Firesign 1 - Wage Slave Rebellion

by Stephen W. Gee

  Kalenia smiled back. “I just thought I should help out my boyfriend once in a while. My dissertation will just have to wait a few days. It wasn’t going anywhere anyway.”

  “Happy to be your excuse for procrastinating,” said Mazik. He leaned down and kissed her. “Thanks again for doing this. How long do you think it will take?”

  “A few days?” said Kalenia. “I’ll call you when I’ve got something together.”

  “Okay,” said Mazik. “Feel free to call me before then. I love you.”

  “Of course you do,” said Kalenia with a smile. “But I love you more,” she said, softer, and then gently grabbed him by the ear and pulled him into a kiss.

  “Mmmm, no, I love you more…” said Mazik, in between kisses. This went on for longer than was necessary.

  “I need a drink,” said Raedren. He and Gavi were standing by the door, having decided to give the kissing couple a little privacy, and also because they needed to get going.

  “Need a kiss that bad?” asked Gavi. She puckered up her lips and made exaggerated kissing sounds.

  “I am not above taking a pity kiss from a beautiful lady,” said Raedren, doing his best to look both proud and pathetic.

  “Awww, I didn’t mean it like that,” said Gavi. “I was just—”

  “Now if I could only find one…”

  Gavi punched him. “That was a very Mazik-like comment.”

  Raedren smiled back, rubbing his arm. “I figured someone ought to fill in for him.”

  “What’d I do now?” asked Mazik, appearing behind them.

  “Nothing good,” said Gavi. “Come on, let’s go.”

  *

  It wasn’t long before they were back in Kalenia’s lab. One day, to be exact.

  “Wow, that was fast,” said Gavi as they entered the room.

  “I told you, she can do pretty much anything,” said Mazik. “Or figure it out quickly, which is just as good.”

  “Anything? Where have I heard that before…?” said Raedren.

  “I know and am good at absolutely everything,” said Mazik.

  Raedren snapped his fingers. “There it is.”

  “Hi, welcome back!” said Kalenia. “I hope this isn’t too fast. How are your days going so far?”

  “Oh, no, this is great!” said Gavi. “I was just saying how impressed I was that you got all this together so quickly.”

  Kalenia fidgeted, embarrassed at receiving praise from someone other than Mazik. “I just thought you would want to know as quickly as possible so you could start looking. Plus,” and here she blushed, “i-it was actually kind of fun. Once I got started I couldn’t stop myself.”

  “And that’s why I love you!” said Mazik, wrapping Kalenia in a big hug. After a minute of cuddling, whispering, and shameless flirting, Gavi punched Mazik in the solar plexus.

  “Enough of that,” said Gavi. “My boss was already nice enough to switch my schedule for today, so I don’t want to be late.”

  “Sorry,” said Mazik, though he didn’t mean it. He turned back to Kalenia. “All right babe, what can you tell us?”

  Kalenia motioned to the table. A large map of the city, filled to the brim with pins, pens, markers, marks, written figures, wooden figurines, notations, note cards, scraps of paper, salt shakers, tiny dolls, half a sandwich, a shark’s tooth—basically anything that could be used to mark a location—filled the table. Surrounding the map were research papers of a more recent vintage, along with two new faces.

  “Have you met Taronn and Xer’Danqin?” asked Kalenia. She didn’t wait for a reply, and pointed to each in turn. “This is Taronn. He’s a graduate student in Experimental Evocation. He helped with information about the attacks, especially locations and possible targets.”

  “Hey,” said Taronn, waving. His hand barely lifted off the table, though even if he had raised it as high as he could it would have barely reached Mazik or Raedren’s shoulders; he was a halvelin, a people known for their extreme height, or rather their lack thereof 25.

  Taronn scratched his jet-black goatee and regarded each of them dispassionately, like research specimens only marginally more interesting than dust and ash. Given his area of study, that’s probably what most of his specimens turned into.

  “And this is Xer’Danqin, a research assistant in Exotic Divine Magicks,” continued Kalenia, pointing at the woman sitting next to Taronn. “She’s actually doing a paper on the kidnappings right now, so she helped a lot with who and how.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Xer’Danqin, her pretty voice fluttering through the air like a butterfly’s wings alighting on a cloud’s kiss. She bowed, her long, wavy black hair falling off her shoulders and hanging to the table like black ivy. “You can call me Xer.”

  After Kalenia introduced Mazik and the others, they all bowed.

  “So, what’s all this?” asked Mazik, gesturing at the map.

  “I’ll start,” said Taronn. He shuffled forward in his seat so he could see the map better. Kalenia excused herself to make them all some tea.

  “As far as anyone can tell, the abductions started about a three months ago. Since then, there have been twenty-five known incidents, with a total of thirty-three people taken.” Taronn pointed to a tiny red flag stuck into the map, and then several red pins. There were more like them spread across the city. “These show the locations of each abduction.

  “As you can see, there’s almost no correlation between them,” said Taronn. “Most took place in less affluent parts of the city, but there have been several in very rich areas as well,” he said, pointing to a pin only a few blocks from the capitol. “All the ones we know of happened at night, and they started off being separated by a week or longer, though for the last month the pace has picked up to a kidnapping every three to four nights. And let me reiterate, this only includes the ones we know of—chances are there are some that have gone unreported, especially people who don’t trust the city guard. That’s more common among poorer communities, which may be why they’re being targeted more heavily.

  “Other than that, about all I can say is that the incidents are abnormally well spread out, which is probably why they haven’t been caught yet,” said Taronn.

  “That’s not ideal,” said Mazik. “Though I guess if they were easy to find, they would have already been taken care of.”

  “And the reward wouldn’t be so big,” said Raedren.

  Mazik grinned with predatory excitement. “That too.”

  “Is there any pattern?” asked Gavi. “Like, I see a few different areas where multiple kidnappings took place near one another. Did they happen around the same time, or a while after?”

  “A while after,” said Taronn. “Probably the safest place in the city is an area where a kidnapping has happened recently. Guards and adventurers always swarm those areas, hoping the kidnappers will be stupid. They haven’t been so far.”

  “Hmm…” said Gavi. She wrote this down. “Are there any connections between the abductees?”

  Taronn shook his head again. “None. They’re from all over the city, have all sorts of different jobs, different wealth levels, et cetera. Slightly more women have been abducted, but not enough to think they’re being targeted specifically. The victims are all different races and nationalities too. Mostly Houkian, but then again they’re being abducted in Houk.” He shrugged. “About the only similarity between them is that they’re usually alone and they’re never casters.”

  “Gotcha,” said Gavi, writing this down as well.

  “Any suggestions on where to focus our search?” asked Mazik.

  “Later. Don’t you want to know who they are first?” said Taronn.

  “Wait, you know?” asked Mazik, surprised and excited.

  “No,” said Taronn. Mazik instantly deflated. “But we do have some good guesses. And they’re not mine, they’re hers,” he said, nodding at Xer. She waved perkily.

  “Oh, okay,” said Mazik, exhaling. “That works too. Lay it on me.
”

  Xer laid her palms on the book in front of her. “In short, I concur with the prevailing assumption that they’re divine casters, and I have some suggestions that might help you capture them.”

  “Divs. Wonderful. My favorite,” said Mazik. Raedren and Gavi, the latter still slouched over her notepad, both smiled. Taronn nodded in agreement.

  Kalenia walked back in with a tray full of teacups. She set it down and began handing them out.

  “Thank you,” said Gavi. She turned back to Xer. “Is there any proof they’re divine casters? Everyone says that, but they could be wrong.”

  Xer shook her head. “No real proof, just conjecture. It’s what makes the most sense, though. It all comes down to motive.”

  At this Xer stood up and walked to the nearest blackboard. It sported three numbers enclosed in circles, with crude drawings beneath each. Xer picked up a piece of chalk and twirled it once.

  “What do they want? From the two sightings we have, there have always been multiple kidnappers, up to four individuals so far. They could be insane, but truly crazy people don’t usually work in groups, and serial killers aren’t usually so indiscriminate. That means they probably have something uniting them.”

  The others nodded. “Makes sense to me,” said Mazik.

  “Okay, so the question is, what is it that unites them?” said Xer. “Since there’s no correlation between the victims as individuals, it must be something more general. And given everything we know, there are three main possibilities.”

  The chalk thudded against the chalkboard below the number one, where a crude approximation of the Houkian flag lay. “One, they’re attacking them because they’re Houkians, or think they are. Whether they’re unhappy with our government or from an enemy state, they want to hurt Houk as a whole, and this is how they’ve decided to do it.”

  “Not a real good way to hurt us, if that’s the case,” said Mazik. “They’re scaring the hell out of people, but their victims are all normal people. If they really wanted to hurt the city, they would need to do more than this.”

  “If it was being done by one or two people, I would disagree,” said Xer. “Then this could be the best they could do. But since there are more people involved, it does seem like they could do more harm elsewhere.”

  “Especially if it’s an enemy country,” said Taronn. “They wouldn’t risk a war over killing a few civilians.”

  “Correct,” said Xer. She drew an X over the flag and moved onto the next one. Underneath the circled two was a stylized letter C with a slash through it. “Two, they’re attacking them because they’re not casters. Not because it’s easier, but because they’re violently discriminating against nons.”

  “That’s a nice thought,” said Gavi.

  “No one ever said this was going to be all chocolates and blowjobs,” said Mazik.

  “Except for you,” said Raedren. “You told me exactly that two days ago, on the way home from The Joker. Word for word.”

  “Well, yes, but no one said you should believe me.”

  “But you don’t think that’s what’s going on here, do you?” said Gavi, ignoring her companions. “Is it because they’re not killing their victims?”

  Xer glanced over at Taronn, who took that as his cue.

  “That’s certainly part of it,” said Taronn. “If they hated nons so much, you’d expect them to be sending some kind of message, likely in entrails and blood. Now, it’s still possible that they’re waiting until they’ve kidnapped more people to do exactly that, but it seems too calculating for people killing out of hate. Or not killing, as the case may be.”

  Taronn took a sip of his tea. “Plus, I wouldn’t expect people like that to be so…” He hesitated, and then shrugged. “Well, good at it. These guys are acting like their victims are valuable to them, and like they really don’t want to get caught.”

  “Exactly,” said Xer, crossing out the second option. “Which brings us to option three.” She tapped the chalk next to a picture of a stick figure wearing messily filled-in robes. “Divine casters. I did some research, and I found over fifty different gods who have a ritual or ceremony that requires the sacrifice of sentient beings, and that was only until I got too depressed to keep looking,” she said, smiling wanly. “If the kidnappers are worshippers of one of those gods, that means they not only have the motive, but also a reason to not kill their victims until they’ve collected enough sacrifices.”

  “Could there be multiple, unconnected groups?” asked Gavi. “Copycats, or someone taking advantage of the first group’s activities to abduct people for their own reasons?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so,” said Xer. “Nothing I’ve heard indicates any deviations in how they operate, and both known sightings describe them in largely the same way. Until there’s some reason to think otherwise, I would assume it’s all one group.”

  “So they’re probably divs,” said Mazik.

  Xer nodded. “Yes, probably. It could be something else, but we think this is the most likely possibility.”

  Mazik let loose a long, tired sigh. “Oh goodie. Divs.”

  “Think of it like this,” said Taronn. “You might get to beat some of them up.”

  Mazik brightened up. “There is that.”

  “Any idea which god they’re following?” asked Gavi.

  Xer shook her head. “No. Not enough information to know for sure. All we know for sure is that they abduct people and wear black robes, and those are pretty popular among the kinds of gods who demand sentient sacrifices.”

  “You don’t have to be 100 percent certain. Do you have any guesses?” asked Mazik.

  Kalenia spoke up first. “This might not have any bearing on which god they’re worshiping, but we think there’s a good chance they’re using some kind of invisibility magick.”

  “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” said Mazik. “If it weren’t for the robes I would say they could be getting by without it, but if they’re going to run around in suspicious black robes then they’d definitely need something else. If we narrowed it down to only the gods who demand sacrifices and give their worshippers some sort of invisibility magick, how many would that be?”

  Xer picked up a book stuffed with bookmarks. She flipped through it. “If you’re talking about only the gods who give a large percentage of their worshippers invisibility magick, five that I’ve found so far. If we expand that to those who give invisibility magick to four or more of their high-ranking worshippers, the number would be many times that. Twenty or more that I can think of, easily.”

  “And if they’re using arc magick, you’re screwed,” said Taronn.

  “That’s nothing new,” said Mazik. He pointed at the book. “Can I see that?”

  “Of course,” said Xer, handing it to him.

  Mazik looked at the spine for one second, and then passed it to Raedren.

  Raedren turned the book around. Etched on the gently used maroon cover in letters of faded gold were two words: Practical Mythology.

  “They’re the ones with the brown bookmarks,” said Xer.

  “Thank you,” said Raedren. He opened the book and disappeared from the conversation.

  Xer turned back to the chalkboard and circled the third option, and then gently laid the chalk to rest among its fellows. “So we can assume they’re using some kind of invisibility magick. Can all of you use sight-enhancement magick?”

  “Rae and I can,” said Mazik.

  “I can’t,” said Gavi. “That’s high-level stuff. I’m nowhere near that good.”

  “Wait, you can?” said Taronn. “Then why the hell are you working as a salesman?”

  “Because I didn’t try hard in school and the place I work for recruits heavily at Telman,” said Mazik. “Also, I’m a dumbass and I was running out of money.”

  “Ah.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, are you willing to change religions?” asked Xer.

  Gavi shrugged. “Sure, why not27?” />
  “I know one that might help. The god Hierdy’nt, sometimes just called the Warden, offers a divine magick called Trueseeing,” said Xer. “It will allow you to enhance your eyes enough to see through most invisibility spells. Only your eyes, though—it won’t do anything for your other senses.”

  “Hopefully that will be enough,” said Gavi. No one was surprised there was a god offering the spell she needed—with thousands of gods offering thousands of divine magicks, the trick was finding the right one. Fortunately, Xer was an expert. “Do you know where I can find one of its priests?”

  “Yes. Levi’s God Emporium28.”

  “Oh, fun. Haven’t been there in a while,” said Gavi. “Thank you, I’ll go do that.”

  “That will be helpful once we’re actually out looking for them, but first we need to narrow down where we’re going to be doing that,” said Mazik. He turned to Taronn. “You said you had some suggestions on where to search, right? Because, ya know”—he waved at the map—“big city.”

  “Yes yes,” said Taronn. He grabbed a smaller, blank map and a pencil.

  “Here’s what I think. First, the edges of town. Avoid them.” Taronn drew Xs all around the city. “The city guard thinks the kidnappers are probably hiding outside the city, so they’ve got extra people stationed on the walls. That tells me either they’re wrong and the kidnappers are staying inside the city, or they’ll catch them there eventually. Either way, there’s no use in your being there.

  “Next, the same idea but for inside the city. If there are a lot of guards somewhere, you shouldn’t be there, or you’ll have a hard time claiming the reward even if you do find them. Fortunately, I can help you with that,” said Taronn as he snagged another map from behind him and passed it to Raedren. Raedren looked at it for a second, and then passed it to Gavi.

  “I know a guy in the city guard,” Taronn explained as Gavi poured over the map. “I talked to him yesterday, and he sketched out approximate patrol routes for his part of the city. He’s based near the docks, so this has the patrol routes for the eastern half of the city.”