Reaper(Cradle #10)(16)

He planned on staying inside his house aboard his cloud fortress, motionless, until he had healed.

He had spent no effort on decorations or customizing his housing, so his bedroom was a room with a bed in it. That was all. If he needed to keep his belongings somewhere, they could stay in his void key or sit on the floor.

Likewise, he lay on his bed and stared up at the ceiling and waited for the discomfort to fade.

Or so he intended. But he grew bored.

He rummaged through his void key with his perception, but he found nothing that could entertain him. The best he had kept were dream tablets demonstrating scripts or techniques.

Ziel had once told his students that if they had a spare moment to themselves, they should spend it cycling. He cursed himself. There were immersive tablets that would allow him to experience any kind of dream he wanted, and all of them would beat lying there staring up at his ceiling.

He wished for any distraction, and then he heard a knock at the door.

Ziel revised his wish.

Any distraction except a visitor, he thought.

The person knocked politely but persistently, and Ziel finally reached out and felt their spirit. When he sensed who it was, he dragged himself to his feet and out to the front entrance, where he opened the door.

Lindon loomed outside, his broad frame taking up the entire doorway. He ducked his head and his wintersteel badge dangled in front of him.

“Apologies for bothering you, but do you have a moment to talk?”

“I’m busy.”

Lindon started to apologize again, which pricked Ziel’s conscience. Lindon was too earnest, to the point that it made Ziel feel guilty lying to him.

“Never mind, I was lying,” Ziel said. “Come in.”

That should be enough explanation. He turned around and left the door open so Lindon could follow him.

“Gratitude. I don’t think I’ve been on a proper tour of your fortress.”

Ziel braced himself for polite compliments about his bare, boring house, but then Lindon continued.

“Does yours have the same foundational scripts that ours does?”

Ziel considered that it would be downright rude to refuse a curious student’s question. “Mostly. It was solid enough—the Court does good work—but I had them add another layer of concealment. Then I laid an encryption circle of my own around the whole cloudbase.”

It was the first and only modification Ziel had made to his home. If he kept the Ninecloud Court scripts as they were, then the Sha family would have ward keys to all his security.

That shouldn’t be a problem, since he had never been an enemy of the Ninecloud Court in the first place, but he wouldn’t allow them the ability to deactivate his cloud and let him plummet from the sky if he could help it.

Granted, any Monarch could do that regardless of what scripts he had in place, but that he couldn’t help.

Lindon squinted at the floor as though he could see the buried scripts below. “Fascinating. Do you mind if I…”

Ziel gestured his agreement, and Lindon extended his own perception to admire the scripts. Strictly from a security perspective, Ziel ought to have prevented anyone from seeing the exact layout of his protective scripts, including Lindon.

But it came back to a similar situation to that of the Monarchs. If Lindon really wanted to kill Ziel, he could, and an extra layer of encryption wasn’t going to slow him down.

Lindon muttered to himself, and Ziel expected him to pull out a pad to take notes. Or to summon that mind-spirit of his.

Then Ziel remembered that Dross was gone, maybe for good, and his heart squeezed out one small drop of pity.

“Gratitude,” Lindon said at last. “I appreciate the chance to learn from a master.”

“Scripts are great. My food stays fresh and my house is warm in the winter. But ask me what good my scripts did me against the Weeping Dragon.”

“It was a script formation that weakened the Titan enough for us to drive it off,” Lindon pointed out.

“Yeah. That’s the work of a master. You want to learn from someone, learn from them.”

“That’s what I came here to talk to you about,” Lindon said, and suddenly it was as though Ziel could see the future. He saw exactly what Lindon was about to ask him.

“I’m not coming,” he said.

“We would very much appreciate your expertise.”

“I said I wasn’t going to fight the Dreadgod, but I did that. I’ve done my part.”

“I’ll scout it out myself first. But if we’re going to make any progress, we need—”

“Stop. I like you, Lindon. I was a lot like you when I was your age, except weaker and not so crazy. But I’m not part of your team.”

Lindon looked vaguely hurt, but that wasn’t enough to slow Ziel down. It would only be more painful the more he let this play out.

“I will fulfill my obligation to Eithan, and then I will go my own way. Don’t rely on me for help.”

Lindon’s gaze dropped. “I didn’t mean to cause you any inconvenience. If we find anything to bring back, would you mind taking a look from here?”

Ziel shrugged. “Sure. As long as it isn’t too much effort.”

Lindon’s unhealthy obsession with advancement had paid dividends, and he was far stronger than anyone his age had any right to be, but he was still young. He needed to find a life to live before it was too late, and Ziel hoped this would remind him that there were people in the world who didn’t care about the sacred arts to the exclusion of all else.