Climbing back toward the fortress he had been thrown out of took a specific kind of arithmetic. Nox ran it on the stairs, and the numbers stayed friendly the whole way up.
The purge was three hours from eating the admin block, and the admin block did not know how to survive it. He did, which made the next half hour a market with exactly one seller.
Kendra climbed beside him without once asking why they were going back up. Vasa had asked with one raised eyebrow and accepted the answer before he gave it. Yeda simply counted the landings, keeping her number between herself and the dark.
"State the known risks," Vasa said at the last landing, frost idling off her fingers.
"The risk is they're proud," he said, "and proud people pay late. We're selling anyway, because the fortress is the biggest asset on this floor, and I want it owing me."
The gate watch saw him come out of the stairwell and shouted the name that had gotten him expelled. Sir Owen arrived at the gap inside a minute, axe still down, face already braced.
"The purge redirected," Nox said before the teacher spoke, "toward your heat, your food, your hundred forty heartbeats. Your wall stops Gobdogs, not what walks in front of a purge line."
"You came back to tell us that," Sir Owen said, flat with disbelief.
"I came back to sell you the version where most of you are alive tomorrow," he said, "one price, stated once."
He gave it to them the way he gave terms to monsters, plainly, without decoration. Behind the desks the corridor had gone quiet enough to hear the board chalk settle.
A third of their food stock and half the medical shelf, paid tonight. Permanent access through the east wing, and one public sentence from Sir Owen recognizing his loot rights in front of the fortress.
"You want us to feed you," a teacher's voice called from behind the barricade, "for the privilege of admitting you rob us. That's extortion with a schedule."
"It's a bill with a discount," he said, "and the schedule was written by the thing with horns, not by me."
The council argued behind the desks in furious low voices, and the crowd argued louder behind the council. He listened to the fortress spend its minutes the way rich men spent money they believed was infinite.
Fragments carried through the desk wall, murderer, extortion, children, all in the same sentences. Underneath them, quieter, other voices were doing supply math out loud and arriving at bad totals.
Sir Owen watched him through the gap the whole time, and the teacher's face did the real negotiating. He wanted to pay, Nox judged, and he could not afford to be seen wanting it.
"We have walls," a voice insisted from behind the desks, "we have rotations, and we held four days. We do not bargain with a murderer for rescue."
The horns answered the council's argument before Nox needed to bother doing it. Five notes, close now, and under them a sound the fortress had not heard before, a ripping bass note like canvas the size of a corridor.
The first purge beast came around the west junction while the council was still mid-sentence. It stood plated where the Gobdogs were soft, waist-high at the shoulder to a grown man's chest, and it looked at the barricade the way labor looks at work.
[ Purge Vanguard: Rank E. Weak seam: throat junction. Function: wall-breaker. ]
Screaming started behind the desks, and the market changed instantly, as panic markets did. Somebody yelled to accept, somebody yelled his name, and Sir Owen's hand came up to wave him inside.
"The offer expired," Nox said, stepping back from the gap.
"There are children behind this wall," the teacher said, and the words came out with real spine in them.
"There were," he said, "when I named the price. Your council spent them arguing about my manners, so survive your own choice and buy early next time."
Something went out of Sir Owen's face at that, and something harder arrived to hold the post. The teacher turned back to his wall and started giving orders, which was the correct use of the remaining minutes.
Nox walked east with the screaming at his back and did not turn around for any of it. The fortress had numbers, barricades, Emilia's green, and a competent man with an axe, which was more than most of the building got tonight.
"They might hold," Kendra said at his shoulder, not quite a question.
"They might," he said, "and either way, tomorrow they remember who set the price and who paid for the delay."
The east stair sat two corridors beyond the fortress's claim, and the purge had seeded it ahead of the line. His map showed the shaft crawling with signatures between his party and the only unclaimed route off the floor.
"Known risks," he said at the door, "three Vanguards, four Hounds, two Stalkers on the shaft walls. The Vanguards break structure, so nothing they charge survives the charge."
"We take the stair landing by landing," he added, checking the knife.
The first landing went to plan, which meant it went to Vasa. Frost sheeted the steps as the lead Hound committed, and it arrived at Kendra's planted shoulder as luggage, where Yeda's pipe closed its account.
Two more Hounds came up the rail line together, learning nothing from the first. Frost fixed the lead one's feet mid-stride, stone met the second's skull at full plant, and the pipe worked down the landing like a metronome with opinions.
The Stalkers came off the shaft walls together, and the party's week of lessons paid in full. Kendra fed one into the rail for the pipe while his knife met the second mid-drop, and neither reached a back.
A Vanguard filled the next landing like a plated verdict, and it charged the way its title promised. He pulled the party up three steps, let the charge eat the railing instead, and put his knife through the throat junction while its plate was busy with architecture.
The second Vanguard learned from the first one's death, which made it expensive. It came slow, shielding its seam, herding them into the corner of the landing with patient, terrible competence.
Yeda solved it by being unreasonable, stepping inside its guard to bait the lunge. The lunge came, faster than her body could tax, and Nox spent his seventh bullet into the opening throat before the teeth arrived.
The shot dropped it at her feet, and the stairwell rang like a struck pipe. One round left now, wrapped in gauze at the bottom of the pack, and he filed the spend as correct.
"That was mine," Yeda said, shaking, upright.
"It was ours," he said, "that's what the contract is for."
The last Vanguard came with two Hounds in the shaft's final turn, and the party took them the way trained things take work. Frost, stone, pipe, knife, each in its slot, until the stair went quiet and the door at its foot stood unguarded.
[ Enemies defeated: 3 Purge Vanguards, 4 Purge Hounds, 2 Stalkers. ]
[ EXP +2,100. (4,500 total.) ]
[ Level 8 reached. Level 9 reached. Level 10 reached. ]
[ 15 assignable points available. ]
Three levels in one stairwell, and the warmth of it nearly buckled his knees. He put five into Strength, five into Agility, three into Endurance, and two into Perception. The dark of the shaft went subtly grainier around him, richer, more legible.
[ Level 10 milestone: rank F confirmed. Next rank threshold: Level 20. ]
[ EXP: 0 / 1,000 to Level 11. ]
He took stock while the levels settled, because milestones did not excuse inventory. One round, a knife due for a whetstone, three days of food split five ways, and a body running on wounds the System refused to acknowledge.
Behind them, far up the shaft, the fortress was still making noise, which meant it was still alive to make some. He marked the sound as an account left open rather than closed.
The east door opened onto a corridor that had no business existing. It ran forty meters where the school's outer wall should have stood, lined with classroom doors in a style no school had ordered. The ceiling climbed three stories into a dark that moved like slow breathing.
Vasa's frost light caught the nearest doorframe and found growth in the grain of it, as though the architecture had been fed. The corridor did not match the map, and then the map redrew itself to match the corridor, which was worse.
"The school grew," Kendra said, stone sliding up her arms on instinct.
Yeda moved up beside him with the pipe low, reading the impossible hallway the way she read gaps. Nobody suggested going back, because back was a purge, and forward was at least new.
"The Merge stitched something into it," Nox said, reading the new wing crawl across his screens, "and the purge drove us straight to the seam."