Chapter 83: What Zero Does At Night
Zero had not slept since becoming Zero.
She had, in the weeks before that, slept perfectly well. She had been Kristie then — a name that felt, in retrospect, like a piece of clothing she had outgrown without noticing — and Kristie had slept in barracks and roadside inns and, once memorably, in a tree, and none of it had posed particular difficulty. Sleep was a function. She had performed it.
Now, when she closed her eyes, she could feel the golden chain.
It was not painful. It was not even uncomfortable, exactly. It was simply... present. A warmth at the edge of her consciousness, like standing near a hearth you hadn’t chosen to stand near. Her master’s soul, vast and strange, connected to hers by a thread of something that felt older than magic and more fundamental than blood. She could feel, distantly, that he was awake. She always could. And when he was awake, some part of her was awake too.
She had stopped fighting this.
Instead she used the nights. Blackthorn at night was a different place to Blackthorn in daylight — quieter, less muddy, and honest in ways that the daytime hustle obscured. She moved through it in the way she moved through everything since acquiring the Shadow Walk skill: not invisible, exactly, but adjacent to visibility, occupying the space between one person’s glance and the next.
She counted things. This was her primary night activity. The supplies coming in from the marquess’s convoy. The food stores and where they were being held. The quality of the weapons her master’s knights were drilling with — poor, still, though improving since Thar had started running a metal quality assessment on anything that came through the gate. The number of people who had signed job contracts versus the number who were doing the jobs they had signed for, which were usefully different numbers.
She reported all of it.
Jack received her reports in the early morning, sitting at his desk with the pocket watch open and the quill writing. He had asked her once how she decided what to include.
"Anything that could kill you," she’d said. "And anything that might not but probably should be your problem."
He’d seemed satisfied with this. He was, she had concluded, a person who valued precision more than volume, which was a quality she respected because it was her own.
Tonight’s circuit had taken her through the northern section of Blackthorn, past the new construction that smelled of green timber and ambition, and out toward the edge of the tree line where the marquess’s soldiers had set up a training perimeter. She had watched them drill for twenty minutes. They were good. Disciplined in the way that came from actual conflict rather than parade grounds, which was the important kind.
She had also watched Commander Nicholas.
Nicholas was a problem in the way that experienced, loyal, and suspicious people were often problems. He had not accepted Jack’s authority the way the marquess had. The marquess had accepted it the way a man accepts a business arrangement he finds unexpectedly reasonable — with professional goodwill and the implicit understanding that it could be renegotiated. Nicholas had accepted it the way a man accepts a weather condition — as something to work around until it changed.
He had been asking questions. Not of Jack, who he kept at arm’s length with the studied politeness of someone who had decided on a strategy. Of the Overseers. Of Leon’s staff. Of Randy, who had apparently told him something that produced a long silence followed by a longer walk, which was what Randy’s honest assessments frequently produced.
Zero filed this under ’Nicholas problem’ and moved on.
The more immediate concern was on the eastern road.
She had detected it two nights ago — a subtle wrongness in the mana distribution at the tree line, too regular to be natural. She had mapped it over consecutive nights. It wasn’t a single person. It was a rotation, which meant it was organised, which meant it had planning behind it.
Three watchers. Cycling in four-hour shifts. They were using some form of concealment magic — low-grade, but competent. They were not from Kieran’s convoy, which had departed two days ago. They were not the marquess’s scouts, whose positioning she had already catalogued. They had arrived from the east, which meant either the Veranthos border or somewhere along the road from the capital.
She crouched at the tree line and looked at the middle watcher’s position. In the dark her eyes caught the faint luminescence of a concealment ward — cheap, painted on a tree trunk, the kind of thing a mid-level wind mage would use for short-duration surveillance.
On the watcher’s wrist, where the sleeve had ridden up: a tattoo. A small black skull.
Zero looked at it for a long moment.
Then she withdrew into the shadows and went to wake her master.
Jack was not asleep. He was at the desk. He took the report with the pocket watch open, listened without interrupting, and then closed the pocket watch.
"Prince August," he said. Not a question.
"The skull tattoo matches the description you gave me of the knights from the bridge," Zero confirmed. "These aren’t soldiers. The movement pattern is too patient. These are scouts trained specifically in surveillance, not combat."
Jack was quiet for a moment. The fire had burned low. Outside, a pair of pink spiders were navigating the courtyard wall with what appeared to be a small piece of rope, for reasons neither of them had yet explained.
"Don’t remove them," Jack said finally.
Zero waited.
"Let them watch. A spy who doesn’t know they’re known is more useful than a spy who’s been removed." He stood and walked to the window. "We’ll manage what they see. Randy’s guild activity, the construction, the marquess’s soldiers drilling — all of that looks like a legitimate territorial build-up. Nothing that should alarm August yet." He paused. "Is there anything they could have seen that I would prefer they hadn’t?"
Zero considered. "Roselyn, possibly. Her appearance is notable."
"Keep her in the fortress for now. The dungeon is below any sight line they could have from the tree line anyway." He turned from the window. "Good work."
Zero bowed and left. She did not need to be told twice. She did not, in fact, need to be told once — she had already been planning Roselyn’s movement restrictions on the walk over.
She went back to her circuit. There were still four hours before dawn, which was more than enough time to finish counting the supply manifests.
Blackthorn slept. Zero did not. The golden chain was warm and present and she had stopped minding it.
