Episode 048| Brought Before the Boss

Kaiyuan Year 1010, January 4 · 9:38 p.m. · Saint Tranya, Underground · Beyond the Line

The light inside the door was warm.

Not the rows of white lamps out in the passage — a few warm bulbs under old, worn shades, throwing their light over a wooden table you could tell had years on it. The table was real wood — down here in this undercity where even the Source Stone ran short, a real wooden table was more of a luxury than a piece of rift goods.

Behind the table sat a man.

He didn't get up. He watched Lika walked in under guard, turning a piece of rift goods slowly in his hand, the crystal's flicker going bright and dark between his fingers.

He wasn't young anymore; there was grey at his temples. But the way he sat there was nothing like an old man's — more like a man who knew very well that this table, this room, this whole Beyond the Line was his.

"Let him go," he said.

The 2 underlings holding Lika let go at once and stepped back to the door.

---

"I hear," the man set the rift goods down on the table, "my people can't measure you."

Lika didn't answer.

"That's a rare thing, Beyond the Line." He lifted his eyes to Lika. Those eyes weren't like anyone's outside — outside, people looked at Lika to weigh how dangerous he was; this man looked at Lika to reckon what he was worth. "The ones who come down to find me are either an E, or an S, or some worm scared out of its wits that took a wrong turn. All 3 sorts I know how to handle. But you—"

He paused.

"You're one I can't measure. The thing I like least is the thing I can't measure."

Lika spoke, for the first time. "Then you can throw me out."

"No." The man gave a small smile, a smile with no warmth in it. "What I like least, I'm also least likely to let go. A thing you can't measure is either especially useless, or especially useful. Until I've worked out which, I'm not letting you leave."

---

He tipped his chin at Lika. "Sit."

Lika sat down in the chair across the table. All this way he'd been pushed, hauled, left to wait — this was the first time anyone had asked him to sit.

"They call me Goran," the man said. "These past months, more people have died because of this name in Beyond the Line than you've seen. You'd do well to remember it."

Lika remembered it. But what he remembered wasn't only the name.

In those few seconds of sitting down, his eyes hadn't been idle. This room was far finer than the market outside — warm lamps, a real wooden table, the coat on Goran cut from cloth that didn't look made in the undercity. An underground king who lived off rift goods, well-off enough for all this — that was already a little wrong.

What was more wrong was the thing at the corner of the table.

It was a screen, a stack of paper pressing down on it; Lika could see only one corner. But the format of the data stream flickering on that corner he recognised — that wasn't something cobbled together in the undercity. That was a line from up top, a regulation one, the kind you needed very high privileges to even reach.

An underground king, with a line running up to the high levels on the surface laid out on his desk.

---

Lika drew his gaze back, showing nothing on his face. His greatest skill was this: when he saw something he wasn't meant to see, not a muscle on his face moved.

Across from him, Goran picked up the piece of rift goods again.

"You came down here," he turned the crystal, as if offhand, "not to buy goods, and not by a wrong turn. You're looking for something. Something a long way down."

Lika's fingertips moved, a very small movement, on his knee.

He had never said #002 to anyone. All this way he'd been hemmed in, left to wait, and given away not a single word. Yet Goran, sitting behind this table, in a few light strokes, had spoken the thing buried in his innermost layer.

---

Goran lifted his eyes, looked at that face of Lika's that hadn't moved at all, and smiled again.

"Don't be tense. I'm no mind-reader." He set the crystal back down on the table. "It's that someone — someone who stands higher than me — had me keep watch, for whether these few days a 'one that can't be measured' might come feeling his way down to the undercity."

He leaned forward a little.

"You're 2 days earlier than I was waiting for."

Lika sat in that chair, and felt for the first time that this undercity was not merely a black market.

Someone was waiting for him. And the one waiting for him wasn't behind this table — he was further up.

【Ch. 048 End · Saint Tranya, Underground, Beyond the Line · Inner Room】