The throne room stank of beeswax and old fear. Kairito counted the pillars, seven on each side, and decided he hated the number fourteen. Bad luck. Or maybe just boring. His sandals left scuff marks on the polished black stone. No one told him to stop.
Twelve princesses lined the walls. Each one wore a dress that cost more than the village he burned through last spring. Silk. Velvet. Some kind of fur that made his nose itch just looking at it. Their eyes tracked him like he was a stray dog that might or might not bite.
He was ten years old. Permanently. That was the joke the gods played when they dumped the infinite mana into his ribs and forgot to let him grow.
"Step forward, child."
The king's voice echoed. Too big for the space. Fat man, Kairito thought. Fat man in a fat chair with a fat crown that's probably fake.
He stepped forward. One step. Let the silence stretch until the guards shifted their weight.
"You are the one they call the Overflow."
It wasn't a question. Kairito picked at a crust of dried blood under his thumbnail. Goblin blood. Three days old. He liked the texture.
"I'm the one who wants lunch."
One of the princesses, third from the left, blue dress, lips pressed thin, made a sound. Disgust or amusement. Hard to tell. They all smelled like rosewater and politics.
The king's hand tightened on the armrest. Knuckles white against the gold leaf.
"We have a proposition."
"No."
"You haven't,"
"Doesn't matter." Kairito scratched his elbow. His tunic was too small. The sleeve rode up, showing the burn scar that twisted around his forearm like a question mark. "You want me to kill something. Or move something. Or scare something. And you'll offer me money I don't need and land I don't want and probably one of them." He tilted his head toward the princesses. "Because that's what you people always do when you don't have real leverage."
The temperature in the room dropped six degrees. He could feel it on his neck, his own mana bleeding out, automatic, the way a furnace leaks heat when it's overfed.
The king's vizier stepped forward. Old man. Smelled like ink and rot. Dead tooth, Kairito guessed. Maybe two.
"The northern front has collapsed. The demon incursion,"
"The demon incursion is your fault." Kairito yawned. Showed teeth. "You dug too deep for that mythril in '03. Cracked the seal. I read the report." He hadn't. He'd listened to a drunk Dwarven engineer in a bar three months ago. Same thing. "You want me to plug the hole. Free of charge. Because if the kingdom falls, I lose my favorite noodle cart."
Silence.
The princess in blue shifted. Her sandal, matching his, he realized, scuffed the floor. Deliberate.
"He's ten," she said. Not to him. To the king. "This is absurd."
Kairito looked at her feet. The sandals were expensive. Custom. Someone measured her arch, chose the leather. His were stolen off a corpse in the gutter outside the Eastern Gate three years ago. Still holding up.
"He's killed more men than my entire knight corps," the vizier muttered.
"Men aren't the problem." Kairito snapped his fingers.
The sound cracked through the hall like a branch breaking. Every candle went out. In the dark, he heard swords clear scabbards, heard the sharp inhales of twelve women who'd never been in a real fight.
Then the light came back. Different. Blue. Cold. It pooled at his feet like water, lapping at the first step of the dais.
The king's chair legs were freezing over. Frost crept up the gold.
"I'll look at your hole." Kairito turned his back on the throne. "I'll decide after I see the noodles."
He walked out.
Behind him, the princess in blue said, "Father, he's,"
A snap. His snap. The chandelier above her head dropped six inches. Chains groaned.
She stopped talking.
Outside, the sun was too bright. Kairito squinted, pulled his tunic collar up against the heat. A guard waited with a horse he didn't ask for.
"Noodle cart," he said. "Now."
The guard pointed east.
The streets were narrow here. Old city. The kind of place where the buildings leaned toward each other like they were sharing secrets. Laundry hung across the gaps. Somewhere, a baby cried. Somewhere else, someone was sharpening a blade with a whetstone that needed oil.
He found the cart by the smell. Pork broth, garlic, something fermented and sour in the best way.
The vendor was a woman with one arm. She didn't bow. Just looked at him, looked past him at the guard trailing twenty feet back, and started boiling water.
"Same?"
"Same."
She set the bowl down hard. Broth sloshed. Noodles tangled around pork belly and bamboo shoots. He ate standing up, hunched over, the steam fogging his face.
Halfway through, he stopped.
The mana in his chest pulsed. Once. Twice. A rhythm he knew too well.
Something was following him.
He kept eating. Let the presence settle behind him. Close enough to smell, rosewater and a different kind of fear. Not the cold fear of the throne room. Something warmer. Curious.
"You can come out," he said, mouth full. "Or I can make you. Your choice."
Silence.
Then footsteps.
The princess in the blue dress stepped out from behind a butcher's stall. She'd changed sandals. These were quieter. Smarter.
"You dropped the chandelier on purpose."
"I dropped it six inches." He slurped noodles. "If I wanted it on you, it'd be on you."
She came closer. Close enough that he could see the thread count on her dress. Too high for street dirt. She'd be scrubbing that later.
"Why did you come?"
Kairito set the bowl down. Looked up at her. She was tall. Everyone was tall.
"Because your father's going to offer me something I actually want," he said. "He just doesn't know it yet."
Her eyes narrowed. Good. She wasn't stupid.
"And what's that?"
He snapped his fingers.
The chandelier a quarter-mile away crashed to the throne room floor. He heard it. A distant, satisfying crunch of metal and stone.
"A reason to care."
The princess's face went pale. Then red. Then something else. Something he couldn't name.
She was still standing there when he walked away.