After the city watch had arrived to deal with the aftermath, they returned to the Moontower to debrief and interrogate their captives. It was a tense walk, even escorted by the watchmen. Lucas hadn’t interacted with any of them since arriving outside the city, where they’d been deployed in force to handle the refugees from Harwyckshire. Their oily black armour stood in stark contrast to the Order, every part of their features hidden.
If it weren’t for their normal voices and the generally amiable conversation they gave, Lucas would have found them dreadfully intimidating. They seemed to take Florence’s word about what was going on without complaint.
Lucas kept his mouth shut pretty much the whole time. He was worried more than words would come spewing out if he opened it. That, and he didn’t even know what to say to begin with, instead contenting himself to listen to the chatter between the watchmen as they walked.
The sun set before they’d made it to the inner ring of the city. Dawnguard felt like a different place at night. The streets were lit by magical crystals of some variety, but the light didn’t penetrate all the way up to the looming buildings, leaving them as towering silhouettes that seemed to lean over them in the dark. Lucas imagined thousands of eyes staring at them from within those dark towers.
Their captives didn’t bring them any trouble, at least. Mostly because they were unconscious, courtesy of an oneiromancy spell the city watchmen had enchanted into their gauntlets. They could knock out anyone resisting arrest with but a touch, though there were ways to resist it—the one Valerie had taught him required causing himself a small wound, letting the pain keep him awake since the spell didn’t act instantly. The New Dawn thugs knew no such techniques, and so they were out for the count, shackled in the back of a nondescript cart with a canvas hiding its goods.
Lucas wondered if all the precautions meant they suspected another ambush from New Dawn to free their comrades, or some other kind of trouble. Valerie assured him it was standard procedure when he worked up the nerve to ask, but a watchman who overheard their conversation informed him there’d been great unrest in the city that day, with multiple ambushes occurring, not just on skycloaks, but watchmen too. That explained the tension.
Lucas kept quiet after that, keenly aware that any one of the watchmen escorting them could end up hearing him speak in another language, and he’d have no way of knowing.
Barely an hour had passed since the ambush by the time they reached the gates to the Order’s territory, and yet the incident seemed like an entire lifetime ago. Lucas felt like he’d been reborn as a new person. There was the Lucas of before that battle, who still had his food in his stomach, and the Lucas of after it, who’d killed two men far too easily.
That was what got to him, he thought. Nial had been an entirely different matter, an execution he took responsibility for because he felt that, as the one who’d essentially sealed the man’s fate, it was only right that he be the one to do the deed. Those two men in the alley, whose names he’d probably never know unless he really pushed for it, had been able to fight back. Had started the fight, even. They’d engaged in mortal combat fully knowing their lives were on the line.
And he’d totally outclassed them, not even mentioning Valerie and Florence, or even Cherry and Symar. None of those men had stood a chance, and it all just felt like such a fucking waste. Of their time, and of human lives. This wasn’t the kind of shit a Great Hero was supposed to be dealing with. Back alley brawls with barely-trained combatants seemed more suited for the watchmen.
A righteous anger swelled in him. A wave of indignation. These bastards had made a killer out of him. No matter what their intentions or motivations, he didn’t think he could ever forgive them for that.
So he was fuming as they passed under the Order’s gates. The Road of the Star was less busy at this late hour, so the guards on duty had long seen them coming and sent out more skycloaks to help them with their burden, since the watchmen wouldn’t be able to pass the barrier. Their three captives were taken from the cart and loaded onto stretchers, where they’d be carried away to the Order’s dungeons.
One of the watchmen stopped Valerie before they could all part ways. “Captain Vayon,” he said to her, his voice slightly distorted by his full-face visored black helmet. “I need to relay to my superiors what’s happening here.”
Lucas watched, interested in a detached way. Evidently, the Order still hadn’t communicated their intentions to the city at large. He’d been so focused on springing the trap in the last few days, he hadn’t paid any attention to the bigger picture.
“If none of the Masters have contacted your commander, I am not at liberty to discuss the situation,” Valerie said, staring him down.
“Tell me something, Captain,” he pleaded, palms held up.
“There are dissident elements in the city. We gave you a full report on what transpired today.”
The watchman’s sigh echoed in his helmet. “Yes, we already figured that out. There have always been rogue factions in Dawnguard, though. Why have you skycloaks suddenly decided to be proactive about it? I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that your people have suddenly been searching about in specific areas, as if looking for trouble, and then a bunch of fighting kicks off.”
Valerie said nothing, expression blank.
Florence answered for her, “We received news that forced our hand.”
The watchman turned to her. “And I don’t suppose there’s any chance you might share that news?”
“I think you know the answer to that, Ser,” Florence said dryly. “Any intelligence shared with you will be shared with the entire watch in due time. After that, it’ll filter down to the entire city. In a week, I’d be hearing my precise words repeated back to me echoing from every tavern.”
“The watch is not corrupt,” the man growled.
“As an organisation? No. Lady Claire thinks highly of Ser Vaylence,” Valerie agreed. “But that doesn’t mean we can trust individuals not to leak information.”
“You could say the same of the Order!”
“Indeed you could,” Valerie said, and then she was turning away, and Lucas moved to follow her.
Lucas initially assumed that they'd be taking part in the interrogation. However, the skycloaks who had come to meet them went one way with the captives on their stretchers, heading towards a building Lucas had never entered, while Valerie steered them in the direction of the tower.
When asked about it, Valerie said: “We have information to report first.”
“More important than the interrogation?”
“We’ll get nothing out of them that the specialists wouldn't be able to.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. “And I suspect there is not much of use to get in general.”
Lucas considered that with a frown. “Really? You seemed really determined to make sure you captured that one guy.”
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“I identified him as the leader of that operation.”
“And the leader won't know anything useful?”
“Nothing immediately relevant. And if he does, there are people more suited to extracting it from him. Torture is notoriously unreliable, as people will say whatever they think they need to in their desperation to make the pain stop. But, as distasteful as it may sound, there are extremely rare branches of magic that can let one plumb the depths of a weakened mind.”
That earned a grimace. “When I’m out to the Order, I’ll be having someone teach me to defend against that.”
“Easier said than done,” Florence said from behind him. “And not particularly necessary. Phrenomancy is notoriously complex and perhaps the most highly, hm, regulated branch of legal magic.”
“To wit: you probably won’t encounter someone who could utilise it to such a level that you would require special training to fight it off,” Valerie said.
“What use is your special interrogator, then?” Lucas asked.
“If you’re in a state that a phrenomancer is able to deeply penetrate your thoughts against your will, you have many other problems,” Florence said.
“We can set to learning how to protect your conscious mind from the basic manipulations of foreign magic, however,” Valerie said. “It goes hand in hand with resisting the chaotic effect of demons, so it shouldn’t be difficult to fit in.”
Lucas dropped the conversation there, and they moved through the atrium in silence. Cherry and Symar had gone ahead, but rejoined them at the foot of the grand staircase. Quite to Lucas’ surprise, they descended to the basement levels of the tower. It had been a few days since they’d been down to their hidden away training room, and it occurred to him that he didn’t really know what else was down here, except in the abstract sense.
They didn’t go anywhere near as far down as the training room, instead stepping out of the grand staircase about ten stories below ground level. A wide corridor lit by pure white crystals greeted them, and they followed it to the right around the grand staircase. The subterranean levels of the tower were the exact same dimensions as the above-ground sections, which had struck Lucas as odd since he learned of it. There was so much more space to work with down here; why not expand out? He already knew there were no plants surrounding the basement levels from his floramancy, and pyromancy suggested there was nothing unusual about the geothermic temperature beneath the ground. Lunamancy didn’t yield anything interesting, though he hadn’t expected it to. He was yet to check with necromancy because he fucking hated the art, but he resolved to do it at some point.
No one had any satisfying answer for him, aside from tradition. The tower was so old that it predated recorded history, and that kind of cultural heritage was a weighty thing. Even Claire, a non-native, was apparently strongly averse to growing the tower’s below-ground layout, though he felt she must surely have better reasons. Valerie insisted that Claire knew more about the tower than anyone alive today, as she was deeply connected to its wards. There was even a possibility she knew about the barrier’s activation, despite being deep in the Blighted Lands where magic went kind of haywire. He hoped to ask her directly, when she returned.
Wooden doors lined the outer wall of the corridor every dozen metres or so, and Cherry stopped to knock on one that, to Lucas’ eye, didn’t appear any different from the others. However, he recognised the voice that called, “Enter,” from within. The door opened on its own a second later without a sound.
Master Meyah’s office was, in a word, tidy. Scrolls, parchments, and books were neatly arranged on shelves that lined every wall. A giant slab of a wooden desk dominated the centre of the room. It made the Master of Security herself look tiny, even with her height and proportions. She was out of her armour and her cloak, dressed in the blue tunic and trousers that made up the rest of the Order’s standard uniform, and it made her long neck look even longer. Her eyes catalogued the intruders in her domain in the span of a second, then fixed unerringly on Valerie.
“Captain Vayon,” she greeted, and, to Lucas’ surprise, he could detect no hostility in her voice. Though perhaps the careful neutrality of her tone spoke her feelings on its own. He didn’t know her well enough to tell. “What news do you bring to my office?”
“Approximately one hour ago, we were ambushed by a group of armed men we believe to be associated with one of the groups listed among the rogue factions in the city considered to be hostile,” Valerie said without preamble. Then: “New Dawn, they call themselves. I assume you’ve heard of them.”
Meyah's lips thinned. “Of course I have. Your report regarding the group reached me three days ago, and I’m given to understand an operation has been underway to bait this group’s planned ambushes out with more competent combatants than they were expecting to face. Why are you bringing this to me directly?”
“The Master of Security would naturally have a greater understanding of the enemy we face and their movements, and a verbal report on our situation can only assist you in attaining a clearer picture of the wider-scale conflict that’s brewing.”
Meyah arched an eyebrow, then gestured for Valerie to continue.
Valerie didn’t immediately reply though, instead staring at the Master with those icy eyes of hers. Cherry and Symar shifted uncomfortably, while Florence was side-eyeing Valerie.
After a tense moment, Valerie began narrating the events of the last three days, though she seemed to repeatedly demur that Meyah surely knew this all already. Lucas wondered if she was just trying to piss the Master off. She talked of their exact patrol route down to giving precise directions of where they’d walked and all that they’d seen in an extremely impressive display of memorisation. Lucas didn’t recall half of what she described, but the bits he did remember informed him that she wasn’t just bullshitting.
He did note, however, that she mentioned nothing about the stalker who tailed them throughout most of the second day. Instead, she narrated their movements in excruciating detail all the way through to the ambush itself, where she once again made sure to describe every move she’d made in the confrontation, then went on to explain exactly what everyone else had done.
Excluding Lucas. From the way she talked, she made it sound like he’d stood around doing nothing. What the hell was she playing at?
Cherry and Symar didn’t contradict her, to his continued bafflement. Meyah absorbed it all without comment, watching Valerie with a steady gaze. When the story was done, her eyes flicked to Florence. “I suppose you’d tell the same story, Ser Florence?”
“Not in so much detail,” Florence said after a moment. “But yes.”
Then she turned to Lucas. “And what about you, Apprentice James? I couldn’t help noticing that your mentor left out any mention of your involvement in the battle.”
So it wasn’t just him, then.
“By the look in your eyes,” Meyah continued before he could reply, “I find it difficult to believe you stood at the sidelines and watched it all unfold. You’re a Star, correct?”
“I am, Master Meyah,” he said, bowing his head slightly.
“It’s not often a Star gets deep in the thick of things,” she noted idly. Then she said to Valerie, “I find myself curious that you faced so many enemies. Most reports I’ve seen talk of groups of five, thus far.”
“Perhaps my reputation preceded me,” Valerie said. “It can have unfortunate effects like that. It’s part of why many of the Masters argued I should be banished to the Front Lines permanently, I believe.”
Meyah smiled tightly. “Indeed. Was there anything else, Captain? Your report has given me much to consider.”
“Nothing immediately relevant,” Valerie said.
“Good. Dismissed, then. Ser Cherry, Ser Symar, remain.”
Lucas waited until they were back in Valerie’s quarters to ask what the hell that had all been about. “That didn’t seem like a regular bloody report,” he said.
“It seems our Master of Security believes there are spies in our midst,” Valerie said.
That statement hung in the air for a heartbeat, and Lucas winced as his own heart lurched. “We suspected that might be the case even before…”
“Based on paranoia at the possibility,” Valerie replied. “I believe Meyah now has something more solid. Hopefully, she can get to the bottom of it and plug any leaks.”
“Uh… okay?” Lucas scratched his head. “I can’t lie here, it didn’t seem like you two got along very well. But now you’re acting like there isn’t even the slightest possibility that she’s involved in the shady shit you’re talking about?”
Valerie looked at him, then. “Of course she’s involved in the, as you call it, shady shit going on. That’s quite literally her job.” With a sigh, she dismissed her armour and lowered herself into the chair at her lonely table. Staring at one of the documents she’d left there this morning, she muttered: “There are very few people in this entire tower I trust more than her.”
It took a while to digest that. Namely because: “Doesn’t seem to me like that feeling’s mutual.”
“Of course not,” Valerie said. “Anyone who trusts me is a fool.”
Discord :)
Auramaxxing
When demon-spewing portals appear and plunge the world into chaos, John Woods is granted the worst possible ability for a socially anxious loner: in order to gain the power he needs to survive, he must make people think he's cool.
