52. [Carina] Clever Friends (Patreon)

Carina Goldstone, Logician of the 3rd Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, her feet in two worlds

Samus Bind, Inquisitor of the 9th Renown, Candlefast, on the case

***

7 Frett, 61 AW

The pyramidal city of Infinzel, North Continent

173 days until the next Granting

If the cold air didn’t sober up Carina, then the company quickly did.

Samus Bind shuffled a few feet ahead of her as they descended the heated staircase leading down from the pyramidal city and into the outer districts. Once they reached the gravel road below and were no longer protected by the windbreaks or the warded stone, goosebumps rose on Carina’s arms and shoulders. Even so, the cold felt refreshing after the enclosed warmth of the banquet hall.

Bind seemed to agree. He tipped his head back and gulped in the night air like some kind of wolf.

“Better, don’t you think?” he asked. “Something in your temple plays havoc with my senses.”

Carina raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t sure where to begin with that statement; nobody called Infinzel a temple.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said with practiced neutrality.

“You don’t find all the wards in there suffocating?” he asked. “There are lines of magic crisscrossing every room. I feel the constant need to pick my feet up.”

Bind demonstrated by hiking up his frayed pants and taking a couple exaggerated steps, as if he were a burglar navigating a hallway bisected by tripwires.

“I haven’t noticed that,” Carina said.

“Hm. I thought you would have.” The inquisitor sounded almost disappointed, like he’d hoped to compare notes. “It’s oppressive. Although maybe that’s just something your king has installed with an archmage visiting. Regardless, I don’t recommend selecting [Detect Magic] when you reach your next level of renown. Not worth the migraines.”

Now that he mentioned it, Carina had felt an aching sensation at the edge of her awareness, an odd numbness to both her [Alert] and [Future Sight] Ink. She'd assumed it was just the champagne, but there was a resettling sensation to her abilities now, like they had been pulled taut and were finally relaxing. Was it true that the king installed some arcane blockage in preparation for the banquet? That would explain why Samus Bind hadn't triggered her [Alert] when he sidled up behind her, although maybe that just meant the man wasn't a threat in the traditional sense, or that he had defenses of his own to avoid such mental abilities. If it wouldn't have made her interest so plain, she would've asked Cortland to [Assess] him for her. She wished to know what an inquisitor of the ninth renown was working with. 

Too many questions and possibilities, and now Bind had an amused twinkle in his eyes as he watched her work things through. 

“You did feel it, then,” Bind said. “But you’re embarrassed you didn't know you felt it.”

“I've heard better come on lines than that tonight, inquisitor.”

Bind smiled, his teeth straight but stained from tobacco, and so Carina was unsurprised when he popped a smokeroll between his lips and lit it with a spark from his fingertips. He didn't offer her one. 

Carina glanced back the way they had come and saw the paladin from the Ministry of Sulk descending the stairs. She must have left right behind them. The woman came down the steps on great purposeful strides, her armor creaking. Carina found herself activating her [Future Sight], peeking for a short term possibility where the paladin tripped over a loose greave and tumbled. There was no version of events where Sara didn't breeze right by her and Samus like they weren't even there, disappearing to search for her next pulpit. But there was something else in Carina's vision—a scuffle, a shattered champagne flute, a stem used like a dagger to gouge across a face—and Carina felt suddenly that she wanted to be somewhere else. 

She started walking before the paladin reached the bottom of the steps. Bind shuffled along beside her, curls of smoke that smelled like burnt tea spilling from his lips. 

“I only meant a breath of fresh air, Madam Goldstone,” he said. “We don't have to go far.”

“I think I've had enough of my first Open Gate,” Carina replied. “Do you mind walking for a bit?”

“Not at all, but you aren't dressed for it.”

He nodded toward her gown just as a cutting wind blew a flurry of snow across the road. Carina had crossed her arms as they started moving—a chill was setting in—but they were entering a stretch of merchant stalls and storefronts, all of them open late in an attempt to attract business from those leaving the banquet. Carina knew she wouldn't have to be uncomfortable for long. 

An older woman dashed out from her stall with a grey fur in her arms, not even asking permission before throwing the garment around Carina's shoulders. The fur was heavy and warm, lined with silk, and smelled perfumed. Carina suspected it was from a northern bear, probably imported from Fornon. At least a hundred angles for a fur like that, but when Carina told the woman she didn't have any money with her, the merchant acted offended at the thought of payment and merely begged for Infinzel's ‘young and beautiful champion’ to showcase her wares throughout the winter. Pulling the fur around herself, Carina was happy to oblige. 

As they walked on, Bind stared at her. “They give you free things for being a champion here?”

Carina nodded. “The people have been very generous with me.”

“Because the gods chose you?”

“Because I'm a woman,” Carina said. “It's been years since there was a female champion. The dressmakers and soap sellers have all been desperate for endorsements.” She glanced at him. “Would you like a new coat while we're out? You're not one of our champions, but I'm sure we can find a merchant excited by the prospect of outfitting a candle.”

Bind pinched his collar and turned it up. “I like this coat. Thank you.”

“Shall we talk about Ahmed Roh, then?”

“Ahmed Roh,” Bind repeated, sighing.

The air around them changed—Carina sensed a new stillness, almost like her eardrums had popped. The sounds from the taverns and eateries they passed sounded unnaturally muffled. Samus Bind had done something to make their conversation private.

“You traveled with the archmage between here and Magelab?” Bind asked.

“Much to his chagrin,” Carina said. 

“You didn’t find it strange that he traveled alone? Without candles?”

“I suppose I didn’t think much about it. I’d just gotten my Ink and had other things on my mind.” Carina paused. “And anyway, who would I have brought such concerns to? My presence was barely tolerated in the Magelab. I learned not to ask questions or volunteer unsolicited input.”

Bind scratched the stubble shrouding his cheeks. “How did the archmage seem to you?”

“Impatient? Annoyed?” Carina shrugged. “I never knew him to be very pleasant.”

“He wasn't,” Bind replied. “Personally, I would say good riddance. I'd often found myself on the man’s bad side over the years. His research turned over stones from under which scuttled problems. However, his compatriots would like answers. Losing a fifteenth renown is no small thing. And, for my part, Roh’s not the only one who has died, is he?”

Carina pressed her lips together. She had fought hard to gain entry into the Magelab, and so spent most of her time in the fortress at the center of the lake, with little reason to visit the town that made a perfect ring around the lake shore. Only on a couple of occasions when she felt like it was better she disappear for a few hours or days had she spent any time in the cozy taverns of Candlefast. The servants of the mages were kind and welcoming and seemed to live a good life. Yet, she had a hard time looking at any of them and not envisioning a sword dangling from a fraying rope. 

“I'm sorry for that,” Carina said. “Anyone you knew?”

Bind shook his head. “A grandmother, short on days. Some kindness in that. And a young man, just twenty, stepping out on his path. I didn't know them personally, but that doesn't make me less eager for justice.”

“Don’t you worry it could be you?” she asked. “I don't know how you live that way. All of you. The uncertainty would drive me mad.”

The inquisitor glanced up at the sky. The night was heavy with clouds; more snow would come later. 

“You stop thinking about it,” he said. “Like a bolt of lightning or, for someone like you, a stone coming loose from the ceiling. Nothing but randomness.”

“Stones don't come loose in our ceilings,” Carina said. “We see to that.”

Bind took another look at her fur. “Lucky for you then, all around.”

Two dead candles for every dead mage. Carina shook her head, but didn’t belabor the issue. Once, it had been the candles that burned the tomes, but now the flames were snuffed by the weight of the pages. The Magelab had wished that arrangement into existence, originally one-for-one, until the candles attempted to overturn the wish and were punished with a doubling. That had all transpired before Carina, or Samus Bind, had been born. The candles were docile now—servants and protectors, their past as jailers all but forgotten. All except for the inquisitor. He was a role from the old system which the mages still had a use for. 

“Do you know where Roh was heading?” Bind asked.

“Ambergran,” Carina said. 

“He told you that?”

“I deduced it.”

“Strange,” Bind said. “Last year, I couldn't have found that town on a map.”

“Me neither.”

“Now, it’s on the tips of very powerful tongues.”

“An annihilation will do that,” Carina said.

“Did you further deduce what he wanted there?”

“I presumed he intended to see what the Orvesians had done. A scientific study of suffering.”

“I suppose that tracks,” Bind said.

Carina watched the lines form in the man’s forehead—crinkle and relax, crinkle and relax—almost as if his brain were breathing.

“Can you share any of the details? Perhaps I can help.”

They both knew that this was more a matter of curiosity for Carina than any genuine desire to aid in his investigation, so Carina was surprised by the frankness of his answer.

“He died five days ago,” Bind said. “The first clue was the Ink returning to Quill Ulpha. “

Carina had met Delia Ulpha during her time at the Magelab. An ineffectual bureaucrat mage in her middle years, entirely beholden to the demands of the elder archmages. They’d assuredly chosen one of the other elders to replace Roh—the ease of Ink was seen as a reward for a lifetime of dedication to the old ways. She wondered which archmage had been chosen; they varied greatly in their degrees of priggishness.

“A heart attack, perhaps?” Carina asked, focusing on the matter of Roh’s demise rather than his successor. “Or maybe he saw Ambergran, decided the world was too grim a place, and…”

“The latter more likely than the former,” Bind said. “We don’t have Roh’s body, but we have the candles. They suffer the same death, you see. I wasn’t there to examine them personally, yet my assistants describe heads half cut off. Maybe it’s like you said and Roh fashioned himself an enchanted guillotine.”

Carina snorted at the inquisitor’s bleak joke. He lit another smokeroll.

“Murder, we think,” Bind continued. “With a list of suspects only as long as every mage currently traveling outside the Magelab.”

“Is that many?”

“More than I’d like.” He exhaled a plume of smoke. “You’ve been helpful, Madam Goldstone.”

Sound rushed back in as Bind released his grip on their privacy bubble. The loudness of the night surprised Carina—shouting and commotion from the taverns and whorehouses made her blink.

“Is that it?” Carina ran a hand through her hair, disturbing some of the pins that held it in place. “Very different from our last interrogation, Samus, when I thought you might ship me out of the Magelab in a crate.”

He tapped some ash off the end of his smokeroll. “A very different situation then. We weren’t yet colleagues.”

“Colleagues?” Carina chuckled again. “You mean as champions?”

Bind looked down at his feet with a hangdog smile that Carina didn’t entirely believe.

“You’ve pointed me in the right direction on Roh, but I also had ulterior motives for this conversation, Madam Goldstone,” he said. “You see, the two of us are part of a very special siblinghood. Surrounded on all sides by weapon masters, archmages, hunters, and the healers who tend to their wounds, we have chosen a different direction. The gods offered us boons and we have applied them to our minds. I always like to meet the ones like me—the logicians, the enchanters, the artificers, and spies. I think of us as the Clever Friends. The island is a dangerous place for our type and we must stick together when we can.”

Carina smirked at the nickname, although she had to admit there was something alluring about a cross-faction alliance of the more intelligence-inclined classes. Oh, what they might do for the world…

“If I’m to be one of your Clever Friends, what advice would you have for a first timer?” she asked.

“Don’t get stabbed. And don’t let yourself be distracted,” Bind said. His gaze drifted down the street, to where a crowd had amassed. “Where have you brought us, Madam Goldstone?”

Only then did Carina realize that she had been leading the way. Her steps had carried them to Soldier’s Rest. The narrow street ahead was clogged with bodies wedged between the leaning chaos of the district’s slapdash buildings. A stage had been erected there, a familiar shape strutting back and forth upon it.

“Protection! That’s what they tell us the dues are for,” Traveon Twiceblack said, his words carrying easily above the murmuring crowd. Carina could imagine his face—confident smile, chiseled features, coal-lined eyes—and that voice always like he was letting you in on a private joke. “The only protection we need out here is from the greycoats, our own brothers and sisters, sent to knock down whatever we build!”

As the crowd roared again, Carina found herself slipping to the side, under the overhang of a building that had its door boarded up. Why had she come here? She hadn’t been thinking. Distracted as she’d been with Samus Bind, Carina hadn’t been mindful of her feet.

Bind slouched into the space beside her, head cocked toward where Traveon was drumming up this gods forsaken outer district strike that Watts Stonework had been talking about.

“This is interesting,” he said.

“Is it?” she replied. “I think I made a wrong turn.”

“Hm,” Bind said. “Did you?”

Laughter from the crowd as Traveon continued. “I thought nobles were supposed to be rare! Isn’t that the point of nobility? I hear they’re running out of rooms for Salvados inside. Twenty new ones every year! But gods, we must make more! Let us wish the old king’s balls full so he can breed more freeloaders!”

Carina winced. That was the kind of talk that would get Traveon’s skull cracked by a Garrison patrol. She glanced about to make sure the coast was clear, and so was the first to see Watts stumbling up the street covered in blood.

“Watts!” Carina yelped, and started forward. Bind put a hand on her shoulder.

“Doesn’t seem wise,” he said. “Not a place you want to be seen tonight, my clever friend.”

Carina let Bind drag her further back, into the shadows. Her cry had alerted others, though. The people of Soldier’s Rest rushed to Watts’ aid, even as he swore it was nothing, that he just needed to lay down for a bit. He’d been cut and beaten before. Injury was nothing new for the bouncer.

The story would be all over the outer districts by morning. How Vitt Secondson-Salvado had tripped over Watts Stonework’s foot and, for that offense, had gouged out his eye with the broken stem of a champagne flute. How the healer of Infinzel had been too drunk to do anything about it. Watts hadn’t even gotten to make his request to the king.

The strike began regardless.