Chapter 46: Offer
"Morning, Sir Ethan."
"Eyyy, Ethan my boy, why up so early?"
"Your little girlfriend gave me a tongue lashing just a few minutes ago."
As Ethan walked down the grand hall of White Tower, greetings came at him from several directions at once. Guards posted at intervals along the walls, servants moving between duties with their arms full. Three weeks had been long enough for his face to become familiar to most of them.
If not from his close relationship with Hela, then from Fin’s mouth.
Ethan nodded back at each of them as he passed, his expression settled into the particular calm he’d worn since arriving here, polite enough to be functional, distant enough to discourage anything further.
The hall was wide and high, morning light coming in through the upper windows in long pale columns that fell across the stone floor and didn’t quite reach the far walls.
He kept walking.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Approaching an office door near the far end of the corridor, Ethan stopped and looked at the two guards posted on either side of it.
"Is the High Regent in?"
Three weeks was long enough. It was about time to leave, but first there was the matter of the reward. That conversation couldn’t wait any longer.
After all, if not for him and Hela, those captives would be in demi human territory right now.
As slaves.
"She’s expecting you."
One of the guards stepped aside and opened the door without further exchange.
Ethan walked in.
The room was larger than it had any right to be. Murals covered the walls on every side, carved directly into the stone, rising from the floor and climbing upward without interruption until they merged with the ceiling far overhead. The height of the room was difficult to take in all at once, the kind of scale that made the furniture below look misplaced, as if the space had been designed for something else entirely and then repurposed.
Near one of the upper windows, a hammock had been strung between two anchor points set into the wall.
The High Regent Arian lay inside it, legs crossed at the ankle, a cold drink held loosely in one hand. She glanced down at Ethan with the unhurried ease of someone who had been comfortable for a while and wasn’t particularly moved by the interruption.
Then she smiled, the expression landing somewhere between pleasant and awkward.
"You’re here."
She waved her hand in a slow beckoning motion.
"Come up."
Ethan crossed the floor toward a set of stairs along the near wall and climbed until he reached her level, the city visible through the window behind her, distant and wide in the morning light.
"Today is the day you want to leave, yeah?"
She looked at him without shifting her position in the hammock.
"What plans do you have?"
Hela had explained it to her already. Ethan wanted to go out and grow stronger. That was natural for any summoner at his stage, the kind of restlessness that only movement could resolve. Even Arian had left at some point, trading comfort for the kind of growth that couldn’t be achieved inside walls.
If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be where she was now.
"Thank you for your hospitality, High Regent."
Ethan bowed his head, his voice measured.
"I am forever grateful."
Arian looked at him for a moment, then set her drink down on the edge of the hammock’s armrest.
"I have two offers for you."
Her voice didn’t change register. She delivered it the way she delivered most things, directly, without building toward it.
"One is a reward worth a significant sum of money. From there you’re on your own. If we cross paths out in the world, I act like I don’t know you and you do the same."
The resentment behind the words was there if you listened for it, not loud, not dressed up in anything sharper than it needed to be. Just the quiet anger of a mother who hadn’t finished processing what she’d found when she arrived at that compound, and had chosen to let the practical matters stand in front of it.
Ethan said nothing and waited.
"As for the second offer," she continued, "it’s an honorary position within White Tower. You still go out on your own recognizance. No one tells you where to be or when. But every so often you’ll be called for a mission."
She paused just long enough to let the shape of it land before continuing.
"In exchange, you get access to training from White Tower officials. Access to our information networks and our trading centers. And a monthly stipend of forty thousand gold coins."
Ethan’s eyes widened before he could stop them.
He had never heard that number applied to anything in his life. Not at the beast market, not in the ring, not in anything he’d accumulated since arriving in this world. And that was monthly. A repeating figure, not a one time ceiling.
"Forty thousand isn’t that much."
Arian’s expression shifted into something that might have been amusement.
"You’ll come to understand that when you attempt your third summon."
She let it sit for a breath, then added, "I’m waiting for your response."
Ethan ran through it quickly without making a production of it.
He was alone in this world. More than that, he was operating with a severe lack of information, the kind of disadvantage that resources and access could address in ways raw strength couldn’t. An honorary title from White Tower meant neither of those problems remained permanent problems.
He wasn’t bound by their rules. He kept his freedom of movement. He received everything else on top of it.
"I’ll pick the second."
He nodded once as he said it.
There was nothing to deliberate over.
"Good."
Arian smiled again, this one carrying less awkwardness than the one before it.
"Coincidentally, a mission just came up. Meet Fin and get onboarded."
She reached for her drink again, the motion easy, signaling that her end of the conversation had concluded.
Somewhere to the west of Windgrave, in a small town, a disturbance had been reported. Wild beasts.
White Tower’s responsibilities stretched far and wide across the kingdom, and this was one of the many things that fell within them.
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