Despite a slightly late night, Quill woke at his accustomed hour. He wasn’t sure why he was surprised, though he was assuredly delighted, he found his memories of kisses shared with Noue clear and fresh in his mind. He got the fire started with yesterday’s paper, putting water on to boil, and checked on the prunes and raisins he had put in water the night before. They looked to be on the verge of dissolving, and if that wasn’t how Mom made it, it was quite tasty. He retrieved the paper, and the red letter headline grabbed his attention.
There had been a collapse in the mine works of the Earth Guild. The great pre-Loss artifact which Tome so graciously had led the guild to was buried under tons of unstable stone, which would be harder to remove than the initial mining had been. There was going to be an investigation as to the cause, although preliminary reports blamed unskilled labor. The guildmistress, and Quill sighed in relief at this, had been about to make a personal inspection tour but had been called away by an unruly homeless person now safely ensconced in Power of Engel’s Sanitarium for the Criminally Insane.
Quill raised an eyebrow at this, wondering if protesters from his own economic bracket would have been deemed “criminally insane” for protesting the sale of the Orth’s own heat. But then, Tome was a fire dragon and the volcanism of Barbery was not entirely natural, it was possible that the sale of heat was a necessity. But he digressed, and the article was interesting. A spirit mage was being hired by the Earth Guild to calm the dead long enough to bury them.
A sharp hissing drew Quill’s attention and he realized the water he had put on for blanching cabbage leaves was boiling over. With an exclamation of frustration he ran over and moved it to the back of the stove, and realizing he had read more of the paper than usual he whipped up a quick salad of onions and eggs for breakfast. He would have to part with the money to buy lunch, which at least would be with Noue and he could show off his knowledge of hole in the wall cafes. In his hurry, he skipped his habitual checking of the brick in the alley behind Dragon Tales, and set about organizing volunteers. Leather, in particular, seemed put out by his lateness, and he resolved to apologize to her personally for not setting a good example. Cats soothed and herded, he set about his own tasks. First, of course, was the blackboard. Across the top he wrote, “New members join free with commitment to volunteer hours!” Next, he organized the fiction section of the library, noting with some consternation that someone had checked out three entire compilations of the Daring Kaliskast. He cast about for what it entailed. Unable to recall, he sliced his thumb to make an offering to his axiom of lore.
The Daring Kaliskast was a penny dreadful published by apologists of the late dragon God-King Izkarzon, detailing the thoroughly fictional exploits of an “adventurer” loyal to the Church of Izkarzon. Mercifully across the sea from the Sevens, though evidently popular enough to compile and make its way across the sea. He blamed the Belt, it was full of dragon fanciers who would find that kind of rubbish exciting, and represented a convenient route for shallow-draft sprint traders. He sighed and finished sorting the books on the shelves. Then he went to apologize to Leather, both for his lateness and for his hypocrisy when he had been on her case about her own tardiness. She quipped that the Savior Himself’s biggest pet peeve had been hypocrisy, and Quill nodded meekly. Venting seemed to satisfy her, and he offered his hand and a mutual agreement to both be on time going forward. She took it, and he was surprised to find that her handshake was quite firm, though by no means a crusher grip. He walked away from the encounter resolving, yes, to be more careful with his time, but also feeling that Leather was a more devoted volunteer than he had thought and that he ought to be more charitable in his assessments.
When lunch time came, he picked a convenient cabbage roll shop that wasn’t too far out of the way. It wouldn’t be the same as his own recipe, mostly because it would lack the treacly reduction of fruit he poured over his, but it would be tasty. Perhaps he could offer Noue a bite. She was, as she had been from the start, on time, while he was continuing the day’s trend of being just a bit late. He apologized earnestly and was preparing to launch into an explanation regarding headlines and breakfast disasters when she put a finger to his lips and suggested they make the most of the time they did have remaining. Eyes shining, he nodded, and sat down at what he had come to think of as “their” go table. Offering her a bite of his cabbage roll, she wrinkled her nose at the pungent leaf wrapping the meats and rice. Her own choice of fare was likely from one of the shops lining the covered central square, this time a rice dish seasoned with red spices and containing both sausage and shrimp. She offered him a bite in turn, and he found it hot and heavily spiced where his own food benefitted from only dill and pepper. He also wrinkled his nose, and they laughed together at their differing preferences. Their kiss was shallow out of respect for the flavors they would be carrying from their respective lunches, and then they sat back down and dug into their meals.
Quill commented to Noue that she looked lovely that day, her hair down and cascading over her shoulders in dark ringlets. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t think he’d seen her with her hair down. She always wore it up, with two bent pieces of metal pinning it in place. When he asked her about it, she shrugged and replied that she didn’t feel the need to keep such things on her person at all times lately. They both stared off into space for a moment before Noue replied that Quill looked charmingly disheveled. He sighed. He had meant to brush his hair that morning, but breakfast and the paper had taken priority and then he had run out of time. Noue clarified that he was still quite handsome, and they both laughed. Noue’s laughter died in the middle, and she pointed over Quill’s shoulder.
Approaching them was a man Quill cast about for the name of, with a nose that had been broken more than once and a bouquet of the small white wildflowers that could be found ringing the geothermal springs. He stalked past Quill, ignoring him, and pushed the handful of flowers to Noue’s chest. Noue said, “Hello, Burner,” in a cool voice, and rather than clutch at the bundle simply allowed the flowers to fall onto the ground and her lap. His eyes narrowed. Recalling the name Burner now, alarm flared in Quill’s chest, but as soon as he was alarmed he remembered that neither he nor Noue had anything to fear from this man. It was… someone else, that he feared.
Burner turned to face Quill. In an accusatory tone, he reminded Quill, accurately he suspected, that he had warned the librarian away from Denouement. Quill took a bit of satisfaction at Burner’s formal use of Noue’s full name.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Noue stood up and said, “You are boorish, you are low, you are a coward, and I have no use for you. Leave me alone.” Burner snarled and declared that if that was how she wanted it, it was how she could have it. Quill staggered at the wake of potent psi, and cried out in fear as Burner presumably was focusing his will on Noue. Noue crumpled forward, hands on her head, but after a few moments Burner snarled and the pressure eased. “What’s the matter, Burner?” Noue sniped through gritted teeth. “Can’t find an excuse for your blatant violation of the laws regarding use of sorcery in search and seizure?” Burner kicked the flowers and turned to Quill, who gave him his best impression of an easy smile. After all, the lady had dismissed him, he should go, didn’t he think? The blinding headache that followed was entirely worth the vein throbbing purple flush on Burner’s face. Noue smiled cheerfully at Quill. “I think that went rather well, don’t you?” Quill wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but agreed for the sake of being agreeable. He couldn’t find any reason to disagree aside from a splitting headache.
That evening, he met with Parchment and Glue at the Manners Lounge. When Glue and Parchment exchanged a kiss, he sighed and regretted that there had not been a reason to invite Noue. Except there had been a reason, there simply hadn’t been enough time to both do his job and notify the others. So he’d have to invite her to their next gathering. They had been meeting fairly frequently of late, a source of unease but also a pleasure.
Quill said, “It was fortuitous, the occasion of a madman in your offices when you had planned to make an inspection. I would hate to see you buried alive.” Glue sighed and said that if they were going to discuss that, rather than simply enjoying the Lounge’s fine hookah, they may as well unlock their minds. Quill called to mind his glyph, rotated it just so, and felt the fog part from his mind. “Glue… how much of the madman in Parchment’s office was fortune?” Glue glanced up at his sharp tone, and sighed a breath of smoke. It had simply been the strong thought in someone with gambling debts that Parchment owed him money. Removing the false memory and finding him another position would be the matter of a few days’ work, especially seeing as their last “test subject” had yet to recidivate, confidence in Power of Engel’s was at an all-time high. “So what actually happened, Parchment?”
Parchment laid out what had happened, and her matter-of-fact tone made Quill wonder about questions Noue had been asking, as to the morality of his cellmate. She had met with the foreman carrying a set of mining tools in a duffel bag largely full of acid- and fire-branded explosive. She arranged to be summoned just as she arrived, and handed her bag to the foreman, asking him to take it ahead after she dealt with a minor issue. The entire shift of miners were either blown to bits or crushed, either way beyond the reach of any kind of shadow magic to interrogate them. Their secrets were safe, and given Tome’s insistence upon a lack of magical aid, it would be the work of days or weeks to get them out. “It was for the greater good, at least.” How Quill could say the loss of an entire shift of good men and women was for the greater good… Parchment shook her head. “I can say it because if I didn’t believe goodness could come at a cost, I wouldn’t be a Historian.” The spirit mage they’d brought in was going to be useless, assuming Tome suspected anything. It was, of course, why else the dragon might have called for a spirit mage that made Parchment’s blood run cold. Fortunately, or perhaps dangerously, Tome had demanded a thorough investigation, having been unaware of a fault or other threat to the venture, and having called for the highest standards of supports. He was, as he put it, “very interested” to learn the cause of the collapse. Fortunately, such interest allowed Parchment to endanger herself clearing the collapse personally, which both delayed things and allowed for greater obfuscation of the cause.
Quill furrowed his brow, “You have earth sphere magic though, don’t you?” Parchment shook her head. She had earth brands on one arm, which allowed her to shape stone like clay, albeit at the temporary cost of some of her strength. That was “non-sorcerer” enough for Tome, and so she would personally delve into the mine. “Why don’t you have a team of branded miners? I mean, if this is so important and keeping the magically-minded away is so critical?” The answer, of course, although this hadn’t occurred to Quill so perhaps not of course, was the expense. Advanced spheres required for branding anything but fire were new, hard to find, and costly to employ. It had been a mark of status to receive her own brands, nobody had ever thought she would actually use them. Quill thought back to Noue and her branded clothing warding her against cold, intentionally understated and entirely the antithesis of intent of Parchment’s runes. Parchment went on to explain that if they found they had more unearthing to do, it was quite possible she would be going to the expense and effort of procuring shifts of earth-branded miners. “Oh… sarx. I’ve been asking questions out of curiosity. We were concerned about Decontextualized—is there any way to shorten that?—having implanted curiosity in my mind to leave it ripe for plundering later.”
Glue shrugged and seemed unconcerned, inviting Quill to recall the nature of Parchment’s deceit. He found that, while he could formulate questions about it, he couldn’t call to mind any of the pertinent details. Everything was hidden in the blank expanse that Glue had conjured in Quill’s mind. Glue said they would, however, like to reinforce that construct. Minds were ever plastic things, which both allowed the construction of complex sphere effects and weakened them over time. Quill sat through the patently uncomfortable experience of Glue’s hand to his temple, both of them drawing on the hookah, making changes in Quill’s mind that put him in mind of the concept of cognitive dissonance. Glue was the analyst, of course, but they had explained to him that the mind would go to great lengths to believe whatever it already believed, experiencing discomfort at times verging on pain when contradictions were introduced. The mind would reject that information, even if it was from an authority, and similarly the humors tended towards a certain balance that varied by the person. The humors, Glue had explained, were what resisted sorcery. It was the raw physical reality of the person that fought against the spheres. So when Glue worked on Quill’s mind, his blood resisted the interference in its natural flows. Quill, hale and hearty as he was, made a poor subject for Glue’s sorcery, and so they met regularly for lunches and evenings at the Lounge to allow them to reinforce it.
It was only when Glue commented on the bruised aspects of his mind that Quill realized he had neglected to mention his encounter with Burner. Even as he said something, Glue was nodding. They had seen the blunt trauma of a psychic headache, which was not quite the same category of thing as what Glue was doing. But the mysteries of draconic psi were just that, mysteries. Quill sighed and tried to be patient as his friend worked their sorcery that kept them all safe, looking forward eagerly to some calm, centering meditation before bed.
