Chapter 242: The Silver Lioness
The handle turns at seven o’clock exactly.
Zhang Xi enters first.
Her posture is the same as always: calm, hands joined in front of her body, gray tunic impeccable, and that serene face that seems to weather internal storms without letting a single drop hit the floor. She gives a small bow when she sees me.
"Dryden Sands."
"Reverend Zhang Xi."
A faint smile touches her lips, but it dies fast when the person behind her steps into the room.
The leader of the Silver Fang doesn’t look like the head of a healing guild.
I already knew that, and even so, it’s the first conclusion I reach.
She crosses the doorway as if the room had been booked for a party no one told me was happening. Short blond hair, messy on purpose or out of sheer impatience, honey-colored eyes shining with an almost aggressive cheer, lightly tanned skin, and a smile too big for the expensive hush of the Comet Tail. She’s strikingly beautiful, but not delicate. Strong shoulders, defined arms, the loose posture of someone who’s taken a punch, returned a worse one, and then healed the attacker out of professional courtesy.
She wears pale flexible-leather trousers, high boots, a sleeveless shirt under a white-and-silver jacket marked with the Silver Fang emblem. She looks less like a holy healer and more like she’d break your arm in an arm-wrestling match, win, and then patch it up out of guilt.
Leona Hartwell.
Rank S.
Master of Healing.
In my past life, she was one of the few powerful people in Azure Prime who still remembered what an open hand was for. Not naive. Not a saint. But when everything started to collapse, she kept field hospitals running where entire guilds saw only losses.
I remember her covered in blood that wasn’t hers, laughing in the middle of a corridor full of the wounded, calling veterans "dramatic babies" while keeping half of them from dying.
Those reasons made it all the more painful when she lost everything to the Deepwarden.
The Silver Lioness.
I expected someone difficult. I’d just forgotten how much space she takes up.
"Ah, so it’s you!" Leona says.
Before Zhang Xi can finish any formal introduction, Leona crosses the room and grabs my hand. The grip is too strong for courtesy and too cheerful for a threat.
"Handsome, dangerous, and the face of a man who sleeps badly. Now I get why Xi talked about you like she’d found an interesting disaster."
"She said that?"
Zhang Xi closes her eyes for an instant.
"Not in those words."
"But with that face." Leona lets go of my hand and, without asking permission, squeezes my shoulder like she’s appraising meat at the market. "Hm. Young body, old tension. You’ve taken a beating recently."
"It’s a hobby."
"Terrible hobby. But it suits you."
"Master Leona," Zhang Xi says gently. "Perhaps we could sit."
"Sure, sure. Business." Leona drops into the seat across from me with a casualness that’s almost criminal for a place this expensive. "I like business. Especially when it involves money, healing, or rich people getting uncomfortable."
"Then you might like this conversation."
"We’ll find out."
Zhang Xi sits beside her, more composed, but I catch the small spark in her eyes. She’s used to Leona. Maybe she even enjoys the controlled chaos of the slim silver lioness.
I set three things on the table: Garen’s authorization, Thomas’s authorization, and a small technical sketch of the alchemical condensation rune. Not everything. Just enough to prove the conversation isn’t a fantasy.
"I have a freshly registered runic patent," I say. "It lets me condense contaminated OXI in ducts and turn accumulated residue into reusable currency. The process cleans the environment and generates an immediate return."
Leona loses a little of the smile.
"You’re telling me you can clean old ducts and recover Scales from the sludge?"
"Shards, in most cases."
"In most cases." She props her chin on her hand. "I like small words trying to hide big things."
"The Silver Fang comes in with legitimacy, runists, technical staff, and operational structure. Safe Harbor brings the patent, the initial training, and the organization of the model. House Azurea is the political face in Frost."
Zhang Xi looks at me with renewed attention.
"You’ve already spoken to the King?"
"Today."
Leona whistles low.
"You move fast, interesting disaster."
"I’m short on time."
"Everyone’s short on time. Some are just more annoying about it." She smiles again. "Go on."
"Thirty percent of the operational revenue from the cleanings stays with the Silver Fang. On top of that, a ten percent commission on every batch of LDP sold through the guild’s referral or channel."
Leona goes quiet.
For the first time since she walked in, the room seems big enough to hold her.
"You’re a cute disaster, but you just stopped being interesting. So it’s a no."
Zhang Xi doesn’t look surprised. Neither am I.
"Reason?"
"You’re offering me a war wrapped up as a contract." Leona points at the papers. "Ducts mean the city. The city means nobles. Nobles mean the crown. The crown means the Deepwarden pretending not to watch while it slides a knife under the table. And LDP..." She taps a nail against the empty vial I brought as a sample. "That means the military market. A different kind of war. The front line. The Silver Fang covers hospitals."
’She doesn’t know it, but all of that is about to change...’
"I’m offering clean air," I say.
"Clean air in a rotten city is always war, kid."
That’s the Leona I remember. Playful on the outside. Precise underneath.
"Thirty percent doesn’t pay for that risk?"
"Not when the gain seems to ride on the maintenance fees of broke merchants."
"That’s the mistake. It’s what everyone thinks."
She tilts her head.
"Enlighten me, sweetheart."
I pull four Plates from my inventory and set them on the table.
The sound is quiet. The impact on her isn’t.
Even Leona stops breathing for half a second. Zhang Xi looks at the Plates, then at me, as if reliving the shock of the first time she saw my HUD open on Scales.
"Everyone thinks duct cleaning makes money from the fee the client pays and the low recycling of sludge," I say. "That’s backwards."
Leona doesn’t joke. Doesn’t touch the Plates. She just looks.
"I visited fifteen commercial establishments in the Red Squid Slums. Today alone. I didn’t charge the owners a single Scale. After paying out almost a third of the total to two people, this was the profit."
The honey-colored eyes rise slowly to mine.
I nudge one of the Plates forward with the tip of my finger.
"Still think it’s a bad deal?"
