Eight 5.24: In the Lair of the Beast II

The safe’s interior was padded on all sides with a soft quilted fabric the color of ripe persimmons. Two slim journals lay inside, along with a mahogany box similar to the kind you’d keep cigars in.

Using a granite rod, Fala flipped open a journal to reveal pages filled with hand-written code.

Jackpot, I thought.

Fala nodded in satisfaction, and she transformed the rod into a hand to lift the journals out into the open. A second hand soon joined the first, so that she could turn the pages of both simultaneously.

Yuki was over the moon. They found the names, dates, and cover identities of Maltran agents who’d passed through Bashtencru, as well as the various supports they’d received from the region master. That included, by the way, multiple entries for the Great Alchemist. His mission to disrupt the Albeityel area by seeding dark creatures was well documented in the journals.

Project Birthright wasn’t mentioned anywhere by name, but there was a standing order to purchase any death-aspected materials and send them to directly to Gorwenta, no matter the cost or method of procuring them. The couriers were instructed to carry the region master’s own badge of office, so that they could commandeer resources to speed their passage.

One of the journals was supplemented by several loose sheets of paper. On them was a list of alliance agents captured, interrogated, and killed. Apparently, all attempts to suborn them had failed. A note had been jotted in the margins of one of the pages, “Remember to watch the shadows.”

No doubt that had been a reference to Silasenei. Had she ever come out this way herself? I wouldn’t put it past Albei’s spy master.

This is a gold mine, I thought.

Fala nodded, yet she must’ve been pursuing a different line of investigation, because she sent, ‘Ashkandal suspects Melwei of being an agent of Albei.’

What? Then why hasn’t he been brought in?

‘Forced conversions don’t seem to work on Silasenei’s people, so she’s using Melwei’s relationship to Sonasen to lure him in slowly. To no effect so far, but she’s playing a long game.’

My brows furrowed. There hadn’t been anything in Melwei’s spirit or among his talents to indicate he was a spy. It was laughable, actually. The Maltran operations were so meticulously organized; it was funny they could also be so wildly wrong.

Finally, the journals included a map charting the light levels of the local populace. The associated notes indicated that this was the true version, which strongly signaled that there was a false one available publicly.

The observation I’d had upon entering Bashtencru was spot on—the residents were lower-leveled than their counterparts in Bashtotwei. And the discrepancy was even more apparent deeper within the empire’s territory.

There was also a note in the margin here: “For the people’s own good.”

‘This is folly,’ Fala sent. ‘The people need to be stronger, not weaker. Concentrate power into too few hands, and the Long Dark will overwhelm the towns and cities. How will they survive if the farmers all die? Who will build their homes and furnishings if the artisans perish?’

I shook my head, not having an answer for her. Human folly was an all-too-common characteristic shared by both my world and Diaksha.

‘The tax records are accurate,’ Yuki said. ‘It’s just there must be a chart that people reference instead of looking at the numbers directly.’

‘Because why hurt your head reading the numbers when you can look at a chart instead,’ Fala sent.

Yuki’s qi turned in agreement. ‘Exactly.’

I tapped my knee to get Fala’s and Yuki’s attention. Our mission isn’t to save the Maltran empire from its internal structural problems. We need to get to Gorwenta, and I’m thinking that the region master’s badge might be a huge help for that.

‘It’s probably on her person,’ Fala sent.

‘If it’s stolen, then she’ll know an agent of Albei was here,’ Yuki added.

We all went quiet as footsteps sounded from outside. The patrolling guards were back, and one of them tried the door, finding it locked.

When they left, I gestured toward the mahogany box. What are the odds she keeps it in the safe?

Both Fala and Yuki frowned at the idea. The hidden mind articulated why: ‘It doesn’t sound like something she’d need to use often, but storing it in the safe would make it a hassle to access.’

‘You just want to know what’s inside the box,’ Fala accused.

It’s a win-win, I defended. We find out what’s in there and we confirm or not whether it’s the badge.

Fala shook her head at me, and used the stone hands she’d created to put the journals back. Then, she lifted the box out into the open. It didn’t appear to be locked; there wasn’t a latch or keyhole or anything like that.

The Deer God stuck his nose inside and shook his head afterward. Still, just in case, Fala only opened the lid after putting a wall of granite between it and us.

The box opened smoothly, the hinges apparently well oiled. There were no untoward sounds or scents, no flare of magic. Peeking from around the stone shield, I saw that the interior was plush with the same persimmon-colored fabric as the safe. Nestled inside were a bottle and a flask—the bottle made from a deep blue glass and the flask polished silver.

Potions? Yuki asked.

The flask’s top was sealed with an amber-colored wax. The image of a crescent moon had been stamped onto it. The blue bottle, though, was simply stoppered, which made it easy to open and drink.

I reached for the bottle, but Fala grabbed my wrist before I could pick it up. At the same time, Yuki short-circuited the nerves in my arm, so that it twitched instead of doing what I wanted it to.

What? I asked. I was just going to smell it, not drink it.

‘Ah huh,’ Yuki said. ‘That’s exactly what someone would do when faced with a bottle of seemingly precious liquid. Just give it a big sniff.’

‘These people know human behavior very well, Fala said, ‘They are used to manipulating others, and they would, I imagine, expect someone breaking into the safe to want to examine the bottle’s contents.’

You’re saying it’s another trap? More poison?

‘It’s what I would do,’ Yuki said.

Fala was thoughtful for a time, then she nodded in agreement. ‘Now that I’ve realized this trick was possible, I would use it too.’

Damn, that’s ruthless, which is probably why it’s a good idea. I’d also do it, which makes three of us. With a sigh, I pulled my hand back and watched as Fala closed the lid and returned the box to its place within the safe.

The contents would remain protected from my curiosity.

###

The Deer God scouted the way down to the tax office. We still had several hours until dawn, so the plan was for Fala and I to head back there to scan a few years’ more of records before exfiltrating the building.

He was moving through the second floor, when he suddenly jarred to a stop. His attention swung, then narrowed, and his movements became more muted as if he’d turned into a stalking predator.

Down he went, from the second floor to the first. From the first floor to the basement. Yes, he’s definitely farther down than we’ve visited yet, I thought, narrating what I was sensing to Yuki and Fala.

A moment later, a sinking feeling ran through the Deer God—a disappointment.

What followed next started as a command. It was him back in his imperial mode, but the intention changed midway, turning into a request. He let me know there was something down in the basement that I would be very interested in.

There’s a guard, I thought.

But the Deer God doubled down: checking out the basement would definitely be worth the trouble it would cause.

Sifting through the blend of sensations streaming through the connection between, I noted a familiar scent of a person’s spirit, one the Deer God had encountered earlier in the day.

Ashkandal, I thought. She’s in the basement now? At this hour?

‘The ritual room is on the second floor,’ Fala sent. ‘What could be down there to occupy her time?’

‘There’s one way to find out,’ Yuki said.

Disappearing a guard will turn this op hot, I thought. The soldiers are going to know something went wrong.

The connection to the Deer God pulsed, reinforcing his earlier point.

He was part of the family now in a way he hadn’t been before accepting a physical body, and we needed to know whether his judgement could be trusted in situations like this one.

If so, great, and if not… then it’d be a learning opportunity. We had the skills, talents, and magic to survive any mistakes in judgement.

It only took a couple of seconds to think things through and for Yuki and Fala to each separately arrive at similar conclusions. With a nod to each other, we left the region master’s office exactly as we’d found it, locking the door behind us.

Well, we’d tripped the safe’s poison gas trap, but the fact wasn’t obvious, the mechanism hidden from view. The only way someone would notice is if they knew the trap was there and also opened the safe door without disabling it first. Otherwise, it’d require an exceptional tracker to notice that the office had been broken into.

On the way to the basement, Fala and I ducked into one of the storage rooms on the second floor to avoid the patrolling guards. We slipped downstairs only after they’d gone up to the third floor.

At the landing on the first floor, though, we paused. The Deer God had moved so that he was visible down there, along with the guard. He gestured with his antlers to get my attention, then he pointed with them.

I couldn’t quite see at what. Yuki cast the whole suite of sensory spells, but the object of the Deer God’s attention remained elusive.

So, he changed tacks and began to pantomime. The action of killing the guard was obvious, yet what was that scooping motion afterward supposed to represent? He looked like he was hooking the guard’s arms to carry him.

‘We’re not to let the guard drop to the ground,’ Fala sent.

What on Diaksha for? I wondered.

‘We’ll find out,’ she answered. ‘You cast, I’ll catch. Ready two?’

Sure, I suppose. Ready two.

I brought the Silent Kill spell runes to mind, and this time I got them right. One moment, the guard was alive, and the next he was dead. A sound-deadening field surrounded him, so I didn’t hear anything, not even when the stone underneath his feet rose up to catch him by the armpits to hold him up.

Even the smell of the piss leaking down his leg was missing. I padded down the stairs to store the body in the Hoarder’s Pocket, but the Deer God stopped me before I could. He pointed with his antlers once again, and this time he also gestured for me to feel with my hand…

Ah, there’s a thin, invisible string connecting the guard to… it’s a tiny hole in the door. If the guard falls or moves away from his post, then whatever it’s connected to on the other side gets jerked up.

‘An alarm?’ Fala asked.

That’d be my guess, I replied.

The Deer God blew out a relieved sigh. Seeing that we recognized the danger, he passed through the door ahead of us.

I cut the string and held onto it while Fala stored the guard’s corpse away. Then she consolidated the stone into a pillar that we could tie the string to. Except…

The door’s movement will also trigger the alarm, I thought. We have to move the string along with it, then we can tie it off.

So that was what we did—orchestrate the moving pieces, with Fala unlocking the door in the process. And she’d had to rely on her ability to manipulate stone again, because the guard didn’t have a key. Finally, though, we got the door open.

On the other side was a pedestal holding a brass bell about the size of a football. The corridor beyond it was clean and well-lit with candle stones, with four reinforced doors, two to each side, and a fifth door at the corridor’s end. There were sliding peepholes at eye height on every door.

We’d clearly found a detention center, and the Deer God waited for us at the corridor’s end.

Fala and I split up to look through each peephole as we moved to join him. The interiors were comprised of just a sleeping mat and a bucket for waste, and the four we checked were empty of prisoners.

The Deer God tilted his antlers toward the last room. Gently trying the door, I found it locked. Carefully moving the slider blocking the peephole, I saw Ashkandal sitting at a small desk, her back to me as she wrote, the quill moving steadily but silently across a piece of paper.

In the center of the room was a rack, the remains of a young woman strapped to its surface. Her ears and nose had been cut off and her mouth emptied of teeth. All that was left of her eyes were just weeping sockets. Her whole body had been exposed, so I saw all the cuts into her flesh and all the breaks in her bones.

Error

Not a valid spirit vessel.

The poor thing was dead, and the source of the Deer God’s disappointment became clear to me: her ghost was in the process of being pulled away toward the east. She didn’t want to go willingly, but the source of attraction was too great to resist. Eventually, she’d fail and get sucked away.

That was when I saw the stone needles embedded in her flesh. They seemed to be pinning the remains of the ghost to her body, imprisoning her until the process was complete.

A moment later, Ashkandal checked an hourglass sitting on the desk beside her. The thing glowed with an eerie light—not comfortable or comforting at all—and it set my teeth on edge. I felt my authority rise up in response.

A part of me wanted to slip inside to stab Ashkandal in the kidney. I wanted to feel her breath catch and shudder while hanging on the tip of my knife. A colder side of me asked Fala for the sphere of poison gas we’d liberated from the region master’s office.

The Deer God expressed his satisfaction toward this plan. Yuki and Fala approved, as well. It was karma, after all.

Fala reshaped the stone so that it would fit through the peephole, then she floated the poison gas container closer to Ashkandal, right behind her heart where it would be impossible to see. A moment later, slits appeared in the stone.

Ashkandal the Region Master jumped in fright. She had a beat to turn around, her eyes wide. A beat after that, she slipped to the ground, not dead yet. Her arms thrashed and her legs kicked. She must’ve cried out to, because her mouth opened and closed. Her lungs labored. Yet we didn’t hear a thing. There was an enchantment on the cell to keep the sounds of torture from spreading.

In the meantime, Fala had gotten a fan going to make sure none of the gas came our way. As for me, I used my camera steadily on Ashkandal, beat after beat, until I saw her Status match the young woman she’d tortured.

Error

Not a valid spirit vessel.

The expression on Ashkandal’s ghost’s face turned from horror to rapture in an instant, disappearing to the west without opposition. The rest of the room went still as the things she’d disturbed settled.

‘That was satisfying,’ Fala sent.

‘But now we have to deal with a room full of poison gas,’ Yuki said.

I don’t regret it, I replied, the anger inside me still smoldering.

‘We know,’ Yuki gently said.

‘I can use the stone in the pocket to sweep the gas into a corner to contain it again,’ Fala sent.

‘A poison that can kill someone silvered so quickly… we seem to be gathering a collection of deadly treasures,’ Yuki commented wryly.

That won a bitter smile from me. In a way, each member of this precious family I’d assembled was a deadly treasure. I kept that thought to myself, though. The moment was heavy enough without it.

###

Once the room was safe for entry, I headed straight for the young woman’s ghost and pulled the stone needles from her body. That let her loose from her imprisoned state, yet she still lingered, her eyes locked onto Ashkandal’s corpse.

My will caught hold of her, and the room filled with a refreshing mist. With a gesture, I brought her attention up to look at me instead, radiating toward her my reassurance that everything would be all right.

The young woman’s expression turned from pained and teary-eyed to relieved and grateful. Then, the soft embrace of the other world enveloped her; she disappeared into it.

Gently, I cut into her chest to pull the light from her body. Much more roughly, Fala dug out the region master’s light. We also went through her things, taking any and everything of value: her badge, the stone needles, the hourglass, her papers, the keys to the administrative hall, and her coin purse.

We also stored both bodies and cleaned up the cell to erase any evidence of the events that had transpired within it. On the way out, we locked the door, and Fala filled the peephole with stone. Then, at the basement landing, we wrapped the invisible string around the bell and closed and locked the door.

We didn’t know if anyone else had a key to the basement, but the efforts to delay and obfuscate wouldn’t hurt.

‘The question is,’ Yuki sent, ‘do we run or keep playing the merchant role to throw off suspicion?’

Back to the inn first, I answered, then we’ll decide.

‘That’s good,’ Fala added, glancing toward me. ‘We need clear heads to chart our path forward.’

‘Okay, back to the inn it is,’ Yuki said.

My awareness of the needles in the Hoarder’s Pocket felt heavy, just like the stones we’d encountered along the way—the ones plugging the holes between life and death.

I couldn’t help thinking, We might want to move sooner rather than later, no matter what.