11.2 Illuminating

General Summary

Day 105

When I return from my meeting with Shelor, I find my people celebrating at the inn. Bran shows me a braided cord and proudly tells me that he has been accepted into the Smiths’ Guild as a High Master. I am told that this rank is the second highest possible, and indicates that Bran is a true master of his craft. Sheepishly, he admits that a small part of him wishes he could return to Ipth with this guild rank, to stun all the craftsmen who had set him to making horseshoes.   Petra is with us now, staring adoringly at Bran. As part of his jointure into the guild, he managed to restore her status as a journeyman, though she will still come with us back to the Keep.   The evening passes joyfully, and I catch myself on the verge of calling for music from Thalien before realizing what I’m doing. As the atmosphere quiets and the night deepens, we turn back to strategy and planning our next steps.   In his politicking, Bran found that several hard-to-identify clients have been placing large weapons orders with various smiths. For many of them, a single client is taking up all of their capacity. While it may not technically be difficult to identify the clients, they are studiously remaining ignorant and uninvolved.   Sounds like Killeon to me.   When I mention this, Vaneili’s eyes glaze over and she speaks in a voice that isn’t her own. I must be spending too much time with Fatespinners, for it seems entirely normal.  

Old hates in new places find fertile soil. Hate grows like weeds, and weeds catch fire. Unfanned, they burn themselves out. But a single burning seed starts the cycle anew.

  I nod decisively. Killeon. And he must be interested in Deldrin because there are so many elves here. If Zadiyah has had any influence in the direction of the Order, that would be it.   Bran thinks on this and notes that Killeon’s thread is strange, like a hot cable. It burns if Bran reaches too closely towards it, and something whispers around it in an unknown language.   At this point in the evening, though, I am exhausted. Whatever Killeon is doing, and whatever his thread is tangled up in will have to wait for tomorrow. Hella has joined us, her plate heaped full of confections.   She and Kadia have decided that the best use for the pearls from the sea is to power the gate to the Keep and activate some of the city’s defences. We’ll need to do an inspection of the city’s statues with a stonecarver, to ensure that they’ll be ready to be powered.   The only stonecarver that comes to mind is Bodin, but there’s no guarantee that he’ll help us. He very well might prefer to try to make a bad peace with the Order than to fight a good war.   So tomorrow, Bran will investigate whether the same sort of mysterious purchasing has been happening from oil and glass-makers. And he’ll check in with Thalien about the unusual thread that he sees running through all of this. Petra will make the same check with the barrel makers, and Alder will slink around gathering information.   On Camellia’s orders, I will be resting.  

Day 106

Fortunately Camellia’s definition of ‘rest’ is flexible enough to let me spend time in the library reading about humans. The migration from across the sea was driven by war and squabbles, like everything else they seem to do. I engage with the material the same way I did with boring history lessons at the Academy. It’s good background knowledge, and easy reading.   Soon though, a young elvish boy comes to find me with a sealed message from Alder: I have gift-wrapped a flame for your inspection.   The boy, River, takes us back to the inn, where Winter directs us into the cellar.   Deep amongst the barrels and stored goods, a human man wearing the symbol of the Order is tied to a chair. His right arm is wounded and he has an impressively bruised face. Knotrael and Alder are waiting, both clearly menacing the angry-looking captive.   The interrogation is slow and well-paced. Alder remains poised behind him with a blade, while Knotrael guards the door.   His name is Rickoff, and his magic feels clean and fiery, like any elemental fire mage I’ve known. There is nothing special about him.   He claims to be led by the Candlemaker, and confirms Zadiyah’s status as a leader of their group. He speaks of her scathingly, calling her a whore and sneering at her. He mentions a beacon, and it becomes clear that the beacon is what is leading their group, and Zadiyah is simply a tool.   “A beacon is a person blessed with the holiest light. A beacon gives up the flesh but walks in flesh as a temporary housing before uniting with the great flame. The Church is dim. They need to be brought back into the fold. Only humans who walk in shadows need to be cleansed,”   He rambles in answer to my many questions, and his rhetoric sounds like nonsense, but at least it’s clear that the beacon is a person (or was, at some point), and that Zadiyah did not come up with this madness by herself.   It all sounds truthful, at least, though there are more precise answers I need out of him that I don’t think he will be willing to give me quite so directly. Fortunately, he is full of blood, and he has already provided me with a sample on his stained bandages.   I accept his word that he will not fight us if we untie him while Camellia heals him, but I don’t think anyone in the room is surprised when he grabs her and ignites a hand. It seems as though we are all just waiting for a reason to kill him, but we resist. Camellia can handle herself neatly, which she proves, escaping and easily subduing him for Alder to restrain once again.   With his blood safely in my hands, my mind clears further and I let him continue to ramble, picking out bits and pieces of his speech.   “It would take thirteen to bind you,” he snarls at me, “No one can withstand thirteen,”   So he tells me, unprompted, that it took eleven to bind “that whore” Zadiyah, and that he was one of the ones to do it. I can feel a ghost of the same sort of terrible calm that I felt when I left the Capital with Doraal and Mistress held in stasis. But I settle it down, and I remember the rest of my family around me. So instead of leeching the blood slowly out of his body the same way he tore the shadows from Zadiyah, I force him to speak truthfully to me, and tell me of the Order’s plans. Their defeat will be worth much more than whatever fleeting pain I could impart now.   Their plan is to disorganize the leadership of the city, leaving them suspicious and untrusting. The murders will continue, and evidence will surface pointing towards the Council members. While they squabble amongst themselves, the attack on this city will proceed.   They hold influence over Tolv, Norrick (Lapis) and Bodin, but only Tolv is truly theirs. The rest of the Order is dispersed within the city and meets only when ‘ordained’. Zadiyah herself resides in an unrestored tower at the edges of the city.   And their beacon is, indeed, Killeon. Or at least, whatever he became when he ‘ascended’. The mysticism of this should be interesting but in the moment all I feel is a calm, quiet satisfaction with what I have learned.   The only thing stronger than unity is harmony. The only thing that can stop the crushing perfect unity of the Order is the harmony of many individuals working together, and that is why the harmony must be disrupted. The truth of this is strong, and they are Zadiyah’s words. We fought the crushing unity of the Collective for decades together and the contrast of assimilation and harmony was always in our minds. Hearing our words from his mouth ends the interrogation.   He tells me that the only way to overcome the Order is to kill them all, and I decide that now is as good a time to start as any. I don’t even bother with his blood; just a dagger is enough. As I expected - nothing special.