The Mechanic Garrick

Forty-five-year-old former mechanic Garrick huddled among three thousand Convicts.

The top of his head gleamed bald, while the few wisps of hair around it had frozen into stiff little spikes. His small, puffy eyes were far too lively; one look told you he was no docile sort.

A gust of cold wind slipped down his collar. He sniffed sharply and nearly sneezed again.

That almost-sneeze brought back the wretched business from a few months ago.

Garrick had been far more comfortable back then.

He was a senior technician for the Church, skilled with his hands and sweet with his words. He specialized in repairing the delicate, finicky machines of the rich and powerful.

That day, he had been invited to a priest's private residence to fix a faulty clock in the bedroom. For him, it should have been child's play.

The trouble was, he wasn't alone. The young mistress the priest kept in the house was there too, draped in a layer of thin silk. She lounged by the window drinking wine as she watched him work on the clock.

Watching would have been fine, but she couldn't keep her mouth in check. One moment she praised his nimble fingers; the next, his strong arms.

As she went on, her words slowly took on a different flavor. Garrick was no saint to begin with, and once that cloyingly sweet scent got to him, he naturally lost his restraint.

What happened next went without saying. But they had barely tumbled into bed when the priest returned home early.

In their panic, she shoved Garrick under the bed. In theory, if he had held his breath and stayed perfectly still, he might have escaped with his life.

Unfortunately, a long-haired animal-hide rug lay beneath that bed, and Garrick happened to be allergic to the stuff.

So at the worst possible moment to make a sound, he let out a tremendous sneeze. It was loud enough that the priest couldn't have pretended not to hear it if he'd tried.

There was no need to dwell on what followed. In the end, they stuffed Garrick into a wagon for condemned prisoners and sent him all the way to the Graymist Defense Zone.

At the memory, the corner of Garrick's eye twitched. He forced himself out of that heap of miserable recollections.

The wooden bowl in his hands was empty. He had scraped up every last drop of the hot wheat porridge he'd just received, and his stomach finally held a little warmth.

Truthfully, he couldn't say he was unmoved. In a place like this, getting a bowl of hot porridge with real flecks of fat floating in it was a rare thing indeed.

Garrick even found himself seriously thinking that this young silver-haired lord might be different after all. The Grace Value above his head jumped a few points.

But at the Great Wall of Eternal Night, kindness never came without a reason.

Mechanics and craftsmen were treated with some respect within the Great Wall of Eternal Night. But once they were sent to the Great Wall itself, they usually ended up repairing things in the most dangerous places.

Their deaths weren't necessarily any prettier than those of soldiers charging in the front ranks. Often, they were worse.

Since arriving at the Great Wall of Eternal Night, Garrick had picked up a few tricks for staying alive.

For instance, he couldn't seem too useful, or he'd be dragged to the most dangerous places. But he couldn't seem too useless either, or they'd decide he was wasting food and drag him off to fill a gap in the line.

The best thing was to pass for an ordinary laborer who knew a little craftwork. People like that tended to die a little more slowly.

With that in mind, Garrick immediately bent down and grabbed two handfuls of foul-smelling mud from the ground. He smeared it hard across his face, then rubbed some onto his neck and cuffs to blend in better with the Convicts.

Unfortunately, the heavens had other plans.

Several knights swept aside the tent flap without warning. Before Garrick could react, a large hand had already hauled him up.

A dozen or so other sickly-looking Convicts were dragged out with him. Most of them didn't look like ordinary Convicts either.

Garrick's heart sank.

But the axe he'd expected to take his head never fell. Instead, the group was pushed into a row of newly built stone houses.

The braziers inside burned brightly. Heat rushed over them, melting the chill from their faces at once.

Thick, dry wheat straw covered the floor. Several large pots of stewed meat sat on a rough wooden table in the middle, with a few jugs of strong liquor beside them.

When the smell of meat reached him, even Garrick nearly lost his composure.

The dozen or so Convicts who had come with him stood dazed in the doorway, unable to take it in.

A few had tears in their eyes as they looked at the hot stew and the braziers. Some even knelt to thank the Most Holy.

Garrick, however, felt his back prickle. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

He had spent his life moving among the Royal Capital's nobles, and he had learned one thing: if someone suddenly treated you well, it usually wasn't because they liked the look of you. It was because they wanted you to do something.

Here on the Long Night Defense Line, they were giving Convicts warm rooms, hot meat, and strong liquor?

That hardly looked like mercy. It looked more like a last meal before an execution.

Garrick's legs went weak, and he nearly collapsed into the straw. His mind, ever quick to leap to the worst conclusion, began racing.

This young silver-haired lord had probably received some secret order that couldn't bear the light of day. He had singled out this group of unusual Convicts to torture them to death.

At that thought, even the stew lost its appeal.

That night, the stone house was as warm as one of the secular kingdoms within the Great Wall, and the braziers crackled away.

The others hesitated at first, but in the end, they couldn't resist the smell of meat and began eating mouthful after mouthful. Some even drank liquor, then leaned against the wall and soon fell fast asleep.

Only Garrick wrapped himself tightly in the blanket he'd been given and huddled in a corner. Caught between sleep and waking in a haze of fear, he kept his eyes open the entire night.

Early the next morning, not long after dawn, gray light seeped through the narrow gaps around the windows.

Garrick, with dark circles under both eyes, was barely awake when two expressionless knights seized him from either side and dragged him straight out of the stone house.

This time, they had taken him alone. The last scrap of hope in Garrick's heart vanished.

The heavy curtain fell shut behind him, cutting him off from everything outside.

Trembling, he raised his head and met the gaze of the silver-haired youth behind the wooden table.

When those icy-blue eyes settled on him, Garrick's scalp prickled. It felt as though every thought in his head had been laid bare.

Without thinking, his knees buckled, and he dropped to the floor with a thud.

He did his best to play the part of an old dog, hoping the young lord would look him over, decide he wasn't worth a second thought, and spare his miserable life.

As Garrick was making those calculations, Shien glanced at the Grace Value above his balding head and spent Reward Value to search for information on him.

Feeling that gaze on the top of his head, Garrick soon broke out in a cold sweat across his forehead.

Then Shien spoke, a trace of amusement in his voice. "That long-haired animal-hide rug in the priest's bedroom really was fine quality, wasn't it, Garrick?"

The words struck Garrick's mind like a muffled thunderclap. His darting eyes froze, and he even forgot to breathe.

Impossible. There was no way that story could have reached this place.

That sneeze from under the bed—no one but the priest and that woman should have known about it.

However stupid the priest was, he would never spread such a humiliating story. And that woman? How many heads did she have to spare for telling anyone?

Then how did this lord know?

He even knew about the long-haired animal-hide rug. No amount of asking around could explain a detail like that.

Garrick didn't dare think any further. A chill crept up his spine to the back of his head.