Chapter 780: Edith’s Little Game
“Sister—are you going somewhere far?”
Cole Kant’s voice came from behind her. Edith continued working through the pile of clothes on her bed without turning around.
“Not far. The Western Region.”
He moved closer. “How long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know.”
He looked at what she was folding, then at what she had set aside. No formal gowns. No girdles. None of the structured undergarments she preferred. His gaze moved through the selection with the practiced attention she had spent months trying to teach him.
“You haven’t packed any formal dress, or your favorite corset… You’re not visiting nobles? No banquets?”
Edith glanced at him. “Your observation has improved. But you don’t always have to say everything you notice.”
The boy winced. “You were the one who taught me to observe.”
“Now I’ll teach you something else.” She set a folded shirt in the case. “When you speak to a woman, remain graceful and choose your words with care. Understand?”
“But you’re my sister—”
“If I weren’t, you would have suffered considerably by now.”
Cole shuddered. “I—I see.”
“Good.” She picked up the next garment. “How is City Hall treating you?”
“It’s… fine. Just as you said—I haven’t mentioned being a noble to anyone. All I do is write and record, which is well within my abilities.” He paused. “But I don’t understand why you didn’t place me in your own department.”
A great deal had changed since Cole had watched the artillery demonstration and decided, quietly and permanently, that returning to the City of Evernight was no longer a plan he wanted to pursue. He and Edith had left the Foreign Affairs Building and taken a house near the lord’s castle—a spacious one, five hundred gold royals, which Cole had asked for and was now too proud to complain about. They were Neverwinter residents now, properly settled. The hundred or so scholars and servants they had brought from the Northern Region had found their places as well. Through them, Edith had accumulated something that functioned as standing in the new system—not official rank, exactly, but presence.
The people from the Northern Region would not stay forever. But she knew Roland would never turn away skilled individuals from there, not while he remained as hungry for talent as he had shown himself to be. As long as her father kept sending people south, her position remained stable.
“Because it’s unnecessary and it would create risks.” She didn’t look at him. “Barov watches everything I do. If you made a mistake in my department, I’d have no good option—defending you would damage me, not defending you would damage both of us. Either way, the Kant family’s reputation suffers.” She paused. “And once that reputation suffers, His Majesty’s opinion of me changes. You understand what that means.”
Cole’s expression shifted inward—the look he wore when he was actually thinking rather than performing thought.
“Even when families disagree with each other,” Edith continued, “outsiders still count you as a unit because you share a surname. Whatever you do reflects on all of us. And what reflects on all of us reflects on me. So whatever you do—in this city, in any city—remember you represent the family, not only yourself.”
He looked at the floor. She had no way of knowing how much of it reached him. She had said all of it, and whether it landed today or in three years was beyond her control. Even if the old feudal order was eventually completely replaced by Roland’s new system, the weight of a family name would endure—and in the short term, with everything in transition, that weight would be felt more sharply, not less. The moon is brightest when the sun has gone down.
After a while, he nodded.
Their father had judged Cole deficient: too timid, too indecisive, too soft for the demands of lordship, too gentle with difficult choices to lead knights in wartime. That assessment was not wrong, exactly. Cole did take after their father in personality—and their father had built the Kant family’s position through a willingness to ally with lesser powers, to shift alliances, to survive in the complex machinery of the Northern Region by knowing when to yield.
None of that made Cole suitable for what their father imagined a lord needed to be.
What it made him was suited for Neverwinter. Careful, observant, adaptive, a quick learner who understood that he was learning—these were not weaknesses in a system that valued output over lineage. The day Edith had understood that a small group of common people with snow-powder weapons had taken Timothy’s capital in a single day, she had stopped measuring worth by swordsmanship and started measuring it by other things. That was also the day she had decided Cole needed to be here rather than home, gathering dust in a domain that was about to become irrelevant.
Cole picked up a long dress from the pile and held it in front of himself, as though estimating fit, as though this were a perfectly natural thing to do. “But where are you really going? I don’t want to stay in this big house alone. I’ll get bored.”
“You were the one who asked for a big house.” Edith’s voice was cooler than the room. “Five hundred gold royals is not a small sum, even for me. And now it’s too large?”
The dress nearly fell.
“No. No, I’m completely satisfied. The house is—excellent.”
“Next summer, our younger brother will come and keep you company.” She glanced at the dress and noted, with the particular detached assessment she had inherited from no one, that the cut would suit him reasonably well. “As for where I’m going—it’s a secret of Neverwinter, but it’s not one I’m forbidden to share.” She set down what she was folding and looked at him directly. “According to the old rules, you’ll have to pay a price.”
Cole’s expression became cautious immediately. He knew this game. She had been playing it with him since childhood, and the debts accumulated. In his experience, the price was always something she had already decided on before asking. His curiosity always outran his caution.
It still did.
”…I want to know.”
A small smile. “I’m going to the Great Snow Mountain of the Western Region with a detachment from the First Army.”
He blinked. “The source of the Redwater River? What’s there?”
“Unknown demonic hybrids. Possibly alien species. We’ll find out.” She paused, and then, because it served her purpose, she described the Taquila witches she had seen during the meeting—their blob forms, the tentacles, the way they moved, the cold intelligence that came through the curtain of purple light even from fifty paces. “We’ve entered an alliance with them. I intend to be present when our monster allies and their monster enemies meet.”
Cole stood with his mouth open for a full several seconds. Then: “You’re—you aren’t afraid? And His Majesty made a treaty with something that looks like that? The demons aren’t even that—are they that—”
“So?” She raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t this a good thing for us?”
“A good thing?” He seemed genuinely uncertain whether she was being serious. “Sister, are you—I mean—”
“What?”
“I mean—” He stopped, reconsidered, began again. “A good thing how, exactly?”
Edith put down what she was holding and looked at him.
“What do we want, by being here? By serving the king?”
He answered carefully, the way he had learned to answer her. “Greater power.”
“Not exactly—but not wrong either. Greater power comes from a larger domain and a greater population.” She let that sit for a moment before continuing. “If ancient witches, alien species, and the demons themselves all come to stand alongside the king’s banner—this kingdom’s reach will extend beyond the human world into realms no king has ever touched. Do you understand what that means?”
He didn’t answer immediately. She pressed on.
“A lord who owns a village can name every one of his subjects. A lord who governs a city cannot. The diversity of a domain tells you how vast it is.” She looked at him steadily. “And I know of no king in recorded history who has ruled over alien species. This is the new opportunity. It’s exactly what we came here for—why we left a small domain in a remote region of the north. So why are you afraid of it?”
Cole stood still for a long time. Then, carefully: “But… they’re not our kind.”
Edith let one corner of her mouth lift.
“As long as His Majesty holds the reins, he can do whatever he wants with those alien creatures.” She said it simply, the way one states a practical truth.
Something in the temperature of the room shifted. Cole was quiet.
“Now—” she turned back to the dress he was still holding— “it’s time to pay your debt.”
Her eyes narrowed to something that was almost amused, almost fond, and entirely unyielding.
“Put it on. Let me see.”