Chapter 17: Questions and Plans

Considering Nevero’s threat, Cecilia wasn’t at all eager to linger within the Circle’s environs. Even if the thought of being able to sit down with the books was a pleasant one. They couldn’t take the books with them. In the limited time they had, she and Cantor skimmed as many as they could, and wrote down what seemed the most relevant information. At the end, Cecilia had a list of books and page number to come back to when they could, and a scribbled list of bullet points that looked something like this:

Travelers, Doors, and Getting Back Home

* Onyx gets you in. Smoke lets you travel through your dreams to other worlds (plural!).

* Every Traveler may not be of Earth (see worlds, plural).

* Travelers have a special class that explains their effect on the world (moderate boosts to Intellect and Perception and a big boost to Will).

* Diamond door—rumored to be a lost ritual from prehistory. Nothing substantive except mentions of the Sha-ri, a long dead civilization. Bright side: they were based in this continent. Less bright side: most of their old strongholds have been looted, razed, rebuilt on, and otherwise wiped out and no one found a diamond door. (Or they just didn’t share that they did.)

* Capital has more information on Doors of Smoke. Tavalos, a city on another continent, may use them regularly.

* WHY ARE THERE NO MAGIC TELEPHONES?

As Cecilia punctuated that last with an angry blob of ink, she decided to ask Cantor. Once she explained what a telephone did, he sat back from his reading, taking the moment to rub at his eyelids. He still looked worn down to the bone, but she knew better than to mention it. “Long distance spells of any sort are very difficult,” he murmured. “It’s the nature of azoth, you see. You understand what it is we do when we create and cast a spell?”

She brightened. She knew this one, after reading Cantor’s apprentice grimoire. “Using our focus and will, we create a shape to ‘hold’ the azoth. If we fill that shape with the appropriate amount and type, then the azoth excites itself into a manifestation that we call magic.”

His lips twitched. “You memorized that.”

“Look, it’s right, isn’t it?”

He laughed and waved a hand. “Yes. And therein lies the problem. Azoth requires that excitement to manifest magic. For ranged spells, your will gives it a direction, but you’re not really ‘throwing a fireball’ which exists as its own, self-directed object. Instead, you are gathering and igniting every bit of fire azoth in the air on a path governed by your will. The spell only has the energy you supply to it, and its reach is only as long as your will can command. For most mages, that’s line of sight. With the aid of skills, some mages specialize in unusual range or being able to cast blind, but even the greatest Farseeker Mage of history could only manage a three day travel radius.”

It made sense, Cecilia had to admit. Although electricity had some of the same downsides, and they’d managed to work around it on Earth with power lines and generators. “What about conduits? Like, silver lines that you could send spells down. You said some materials were better for holding enchantments than others, right?”

His fingers were tapping restlessly on his thighs, a sure sign that his mind was engaged. “There’s an idea. It has been tried, of course—remember the Imperial Roads? They are giant conduits for very specific enchantments. And there are some spells that reach across planar boundaries rather than distance. Elementalists are known for having communication portals with certain elemental sovereigns in their home realms. But that relies on rituals that exploit the resonance between the azoth the mage controls and the incredibly high concentrations of that same azoth on an alternate plane. There are very few places on the material plane which carry that sort of resonance.”

“Damn. What if—”

There was a knock on the door, and Cecilia hastily closed her notebook. Instead of Nevero, though, it was Apprentice Eni, with a packet of wrapped and tied cloth in his arms. He gave them a wan smile and offered it as they stood up. “Mage Nevero regrets that she was not able to deliver this in person, but something urgent has come up.”

Cantor deadpanned, “She fell asleep, didn’t she?”

Eni coughed, ducked his head. “I couldn’t say.” Then he peeked out into the hallway. Apparently the coast was clear because he added, “But I don’t think you’re wrong.”

With a laugh, Cecilia took the offered package. It felt like a slim packet of papers under her fingers. “Don’t pick on her about it, Cantor. If she really only had two hours, we should let her sleep. Eni, please give her our thanks. Once she wakes up on her own.”

“I’ll make sure it gets passed on,” Eni said, warily, and Cecilia realized with a wince that the apprentice might not be the most popular person for Nevero right now.

“Right. Whenever it’s appropriate.” She nudged Cantor with her elbow. “We should get out of here.”

Once they were back on the solid stones of the city streets and heading away from the Circle building, Cecilia and Cantor concentrated on navigating the city streets. It was necessary because by now, Can Gallos had well and truly woken up and traffic laws seemed to be another thing that this world had never gotten around to inventing. Peddlers had spread their wares on rough-woven blanket and shouted constantly to draw attention to them—and to keep people from kicking over their things. Lizard-drawn wagons bullied their way through the streets, with their drivers employing their prodding sticks more on pedestrians who got too close to their wagons than on the animals. There were even a few of the riding lizards, with well-dressed men and women perched on the tall saddle-stools with far more grace than Cecilia had managed.

She wondered, for a moment, if this city smelled much less bad than she’d always imagined a medieval city would because of the choice of lizards over horses. The lizards didn’t sweat, and the ones that had pulled Mynet’s wagon had only defecated once that she could remember over the multiple days of their journey. Certainly, there was no dung in the streets proper, although alleyways had a certain rank, sharp scent that she associated with alleys back home, especially around the club district. She doubted that was the animals’ faults.

The streets themselves smelled like people. Not even particularly unwashed people. There were a multitude of bath houses that cost a surprisingly reasonable amount. They were very well used, not just for bathing, but for socializing. The other main scent was cooking. Most of the working class and lower class didn’t have their own baths or kitchens, as the city buildings were very apartment-like but...well, without any sense of housing regulations that the builders and owners had to adhere to. So most cooking was done at public kitchens and bakeries that were in nearly every neighborhood. Every few blocks, she and Cantor would pass another open-front store where meat was being cooked in giant wok-like vessels, or cauldrons, or ovens. And Can Gallos liked their food spicy. It was one of the reasons she was really starting to like this city. “Let’s grab some meat sticks to eat on the way back,” she said, her eyes following the motion of one cook, who was putting sizzling sticks of freshly grilled meat up for sale. Her stomach didn’t rumble any more (Cecilia wasn’t entirely sure she even had a stomach), but she could still feel hunger.

Cantor jumped as she addressed him, shaking himself out of whatever heavy thinking he’d been doing. She half-expected to have to press him—but when he followed her gaze, his stomach let out a rumble that she could hear even over the crowd. He turned red as she laughed, and they hastily made their way to get into what could laughingly be called a line.

One of their smaller money sticks later, they each had two skewers of what smelled a lot like barbecue chicken, and they had a waxed paper package of an additional four skewers for Shin and Mynet. Cecilia bit into her first skewer with gusto; one upside of being a golem meant no longer having to wait for your food to cool. Instead, she was able to savor it as it literally sizzled in her mouth, every flavor coming through, with spices that reminded her of five spice with an undertone of mustard-style Southern barbecue, but temperature-wise there was only a pleasant heat against her stone flesh. “This is so good,” she mumbled around the first bite, hastily swallowing. “Do I want to know what it is?”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Cantor watched the steam rising off his own skewers wistfully. “I don’t see why not. It’s, ah, there.” He gestured with his skewers, pointing at two large birds who had snuggled themselves into a small alcove near a window. Pigeons, was Cecilia’s first thought. But then she realized they had four wings, and were nearly the size of chickens. Cantor continued, “Girten. Incredibly common in cities. They eat garbage and waste, but the flesh never seems to taste foul.” He chuckled to himself. “Just fowl.” He gave her an expectant look.

She obligingly groaned. “Not one of your best efforts.”

“You simply aren’t willing to concede my comedic genius,” he replied, puffing out his chest as they dodged and sidled through the crowds.

“It’s nice that you’re feeling up to making bad jokes.” Cecilia smiled at him, then laughed as he turned red and looked away. “Seriously! We were worried.”

He avoided having to respond to that by taking a big mouthful of his skewer. Unfortunately, Cantor was not a golem. The mage’s eyes watered and he fanned his mouth with his free hand while making sad sounds.

Cecilia winced and dodged to the side to pay too much for a rather bruised but watery-looking fruit from a stall. She thrust it at him.

He took it with a wordless sound of gratitude, poked a hole in the greenish-purple skin with one finger, and poured the juice that trickled out into his mouth. Eventually the mess got down and he let out a painful breath.

“Okay, I won’t tease you again if you promise not to try and set yourself on fire with food anymore,” Cecilia said, mock-solemn.

Cantor glared at her, then conceded with a weary chuckle. “Fine. I will attempt to restrain myself. But we should hurry. We need to resume our disguises before Mynet sees.”

Cecilia’s rising amusement was snuffed out in a moment. It was, on a technical level, no problem for her to become Jon again. Just an exercise of will. But the disguise felt increasingly wrong, even terrifying, as if she were putting on someone else’s skin, wet and freshly shorn from its true master. Everyone looked above her when they talked to her. She would start to feel at home, then look down and see arms and a body that did not belong to her where her own flesh and blood should be. If her true self was under the illusion she could have endured that with something like patience. But there was no ‘true’ self for Cecilia any more. It was all illusion and enchanted stone.

The real body of Cecilia Rojas was, by this time, slowly rotting in a coffin buried beneath the ground. And she was terrified that nothing she could do, even in this world of magic and wonder, would ever be able to fix that. She’d be stuck in a foreign, inhuman shell for...however long she lived. Could she bear that? When it really got down to it, how long could she endure?

“Cecilia?”

She jumped, and found Cantor watching her with concern. “You’re right. Your hair takes forever to get right. Let’s go.” Cecilia picked up the pace and left Cantor scrambling to catch up, too breathless to ask further questions. If she told him how she was feeling, he’d just feel bad. Her disguise was their best option and she wasn’t going to whine about it, not when she was the reason Cantor and Shin were fugitives, outcasts from the Guild.

Surely, she could just...put up with it for a little longer.

*

Later, the four sat around the tiny table in the trio’s rented rooms. The rest of the skewers had been polished off by a grateful Mynet and Shin. Mynet had found a temporary solution to the clothing issue that made him stand out so clearly in their neighborhood: a cloak. He’d taken it off as soon as they were through the door and hung it with clear distaste on a crude hook in the wall.

Cecilia supposed they were all making sacrifices.

She and Cantor had spent the time reapplying Cantor’s disguise, then sorting out the non-Traveler information they’d gotten from the Circle. Cantor had several scrolls unfurled, their ends dangling over the table’s sides. “We’re looking for a Third Circle mage who has experience in both blood magic and certain occluded metamagic techniques. Luckily, for Can Gallos, that’s a fairly short list—in the Capital, we’d have a few dozen candidates. Here, we have...three.”

He pointed to each of the scrolls in turn. “I think we can rule out Meridia. She’s fifty years old and teaches advanced ritual work in the Circle compound. According to the notes, she rarely leaves the building and strenuous exercise brings about a ‘seizing of the lungs’ that requires a healing spell to soothe.”

“It’s hard to imagine someone of that description running around to help subdue Krkrow and staging assassinations,” Mynet said. “Although I wouldn’t say rule out so much as...put her at the bottom of our list. For all we know, the old lady is running an elaborate con and moonlights as a ruthless male assassin.” At their expressions, he grinned. “I’m not saying it’s likely. But it’d be incredibly entertaining, right?”

Shin poked his hand lightly with her skewer. “This is not a bard’s tale, scribe.” Her eyes cut to the other two. “He enjoyed the interrogation too much.”

Cecilia was about to ask how it went, but Mynet held up a hand. “We’ll get to that. Please continue. I apologize for interrupting.”

Cantor’s nod was overly gracious as he continued, “We’ll put her at the bottom of the list, then. But the other two are more likely. Janna and Ryzec. Both male, Third Circle, hale and with experience adventuring, although neither are members of the Guild. I’d bet on Ryzec.” He tapped one of the scrolls, and Mynet picked it up to read. “He’s had some violent altercations with other mages over treasures found in dungeons.”

Mynet made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. For her part, Cecilia wasn’t sure. She thought back to the voice they’d heard in Cantor’s scrying spell. It had been languid and mostly unmoved by what was happening. It didn’t feel like the kind of voice that belonged to someone who would get into a brawl over loot. Come back under cover of dark, slit someone’s throat, and take the loot? Yes. But not brawl.

“What’s Janna’s background?” she asked.

“Nothing extraordinary. He seems to be more of an academic sort; he does seem to have extensive knowledge of blood rituals, but he mostly confines himself to writing monographs about the underlying magical principles of their use—some interesting theories about the azothic principles of animated blood and how quality of excitation may not be a property inherent to the substance but rather to the animating principle…” he broke off as he noticed the blank expressions around the table. “Ahem. That is to say, he has a theory that blood itself holds no greater enchantment potential than any other flesh substance, which goes against popular theory, and instead posits that living blood can be excited by the emotional state of the sacrifice and that’s what powers the ritual.”

“So,” Cecilia said, slowly, “if he were going to do a blood sacrifice, he’d keep the sacrifices alive as long as possible to boost the effect by his theory?”

Cantor saw what she was getting at. “Ah, yes. Which would match the method used by our mystery mage. But,” he held up a hand, “these are monographs that anyone of this Circle could easily access, and in fact, I’d be surprised if both of our other subjects hadn’t read Janna’s work. It doesn’t rule out either of the other two.”

“Then we need to follow up on both of them,” Mynet said, putting the scroll down. “And at the same time, so that we don’t give the guilty party a chance to muster a defense.”

“Or flee,” Shin muttered. “Unfortunately, our questioning of the guard did involve a bit of fleeing.”

“Oh?”

She bared her teeth in a grin. “Only a bit. We brought him to ground very quickly.”

“Shin is an amazing shot. The guard should walk again.” Mynet sighed. “After he gets out of the stocks for accepting a bribe, anyway.”

“Did you find out anything that could help us narrow the mage down?” Cecilia asked.

“Not specifically. I don’t think he was involved in that part of the plan. We did get some information, though.” Mynet closed his eyes, pressing his fingers lightly against his eyelids as he thought. “The person who bribed him was a young, human man, dressed in a uniform that seemed like noble livery, but with all house insignia removed. The guard claims that’s why he took the bribe—he thought it was house politics and didn’t want to get involved. I’m going to make a sketch based on the description and make sure you all have a copy. I’d suspect that the briber is a lackey, someone expendable. Depending on how ruthless our conspirators are, he may already be...expended.”

Cecilia winced. The state of the Krkrow’s nest suggested that they were very ruthless, indeed. “Anything else?”

“One other thing—the wagons came through and turned along the westerly wall. Definitely not headed to the diplomatic lodgings. My next step is to check along the route for buskers and merchants who set up there regularly, see if anyone remembers them. But…” his eyes drifted to the scrolls, “I want to be a part of questioning the suspects, as well.”

Cantor smiled. “My level is not yet sufficient to conjure body doubles, Mynet, so you shall have to choose. I think we can handle all of those tasks if we should split up.”

“I should not question mages,” Shin said, immediately. “I would not know what questions to ask. I can glower quiet well, though.”

They all chuckled at the truth of that. Mynet frowned at the scrolls. “Alright. Let’s put the wagon as second priority for the moment. I want to make sure we follow up with our suspects before they get wind of it. Jon, will you come with me to question Janna?”

Cecilia blinked, straightened up in her seat. “Of course. But why me? Cantor knows more about the details of blood rituals.”

“Indeed, but I think, given Ryzec’s previous conflicts with mages, sending a mage to question him might get under his skin, throw him off his stride. I’d like Cantor to take that, with Shin’s glower to back him up. You, on the other hand, are,” he made a gesture to encompass ‘Jon’s’ formidable form, “large and intimidating in appearance, which makes a good contrast to me,” his smile flashed, half-apologetic, “but actually quite mild in manners, which I think will be useful with a more academically inclined mage.”

Cecilia forced back her discomfort at the reference to her disguised appearance, and decided not to mention that she almost punched a mage that morning. “Sounds okay to me.”

Shin and Cantor agreed that they had no objection to the plan, and Mynet grinned as he clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Wonderful. Let us begin, then.”