Chapter 11 - Part II

"I still think there is something not right.  Most of the staff evacuated before the Archne compound exploded." Gregor dodged an open palmed swipe from Vaughn's left arm.

"And yet all the staff we've located and questioned truly have no idea what happened." Vaughn replied with an equally fluid jab of his right fist.

Both men wore short white, un-pleated kilts of tightly woven linen but were otherwise sparring in the nude.  Vaughn bei'thal, easily the bigger, and hairier man of the two continued his assault on his inferior until he finally made contact with the fairer man's chest.  Gregor reacted quickly, but not quickly enough and he wobbled off balance.  It would take very little time for him to recover, but he didn't have a moment and in the blink of an eye, Vaughn had him pinned on the ground.

"I concede." he readily offered to his mentor.  Vaughn offered his hand to the prone man which Gregor readily accepted.  Both men were panting heavily with sweat pouring from their temples and gleaming on their bodies.  The sparring room was one of the cooler areas these days, being in the basement of the Augur.  But high summer spared no one, not even the subterranean.  "Are we sure we questioned them enough?  Was that bei enough to explore their minds?"

"We've been through this Gregor.  Believe me, Bei'Caudra is one of the most talented of the pnum'bei.  I was present at his compromise and he was forged by the Silent Scholar himself.  I have full faith in his abilities."

"Be that as it may," Gregor wiped his brow "Vaughn'Rduap, I'd like to talk to Bei'Caudra again.  Just to see if he's missed anything."  He touched his forehead in respect to the bei'thal and assumed a defensive position once again.

Vaughn mirrored Gregor before making the first move.  Gregor had to rely purely on instinct to avoid a two handed shove coming his way.  The younger bei'thal spun around, thinking to incapacitate his foe by collecting the man's outstretched arms, but Vaughn had seen this attack well before Gregor had thought of it.  He dropped his arms down to stabilize himself as he landed a devastating kick to Gregor's abdomen.

"That is fine.  They've begun work on rebuilding the Archne estate.  Ketrae finally has a Receiving Room and I am ready to interview her as well.  Caudra will be joining us again.  You can talk to him then."

Prone once again, Vaughn fell on top of Gregor pinning him down to the extent that he could not even wriggle around and his arms and legs were immobilized.  One massive hand clasped firmly around the young man's throat and Gregor felt the constriction on his breathing passages.

"Gregor, I am not going to say you are wrong on this intuition, but we must tread carefully.  Dissent is growing among the local nobles.  Conspiracies of Pho-Boteth dance along side conspiracies of each other.  They will say we planted Zaexyl Archne to take out the houses one by one.  They will insinuate that we blew up the estate and we are coming for others next."

"That would be unfortunate," coughed Gregor, and Vaughn released his grip.  "but perhaps better than if they figured out the truth."

A light chuckle escaped the lips of Vaughn as he rose up and once again offered a helping hand to his sparring partner.  "We do not want war.  That much we must remember and strive for.  A war would be a loss for the empire, regardless of the outcome.  All those resources and people would die for what?  So that some impudent children get to wave their fists around and have their tantrums?

"You've seen these people.  They don't love each other anymore than they love us.  They'd lose a war, but what if they could somehow win?  What sort of country would rise?" He answered his own question well before Gregor could get a word in.  " A self destructive one.  And as the saying goes, the only way to prevent a fight is to start another (translate to Yibouhese when I get the chance).  They'd turn on what they could get easily.  Lithen.  Maybe Sandor.  And with that, we'd have a collapse of the greatest maritime port on the World's Shell.

"And in the meantime, Yibouh would be pumping needed time and energy into the basic security needs of this part of the world, when this part of the world has the capacity to contribute scientifically, academically and technologically.  Exploration would take a back seat to petty infighting.  Progress, Dagleth-inspired progress would come to a halt and we can expect to see civilization suffer for it.

"So ask your questions, follow your instincts, but be exceedingly careful.  Err on the side of deference.  We visit Lady Ketrae Archne after she has a Receiving Room because such insignificant formalities are important to the gentry here.  We play by their rules with them, and maybe we get peace in return."

Gregor nodded.  Every child of Lithen was drilled of their historic connection with Eirdren.  The Eir peoples thought only in terms of resources and material wealth, and at one point, that included people.  Of course, the Chosen Empire was now merely a memory in the minds of the descendants, over 300 years later, but he recalled the clarity with which the brutal slave labor camps had been described.  The Eir, at that point, were fantastic record keepers and they spared no detail in recording each family broken apart and sent away.  The cruelty they visited upon the Lithenese was seen as animal husbandry and the occasional worked to death fellow was a blip in accounting.  No Gregor had decided very early in his life That must never be permitted to happen again.

"I suppose we'd better get ready and put on our dancing shoes then." he quipped.
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Chapter 11 - Part I

Herbaceous little plants of the forest floor, already heavy with fruit and seed, were crushed without mercy as leather boots landed and left their mark.  She could not help but leave signs of her presence in the thick understory of an oak and maple forest, but hopefully that didn't matter.  Less of concern to her was the possibility of someone following her than the probability of losing her quarry.

She stopped for a moment to breathe and grabbed her wineskin from around her waist.  It no longer contained wine of course, that was gone within the first couple of days, easily.  Each cool brook or stream she used to refill it offered increasingly clearer water, though each time the hint of wine was further and further diluted. 

Just as well, she considered.  Wine for my lips was just as unnatural as a pillowed cushion to sleep on.  She looked southeast, back from where she had come from instinctively.  Still nothing.  No sign of anyone here in the middle of nowhere.  The last town she had past was over a two days' hike and the people of Vokdren had paid her no more heed than any other hunter or traveler passing through.

She pulled the loose weave sleeves of her linen tunic up as a futile effort to ward off the day's late Warmtide heat.  All of her other clothing had been well packed in her rucksack in anticipation of the coming cool.  The major moon would soon disappear from the night leaving the minor moon all alone until mid spring.  That would make tracking difficult.  Even more difficult would be the mid-winter Coldtide celebrations, where most people on the continent celebrated the age advancement of their people at once. 

Denizens from all over the continent would often leave to visit their families in mass exodus.  Inland, indigenous cultures usually preferred to mark the actual day each individual was born and celebrate that day once every two tides, rather than have all people born in a tide celebrate it at the same time, so perhaps the roads would not be as blocked.  Still, Coldtide celebrations were most certainly the more hectic of the two, with many more people opting to stay in their resident villages during the Warmtide celebrations.  A farmer has to farm, after all, even if she's ready to celebrate her 100th tide.

She hoped she would have found what she was looking for by then.

A few blackberries, ripe to perfection taunted her from the safety   "Feh."she grabbed them, incurring a slight abrasion and giving up a drop of blood.  Food was hard to come by in her haste, and even if she had the time, she didn't have the skill.  This made the berries all the sweeter.

She looked north once, wistfully before returning to the task at hand, grabbing the leather thong around her neck.  On it, a smooth, small oval ornament of copper and a ruby red liquid sloshed about her neck.  She touched gingerly and felt it speak to her through her bones.

"Just where where is Dagleth's host sending him?" she wondered out loud.  No time to think.  Time to move.
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Chapter 10 - Part X

Onion shivered in spite of the warm day this late summer season was becoming. She had a hard time shaking off the filthy sensation of a thousand cockroaches crawling up her skin.  It was a gradual thing, being exposed to madness.  Onion's web remained blissfully unshaken since the moment she arrived at Pho-Boteth, on that deathly humid day.  The air had been thick and dense and naturally, her movements sluggish and forced, but that day her mind had been clear.  No inane ramblings poked at the silk threads of her mind; she was privy to no conversations between empire shills.

But from the time that scaly being entered her vision, she could not stop but feel the pulse of it as a spider feels the tugs of an unwary insect.  It was as if the creature amplified her senses, whether she liked it or not, and now that the connection had been made between the two of them, she could not dismiss it.  Though it grew weaker as she had made her way to class, even now she could feel exactly where on campus the Silent Scholar was.

The student to her left suddenly stood up, shaking Onion back into reality with the jolt of a semi-panic surprise.  The boy who had asserted himself so suddenly had waxy dark brown hair, cropped closely to his skull.  His taut almond colored skin suggested he might be from Sandor, or the Independent Duchy of Vem, though there was very little reason for the Vemmish to visit the halls of her Wisdom.

He was, for all purposes a youth, though the days when he could no longer be called a boy were fast approaching, and Onion found it strange that even at that age, he had so much confidence and surety in himself.  Children of the Nü were taught to listen and learn from those who had gone before.  Wisdom could not possibly spring from the innocent.

"No sir," the youth responded to a long hanging question the professor had proposed.  "The Three-Pronged War technically began in the 37th year of Coth Di, but the Vemmish and the tribes of the Outer Crest had been aggressive and antagonistic years prior.  Sandor entered the war independent of the Empire when trading vessels had been sunk by both Vemmish and Outer Crestan raiding parties, leaving an intractable situation for business.  The intervention was frowned on by the Empire, who hadn't gone to war in the past 6 epochs.    Her wisdom did not chastise the Sandorans, but nor were we, I mean, they, offered aid.  Fen-Kulch Dar'rduap speculated in his latest book, Lies and Lessons of the Coast, that this is why Sandor was never able to achieve a complete victory. (Linguistic Note, the prefix "Fen" indicates the person is deceased and not a high enough rank to warrant a postmortem name.)"

"Good Saugel.  And who can relate to us some of those prior altercations between the Vemmish and the Outer Crest barbarians?  Make sure to cite your sources." the professor prodded the introductory level history course.  He absently tugged on his closely cropped goatee of chestnut and stood relaxed, resplendent in loose fitting robes of butter-cream yellow and ornate tiger lily stitching. 

While young Saugel had sunk back into his seat, another youth across the classroom, a girl of no more than 25 or so tides, rose to take the question.  She was stunningly elegant with long, wavy raven hair and a bronzed body covered with a pure white silk robe and a sheer blue shawl of embroidered hawks and raptors.  "The Independent Duchy of Vem have always placed their highest faith in Dagleth and its host according to Fen-Pobh Lu'rduap's 'Memoirs of the East'.  This, combined with their dearth of resources means that they are always looking to expand.  They have to, or their civilizatoin will fall. 

"This should be compared with the Empire.  The Vemmish model is hardly altruistic and has been for the economic and social benefit of only themselves.  Since the might of the Empire has historically blocked their access to the west, they've often gone east, causing aggression with both a pre-imperial Sandor and the Outer Crest.

"But the various tribes of the Outer Crest, savage though they may be, have sheer numbers, and they have repelled several colonization attempts.  And their skill on the sea is renowned.  According to the published records of Rohath'rduap, the Three-Pronged War technically began as a two party conflict when Nü pirates made landfall on Vemmish shores."

She knew it was a terrible idea.  She knew up until this point he had managed to elicit no more than formal greetings from students likely 8 or 9 tides younger than herself.  Her dark skin and golden-eyes were hardly noticed by her classmates, though she never knew if the ignorance was willful or natural.  Nonetheless, though she knew it was not a good idea, though she was only partially confident that she translated the words of her classmate with any sort of accuracy, her legs would not let her sit idle.

"This is absurd!  Lies, all of it!" she stood and slammed the desk in front of her.  All the eyes of jade, obsidian, sapphire and onyx fell upon the mahogany girl with golden eyes instantaneously.

"Vren," the professor began, equal parts annoyance and interest tempering his authoritative voice, "State your case properly."

Onion took a sweeping view of her classmates around herself and suddenly found herself wishing she could attain the articulation she had with the Silent Scholar through the tongue of the mind.  "The Nü are not pirates.  We hunted at one time.  We fish.  We have even begun building cities and towns like your people seem to enjoy so well.  We barely even know how to travel from island to island, much less mount an assault on a fortress city."

The boy known as Saugel snickered cruelly and muttered something under his breath that Onion could not catch.  He was not alone.  Many students in the room were second siblings, nieces or nephews of the nobility of Eirdren, Lithen, Sandor, Falloth and even a very select few from Benge.  The rest all exhibited the tell-tale midnight colored hair and warm, light skin of the Yibouhese.  There were no friends to the Nü here.

"Sessha, sit down.  Your time is up." remarked the professor and the girl from Falloth slid back into the confines of her banana shaped chair.  "You did explain the assigned reading well enough.  Vren?" he tried the name on his lips for the second time, "Vren is likely referring to a few of the intricacies of island life.  Technically, it was the Sve tribes, not the Nü, who launched the initial attack, though the Nü jumped in soon after and ended up being responsible for the sinking of several Sandoran ships.  As the most numerous ethnicity on the Outer Crest, the Nü had the numbers the Sve needed and they quickly allied with their historical enemies.  This is likely the reason why the war ended in a stalemate."

"But," Onion continued, unsatisfied with the accusation of malicious intent thrust upon her entire ethnicity.  Whether he consciously lumped all of the Nü of the Outer Crest into one, or was merely ignorant of the lack of communication between the northern and southern isles, Onion didn't know, but she was beginning to feel that she was on trial for the entire archipelago. 

"Don't argue with me, and do not interrupt me Nü!" roared the professor decisively.  "Our people have been recording history for longer than your people have existed.  Two generations ago, your people were illiterate!  Don't presume to teach this class any of your oral stories."

Onion glared at the man and spit loudly in his direction.  She refused to take a seat and instead stalked towards the door.

"Leave this class now and you will never return." the professor Boaz barked; a hint of apathy returned to his voice.  Onion kept walking.

On the other side of a now closed door, Onion felt a wave of exhilaration rush over her.  When did I evolve such a temper?  she thought to herself in surprise.  She could not recall ever becoming this angry at her brothers, certainly never Rejnev.  Does the spider lash out because I am cornered and have nowhere to go?

She collected herself along the cool marble walls of the Second Hall and slid her bottom down to the granite cobblestones in a seat.  She buried her head into her open palms and tried to reach out to that spider for calm.

Her meditation was soon interrupted by a bounding Shar Wu, still in her robes of lilac blue.  "Vren!"

"Shar Wu!  I thought you were leaving the university for the day?"

"Yes, but I stopped by posts first, and I didn't want to delay.  You've got a letter!  I think it is from your friend." she placed the rolled up parchment into Onion's now empty hands, poorly concealing her excitement.  "Go on, read it.  I can help you translate if you have questions."

Happy to be preoccupied with something other than her ouster at class or the slimy remains of the Silent Scholar's mental presence, Onion smiled and nodded before carefully removing the wax seal and unrolling the message.

"It is written in Nüish." the girl laughed.  "In the script of the continental coast.  I can read it though."

"Alright then.  I guess you don't need me.  You should tell that friend of yours to write in Eirdred though.  You need the practice."  she smiled before touching her forehead in farewell and leaving."

Dear Vren,

I hope you are enjoying the City of the Crags, and the University on High.  There are many stories of my days there that I cherish.  I'm sure you are making memories of your own.

I was hoping to return soon myself and show you around to some of the wonders of Pho-Boteth.  Sadly, there is still a great deal of work to be finished here.  

You should know, Zaexyl Archne, your brothers' murderess, committed suicide less than a major moon ago.  I hope this gives you comfort, but there is cause for concern.  We have reason to believe she was not acting alone, and her co-conspirators may know you are still alive.  They may make attempts on your life.  Don't leave Pho-Boteth.  Better still, don't leave the University on High.  

I will try to get back as soon as possible.  Please be safe.

May our webs connect again,
Gregor