Chapter 105: The Old Blood
The argument started over a statue.
Ryn heard it before he saw it — voices raised in the particular register of people who had been disagreeing politely for a long time and had just stopped being polite. The sound came from the Academy’s central courtyard, where the monument garden displayed busts and carvings of historical figures arranged in chronological order. The first bust was Krug. The last was King Aldren’s father. Between them: two hundred and fifty years of commanders, priests, scholars, builders, and administrators whose faces had been carved in stone and mounted on plinths for students to walk past and, mostly, ignore.
Today, nobody was ignoring them.
A cluster of students had gathered around the monument to Sarvek Tarvond the Elder — the current Grand Duke’s grandfather, a Lizardman general who had commanded the northern defense during the First Demeterra War. The statue showed him in battle armor, holding a spear, standing on a plinth inscribed with his deeds.
The plinth had been defaced.
Someone had carved three words into the stone beneath the inscription, in letters crude enough to have been done with a chisel and angry enough to have been done at midnight.
FOUNDERS NOT OWNERS
The crowd was split. Ryn could see the division without understanding it — Lizardman students on one side, faces tight with an anger that was older than any of them. Human students on the other, some uncomfortable, some defiant, a few trying to pretend they hadn’t noticed. Kobolds, Gnolls, and Minotaurs scattered between, occupying the position of people who belonged to neither camp and wanted no part of either.
A Lizardman student — tall, young, wearing the green shoulder-stripe of a third-year — stood at the base of the plinth with his hands clenched.
"This is vandalism," he said. His Common was formal, precise — the speech of a Lizardman noble house. "This is a war memorial. General Tarvond held the Frostmarch against four thousand of Demeterra’s soldiers with eight hundred defenders. He lost an arm. His son died in the same battle. And someone carved graffiti on his monument."
"It’s not graffiti," said a Human girl from the opposite side. She was seated on a bench, arms crossed, with the casual posture of someone who’d been expecting this conversation. "It’s a statement. And the statement is true. The founders built the kingdom. That doesn’t mean they own it. Sixty percent of the population is Human. The kingdom’s majority is Human. But three of the eight noble houses are Lizardman, and Lizardmen hold positions of influence in the Crucible, the military, and the Academy at rates that exceed their population share by a factor of three."
"Because Lizardmen *built* those institutions—"
"Two hundred and fifty years ago. The people who built them are dead. Their descendants benefit from the building, but they didn’t do the building themselves. Merit shouldn’t be inherited."
"The noble house system IS inheritance—"
"Exactly." The girl’s voice was quiet and sharp. "Exactly."
Ryn stood at the edge of the crowd. Thresh materialized beside him — the Kobold had a talent for appearing at the periphery of interesting events without anyone noticing his arrival.
"The Founders’ Question," Thresh murmured. "It comes up every few years. Usually around quota season."
"Quota season?"
"Academy admissions. The noble houses have reserved seats — guaranteed positions for their bloodlines, regardless of examination results. The rest of the seats are open competition. The reserved seats represent twelve percent of the Academy’s capacity. The open seats are ninety percent Human because Humans are ninety percent of the applicant pool. The result: Lizardman noble children attend the Academy by right. Lizardman commoner children compete with Humans and usually lose because Humans have larger cohorts and more preparation resources." He paused. "And then there’s the Warden Academy. That’s the one nobody talks about."
"What about it?"
"House Gorvaxis holds the Hydra bond by bloodline. Three generations. Father to son to grandson. The Warden Academy was built *around* that family — they didn’t earn their position through the Academy’s admission process, they earned it by being Gorthan’s descendants. The bond-resonance passes through the bloodline. No Human, no Kobold, no Gnoll has ever been tested for the Hydra bond because the Gorvaxis family has never let the bond lapse long enough to test anyone else." Thresh’s amber eyes were steady. "The creature bond is the purest form of hereditary privilege in the kingdom. It’s not about merit. It’s about blood. And nobody carves ’Founders Not Owners’ on the Gorvaxis plinth because everyone loves the Hydra too much to question who gets to hold its leash."
"What about Kobolds?"
Thresh’s expression was the Kobold equivalent of a shrug. "Kobolds don’t care about the Academy. We have our own education system — the Deep Archive in Cinderpit. House Myrvalis runs it. Every Kobold child in the kingdom can attend, noble or common. We solved the problem by building our own institution."
"And the Gnolls?"
"Gnolls solve problems by ignoring institutions entirely. The Fenward house trains their people in the field. Pack education — practical, apprenticeship-based, no examinations. A Gnoll scout who can track a wolf pack in a blizzard doesn’t need a Academy degree to prove competence."
Ryn looked back at the crowd. The argument had attracted a professor — a Human woman in the blue robes of the history faculty, who was attempting to moderate with the weary expertise of someone who had moderated this exact argument six times and knew it would happen a seventh.
"The monument will be restored," the professor said. "The disciplinary board will investigate. In the meantime, I would remind all students that the Academy’s founding charter guarantees equal standing for all races, and that the charter was written by a Lizardman, signed by a Human, witnessed by a Kobold, and enforced by a Minotaur. The kingdom is multi-racial by design, not by accident."
The crowd dispersed. Slowly. The way crowds disperse when the argument has been paused rather than resolved.
***
Grand Duke Sarvek Tarvond heard about the vandalism before noon.
News traveled fast in Ashenveil. News about insults to Lizardman heritage traveled faster — through the network of Lizardman officers, priests, scholars, and administrators who occupied positions throughout the kingdom’s institutions and who maintained, despite two hundred and fifty years of integration, the tight-knit communication habits of a race that had once been the kingdom’s entire population.
Sarvek sat in his Ashenveil residence — a stone townhouse in the noble quarter, austere, decorated with nothing except military campaign maps and a single painting of the Green Basin swamplands where the kingdom had been born. He read the incident report that his aide had delivered and set it on the table with the slow, controlled motion of a man containing something combustible.
"Founders not owners," he said.
His aide — a young Lizardman from House Tarvond’s household staff — stood at attention. "The Academy’s disciplinary board has opened an investigation. No suspects identified yet."
"There won’t be. It was carved at night. The courtyard has no guards between midnight and dawn — an oversight that the Academy’s administration has been informed about twice in the past five years." Sarvek’s voice was level. The anger was in the stillness, not the volume. "And the phrase is not original. It appeared on a broadsheet in the Southmark two years ago. And in graffiti in the Ironfields three years before that. And in a petition to the Crown — a legal, formal petition — seven years ago."
"Who filed the petition?"
"A Human merchants’ association in Bridgeport. They requested a review of the noble house quota system, arguing that hereditary institutional access was incompatible with a meritocratic economy." He paused. "The petition was filed through legal channels. Reviewed by the High Justiciar. Denied by the Crown on the grounds that the noble house system is divinely appointed and therefore not subject to civil review."
"Divinely appointed."
"The Sovereign established the houses. The Sovereign can dissolve them. Civil institutions cannot." Sarvek’s claws pressed against the tabletop. "That was the ruling. It settled the legal question. It did not settle the feeling underneath."
He stood. The motion was stiff — ninety-one years of military service, combat wounds, and a spine that had been straight through three kings’ reigns and was now straight through force of will rather than skeletal cooperation.
"The feeling is this: the Lizardmen built the kingdom. The Humans inherited it. And with every passing generation, the Human majority grows larger and the Lizardman contribution grows more distant. We become history. History is respected. History is honored. History is put on plinths and walked past by students who don’t read the inscriptions."
He looked at the painting of the Green Basin. The swamplands. The place where twenty-four survivors had built the first fire and spoken the first prayer.
"My grandfather stood in that swamp. He carried a stone axe and wore animal hide and didn’t know the word for ’kingdom.’ He built every piece of what those students are fighting over. And his great-great-grandson is a duke who lives in a stone house in a city that wouldn’t exist without the people who are now being told they don’t own what they built."
He walked to the window. Outside, across the rooftops, the faint silhouette of the Hydra was visible at the Sovereign Lake — three heads in resting formation, the afternoon sun catching the gold of its scales.
"The Gorvaxis family still holds the Hydra bond. Gorthan bonded it in the first year. His grandson holds it now. That bond — the bond between a minotaur family and a divine creature — is the oldest continuous inheritance in the kingdom. Two hundred and fifty years. And no one questions it because the bond is real. The creature accepts the bloodline. You cannot argue demographics at a divine creature."
His claws pressed against the windowsill.
"But they can argue it at a duke. Because a duke’s authority is tradition. A Warden’s authority is biology."
The aide was silent. There was nothing to say to a man who was watching his legacy become a monument while a divine creature’s bond remained unquestioned.
***
Ryn found Lysa in the Academy library that evening.
The library was the Academy’s largest building — three floors of books, scrolls, reference documents, and research materials organized by the Scriptist system that Orrythas’s scholars had developed over two centuries. The reading room on the second floor was Lysa’s territory — a corner table near the window where she’d carved a space between her stacked books and dared anyone to approach uninvited.
Ryn approached uninvited. She’d stopped objecting to this around week three.
"The statue thing," he said. "What was that really about?"
Lysa closed her book — a history of the Second Demeterra War, six hundred pages, her third read. "Demographics."
"Thresh said it was about quotas."
"Quotas are the symptom. Demographics are the disease." She folded her hands. "When the kingdom was founded, Lizardmen were the majority. First believers. First soldiers. First priests. First everything. The noble house system was created to formalize what already existed — Lizardman families in positions of authority because Lizardmen were the population."
"And now?"
"Now Humans are sixty percent. Lizardmen are fourteen percent. Kobolds are twelve. Minotaurs are eight. Gnolls are six. The demographic shift happened naturally — Humans breed faster, migrate more, assimilate into new territories more easily. The Life domain blessings extended everyone’s lifespan, but they didn’t change birth rates enough to prevent the shift."
"So the Lizardmen went from majority to fourteen percent—"
"But kept forty percent of the noble house seats and disproportionate representation in the Crucible and military officer corps. Because the house system is frozen. It reflects the kingdom at founding, not the kingdom as it is."
Ryn sat with this. The numbers were clear. The implications were not.
"Why doesn’t the Sovereign fix it?"
Lysa looked at him. The look was the one she gave when he’d said something that was either very naive or very dangerous, and she was trying to determine which.
"Fix it how? Add Human noble houses? Remove Lizardman ones? Rewrite the quota system? Every option creates a new problem. Add Human houses, and you dilute the founder families’ influence — the families whose ancestors literally bled for this kingdom. Remove Lizardman houses, and you destroy two hundred and fifty years of institutional knowledge and loyalty. Rewrite the quotas, and you tell every non-Human in the kingdom that their historical contribution doesn’t matter anymore. And then there’s the creature question — the Gorvaxis family holds the Hydra bond because the creature’s biology requires it. You can’t democratize a bond that’s encoded in blood. The Warden Academy has tried. The creature rejects non-Gorvaxis handlers."
"So nothing changes?"
"Things change slowly. The Crown has been gradually increasing the number of commoner positions in the ministries — Yvara, the High Justiciar, is a commoner. Torven, the Master Builder, is a commoner. Helsa, Minister of Agriculture, commoner. The Sovereign is diluting hereditary privilege through institutional appointments rather than structural reform."
"Slowly."
"Slowly is how kingdoms survive, Ryn. Fast is how they break."
He thought about Sarvek Tarvond — the ninety-one-year-old Grand Duke who’d drunk fernbrew with the king and spoken truths that made the shadows in the study feel colder. A man who had earned everything he held and who knew, with the clear-eyed certainty of the very old, that what he’d earned would be worth less with every passing year. Not because it was diminished. Because the population that remembered it was shrinking.
He thought about the Human girl in the courtyard, sitting on the bench, arms crossed, voice quiet and sharp. Merit shouldn’t be inherited. She was right. She was also talking about dismantling the institutional structure of a kingdom built by people who had bled for the privilege of building it.
Both things were true. That was the problem.
"The Sovereign sees all this," Ryn said. Not a question.
"The Sovereign sees everything. He sees the demographics. He sees the tension. He sees the graffiti and the petitions and the arguments in Academy courtyards." Lysa picked up her book. "And he’s been managing it for two hundred and fifty years. Balancing the founder houses against the demographic reality. Appointing commoners to blunt the hereditary edge. Moving slowly enough that nothing breaks."
"And if something does break?"
Lysa opened her book. The conversation was over — signaled by the act of resuming reading, which was Lysa’s version of a closed door.
But before she found her page, she said one more thing. Quietly. Without looking up.
"Then we find out what the Sovereign does when his own system produces a problem he didn’t design."
The library was quiet. The evening light faded through the windows. Somewhere in the city, a stonemason was already repairing General Tarvond’s plinth, chiseling away the carved words until the stone was smooth again.
The words were gone. The feeling underneath them was not.