The arena was still emptying when Dara sat back down.
Not because she hadn't processed what she saw. Because she had, and it required sitting with before it became movement.
Voss remained beside her. The specific gravity of two professionals who had just watched something that didn't fit their existing frameworks and were determining what to do about that.
The arena floor below them. The position where Lexel had stood with his hands behind his back. The position where Kain had gone down. The arena staff already moving through the space with the focused efficiency of people cleaning up after something significant.
"He didn't move like a Champion," Dara said.
Voss looked at her.
"Or a knight," she continued. "Or any warrior class I've encountered in Jaar or anywhere else." She looked at the arena floor with the focused attention of someone running every framework she had against what she'd seen and finding none of them adequate. "The stance. The hands behind the back. The bare hands as primary weapon throughout. The economy of every movement — the minimum required and nothing beyond it." She paused. "It reads like Monk class."
"You've seen Monk class?" Voss asked.
"I've read about it," Dara said. "Never seen one move. But the descriptions—" she looked at where the stance had been, "—match what I just watched. Exactly."
"A Monk class," Voss said, "who cleared the Tower of Lon."
"Who killed a Champion with his bare hands without his equipment," Dara said. "And broadcast his name to the full court before the kill." She stood. "I'm going to ask him."
Voss looked at her. "He won't tell you."
"Probably not," Dara said. "But I want to see what he does with the question."
The corridor outside the arena. Lexel moving through it with the easy pace of someone who had completed a task and was considering what to do next. The gauntlets back on. The smirk present in the residual way it was present after something had gone the way it was going to go.
Dara caught up to him and fell into step beside him without announcing herself.
"What class are you?" she asked.
Direct. No preamble. The approach of someone who had decided that the direct method was the only one worth taking with this specific person.
Lexel looked at her. The easy interest of someone who found the question amusing. "Why?"
"Because you didn't fight like a Champion," she said. "Or a knight. Or any warrior class I've encountered." She looked at him with the professional directness of someone presenting an assessment rather than making an accusation. "The stance. The bare hands. The economy of movement. It reads like Monk class." A pause. "But I've never seen a Monk move like that. Nobody in Aedryn has — there are no Monks here that I know of."
"Is that so," Lexel said.
"Is it Monk class?" she asked.
He looked at her for a long moment. At the direct expression. At the professional assessment running behind it — a Champion who had watched a duel that didn't fit any of her frameworks and had come to the source because that was more useful than speculating from a distance.
He smiled. Not the smirk — the genuine one, the one that appeared when someone had asked something he found genuinely interesting.
"WarGod Scion," he said.
Dara looked at him.
"I'm serious," she said.
"So am I," Lexel said pleasantly.
"WarGod Scion," she said again. Testing the sound of it against what she knew, which was every class and subclass recorded in Jaar's guild archives and several that weren't.
It matched nothing.
"You won't find it in any record in Jaar," Lexel said. He kept walking. "Or Aedryn." A beat. "Good luck with the research."
He left her in the corridor with a class name that didn't exist in any record she had access to and the specific expression of someone who had asked a direct question, received a direct answer, and was now considerably more confused than she had been before asking.
She stood in the corridor for a moment.
Not a joke, she thought. He wasn't joking.
Which was the part that bothered her.
---
Lexel found Seravine in the adjoining chamber — the one with the window overlooking the garden rather than the courtyard, the one where the work happened rather than the performance of work. Attendants at the correct distance, which was the distance of people who had learned that certain conversations required a specific radius of privacy and had arranged themselves accordingly.
She looked up when he appeared in the doorway.
"I was going to send for you," she said.
"I know," Lexel said. He looked around the room with the easy assessment of someone noting the layout. "Nice room. Better than the throne room."
"The throne room is for the court," Seravine said. "This room is for the work." She gestured at the chair across from her desk — not an invitation exactly, more the indication of someone who had decided how this conversation was going to be arranged. "Sit."
Lexel sat. With the easy compliance of someone who had decided that sitting was fine and would have remained standing if he'd decided otherwise.
Seravine looked at him. At the expression that hadn't changed since the arena. At the man who had walked off the arena floor with a name the capital had just given him and come directly to her room before she could send for him.
"You broadcast your name," she said.
"I did," he said.
"Not for vanity," she said.
"No," he said.
"For someone specific," she said. "Not the court. Someone who needed to hear it and isn't here yet." She looked at him steadily. "Your brothers."
Lexel looked at her. At the queen who had arrived at the correct answer through observation alone without being told anything, which was the thing about Seravine Jaar that was going to require accounting for.
"Two of them," she continued. "Based on what you've been asking about through every information channel in this capital." A pause. "I looked."
"And?" Lexel said.
"Nothing," Seravine said.
Flat. Confident. The specific delivery of someone who was not offering a qualified maybe but a position they had arrived at through thorough work.
"There is no record of two individuals matching your description anywhere in Jaar's territory or the territories my network covers," she said. "If two talents of your caliber had been moving through Aedryn, I would know. My network is not incomplete on this continent." She looked at him directly. "Which suggests your brothers are not in Aedryn."
"She provides no value then," Lexel thought. "Not over Halveth. Not for the brothers. If she doesn't know—"
"Stop," Lulu said, through the Anti-System.
He stopped.
"She doesn't know your brothers," Lulu said. "But think about what she does know. She has a private network that covers territory nobody else has mapped. Free territories. Lands outside Jaar's jurisdiction, outside official records, outside the channels Emperor's Eye runs." A pause. "The towers aren't in kingdom territory. They're in the gaps between kingdoms. In the places official cartography doesn't reach. In the free land that nobody governs."
Lexel looked at Seravine differently.
The towers. Not information about where his brothers were — the towers themselves. Each one conquered unlocking the infrastructure that connected him to Myda and Seleron. Group Chat. Geolocation Tag. Shared Spatial Storage. The network that didn't exist yet because the towers that built it hadn't been conquered yet.
His brothers weren't findable through information networks. They were findable through the Anti-System infrastructure. And the Anti-System infrastructure lived in the places that the woman across the desk had been mapping through private channels for years.
"The towers," Lexel said. "Do you know anything about towers?"
Seravine looked at him. "You mean like the Tower of Lon?"
Lexel smirked.
"I know of one," she said. "And suspect another."
"Tell me."
"Far east of Jaar," she said. "Beyond the Aeven Pass. Past the territory the war is currently contesting, into land that Jaar's jurisdiction doesn't reach." She looked at him. "Free land — no kingdom claims it, no noble governs it. The monsters roamed in it generations ago, and nobody has established formal governance since. My network has a contact who passed through it two years ago and described a structure matching what you're describing."
A pause. "The local population had built their settlement around it, the way Lanjaar built around the Tower of Lon. They called it something else. But the description—"
"Matches."
"Matches," Seravine confirmed. "The second — south. Further south than my network's reliable coverage. Two separate merchant contacts mentioned it independently over three years without knowing they were describing the same thing." She looked at him. "Rumors only. Not confirmed."
"What do you want in exchange?" Lexel said to Seravine.
Seravine put her foot on top of the other. She smirked as she noticed how Lexel watched the split second her groin was bare. "The war is coming very, very soon, amplified by the death of Kain and Klauss. I assume that now is either the opportunity to strike us or for them to gain your favor, maybe through fake information about your brothers. Either way, this war is beneficial to you as long as you make a name out of it."
"Not bad," said Lexel, clapping. "I figured that the offers from lesser kingdoms would come in the near future."