All My Summons Become Divine Girls

Chapter 216: Come Price It Yourself

The envoy took Hajin’s audience in the registry hall an hour after the horn, seated across the map table with wine he had brought himself, since it would have been rude to drink a besieged town’s stock.

He was good at his work, complimenting the walls, the patrols, the smell of actual cooking in the streets. None of it carried a single note of surprise, as if reports had told him everything and he had come to confirm the inventory.

Hajin let him talk, watching the man’s eyes catalogue the room while Ash slept in the crook of his arm.

"My lady’s position is simple," the envoy finally arrived at the point, turning his cup slowly by the rim, "you sit on more gold than any vault in the kingdom, and every road it could travel is currently owned by people who want you starved. She finds that arrangement wasteful."

"And her solution comes with her banner on it, I’m guessing."

"Her solution comes with terms I am not authorized to negotiate," the man smiled, spreading his hands in polite apology, "I am only authorized to ask what you intend."

"Then I’ll keep it simple too," Hajin leaned back, adjusting the sleeping weight against his shoulder, "I intend to sell gold to whoever can move it. If the Serpent Queen wants the contract of the century, she can come price it herself, in person, at my table."

The envoy’s smile reached his eyes for the first time all evening. He set down the cup, stood, and bowed with court precision, "she hoped you would say something like that, my lord. Expect her caravan within the week."

[ LoreSeeker99: ] he just speedran a trade negotiation by refusing to have one

[ ramen_witch: ] "come price it herself" to one of the five great houses, the AUDACITY, I love this show

[ RationalSkeptic7: ] no but tactically it’s sound, terms discussed through envoys favor whoever wrote them first, forcing the principal to the table resets everything

Two nights later, Juna’s ears went up at dinner, and this time Hajin did not argue.

The scouts had come back closer, three of them working through the treeline south of the wall, unhurried, pausing at every gap to count sentries before drifting on.

Juna was out the window before he finished nodding, Loccy dropping off the roof beside her, and the two of them flowed into the dark without a lamp between them.

Neither of them bothered manifesting a wing for men whose scent barely carried any mana, and the chase still ran only eleven minutes by Aria’s count. Most of it was herding rather than catching, Juna cutting off every angle south while Loccy simply appeared wherever running men most needed her not to be.

They came back carrying three trussed professionals and a leather map tube, dropping both on the registry floor like the evening’s second delivery of boar.

The maps told the whole story before anyone in the room opened their mouth. The mine road had been measured out in a neat hand, the town wall flagged at its two weak sections, with sentry rotations logged by the hour.

Whoever drew them had marked every granary, then counted the armed patrols and left a question mark beside the word equipment.

"Nothing on them carries a crest or papers, and their coin comes from three different mints," Elise reported, going through their gear on the table, "that’s professional deniability, exactly what you hire when you want to know a town before you visit it with an army."

"So we finally have proof, and now we hang them," Juna said from the wall, her arms crossed, "or at least we keep them in a cell where their eyes stop working for their masters."

The room waited on him, which was the part of ruling he was still getting used to. He crouched in front of the three bound men instead, studying what fear looked like on professionals. Controlled, calculating, already pricing out survival odds, and underneath it a simple readiness to disappear from the trade if tonight went wrong.

"Walk them through the town square tomorrow at noon," he decided, standing back up, "let them see the market, the food lines that feed everyone and the patrol gear up close. Then give them their horses back at the border and let them ride east."

"You cannot be serious," Juna pushed off the wall, her tail rigid, "we caught them mapping our wall, and your answer is a guided tour?"

"They came to count our weaknesses, so I’d rather they count our strengths and deliver that number instead," he met her glare evenly, keeping his voice level, "a report that says this town is fed, armed, and unafraid does more damage in a war room than three missing scouts ever would. Missing men get replaced with better ones, scared reports get believed."

"And if you’re wrong, whatever they saw walks home with them."

"Then I’m wrong and we adapt," he said simply, and something in Juna’s jaw set in a way that told him this argument had been filed away rather than finished.

[ ShadowMage44: ] release them?? my man is speedrunning a betrayal arc

[ ashley (Mod): ] I don’t know... Juna’s been right about her instincts before. Every time, actually.

[ CringeSlayer91: ] fear propaganda is big brain but she looks like she wants to bite him and honestly fair

The royal courier arrived the following morning while the town watched three enemy scouts eat breakfast under guard in the square, which at least made for the strangest market day in recent memory.

Didi’s letter ran four pages in her precise court hand, and it was two letters wearing one seal. The official one read like court minutes, reporting the territory war declaration’s slow crawl through legal review while the Houses watched Seliza’s sudden interest in the east.

Near the bottom it confirmed the Crown would formally observe neutrality, which was court language for nobody is coming to help you. The real one lived in the underlined line near the end, pressed hard enough to dent the paper.

{ The Flints hired someone, and nobody at court will say the name out loud, so be careful who you let close. }

He read that line three times, then folded the letter into his coat and called for paper. His reply reported the mine opening while leaving out its size, then mentioned Ash beside a terrible portrait Vella insisted on drawing in the margin. It thanked Didi for the warning, and it left out that he intended to be the thing people needed warning about.

The scouts crossed the border east at dusk, three riders under empty sky, saying nothing to each other for the first several miles.

At the old toll bridge, the youngest of the three let his horse drift back, peeling away down the river track. The others rode on without looking, as if his leaving had been agreed on long ago. He rode another hour into the dark, dismounted at a waystation with no lamps lit, and spoke toward the doorway without seeing who stood in it.

The report he gave was not the one riding east, running longer and lingering on the child.

Silver changed hands from a purse with no crest, and the voice inside the doorway asked one final question, so quiet that the scout leaned in to catch it.

"How fast is the boy growing?"