by Demi Harper
My own brief research into each of these individuals has proved less than reassuring.
Karst is the subject of no fewer than eighty-nine(!) complaints, mostly from those of noble caste, and is by all accounts a mannerless brute. Meanwhile, Rutherford has been charged with dozens of counts of injury and property damage over the last decade, and while every one of these is listed in the records as "accidental" he nonetheless owes Guild fines in excess of five thousand gold, which is... staggering.
That V would send an academic to do an adventurer's task is concerning, but one look at Moon's records are enough to explain his reasoning. Eliminating Arkasio Jr.'s only intellectual rival would certainly help V gain favor with the boy’s father, the Arch-Academic, despise him though he may.
The leather spine creaked as Tiri's hands tightened on the journal. She'd suspected—no, she'd known that her position as top of the field in theoretical crypto-entomology had been what drew the higher-ups' attention to her. That her entire life had been tossed away to satisfy one man's ego and another's social maneuvering made her grind her teeth with rage.
Her anger softened somewhat when she recalled explaining her situation to Lila, back when they were all lost beneath the earth. The red-haired ranger had clearly already known, or at least guessed, the basic facts, yet she'd listened sympathetically while Tiri told her, and then delivered a thoughtful speech to bring her spirits back up.
She sniffed and pulled herself back into the present. Lila had been a good person. The least Tiri could do was give her memories her full attention.
But by far the most worrying of my soon-to-be traveling companions is the pyromancer. If what I have long suspected is indeed true, then his presence alone is confirmation that the mission on which we are about to embark is not one of duty but of suicide.
It isn't that I don't have faith in my own abilities; how could I not? But by their very nature (heh) they will be inaccessible to me beneath the ground. And my most powerful assets will also be useless; the BCs need time to grow, to flourish, to proliferate, none of which is possible on such short notice.
All of this is to say V's purpose seems likely to be this: use the pretext of a standard mission to conveniently dispose of untidy loose ends, within the Guild and also his own personal business. Though it pains me deeply to think it, as one of only a handful of V's remaining agents—one who has over the years become privy to his most coveted secrets and deep-rooted desires—I suppose I myself must represent the untidiest of those loose ends, and thus has my end arrived.
But! The situation is what it is. I may be wrong—I hope I am wrong. Perhaps there really is a malign Core, and V is sending me as ever to do the Lord of Light's work in destroying it. Perhaps it will even turn out to be the fabled purple Core I know V has secretly been seeking for so long. And the Subgardia system... V has mentioned in the past that he has an ally in that region. Perhaps we will be able to seek aid from them should we encounter difficulties. Or perhaps V has instructed that they should be the agent of our doom.
Only time will tell.
In this mire of muddy waters, one thing has become clear to me.
V has ulterior motives and I can no longer trust him.
I embark on this journey with open eyes, and will do my utmost to fulfill my directives as a high ranger and protect those under my leadership, unconventional though they may be.
But I can trust nobody.
Eleven
Bacon Butties
Tiri
The next page was empty, as was the rest of the journal.
Tiri rubbed her eyes and tried to process what she'd just read. Lila's last written words seemed to sear themselves on the inside of her eyelids, and she felt a dread certainty that the ranger had been right.
Trust nobody.
The words sounded paranoid. Crazed, even. But the handwriting said otherwise; it was neat, measured, just as it was in the earlier entries. And Lila hadn't struck her as paranoid; only cautious. If she suspected something was afoot, Tiri believed her. What was more, her suspicions meshed with Tiri's own concerns—and left her with a host of new ones.
Assuming 'V' was Guildmaster Varnell, what secrets had Lila known about him? And what did she mean when she said she was his 'agent'? Why was she worried about being partied up with Benin in particular? What were the 'powerful assets'—the mysterious 'BCs'—she'd referred to?
Above all, what could be so special about the 'purple Core,' and why was the Guildmaster looking for it in secret?
I'd hazard a guess it’s not to invite it over for a cup of tea.
Tiri glanced at the pile of papers beside her, torn between delving into them and flipping back through the journal for more insights into Lila's last days. That was when she noticed the first pink fingers of dawn had already begun to creep through the half-drawn curtains.
She'd been lost amid old memories and new suspicions, but now her physical surroundings came back to her in a rush. She was in a room she'd illegally broken into, rifling through a dead woman's private belongings in an institution from which she was technically outlawed. And passing footsteps in the hallway indicated the Guild was starting to wake up.
Shoving the pile of loose pages back inside the journal, Tiri stuffed it all into her satchel. Then she grabbed her chemsphere, though she didn't really need it any more. Her legs were stiff and clumsy—it felt like she'd been kneeling there for hours—and she tripped on the blanket Lila had used to wrap the journal before hiding it away in the secret drawer.
A flash of silver, and then something small and hard fell from a fold in the blanket. A necklace? Tiri picked it up gingerly.
Barely an inch high, the pendant’s narrow form was made of some kind of gray-black glass. It was twisted into a shape that looked pretty at first glance, but the more Tiri stared at it, the more it began to resemble a contorted humanoid, like a drowning fairy trapped in amber.
She shuddered. Tucking the pendant and its silver chain back into the blanket, she shoved that in her satchel too, cursing the lack of sleep that was now apparently sending her imagination running wild.
As more footsteps passed in the corridor, a pair of voices drifted in through the door, which Tiri had left slightly ajar for the sake of a hasty exit.
"... can't believe it took six darts to down him."
"He'll have a hell of a headache when he wakes up. Big oaf."
The words prompted a sinking feeling in Tiri's gut. They could be talking about anyone. Besides, Coll and Benin are keeping a low profile at the safe house, like you told them to. It won’t be him—
"Oaf, maybe, but I'm glad he dropped before any of us got on the receiving end of that hammer. Had a mean swing, he did."
"Yeah. Wish we'd caught the other one though. Captain’ll be furious."
"Not at us. We were just the backup. It's Koff and Vann who'll get it."
"If they even bother reporting it."
His companion snorted. "Oh, they'll report it, but not yet. It's Thursday."
"So?"
"I keep forgetting you're new here. So, Thursday means bacon butties. Those two will already be in the cafeteria, chomping on as many slices of pig as they can stomach. Bacon butties always run out if you don't get to breakfast early. That's why they sent us to throw the perp in the cells instead of seeing to it themselves."
"Bastards."
"Welcome to the Guild, darling."
The voices faded as the two young men disappeared around a corner. Tiri groaned inwardly. I’m going to kill Coll and Benin when I see them. She didn't know what they'd done, but she knew one thing. Sleep would have to wait. She had a captured oaf to locate.
As she reached for the handle, the bedroom door swung inwards. She gasped and stepped backward to avoid getting hit.
A woman stood in the doorway.
Her hair was a mess of brown curls so disheveled it could easily have been home to several mice and maybe a small bird or two. A pair of painfully bloodshot eyes glared out
from beneath the tangled mass. They burned with hostility, as fierce as a basilisk’s gaze.
The woman took a step into the room. Tiri was suddenly very aware that this woman was much larger than her. And she was standing between Tiri and the exit.
Who is she? And what in the stacks is she doing here, now?
"Who the hell are you, girl? And what in the twelve hells are you doing in my room?"
The woman's eyes flicked to the bedside cabinet. The drawers were still wide open, exactly as Tiri had found them.
But she'd forgotten to replace the secret compartment.
Scowling, the curly-haired woman—Lila's roommate, evidently—strode across the room to the drawers.
"But I checked," she muttered. "I checked! How—"
Tiri didn't wait to hear her next words. She bolted for the open door, desperately seeking the relative safety of the hallway, now slowly filling up with rangers in varying states of dress on their way to breakfast.
Almost there…
"Argh!"
She was yanked back into the bedroom doorway. Shoulder aching, collarbone throbbing like it was just kicked by a horse, Tiri fought for purchase on the leather strap that now felt as though it were crushing her chest. The woman had somehow moved quickly enough to cross the room and grab Tiri by the satchel. Now she held her fast.
"You were going through my roommate's things. Why?" Her breath was hot against Tiri's ear.
Mind racing, Tiri stared at the doorway, her freedom so near yet so far. She could probably make it; a quick twist and duck and she'd be free of the satchel and running. But that would mean leaving behind Lila's journal, not to mention all her own research notes from the last few weeks.
"Tiriani Moon," hissed the woman. "I recognize your description from your file. Where are the others? What happened to Lila?"
"I don't know where they are!" gasped Tiri. "But Lila's dead. I made my report—"
"Lies, all of it," she growled through gritted teeth. "What really happened down there? Tell me the truth before I beat it from you!"
The fist to her kidney felt like a rock from a catapult. Tiri would have doubled over from the pain had the woman's grip on her not been so strong.
"Gahhh... help... help!"
She gasped the words on instinct, and instantly regretted it. She was an impostor who'd just been caught breaking into a ranger's private quarters. Why was she trying to attract the attention of even more rangers? They'd just throw her in the cells with Coll and turn her in to the Guildmaster—if they didn't beat her black and blue first for daring to violate the rooms of one of their own.
Oddly, her assailant also seemed to think calling for help was a bad idea. She clapped a hand over Tiri's mouth and hissed, "Hush!"
But it was too late. Two figures appeared in the doorway. Both young women looked sleep-tousled, and one of them kept glancing back down the hallway, from where the faint smell of bacon and toasted bread was now starting to waft.
"What in the name of Talamis is going on here?" one asked, yawning.
"Are you all right?" the other said to Tiri.
She stared at them both, eyes wide and disbelieving over the hand that was currently gagging the lower half of her face. Thankfully they seemed to get the message that actually, no, she most certainly was not all right.
The first woman stepped into the room, pulling her white-blond hair back into a tail as she did.
"You going to let that poor kid go, or are we going to take this to the captain?"
The sleepiness in her voice was gone, replaced by outright hostility. That hostility was mirrored in the second woman's glare as she too stepped forward.
"You're on your final warning, right?" she said. "One more strike and you're out on your ass."
Tiri's curly-haired captor slumped, and her grip on Tiri slackened. But she did not let go.
"I found this little snake in my room. She was going through Lila's things!" The big woman's voice was almost pleading. "You know there's something strange going on. Varnell is trying to cover it up, but this girl knows—"
"Put a stocking in it, Sinica," interrupted the first woman angrily. "Your roommate died in the field. A shame, but it happens. Get the hell over it."
"Yeah, and quit it with the crazy conspiracies. No one wants to hear them."
"And no one wants you drawing negative attention to the rangers. In fact, no one wants you here at all."
The woman finally released her hold on Tiri and took a step back. The other two rangers nodded, eyes narrowed.
"That's right. Not another peep out of you, or we'll take matters into our own hands."
"You'd best keep sleeping with one eye open, crazy."
Shocked at the sinister direction the conversation had taken, it was a moment before Tiri realized the two women had left. Seizing her opportunity before Sinica could resume her interrogation, Tiri darted for the door and hurried down the corridor without looking back.
Her lower back throbbed from the punch to her kidney, and the vulnerable space between her shoulder blades was tingling. She felt as though the ranger’s bloodshot eyes were following her. Heart still pounding from her near-miss, Tiri turned a corner and broke into a run. She couldn't get away from that room fast enough, even though she was most likely running straight into even more danger—particularly if she intended to see this investigation through, which she did.
But that would come later. For now, she had a prison break to pull off. Somehow.
Twelve
Scavengers
Corey
“The stream is flooding again.”
Ket was right. Water was beginning to pool on top of the clay flats, where, if left unchecked, it would slowly creep inland toward the barracks.
"But we just shored it up!" I complained. I spent several moments cursing vehemently, until Ket got bored of hearing it and cleared her throat.
"Yes, and now we'll have to shore it up again. It's not a big deal."
I carried on grumbling, though I was already using Divine Inspiration to convey to Gneil that he should instruct the builders to increase the flood barriers. Though I didn't really like dragging him away from his post, it was much quicker that way, either because I'd done this with him so many times or because he was my high cleric.
Whatever the reason, within moments three builders were stuffing dirt into burlap sacks until they were full to bursting, then tying them off and hauling them across the bridge. They stacked them atop and behind the existing barrier of sacks along the bank, then did the same around the north and west walls of the barracks.
"See? No big deal," said Ket brightly.
The sprite zipped off to check again on Longshank, who was hobbling around supervising the placement of the makeshift sandbags. I noted Ket glowing with approval as she admired his initiative.
I'm still not making him overseer, I thought grumpily. Though he is doing a pretty nifty job with those defenses...
As Ket said, shoring up the flooding hadn't been such a big deal. But it wasn't the task itself that was making me irritable.
The stream had been swelling for days. But the weather up top—which by choice I only ever experienced through the hole in the Grotto's ceiling—had been no rainier than before.
What was more, I'd noticed parts of the wall through which the stream flowed into the cavern beginning to crumble away. Even as I watched, a few more clods of dirt splashed into the stream as the crack in the wall widened by yet another increment. I felt a twinge of worry, not for the first time.
Thankfully the scouts chose that moment to return from their latest expedition, providing a well-timed distraction from my water-based worries.
A few more uneventful patrols underground had confirmed the mole-rat threat was now well and truly dealt with. So, at Ket's insistence, I'd been sending the scouts out above the surface. They'd returned the first time with an array of biological treasures from what Ket suggested must be the corpse of a wild sheep: wool, meat, and a
waxy substance Ket called 'lanolin'.
(I’d initially misheard the latter as 'lamb-olin', and replied, "Oh, because it's a sheep?" This had prompted much mirth and mockery from the sprite ever since.)
The lanolin had proved a timely find. When applied to the surface of other materials—like wood, hide, and the rough hessian fabric the gnomes used to make their clothes—it imbued them with minor waterproofing properties.
It looked like the scouts had brought back more of the same this time. One by one they climbed down the ladder from the hole in the western wall, which led windingly to the surface by way of the badgers' former sett. The scouts' packs were bulging with evidence of sheeply bounty; they'd gathered so much wool this time they looked like walking clouds.
Two of my recently matured gnomes—to whom I’d assigned the ‘clothier’ vocation—scurried forward to meet the scouts, crooning over their new finds and rubbing the latest samples of fleece between their fingers.
"Ooh, I wonder if they'll use this wool to try out the new spindle the carpenters made!"
The last batches of wool had somehow all found their way into the badgers' nest. I suspected some of the children had had a hand in that, and knew for a fact that Binky had as well. In fact, he'd had eight. His relationship with the stripy little mammals really was bizarre.
"If you can call it a spindle," I replied to Ket. I eyed the wonky shroomwood construction dubiously.
"It's their first attempt. Of course it's not perfect." Her tone was reprimanding. "But at least starting now means they have lots of time to practice before the cold weather starts to set in."
I grunted in agreement. "And at least their winter outfits can't be any worse than their summer ones." I glanced from the clothiers' rough togas—recently customized with snail shells and wilting daisies—to the scouts' wrinkly mole-rat armor. "Or their scouting gear."