Kaiden's hand flattened on the map table.
"I see how it is," he said, and it came out low.
"There he is." Lazarus sounded fond about it. "That's the one from the mountain."
A chair took the old man's weight somewhere behind the voice, and ice shifted in a glass.
"Good. Then I'll say the part I've been sitting on for this entire time. I want you to hear it from a man who likes you, because the next fellow who says it to you won't."
He let a beat go by. "Three months ago you were a name in a chat room with twenty people in it. Tonight you hold sovereign territory. Twenty dungeons of your own choosing. Immense wealth in each of your inner circle's accounts, and a signature that turned monsters into citizens."
"Stop monologuing. I'm not in the mood to listen to your yapping."
"Haha! This old man has things to say," Lazarus audibly grinned. He continued, unbothered. "You know what you have. You don't know what it looks like from a desk."
