34. [Carina] Hurt Feelings (Patreon)

--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—

Carina Goldstone, Logician of the 2nd Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, could maybe try apologizing

Cortland Finiron, Hammer Master of the 12th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, needs to get over it

Henry Blacksalve, Healer of the 8th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, a man of bad habits

14 Harvesend, 61 AW

The pyramidal city of Infinzel

226 days until the next Granting

Cortland Finiron had cut her loose.

The hammer master stopped showing up for their early morning training sessions. He avoided Carina in the halls and began to take his meals separately, refusing the offers to cook for him that had seemed to charm him during Carina’s first weeks in Infinzel. He kept himself busy to avoid her, signing up for shifts fishing the river, a task well below his station as champion.

“He’ll come around, eventually,” Henry Blacksalve told her one morning.

At least Henry continued showing up for their morning sessions, but there was only so much that Carina could learn from the healer’s deflections and energy shields. Carina found that she missed the brutality of Cortland’s lessons. Without Cortland supervising, the smell of spirits started to cloud Henry again. When they halfheartedly sparred, Carina winced at the brandy-sweet smell of his sweat.

“Perhaps this has run its course,” Henry admitted after a few mornings with just the two of them. “We don’t need to keep getting up so gods damned early.”

Carina expected some hard feelings after her pre-dawn ambush. She hadn’t pulled any punches, which is exactly how Cortland had been teaching her to fight. Perhaps it had been too far to don a mask like the assassin who she knew still haunted Cortland. Or maybe it had been pitting King Cizco against him. Using [Enthralled Defender] on the king—the man she was sworn to fight for—could’ve been interpreted as vaguely treasonous. Of course, the ageless lord of Infinzel has essentially given her permission, or else Carina wouldn’t have done it.

Well, she probably wouldn’t have done it.  

The whole thing had been Cortland’s idea, anyway. Challenging her to best him. Sparring was sparring, whether it occurred in the training pit or not.

So, yes, she expected Cortland to need some time to soothe his ego. But she thought him a reasonable man. Eventually, he would see that she had only done what he asked of her. She needed him to understand what she was capable of—a logician, even of the lowly second renown, had uses beyond bleeding out in the training pit. Perhaps, she thought, once he came to terms with these facts, he might even be proud of her and congratulate Carina on her ingenuity. Carina was deeply disappointed in herself that this last bit mattered to her. She thought herself past the time in her life when she valued the approval of middle-aged men.

After more than a week of Cortland acting the ghost, Carina decided that enough was enough. She found the hammer master in the Battle Library, going over records of Ben Tuarez’s kills on the island, the details of which she expected Cortland had nearly memorized.

“What are you doing?” Carina asked him, her hands on her hips. “We’re supposed to be training.”

“Are we?” Cortland asked blandly, without looking up.

“Oh, by the gods, Cortland,” she replied. “How long is this sulk going to last?”

“The arrangement was that if you bested me, you could direct your own training.” He licked his thumb and turned a page in one of his books. “Go ahead and direct it.”

“Fine. I want to enter the Underneath.”

He grunted. “You’ve made that clear. The king will make a map in Ink for you, show you which way to go when you’re down there. Tell him that you’re ready to go down. Have you put a team together?”

Carina bit the inside of her cheek. “What do you mean by that?”

Finally, Cortland set aside his papers and looked at her. “There are more horrors down there than any one champion can handle, especially…” He trailed off, but she understood the implication. Hers was not a class that waded through hordes of monsters alone—she had no problem admitting that.

“A team, then,” Carina said thoughtfully. She pulled her dark hair back in a ponytail, cinching it, as if ready to go into battle. “How many is customary?”

“One squad to escort you and another squad to hold the gate and keep the way out clear,” Cortland said. “Trustworthy people. There’s a bonus for forays to the Underneath, but that’s not always enough to assure someone’s got your back. Deaths aren’t uncommon. Not all will want to risk their lives to put a little more color on your chest.”

“I’ve been kept apart from the rest of the Garrison,” Carina said. “How am I supposed to know who can be counted on?”

Cortland opened his mouth, but stopped himself from speaking. In that brief moment, Carina understood that he’d been working on this. Dragging his feet in taking her to the Underneath so that he could figure out which Garrison soldiers to send in with her. Interest in Carina had cooled over the last couple months, but perhaps not resentment. There were no doubt still prospects in the Garrison who doubted she was the right choice as champion for Infinzel.

“We were too cautious when you showed up,” Cortland said. “You’ve proven skilled enough at navigating the politics of this place. Go make some friends.”

Carina lingered there, tapping her fingers against her hip. “What about you?” she finally asked. “Will you come with me, Cortland?”

The hammer master’s eyes flared—offended that she would even ask. Not because he would refuse her, but because he took it as a given that he would be with her. He stood up and stomped over to a shelf near the doorway, grabbing a leather-bound book of reports, and tossed it to her.

“The champions always go together,” Cortland said. “That was one of Ben’s rules.”

With that, Cortland left the library. He’d spoken to her. That was some progress, Carina thought.

Later, Carina found Henry in the food hall. Centrally located on Infinzel’s first tier, the food hall was always bright and filled with smells of baked bread and smoked meat. Panels in the ceiling glowed with sunlight reflected from the outside by mirrors and rune-work, another innovation of King Cizco’s that Carina had spent time trying to reverse engineer. For a people who spent so much time inside, light could be a form of sustenance.

Through pockets of residents moving between the food hall’s long tables and benches, Carina took a moment to observe Henry. She watched him tip liquor from a flask into a mug of coffee. He’d only picked at the plate of potato hash in front of him, separating the peppers as if conducting surgery.

She should have foreseen this. Participating in her instruction had given Henry renewed purpose. Every morning, she and Cortland relied on his healing magic to patch them back together. The sessions gave Henry a chance to put his Ink to good use after it had failed him on Armistice. But now, the routine had changed, and Henry had returned to the bottle. She had misjudged some of the repercussions of her attack on Cortland. Part of being a good logician was clear-eyed assessment of her own failures. Why had she rushed her training?

A desire for more Ink. Her incessant need to always be winning. The king’s request that she find Cortland someone to punish for Ben Tuarez’s death, which would require certain events be set in motion. Her annoyance with Cortland’s visit to Soldier’s Rest where he sniffed around her past.

All worthy reasons, she decided. Although now she was left with the task of fixing relations with her fellow champions.

Carina slid onto the bench opposite Henry. He recognized the sheath of reports she carried, squeezed his eyes shut, and groaned.  

“When?” he asked.

“As soon as I can assemble a proper team,” Carina replied. “You’ll be up for it, right, Henry?”

“As up for it as I ever am.” Henry’s watery eyes met hers briefly, then he glanced into his coffee mug. He rededicated himself to his food, shoveling a few mouthfuls down before continuing. “If you ask me, we should cave the entire forsaken place in and be done with it.”

Carina had considered the matter of the Underneath herself. More than sixty years since the end of the Final War and still Infinzel sat atop a regenerating infestation made by a dead Orvesian war criminal. There were theories that filling in the tunnels beneath the pyramidal city would cause structural instability or imbalance the alchemies at work in the mineral garden. Carina found these possibilities unlikely—if the Underneath could so easily affect Infinzel, then they risked too much letting creatures breed unfettered down there. No, she thought, it was the power offered by the Underneath that kept Cizco from wiping it out. Not just the power in the Ink the gods hid down there with the reliability of changing seasons. The power of a threat. The power of a common enemy for Infinzel to rally against.

“Of course, then the Garrison soldiers wouldn’t have anything to do except pick fights in the outer districts,” Henry muttered, almost like he had read her mind. “Whatever. I know the right soldiers to ask to be on your gate team. Veterans, all, who will jump at the extra pay and not hesitate to cover our retreat if it comes to that. Old men without ambition. Like me. I suspect Cortland already asked most of them.”

Carina pursed her lips. “And how many more for the…?”

“For the dangerous part?” Henry asked. “Two or three, depending.”

“Depending on what?”

“On whether or not you bring Vitt.”

Vitt Secondson-Salvado. The hunter. The fourth champion of Infinzel, who had studiously avoided her since casually suggesting her murder on the day of her arrival. The thirty-first child of the king, elevated to second in the line of succession thanks to the kinsmete. Carina knew the day would come when she would have to forge some sort of peace with Vitt. She suspected that he had been keeping tabs on her, and that it was Vitt who had told Cortland about her visit to Soldier’s Rest. Fair play. Carina had been gathering intelligence of her own. She kept count of the nights Vitt spent sleeping somewhere other than his apartments on the champions tier, and she had asked her friend Traveon Twiceblack to find out who Vitt spent his time with in the outer districts. So far, all she had was a list of brothels, but it was a start. She wasn’t yet sure if her arrival to Infinzel had interrupted some game Vitt was playing, or if he simply disdained her in the way nobles often did. There had been no shortage of men like Vitt languorously fucking their way through the high houses of Penchenne. Men like him were why she had taken up the rapier during her time there.

“We have to start working together at some point,” she told Henry. “Besides, Cortland told me we all go.”

Henry nodded. “That was one of Ben’s rules.” He leaned across the table, lowering his voice. “Between you and me, Vitt might not be up for it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sick, lately, and won’t slow down to recover,” Henry said. “I’ve healed him for dust lung three times in the last month, but it keeps recurring.”

Dust lung. That was an affliction suffered by the rock-workers—the tenders, masons, and smiths. Prolonged exposure to the raw materials of Infinzel could leave particles behind, grating the soft tissue of the lungs. Not something that a noble should be suffering from, especially not one as young as Vitt. It made Carina wonder anew about where Vitt spent his nights away.

“Interesting,” Carina said, her voice neutral.

“I probably shouldn’t have told you that.” Henry chuckled and at last took a sip of his coffee. “Oh, well.”

After Henry left for his rounds, Carina lingered to read through the reports that Cortland had given her. The Garrison conducted periodic raids into the Underneath in order to ensure that the creatures living down there were not massing too close to the gate. Mostly, this meant clearing the first few chambers of the Underneath, making sure that there were no new tunnels being dug toward the surface, and confirming the maps remained accurate. These patrols did not venture too deep; they did not press into the cold depths well beyond Infinzel.  

That was where Carina would be going. Into the recesses where the monsters felt safest. The places deep and dark enough that they could no longer be considered part of Infinzel.

Carina noticed a trend in the most recent reports. Increased activity amongst the gargoyles. According to older reports, the stone creatures were typically docile, content to lurk in the depths of the Underneath. The magic that animated them had even begun to run out—some of them had apparently reverted into simple statues. But their behavior changed roughly two months ago. The gargoyles were increasingly massing at the gate, attempting to hack their way through in a way they hadn’t done since the war ended.

One line of the report in particular caught her eye. Written by some grizzled Garrison soldier, she could practically hear his laughter through the writing. It was a story better told over drinks than included in an official report, so Carina assumed the veteran had it out for the cadet he mocked on the record.

Cadet Tendersword found himself briefly overwhelmed by the beasts, the report read. We were able to reach him and extract him from danger. Tendersword took a blow to the head. He insisted, afterward, that one of the gargoyles had spoken to him. ‘Where is mother? Where is mother?’ he claimed the thing said. Reminded Tendersword that the gargoyles don’t talk, have never talked, and that he probably heard his own cries of panic. Recommend the cadet be reevaluated for suitability for Underneath duty.

 Where is mother?

Carina touched a hand to her chest. She could not explain why, but the crimson flecks floating in her Ink suddenly felt very hot.