The Hero System Glitched And Now It Pays Me to Love My Assassin Wives

"A man who sorts his archive at eleven at night leaves prints in the archive."

I said it to Zelina in the courtyard, with the chancellor’s secretary still crossing the main gate and Decimus’s letter folded in my hand.

"And who reads those prints?"

"You do."

"Then don’t look for me until this time tomorrow." She was already walking. "And don’t send any letters today."

"Why."

"Because if I’m right, whatever you send today gets read by somebody else before it reaches anyone."

The fourteen crates arrived at six in the evening on a Towers cart, two men in gray who unloaded without looking at anyone and left without asking for a receipt.

Thirteen had the matrix inside.

The fourteenth was empty.

Saoirse held it up to the light for a long while before setting it on the floor with the others.

"Cardo," she said.

"They kept it?"

"They melted it. There’s scraper marking here." She ran her thumb along the bottom of the crate. "A scraped matrix can’t be etched again."

The borrowed hall filled up with pieces that night. Cardo sorted into four piles, and her sitting on the floor with one leg folded under her.

Cardo had been the worst of her fourteen. His rivets stuck out. He snagged on curtains. He jammed on stairs.

He had also crossed a chalk circle to stand in front of her with his arms open.

"What exactly is a matrix?"

She looked up, and the question pleased her more than anything else I’d said that day.

"A square of silver with instructions etched into it. About the size of a coin." She pinched her fingers to show me. "The guild etches them and sells them. Nobody outside can etch one."

"And the rest?"

"The rest is mine. The body, the joints, the weight distribution." She pointed at the piles with her chin. "They supply the coin. I supply everything else."

"So all fourteen were yours."

"That’s what the paper said. That’s why they rejected it."

"What’s missing to put him together, besides the matrix?"

She took a while to answer. "A three eighths brass pin. I lost the original two years ago and replaced it with an iron one. That’s why he snagged on curtains."

Two years of snagging on curtains over a pin she couldn’t request without somebody asking what for.

I pulled the ring off my thumb. The spare imperial seal, the one the dead man used for second tier correspondence.

"Does this work?"

"That’s the seal of the empire."

"That’s brass."

She held the ring in her palm for a while. Then she took a file out of her apron and started working it right there on her knee, without asking me and without asking again.

I sat down on the floor across from her. I know nothing about matrices or pins. I passed her pieces from the pile she couldn’t reach, which was all I could do without getting in the way.

The first attempt didn’t fit. It was a hair too thick and she had to start over.

"It’ll weigh differently," she said, without lifting her head. "Brass is softer. It wears out in a year."

"Then we replace it in a year."

The file stopped.

It started again before I could decide whether that had been deliberate.

Calista came in around midnight with a tray and set it on the floor between us without saying anything, because we’d asked her not to interrupt and she was taking it literally.

She stayed on her knees beside the piles a moment longer than she needed to.

"Which one is the one who stood in front?"

Saoirse pointed with the file.

Calista turned the brass plate two fingers toward the light and stood up. At the door she looked back.

"When you finish him, tell me. I want to see him walk."

"He won’t walk. They melted his matrix."

"Tell me anyway."

Saoirse ate without looking at her plate. I ate watching her eat.

"How did the vote go?" I asked.

"Seven for separating me, two against, one absent."

"The two against?"

"The two who signed off on my matrices the first six years." She wiped her fingers on her apron. "The absent one was my master. He sent a note saying he was ill. I saw his horse in the yard that morning."

"How old were you when you joined?"

"Nine."

"And now?"

"Nineteen." She blew on the brass. "Ten years, and they took me out in one afternoon with twelve signatures. That’s a year per signature with two left over."

"Why did you name them?"

"Because there are fourteen and every one of them breaks differently." She held the piece up to the light. "Give them numbers and the report says number nine fails at the left joint. Give them names and you remember that Brizna carries well but turns badly, and you change the design."

"That’s engineering."

"That’s what I told them."

She worked until the candle burned down two fingers. When the pin seated it made a small dry sound, and she tested it three times, pulling it out and pushing it back, before laying the arm on top of the pile.

"Without a matrix this is a pile of metal in a shape," she said. "Why did you stay six hours?"

"Because you were going to stay."

Saoirse Wynne measures everything. She writes down what she measures. In eleven weeks I had never seen her run out of things to record.

She reached for the notebook, opened it, closed it, and set it on the floor.

"I can’t put that in a column."

I set the brass plate with the five letters into the gap in his chest, where she had screwed it the first time, and it came out crooked because I don’t know how to do that.

She straightened it with two fingers.

[DING]

[Investment tracking: negative.]

[No action registered.]

[Integrity: 30% ▲ 31%]

In seventy eight days the number had only ever gone one direction.

[...accounting error. Reviewing.]

[Review complete. Error persists.]

[HERO, you shouldn’t be able to go up.]

[Don’t move. I need to check something.]

The window closed on its own.

It stayed closed eleven minutes. I counted them sitting on the floor with a disassembled construct between my knees.

Saoirse asked me three times if something was wrong. The third time I told her the truth, which was that the System had left and I didn’t know if it was coming back.

"Has it left before?"

"Never."

"What did you do when it was here?"

"Argue with it."

"Then argue with me." She put a joint in my hand without looking at me. "Hold this."

"I’m installing thirteen matrices tomorrow," she said, later. "I’ll need six hours and somebody to pass me pieces."

"I’ll be here at seven."

"The emperor has Council at nine."

"The emperor is going to be late."

When the window opened again, the line wasn’t a reward or a valuation.

[Who were you with when it happened?]

"Saoirse."

[Did you ask her for anything?]

"No."

[Were you expecting anything?]

"No."

[Did you know the number could go up?]

"No."

[...]

[Good. That was the part that mattered.]

[Do it again tomorrow.]

[I need to know if it works twice.]