This Beast Tamer Has So Many Questions
Chapter Seventy-Three: Plans Over BreakfastHis family had left the night before.
They had stayed until well after dark, reluctant, as the Arkwrights were always reluctant, to end a good day, and then, at last, they had said their goodbyes in the lamplight at the edge of the laboratory. It had been brief, as their farewells usually were—his family had never been much for ceremony.
Selena had cuffed him lightly on the shoulder and told him not to let the soldiers boss him around in his own home. Damian had simply held him for a moment, warm and steady, and said he was proud. And Kyle had grinned, looped an arm around his neck, and said the thing that stayed with Elias longest after they were gone.
“We trust you,” Kyle had said. Simple, certain, the way Kyle said most things that mattered. “With all of it. You picked good people. We can tell.”
Then they had stepped through, and the realm had gone quiet, and for the first time the secret world that had only ever held his beasts held five sleeping guests as well.
The five of them had taken the guest rooms—rooms the Butler Pigs had prepared with such evident delight that Elias suspected they had been waiting years for the chance to host someone other than family. Sebastian had overseen it personally. Elias had gone to sleep to the distant, contented sound of pigs fussing over linens.
Morning came soft and golden, the way it always did in the realm, and with it came the pigs.
They arrived at each door at precisely the right moment—not a knock too early, not a minute too late—and escorted the guests, freshly woken and freshly tended, out across the meadow to where breakfast was already waiting. The long table had been set again beneath the open sky, laden now with warm bread and fruit and honey and a dozen small dishes besides, every cup filled before a hand reached for it, every plate replaced the instant it emptied.
It was, Elias thought, exactly the sort of gentle, seamless care Sebastian lived for.
It also, he noticed, made some of his guests deeply uncomfortable.
Cassian sat very straight at the table and regarded the spread before him as though it were a tactical problem.
It was strange to watch. Here was a man from one of the Twelve Great Families, raised in every privilege the Federation could offer—and yet the lavish, attentive ease of the realm clearly unsettled him. Elias understood why a moment later, when a Butler Pig refilled the commander’s cup unasked and Cassian’s hand twitched toward where a weapon would ordinarily hang.
The frontier. Of course. Years of mess halls and rationed hours and rising before dawn to a horn rather than a hoof at the door. Cassian was a creature of discipline and order, and there was nothing disciplined about being waited on hand and foot in a field of flowers. He kept reaching for tasks that were already done, and finding nothing to do, and not quite knowing what to make of it.
Rowan wore his discomfort more openly—he kept thanking the pigs, profusely, every single time, until a faintly bewildered Butler Pig began trying to politely escape him. Iris held herself carefully still, as though afraid to disturb anything, the posture of someone unused to being given things without a price attached. And Seraphina simply went quiet and watchful, taking only what was set directly before her.
Only Oliver looked entirely at home. He accepted each small attention with an easy, gracious nod, complimented the bread, asked a Butler Pig its name and remembered it—every inch the product of a household where service of exactly this kind was simply the texture of daily life. He caught Elias watching and gave a small, knowing smile, as if to say: they’ll adjust.
Elias hoped so. He rather liked the idea of them being comfortable here.
Once everyone had eaten enough to be civil, Elias cleared his throat and brought out the list he’d been turning over half the night.
“So,” he said. “If you’re all going to be staying—and I’d like you to, properly—then there are a few things I need to sort out. I made a list. I’d rather decide them with you than at you, if that’s all right.”
“A man with an agenda,” Oliver said approvingly. “Go on.”
“First,” Elias said, “buildings. The guest rooms are lovely, but they’re temporary. I want proper quarters—a real home for each of you, however you’d like it, and a place of their own for the Butler Pigs, who have frankly earned it ten times over.” He glanced down the table. “I don’t want to guess what any of you would want to live in. So—think about it. Tell me what you’d like. I want you to actually like where you live.”
There was a small, surprised silence. It occurred to Elias, a little sadly, that perhaps none of them were used to being asked.
Oliver recovered first, as Oliver tended to.
“Leave the building itself to me,” he said. “Finding a discreet construction crew, vetting them, keeping the realm’s nature quiet, managing the contracts—that’s precisely the sort of thing I’m for. You tell me what you want built; I’ll see it built, and you’ll never have to speak to a single contractor.”
“You’re sure?” Elias asked. “It’s a lot of—”
“Elias.” Oliver looked genuinely delighted. “This is the most fun I’ve had in years. Please. Let me.”
From beside the table, Sebastian inclined himself with quiet authority. “If the young master permits, I shall coordinate with Mister Locke on the materials. The household will know best what is required—and the pigs can move and organize anything needed within the realm far faster than any outside crew.”
“That,” Oliver said, “would make my life considerably easier. A pleasure to work with you, Sebastian.”
Sebastian bowed as though he had just been knighted.
“Second,” Elias went on, and this was the one that had kept him up. “The ravens.”
He let out a slow breath. “I need to publish the Lucky Raven method. That’s not in question—the whole point is to give it to the world. But I don’t think any of you fully appreciate what’s about to happen when I do.”
“Enlighten us,” said Oliver, who had gone from amused to attentive.
“Carrier Ravens are everywhere,” Elias said. “There isn’t a city on Blue Star without thousands of them. They’re the cheapest, commonest delivery bird there is—people give them away when they break. And the evolution turns them into a Mystic-attribute beast. Fortune. Lord Rank Ten potential.” He looked around the table. “Mystic is the rarest attribute category in existence. Fortune especially. And I’m about to make it so that anyone, anywhere, with a broken delivery bird and the patience to follow a method, can have one.”
The silence this time was different. Even Cassian had gone still.
“There is going to be chaos,” Elias said quietly. “Every shelter emptied. Carrier Raven prices through the roof overnight. Every great family and guild scrambling at once. I can imagine perhaps a tenth of the mess it’s going to make, and I genuinely don’t know how to manage that part. I never have. I just… make the things and hand them over.”
Oliver was smiling again—but it was a different smile now, sharp and pleased, the smile of a man being handed precisely the problem he was built to solve.
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“Elias,” he said, “that is my entire purpose. Truly. You make the miracles; I manage the avalanche they cause. Let me take all of it—the submission, the timing, the finances, the families and guilds who’ll come knocking, the prices, the panic, the whole magnificent disaster.” He spread his hands. “You will not have to touch any of it. I only need one decision from you.”
“Which is?”
“How do you want to release it? Quietly—semi-public, to a controlled few first, the way you’ve done before? Or fully public, all at once, to everyone?”
Elias didn’t hesitate.
“Public,” he said. “Fully. I want every broken bird in every shelter to have a chance at it. The more people who can do this, the more Carrier Ravens get a second life instead of a cage. That’s the whole point.” He winced slightly. “I know that’s the harder choice for you. I’m sorry to drop something this size in your lap.”
Oliver looked, if anything, even happier.
“Don’t you dare apologize,” he said. “A public release of a Fortune-attribute evolution from an anonymous master. Do you have any idea how badly I’ve wanted a project like this?” He sat back, thoroughly content. “It would be my pleasure. Genuinely. Leave the avalanche to me.”
“Third,” Elias said, and found himself smiling, because this one was almost a happy problem. “The realm itself. I want it bigger.”
He gestured around at the endless meadow. “It’s five hundred hectares, and between the bees and the pigs and three hundred ravens and now all of you, it’s starting to feel… cozy. I’ve got contribution points to spare these days. I can afford to expand it. The trouble is, I don’t actually know how—expanding a secret realm isn’t the same as building it the first time.”
“I can help with that,” Cassian said.
It was the first thing he had volunteered all morning, and everyone turned.
“Secret realms,” Cassian said, “are not made from nothing. They are built within the spaces left behind by King-rank beasts and beast tamers when they die—the Beast Spaces that survive their owners. To shape such a place, or to alter one once made, you need someone of King rank to take part in the working. Without that, the space cannot be reshaped.” A pause. “I happen to meet that requirement.”
For a moment no one spoke.
Then Elias said, carefully, “You’re… King rank.”
Even Oliver looked startled—and Oliver, by virtue of the Locke family’s constant dealings with the Twelve Legions, knew Cassian better than anyone at the table.
“You never said,” Oliver accused.
“It never came up,” Cassian said, which from him was practically a joke.
“But you’re twenty-eight,” Elias said, still catching up. “King rank, at twenty-eight, that’s—that almost doesn’t happen. How?”
Cassian considered the question for a moment, as though deciding how much to explain.
“My talent is Supreme Commander,” he said at last. “I draw a portion of strength from every soldier who genuinely admires, respects, or trusts me. The deeper the faith, the more I gain.” He let that settle. “I command a Zodiac Legion on the worst frontier in the empire. How many soldiers of high and middle rank do you imagine place their trust in the man who leads them through that?”
He said it without arrogance. It was simply arithmetic. And put that way, Elias understood: Cassian’s strength was not really his own at all. It was the weight of thousands of people’s faith, gathered into one man.
“Then—thank you,” Elias said. “I’d be very grateful for the help. We can do the expansion whenever suits you.”
“Which brings me to the turtles,” Elias said. “I’ve got nine hundred and ninety-six Fool’s Turtles still in the realm—all the ones that weren’t a match for me or my family. Every one of them could become a Protector Turtle for the right person.” He looked around the table. “I’d like all of you to try first. Spend time with them, see if any of them takes to you. A guarded mind is the best protection I can give the people standing closest to me—so you should each have one, if a turtle will have you.”
There were nods around the table at that—and then Elias went on to the part he’d been turning over.
“And whatever’s left after that,” he said, “I’d like to donate. To the Sagittarius frontier.” He glanced at Cassian. “The Protector Turtle was always meant for places like that—for soldiers facing exactly the kind of mental tides your legion holds back. I’ve got the better part of a thousand of them sitting in a meadow doing nothing. They’d do far more good in the hands of people who actually need them. If it can be arranged, I’d like them to go to your soldiers.”
Cassian was quiet for a moment, and something moved behind his golden eyes—not surprise, exactly, but the particular stillness of a man recalculating someone he thought he’d already measured.
“That is… a significant gift,” he said. “My soldiers would be in your debt. I will arrange it personally.” Then, more quietly: “You should know it would matter to them more than you can imagine. Thank you.”
“As for me trying one, though—” Cassian set down his cup, and his expression closed over slightly. “You should know something first, before you hope too much.”
He expected hesitation. He did not expect the small, tired thing that crossed Cassian’s face.
“I have a horrible affinity with spirit beasts,” Cassian said. “The worst anyone in my family has ever recorded. No creature has ever consented to bond with me—not one, in twenty-eight years. They shy from me. Look through me.” His jaw tightened, very slightly. “I have already tried turtles. On the frontier, when the Protector evolution first reached us, I tested it against thousands of Fool’s Turtles myself, hoping mine might be the exception. None of them so much as stirred for me. Your nine hundred and ninety-six would do the same. I’d sooner they went to soldiers who can actually use them.”
Elias didn’t know what to say.
It was, to him, a nearly incomprehensible thing—that spirit beasts could simply refuse a person. In all his life, beasts had been the one thing he could count on. They were, to Elias, the very epitome of kindness: as long as you gave them your care, your patience, your honest effort, they returned it tenfold and never once asked whether you deserved it. Briar, Valentine, Angel, the bees, the pigs, the ravens—every single one of them had answered kindness with devotion. The idea of a man offering all of that and being met with nothing, year after year, was so far outside his experience that for a moment he simply could not hold it.
Whatever showed on his face, Cassian saw it.
“It’s all right,” the commander said, and there was something almost gentle in it, as though he were the one offering comfort. “I made my peace with it a long time ago. A man doesn’t need a spirit beast to stand on his own. I have managed twenty-eight years and a frontier without one. I’ll manage the rest.”
It was meant to reassure. Somehow it only made the quiet ache in Elias’s chest worse.
“Okay,” Elias said.
And then, because he was who he was, he added: “But I’m going to find one anyway.”
Cassian looked at him.
“I mean it,” Elias said. “I won’t push the turtles on you if you’ve already tried them. But somewhere out there is a spirit beast that will choose you—I’m sure of it. The problem has never been you. It’s that nobody’s found the right match yet. And finding the right match for an overlooked, impossible creature…” He allowed himself a small smile. “That’s rather the only thing I’m good at.”
For a long moment Cassian said nothing at all. Whatever he had braced himself to feel at the offer of turtles—the old, practiced disappointment—plainly had no answer ready for this.
“You’re a strange man, Elias Arkwright,” he said finally. But the corner of his mouth had moved, and his golden eyes had gone unexpectedly warm, and it did not sound, at all, like a complaint.
“There’s one more thing,” Elias said, and this time he set down his own cup, because it was the one that frightened him most. “I want to go public. Not the raven method—me. My name.”
The table went still.
“For years I’ve done all of this anonymously,” he said. “The Lifebloom Bee Queens. The Hundred Fragrance Vine. The Blood Crystal Butterflies. The Butler Pigs. The Protector Turtles. Every one of them went out into the world without a name attached, and I told myself that was safer. But the truth is, someone will put the pieces together eventually. Too many discoveries, all tracing back to one source. It’s not a question of if my identity comes out. Only when.” He looked around at the five of them. “And I’d rather choose the when myself than wait for it to be chosen for me.”
He took a breath.
“I couldn’t have said that a week ago,” he admitted. “The thought of standing in front of the whole world terrified me—for my family, mostly. But that’s exactly why you’re here, isn’t it? You swore to protect me. With you, I think I’m finally ready to face the crowd. I want people to know who made these things—not for the glory of it. Just… because hiding has started to feel like being ashamed of the one thing I’m proud of.”
For a moment no one said anything. Then Oliver set down his cup with the soft, decisive click of a man accepting a commission.
“Then we do it properly,” he said. “On your terms, at your pace, with every protection in place before a single word goes out. When your name does become public, Elias, I will make certain of one thing above all else.” His amber eyes were entirely serious now. “That your life is not disturbed. That you can still walk through your own realm in peace, still do your work, still sit at a table in the flowers without the whole world climbing through the windows. The fame will be loud. I’ll see to it that your days stay quiet. That’s a promise.”
Elias felt something unclench that he hadn’t known he’d been holding for years.
“Thank you,” he said. “All of you. I mean it.”
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