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Chapter 711: Bare Heart

There was a phrase he’d encountered in engineering literature that had stayed with him: there are no perfect weapons, only the most appropriate ones. The mortar’s case was built on that principle.

He’d run the design through several variants before settling on the current one. The candidates had included a smaller field artillery — lighter, faster, more mobile than the twelve-pounder — but the production arithmetic had killed that option quickly. Rifling the barrel, casting the shells to the required tolerances, calibrating the propellant charges: every element competed directly with the Longsong Cannon already in production. Anna’s Blackfire could cover the Longsong line in emergencies, but adding a parallel production track for a lighter cannon would have put the First Army in the position of depending on tolerances that didn’t have that backstop. Too much risk for too little capability gain.

The mortar fit differently. The tube didn’t require rifling. The shells could be cast from pig iron rather than higher-grade stock. The manufacturing complexity sat well below everything else on the production schedule, which meant it could proceed without displacing anything currently running. The numbers were clean.

Its combat case was equally clear. The gap between the HMG’s effective range and the Longsong Cannon’s minimum engagement distance — roughly two hundred to three thousand meters — was the space where the mortar would operate. High-angle fire over obstacles, around terrain features, into positions that direct-fire weapons couldn’t reach. A crew of several soldiers carrying disassembled components across ground that would have stopped a field carriage entirely. The mountain terrain south and west of the city had vertical gaps that most weapons couldn’t exploit; the mortar’s elevation range made those gaps into positions.

He’d also considered individual grenades — prototypes existed, black powder fill, fusing based on the existing system. He’d tested them. The results had been decisive in their inadequacy: useful for urban fighting against human opponents, insufficient for anything harder. Against demonic beasts or the demons themselves, the blast radius and yield were simply wrong. Double-base powder grenades would change that calculation, but double-base production wasn’t at the level to put a grenade in every soldier’s hands and sustain it through a sustained engagement. Not yet.

So: mortars. The decision was made.

He went to Anna’s room when the castle had settled into its evening quiet, descending one floor and knocking lightly at her door.

She opened it, and for a moment something moved across her face — not alarm, but the small readjustment of someone who’d expected something and found something better. Then the look settled into warmth, and a color that climbed quietly into her cheeks.

He came inside. The room was smaller than his, more organized, her books arranged by a logic that was hers alone. He sat with her on the bed, leaning back against the headboard, his arm around her shoulders, and was comfortable in the uncomplicated way of two people who have stopped performing ease and simply have it.

“The Dream World,” he began. “I didn’t have time to explain it properly this afternoon.”

“You dreamed of a different world,” Anna said. A statement, not a question. She was watching the middle distance, following the thought as he assembled it.

“Yes. Built on my memories, but not only my memories — the detail is beyond what I could have produced alone. There are things in it that I remember from my life before here, and things that were never in my memory at all. Physical laws that work differently. People who shouldn’t be there.” He paused. “Including Zero.”

“Of course.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, pleased with her own logic. “The dream came after you defeated her in the Soul Battlefield. If it belongs to both of you, she would naturally appear in it.”

He blinked. “That obvious?”

“Did she attack you again?”

“No. She lost everything — memories, power, age. She’s ten years old in that world. Opinionated about everything despite knowing nothing.”

“Does she live with you?”

“Her parents left her in my care.” He considered the wording. “Tenant, more accurately.”

“Then you should look after her properly.”

Roland glanced down at her. “It’s a dream.”

“You said it isn’t different from the real world.” Anna’s eyes had the particular quality they got when she was being precise. “If that’s true, why do you make that distinction?”

He found, again, that she had moved his thinking from one position to another without making it feel like a correction. She did this with the ease of someone who had simply thought the thing through and was sharing the result, with no investment in whether he found it surprising. It was, he had come to realize, one of the things he valued most about her.

They talked.

From the Apartments of Souls to the memory fragments stored behind each door. From the Force of Nature that ran through the Dream World’s physics to what he’d pieced together about the Martialist Association. Garcia at the parents’ meeting with her sunglasses and her cousin and the Clover Association’s shadow over everything she did. Agatha’s gate of deep turquoise, the smell of the sea on the other side, the dust on the handle that said it had never been opened.

Anna listened and occasionally asked questions — the precise, quiet ones that confirmed she was tracking everything and wanted the detail rather than the summary. She lay against his arm, turned slightly toward him, and the room’s firelight moved along the ceiling.

He was still speaking when her breathing changed. Lengthened and deepened. Her hand, which had been resting on his arm, shifted slightly and found his waist, and held.

Roland looked at her.

Her expression in sleep was the expression of someone who had decided, conclusively, to be where they were.

He considered the distance back to his room, the noise of rising and moving, the certainty that she would wake if he tried to leave without waking her. He looked at the hand at his waist.

Nevermind.

He reached across and extinguished the bedside lamp. Settled against the pillow. Her breathing continued, even and steady, and he adjusted his position carefully to avoid disturbing it.

He kissed her forehead.

Closed his eyes.

The castle was quiet outside the window, and the snow fell, and he slept.

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