by Kim Wedlock
As it stood, he felt as though he was just sitting around and waiting for things to happen just so he could reverse them. Worse still, the only reports he was getting were regarding the barbaric tribes and their bloodshed, and that matter was beneath his attention. The only real cause for concern was that their raiding parties might target nearby settlements - a few small groups had already begun leaving their territory to attack their enemy tribe directly, and the brutes weren't above striking civilised towns and villages to steal food and supplies on their way, nor killing the residents in their blood lust. But there were guards for that; it didn't concern him.
He puffed a rough sigh while his frown deepened in thought.
Beneath his regret for the impossibility of providing such absolute protection, even against that niggling little matter, he felt something else pull at the fraying edges of his mind. Something which affected a sense and provoked an emotion but neither of which he could identify. Far from the first time in three days he felt an intense, pressing necessity...but whether it was for something or to do something, he just couldn't tell. And yet, despite being at the mercy of the disembodied sensation, as it certainly felt like it belonged to someone else, the need was so great that it felt as if it had formed within his own heart - a closely cradled desire, and yet so far beyond it.
He grunted longingly and sat back in his seat, dragging his mind away from the analysis as he found himself chasing it in circles yet again, just as a knock came at the door. His eyes focused and flicked towards it. It sounded urgent; he wondered if this wasn't the first time they'd announced themselves, just the first he'd noticed.
"Enter," he called, sitting straight again, and three phidipans promptly stepped inside. Though he'd expected Taliel to be among them, his heart still jumped at the sight of her. "Orders from the Crown," he said, ignoring the reaction as the three lined up before him and stared over his head. "There are soldiers causing trouble in the city, but they can't be openly opposed within the capital, of all places, or it will weaken their position of authority. Given the demand on the guards and the military, we've been asked to step in and put a stop to it instead. They will seem to go unpunished." No one spoke, though he didn't expect comment. "The people should not fear their own military," he continued for the sake of the small voice of doubt a phidipan may have towards such a decision, though they kept it dutifully silenced, "but that fear will keep people out of their way and from hindering their efforts. They can't be allowed to continue their activity, of course, but all those involved seem to be covering for one another and no one knows who the perpetrators are - none of the civilians have caught their names, and their faces are covered by their helmets.
"I need each of you to fall victim. Remember their voices, find a way to encourage them to take off their helmets if you can. Uncover anything that will reveal their identities, then it can be handled quickly and discreetly."
"Understood, Keliceran," the three replied rigidly in unison, and he dismissed them.
"Taliel, a moment," he added, rising to his feet as the two men left ahead of her, and she stopped and turned, her eyes ever averted. "I must apologise for assigning you to this task. Apparently they're a little rough with women."
A frown flickered across her brow, just a twitch of confusion at his concern, and a similar expression then passed over his own. Why was he concerned? She could handle herself.
He cleared his throat and forced authority back into his tone. "I have another task for you: I want you to speak with Renan in The Cockatrice. Everyone who comes to Kulokhar passes through there eventually, whether they want to be seen or are looking to hide. I want to know of the most recent arrivals."
"Do you suspect infiltration?"
"I always suspect infiltration, but at least with the war approaching the idea may be justified." He smiled at his own expense, but of course she didn't look back. It quickly faded. "It's just to be on the safe side. Keeping a close and subtle watch is our area, as simple as that work is. Guards can't leave their posts or routes to follow up on a hunch, if they're even able to spare their attention long enough to develop one."
"Understood."
"Thank you. You're dismissed."
He watched her as she turned and walked away, absently noticing the way her cream blouse hugged her waist, then caught himself and forced his gaze back down to the table, reassuming his seat with a shadow of a frown.
Another knock interrupted him before his rear could find it, even before the door had closed, and he looked up at the clearly shaken boy who peered back inside.
"Come in," Salus commanded, his irritation returning as Taliel disappeared from his sight. "What is it? What have you got?"
The young man regained control of himself and hurriedly stepped inside, extending towards him the miniature scroll of paper. He held it gently between thumb and forefinger, barely bowing the shape. He seemed almost afraid of it.
Salus managed to take it without snatching, though the effort was conscious, and set to reading the frantically scrawled abbreviations.
Heat began to rise in his face. The veins on the backs of his hands swelled and his jaw knotted. The phaeacian wasn't looking directly at him, but he was acutely aware of his rising anger.
"Get out." His eyes flashed as a darkness descended, his tone all the more menacing for the control he'd spoken with. The messenger needed no encouragement. "And get me Teagan. Now!"
It took an infuriating twenty minutes for his favoured to arrive, by which point Salus had read the report over and over and thoroughly picked it apart, but every possible conclusion he'd come to was increasingly alarming and only further stoked his temper.
He threw the report at Teagan when he stepped in through the door, but of course the younger man took no offence. He merely unrolled the tightly wound and slightly torn paper as if he was used to such treatment.
"Find me a mage!" Salus roared before he could begin reading. "They will not destroy this country from under our feet while we try our damnedest to hold it together! And we will not let the Order have this one, either. Find a means of holding them off - mask the mage's presence somehow, delay their ability to get him back!"
"Will our mages be able to contain him?" Teagan asked coolly as he rolled the paper back up. "None of the mages we've incarcerated have made any attempts at breaking themselves out, presumably because they know the Order will come to get them."
"They would be more than capable of breaking themselves out," Salus replied sharply, stung by the admission, "and if they start to think that the Order isn't coming for them, they might panic. But if the magic of our own is strengthening, we should put it to use!"
"Do you really think we can throw the Order off the trail of one of their own?"
"We have no damned choice but to try." He dropped back into his seat, drumming his fingertips impatiently upon the desk. "There's too much magic and the Order is responsible..." He mumbled to himself, then grunted humourlessly. "At times like these I wish I had magic. At least then I'd know there was some sorcery being put to good use..." His eyes flicked back to Teagan. "Go to Stonton. We've found none there yet, but the area is in chaos so they'll certainly be nearby. It's the best place to start. Leave now."
"Keliceran."
The portian turned on his heel, but a sharp curse was hissed from behind him. "Wait. On second thought, I'm coming with you."
Teagan's voice creased instead of his brow as Salus shoved himself up from his desk. "But you're needed here, and you said yourself it's chaos--"
"I don't care!" He suddenly snapped. "I'm sick to death of these accursed walls. Call the two strongest mages we have available. One will come with us, the other will prepare a cell, and we'll just have to pray to Vastal that it will be enough to contain him." He stormed past him and threw the open door even wider, striking the bookcase behind it and certainly denting the wood. "And Zikhon if she won't answer!"
It took three hours by carriage with the horses barely spared to reach
the woods that enveloped the old ruins, in which time Salus had cursed mages again and again in a variety of colourful ways. How much could have been done for the war effort in that time? What else could the agent in Roeden have learned if this hadn't stolen his attention? What had managed to take place in the distraction? Curse time and its restraints! If only they could be in two places at once!
He champed back his frustrations as the three started through the woods on silent feet, following the mage's lead, though they burst back out as a sharp snarl when a clawing wind rose from nowhere and swept them up in its frenzy. He braced himself as Teagan did and looked expectantly towards the mage, but he did nothing against it but throw up an arm, even as unease invaded his harsh face. "What is the Order doing?" They heard him mumble through the roar that began buffeting their ears, then he looked back towards them, his expression dampening. "I can't use magic. If there's a mage here, we risk alerting them to our presence."
Salus nodded his begrudging understanding, for the wind certainly wouldn't let him speak it, and within moments the three had split up. Skulking through the trees and circling towards the centre from different directions, they became shadows even against the wind's onslaught, and only then did Salus find peace. His mind was silenced but for necessity, regressing back to the portian training he'd received at the age of nineteen. His senses were sharp and keenly focused, absorbing everything around him - the scattered branches ripped free by the wind; the single track of recent footprints flattening the grass, made with even pressure as though the wind had not hindered them in the slightest; the snatched scent of seared wood carried on the twisting gale. He noticed and noted every detail.
The stone village rose up ahead of him and the wind relented as he neared the trees' edge. But there was no room in his mind for marvelling.
He searched the area from the shadow of the trees and quickly picked out a figure standing high up on the structure, walking slowly where the wind didn't reach, leisurely, trailing his hand over the stone.
He was lost in thought. Distracted. Careless.
Salus melted back into the forest.
He joined back with the others and they moved around together, following silent instructions and joint instincts honed by years of experience. They stopped within sight of the column and waited. The man would have to come down eventually.
They were quickly rewarded for their patience.
The man was still lost in thought as he followed the twisting path down towards the ground, but they didn't move from their hiding place until he neared the final ring. Then, following Salus's lead, they darted across the grass towards the base of the stone pillar and followed it around in the opposite direction, moving to the left as the man moved clockwise, and drew to a stop to wait again where the stone could still conceal them.
The footfalls on the path just above their heads were consistently lazy, and each could gauge with ease precisely where he was. They tracked him by sound, and as soon as his foot struck the damp remnants of a puddle that filled one of the many weathered dips in the path, they slipped away.
They were perfectly silent. They crept with neither crunch, squelch nor rustle beneath their feet; their breath and movements were precisely controlled. And yet something still stirred their target's attention.
But when he stopped in the grass and turned to look inquiringly behind him, they were already in action. As confused, pale blue-grey eyes fell upon Salus, the others caught him in a pincer. The man was left no moment to react; Teagan restrained him easily while the Aranan mage froze his hands with a spell. There was a technique used by the Order to bind and numb the hands of an enemy mage, but they had not taught it to any within the Arana. Salus had always thought that suspicious.
The man, pale-skinned and dark brown haired, made no struggle as Salus stopped in front of him. He was a mage, the phidipan's decisive and urgent actions had confirmed that, though no cloak draped his back, and he met the keliceran's authoritative gaze with a strange mixture of interest and confusion.
"You," Salus declared, suppressing the ill smile that tried to pull at his lips, "are under arrest."
The man's pale brow knotted further in shock. "Why?" His eyes searched him intensely as if to reveal the answer for himself.
"Suspicion of crimes against the Crown and country." Salus nodded to the others and they began to drive the mage along, back towards the trees, but still he didn't struggle. His bewilderment only deepened, and once he turned away, Salus finally indulged in his triumph, if just for a moment.
The mage was silent throughout the return journey, his gaze fixed for the most part to the floor of the carriage, except for the occasional moments when they shifted instead onto Salus. But he ignored the looks, refusing even to dignify them with a cursory glance or note their certain disdain.
When they arrived at Arana House they bundled him along through the side entrance to conceal him from prying eyes, leading him through a dimly lit passage towards the house's extended cellar.
"I want soldiers stationed around the House," Salus told Teagan quietly as the phidipan mage steered their captive ahead of them.
"That will need to go through Malson."
"I doubt even he will object to this, and the civilians might be unsettled by all the soldiers, but I think they'll see reason."
They soon reached the holding cells, the second mage tasked with suitable preparation standing beside an open chamber. The prisoner looked at it as they drew level, surely feeling the magic that surrounded it, and even Salus thought he could feel its hum. To conceal a mage from the Order, it would have to be that strong.
The prisoner stumbled as the phidipan mage shoved him inside, unable to hide even his own disdain for the Order's actions, and Salus moved up to follow him in and begin the questioning himself before the Order had a chance to circumvent them.
"Keliceran," a voice came from the far end of the line of cells, interrupting his purposeful stride as it bounced off of the cold stone walls, and he found another operative hurrying towards him with another folded parchment in hand.
He growled as his tension grew tighter and extended his hand impatiently. He'd either been sought out or waited for, so it must have been important, but at least this man didn't seem to be quivering. Perhaps the news wasn't that bad.
But whatever it was, it wouldn't be good, either.
He growled once again as he read the missive, then looked up to its runner. "Bring Nolan in here and have him question him," he said with frustration, then looked to the second mage, "and you stay here and watch him. He goes absolutely nowhere." Folding the parchment back up, he turned and stormed away, gesturing for Teagan to follow.
"What is it?" The portian asked with irritating indifference once there was distance enough between themselves and the prisoner.
Salus's blue eyes were sharp with resentment. "Karth has been found."
"He has? Where?"
"In the company of the mage responsible for the first attack." He was confident that Teagan would have blanched at the sickening idea had he not been portian. "The Order is after the artefact after all. Likely to destroy it if it really is the only thing that can stop them, or to deconstruct it and use whatever power is in it for their own means."
"What can we do about that?" Teagan asked, and though Salus was surprised to notice a hint of concern in his voice, he realised after a moment that that concern was his own. But it was warranted. They'd been after Karth's help from the beginning, but the man wouldn't keep still long enough for even the Arana to find him. His routes were chaotic, and without knowing his present research, as he kept his notes with him at all times, they couldn't predict his next movements. Drassa was a highly respected historian, but even as their second choice, a chasm still stood between them.
"We get there first."
"That may be easier said than done."
Salus raised his chin defiantly. "Which is why we're going to see Drassa immediately. Get changed."
Anoth
er two hours was wasted on travel and darkness had set in by the time the coach rolled up outside of the historian's home, but Salus's increasing tensions were bitten back again as he and Teagan each reassumed their roles of lord and servant and stepped out into the evening.
"My Lord Baymont!" Drassa cried as he opened the door, immediately dropping into a bow at the sight of their regal faces. "What a surprise! I have not seen you since--"
"I am well aware of the last time we spoke directly, Mister Drassa," he sighed, "I believe I was present." Lord Baymont stepped through the door as Drassa moved aside, his personal assistant and guards duly following in silence. "Mister Vakh has been relaying all of your reports," he continued as he walked into the sitting room, the older man hurrying along to join them, "and that has me concerned."
"Concerned, my Lord?"
He absently leafed through the papers that littered the table. "I can only assume you are holding information back."
Drassa's old brow, wrinkled by years of thought, twisted in insult, and he puffed for a moment in a fluster. "With all due respect, my Lord, I take my work quite seriously and treat all of my employers with equal courtesy regardless of their social position, and never once have I held back any information, so I certainly wouldn't dare to withhold anything from someone of your esteem!"
"My esteem? I thought you treated all of your employers equally." Baymont looked up mildly.
Drassa's cheeks flushed. "I do, I mean of course that you would be no exception anyway, but even if I did prioritise status--"
"Enough." The noble's expression darkened as he waved his blustering away and turned to face him directly. "You told me this would be an easy matter."