's smirk measured the angles of her patience and found them interesting. He flipped the coin once. Ting. đ°
"Gifts," Venn said briskly, stepping up with a coil of rope, a hinge wrapped in oiled cloth, and a small pouch of bitter herb with Calder's practical boiling notes. "Not iron. Use."
Lucien's scholar accepted with tidy hands. "Salt, cloth, and a map," Lucien said in return, with showman's timing. He nodded; the scholar offered a small sack (fine salt), a folded bolt of stout fabric (unfancy, blessedly), and a rolled map with ink still smelling faintly alive.
"Trade," Lucien went on, smile contained. "And talk."
They arranged themselves under the shade of boring bushes like gentlemen at a picnic too prudent for wine. Garran kept his weight on the good leg and watched everything; Bryn sniffed the wind as if news rode it; Hale's eyes never stopped moving.
Lucien's map unrolled crisp and clean. Ink marked raider sightings and "safe-ish" routes like veins under skin. Aiden traced the lines without touching; the [System] obligingly overlaid his view. Renard watched Venn watching the map and smiled slightly when Venn's charcoal twitched in disdain at a sloppy notation.
"Bandits cluster here," Lucien tapped a symbol near one of his roads. "And here. They like choke points. They like fear. I don't like either."
"We've found charms," Aiden said. "Triangles of sinew with blue beads. Hanging at head height. Wolves push when they're near."
"Goblins push more," Elara added. "The beads crack into three pieces when burned."
Lucien's lashes lowered a fraction. "Mmm. We've burned a few. They stink, and the air feels better afterward." He looked up and the smile warmed by a degree. "Soâbridges. We share raider notes. We decline to buy or sell charms. We decline to shelter thieves. We set a market day in three weeks at this knoll: five escorts, no more."
"Agreed," Aiden said. It felt like choosing a plank instead of a coin toss.
"Trade?" Lucien cocked his head, all gentleman. "You have iron and coal. We have grain in excess. You have stone. We have⌠skilled hands who prefer to eat on their off-days."
"Salt, cloth, herbs, skills," Venn cut in before Aiden had to play the bad ledger. "We don't trade iron this early if we intend to build walls that last. We can offer stone, work-gangs for hire, fish, rope, leatherâ" He paused, glanced at Hadrik's hinge with parental pride. "âand a few excellent hinges."
Renard whistled. "A hingeâa promising currency." His eyes flicked, not quite stealthy, to Elara's battered plate. "And stories. Those trade well."
"Some do," Elara said. "Some pay in blood. We charge more for those."
"Never mind," Renard said cheerfully. đ
Lucien's smile did that thing where it looked generous and somehow measuring at once. "Information," he said, tapping the map again. "You may be interested to know that two lords south of Ironvale have been buying blue beads. Not charms. Beads. They call them luck. The more luck they buy, the more night teeth find their fences."
"Noted," Aiden said. His face did nothing special. His pulse did.
"We will also not buy luck," Lucien said, as if making a moral statement. "Luck rarely returns the favor."
"Good," Elara said. "Luck gets people killed when they think it's loyalty."
Lucien's gaze landed back on Aiden. "A caution, offered without knife," he said. "You are building a great dealâwalls, barracks, mines, kindness. It becomes⌠easy to confuse momentum with invulnerability."
"We protect edges," Aiden said. "We pace ourselves."
"And you meet foxes on hills with boring bushes," Lucien acknowledged, hands open. "A sign of excellent taste." He leaned back on his palms. "One more piece of news in exchange for one of yours."
"Name it."
"East of here, a bandit called Grey Moth sells routes through fields other men tend. He does not rob. He arranges robbery. He will smell your wall building and come calling with compliments." Lucien's smile turned flinty. "He prefers letters to knives. I dislike both of his."
"We'll sweep letters off our road," Aiden said. "News for you: west of us, we hold a Dormant Hollow. Goblins will keep trying to wake it. We trim it nightly. If your scouts see blue-bead charms hung like bad fruit, burn them. The air will thank you."
"Done," Lucien said lightly. "And if you meet Grey Moth, tell him foxes eat moths."
Renard's coin flashed. Ting. A wry little punctuation mark.
They drank water and chewed Mara's bread in companionable caution. Garran told a story about a gate that refused to open until he swore at it in three languages; Lucien laughed like a man who knew all three. Bryn shared the technical differences between bird gossip and murder chatter; Lucien's archer leaned in, interested. Venn and the scholar haggled in numbers and were obscenely happy about it.
For a little while, it felt like the Blue World had never endedâjust changed the names of its games.
Then Renard rolled a small object across the cloth. "Curiosity," he said. "Picked off a dead bandit two days past." A triangle of twigs bound with sinew. A blue bead sat in the center like an eye that refused to blink.
Hale stiffened. Bryn didn't move at allâher stillness had edges. Elara's hand rested on the table without touching, knuckles easy.
"Calder would burn it," Aiden said.
"Of course," Lucien said. "But I thought you might like to see if your bead cracks into three like ours did."
"They all do," Aiden said. "I hate it."
"Me too," Renard grinned, which did not help. He pocketed the thing and looked perfectly willing to burn it laterâor juggle it, if conversation demanded.
They finalized terms. The [System] wrote them in the air like tidy law.
[Accord of Neutral Knoll] ⢠Market Day: +21 days, then monthly. Escorts: 5 per side max. ⢠Pact: No shelter or hire of bandits. Share road-sightings. ⢠Ban: No trade in charms/blue beads/luck-totems. ⢠Trade: Salt/cloth/herbs/skills for stone/fish/rope/hinges (iron/coal excluded for now). ⢠Map Pins: Shared (raider routes / safe paths).
Lucien sealed it with a fox-stamp and a flourish. Aiden declined to stamp with anything; Novaterra had only work for a seal. That was enough.
"Bridge, not leash," Aiden said, rising.
"Bridge," Lucien agreed, and for a breath it felt like the word meant the same thing to both of them. He offered a hand he knew Aiden couldn't take; it was a courtesy and a test. Elara tipped two fingers off her helm in an old knight's acknowledgment; Renard copied her with mock gravity and got an eye roll he looked pleased to earn.
They parted with the deliberate slowness you use around big animals. No horns sounded. No bushes produced knives. The fox pennant dwindled into the shimmer and lay down behind the horizon.
"Four for 'fox lies' would have been rude," Jory said when they trudged back into earshot of the watchtower.
"We didn't need it," Elara said. "We have numbers." She nodded at Venn's ledger.
"Numbers," Venn agreed, fond as a priest. "And hinges."
Mara tried to pretend she hadn't been waiting by the road. She failed. She sniffed the air around Aiden like a hound judging rain. "He didn't sell you perfume and call it bread."
"No," Aiden said. "He tried to sell me a mirror and call it truth. We bought a map and a day instead."
"Good boy," Mara said, and handed him stew. đ˛
Evening slid toward the west line. The wind carried the faintest ghost of drumâthen lost it in the caltrops' rude geometry. Thorn got a second oiling she didn't need because Tam needed to feel useful. The wall's corner learned the next stone and looked a fraction more like a promise.
A runner panted in from Silverbrook after sunset, hair plastered, grin wild with the courage of messengers. "Dace sends word," she gasped, and thrust a [System] fragment into Aiden's view:
[Field Report â Silverbrook Road] ⢠Red Hal tried a shaman. Shaman tried a drum. Broom worked twice; Thorn-notes taught with horn. ⢠One charm vendor caughtâhuman. Beads: blue (crack into three). Vendor slipped away when crowd panic broke. Left token: moth sigil. ⢠Request: More shields; 'open-field muster' primer. â Dace
"Moth," Elara said softly. "Grey Moth."
"Arranger of robberies," Aiden said. The stew in his stomach went a little cold. "We're not borrowing wars, but we're naming them."
"We're building bridges," Elara corrected. "We'll need them."
The [System] pinged its polite little purr:
[Regional Threat Tagged] ⢠Grey Moth â Facilitator (human). Modus: letters, routes, fear-craft (charms via intermediaries). ⢠Risk: Medium (rising). ⢠Recommendation: Counter-scheme with road pacts, signal net, and **open-field doctrine**.
Open-field. The word sat by the door and waited for the portals to open their bigger mouths. Aiden saw the formation in his head the way he saw a street before the first stake: shield wall center, Thorn behind, light cavalry on the wings to harry and catch, skirmishers peeling shamans, reserve with the fifty veterans when they finally arrived a few years from nowâtired, cut, stubborn. He saw banners planted where men could find home with their eyes. He saw rope lines and caltrops where goblins expected soft ground.
He blew out a breath.
"We'll write the primer," he said. "We'll send two more shields. And we'll keep the knoll accordâwith boring bushes and fewer lies than usual."
Elara's mouth tilted. "That last part will be the hard part."
"Numbers help," Venn said, hugging his ledger like it was a loyal dog. đ
Night settled. The watch walked. The pump sighed. Calder's lantern in the clinic made the canvas glow like a small, kind moon. Founders' Way held footprints and the sound of a town that had decided to keep making itself.
Aiden stood by the half-gate and looked east where the hill had been briefly honest; west where the cave sulked; north where Riversong hummed fish; south where Ironvale cracked its hammer. He thought of Grey Moth's sigil and Lucien's coin and the blue beads that refused to reflect the world.
He cleared his throat and spoke to the air that increasingly remembered his voice.
"Novaterra, we keep our edges tidy, our bridges honest, and our ledgers boring. We'll fight in the open when we must. Until thenâno heroics, just work." đ
The wind approved in a small way. Thorn creaked like a cat stretching. Somewhere in the dark, a drum tried to find a rhythm and tripped over a caltrop.