Episode 044| The Unreadable Rank

Kaiyuan Year 1010, January 4 · 9:14 p.m. · Saint Tranya, Underground · Beyond the Line

Lika didn't turn his head.

The hand on his shoulder put no weight into it, but had no intention of moving either. After that line — watching the show costs money — the man at his back said nothing more, just held it there and waited to see what he'd do.

Lika turned around, slowly.

It was a man half a head shorter than Lika, in an old coat patched more times than you could count, an old scar under his left eye. There was nothing fierce in his face — if anything it was a little tired, the kind of tired that says how many's this been tonight. To the people beyond the line, catching some outsider who'd come creeping down from above to gawk was about as routine as packing up a stall.

"New ones are all like this," the man said, letting go of his shoulder, stepping back half a pace, giving Lika room to come into the light. "Stand outside the sign and stare a good while, and figure no one's seen you."

He looked Lika up and down once.

---

Then Lika saw the man's eyes change for an instant. Not the way they change when you're looking at a person — the way they change when you're reading something.

Lika knew this one. He'd read too many faces in the act of reading something.

By reflex he reached the Triggerer's sense of bearings a little toward the man. He could read it — something was running just then on the man, a very simple, very low-effort ability, like a measuring rule used every day, used until you no longer had to think about it. That rule stretched out toward Lika, to measure a value off him.

Lika knew what it was. Down here, the first thing anyone did on meeting was likely to be run over once by this rule — to be measured into a letter from E to S, measured into which layer of this underground city you stood on.

---

The man's brow drew down for a moment.

He looked at Lika again. Not tired this time. The rule stretched out once more.

Lika could read it: the rule came back empty-handed a second time.

He more or less understood.

That rule was made to measure "Awakeners" — to measure how much weight their bare hands could bear up, how wide a gap they could open in a wall, how much of that strength there was. But Lika had no such strength on him. What he'd brought back from under the Frozen Reach wasn't strength, it was another set of things entirely — Observer, Triggerer, the access to read a crevice and rewrite a rule. That set of things wasn't on this rule's scale.

The rule couldn't reach him. In a place where everyone had been measured, where everyone had a letter stuck to them, what Lika measured out as was blank.

---

To the man, this was more trouble than measuring out an S.

Measure an S, and he knew to be afraid; measure an E, and he knew he needn't be polite. But this blank of Lika's was neither — he didn't know what to make of Lika. Some poor wretch who hadn't even Awakened, who'd simply taken a wrong turn down here? Or something that even his rule couldn't reach?

Those two, beyond the line, were worlds apart in how they got treated. And he couldn't tell which it was.

---

Lika stood there and didn't help him tell.

The most comfortable place for him had always been the moment when others couldn't read him. Can't read you, they have to guess; the moment they guess, they show what they're thinking. The man in front of him was holding up the scale in his own head for Lika to see — weighing it out, weighing whether Lika was someone he could afford to cross.

Lika let him weigh. One more person who couldn't see through him was one more measure of safety on the road ahead.

---

The man stared at Lika for 3 seconds, then made the decision Lika had expected: he didn't decide himself.

He tilted his head, toward some direction deep in the market, and gave a low whistle. 2 notes, one high, one low.

Not far off, something answered.

Lika heard at least 2 people, from different directions, closing in toward his corner — their steps heavier than the smoker's earlier, steadier than this man's.

"Your sort," the man said, looking back at Lika, that bit of tiredness gone from his face entirely, "isn't mine to handle. The people above will have to take a look at you."

Half a step to Lika's rear left, that knot of cold didn't stir at all. Shadow_001 showed no sign of leaving — it seemed to want to know too, who "the people above" were.

【Ch. 044 End · Saint Tranya, Underground, Beyond the Line】