Chapter 16: Politics Is Merely Warfare By Other Means

Cantor did what any sensible person would—he dove for cover, dodging behind a chair as he shouted, “Wait, Nev!”

The mage—Nevero, Cecilia was guessing—raised her hands. Cold lightning flickered between her fingers. “Wait? Did you wait? Did you come at a sensible hour? Or did you rouse me from a very good sleep for no good reason?”

“You don’t even know the reason!”

“It’s not good enough.”

The lightning was growing, and Nevero was storming towards Cantor’s cover. Cecilia jumped between them, planting her feet and growling, “Fists of the Forge.” Her hands caught fire as the blizzard aura swarmed over her, sending up plumes of steam as fire met ice.

Nevero stopped. Her eyes, as coldly blue as her magic, bored into Cecilia. “Who are you?”

“Cecilia.”

“Never heard of you.”

Cecilia could feel the cold intensifying, trying to push her to retreat, but it was a distant thing, not comfortable but something she could ignore. Being a golem meant never having to worry about frostbite. She took a step closer, and Nevero’s swirling shield of wind failed to stop her. It made the mage’s eyes widen. “You have now. So back off, or I’ll make you.”

“Cecilia,” Cantor hissed behind her, urgent and warning.

She ignored that, too. Instead, she cut Nevero off as the other woman opened her mouth. Cecilia snapped, “We are all up at the asscrack of dawn today, and none of us like it. You’re not special! We didn’t do it to fuck with you—you’re not that damn important. We need your help. That’s all. Give it or don’t, but there’s no reason to come in here like the Wicked Bitch of the West just because you missed your beauty sleep.”

“The Wicked—” Nevero blinked. The blizzard winds cut off between one breath and the next, dumping snow and ice in a circle around them. She gave Cecilia a long up and down examination and her eyes narrowed. “Temperature resistant and you’re wearing a disguise spell.” Her voice turned silky. “What are you hiding, hmm? Why don’t we find out?” She lifted a hand, and Cecilia got ready to put a flaming fist in her nose.

Cantor popped out from cover. “Nev! Stop it. We’re not in the mood to play, and Cecilia doesn’t know you’re not serious.”

Nevero’s gaze flicked away from Cecilia, to the other mage. “I’m not serious? Do you have any idea when I went to sleep? I was experimenting with endothermic azoth formations. It took twelve hours to set up the matrices to stabilize and sustain the reactions and ten hours to conduct the series.” Her hands dropped, her shoulders drooped, and she suddenly looked like she was about to cry. “Two hours, Cantor! Two hours of sleep, and now that I’m up, everyone will expect me to catch up on paperwork!”

Although she was still more than a little irritated at the grandstanding, sympathy prickled at the edges of Cecilia’s conscience. As Nevero no longer seemed about to smite Cantor with ice and fury, she let the Fists sputter out and shifted out of her defensive stance. “Sorry about that,” she murmured.

Cantor was even more contrite. “My deepest apologies, Nev.” He even bowed, and more elegantly than Cecilia expected. “I didn’t know. But we do have some significant need, and we wanted to be discreet, hence our early arrival.”

As one, the three of them turned, looking at the path of icy destruction leading to the door and beyond. Three faces peered around the door, apprentices in various degrees of shock, glee, and disappointment. Realizing they were seen, all three disappeared, and the sound of running feet retreated from the door.

“It, perhaps, did not follow the plan as I originally conceived it,” Cantor said.

“Ugh.” Nevero pointed at the door. “Icy Zephyr.” A wind kicked up near the door, slamming it closed. She turned back to them and tossed her cerulean hair. “I suppose I forgive you, and maybe I should have been a little more...restrained. I—” she broke off, lifting a hasty hand to cover her wide-mouthed yawn. She sighed and threw herself into the nearest chair, not seeming to mind the ice that shattered on the cushion at the impact. “Well? Sit down, both of you, and tell me what all this fuss is about before I pass out.”

Tentatively, they did. Cecilia let Cantor take the lead in explaining their purpose for being here—the Krkrow part of it, not the Traveler issue—while she took the opportunity to study the woman without the shroud of ice and irritation. Nevero, when not raging, was not an immediately intimidating figure. She seemed to be just under average height, a little shorter than Cecilia, and her broad shoulders and hips weren’t muscular so much as just wide-framed. While she wasn’t what Cecilia thought of as beautiful, her blue skin and hair meant that even in a world where the ‘racial’ types weren’t what Cecilia was used to, she suspected Nevero stood out. She wondered if she was one of the non-human People, but nothing except her coloration was different. Her robes, like Cantor’s, bore several protective enchantments (Cecilia took a moment to thank Analysis for being useful for once), and the bracelets she wore around each wrist were also enchanted: one boosted her ability to convert azoth to water, and the other had a strong enchantment against cold.

Her actual class and level were warded, but from the deference Cantor showed, Cecilia was betting that the latter was higher than his. And she certainly seemed to occupy a higher status – Third Circle to Cantor’s Second. But the two had a clear familiarity with each other. And now that she wasn’t actively trying to kill him, Cantor seemed at ease in her presence.

By the time Cecilia finished her assessment, Cantor had hit the high points of the problem and was leaning forward as he explained the tricky part. “Blood magic rituals aren’t legally taught outside of the Circle, Nev. If someone’s using them, he’s either one of ours, or he’s an outlaw. Either way, if he’s caught by someone not affiliated with the Circle, it’s egg on our faces for sure.”

Nevero pursed her lips. “We had someone here just the other day, asking about that distasteful ritual in the sewers.”

“What did you tell them?”

She sniffed. “As if we hadn’t created and deployed the bathuiomox in the first place. Why would we sabotage the same drinking water that we rely on? Especially in such a crude fashion. Give me a moment.” She gestured at one of the lights above the Index and it dropped into her upraised palm. To it, she said, “Apprentice, fetch my notes from the meeting with the Viscount’s Guard, yesterday.”

The light burst from her palm and zipped through the air, right through the door itself, and disappeared. Nevero leaned back in her chair languidly. “I had no real information to share with them. It’s a basic blood magic ritual. Third Circle, invoking azoth conversion. It would have needed a good fortnight to taint the water supply enough for people to start being sick.”

Cecilia made a thoughtful noise. “If nobody had fallen sick, then how did the city know to hire us to look into it?”

“Monitors,” Cantor said. “Also from the Circle—some First Circle mages are usually assigned to monitor the city’s ongoing enchantments and look for signs of fraying and disruption.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“It’s dreadfully boring work,” Nevero put in, “but it pays well and doesn’t require much actual talent or training. Your blood mage must be a fool if he didn’t know about that.”

He hadn’t sounded like a fool. “I don’t think so,” Cecilia said, slowly. “This was organized, planned. They attacked a group they had advance notice of, knocked them out quietly, and hid their belongings as well as managed to get them down into the sewers without raising suspicion. Does that sound like people who wouldn’t realize that the enchantment they wanted to corrupt was going to be monitored? When it’s something as vital as water?”

Both mages paused, thinking. Neither of them, it seemed, could refute the logic of that. Cantor steepled his fingers before him, tapping them together. “Then...they expected the sabotage to be found before it could do permanent damage. But why?”

“Politics.” Nevero’s voice had gone flat with disdain. She gestured to Cecilia. “Assuming that you’re correct and they’re not just morons, then this was meant to send a message. Several ‘messages’ of this type have been sent to the Viscount lately, but this is the first one that’s targeted a wider audience.”

“The deaths of her heirs,” Cecilia murmured.

“Exactly so.”

Cantor looked baffled. Of course, he’d been concentrating on maintaining his spells and remaining conscious when the rest of them had been listening to farmers’ gossip on the way into Can Gallos. Cecilia summarized the rumors for him, with occasional corrections from Nevero.

Cantor groaned and scrubbed at his face with his hands. “I hate politics. Who’s taking a shot at her?”

“If we knew that, Cantor, we’d turn the name over and bask in the light of the Viscount’s favor,” Nevero said, exasperated. “That’s the most baffling thing about it. Viscount Eita has factions that don’t approve of her, but none that are viciously opposed. Or headed by someone so ambitious that this kind of campaign of assassination and sabotage make sense.”

“When did it start?” Cecilia asked, curious despite herself...and maybe hoping that the time she spent binging Columbo would once again come in handy.

“Her original heir died of a fever two and a half years ago. The Circle was asked at the time to examine the body for signs of hostile magic, but we detected none. Nonetheless, from the time that Lord Fienno passed, the Viscount has seemed plagued by poor luck in a wide variety of endeavors. Although none so dramatic as the deaths of her heirs.”

“Always by misadventure?” That was Cantor, and he had his thinking face on, his silver eyes half-lidded.

“Two accidents, one death in a duel...although her opponent swore she did not intend to strike a fatal blow.”

“And hostile magic—”

Nevero shook her head. “At every incident, we scryed and found no evidence of spell or curse.” She hesitated, just a moment.

Cecilia didn’t. “But…” she prompted.

“But,” Nevero responded, grudgingly, “there were several odd objects found tucked away in various places around the death that did have some trace of magic. It is possible that they could have been foci for rituals set up elsewhere, then channeled to the scene.”

“That’s Circle magic,” Cantor said, quietly. “One of our trade secrets.” His eyes sharpened. “Which means you didn’t share that with the court.”

Nevero couldn’t meet his eyes. “I consulted with the higher Circle, and we agreed that it wasn’t in the best interests of our organization.” Seeing their expressions she added, defensive, “There was no guarantee it had anything to do with the incidents. Not...definitively.”

“Oh come on,” Cecilia snapped. “Even I know better than that. Once is accident, twice is coincidence, but three times is a pattern.”

“It was out of my hands,” Nevero said, the words heavy as stones in her mouth.

Cantor snorted, shook his head in disgust. “You mean you realized that it was likely to be enough trouble that it would interrupt your research agenda, so you let the Circle tell you it wasn’t your problem. What if they eventually move on to assassinating the Viscount herself?”

“Rulers die, Cantor.”

“Sure, but when they die and there’s evidence the Circle is either directly involved, or knew something that could have stopped and chose not to intervene? That’s when people get angry. That’s when the Empire sends Inquisitors.”

A vision of a stern man in Church robes intoning show them the instruments danced in Cecilia’s head. She raised a hand. “I’m not from the Empire. Inquisitors?”

Nevero huffed, closed her eyes. “This surely isn’t enough to draw their attention…”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Cantor muttered. He looked to Cecilia. “The Inquisitors are, hm. Agents of the Empire. They police the upper classes, both nobility and,” he gave Nevero a stern look that she pretended she couldn’t feel, “the leaders of guilds and organizations like the Circle. People who are, generally, too powerful to investigate or prosecute locally. No one wants to be the one to arrest their own lord. Or execute them.”

Cecilia wanted to try and compare them to federal agents, but not only was this not the audience, she realized as she tried to conceptualize the term that the translation spell was slotting in ‘Imperial’ for ‘federal’, which would only make it redundant. Instead, she said, “Well, why don’t we talk to them, then? Do they have...a field office or something around here?”

Cantor blinked at the idea, then laughed. “Gods, no. No one would want a bunch of Inquisitors just sitting outside the palace, watching things. There are two branches of the Inquisitors. The Judges would be the ones that would show up if the Viscount got assassinated—”

“—might show up,” Nevero interrupted.

“Would probably show up,” Cantor snapped. “C’mon, at this point we’ve got multiple dead nobles and an attempted poisoning of a city. If this escalated, the Inquisitors will come. They might already be here,” he added. “Because the second branch is the Hounds. Rumor suggests there are Hounds in every major city and court, poking their noses into things, sniffing out corruption and betrayal. You only know someone’s a Hound if they want you to know.”

Oh, the secret police. Cecilia grimaced. “And a little light terrorism and political oppression on the side?” she muttered.

“What, the Hounds?” Cantor squirmed. “The Imperium says not. But how do we know for certain when nothing is revealed? It’s true, a Hound could as easily be an assassin or a saboteur as an investigator. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I acknowledge the reality.” He waved his hands about a bit. “The point is that if a Circle mage is involved in this, it will be eventually found out, and everything you’ve done to try and ‘protect’ the branch will just make you look like you were involved, Nevero. And the upper Circle will absolutely leave you hanging if it means that’s where the investigation stops.”

Nevero let out a painful groan. She was practically puddled in the chair, eyes still closed and face scrunched up. “What do you expect me to do, Cantor?”

“Help us,” he said, simply. “Give us the names of the Circle mages here in Can Gallos who could do the rituals we’ve discussed. Blood rituals, proxy foci, Third Circle or higher? That’s got to be a short list. Just tell us what you know, and we’ll make sure that the right people know that you helped. Discreetly.”

She opened one eye to stare skeptically at him. “And if it’s nobody on the list?”

“Then we’ll need to look at the Guild,” he said, simply. “Someone with those skills isn’t just locked up in a chamber until he’s called upon. He needs resources to grow, which means he needs money. And we don’t think he’s someone’s house mage. He’s a mercenary.”

Her eye closed again and she lapsed into silence while Cecilia and Cantor fidgeted. Just when Cecilia was considering kicking her ankle to see if she’d fallen asleep, she said, “Fine.” She heaved her body out of the chair and rose to her feet. “I’ll get the information. But Cantor, I’m holding you personally responsible if it’s used to harm the Circle.”

“I’ve no interest in spreading idle gossip, Nev. But murders and poison? That’s not worth protecting.”

She just sighed. She started to turn away, then hesitated, turning back to squint at Cecilia. “You withstood my blizzard and my wind, but you’re no mage and you’re not carrying any enchanted equipment worth noting. What are you?”

Cecilia froze. Cantor sputtered. Before he could try and come up with an excuse—because he was absolutely a terrible liar and she suspected Nevero knew it—Cecilia concentrated, bringing up her mental grimoire and pouring azoth into the shape she had in her mind.

Ding! The sound was all in her mind, but the magical light bulb popped into existence above her head, shining brightly. Cecilia smiled equally bright. “I’m learning magic. That sort of makes me a mage, right?”

Both actual mages stared at her. Out of the corner of her eyes, Cecilia saw Cantor shaking his head.

Nevero said nothing. Then, she burst out laughing. “No. No, it does not. But that’s not a bad cast. Weird cast. Why’s it that shape? But, fine. I won’t ask again this time. Next time I see you, though…”

“Not if I see you first,” Cecilia responded, promptly.

Nevero snorted. “Guess we’ll find out. I’ll be back.” She strode to the door, pulling it open with a surprising amount of energy and practically slamming it behind her.

Cecilia waited until she was reasonably sure she really was gone before she hissed, “Do you have any way to erase what we searched for in the Index?”