The man arrived at Grauheim's gate at midmorning on the sixth day since Arnulf had shaken Wren's hand.
He was on foot, carrying a satchel pressed to his chest with both arms like it was the most valuable thing he owned.
He had a split lip and a coat with the Eisenwall academy crest half-torn from the collar.
His boots were caked in Ashwilds dirt up past the ankles and his eyes were moving too fast, checking the tree line behind him in a pattern that said he'd been checking it for days.
The gate guard brought him to Mathild, who looked at the crest, the satchel and the way he kept turning his head.
Wren came into the courtyard with Arnulf one step behind, which was where Arnulf had been every time Wren left the building for six days,without being asked and without being told to.
He was reading as he walked, the book held low in one hand, and Wren had stopped questioning whether the man was actually reading or just holding the book as a prop.
The answer was probably both.
The man from the gate saw Wren.
And his class activated.
The eyes went out of focus for half a second and snapped back too sharp, reading something not visible in the courtyard.
The color left his face in a fast sweep starting at the forehead, like someone had pulled a plug at the top of his skull and drained all the blood out through his feet.
He looked at Wren's right hand and then at the air directly around it and his mouth came open.
"Aschen,"
Wren's palm covered his mouth before the word finished.
They stood there.
Four other people in the courtyard, none of them looking at the right angle.
Wren kept his hand where it was and looked the man in the eyes and counted to three.
The man's eyes above his palm went through three different states,shock, comprehension, and then the sharp focus of someone recalculating everything they thought they knew about the next thirty seconds.
By the third count he understood what had nearly happened.
He gave one small nod. Wren took his hand back.
The man's overlays were still running.
His eyes moved in the fast scanning pattern of someone processing information from his class rather than from anything physically in front of him.
Two people near the supply shed moving crates.
A woman near the gate adjusting her coat.
None of them had noticed.
"You're real," the man said, fighting his own speed.
"I ran the probability six times in the restricted archive and every time my overlays flagged the output as a modeling error."
"Who are you?" Wren said.
"Eckhart Pfeiffer. B-Rank Rechenmeister, formerly of Eisenwall's Academy of Applied Analysis."
He said formerly with the care of someone who had been practicing the word for three days and still hadn't found a comfortable way to wear it.
"I accessed sealed files in the restricted section."
He stopped. Started again.
"My class kept flagging the probability values on those records as an active threat indicator. I kept going back because numbers that large attached to a historical document meant either a data error or something the academy buried, and I could not stop checking until I knew which one."
He looked at Wren's Brand. "Three days ago the dean found me in the archive corridor and I ran before the formal inquiry could begin."
"What class is a Rechenmeister?" Arnulf said from one step back, not looking up from his book.
Eckhart glanced at Arnulf and took a small step left, placing Wren between them.
"Probability overlays on everything in my field of vision. Attack angles, structural weak points, health and stamina estimates, skill proficiency levels on classed individuals."
His overlays were still running. He looked at Arnulf's forearms. "Your damage accumulation readings are quite high."
"Good," Arnulf said, and looked back at his book.
◆ ◆ ◆
Mathild put Eckhart at the long table with leftover porridge and told him to eat before he explained anything else.
He ate about a third of it and pushed the bowl aside and started talking before he had finished swallowing.
His academy posting was predictive mapping for Rift expeditions,reading probability data for squad composition and monster density projections.
He'd been doing it for two years.
He had no complaints until his overlays started flagging the restricted archive corridor every time he walked past it.
The probability values on the sealed records were so far outside standard modeling range that his class kept reading them as an active threat somewhere in the building.
"I thought I was catching a data error," he said.
He turned the bowl a quarter turn without eating from it. "The values didn't match anything in the known Class hierarchy. I went back to correct them and they were correct."
"How long were you going back?" Arnulf said from the far end of the table, without looking up.
"Six weeks." Eckhart looked back at Wren.
"I had a 94% probability that the dean would eventually check the access logs. I kept going back anyway."
He paused. "Which tells you something about what the numbers looked like."
"What did the files say?" Wren said.
Eckhart set his hands flat on the table.
When he spoke next his voice had changed,the nervous speed was gone, replaced by steady cadence.
"That the class appears cyclically and has been executed at Branding without exception for eight hundred years." He looked at the Brand on Wren's palm and then back at his face.
"That the historical record before those executions was cleared from public archives two hundred years ago after the thirteenth holder. That the probability modeling on a fully developed holder at high Soul Integrity was so far above anything else in the hierarchy that my overlays stopped generating a number and gave me a flag instead."
"What kind of flag?"
"The kind my class produces for situations that would completely restructure the current tactical environment."
He paused. "It doesn't distinguish good from bad. It just identifies scale."
The table went quiet. Arnulf turned a page.
"Then you walked through Grauheim's gate," Wren said.
"My overlays showed me your skill profile before I had any other information."
Eckhart glanced at Wren's right hand. "Predator's Lunge at 71% proficiency is above average scaling for a week of use and Flickering Step at D-Rank with the current proficiency at 44%..."
He stopped. His mouth pressed closed. "I'm doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Reading the numbers out loud. I do it when the data is interesting and I lose track of the people attached to it."
He looked at Wren. "The proficiency scaling on Predator's Lunge for your timeframe is genuinely good. I wasn't performing."
"I didn't ask," Wren said.
Eckhart was quiet for a moment.
Then he reached into his coat pocket, took out a short piece of charcoal and turned the satchel face-down on the table and started writing on the back without asking anyone.
His handwriting was small and arranged in columns, three rows running simultaneously, cross-referencing against whatever his overlays were showing him above the table that no one else could see.
Wren watched his face, not the numbers.
The face changed.
Eckhart's eyes went still,the overlay-reading motion stopping cold.
His jaw moved forward half an inch.
His hands went flat on either side of the satchel and he looked at the bottom row without moving.
Then he looked up at Wren, and his expression was the face of a man who had run the arithmetic four times looking for a different answer and kept getting the same one.
He turned the satchel around.
Three columns.
Devour cost by rank tier on the left.
Projected Soul Integrity curve in the center.
Notes on the right.
Through the 50% mark ran a horizontal line drawn heavier than everything around it, and beside it in small tight letters: COGNITIVE DAMAGE ONSET. Below that, underlined once: 38.
"Approximately 38 devours before you cross 50% and cognitive damage begins,"
Eckhart said. He didn't round it up. "Conservative estimate, weighted toward D-Rank. B-Rank costs 6 to 8 percent per acquisition. A-Rank costs 10 or more."
He tapped the underlined number. "A single A-Rank devour carries the same toll as five D-Rank ones."
He kept his finger there.
"You said you used two devours so far. That leaves 36 viable acquisitions before threshold at best-case tier assumptions."
He looked at Wren directly. "At realistic assumptions, given what you'll need to fight to survive the next month, the number is lower."
The table was quiet. Outside, someone set a tool down with a clank and went silent.
"That's not a lot," Wren said.
"No. It is not." Eckhart did not look away.
"I ran this calculation four ways. 38 is the highest result. The other three were lower."
Folkwin took eleven and stopped recognizing faces.
Wren looked at the chart and the line drawn heavy through 50% and the number underlined beneath it.
Thirty-six chances to get stronger before his mind started to break apart. The number said what it said.
"Then I don't waste them," Wren said.
Eckhart's mouth came open.
Something moved through his expression,a fast recalculation, the kind that happened when a variable changed and every equation downstream shifted with it.
Then he looked at the chart and then at Wren and his expression settled into something that hadn't been there since he walked through Grauheim's gate.
He put his finger on the horizontal line.
"Yes," he said. "Or..."
He held his finger there.
The pause was deliberate, and for the first time since he'd arrived, Eckhart's voice was not running ahead of his thoughts.
"Or we find a way to make each one count for more."
He turned the satchel back toward himself and looked at the notes column and then at his overlays.
The expression that had been running frightened calculations since the gate settled into something different and stayed there.
He picked up the charcoal and started a new column.
He labeled it at the top: DISCHARGE OPTIMIZATION. Below it: ALTAR ACCESS WINDOWS.
He was already writing the third header when he said, out loud: "The ruin Mathild mentioned. Two days southeast, carvings matching Brand shapes, stone no one recognizes."
He looked up at Wren. "That's an altar site."
"Probably," Wren said.
"High probability." Eckhart went back to writing, and his handwriting got faster, the charcoal pressing harder into the leather.
"Which means partial discharge is in the model. Which means 38 is a minimum, not a ceiling, and the actual viable acquisition count could be significantly higher depending on altar access frequency and discharge yield per visit."
He tapped the new column. "I need yield data before I can model it accurately. But if it's even 8 percent per access, the picture changes."
He kept writing.
The charcoal snapped and he pulled another piece from the same pocket without looking up.
"You're going to want to get to that ruin," he said, mostly to the column and not to anyone in particular.
"I know," Wren said.
Arnulf closed his book, tucked it into his coat, stood up, and walked out without a word.
Wren watched him go.
Then he looked back at Eckhart, who was still writing, and at the satchel with the numbers on it, and at the line drawn heavy through 50% with the word:
COGNITIVE DAMAGE ONSET.
Beside it in letters so small and tight they might have been written by someone who didn't want the words to be any bigger than they had to be.
Thirty-six chances.
An altar that might buy him more.
Hunters eight days out and a man at the table who had thrown away his career because numbers that large wouldn't let him sleep.
Three people now.
Arnulf with the knife and the deal. Mathild with the ruin. Eckhart with the math.
It still wasn't enough but it was more than the stupid rock.
[Soul Integrity: 97%] [Active Talents: 2] [Devours Declined: 2]