To Trade in Secrets
Third Day of the Third Month 293 AC
There is only one question you can ask first no matter how many clamber for your attention, how curious, or suspicious, you may be: "Is this place properly warded?"
For a long moment there is no answer and you fear Lady Phassen might have taken it as an attempt to probe their defenses, but in the end she gives a short sharp nod, most unlike the languorous manner she had adapted at the conclave meeting, the woman behind the mask, or simply
another mask? The best deceptions have very little to do with sorcery, after all.
"Do you have reason to assume this place may be unsafe in any other manner, or that others may be trying to eavesdrop on the conversation?" you continue in like manner.
"You are not what I expected," she admits at last, speaking slowly as though choosing each syllable with care.
"You did not expect caution?" you ask, surprised.
She hums in thought, the sound far too low to hear over the various sounds of the workshop were it not for your senses. "From my studies on transfiguration I had thought the skill of becoming a dragon would mark a rather different character." She had not outright admitted to being some manner of sorceress herself but it was close enough as made no difference.
"Brash, thoughtless?" Malarys challenges, obviously setting himself up as the more antagonistic presence, a role which admittedly suits him well.
"Let us say more
direct in approach," the lady replies. "To answer your questions in order, yes there are wards and those who would break them if they could as with every secret worth knowing. For all that I do not worry that we will be overheard this night."
You nod, then with a smile to soften the threat beneath the words you add, "I grew weary of springing traps from the inside."
The slow walk through the workshop leads you past an apprentice carefully pouring molten glass into an enchanted crucible, the arcane markings clear upon the thick leather gloves he wears. You ask, "Was this your own work?"
Your host acknowledges the vagueness of the question with a slight tilt of the head. "I have some skill in the matters of sorcery though I can hardly claim to be directly responsible for most of this..." She waves around the hall. "It is the small and simple magics that will change the world I think, the wards that keep a master from losing his hands to flame, the subtle insight that makes a great craftsmen out of a common one and a prodigy of the truly great. Most of those are not my work, nor could they be the work of any single man or woman."
Almost in spite yourself you nod along. It has been so long since you have heard someone in power express some sort of vision for the changing world that extends past the desperate attempt to halt the tide, or worse ignore it as they burn. In fact you think the last was Zherys' dream of raising Valyria from its unquiet grave, and this sounds a great deal more palatable than that.
"Who are you truly, Dorera Phassen?" Malarys asks searchingly. "You know of us, by reputation at least, yet we know little of you beyond what little we learned yesterday, and I think there is cause a plenty to think that information was... incomplete."
"I know who Viserys Targaryen is," she corrects. "I can even make a decent guess as to the dragon-kin that rides on your shoulder..." She pauses for a moment as Varys hisses in pleasure of being recognized mingled with annoyance that she could be counted an afterthought. "But I know precious little of you, Lord Vanor. Mistake me not, one would have to be deaf and blind not to know you for a distinguished scion of ancient lineage and educated in far more than sorcery alone, but the mystery of your precise origins endures..."
Malarys gives you a questioning look which you meet in turn with a minimal sort of shrug. It is his history and thus his choice who he trusts with it.
"I was born in Essaria not quite four decades before what you call the Doom of Valyria, a fate I escaped though not without cost to myself." Then, before Lady Phassen could have possibly come to terms such an announcement, he asks, "Is the sentinel outside as old as I, or has it been wrought through more recent artifice?"
"The latter," she answers a bit too quickly, possibly without thinking about it. The look she gives the ancient sorcerer in turn is one of mingled annoyance, interest, and grudging admiration. "Creating such automatons was instrumental in ensuring those maegi with more ambition than sense or sanity did not rip the city apart. It's something of an open secret in circles dabbling in the occult that any truly egregious transgression will be dealt with permanently."
Not many minor sorcerers still taking their paths towards true power would be able to handle even one of the glass servitors still less more of them, you know, but that still leaves many questions unanswered. "What constitutes such a transgression?"
The answer comes readily enough, it has the air of something almost learned by rote: "Fiend binding, any sort of permanent conjuration really. Too many times those seeking to call benevolent spirits have found themselves deceived, drawing the dead from their tombs to serve, though expeditions are made for those merely seeking knowledge as long as they clean up after themselves, wide scale enchantment of the wealthy and powerful... just because one can take a man's wits away with magic does not mean you have any more of them to begin with." The last is said with a smile you easily recognize. Some challenge that can be made light of in hindsight that was anything but in the moment.
"So there are no spirits, elemental, fey or otherwise acting in Myr itself that you know of?" you ask, impressed in no small measure, wondering if you should even think of Lady Phassen's group as a faction within the city. The sort of enforcement she speaks of implies solid control, whether open or not.
"No, though there are fey aplenty in the wild lands," she sighs. "Thankfully they do not seem to have any love of cities."
Malarys nods along in satisfaction, returning the admiration perhaps even with a different sort of glint in his eye... You suppose objectively she is pleasant enough to look at. At least he is not one to let that get in the way of his work and ambitions. "Keep a close eye on discontent among the slaves, particularly odd movements or pervasive rituals. No one else will know what to look for so you are unlikely to catch it at the root."
The lady looks momentary surprised at the advice, or perhaps your lack of negative reaction to it.
"That is at most a stopgap solution," you interject. "Slavery breeds too many opportunity for unsavory practices, from masters offering their slaves up in sacrifice to dark powers, body and soul, to desperate slaves reaching out to any power that promises to break their chains."
"And yet the Freehold endured for five thousand years and more..." the lady notes, her tone carefully neutral.
What do you answer?
[] Write in
OOC: Remember you have Malarys with you, so you should try not to be too insulting to the Freehold.
