In fiction, there were many fanciful notions of what could and couldn’t impede sorcery. There were frequently tales of villains wearing rune branded torcs to conceal their iniquity from water sorcery. In the popular serial about a potent air sorcerer soul-bound (in itself its own kind of nonsense) to an air element dragon, the main villain wore a helm of some exotic metal to hide from the hero’s far-reaching abilities. And a thin coating of lead was forever used to hide gambling halls from fire sorcerers looking for unlicensed entertainments. That said, there were some ways of preventing the sorcerously-inclined from rifling through one’s essence, mind, and so on.
One was simple distance. The further you were from the subject, the harder the spell became. Another was retributive magic, though that incurred the strain of maintaining a spell of awareness. The Manners Lounge had four stories, and the uppermost floors were private rooms for those wanting to discuss business as securely as one could. This was, doubtless, why Parchment had chosen it to patronize. The third required an accomplished sorcerer of the sphere you sought to guard against. Glue was an accomplished air sorcerer, having laid down the “walls” of fog which shielded their Historian secrets from draconic psi.
It was hardly pleasant, however, and reclining on pillows in their private room, Quill relished the freedom of thought having released his glyph entailed. He relied upon routine to reinforce the soft work, nearly runic itself, of Glue’s sorcery. Thoughts which did not fit into his persona slipped along mental troughs behind the wall of vague, foggy forgetfulness. It was not true forgetfulness, in fact Quill probably had to rely upon his axiom of lore more because of it, but it was his own mind maintaining non-awareness of what he was not thinking about. Glue had gotten the idea from the repression of memories their traumatized criminally insane often demonstrated, and it was more subtle than a simple wall blocking off memories and thought patterns.
However, Glue was concerned about this new operative, Decontextualized. That she had given Quill a headache was an ominous statement of the power of her psi. Every mind had limits, even if she had not reached Quill’s upon her first investigation. Glue expressed that they would like to take some of the more critical secrets and secure them with walls of air as well as the mind’s own defenses. Quill nodded, although the concept of anyone, even Glue, tinkering with his mind made him nervous. As Tome Junior nipped at a scrap of meat in Quill’s sandwich and spiraled off in pique at his warding hand, he thought of emotion magic, fire sorcery. Finding guilt or paranoia was within the scope of draconic psi, but the excitable dragon kin would put out waves of emotion which masked their own. Quill raised an eyebrow. If he weren’t devoted to the secrecy of their methods, he could write his own serial detailing how to evade sorcery and draconic psi.
Parchment turned to him, and he realized he had been reflecting on the methods of ensuring their safety because, comfortable as it was, releasing his glyph made him nervous. He wondered if Glue had distracted him in order to avoid giving him the key to his own thoughts, but that thought slipped aside, which meant that yes they had. Quill asked her to repeat herself. She replied that they were running out of time. She had stalled by moving her office and having her interim secretary misfile the papers, but Tome clearly had committed to memory the books Noue had stolen and simply wanted to avoid anyone else having knowledge of them. She was still directing Earth Guild miners with confidence, now that she had “found” the new translated chapters.
Quill sighed. The drop had, he would hopefully confirm tomorrow, gone smoothly, but word from Spine was brief and limited to a few words each day. Even without Glue’s wall of fog, Quill knew nearly nothing of his contact with the next cell, but he would obey her or his orders without question. Usually, anyway. He had lobbied fiercely for his former boyfriend to stay on in place of Parchment; at least, as fiercely as one could with the first words of a blackboard sign purportedly about library business. He sighed out a cloud of flavored smoke. He had to admit, Parchment was of greater utility to the cause of the Historians.
On that thought, he said, “I think we should take on Denouement as a journeyman Historian.” Glue chuckled and asked why she wasn’t “Noue” just now. Parchment simply cocked her head thoughtfully. She was doubtless aware of Quill’s efforts to displace her, but had never commented upon them. “She’s opposed to the cause of dragons, albeit on the basis of their selfish use of wealth and power. She’s an accomplished thief. As a trade center and her status as an investor, she’d have a cover—” Glue shook their head in interruption and reminded Quill that he would likely not be allowed to keep a close relationship with Noue, they used the familiar name that had been invited, regardless of whether she joined the Historians or not. Quill countered, “Oh, just because you’ve found your kindred spirit inside the cell, I’m not allowed to help? Four isn’t an unreasonable number for a cell, we’ll make an effigy and carry it like we’re—” Quill stopped short. He had been about to analogize them to heroes of a serial. Maybe reading the back covers as he sorted the fiction section was letting brain rot set in. “—like there’s five of us,” he finished half-heartedly.
Parchment snatched her hand from Glue’s like she’d been stung and looked sharply at Quill. Glue seemed more placid, but Quill’s ill humor likely paled in comparison to the vituperative invective of their patients. After a moment, they said they would second the initiative provided they could do an in-depth probe of Noue’s mind. Just because Burner had the subtlety of a drunken ass didn’t mean Tome or Decontextualized weren’t capable of the same mind-jiggery-pokery as Glue themselves. “You could detect that kind of thing? That could revolutionize initiation! Especially with what you said about your madhouse—sorry, sanitarium—patients, you could create and conceal entire cells!” Glue inclined their head slightly, clearly thinking, and acknowledged that the potential existed. However, they weren’t certain they were capable of it. “You as good as admitted you could do it in your lecture, but you won’t entertain it in private?” Glue shook their head and began to explain. While they were entirely capable of instilling habits of thought, possibly even behaviors, although they hadn’t extensively tested that, there was a bigger issue with creating an entire population slaved to the cause of the Historians.
“Faith.” Quill groaned and clapped a hand over his eyes. He believed in a greater good. His spirit of lore, as an axiom, was less concerned with moral issues and more concerned with his accumulation of knowledge; a pursuit to which he was well-suited as a Historian. Once they had thwarted Tome he would have to ask Spine about a copy of the books Noue had stolen, to satisfy its curiosity and honor his bargain with it, or else find some other way to feed its inquisitiveness.
Stolen novel; please report.
But getting back to the topic at hand, he knew that thwarting dragons was the single greatest good. Scraps of parchment hidden in another book had hinted to him as to the cause of the Age of Loss, its draconic origin, and when he had made unsubtle searches for further lore he had been warned, warned again, and finally approached by the Historians. Glue, however, had an altogether different outlook. They had learned of the Age of Loss as a result of treating one of Burner’s failed conversions. The One God had sent a prophet and Burner had tried to brute force her mind towards Tome’s ends. The result had been madness, Glue was still loathe to speak in any detail as to the state of her mind, and she remained at Power of Engel’s in the long-term suite reserved for the incurable. Effectively jailing a woman who would do nothing but rave, to anyone who would listen, of dragon-kind’s evils was another layer of obfuscation as to Glue’s loyalties, ostensibly a favor to Tome, despite being motivated in truth by a desire to preserve her life. And, Quill added, plumb her secrets. But their faith did not allow admission of such a truth. Glue bent minds towards Historian ends, but only incidentally or with their full consent. They believed they were helping, or at least doing no harm, and faith in the Will of the One God was essential to sorcery.
Questions of faith with an upbringing in the Gospel of Gotorjod had been what steered Quill away from sorcery and into spirit magic. His meditation, his belief in an energy of life, those he understood. Church he attended dutifully as a common librarian would, but so often the sermons clearly served draconic ends. He wondered why they didn’t convert to a Witness faith and then remembered: appearances. He would have asked Glue why they even bothered with their research, if they were going to intentionally hobble their ability to turn it to the greater good, but he knew their answer already; they were helping people. Unlike Quill, who was a librarian when he wished to be a scholar, Glue was serving both their callings. All three, if their relationship with Parchment panned out. Once again he waved Tome Junior away from his sandwich, then elected to finish it rather than vent any bitterness.
“Eating your feelings, Quill? You’re a romantic, that will get expensive fast. Even Parchment’s funds aren’t unlimited.” Glue laughed, and Quill let out an insincere growl. When he had finished his sandwich he asked Glue what useful information had come of their latest experiment. “It’s actually very exciting,” they replied. “The criminal inclinations of the individual, we’ll call them Z, have been entirely subsumed into devotion to their new job.” Quill had to ask how a criminally insane person had gotten a job in Icehold, though he suspected he knew the answer. “We arranged it, of course. You can’t treat the symptom without treating the cause, and the people who choose principle over food and warmth make rather hideous gargoyles along the street.” The people who choose principle over opposing dragon-kind make the shadow war that much longer, Quill replied. “Oh, don’t be a sourpuss. Just because my convictions don’t align with yours doesn’t make them any less valid. Besides, with Tome’s universal access to the records of anything in Coldpass, my experiments into creating actual thralls would have to be off the books, or we’d simply throw waves of innocents into battle with one another.” Stung by their valid point, Quill kept his peace, sighed, and made a gesture for them to continue. “And while I’ve avoided attempting any overt controls, they do mark with chalk the number of frozen homeless they pass between work and home.” That sounded promising. It could be repurposed, if more patients could be released, into a way of monitoring the comings and goings of agents like Burner, or at least the dragon’s guard.
They sat around, eating and inhaling the water-cooled smoke of the hookah, in companionable silence. For all that they clashed, they had been forged by pressure (and no small dislike of Tome and Burner) into a cohesive unit. That Parchment had attached herself to Glue was likely a result of that closeness, but also Quill had less in common with the guildmistress. She was wealthy, branded, and while she had inherited her position with the Earth Guild, her family was originally out of the Fireplains. Musing on Glue’s subliminal counting of frozen homeless, he commented that it was disgusting, Tome offering a reward of platinum, when people were freezing to death in the streets. Everyone agreed heartily, but little of substance was said. Parchment kept her peace, more often than not, and while Quill knew what side she stood on, he knew little about her.
He snapped his fingers. If Glue was going to shore up their defenses, they needed to work on Noue’s mind as well. He was having lunch with her the next day, would they join them? Glue had been associating with Parchment, they had formed a bond, maybe he could learn more about the reticent guildmistress during the lunch. Glue nodded, and Parchment volunteered to attend as well. The idea made Quill nervous, because he had little excuse to be seen with the guildmistress of the Earth Guild, but if Glue and Parchment were publicly a couple, that would excuse her presence. Then, again, Burner seemed aware of Quill’s comings and goings.
He asked if either of them had been menaced by either Burner or Decontextualized. Both Glue and Parchment shook their heads. “I would imagine we’re securely in the book of Tome’s allies,” Glue said. “My records are an open book, I forward the cause of order, and Parchment… well, I mean, she’s the dragon-sponsored guildmistress of the Earth Guild. I’m likely shielded by my close association with her, and I’m honestly hoping your being seen with her will take you from the list of suspects to, at worst, a pawn not worth bothering with.” Quill acknowledged that this sounded like a good idea, though he was slightly frustrated to be thwarted in his information-gathering endeavors. There was the very good question of why he wanted to know more about someone with whom he primarily shared a very dangerous secret. He thought of the intense headache he had gotten with Decontextualized applying pressure to his mind, and asked Glue if it were possible she had implanted some kind of compulsion in him for later. Glue replied, “If she did, she hid it under the intellectual bruising that kind of application of psi causes. I didn’t see any when I was laying down the walls, but if she embedded it as curiosity, rather than a thought process, I wouldn’t find it. That’s the domain of fire sorcery. I think, for the time being, it’s best you not inquire too deeply into the histories or intentions of anyone around you. Not only could you acquire information to use against them, any holes in who you ask about would tell them what direction to look in. Whereas if you don’t acquire information about anyone, she could just suppose that her psi failed to take. Minds are slippery things, both plastic and rigid in different ways.”
Quill nodded, but he felt sincere frustration at the prospect of avoiding learning anything about Noue, when he wanted to learn as much as he could about her and commit it all to memory before her work or graduation tore her away from him. He wondered if he was simply suggestible, reflecting on Glue’s comment on eating his feelings, as he ordered another roast beef sandwich with what would be an unfulfilled intention of feeding the great majority of it to Tome Junior.
