He walked the main street on the way back to the transit point.
Shadow had been working for two hours. The clones — as many as Arthur had ever deployed simultaneously, running in every direction through the city and the surrounding villages — were each carrying a single gold coin. Not deposited. Placed. In a hand, on a windowsill, beside a door. Anyone whose signature read as genuinely struggling received one.
He watched through the network as people found them. An old woman coming out for water found one on her step and stood looking at it for a long time. A baker opening his shop at four in the morning found one on the counter and looked around the empty street and back at the coin, unable to account for it. A child sleeping in a doorway — too young to be sleeping in a doorway — found one in his coat pocket when he woke and did not know what to do with his expression.
A gold coin was more than most of them made in a year.
Arthur walked the street and let Shadow keep working and did not feel the way he had expected to feel, which was satisfied. He knew his plan wasn't perfect. He knew handing out a gold coin to a homeless person was a temporary solution. But he also knew he wasn't responsible for saving everyone and he didn't want to be. He was protecting his family and all the rest were just the consequences of that singular purpose.
He thought: they will not be taking my sisters anywhere.
He arrived at the transit point and went home.
◆ ◆ ◆
His mother was in his room.
She was sitting in the chair by the window with the magic lamp on and her hands in her lap, and she was looking at the empty bed, and she looked up when he came through the window and her face went through several things in quick succession before it settled on the one she had decided to lead with.
He stood in the window frame and looked at her.
He was eight years old. He was wearing his coat and his belt and he had just spent a night doing things that he could not tell her about and the mana expenditure of the evening was catching up with him and he suddenly felt the full weight of being very tired and also very caught.
'Where,' she said. Quietly. Each word deliberate. 'On earth. Have. You. Been.
He opened his mouth. He closed it.
'I had Shadow,' he started. 'Go check. On the count. To make sure nothing was coming our way. To make sure we were safe.'
Her face went red.
Not the quick red of immediate anger. The slow red of someone who had been sitting in a chair for five hours looking at an empty bed and was now looking at the child who had made it empty and was feeling the full scope of the past hours arrive at once.
She stood up. She walked to him. She dragged him out from the window sill, picked him up — all of him, coat and belt and tired mana-depleted seven-year-old — the way she picked up sacks of grain, efficiently and without ceremony, and turned toward the door.
He heard Lyra and Clara's door open. Their faces appeared in the gap — wide eyes, sleep-mussed hair, the specific expression of children who had heard something and were now trying to determine whether they should be concerned.
They saw Arthur in Mira's arms.
They saw Arthur's face.
Lyra's eyebrows went up slightly.
Clara's hand went over her mouth.
'You ran away,' Mira said. She was carrying him to the living room. Her voice had the quality of someone who was going to be very clear and was choosing each word. 'In the middle of the night. Without telling anyone. You are still just a child, Arthur.'
'I'm sorry,' he said, very quietly.
'You are still a child, and you ran away in the middle of the night to do something you decided you needed to do without telling your mother, without telling your father, without —'
'I wanted to keep everyone safe,' he said.
She stopped walking.
'You dare,' she said, in a tone he had never heard from her, 'talk back to me like that.'
He did not say anything further. He was aware that his eyes were doing something he had not authorized them to do. He was aware that being carried was not helping with the dignity of the situation.
She layed him onto the edge of the couch and pulled his pant's down and took off his belt. Then she got to work, spanking him. The shame, the humiliation, and the pain, all of it came flooding to the surface. He knew he was reincarnated and technically older then he seemed but right now, in this life, he was a child and he couldn't help crying his eyes out when being spanked. He balled, and wept, and yelled, and mumbled an apology.
'I just wanted to protect Lyra and Clara -' Arthur mumbled between cries. His excuses only infuriated his mother, the spanks could be heard in the home.
Arthur looked around, with his red eyes and damp face and saw his sisters, now hiding in the hallway peaking out at the punishment he was receiving. Technically, it didn't physically hurt, but emotionally, knowing how mad his mom was and the shame he was being subjected to, it was the most painful thing he ever experienced.
After ten or so spanks, she finally stopped and helped him pull his pants back up. Arthur, now fully unable to control his tears was even crying to the point of hyperventilating.
Seeing this she Mira stated clearly and with full authority, 'You are grounded, you are grounded, and I mean it, and I do not want to hear a single word about why it is unfair or why you had good reasons.'
He nodded. He did not say anything. His face was wet.
She sat down on the living room and looked at him — held at arm's length, tear-streaked — and something in her expression changed. Not softened. Changed in the way that fury changed when it ran into the thing underneath it, which was not fury at all.
Arthur rarely cried and never this loudly and out of control. Despite her tough facade, dishing out a punishment on Arthur was one of the hardest things she has ever done. She knew how strong he was and how much he helped their family but she was still his mother and him sneaking out of the house to do only God knows frustrated her beyond belief.
She pulled him in.
Not gently, not gradually. She pulled him against her chest the way she had held him when he was just a baby.
He sunk into her arms and put his face into her shoulder.
He had wanted to keep them safe. He had wanted to close the door on the count's comfortable voice and his plans for when the girls were older. He had done that. He had done it completely, and his sisters were safe but he still had to kill people tonight. And after all he did to protect his home, he got punished by his mom. Spanked. It felt so unjust. He felt so frustrated. But being in his mom's arms as she comforted him, he looked up and saw tears in her eyes too. He realized that she likely had a hard time doing that.
He cried.
Not quietly, not with the controlled quality he brought to things he wanted to manage. The actual version, the one that came from somewhere that did not consult the management system first. He cried about the count's voice and about Clara in the clearing with the goblins and about Lyra's name being spoken in that official's tone and about being eight years old and knowing things that meant he could never entirely stop watching for what was coming.
Mira held him and said nothing for a while. Then she said, quietly, against the top of his head: 'You are their brother. You are allowed to love them. You are not allowed to carry everything alone. Do you hear me.'
Unable to speak clearly, he nodded to confirm he understood.
'You are still a child. Even you. Even with everything you can do, you are still my child. And at times like this —' she pulled him closer, '— you let me be your mother. Yes?'
He nodded. He was still crying, slower now, the way it slowed when the worst of it had moved through.
'Good,' she said.
Lyra and Clara had come into the room somewhere during this. He became aware of them sitting on either side of Mira — Clara curled against her arm, Lyra sitting close with the specific stillness she had when she was feeling something she had decided not to name. Neither of them said anything.
Mira looked at her three children arranged around her in the lamplight. She did not say anything either.
Arthur felt the last of the mana exhaustion settle over him with the weight of something that had been waiting politely to arrive until he stopped moving. Seizing the count's estate and supplementing shadow's mana usage to send out thousands of spiders was a lot of work. He was tired and warm and the house was quiet and his family was present.
He was asleep before he knew it was happening.
◆ ◆ ◆
Edric came downstairs at six.
He stood in the living room doorway. His wife was asleep in the settle with all three children around her — Arthur against her chest, Clara tucked under her arm, Lyra leaning against her shoulder with the journal still in her hand from whenever she had stopped pretending she wasn't listening.
He looked at them for a long moment.
He got a blanket from the chest by the fireplace and spread it over them, gently, without waking anyone. He looked at Mira's face, peaceful in the early morning light. He looked at his children.
He put his hand briefly on Mira's shoulder. She did not wake. He went to start the morning work, and let them sleep.
❧