Extra's Survival: Raising SSS-Rank Characters Is My Only Option

Encrid sat.

He adjusted his coat without hurrying, then placed both hands flat on the table where they could be seen.

He met the woman’s winter-river eyes with his steady gaze.

And then he did the single most important thing the novel had taught him about these people.

He did not start by apologising.

”No,” he said. ”I won’t tell you that.”

One of the men by the wall shifted his weight. Even the woman seemed quite taken aback by his response.

”You don’t seem to understand your position, my lord.”

Her voice remained level.

”That phrase, spoken by an unknown person, has one answer. Just because you are a noble - it doesn’t change that. If anything, rank makes it worse. A duke’s son who knows our codes isn’t a smaller problem.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

”He is a much larger one.”

”I understand my position exactly,” Encrid said.

He glanced around the room.

”I’m an unknown man holding your organisation’s keys, sitting in a locked cellar, outnumbered, two hundred miles from anyone who would come looking for me.”

He paused.

”The Wall doesn’t investigate people who go missing. I know better since I am in charge of the ledgers now - there isn’t even a procedure to search for disappearing men.”

He let that sit for a moment.

”My position is terrible.”

His eyes returned to hers.

”Which should tell you something about the quality of what I came here to sell. I am not someone who would risk my life over small errands.”

A brief silence followed. Once again the woman seemed conflicted. She must have expected Encrid to say something arrogant, but instead he was being completely honest - so there was only one thing she could ask for.

”Then tell me the errand.”

”Well, it’s a commission.”

Encrid leaned back slightly.

”I’m looking for a man. He’s somewhere on the Wall or within its territory. I have his name and very little else, and I need him found quietly and fast.”

He turned one hand palm-up.

”Without him ever knowing anyone was looking.”

”For your organisation, that’s a week of asking the right ears. Probably less.”

He smiled faintly.

”It would be the smallest thing you’ll do this month.”

”Small commissions have small prices.”

Her gaze sharpened.

”What are you offering?”

And there it was.

Encrid had rehearsed a dozen ways to say it during the walk here.

He had discarded every one.

There was no soft way to say what he knew - the best way was to be completely straight and simple about it.

”I’ll cure your Leader’s daughter.”

The room stopped the moment those words left his mouth.

It wasn’t dramatic - literally nothing moved.

And with these people, that was what stopping looked like.

The two men by the wall stopped even their smallest movements.

The woman became so still that the quiet crackle of the lamps suddenly seemed deafening.

”I don’t know what you think you’re referring to,” she said softly.

”You do.”

Encrid held her gaze.

”And I’m going to keep talking, because we’re well past the point where stopping helps me.”

He began laying out the information one piece at a time, just as the novel had.

”A girl of about nineteen now. It started when she was eleven.”

The woman’s expression didn’t change.

”Silver lines appeared beneath her skin, spreading outward from her heart. They worsen every winter and retreat during summer. That’s why your healers spent three years calling it a blood-chill and treating the wrong illness entirely.”

A pause.

”She has cold sleeps. She falls into them without warning. Sometimes for a day. Sometimes three days.”

Encrid’s voice remained steady. But the woman’s fingers slowly tightened against the table.

”Every time she wakes, she’s weaker.”

Encrid watched her carefully and nodded slowly toward the racks of message tubes.

”The Empire’s physicians have never seen it because it can’t happen naturally.”

Then he added the final piece.

”And you are seeking out the elves as your last ray of hope.”

The woman’s eyes changed.

”That’s why the Blue Moon keeps a senior officer, such as yourself - running a tavern at the edge of the world, sending letters toward a forest that hasn’t answered anyone in three hundred years.”

Silence.

”Is that enough or should I keep talking?”

The woman’s face had gone white.

Not the white of fear.

The white of someone hearing the private shape of her own life spoken aloud by a stranger.

”Who...”

Her voice had almost disappeared.

”Who told you?”

The two men were suddenly there.

Encrid hadn’t seen them move, but a blade rested cold against the right side of his throat.

And another pressed against his ribs.

The hands holding them were completely relaxed. Somehow, that was the worst part.

Encrid didn’t move.

Under his ribs, his heart was hammering out its honest opinion of this plan.

He made himself smirk anyway.

”You don’t want to do that.”

He spoke to the room in general.

”Think it through.”

His eyes remained on the woman.

”If I’m a leak, your Leader will want me alive to question. And you’ve just taken that opportunity away from him.”

He swallowed carefully against the blade.

”And if I’m not a leak...”

His eyes shifted toward the woman.

”...then I’m the only man alive who can save her.”

He paused.

”You’ll spend the rest of your life explaining tonight to your leader.”

The blades remained still. And his voice stayed flat despite the steel against his skin.

”That isn’t a threat.”

A faint smile touched his lips.

”I am offering you a deal here.”

”Names.”

The woman’s voice was colder now.

”Give me a name. Who told you about her?”

”Nobody living.”

Encrid’s answer came immediately.

And, technically, it was the truth.

The source of his information was the novel itself.

A book written in another world, by a person who had never existed in this one.

By every reasonable definition, neither the book nor its author was alive.

”Nobody you can find, follow, or bleed.”

He looked directly into her eyes.

”That answer isn’t going to change. So I suggest we trade in things that can.”

He breathed carefully.

With a blade against his throat, even breathing was a hard decision.

The woman said nothing. She simply stared at him.

And Encrid watched the battle taking place inside those winter-river eyes.

The impossibility of what he knew against the precision of it.

Disbelief and hope tearing into each other.

Hope won.

It always did.

It was, after all, such a terrible thing - Hope.

✦ ✦ ✦