In hospitality, one size fits one.

Pre-Fall Restaurateur.

Harold Wexler was quite unwilling to let them out of his sight. If Johanna had been uncharitable, she’d have compared the situation to their mobilization back in the Montana.

At the same time, it was very understandable on his part. They had escaped the clutches of the Adjutant, for now, but who knew what would be their next move. They were still the only source of Talents, so it went beyond keeping track of a group of mere above-average Talented from the draft. She didn’t know if you could force Moore’s hand if they were captured. The Ancient could refrain himself from converting books, or she couldn’t have read those Ancient books she’d helped herself with back in Washington, DC. But if they were hostages?

The Executive’s residence was much nicer, though, than the fortified castle of the Warden. It was a three-story house in the central district of Vernon, not too far from the Executive’s offices. It was well protected, although Johanna was now doubtful about Wexler’s guards' capacity to defend against serious Talented attacks. She suspected that, in case of an attack, the four of them might be the main line of defense… and the likely target.

She also doubted that Moore would have the capacity to intervene directly again unless he had managed somehow to obtain a lot of the experience that fueled their Talent acquisition and his own abilities.

Ulrich had been politely but firmly rebuffed.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

As soon as they got in, a pair of people came to get their jackets and packs, swiftly and efficiently moving those into a side room. An older woman wearing a light dress came down the stairs and came to Wexler, slightly kissing him on the cheek.

“Unexpected guests. It’s been a while,” she said, looking at them.

“Very unexpected, dear,” the Executive replied to his wife.

“For tonight, I assume?”

“As long as it takes, actually,” he replied, prompting a slightly raised eyebrow.

“I better notify the staff then,” she said, turning back.

Harold Wexler opened a large door and ushered them into a large room. It looked like a mix of a living room and a conference office. A large meeting table, reminiscent of the one Johanna had purchased for the Talent House meetings, only larger. High chairs around it and low leather seats all over the place. A big fireplace which was already lit. A huge and nearly full bookshelf, making her immediately wonder if there were any Ancient books in there.

“Some Executives want to live at the Executive House for the prestige, but I rather like my own home,” Wexler said as he sat in one of the low seats.

“It’s very nice. Much better than the Warden’s residence.”

“The castle in New Benton, you mean. You’ve been there?”

“Why, yes.”

They all sat in the leather seats, and Johanna proceeded to recount some highlights of their stay there. How she tried to make sense of what had been happening there with Elena Worchester and the training they’d had in the castle.

“And your husband went behind everyone’s back,” Wexler said to Laura, chuckling.

“Heroic Talents are harder to spot than magic ones. Tom ousted himself at the Narrows, and it was still hard to avoid people noticing I was hitting stuff better than I ought to, or I was better at dodging even training attacks. In fact, I would have to deliberately make big mistakes, which made me look like I wasn’t talented, lower-case ‘t’. It would be a lot harder now, since my Talents improved, and if you pay attention, you can see how things adjust themselves almost unnaturally. I can more easily stop dodging things, but if I try to hit something, it’s impossible to miss the best spot. But, back then…” Peter explained.

“Well, no stalking in my house, please.”

“I don’t have reason to, this time,” he replied, laughing.

“I was young, I know. Although a bit older than you are when I met Harriet. People laughed at the H & H, Harold and Harriet.”

“So, how long are we staying?” Johanna asked.

“I’m still going to say as long as it takes.”

“Are we…”

Wexler considered the question.

“Not really, no. In theory, you could leave at any time. Although, if that was necessary, we’d find a way.”

“Katia mentioned something about needing like three sentences from anyone to charge them.”

“It’s an old saying. I can charge you with something, and by the time you have a lawyer, and they get the charges thrown out, we will have another set of charges ready. But then, given what Katia told me about what you did against the Adjutant’s agents, at that point, it becomes a problem of enforcement, not of law itself. If you do not want to cooperate with your arrest, then…”

“You need a team of Talented people. And it turns into a battle rather than some guard police action. There are probably tactics useful for capturing a rogue Talented if you only have untalented, but that’s never going to be easy, nor costless. Moore warned me – only power can manage power.”

“And I suppose at one point, if we make it through this crisis, we’ll have to figure out exactly how to do that. But right now, we must deal with the emergency first. And I’m not going to piss off the only means to deal with that emergency.”

Wexler’s wife came in the room, accompanied by another woman in livery.

“I didn’t ask, but do you need separate rooms or…”

“Ah, no. Tom and I are married, and…”

“… my wife and I actually married on the same day,” Peter completed.

“Good. Much simpler,” she said, nodding to the head maid, who bowed slightly, turned, and left. The older woman went and sat next to her husband.

“This is quite unusual compared to our usual visitors. I don’t think we had visitors that young since Malcolm came to introduce his fiancée without the rest of the family trailing along. I apologize in advance; we haven’t prepared for guests.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“It’s fine,” Johanna immediately replied.

The conversation petered out at that until Wexler’s wife restarted it.

“So, my husband has invited you to stay for what?”

“Oh, because we’re Talented. Sorceress, Heroes, Saint.”

Mrs. Wexler blinked. Obviously, she did not have time to get informed on why the four of them were there in Vernon.

“Really?”

“They are,” Harold confirmed.

As a demonstration, Johanna raised her hand and brought up her usual demonstration flame. She had done it in Wexler’s office, and it was now routine for showing that she was indeed what she claimed to be.

“That’s Fire Handling. The flame is actually rather impractical now. I used it for cooking before, but it’s too big and too hot now, and I can’t tune it down.”

Johanna moved to the next demonstration, and a bright ball of light materialized in the middle of the room, a couple of feet safely above the table.

“Burning Orb. Handy as a light when in camp – you can ask Katia Michaelson about it. And dangerous because it burns without fuel. You can’t extinguish it; just move out of the way.”

She picked a small knife on the table and brought a flame over it briefly.

“The rest, I’ll skip. I can breathe ultra-hot steam, but that’s far too dangerous in a confined area like a room. Ditto for the Cinder Circle; I make a circle of ultra-hot ash around me that will burn you if you try to cross it without being extra careful. And it would burn your parquet, too.”

The Executive’s wife stared at the spectacle before finally snorting.

“Well, that’s certainly different from the usual guests. I did not expect the Burning Walker reincarnated to come east as a guest.”

They finally moved to the “conference” table, which doubled as a dinner table, where the house staff started bringing the meal. Despite the house mistress’ apologies about a quick improvised dinner, Johanna felt like she was at some upscale restaurant. The Executive took the opportunity to resume talking as the entrées came.

“You seem to think war is inevitable,” Johanna asked him.

“Of course, I can’t be 100% sure of that. Just 99%. You’re from the Marches of the Montana, but how much of your history do you know? Or the Union in general?”

“Well, basics. Mrs. Vanu went over it, but that was never very interesting. I know the Wardens unified the Marches a century ago. That’s why it’s called the War of Unification, I think.”

“Well, there were more than one. Historians settled on three, as these involved about everyone in the Union at one point or another. The Maistry’s ancestors basically created the modern Montana during the Second and Third Wars of Unification a century ago, as you got told. His great-great-grandfather captured New Benton and made it its capital at the end of the Third. They kept the name of Montana, although they started from what was called Washington State before the Fall.”

Wexler looked at his drink, sighing.

“The Warden’s dynasty got started with conquest, and they never let that frame of mind go. The Treaty of the Union put Albert Maistry in the wrong position for his ambitions. It was pushed to end the Wars of Unification because it was obvious to everyone – well, not everyone, most – that the entire continent was not going to be re-unified more or less like it had been before the Fall. I’m sure the first Warden only joined reluctantly, but it was the pragmatic choice, even for him. The mutual assistance part of the treaty forced him to reconsider his strategies and direct his ambition outward. His son finished most of the job of making the core of the Marches, his grandson started chomping on what was tribal land at the time and managed to push the Marches northwest, up to the Alaskan peninsula since that was almost entirely depopulated at the time. The next Warden managed to snag some more land, but not that much. And, of course, the tribes of the North saw the writing on the wall and started the recent war when the abrupt succession happened, before the latest Maistry, Edgard could become too comfortable and start to plan some new campaign against them.”

“Don’t you technically have to go and help him? I remember a newspaper talking about it. That’s why the Adjutant was in Nashville, yes?” Johanna asked.

“We do have good politicians in Nashville. Nobody wants to really help the Montana get larger, as we’re sure he’d use the help offensively rather than defensively, so they argued technicalities, like the fact that, until recently, there had been no enemy armies within the official Marches. The forward forts built by Edgard’s father did not technically count. Contested territory, and all that.”

Harold Wexler looked at her with an intense gaze.

“From what my intelligence agents understand, after you completely stalled their offense last fall, the tribals got emboldened by your disappearance and pushed on two fronts. That’s why he expanded further the draft, and how he finally got the help he was asking the Union for.”

“People did not like the first draft,” Peter injected.

“State cohesion has always been difficult after the Fall,” Wexler admitted. “Most settlements had been made self-reliant, sometimes for decades. When the big ones started to talk about unifying the continent again, few were willing to follow. Even Independence was hard to get started, even if most of the major town associations were not very warlike and more inclined to cooperate, even just by trade.”

“I got history lessons back home, but they were mostly about how Valetta got started,” Johanna said.

“If you want more about the origins of the Union, the wars, and how the States arose in their varied ways, there are good books on that topic. I’m a fan of Unification. That’s a single but hefty book from Luther Nero, an academic in the Eagle Republic, written thirty years ago. Of course, it’s got a bigger focus on things west, like how Cheyenne finally joined the Union or Greater Idaho holding a large referendum on its name, rather than the history of Independence, but it has a large section on the origins of the Marches of the Montana. If that interests you. That Valetta of yours, it’s an Ancient town, or…?” Wexler asked. “More than half of the cities in Independence didn’t exist a century ago.”

“It wasn’t quite one. It was a refueling – whatever that was – stop and store on an Ancient road. Josh Valetta – the founder – got an early warning. One of his cousins – a Milton, one of my direct ancestors – warned him about the incoming Fall, and he could prepare somewhat.”

“That’s one of the thing the historians have difficulty understanding,” Wexler noted. “People knew somehow the Fall was coming, but nobody knows what it was. Or how they actually knew.”

“From what I remember, the Ancients had way to talk and watch all across the world, instantly. They even could leave the world entirely…?”

“You have historians pondering how, if something worked, it cannot work anymore. People speculate that the arrival of mana suppressed technology. It’s mostly of academic interest since it is so ancient and mainly irrelevant to today’s concerns. But you’re right. There are even cults around the Ancients’ abilities, including some exotic ones that believe they’re still out there, above the world, monitoring and watching us…”

Wexler slowed.

“Do you think that’s what your Ancient is? One of those watchers?”

“I have no idea,” Johanna replied. “But his skeleton was there, in ruins near Valetta. And wherever he is, it is not the world, not even the skies. It is nothing like we know.”

“You really went in… whatever it is?”

“It was the strangest experience of my life,” she admitted. “And I’ve had a lot of weird stuff going on since we found Moore’s skeleton.”

She pulled herself back into the feel of that unique place.

“I had no body. Nothing. I was there, but not entirely there. If we swapped ‘bodies’, then he hasn’t one at all. He’s a pure spirit, in some strangeness that is entirely unlike the world. It was empty but full of some… things. Some strings of sorts. The one thing that was immediately recognizable was the four windows that opened up into the world. Those, I knew, because they were there in some way or another whenever he called me into his dream realm.”

“One for each of you.”

“Yes. And that’s all he has…”

“Do you think it is why he pays special attention to you? Because there are only four windows to reality and no other?”

She stopped to think.

“I would like to think he helps because he wants to, but…”

She thought a bit longer.

“You know, the Church always talks about what awaits us after we die, how we’re judged. And I think he’s dead. I mean, we found his skeleton, and he’s definitively not in our world anymore. His realm feels like it’s the purgatory. The empty place, neither hell nor heaven, you know.”

Wexler nodded.

“It must be a bit weird to hear people speculating about you,” he said, tapping his finger on the table, and Johanna immediately knew he was addressing the Ancient directly.

“We always try to ignore a bit the fact that he sees us all the time. Notably at night.”

Laura looked like she was going to add something but stopped.

Well, that one is better than the Warden’s kitchens, Moore had to admit. He was surprised to see the president having a separate house than the executive building they’d been to earlier. The “Oval Office” knock-off probably threw him off.

It was still frustrating to see people chatting and eating when you couldn’t hear them or enjoy the taste of the dishes – which looked both simple, yet well done. M. Wexler had a kick-ass chef, he guessed, or at least Mrs. Wexler was a good head of household.

The fun bit was that she was a level 7 Explorer. However, once they shook hands, he could see the specialization went without any skill, and she had started with a base of 15 in the stat before getting a stat point and then the class. He’d seen it happen often by now, and it always irked him, the fact that people went without a proper set.

If only it weren’t that expensive to make builds.