A scuffed leather boot kicked against the courtyard gate just as the afternoon sun dipped behind the western ridge.
Kaelen Vance did not open his eyes. He lay in the hemp hammock, his head resting against a soft wool pillow.
Behind his closed eyelids, the system tally ticked quietly into its thirty-sixth hour.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Stacking Time: 36h 00m] [Active Multiplier: 37x READY!] [Status: Mortal Pulse Rank 6 (Clean)] [Vessel Capacity: 240h (Stage 1 Cap)]
A day and a half of pure quiet, Kaelen mused, letting the warm current settle through his meridians. Thirty-seven times baseline speed, and all it cost me was an afternoon nap.
The gate rattled again. Barnaby Holt limped across the yard and yanked the heavy timber open.
A scrawny youth wearing the stained apron of a fishmonger fell through the entrance, gasping for breath. The lad clutched an iron token marked with Deacon Vane’s three-crow crest.
“Young Master Kaelen!” the runner wheezed, falling to his knees before the porch. “Deacon Vane sent me from the market! It is Garrick!”
Barnaby scowled, raising his wooden ladle. “Speak plainly, boy, before I grease your ears with soup.”
“Scar-Nose and three Iron-Hound thugs just spent your second brother’s silver down in the lower market,” the youth panted. “They bought three jugs of pine pitch and four broadaxes from the smithy to burn your drying barn tonight!”
Barnaby’s face went white, then mottled red with fury.
“Those dogs!” Barnaby roared, waving his ladle toward the sky. “Burning an ancestral herb barn! I will sharpen the scythes! We will dig trenches along the wall and stand guard until morning!”
Kaelen turned a page of Book 3 of The Bandit King’s Secret Bride.
“Put the ladle down, Barnaby,” Kaelen said in a mild voice. “Nobody is digging trenches.”
Barnaby stared at him in disbelief. “Did you hear the runner, lad? They are coming with torches at midnight! We have five cartloads of dry medicinal herbs in that barn! If it burns, the clan audit will hang us!”
“Standing in cold midnight fog stiffens my knee meridians,” Kaelen murmured, without looking up from his page. “Night air brings damp chills to the spleen. I have no intention of catching a cold over four street thugs.”
If I stay awake all night swinging an iron poker in the mud, my thirty-seven times multiplier resets to zero. A man who trades thirty-seven times compound interest for a midnight street brawl deserves to weed turnips for eternity.
“Then what do we do?” Barnaby sputtered. “Do we hide in the cellar?”
“We go to bed at our regular hour,” Kaelen said. “First, we prepare the hospitality.”
***
By twilight, the courtyard smelled of rotting vegetation and bitter vinegar.
Kaelen sat on a low wooden bench beneath the porch eaves, sipping warm chrysanthemum tea while directing the work.
“Move the real stock first,” Kaelen instructed, pointing with his porcelain cup. “Every bundle of Silver-Leaf Root, every sprig of Dragon-Tooth Grass, and all the bruised Grade 1 roots go under my bed and inside the cedar wardrobe.”
Mina worked with nimble fingers, hauling armloads of dried bundles into the sleeping quarters. Her small face glowed with excitement.
“I wrapped the best roots in oiled silk, Brother,” Mina said, wiping her brow. “The bedroom smells like a medicine shop now, but nothing will catch fire.”
“Excellent work,” Kaelen said. “Now, Barnaby. Bring out the fermentation barrels from behind the compost pit.”
Barnaby dragged out two wooden casks that smelled strongly enough to make a mountain goat gag. The barrels contained rotting skunk cabbage, sour turnip wash, and three jars of crushed ghost-pepper oil that had fermented under the summer sun for four months.
“This sludge would strip the varnish off a temple door,” Barnaby grumbled, coughing into his sleeve. “What are we doing with it?”
“Fill the drying racks with damp ditch straw,” Kaelen said. “Soak every bundle in that sludge. If someone brings a torch inside, it will not catch fire. It will only steam.”
Barnaby’s one eye widened. A wicked grin slowly spread across his wrinkled face.
“And the entrance?” the old man asked.
“Set three hunting crossbows on the floor joists,” Kaelen replied. “Tie the triggers to thin hemp line three inches above the threshold. Load them with wooden practice bolts dipped in pepper paste.”
Sera Thorne stepped down from the drying barn loft. She carried a coil of waxed cord and a small iron file.
“I rigged the roof hatches to drop two sandbags if the inner latch is pulled,” Sera said, her voice completely even. “Where do you want me stationed?”
“In the apple tree above the west wall,” Kaelen said. “When they trigger the sludge, knock them unconscious. Do not kill them. Dead bodies bring magistrates, and magistrates ask questions that require filling out paperwork.”
He finished his tea and stood up, stretching his arms toward the purple evening sky.
“I am going to sleep,” Kaelen announced. “Lock the front door behind you, Mina. If anyone wakes me before dawn, I will deduct their breakfast from their monthly allowance.”
A proper cultivator lets his traps do the overtime while he collects the interest.
He walked into his bedroom, closed the heavy oak door, and slid beneath the warm blankets.
Within five minutes, his breathing slowed to a deep, rhythmic murmur.
Above his head, the blue numbers clicked upward into the night.
***
Midnight settled over the mountain ridge with a cold, biting silence.
The moon slipped behind a bank of thick gray clouds, plunging the Third Herb Shed into ink-black darkness.
Near the western stone wall, four dark shapes climbed over the broken coping stones. They dropped into the vegetable patch with soft thuds, their leather boots sinking into the loose soil.
The lead cutthroat, a brute with a jagged scar across his nose, crouched low in the weeds. In his right hand, he held a heavy woodman’s hatchet. In his left, an unlit torch wrapped in hemp and tallow.
“Quiet, you fools,” Scar-Nose hissed, glancing toward the darkened main house. “The cripple sleeps in the east wing. We hit the drying barn first, soak the roof, and drop the fire.”
The four men crept across the stone flags toward the low wooden drying barn. The timber door stood slightly ajar, swinging gently in the mountain breeze.
“The door is open,” one thug whispered, pulling a flint and steel from his pouch. “They did not even bother to bolt it.”
“Lazy dogs,” Scar-Nose sneered. “Strike the spark. Let them wake up in ashes.”
His companion struck flint to steel and lit the hemp on Scar-Nose’s torch. Scar-Nose kicked the barn door wide.
Snap!
His left boot caught the waxed hemp cord stretched across the threshold.
Twang! Twang! Twang!
Three heavy hunting crossbows released simultaneously from the lower joists.
Blunted wooden bolts slammed into the lead cutthroats with bone-cracking force. One bolt caught Scar-Nose in the center of his chest, while two others smashed into the knees of his companions.
“Gah!” Scar-Nose wheezed, stumbling backward into the barn.
His flailing elbow struck the wooden lever beside the door frame.
A heavy wooden hopper tilted from the ceiling beam.
A thick, bubbling cascade of black skunk-cabbage sludge and fermented ghost-pepper oil poured down in a roaring torrent, drenching all four men from head to toe.
The stench hit the courtyard like an explosion of rotten eggs and burning sulfur.
“My eyes!” the second thug shrieked, clawing at his face as the ghost-pepper oil seeped into his eyelids. “It burns! It burns like acid!”
Scar-Nose gagged, vomiting violently into the mud as the suffocating stench filled his mouth and nostrils. His lit torch sizzled and died in the foul sludge, sending up clouds of acrid, stinging yellow smoke.
“Ambush!” the fourth thug screamed, turning to scramble back toward the courtyard wall.
A dark shadow dropped from the branches of the apple tree.
Sera Thorne landed lightly on the stone flags. Her ash-wood spear shaft whipped through the darkness with terrifying speed.
Thwack!
The blunt wooden pommel caught the fleeing thug behind the ear. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed face-first into the dirt.
Sera spun on her heel, her spear blurring in a tight crescent arc.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Three sharp, precise strikes cracked against the temples of the remaining cutthroats.
Within three seconds, all four men lay sprawled in the foul-smelling sludge, twitching feebly in complete unconsciousness.
Old Barnaby stumped out from the side porch, holding a lantern in his good hand and a coil of heavy hemp rope over his shoulder.
“By the ancestors,” Barnaby gasped, covering his nose with his sleeve. “That stench could knock a bull off its feet.”
“Tie them up,” Sera said, resting her spear against her shoulder without a drop of sweat on her brow. “Back to back, like turnip sacks. The master will want them delivered before breakfast.”
***
The dawn sun broke over the eastern ridge, painting the courtyard in bright amber light.
Inside the bedroom, Kaelen opened his eyes with a satisfied stretch.
The air in the room was fragrant with dried mountain herbs, completely sealed off from the horror outside.
A glowing blue notification pulsed before his eyes.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Stacking Time: 48h 00m] [Active Multiplier: 49x READY!] [Status: Mortal Pulse Rank 6 (Clean)] [Vessel Capacity: 240h (Stage 1 Cap)]
Forty-nine times, Kaelen thought, feeling the immense, smooth reservoir of spiritual energy hum within his chest. Two full days of doing absolutely nothing. My cultivation talent is nearly fifty times its natural speed.
He pulled on his cotton slippers, adjusted his linen robe, and picked up a clean porcelain teacup from the bedside table.
He stepped out onto the porch.
The morning breeze carried a faint whiff of cabbage rot, but the courtyard was already swept clean.
In the center of the flagstones sat the four Iron-Hound cutthroats. They were bound back-to-back with thick hemp rope, their faces bruised, their leather armor caked in foul black crust.
Old Barnaby stood over them, happily nudging Scar-Nose’s ribs with his wooden ladle.
“Morning, Young Master,” Barnaby chirped. “The hospitality was a grand success. Not a single ember touched the timber.”
“So I see,” Kaelen said, leaning against the wooden railing and sipping his hot jasmine tea. “Did they bring anything useful, or are they just decorative?”
Sera Thorne walked over from the tool shed, carrying a small leather pouch. She tossed it onto the porch table beside Kaelen’s teacup.
“Eight low-grade spirit stones,” Sera reported, her voice dry. “I kept their loose copper toward my night-watch tab.”
Kaelen swept the eight spirit stones into his sleeve with a practiced flick of his fingers.
Fifty-seven plus eight makes sixty-five Low-Grade Spirit Stones. Getting paid to sleep through an arson attack is the true sovereign path.
“Load them onto the manure cart, Barnaby,” Kaelen commanded smoothly. “Wheel them down to the manor’s main hall and dump them on the front steps as the morning guard shift changes.”
Barnaby grinned ear to ear, heaving the four groaning thugs onto the wooden flatbed. Before he rolled the cart out the gate, Sera bent to check Scar-Nose’s heavy leather boots for concealed daggers.
Her fingers caught a stiff seam inside the left boot lining.
With a sharp jerk, she ripped the leather cuff open.
A folded sheet of thick yellow parchment slipped out into her hand. The parchment was sealed with heavy red wax, bearing the official stamp of the Vance Clan Land Office and a jagged smelter mark.
Sera unfolded the document. Her eyes scanned the black ink lines, and her jaw tightened into an icy line.
“What is it?” Kaelen asked, noticing the sudden shift in her posture.
Sera walked up the porch steps and held the parchment out to him.
“This is not an arson contract,” Sera said quietly. “It is a signed duplicate of a formal promissory note from the Silver-Dice Den, dated five days ago.”
Kaelen took the parchment.
His eyes scanned the crisp, formal characters written across the center:
I, Garrick Vance, Second Son of Vance House, hereby pledge the deed of the Third Herb Shed as collateral. This covers thirty-five Low-Grade Spirit Stones of debt to Hound-Lord Briggs. In default of payment, possession transfers to the Iron-Hound Clan.
At the bottom of the page sat Garrick’s official clan seal, alongside a fresh thumbprint stamped in dark, dried blood.
Kaelen lowered the paper, his eyes narrowing slightly as he took a slow sip of his jasmine tea.
Garrick had not just sent four thugs to burn down an empty barn.
He had already mortgaged the ground beneath their feet to the Iron-Hound gang, and the Barony Tournament qualifiers were only eight days away.