Chapter 415: The Hand from Mihos
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Not useless in the complete sense. Not yet. But useless against difficulty, which often mattered more.
Mihos turned slightly when his butler stepped in from the side and bowed. The old man had served long enough to read temper the way merchants read grain shortages. He did not waste words.
"Young master."
Mihos did not ask if the new message was good. That would have been beneath both of them.
"Say it."
"The western pressure has failed to hold." The butler’s voice remained perfectly smooth. "And Dawn House counteraction has spread faster than expected."
Mihos smiled.
Not pleasantly.
"Expected by whom."
The butler, wisely, did not answer that question directly. "Iron House is losing structure."
Yes.
That part Mihos already knew.
He looked past the pavilion line toward the fading horizon. The city lay beyond it, still out of sight from this angle, but close enough that the insult of it felt near.
He did not like losing.
He had never liked losing.
More to the point, he had almost never experienced it in any form worth naming.
This? This counted.
The lower branch bastard was beating him.
’Sekhmet.’
That name sat in his thoughts like grit between the teeth.
Not merely surviving.
Beating him.
Mihos let the report in his hand fold once under pressure.
"Iron House is useless."
The butler did not disagree.
Smart.
Mihos turned fully now. His expression had gone cold enough that even the nearest servants found reasons to move farther away without appearing to move at all.
"Call one of ours."
That changed the room.
Not loudly. But precisely.
The butler bowed. "Which one?"
Mihos considered only for a breath.
"Someone with enough sense to hold a collapsing hand together. Dickoff is a fool. He cannot overcome difficulties once they stop flattering him." His eyes hardened. "If Iron House cannot stand under pressure, then we lend it spine until this phase is finished."
The butler inclined his head once. "At once."
Mihos looked again toward the city.
He would not let this continue.
Not because Iron House mattered so deeply in itself. Houses rose and fell. Tools broke. Lesser branches embarrassed themselves every season somewhere in Null. But this was happening before him, under his hand, in a game he had already touched.
That made it personal. And Mihos did not like being answered. Not like this. Not by someone beneath him.
By the time the first true signs of night reached Dawn House, the report lines had been copied, the route marks updated, and the major decisions of the day had been made. Raka had left to continue the pressure. The house itself settled into that dangerous hour between daylight business and night movement, when men either prepared for sleep or prepared for violence and only the experienced ever knew which one a great estate was choosing.
Sekhmet remained by the table a while longer after Raka went.
The myth still sat in his mind. So did the vision. So did the system answer.
Upgrade Vampire Creation. Build his own bloodline. Touch the old vampire world later, if at all.
Useful priorities. Clean ones. Outside, the light kept fading. Inside the house, lamps began to glow one by one.
One hours later...
Night settled fully over Dawn House, but the house did not soften with it.
Some estates slept at night.
This one sharpened.
Lamps burned behind thick glass. Corridor shadows stayed controlled instead of dark. Guards changed positions without noise. Maids moved like they were carrying more than trays and cloth. Even the stillness around the walls had purpose in it now. Dawn House had already passed the point where anyone inside could mistake this for ordinary business pressure. Iron House was bleeding. Mihos had been answered. And men who were used to being answered badly often became dangerous when the world refused to keep its proper place.
Sekhmet remained in the strategy room a little longer.
The table before him held the same facts as before. Routes. Cuts. Pressure points. Merchant shifts. Broken confidence. But facts never remained, only facts once night arrived. At night, they turned into movement. Secret movement. Revenge movement. Desperate movement. A smart enemy did not always strike when losing. Sometimes he sent someone sharper to keep from collapsing.
He did not need prophecy for that.
He needed only basic contempt for men like Mihos.
Useful contempt.
Behind him, the door opened quietly.
Not Raka.
Not a maid.
Mira.
She stepped into the room carrying two rolled papers and one smaller ledger, and even at this hour there was no softness in the way she moved. Her human appearance remained as elegant and controlled as ever, but now that Sekhmet knew what sat under her skin, he could see the patience in it differently. Not the patience of a clerk. The patience of a predator who had learned numbers because numbers built cleaner cages than claws alone.
"You have not rested," she said.
Neither accusation nor concern.
Observation.
Sekhmet did not look away from the table. "Neither have you."
Mira came closer and laid the papers beside the map. "Three more traders shifted quietly away from Iron House before dusk. They did not announce it, but they changed delivery preference and asked for Dawn House protection wording in their next contract copies."
She unrolled the second paper.
"One weapons buyer tried to delay instead of cancel. That means fear, not confidence. We can recover him later." Her finger touched another line. "Food lines remain stable. Worker panic is lower tonight than it was this morning."
Better.
Mira’s eyes lifted to him. "Raka told you one week."
"Yes."
She nodded once. "If Mihos lets Iron House die on its own."
There it was. The real question.
Sekhmet looked at her now. "And if he does not."
Mira’s expression did not change, but her voice became colder. "Then we stop fighting only Iron House."
Correct. Very correct.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The house beyond the room continued breathing in quiet layers. Somewhere far off, a serving cart rolled over stone. Somewhere lower, someone shut a door too carefully for it to be casual. The whole estate felt like a blade laid flat on velvet. It was still beautifully ready.
Mira said, "The old vampire women."
Interesting that she chose that phrasing.
Sekhmet did not answer immediately.
Mira went on. "I know you went to them."
Of course she did.
Nothing meaningful moved through the house or the Void Land now without someone like Mira noticing the shape of its absence.
"They offered something," she said.
Not a question.
Sekhmet’s gaze settled on her fully now. "You want to know what."
"No."
That answer surprised him slightly.
Mira saw it.
Then she added, "I want to know whether it matters for tomorrow."
Useful.
Good.
Not jealous.
Not distracted.
Thinking.
"Not for tomorrow," he said.
Mira accepted that at once. "Then I do not need the rest yet."
That answer pleased him more than he showed.
Good again.
He looked back down at the table. "Get some sleep."
That made her mouth move very slightly. Not a smile. Something smaller and harder.
"That order would sound more convincing if you intended to obey it yourself."
Then she gathered the empty tube from the map’s edge, nodded once, and turned to leave. At the door she stopped.
"Mihos will answer the humiliation," she said without turning back. "Not because Iron House matters. Because he does."
Then she left. Yes. That, too, was correct.
Far outside the city, Mihos Dawn had no intention of sleeping yet.
His camp looked magnificent from a distance and unnatural from up close. That was how he preferred it. Large enough to remind others that temporary comfort could still be superior to permanent homes. Fine enough to keep ugliness out. Controlled enough to let everyone near him remember who stood above them.
Tonight, however, the beauty of it did not help.
Mihos stood under a lamplit canopy at the center of his command section, one hand behind his back, the other holding a cup he had not touched in too long. The drink inside had gone almost cold. He did not notice. Or perhaps he noticed and hated it as one more tiny proof that the evening had failed to arrange itself properly around him.
Across from him stood three people.
His butler. A thin man in layered dark clothes whose face never remembered warmth. And a woman in pale armor with no crest visible on it.
Not soldiers in the common sense. Not servants either. His people.
The kind brought closer only when lesser tools had shown their limits.
Dickoff’s written report lay open on the low table between them.
"Pathetic thing. Too many explanations. Too many complaints. Too much phrasing shaped to make loss sound like complexity instead of failure."
Mihos did not sit.
He did not need height added to his presence tonight.
He let the silence build until the dark-clothed man lowered his gaze first. Good. Someone in this space still had instinct.
"Iron House is collapsing faster than forecast," Mihos said.
No one replied.