PreCursive

  I tried to put the odd enter with Bleddyn’s cousin out of my mind during my shift at Jason’s. Thanks to the nature ed Mind, it athetically easy for me to nearly auto-pilot the process of making lootions for the shop while my middle and cs dwelled on it.

  Rhiannon had called herself a ‘dy of the court’. In text with Herztalian high society I had…absolutely no idea what that meant. I hadn’t had much of any kind of social tact with the upper echelons of the Kingdoms, outside of strictly military affairs. The most iion I’d had with them had been serving some tea duriings I attended with Grey.

  Outside of my little disagreement/frontation with the Prince.

  The point being, I didn’t have much experien navigating ers, so to speak. What was a woman who was the best thing to being Mynydd obility even doing here? My uanding was that the s mostly kept to themselves, disdaining rger tact with the Kingdom as a whole. They may nominally bow their heads to the , but both polities seemed to exist in a ‘live a live’ state of being.

  I’d have to ask around, I suppose.

  But for now, I was done. I’d ed out the potions Jason o stock the shelves with, so it was time to clock out. I hung my apron up on the hook of my little brewing spaext to the door, and stepped out. Oher side, Jason was just finishing up with another er, lit by the afternoon light streaming in through the front windows.

  As I shuffled around him, Jason looked up at me. “Ah. Hans, w-wait a moment!” He stuttered.

  I stopped in the middle of shrugging on my jacket, previously hung on a coat raear the ter. “What’s up, Jason?”

  The shopkeep bent down and dug around underh his ter for a momeually produg a fairly long scroll of part. “Your friend from e-earlier had a courier drop something o-off for you, Hans,” He told me, holding the scroll out to me with a mildly envious look on his face. “I had no i-idea you had friends in the nobility, Hans. I’m j-jealous.”

  I stared at the outstretched scroll for a moment as if it was about to reach out and bite me. Gingerly, I reached out and accepted the roll from him. “I didn’t know that either,” I muttered to myself, before f a smile on my face at Jason’s curious look. “Ah, thanks for holding onto it, Jason. I fot she was going to drop that off for me.” I paused, for a moment, a healthy sense of paranoia rolling over me. “Do you mind if I use the ba to look it over?”

  Jason waved me off as another er ehe shop, absentmindedly slidihe key. With muttered thanks, I used it to walk over to the ba a myself iing the scroll on the same table I’d spoken to Rhiannon over earlier.

  I eyed the scroll as if it were an active bomb when I did so.

  Because for all I knew, it could be.

  Something I’d learned during my lessons as a, was that it was very risky to just trust random messages like this. Runecraft was such a broad field that you could inscribe damn near anything you could think of onto part, a to activate at all kinds ers. Ihis scroll could be anything from a trag script, to a seque to explode at opening, or even stored poison gas. If I had just brought this into our Elderwy safehouse like my first instinct had been to do, Hook would have probably chewed me out in front of everyone and put me on message duty like he had poor Jangle.

  I mean, how was the guy supposed to know that the ‘super important dots’ he stole were really just a colle of bad love poetry?

  Anyway, the point was, I o check this out before it left the shop. I didn’t dare bring it to either the ft Sylvia and I were sharing, or to the safehouse first.

  I took a deep breath, o no one in particur, and approached the table. I drew my cealed dagger and used it to cut the ribbon holding the scroll closed, ging away and closing my eyes as I did so.

  Nothing happened.

  Crag open my eyes, I let out a sigh of relief. Leaning over, I took a look at what the strange woman from earlier had left me.

  At first, I didn’t uand what was on the part. But…once I did?

  I nearly choked on my own spit.

  There sure as hell weren’t any traps on this.

  Pounding my chest and coughing, I rapidly rolled it back up and scooped it into my arms. Dashing out the door and tossing the key ba the desk as I passed a puzzled Jason, my thoughts raced along with me as I made my way to the safehouse.

  Hook o see this.

  ………………………………….

  “Who, exactly, did you say gave you this?” Hook said, a note of astonishment c his voice. He and I, along with all of the ents down here in the safehouse, were gathered around the tral pnning table down here. All of us were staring down at the unrolled part I’d spread out on it in astonishment.

  Because, on the scroll, meticulously detailed and intricately sketched….

  Were the full blueprints to Duke Olsen’s patial estate.

  Not only did the rge scroll detail the ey of the pace itself, but the apparent sublevels of it as well. Hell, it also had a plete sketch of every inch of the enormous grounds that the plex rested on.

  My God, there was even a full runic breakdown of the ward scheme, plete with the local Ward Stone’s location!

  This was…

  “How the hell does anyone have access to this?” Wisp asked in amazement, ing her head over the table to stare at one of the rooms. “Aren’t there rumors about these pns?”

  “Yes,” Hook said absentmindedly, not tearing his eyes off of the scroll. “That they’re not supposed to exist anymore. The current pace is new, as the old one was doo the city guard to use as a headquarters on his Ducal assion. Olsen wao almost pletely eliminate any trace of the old ruling house when he duped Marjory Olsen into marrying him. Thus, he hired some of the best architects and Ward crafters in the realm to design and build his new pace. And then, ohey had finished?”

  “He had them, and their entire crews, all executed.”

  That was shog enough t my eyes away from the pns, to stare at Hook in horror. The dwarf nodded grimly. “Oh, he cocted some story about them trying to rob him afterward, but everyone knew what was really going on. He was trying to make sure nobody who had anything to do with the stru could ever speak about what they did. Either that, or he didn’t want to pay for the work. A away with it, too. Sure there was u about the baseless executions, and he even received royal sure because of it. But he weathered the storm, and came out with a firmer position afterward.”

  The room was silent for a moment. I don’t know about everyone else, but I was thinking about just hoeople Olsen must have o kill, in order to silehe eial work crew. It had to be hundreds and hundreds, sidering the sheer size of the estate.

  One of the ents, a woman who went by the ame Crook, broke the silence. “I had family on that crew,” She said quietly, staring down at the pns. “We didn’t receive any pensation for the work my cousin Taylor did. The officials said that his wages were being withheld as damages cimed by the Duke, to pay for the ‘crime’ that he itted,” She was silent for a moment before her bck, star-dotted mask tilted up to stare at Hook. “This is it, isn’t it Hook? You promised me when I joined up that we’d take out Olsen one day. This is how we’re going to do it…right?”

  Hook met her eyes through both of their masks. “Yes…but not now,” He said grimly. “Olsen is the st head that will roll before we’re through. We’ve barely even begun, and so he gets to live a bit longer. But…it’s going to happen before we’re doh this city. One way, or the other.”

  Crook was silent for a moment, standing perfectly still. But eventually, the woman nodded ever so slightly, and thehe basement without another word on silent, padded feet.

  We stood around for a moment before I cleared my throat awkwardly. Everyone around the table looked at me. “Do we know anything about this Rhiannon erhaps how she could have possibly gotten her hands on pns that don’t eve anymore?”

  Hook tilted his head in thought for a moment before crossing his arms. “Not off the top of my head,” He finally admitted, before abruptly spinning on his heel. “But maybe we have a profile on her back at HQ. The rest of you, clear out. This is a facet of the operation that’s going to be overseen by Hangman and I,” Before he sat down in front of the messaging station he had set up with his prototype two-way unication , our ander looked over his shoulder and gred at the gathered Agents. “Get going. I know you all have better things to be doing than standing around and snooping.”

  They got the hint. Soon, it was only Hook and I down in the basement.

  I could only stand around awkwardly as the leader of the Noe Division started rapidly tapping his on alternating faces. When he was dohe held suspended in midair by wire began to spin bad forth, being directed from hundreds of miles away by a messenger back at our Helstein base of operations. Hook observed it intensely, transting the rough nguage by scribbling frantically on a piece of part set up in front of the station. When the was finished spinning, he sat back with a sigh and reached up under his mask to rub his eyes tiredly.

  I had to wonder, if I was worn out from the all-nighters I’d been pulling….

  How tired was Hook?

  He stood up from the desk and turo face me, before pausing. “What the hells are you doing just standing around?” He said, baffled. He waved an irritated hand at his cluttered desk, and the lone chair sitting in front of it. “Sit down, you moron.”

  I flushed slightly at the mild rebuke, but did as he asked while the dwarf himself plopped into his own chair. “Now, this is what we have on one ‘Rhiannon of awr,” He started, pig up the part and reading from it. “Born in the year twenty-three forty-two, she should be around twenty-nine by now. Birth parents are Archmage Daffyd of awr, and a minor Elderwy noble daughter by the name of Vivian of House Steinham. The House objected to the unioween Vivian and Daffyd on the basis that the Mynydd s are all godless savages, and thus cut her off. Unfortunately, in a fairly rare occurrehe mother would die in childbirth, leaving Daffyd to raise the child with only support from the rest of his family. Hmm,” He made an ied what he read .

  “What is it?” I asked him curiously.

  “Acc to our profile, she was the inal heir of Thunderheart, before the birth of your friend Bleddyn,” Hook said. “However, when the boy was born about five years after her, the title was stripped from the then toddler. We don’t know why. Moving on, ohe girl came of age and was Awakened, House Steinham was suddenly ied again. They approached Archmage Daffyd, and told him they could give the girl a better life here in Elderwyck. For some reason, Daffyd agreed and surrendered custody of the girl to her maternal grandparents. Now, if you say Daffyd and the girl still have tact, that’s o us. Because the only other thing we have on her after that is that she’s supposed to have died.”

  I bli that. “Hook, I promise you,” I said ftly. “She’s very much alive.”

  “Yes, I know,” Hook said, irritated. “Let me finish. It says she died only briefly, in an act up at the pace when she was in her early twenties. What it was, we don’t know. All we do know is that it caused a bit of a minor sdal when it happened. But she was successfully revived by the pace Healer, and ever sihen, she’s enjoyed a position of minor influence as an advisor in Olsen’s court. No spouse, no children, and the rest of House Steinham is dead by now. She seems to be entirely isoted, with only her position to occupy her time. Hangman…” Hook trailed off, raising his head to look at me. “I don’t have to tell you that this is all damn suspicious. But…”

  “It’s too good of a source of potential information to just let slide,” I finished for him, crossing my arms. “And it seems like she’s tched on to me for…some reason. I don’t buy that she’s ied in me only because I rescued the cousin who stole the from her.”

  “Yes, it’s likely a cover,” Hook agreed. “The woman might even be SED, for all we know. But for now, we, and more importantly you, o py along. Hangman, if she tacts you again, do your best to cultivate this woman as an informant. Maybe we get more out of her. In the meantime, I’ll suspend most of your usual missions while we look into this. Feel free to pick your training back up during this downtime. For now, you’re dismissed. But…be sure to watch your back.”

  I my boss and stood up from my chair. It was about time for me to go and pick up Sylvia, anyway.

  I’m sure she would be ied in all of this.