[] You're going to throw a wrench into the works, then go to ground here.
"You saw
what?" Tehli looks at you in surprise, but the carefully-measured surprise and shock on your face is convincing.
"An Anathema mark," you repeat. "Her headband slipped. I don't think she saw me see it, though, which is probably why I got out safely. Twine is some sort of Anathema."
Tehli sucks in, a long intake of breath, tapping her pen on a half-completed new story of men in love as she considers what this means. "That's… serious. We have to keep Anathema from running free in Gem, after all." The Despot doesn't like competition: between that fact and the Lap's unwillingness to ship food to places that willingly harbor such monsters, they can't be open in Gem. Whether or not the Despot knew, you're whispering in places that aren't
supposed to know. That's the sort of thing that can't be as easily swept under the rug. Rumors spread all the more when clamped down on.
"There was some fell working there, too," you continue. "I'm not sure what. It was subtle, and I didn't recognize it. I think the place is going to be very dangerous for days to come."
"That's also not good. Now we have to shift around assignments, make it look like you did have a guard with you, because people will check the paperwork after an accusation like that." Tehli considers.
"A favor, if I could?" Tehli looks up from pulling out a few different folders, where she doubtless was moving through various permutations of how she could make this look. "I'd rather not be associated with this. I felt a duty to report this, but I'm just trying to be a good citizen. I'm not a fighter, and I don't want to attract attention." That's in line with your cover, where you're just a relatively normal, mildly-shady sorcerer. It's far from uncommon for a sorcerer to get into trouble. This is why Realm-approved sorcerers tend to have to have demon insurance. Even if not actually through rampaging demons, sorcerers tend to get their fingers a little metaphorically burnt now and then, so laying low is normal and accepted
enough as long as the trouble isn't too bad and the sorcerer is sufficiently useful.
"Hm. That might actually help." Tehli nods. "Libni. I owe him a favor and he'd be willing to accept this for the glory. If anyone asks, he was the guard who went with you, saw the mark, and reported it." You file the name away and forget it, rather confident it won't come up but that you have it if you need it. "What Anathema mark was it?"
This one you have to think about. You actually don't know. You didn't really see it, and it's not like such marks are there when you're not flexing your Exalted muscles, after all. "I think it was the mark of the Deceivers," you hazard. The so-called Eclipse caste Anathema were the ones who forged fell pacts with all sorts of evil powers, so it's a reasonable guess for someone who's trying to tame the Shrike. "I didn't have enough time to look hard, but it was clear enough. A dark Anathema brand."
Tehli nods. "Got it." She raises her eyes to look back to you. "You know, this is going to have to pan out. If there's nothing to be found after a couple of days, the investigation
will get back to you. I can't do anything about that."
You nod. "I understand." Besides, in a couple of days, things won't matter near as much. Regardless of what they find, as long as there's someone there to see the Waif when she comes in, you will be vindicated.
* * *
"Damn it.
Damn it. Why now?" It's a familiar refrain from Twine by now, so Son of Crows doesn't reply. "I had almost finished the calculations, but they're not
done yet. What is suddenly so all-fired urgent? She doesn't usually want to crawl out of her lair until it's the endgame. Why now?"
Twine is in her office, a small room with nearly every flat surface covered in paper filled with her handwriting, mathematical and geomantic calculations, geometry abstracts, and more. Son of Crows stands near the door, which is as far as he is allowed in, given how frustrating it is for Twine to have anyone move
her designs by even half an inch. "Does the Waif suspect, or is this some other project?"
"I don't know.
I don't know! But I wasn't ready!" Twine balls up one of the papers on her desk in both hands, then carefully flattens it back out, stares at it silently for perhaps five seconds, before balling it back up, even more aggressively. "The Waif never wants to explain anything. Always too sure that everyone's going to backstab her if she does."
Given what the two of them have discussed, Son of Crows doesn't choose to comment on this.
Listlessly, Twine shifts a few other papers, and with a half-hearted if still superhuman speed continues the gruntwork of working through her observations and what they tell her about the Shrike's bases. No observation is perfectly accurate, so there's a level of inference and error correction that always must be done. "I hope that idiot sorcerer comes through," she finally says, in a tone that she has forced to be somewhat normal. "If it's anything even slightly useful, it might be enough to ameliorate her mood." Son of Crows inclines his head in agreement, knowing she can see it from the tiny reflective mirrors on the sides of her eyepiece, even though she isn't looking at him. He cocks his head a moment later. Twine doesn't notice this. She's gotten distracted again, though at least this time she's not ranting about the Waif.
"Do you hear that?" She finally asks, getting up from her table. "Is someone out th--Ack!"
Without a word or gesture of warning, Son of Crows has lived up to his name, the deathknight exploding into a flock of the eponymous birds. Reflexively, she covers her eyes and face with her hands, her complex, many-lensed eyepieces ignored as she deals with the storm of birds, all of them hurrying out the window with an unmistakable urgency.
"What?"
Twine's question, aimed in confusion at the empty room around her, goes unanswered for a breath, no longer. Then, what she had heard comes for her: a pair of grim-faced Dragon-Blooded warriors bearing the Despot's symbol burst in, a scale or two of normal soldiers behind them. "Stand down, in the name of the Despot!" one barks.
Twine rounds on them in a fury, but her combat training has never emphasized the ability to hold off multiple Exalt-level opponents while surprised and bare-handed. The Despot's troops, on the other hand, came here with full expectations of what they would find. Rough hands reach for her, and she is wrestled down, forced to a kneeling position, both knees uncomfortably resting on filled pockets stuffed with equipment that presses in painfully even through her thick dress. "What is the meaning of this?" Even forced down, immobilized, and taken by surprise, Twine is not without her talents. Even when not exerting herself, there is a weight to her words that cannot be denied. The mortal soldiers who are putting dusty bootprints all over her work look sheepish, and the Dragon-Blooded leaders are not immune, either.
"It's a precaution only," one of them says. "There was an accusation, and we must investigate. We will let you go as soon as we've cleared it up. My name is Sirocco, and I'm here on the Despot's directions. It shouldn't take long." Somehow, it makes sense to her that this is definitely wrong, but she is still going to play her orders to the hilt.
"What sort of investig--
don't touch that!" The other, who had been reaching for Twine's headband, pauses. However, he, too, has his orders. The headband comes off.
There is, of course, no mark on her forehead. They didn't really expect it. One does not have to be a devout Immaculate to know that the forehead brands of Anathema only show when the dark creature is exerting itself.
"Don't worry, my lady." Sirocco sees nothing wrong in using the term of respect, even as she holds Twine restrained. One of Sirocco's hands holds both of Twine's wrists, holding them together behinds Twine's back. Sirocco's other hand is on the back of Twine's neck, keeping her staring at the floor. Hesitantly, she loosens her grip slightly, not to the point of letting Twine free, but lessening the discomfort she is forcing on the prisoner. "This is what we expect. Once we clear you, I'm sure the Despot will see to things." A neutral statement, which is all the more that she is allowed to speak for the Despot; he takes a dim view of his low-level flunkies
endorsing that he will pay restitution or otherwise take on obligations. "Of course… what's that?" Her own eyes go to the inside of the headband.
They both look. It takes a moment to recognize: it's some sort of make-up smeared on the inside of the band, in Twine's skin color.
The one who took off her headband licks his thumb, and roughly wipes it on the center of Twine's forehead.
There is a mark there, revealed as the make-up is scraped off. A black symbol, a circle with only its upper half filled.
It is the mark of the Unclean, those terrible Anathema who in search of knowledge and wealth fed whole cities to destruction as collateral damage.
Now Twine struggles for real, writhing and kicking, hissing and spitting defiance. The headband is dropped, forgotten. Both of the Dragon-Bloods focus all their attention on restraining her, now. Restraining her… and dragging her away. "
NO!" Twine's rejection is spat to the air. But she can't fight her way out, only perhaps escape if she has a moment of freedom to spin her secrets to effect that. Instead, she
has to explain. "No, you don't understand! Not now! None of us have
time for this now! Don't you see? This is wrong! You can't do this!"
Her demands fall on deaf ears as she is dragged away.
* * *
One of the mirrors above Twine's swimming pool is different than its kin. It looks the same, but one of them was crafted personally by the Lonely Waif of Cooling Embers, then carried here to Gem by Twine, and mounted in a very precise alignment of geomantic factors. Lastly, its position was reported with exacting accuracy to the Waif.
This mirror cracks suddenly, a single fissure running from top to bottom. The guards in the room look up. Twine hadn't thought in such terms, but her extravagant purchase of a swimming pool had left a certain amount of wealth just sitting around. Naturally, this would be left under "close guard", which would mean that its depth would shrink by about a foot a day until there was no water left to disappear.
The mirror bursts, spraying slivers of glass across the room. The guards curse, throwing up arms and turning away to shield their faces. The Dragon-Blood leading them is the first to raise her eyes again. Sirocco is still here, which is still a major investment on the Despot's part and a sign that he took these allegations seriously. Even the million or so people living in Gem only produce so many Exalts, and there's always a demand for them.
There is a gust of wind, and in its passing, Sirocco has a spear in her hands, a black metal pole some eight feet long, its head crafted of soulsteel and patterned to look like a wolf's head. Soulsteel is not the ideal magical material for a Dragon-Blood, as their nature aligns so strongly to that of the living world, but it is still finer than any merely mortal weapon, and is a prize she claimed many years ago. "Stay back," she commands her troops.
They need little convincing. No normal human would want to face the three currently drifting slowly to the ground from where the broken mirror rested. The most immediately terrifying of these is a muscular human figure with a skull for a head and garbed in royal purple. Sirocco recognizes a nephwrack when she sees it, and just as quickly realizes that the nephwrack is not the leader. Both the nephwrack and the other figure are instinctively deferring to the one in the center, who... looks like a normal materialized ghost, for all that she can't be. From behind her veil, the Lonely Waif scans the room, noting with displeasure the lack of Withered Flowers Twine the Soul and the presence of one of the hated Dragon-Blooded Exalts. "What game is that foolish girl playing at? I
told her I was coming," the Waif asks the world at large.
Sirocco approaches. She does not like her odds, but she can't very well back down, not here. To flee would be to sacrifice the guards she commands, at best.
The Waif finally looks directly at Sirocco for the first time. "Tumulus?"
"Yes, your grace?" The third figure steps forward. He is a grey-skinned man, wound round with burial clothes, but stowed safely at his sides he has a one-handed axe of common make and a white jade thunderbolt shield.
"Show me what you can do." A gesture towards Sirocco.
"As you command, your grace." The Tumulus Raised as a Steadfast Bulwark holds his axe up and back, ready to come crashing down, and holds forth the shield in a center grip.
Sirocco flourishes her spear and focuses her attention on Tumulus. If these interlopers are willing to make it a one-on-one fight, instead of a three-on-one fight, she won't complain. "Cleansing Flame Strike!" Although Sirocco is an Air Aspect, any Dragon-Blooded Exalt is capable of wielding any elemental power with proficiency. Flaring heat bursts forth from the soulsteel wolf's 'eyes', and she crosses the eight meters between them in an instant.
The white shield rings as the spearpoint hits it, but with a twist of his wrist it is deflected, and he steps into the opening provided, looking to bring his shorter weapon against her. Sirocco is ready for him, letting the head be pushed aside while she shortens her grip, turning the spear into a quarterstaff and aiming a follow-up low at his shin, which is also intercepted by a quickly-interposed white shield.
Tumulus isn't trying to hide what he is: he is trying to show what he can do. A black circle opens on his forehead, leaking blood, and Sirocco realizes he is an Exalt, as well. He fights with the sort of speed and accuracy that typifies an Exalted warrior, keeping his feet planted firmly as much as possible.
Sirocco gives up a step, then another, keeping the distance between them open as she burns with ever-hotter flame. Time and again, she lashes out with her weapon, invading his space and seeking to skewer him. His shield is always there, always ready, ringing like a bell with hard impacts and producing a metallic scraping sound when he deflects. With every exchange, his defense grows more adamant. With every step Sirocco gives up, that fortress-like defense shifts and needs to be rebuilt. Still, the Tumulus possesses the sheer excellence and brute power of a deathknight, and
merely having to advance into her magical fire and dancing spearhead would mean nothing to him... were it not for the fact that her style is Golden Janissary. By his sheer bad luck, he is facing a Dragon-Blood who has studied a style that strikes harder against creatures of the Underworld, which certainly includes him.
There is a lull as each of them take stock. Hot desert winds surge forth from Sirocco, her anima flux creating a sandstorm. They have exchanged some two dozen blows, to no discernible advantage. Sirocco is breathing hard, but there is a ready light in her eyes, a fierce desire to
conquer this unexpected foe. The Tumulus, however, is practically unmoved. His burial clothes are, of course, too fireproof to catch flame, and his flesh is corpse-hard, not yet showing injury. He doesn't look like he's exerted himself too much yet, but... his attention isn't only on Sirocco. He can't stop his eyes from flicking to the Waif, seeing what
she thinks of this fight.
The Waif watches the Midnight caste's battle with undisguised unhappiness, judging him against a scale he cannot measure up to.
No force in existence can successfully bind an Exaltation to an unworthy host. The more-than-divine spark of Exaltation is a thing beyond control. The Waif is one of those who... experimented... in the early days, when the Deathlords were first granted control of the power to name deathknights. In some cases, it would simply fail, smoothly sliding off of a weak mind that offered it no purchase. In other cases, the unfortunate would die, in quite intriguingly horrible fashion, unable to master the roiling power of a hurricane unbound to run rampant through their soul.
Nonetheless, there is worthy, and there is worthy. The Tumulus is the latter. He can suffice, for all that he is merely
superhuman, compared to the transcendent glory that were her exactingly Chosen champions. The last few months have been frustrating.
As the Waif stands, silently absorbed by these thoughts, the nephwrack standing by her side suddenly jerks into action. Tesklore bounds forward, his arms spread wide. The Waif's attention is pulled to him, and she sees why. While they could not possibly injure her, the mortals backing up Sirocco have pulled themselves together, volleying a series of bullets from slings at a silent command. Tesklore, charged with defending her person, has interposed himself, knocking aside several lead balls and taking the remainder on his person.
For the first time, the Waif's attention falls on the mortals. Exalts and other great foes are a fact of life. The techniques for a band of mortals to engage them are as familiar as the opening moves played out on a Gateway board. Engage at range, engage together, do not clump up, give ground, use your own champions to hold down the enemy and deal critical blows. This still usually results in some casualties, but with good discipline, they can be minimized, and the rewards can be great.
However, the Waif is not some rogue elemental or arrogant god-blood. She is a Deathlord. A difference in scale is, eventually, a difference in kind. Now that the humans have caught her eye, she raises her soulsteel calligraphy brush with its fine moonsilver bristles, and carves letters in the air with an instant speed and inhuman precision. For an instant, they hang there, before the Waif activates them with a sentence. "Cease to be."
There are no longer living humans in the room, save Sirocco.
There is a last explosion of flame as Sirocco propels herself away from the Tumulus, hopping backwards across the pool. She glances this way and that, but her squad is gone, each of them having collapsed where they stood, no injury or distress visible. Just dead.
Taking this in at a glance, Sirocco flees. There is nothing to be gained from dying here, and nothing more she can hope to salvage than her own life.
"Sloppy, Tumulus," the Waif says. "She shouldn't have been able to escape you."
The Tumulus bows his head. "Yes, your grace. I will aim to do better." He doesn't say 'but you gave me a shield whose magic works when I hold fast'. He doesn't say 'she was trained to fight creatures of darkness'. He doesn't say 'I haven't had time to learn'. Both of them hear these words, regardless.
The Waif clucks her tongue. "Never mind. We will need to move out and go to ground. I have no idea what game Twine is playing at, but because of her failure here, we are at a disadvantage. I don't want to try to take all of Gem in a straight fight." It would be one thing with an army at her back. With only two subordinates, even a nephwrack and a deathknight, it will not go well for her. Instead of having a secure base and a source of information, the Waif has been found out and has no ready safehouse. The three of them will need to find a back-up.
In the Waif's very precise and extensive mental listing of slights that need to be repaid, Twine's name is added at a low priority, where she will be required to have a good explanation to get back in her Deathlord's good graces. Sirocco's face is added, without a name, at the ranking that any who use flame in her presence begin at.
Vessel's already-extensive entry is updated further.
He almost has to be behind this somewhere, somehow.
* * *
The news gets out, of course. The Despot would rather that it didn't, but even the Despot of Gem has no power over the rumor mill, and Twine's capture and then the deaths at her estate ensure that it is not possible to clamp down completely. Some creature of the Underworld has crawled forth into Gem. Hushed whispers pass on very wrong details as people seek patterns where none exist: it was a great, eyeless worm, the
thing that had haunted the mines, drawn forth at last. It was some spirit of water, driven mad by the Deep South, which lashed out. It was the ghost of previous Despots, back to topple the pretender on the throne or to support him in a crisis.
It's only thanks to your very good hearing that you find out what
actually happened to Twine, background talk between guards as you get your water-summoning assignment: she has been taken to a cell where the Despot has held other Anathema. She's not dead, then, but neither is she free. You wonder at that. You strongly doubt that a cell will hold a deathknight like her for long, but clearly she's not gotten free yet.
You, however, know something that very few others in Gem are aware of: the Waif is here. The message to Twine you intercepted said that she would be, and then with the deaths at Twine's manor it has been confirmed. A Deathlord walks the waking world, for all that she's keeping a low profile as of yet. It's what you expected. What you
needed. If the Waif were to just lurk in the Underworld, you would possess no method to strike at her. If she were thinking clearly, she would know that. However, as Immaculate doctrine states, ghosts get obsessive. The Waif is too busy being angry at you, almost certainly dwelling on the horrible details of what she'll do to you when she gets a hold of you, to think what you might do to her, in return.
You are inherently hard to track, however, and Gem is
huge. She shouldn't be able to run you down very easily, and you don't think she could have heard you're a sorcerer, now, so you have a very good set of cover.
At some point, this will come crashing down, but for now… you're working, and then hanging out with the same people as always, a weirdly domestic and low-key thing for you. No grand galas, no social sniping for advantage, no large business deals, no family matriarchs deciding how things will go to advance the House's fortunes.
Just being
comfortable around people is almost odd itself.
"Is this iridescent mustard?" Flawed Topaz hands you a jar. You consider it.
Today, Topaz is trying to cook for the group, hosting you all at her place. She'd never have cut it as a Realm cook, even with her full eyesight. Even just saying what she's doing counts as 'cooking' might be too generous. She did bake some bread, but apart from that, it's just arranging some meat and cheeses on a platter. You've been chosen to help her, while Dub-dubs and Shetuk talk in the other room.
If there's a bright side to working with Topaz, it's that she's apparently on good if somewhat distant terms with her father, the actual fae, and so she's introduced you to some of the exotic spices that are available in Freeholds and bordermarches close enough to Gem to get traded here. The Guild and other merchants absolutely know the value of a good spice: since a little goes a long way, it can be sold at a high price per unit of weight, and sold in small packages to lots of people. Of course Gem, where jewels and silver flow rather freely, is a hotspot for them. Topaz has let you sneak a bit of a taste of a few different ones, and you've made note of ones you liked.
"I
think it's iridescent mustard," you allow, looking at the stuff in the jar. It seems like mustard. It has a subtle rainbow effect on it. "Looks like I'd expect, and it smells like mustard."
"Good, then add that to
that platter, get another knife out of the drawer, and let's take these out." There's only a little hesitation as Topaz gathers up things she can't quite see, and you aren't far behind her.
This is comfortable, and relaxing, but no matter how much you've gone to ground here, there's going to be more you have to do. What is the next important thing that happens?
[] Son of Crows finds you
The mysterious deathknight knows something about who you are, after all. You suppose it's better that he finds you himself than runs into the Waif first. That would have made everything much more complex.
[] You meet with Dub-dubs
Dub-dubs offer to talk sorcery with you. You're going to take them up on that. There's a couple spells that you really do need to learn, even if it means revealing how little sorcery you know so far and sort of embarrassing yourself.
[] You go to see Twine
You're never going to get a better chance to hold all the cards with her. She is trapped in the Despot's power, and almost certainly desperate. You have something she would like to know. Who knows what either of you might find out?
