The Exiled Duke's Lottery system

Inn top floor Ghara’s room

Ghara’s room sat at the dead end of the top floor, a cramped garret under the eaves that smelled faintly of stale tallow, damp plaster, and the sour tang of cheap pipe weed. A single shuttered window kept the chill night air at bay, though a persistent draft rattled the wood whenever the wind picked up over the rooftops.

Soon all of the eight arrived in calculated trickles over the span of forty minutes, putting long, deliberate stretches of silence between each arrival so as not to rouse the suspicion of the innkeeper or any lingering patrons.

Aldis was the first to cross the threshold. He still carried the loose, glassy-eyed slouch of a man who had spent his evening drowning in thick ale, but the moment he stepped inside, the mask slipped away. His posture straightened, his eyes sharpened, and the loud, brassy voice he’d used in the common room collapsed into a quiet breath.

Durn followed a dozen minutes later, slipping through the door like a shadow. Then came Pib and Elenwe, stepping together.

Vale waited until the corridor outside had gone utterly dead before he crossed it himself. He paused at the top of the stairs, listening to the creak of the old timber below, before sliding into the room and closing the door behind him.

Renna came last.

She shunned the interior stairs entirely. Instead, she had skirted the outside of the building in the dark, crossed the muddy rear yard where the draft horses stomped in their stalls, and hauled herself up the rotting service ladder on the northern wall. She slipped through the window frame without making a sound, her boots coated in fresh mud.

When the eighth of them was safely inside, Ghara pushed the heavy bolt home and turned the iron key in the lock closing it with a sharp clack and nodding to everyone.

Only then did anyone allow their shoulders to drop.

The room was far too small for eight grown people. Durn claimed a low wooden stool beside the cracked washstand, folding his thick arms across his chest. Aldis collapsed into the room’s only armchair, his long legs stretching out until his boots nearly touched the center of the floor. Elenwe leaned her hip against the small writing desk, while Pib perched lightly on the edge of Ghara’s unmade cot. Ghara herself remained standing near the door, her arms crossed, watching them all with a sharp, vigilant eye.

Vale turned his back to the shuttered window and looked around the dimly lit circle.

"What have we got?"

"Elarion," Durn said. His tone was dry, stripped of any excitement, but his posture was rigid. "That is the only thing worth carrying out of that filth-ridden common room."

Aldis leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. "One name. Dropped by a man who couldn’t even keep his forehead off the table by the end of the third glass."

"One name, but four distinct buyers," Durn corrected. "Valdris, the Concord, Asterion, and apparently two other smaller outfits down along the southern coast."

Ghara shifted her weight, a subtle scowl tracing her mouth. "Can we trust what he said,the man was half-blind with drink, Durn. Drunks invent names when they want to sound like they’re privy to high secrets."

"He was soaked in ale,yes" Durn agreed, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "But the important part wasn’t what he believed. It was that nobody at his table challenged the existence of the trade."

Vale looked at him, his brow furrowing slightly. "Explain."

"If he’d claimed that Elarion was some secret forge selling swords to a single local baron, I would have dismissed it as tavern noise," Durn said, his voice dropping an octave. "But he named major continental powers. More importantly, the men sitting around him—didn’t scoff. They didn’t ask where Elarion was, or if it was real. They argued over the prices. They complained about the distribution networks and the quality of the shipments. They spoke about Elarion’s weapons as though the trade itself was common knowledge."

Silence settled heavy over the garret. The only sound was the low whistle of the wind prying at the shutter slats.

"That matters," Durn added softly.

Aldis gave a slow nod, the humor entirely drained from his face. "Kingdoms don’t contract for armaments in bulk quantity just because a blacksmith has a fine pedigree. Not on that scale."

"Not weapons," Vale said.

"Especially not weapons," Ghara agreed quietly. Her fingers tapped a rhythmic beat against her forearm. "So Elarion produces something other places want. Something they can’t easily replicate."

"Something they can’t produce," Durn corrected. "Not without the proper facilities. Or the right designs, maybe both."

Vale looked down at his own calloused hands, then back toward the shuttered window. "And that gives us our first real direction."

A place,a name and a tangible connection.

The machine they had encountered weeks ago in the avarran campaign was unlike anything known to them. Its construction, the seamless plates of dark metal, its heavy, unnatural armor, its terrifyingly precise movement, and the strange, thunderous weapon mounted to its frame—none of it belonged to the known guilds or traditional kingdom arsenals. It had felt like an artifact plucked out of a dark future or a forgotten past.

Now, they had learned of a northern territory mass-producing weapons strange enough that half a dozen sovereign powers were willing to pay fortune-sized tariffs to secure them.

It was not absolute proof. But it was the first piece of the puzzle that actually clicked into place.

"Then that is where we go," Vale said.

Elenwe’s hand slipped beneath the heavy folds of her travel coat. Metal scraped softly against leather, and when her hand emerged, she held a long, tightly bound cylinder of thick, dark parchment, sealed with lead caps.

The room went instantly still.

Ghara’s eyes widened, fixing on the object. "You brought that?"

"I wasn’t planning to throw it away," Elenwe said smoothly.

"One crossing," Aldis murmured, eyeing the scroll with a mix of awe "A single-use spatial tear."

Elenwe nodded once. "It can carry all eight of us. In a single breath."

Aldis looked from the scroll up to her face. "And put us wherever we choose?"

"Not wherever." She rotated the scroll slowly between her long fingers, the lead caps catching the flickering yellow light of the tallow lamp. "It puts us somewhere I can visualize—or somewhere I can reach without a prepared spatial anchor on the receiving end."

Aldis grimaced. "That sounds significantly less comforting."

"It should." Elenwe’s expression remained flat, stripped of all sentiment. "We know the city we’re in right now. I know its lay, its ward lines, its elemental boundaries, and its watch patterns. I can tear open a doorway here because I’ve already mapped the local space."

She tapped the parchment with the edge of her thumb.

"But Elarion is completely blind to me."

"How blind?" Pib asked, his large ears twitching forward.

"Total dark," Elenwe replied. The weight of her tone carried far more gravity than any lecture could have. "I have never seen its defensive wards. I don’t know its boundary markers. I don’t know what high-tier protections are woven around its strongholds, its roads, or its cities. I don’t know whether their mages actively monitor spatial disruptions"

She tucked the scroll back into her coat, out of sight.

"And I have no intention of finding out by ripping open a giant magical doorway in the middle of their front yard."

Durn frowned, rubbing his broad jaw. "You think their ward-weavers would spot an unanchored portal?"

"I think anyone with half a baseline in spatial magic would spot it from ten miles away," Elenwe said. "And if they did, eight armed strangers would drop out of thin air into a territory known for producing experimental weaponry, using an unauthorized magical rift."

She smoothed the front of her coat. "I would rather not announce our arrival twice in forty-eight hours."

Nobody in the room argued with her logic.

Vale gave a single, firm nod. "Then the scroll stays hidden."

"For now," Elenwe agreed.

"Until it’s the difference between living and dying." Vale stood straighter, casting his gaze over each of them. "That means we are not walking out through the main gates tomorrow morning."

Ghara looked at him. "Why the delay?"

"Because we have a name, Ghara, and almost nothing else." Vale raised a blunt forefinger. "First: we don’t know which of the northern roads actually leads into Elarion territory."

He raised a second finger. "Second: we don’t know the distance."

A third. "Third: we don’t know what factions or bandit bands hold the passes between here and their borders."

A fourth. "And fourth: we don’t know how strangers are treated at their border checks." He lowered his hand to his side. "More importantly, we don’t know what kind of ledgers the city watch keeps here at the local gates."

The room remained quiet, listening to the tactical math.

"If eight unknown armed travelers walk through the northern gate together in broad daylight, the gate guards log it," Vale explained calmly. "If we attempt to hire a private carriage without knowing the standard rates, we mark ourselves as easy targets or foreign spies. If we pick the wrong road out of the valley, we could waste two weeks marching into a dead-end swamp."

Aldis nodded along slowly, tapping his chin. "So we spend another day in this pit."

"One day," Vale said. "No more."

"And how do we move?"

"We join a merchant caravan."

That drew a few raised eyebrows.

Vale pressed on before anyone could object. "A caravan gives us automatic camouflage. Eight extra guards or hired hands on a thirty-wagon train don’t draw a second glance. We don’t have to explain why we’re traveling together. We can split our group across different wagons. We have meat shields around us if the roads are bad, and most importantly, we can mine the carters for every scrap of local knowledge they have."

Durn allowed a faint, approving smile to touch his lips. "Carters."

"Carters. Teamsters. Mercenary escorts. Anyone who has actually walked the northern mud," Vale said. He looked toward Aldis. "You start with the teamsters."

Aldis grinned, the spark of trouble returning to his eyes. "I’ve already made three friends down in the taproom. One of them owes me half a pitcher of ale."

"Good. Find out which caravans are assembling for the northern push. Which routes they take, when they pull out, and what they charge for extra trail guards or ride-along passengers."

"Anything else?"

"Find out how much grain and salted meat they carry," Vale added. "And how often they hit supply points."

Aldis’s grin faded slightly. "You’re expecting a long trek."

"I’m expecting an empty road." Vale paused, his eyes narrowing. "And try to find out what people say about Elarion when they aren’t trying to sound like trade lords in front of a tavern crowd."

"Consider it done," Aldis said.

"Renna."

The stealthy woman straightened up from the shadow near the shutter. "The city gate."

"You watch it properly tomorrow" Vale said. "Don’t approach the guards. Don’t ask questions. Just find a high spot and observe."

Renna gave a nod. "Guard shift rotations. Search thoroughness. Whether they inspect wagon floors. Who takes the bribes, and whether solo travelers get logged into the red ledger."

"Exactly." Vale turned his head toward Pib. "You stay away from the harbor masts."

Pib’s large ears twitched defensively. "I wasn’t going to—"

"You were."

"I was only considering the engineering!" Pib protested, standing up on his tiptoes.

"That is precisely what worries me," Vale said deadpan.

A quiet ripple of amusement passed through Aldis and Ghara, though Vale’s face remained stone-carved.

"You’ll go with Elenwe to the lower docks," Vale ordered. "Listen to the dockworkers. Don’t probe, don’t buy information, just listen. Track what cargo is being hauled north and what ships are coming down from the northern ports."

Pib let out a dramatic, long-suffering sigh. "Fine."

"And keep your eyes off the rigging."

"I won’t look."

"You stared at a merchant vessel’s main mast for twenty minutes yesterday, Pib."

"It was an exceptionally fascinating mast!" Pib countered passionately. "It used a three-tier counterweight pulley system that shouldn’t mathematically support a canvas of that size—"

"Pib."

"...Fine. No masts."

Vale turned his attention to the largest man in the room. "Durn. You stay here at the inn."

Durn’s dark eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. "I stay here?"

"You stay here."

"I could cover ground in the forge district," Durn argued, his chest expanding. "There are three master smithies down near the river. If anyone knows about foreign metallurgy or unusual iron shipments, it’s the local ironmongers."

"Which is precisely why you are not allowed within five hundred paces of the forge district," Vale said smoothly.

Durn’s jaw set into a hard line. "I know how to be discreet, Vale."

"You do not," Vale replied without a trace of heat. "You hear the word weapons and you forget that we are supposed to be invisible refugees. You walked past an armor shop yesterday afternoon and stopped dead in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare."

"The smith was using a double-bellows blast furnace with an inverted clay draft!" Durn grumbled defensively. "I have never seen such an efficient heat distribution system in a mid-sized shop!"

Aldis had to press a hand over his mouth to muffle a bark of laughter.

Vale didn’t even blink. "You stared at a man’s furnace for nearly two full minutes, Durn. The apprentice was starting to reach for a cudgel thinking you were planning to rob the place."

Durn muttered something entirely unprintable under his breath, crossing his arms tighter over his chest. "It was an excellent furnace."

"One day, Durn," Vale said firmly. "Tomorrow, you sit in the common room downstairs. You eat your stew. You drink your ale. If someone at an adjacent table mentions strange metals, unusual machinery, or weapons coming down from Elarion, you listen. You write it down in your head. But you do not go looking for the source."

Durn grumbled again, but ultimately inclined his head. "Understood."

Vale swept his gaze across all seven of them one final time, letting the weight of their objective settle over the room.

"Tomorrow at midnight, we gather back in this room," he said, gesturing toward the small wooden table between them. "We lay out every map scrap, every route, every guard rotation, and every price we’ve gathered. We put it all together."

Ghara nodded approvingly. "And if we locate a viable caravan heading north?"

"Then we buy our way onto it and move out by morning."

"And if we don’t?"

Vale’s eyes flicked briefly toward the hidden bulge beneath Elenwe’s coat where the magical scroll rested.

"Then we consider the dangerous road."

No one asked him to clarify. They all understood the stakes. The spatial crossing remained their ultimate trump card—an emergency escape hatch to be used only when all tactical avenues were exhausted, not a casual shortcut into unknown danger.

Vale reached out and placed his hand on the iron handle of the door.

"Until tomorrow night, we are not hunters searching for Elarion."

Aldis cocked an eyebrow. "We’re not?"

"We are ordinary, boring travelers trying to figure out how to reach the north without looking like we have any reason to go there."

That earned a collection of quiet, approving nods from around the room.

Ghara stepped past Vale and turned the key back in the heavy lock, drawing the bolt with a sharp metallic scrape.

"Good," she said, pulling the door open a crack to check the dark corridor outside. "Then get out of my room."

Aldis pushed himself up from the armchair with a theatrical stretch of his back. "One at a time?"

"One at a time," Ghara confirmed, her eyes scanning the dark hallway. She glanced over her shoulder at the towering warrior standing in the shadow of the closet. "And Thorne... you go last."

Thorne, who had remained silent through the entire briefing, blinked in surprise, his thick brow furrowing. "Why me?"

Ghara looked him up and down with an unblinking gaze. "Because those massive iron-shod boots of yours make that staircase sound like a runaway timber cart under your weight."

Aldis snorted into his collar, turning away quickly to hide his grin. Thorne scowled, but he didn’t attempt to argue the point.

The heavy door opened just wide enough for a single shadow to pass through.

One by one, spaced out by long, silent intervals, they melted back into the dimness of the corridor, slipping away to their respective rooms like ghosts in the dark.

By tomorrow night, they intended to have a map and a route.

By the end of the week, they intended to be riding the northern mud.

And somewhere far beyond the northern horizons, past roads none of them had ever walked, waited the shrouded territory of Elarion—and whatever dark hand had forged the machine that had set their world on fire.

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