Chapter 16 Verr
VERR
The report is still warm when it reaches my hand, the parchment holding a faint residual heat from transit magic as if it hasn’t fully decided it belongs in the physical world yet.
The ink smells sharp and metallic, not quite settled into the fibers, and I don’t like that; rushed work usually means someone is trying to outrun something, and that rarely ends cleanly.
“Another one?” I ask, already breaking the seal with my thumb.
Skot stands across the table with his usual stillness, hands folded neatly behind his back like he was placed there rather than having walked in. “Yes.”
That’s all he gives me, which is enough to confirm this isn’t routine chatter dressed up as urgency.
I unfold the parchment and scan quickly at first—location, loss estimates, supply disruption—then slower when the repetition starts to stand out in a way I don’t like.
The language is clean, detached, almost clinical, but the pattern underneath it is anything but.
“North corridor again,” I mutter, dragging my eyes back to the beginning.
“Expanding,” Skot says, not raising his voice, not shifting his posture, just correcting.
I glance up at him, irritation flickering, because I don’t like being corrected when I haven’t decided I’m wrong yet. “Is it?”
“Yes.”
The certainty in that single word pulls my attention back to the parchment, and this time I follow the route markings instead of the text. Inked lines cut across the page in uneven strokes, but the direction is clear enough, and the spacing between attacks is too consistent to be coincidence.
“Bandits don’t move like this,” I say, more to the pattern than to him.
“No.”
“Orcs do.”
“Yes.”
I set the report down harder than necessary, the sound snapping against the stone tabletop, then immediately regret the loss of control and still my hand before it can repeat the motion. “We’ve always had orcs,” I say. “That’s not new.”
“Not like this,” Skot replies.
That phrase again, and this time I don’t dismiss it.
I lean forward slightly, bracing my hands on the table as I look down at the routes, letting the shape of it form without forcing it into something convenient.
The attacks aren’t scattered, and they aren’t reckless; they’re placed, measured, almost patient in a way that doesn’t fit the way most people describe orcs.
“Krago,” I say.
It isn’t a question, and Skot doesn’t treat it like one. “No one else operates this way.”
That’s the part I don’t like. Krago doesn’t waste effort, and he doesn’t test boundaries unless he intends to break them later. If this is his work, then what I’m looking at isn’t random violence—it’s preparation.
I drag my finger along the inked path, following the progression from one outer settlement to the next, noticing how each strike forces the supply lines to bend inward just a little more. “He’s not just hitting villages,” I say, more slowly now. “He’s shaping movement.”
“Inward,” Skot adds.
“Yes,” I agree, straightening slightly as the implication settles into something heavier than I’m comfortable with. “And if he keeps doing that, then he’s not done. He’s building toward something.”
Skot says nothing, which tells me he’s already reached the same conclusion and decided to wait for me to catch up. I don’t like that either, but I can’t argue with it.
I pick the report up again, scanning the loss projections at the bottom, the neat little line that labels everything as “within acceptable margins,” and I almost laugh at how cleanly they’ve reduced it.
Villages erased, people gone, and it all collapses into a number that still fits inside a tolerable range.
“What’s the projected impact?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“Minimal disruption to core supply,” Skot replies. “Within acceptable limits.”
Of course it is. It always is, right up until it isn’t.
I exhale slowly and set the parchment down with more control this time, flattening it against the stone with the heel of my hand before stepping away from the table.
The corridor beyond the archway is dim, lit by cold magic that leaves more shadow than illumination, and the air carries that familiar dry weight of stone and control that defines this place.
“Then it isn’t a priority,” I say, because that’s the correct answer, the expected one, the one that keeps everything aligned.
Silence follows, but it doesn’t resolve into agreement or disagreement; it lingers instead, like something waiting to see which direction I’ll lean before it settles.
Skot doesn’t move, and that stillness reads like observation rather than acceptance, which irritates me more than open disagreement would.
“You disagree,” I say, turning my head just enough to look at him.
“I observe,” he replies.
I almost smile at that, but it doesn’t quite land. “Of course you do,” I mutter, stepping into the corridor and letting the conversation end where it stands.
The estate moves around me the way it always does—quiet, controlled, efficient.
Servants pass without looking up, guards maintain their routes with practiced precision, and nothing about it suggests anything has changed beyond the walls.
That’s the point of a place like this; the world can burn at the edges, and as long as the center holds, no one calls it a problem.
I’m halfway down the corridor when her voice stops me.
“Verr.”
I close my eyes briefly before turning, already knowing who it is before I look.
She stands at the threshold of the garden entrance, dirt still clinging to her hands, a faint smear along her jaw where she must have wiped it away without thinking. There’s tension in her posture, not fear exactly, but urgency that hasn’t settled into anything controlled yet.
“You’re not supposed to be inside,” I say.
“I know.”
“Then why are you?”
She steps forward instead of answering immediately, closing the distance with a kind of deliberate care that feels different from before, like she’s choosing each movement instead of reacting to the space around her. “I need to talk to you.”
I glance down the corridor out of habit, confirming we’re not being watched closely enough for it to matter. “This isn’t the place.”
“It is if you won’t come anywhere else.”
There’s no hesitation in that, and I don’t like how easily she says it. I study her for a moment, then nod once. “You have a minute.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It’s what you get.”
She steps closer anyway, not arguing the limit so much as ignoring it, and stops just inside the edge of my space. It isn’t submissive, and it isn’t reckless; it’s calculated in a way I don’t think she realizes yet.
“What’s happening out there?” she asks.
“Define ‘out there.’”
“Don’t do that,” she snaps, the frustration in her voice sharp enough to cut through the controlled quiet of the corridor. “You know what I mean.”
I tilt my head slightly, watching her. “Then say it.”
“Villages are getting hit,” she says. “Supply lines are breaking, and it’s not random.”
“Orc activity has increased along the northern routes,” I reply. “It’s being handled.”
“Handled how?” she presses.
“Containment. Rerouting. Standard response.”
Her expression tightens. “That’s not handling it. That’s letting it happen and adjusting around it.”
“It’s effective,” I say.
“For who?”
The question lands harder than it should, and I feel it before I can decide not to. “For Orthani,” I answer. “For the estate.”
She lets out a quiet, humorless breath. “Right. Of course.”
I take a step closer, closing the space she created. “Be careful.”
“Why?” she fires back. “Because I’m saying it out loud?”
“Yes.”
She doesn’t retreat. “You’ve seen the reports,” she says. “You know what they’re doing.”
“I’ve seen movement.”
“Stop reducing it,” she snaps. “It’s not just movement.”
I watch her for a moment, then gesture slightly with my hand. “Then explain it.”
She doesn’t hesitate. “They’re advancing. They’re hitting outer villages first, forcing supply lines to shift, then pushing inward once the response weakens. They’re testing how far they can go before anyone actually pushes back.”
She’s right, and I don’t like that she’s right. I don’t like that she’s saying it like it’s obvious.
“And?” I ask.
“And they’re not going to stop,” she says, stepping closer again. “Not until they hit something that makes them.”
“And you think that’s here.”
“I think it’s coming,” she says, and then her voice tightens just enough to give away what she’s been holding back. “My village is in their path.”
There it is, the real reason beneath everything else. I exhale slowly, letting that settle into the calculation rather than reacting to it. “Then it will be evacuated.”
Her expression doesn’t change. “No, it won’t.”
“Yes, it will.”
“No,” she repeats, more firmly this time. “It won’t.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because they don’t evacuate villages,” she says. “They replace them. They let them fall, then pull from somewhere else.”
I don’t like hearing that out loud, especially from her, and I don’t like that I can’t immediately argue it without lying. “You’re assuming the worst.”
“I’m recognizing the pattern.”
I study her, really study her, and see the shift that’s happened since the garden. She isn’t reacting anymore; she’s thinking, mapping, connecting things she shouldn’t have access to and turning them into something coherent.
“You want me to act,” I say.
“Yes.”
“On behalf of a human village.”
“Yes.”
I huff a quiet breath, running my tongue along the back of my teeth as I consider the weight of that. “You understand what that looks like.”
“I don’t care what it looks like.”
“I do.”
“Of course you do,” she says, frustration creeping back in. “Because everything here is about how it looks.”
“That’s not entirely wrong,” I admit, which throws her off for half a second. “But it’s not the whole of it either.”
“Then explain it,” she says.
I hesitate, because explaining it means acknowledging it, and acknowledging it means I can’t pretend this is simple anymore.
“If I move on this without justification,” I say, “I draw attention from every direction that matters. My father will question it. The court will question it. Every house looking for a weakness will see one.”
“Then give them a reason not to,” she says.
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Then make it.”
I almost laugh, but it dies before it reaches my throat. “You’re asking me to risk everything on something that doesn’t benefit us.”
“I’m asking you to stop pretending it doesn’t affect you,” she replies.
That lands harder than anything else she’s said, because there’s truth in it I haven’t decided what to do with yet. I look at her, at the steadiness in her posture and the way she refuses to back down even now, and I realize she isn’t going to let this go.
“You don’t understand the scale of what you’re asking,” I say.
“Then tell me,” she challenges.
I exhale slowly, glancing back toward the table where the report sits, the inked lines cutting across it in a pattern I can’t unsee now that I’ve recognized it. When I look back at her, the calculation has shifted, not resolved but no longer dismissed.
“You’re not wrong,” I say quietly, and I see the flicker of something in her expression when I admit it. “But acting on it carries consequences you aren’t accounting for. This isn’t just about one village, and it doesn’t stay contained once it starts.”
“Neither does this,” she says, gesturing vaguely toward the direction of the reports, the routes, the destruction neither of us has seen firsthand but both understand. “You said it yourself—they’re pushing inward.”
She’s forcing me to acknowledge it, piece by piece, until ignoring it becomes a decision instead of a default.
“You should go,” I say finally, not because the conversation is finished but because I need it to be for now.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one you’re getting.”
She searches my face, looking for something I’m not giving her yet, then exhales and steps back toward the garden entrance.
Her movements are controlled but tight through the shoulders, like she’s holding herself in place rather than letting the frustration take over, and I let her leave without stopping her because anything I say now would commit me to a direction I haven’t chosen.
Once she’s gone, I turn back to the table and pick up the report again, studying the routes with a level of attention I didn’t give them before.
The pattern is too clean to dismiss, too deliberate to ignore, and the longer I look at it the more it stops resembling disruption and starts looking like positioning.
Krago isn’t raiding blindly; he’s shaping the field, forcing responses, narrowing options, and if he continues at this pace, whatever comes next won’t be contained to the outer villages.
I fold the parchment slowly, more carefully than before, because dismissing it outright no longer feels accurate, and set it back down with a precision that matches the thought settling into place.
This is no longer someone else’s problem, and whether I act on it or not is going to matter more than I initially decided.