Peril of Wisdom

[Wynna]

She startled awake to find herself slumped in a chair by the Guild’s fireplace. Asleep in a chair, again. The feathers of a dream floated through her. Bird. Her own small inadequacies. Everything had been....out of place.

The book open on her lap fell to the floor with a thud.

“All right, Luv?” Vana’s voice drifted from across the quiet room as Clarianna sat up, combing fingers through loosened hair, staring down at Aglorus’s book, still open on one of its most disturbing pages. No wonder she’d had bad dreams. Had it been a bad dream?

Disarray. Books and shelves. Everything at the Font had been in unsatisfying disarray. So why did she feel so much at peace? The last of the dream flew away with the rattle of ice on the window.

“Remarkable that door is still attached,” Vana grumbled. "Every time that man slams it."

"Did I fall asleep?" She knew the answer. The Font was too far to walk at night, and she was too poor to ride. She slept wherever and whenever she could, lately. But it would not do to jeopardize her employment by being caught sleeping on the job.

"Think you must have. Might explain why Smokey was trying to be quiet."

“Oh, was Smokey here?” Clarianna gathered herself. She owed him an apology and he owed her a walk.

“Said something about the Safehaven.”

Outside the door, Clarianna found Master Peanut. She almost ran over him, truth be told. Quizzing him about his interactions with the frightened citizenry, she followed him into the Safehaven, and found Sarenna and Smokey at a table. Sarenna had some thoughts on the subject, more insightful than expected. Master Peanut seemed to grant the singer some weight. Most interesting, though, was the fact that the Company had also been subjected to the attentions of a mob. Sarenna seemed unfazed by it, which made Clarianna inclined to dismiss her own anxieties. If everybody was the target of suspicion and hatred, then nobody was singled out for any particular danger.

“Sarenna, the other night, before we were rudely interrupted by the unliving, you and Adam were talking about a bird.” She’d seen the bird again. It had pecked apart a pastry she’d offered before flying off, poor thing. Hungry and lost.

“Ebon. He was Tasma’s familiar.”

“He? He’s a he?” Clarianna had a flash, quickly lost. A female voice. Or was it just high pitched and creaky? What did that have to do with birds? Her dream? What was it that stirred the back of her mind? She didn’t know, and Sarenna didn’t ask why she had brought it up. Indeed, she began a story as if it had been building inside her, the tale of the death of a friend. A sad story, and one she told with the skills of an entertainer and the honesty of a chronicler.

Oghma honored bards.

Clarianna found herself looking down at her hands, regretting a few unkind thoughts. As she had already apologized to Smokey, however, she could not bring herself to make a second one so soon.

Besides, Sarenna would probably do something inappropriate, soon enough.

[Wynna]

The sewer grate made a maw. Horizontal and vertical fangs, gnashing together. She delayed as long as possible, but after Adam slipped out of sight she had little choice.

She dropped after him, straight into the pocket of a corpse’s coat, old and musty with the rot of ages. Fetid air slid around her. She landed poorly, clattering. Rather, the ground hit her rudely from below, before expected.

Disoriented, she cast about, glad of the relative dark as she located fallen bolts, thrown out of an overstuffed knapsack made for other items. Glad, until her eyes adjusted to the faint gleam of daylight, and she saw Sarenna ahead, waiting. Even half-elves saw in the dark better than her. The others had already slipped out of sight, she gathered, across a bridge over a canal and into the black throat of a tunnel. If Vale remained anywhere near, he was regretting adding her name to the membership list right about now. Or she was overplaying her priority in other’s attention.

Following Sarenna as the singer crept ahead, she tried to reconstruct the events by which her promotion from employee to enrollee in the Guild had taken place. She had steeled herself to request an advance on wages, a furtheration of the great debt she owed the Guild. The next thing she knew she was being outfitted and given the tour of the Apprentice’s bunkhouse.

Vale Clearwaters. As much a force of nature as any wintry goddess.

The crossbow at the Guild’s cost; the ring from Vale’s own finger; a horridly beautiful mace that apparently Kal of all people had delivered to the Guild for her, out of the blue.

No armor, though.

A dank exhalation brushed along bare arms, curiously wrinkled and thickened from the potion Vale had handed her. She trusted in him that it would be enough.

From ahead came a twang of bowstrings, identified after the sound itself. The shushing ahead wasn’t whispers, but arrows. A thunk, and a cry too thin to be from any of her party. And then a deluge, of all of that. Kal’s voice rising over it. Adam?

She stumbled into a corner. A pipe caught the side of her bow and the bolt he’d helped her lay in the cradle released, shooting off in a random direction.

Oghma’s open eyes, I’m useless.

It was over by the time she felt her way along the turns of the corridor and light returned, filtering through some crack in the streets above.

Adam stood over a disgusting parody of a humanoid. Small, green-skinned and dripping slime from the canal it must have emerged from, it gibbered and writhed beneath his boot, biting at his leg. Others, unmoving or dying, draped the edges of the waterways and littered the slippery cobbles and pavers of the sewers. The savagery on Adam’s face as he sliced sideways with his blade took her aback. The goblin’s misshapen head fell back, throat yawning in upwelling black blood.

He looked unhurt. The blood across his arms did not flow from him.

She had one job. Keep him alive.

Vale ghosted past without a word, and waited where the room narrowed into another tunnel, glancing back. Separate from them. Expecting them to remember why they were here, and continue west. Indifferent to those around him, or anything but the task at hand. Kal had already gone ahead, calling back an all clear. Sarenna’s whisper to him carried no words that Clarianna could hear, but the tone…. Exultant. Lascivious? Absolutely not.

That thought was her own fault. Just how was it that every time a prostitute led Guild members along some path, she found herself with--

Stop. Thinking.

Two jobs. Find the missing lovers. And keep Adam alive.

[Wynna]

Giddiness. Survival. Adrenalin. Out of those godsforsaken dark tunnels, stinking of decay. Thoughts wheeled like gulls over a trash heap.

Which is what she smelled like.

The girl had been unscratched; the guard thankful to be alive. Sarenna continued to smirk and Clarianna continued to pretend she didn’t know what profession the girl plied. She wasn’t an idiot. The discomfort that unfortunate life choices raised in her was none of the singer’s business.

Sarenna brushed her hand over Kal’s face. The otherwise undemonstrative warrior smiled, splattered and stained with gore. Clarianna’s stomach rebelled.

She really, really did not want them coming back to the Guild with their untidy affections.

Seeing Vale and Adam with their heads together, she rubbed her own arms. The barkskin had worn off long ago, but it must have left some arcane residue that sensitized her skin. The cold bit goosefesh from it.

Sarenna and Kal left, thankfully, poorly covering their obvious physicality with light talk of refreshments.

Vale stepped back with an admonishment to Adam to see Clarianna enrolled in yet another Guild. Plumbing, if she heard correctly. He left.

And then there were two. She didn’t want this strange, brutal night to end yet. She didn’t know how to ask him not to leave just yet without raising echoes of the prostitute. Filliken. Open-skirt, as Vale’s people would call one...and as her mind skittered and careened down tangential subjects, she was avoiding the true subject. Avoiding the way he was looking at her on the darkening street. Darkening. Dark. Dark eyes, dark hair. Shadow on his jaw. Demons in his heart, by his own words. Not handsome, but not unhandsome, and radiating strength. And sweat. And blood.

The definition of an unwelcome mess.

What in the world did he want from her?

Stupid question, Clarianna. Stupid, stupid, obvious…. She only had to look after Kal and Sarenna, and the alley down which they had vanished, for the answer.

Why not? The thought breathed through her. They were adults. Throwing up an age difference was foolish. Desperation. What was there between them? Five...six years?

Recognizing a slide down the slope of abnegation of responsibility, she lowered her eyes and ran nervous fingers along the long pins in her hair, heavy with sewage and tightly wound. He said something about the Plumber's Guild, and offered an arm. His family background revealed himself at such gestures. She assumed. Her past had nothing courtly to it, but she had read romances. Foolish romances.

She slid her fingers into the crook of his forearm, the leather armor softer there, where he required movement. Soaked with foul liquids, rapidly chilling.

Knowing herself weak and weakening more, she went where he squired her.

[Wynna]

The man’s blade went in above her hip. It brought no pain with it, at first, only a sensation of cold. It separated superficial muscles, and was deflected by bone. Interior abdominal oblique. Twelfth rib chipped. Knowledge welled up with the blood.

Then it hurt.

*****

All she’d wanted was a moment of blessed peace and quiet. She kept reminding herself of that as the door closed behind the unruly lot of them, Vale and Keryn leading their respective contingents. And one outlier, member of neither Company nor Guild. He had tried to find her eyes and she’d cut him dead, faithful to her promise. Asher’s and the newcomer Tymor’s news of vampires in the streets was more important, anyway.

Silence didn’t offer the opportunities she’d thought it would. The tasks she’d thought would take all night were run through quickly. She organized her research into a more coherent whole, writing neat titles and alphabetizing them. She unpacked and repacked the apprentice’s chest into folded spare garments and matrices of small bloody packets that did not bear examination. She wrote a thank you letter to Loremaster Sandrew for his time that morning listening to her divine failings, and penned a devotion of the Binding to Sandrew’s master, laying out all the Knowledge discovered in the last setting and rising of the sun. Actually, that one took a while.

Will. Never. Happen. Again.

She went back and underlined that emphatic ending, in case it wasn’t clear to Oghma.

*****

The pain fragmented, hard and bright as the citizen’s hatred, burning beneath. He drew it back and stabbed again, up to the hilt. “Die, witch bitch!”

Beneath his bloody fingers, the haft of his knife was carved bone or ivory, cleverly worked into the reflected crescent moons of Waterdeep.

Why? She tried to frame the question, but couldn’t hear whether or not she spoke it, not over the roar of the crowd in her ears.

Cornelius shouted, his arm swinging lightnings. She fell backwards off the knife, and staggered, hand spreading over the wound.

*****

Serpentil had sent urgent word. He had something.

At last, something to do that she was good at. Except, upon arrival at the shop, the book seller had demanded 1000 gold, for what he told them up front was but an incomplete copy of a copy. Cornelius shifted and muttered about highway robbery, looming behind her threateningly. Tymora had favored her earlier, with the late arrival of the bearded Llorkian knight to the Guild, bringing with him steel and sleet. She did not relish the thought of returning alone through the streets, but he had been eager to see her safely dropped off and go on to find the others.

While she pleaded with Serpentil to give her some bit of information to convince the others of the worth of the book, Vale arrived, agitated.

Of all the wonders she had encountered of late, she had never thought to see such a thing as that.

Dumbly, she listened to Vale argue with Serpentil and depart, vanquished and at speed, to collect the trade bars Serpentil demanded. She did not care for such a mercantile treatment of Knowledge. “Cornelius.” She turned on her foot and headed for the door, to try to catch up to the Guildmaster. She needed information.

Outside, a strip of pale sky silhouetted the rooftops of the eastern horizon. Dawn soon, and no more danger. Vampires could not walk beneath the light of the sun. Vale, swift and light-footed as all Tel’Quessir, had already vanished, but before she and Cornelius were halfway back to the Guild, she saw the Guildmaster returning, running.

“Vale! What is the emergency?”

“Blackstaff is dying from this Spell Freeze.” Vale hardly paused, but she spun with him.

“Oh my gods.” Khelben Blackstaff, the great mage and lawgiver of Waterdeep laid low, was grave news. That the Weave could betray even him... .

“Ist dat bad?” Cornelius frowned.

“Everyone is gathered at the North Gate Sewer Entrance to move to stop the Spell Freeze and save him.” Vale did not bother with further explanation. “Go join them now. I will fetch the tome fragment and catch up.” The last commands were shouted from around the corner, already out of sight.

“Where is the North Gate...sewer entrance?” Clarianna asked, her heart sinking. Sewers. The kidnapped lovers had been kept in the sewers, waiting to be sold to vampires.

Behind them, a foot scuffed. “Ummm...hi. You...umm...with the Adventurer’s Guild?”

Clarianna turned, startled. Cornelius eyed the man who had spoken. “Who are you? Vas do you want?”

The stranger held his hand behind his back, scratching casually at his arse. Clarianna put Cornelius between them, feeling foolish at doing so. “Vale said to hurry,” she said in a low voice.

“Can I join?” The man stepped closer, and it was not paranoia to note that his eyes watched her movement away, nor that his grin widened as Cornelius began to turn with a dismissive farewell.

Even so, with all that warning, it came as shock when the citizen brought out a knife. And lunged at her.

*****

Of course, she ran. Stumbling, hearing the pounding of feet behind her and Cornelius’s shouts for her to stay with him for protection, she ran.

A haze of fear blocked sensible action. Separating from her escort was the worst thing she could do. She and her assailant outpaced Cornelius, and her breath all seemed bound up in flight instead of calling on Oghma for protection.

Unarmored. Bow out of reach. Panicking.

She caught herself on a corner of a house with two hands and whirled to see the man on her, shouting about heroism, and killing her. She didn’t know where she was. The narrow alley opened into a green square. Shrinking back, she found time for regrets. She should have taken the time to don armor, instead of leaving it dismissed and disassembled in a chest. She had been going to a bookstore. Why would she put on armor to visit a shop for scribes?

The wound in her side bled. Copiously. Another outfit ruined. She could hide the stains, with a scarf around her waist, or if she wore her pack on her front instead of….

She ducked a swipe of his knife in time to see Cornelius dashing out of the mouth of the alley, grim and resolute.

*****

The dead citizen lay at her feet, his skull crushed. Cornelius seemed unhurt, she noted with some distant part of her mind.

Why? Why would he do that? This. Her fingers spread on her hip, the wound unstanched divinely or otherwise.

“Miss Gardner!” She hadn’t even known Vale had returned. His admonitions landed on her as blows on a muffling blanket. “The shopkeeper will deal only with you because his contract is with you. The greatest Defender of this City is dying and we need to fetch that tome and move. Gardner!”

*****

All she had ever wanted was blessed peace and quiet.

[Wynna]

In my defense at posting a thinly veiled chat log: Rumplechat. Rumple dialogue is worth reposting.

******

Nose buried in the book again, Clarianna headed back to her interrupted work. “Vana, if they return, give me a heads up first?”

A mild reply came, but not in Vana’s voice. “Is this a bad time?” Apparently, a door closing behind one sort of trouble could swing the other way to admit a symbol of another.

Clarianna closed the book with a snap. “Are there any good ones?”

Master Peanut gave that due thought, as befit a man of his profession. “I hear spring is full of them, winter, not so much.”

The snow falling outside the window should have been answer enough. “Then around here, not so much.” She gathered that her small smile didn’t do much to break the tension of her expression. He looked concerned behind the sweeping white mustache. “Good morning, Master Peanut.”

“Good morning Miss Gardner.”

“What is wrong?”

“I had occasion to read the Daily Trumpet. Have you?”

She drew the book in, holding it across herself. “I've read it.” She wheeled, pacing away. “I wanted to speak with you about it.” She could hear him following. “What did you think of that? Can they write such things?” She dropped the Codicil fragment to the top of her desk, staring down at it. Her desk was in terrible disarray.

“I think they have proven that they can,” he said, at her elbow.

She slid loose papers over the book. No doubt the Witness was in Vale’s confidence, but she was responsible for it, after all. At the silence, she turned. The gnome’s expression of concern had only deepened. “But can they legally?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“A few things. Perhaps you should have a seat.” He leaned against the corner of her desk. He really was rather close to other secrets, if he could read upside down. The book, at least, she collected. To slide into her knapsack. The top of the small crossbow revealed itself, stuffed in with all the research material, in the brief moment before she rebuckled the flap.

A little embarrassed, she asked, “Is it that bad?”

“Again, that depends.” He might not have seen the weapon. She didn’t know why it bothered her that he might have. Nobody else gave such things a second thought around here.

She sat, slowly. “On?”

He leaned upon the desk, regarding her. He definitely wasn’t concerned with her pack, behind his feet.

She pressed her hands to her legs, palms down and still.

“Miss Gardner,” he said, “how important is your reputation to you?”

“Who steals my purse steals trash. 'Tis something, nothing: 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands. A good reputation is the most valuable thing we have, men and women alike.” She didn’t recall the source of that. Like everything else she spouted that sounded vaguely intelligent, it was a quote of another’s original words. It sounded like something the honest Master Peanut would a-go and say, though.

He nodded. “You understand then.”

“I do. I understand that they have insulted and endangered me.” Her hand flattened on her hip. Even though Oghma’s healing had removed the scar from the knife, the memory of the assault was another thing entirely.

“Vale was placed in the same situation.”

“Vale,” she said flatly. ”He is in no danger. Not that one.”

“Physical danger?”

“Physical danger.” She began to organize her desk.

“His health may be intact, but his reputation is in tatters. I would argue that he is in a very perilous position. In fact, I know he is.”

She stacked papers. “And perhaps if his manner were warmer—” She broke off, the last part of that registering. “He is?”

“Indeed.” Master Peanut nodded.” I cannot comment more.”

Her brow knit. ”Well, that is wrong. Even if he deserves a good kick in the posterior.”

“However, we are talking of you, and your situation. Let me state the facts.” She continued organizing papers, stacking them neatly, squaring each edge with a tap.“The Daily Trumpet is well known for its scandal focus.”

“So noted.”

“You have had the unfortunate title of the Winter Witch assigned to you. Proving you are not, in fact, a Winter Witch is easier said than done.”

“But I am not! How can it be hard to prove that I am not?”

“Words are easy, Miss Gardner.”

“Blades are hard.” In memory, the knife bit into her flesh. She ran fingers through her hair, nervously.

“Miss Gardner!”

“Sorry,” she said automatically, not actually sure what had caused his severe tone.

“I did not expect that sort of language from you.”

“What?” She reviewed what she had said. “I meant sharp. What?”

“Blades are hard. That is the sort of thing I would expect to hear from Sarenna.”

She rose, turning to the bookshelves. “It was not intended so.” The back of her neck heated. “Although, once repeated.... I apologize for offending you. Sometimes my emotions get the better of me.”

“I am not offended, only surprised, and slightly disappointed.”

She took a book from the shelves and opened it randomly, staring down into words unseen. The sound of rustling papers turned her, to find him squaring up a loose sheet of vellum for her. Alarm jolted. “I truly didn't mean it the way you took it,” she said, grabbing for the vellum covered in her morning’s devotions. There were things that only Oghma needed to know at this point. “Sorry.” She stuffed the heavy ecclesiastical writing material into her belt pouch, cramming it in with a vial of ink and a broken quill already there. “Sorry.”

He watched her dithering. “Perhaps this is a bad time.”

“No, Master Peanut, I value your advice.” She hoped she hadn’t offended him with her wariness over sharing her written fears with anybody. “I will try to control my words.”

“I do not give advice, Miss Gardner, I provide my experience as a professional witness, and counselor.”

She looked down at the book she had hastily dropped to her desk, and reshelved it with a titch of frustration. “Then what is your experience, Master Peanut? Hypothetically, say, these lies in the Trumpet cause harm to someone. I am...asking for a friend.”

“That the battle would be long, difficult, and hideously expensive, and in all likelihood, fruitless.”

“What if someone were, say, injured in some way…?” She turned that into a question at the last moment.

“Can you prove causality?”

“Casually? No, aggressively.” She frowned.

“I mean to say, can you prove a direct link?”

“What form would that take?” The door rattled, startling her.

He didn’t seem to have heard the noise. “A witness, a document, a confession.”

“Did someone just come in? Vana?” Clarianna called. “Did someone just come in?”

Vana shook her head, at the same time as the gnome answered. “Not that I saw. Then again, my attention was fully on your concerns.”

Of which she had many. She did not say that out loud, running her fingers along the pins in her hair for reassurance. The door must have been the wind. “That's good.” She looked down at his serene face. “I see what Vale sees in you.”

If he caught her admiration, he did not show it. “A professional service, for a professional price,” he said. “Not to mention assured discretion, and non-judgmental counsel.”

She took a deep breath. He was the most trustworthy man she had ever met. “A witness. A document. A confession. What if that aggressor died? In the commission of the aggressive act?”

“Are we still talking in hypotheticals? Or has your friend been assaulted?”

She started to nod but it turned into a shake of her head, and she collapsed into the chair. Head down, face in her hands, she confessed. “I was attacked, Master Peanut. Assaulted with a blade.”

“That is terrible.” His sympathy sounded slightly detached. He’d probably heard worse.

“It hurt," she said, muffled.

“I can only imagine it would.”

“I'm a scribe. Not a warrior. Whatever Vale thinks he can pretend I am.” Through her fingers, she saw Master Peanut’s boots, firmly planted on the wooden floor. “Whyever, he wants to pretend that.” She scrubbed her face with a sigh, and sat up. “I’m fine. I'm worried, though.”

“You sound more worried than fine, if I was forced to choose between the two.”

“What if the person who knifed me ended up…not alive? What ramifications might there be?”

“Were there witnesses to the killing?”

He was so calm. “I don't know.” Her eyes widened. “Maybe?”

“Where and when did it happen?”

“I don't know. Near Serpentil’s. Last night.” It all spiraled up in her. “A citizen is dead, Master Peanut. Because…well because he attacked me. But because of the Trumpet.”

“How do you know his motivation?”

She pulled out the vellum that she had snatched away from him. "'Die witch bitch.'" In a muted voice, she read from it. "'I'll be a hero, and end this winter curse!'”

“He wrote that?”

She folded it, creasing it, and refolded it, and again, into smaller and smaller squares. “I think that was it. I was a little shaken. I wrote it. To Oghma.” She was stuttering. “About me. He said it. The man. With the knife.”

Master Peanut gave her a thoughtful look. “And then you killed him?”

“Me?!” She blinked. “No! I—”She stopped and thought that through. She wasn’t always empty-headed. “If I had, would I be in trouble? With the Law?” Horrible thought. “Would I be arrested?” Her imagination ran away with her. “And thrown in jail?” It could happen. It wasn’t just imagination. “To rot?”

“This is why I asked if anyone had seen the killing.”

“I don't know.” Poor Cornelius.

The door opened, unmistakably this time, admitting the Company man, Sarenna’s lover. Whom she truly did not want to see, because she had been remiss in thanking him for the mace she had no desire whatsoever to own. Or hold. Or know about. This time he had brought another weapon, for Adam, which was just about more than she could take. One sensitive topic at a time. Flustered, she promptly insulted Kal with her curtness and excused herself to the downstairs apprentice chambers as he and Master Peanut talked swords.

It was only when she reached for her research that she realized she had left it all, in the knapsack, upstairs.

In somewhat unseemly haste, she ran back up, to find Kal gone, and Master Peanut with his back to her, holding her knapsack. He turned. “I was going to bring it to you.”

It looked closed. “Were you?”

He handed it to her. “Well, I didn’t want to leave it there in the open.” She flipped through the contents, finding them undisturbed. “Miss Gardner, we spoke earlier of reputation.”

“We did.” She hoped he had not noted her suspicions. She was immediately ashamed.

“Please, do not impugn mine. It is all I have.”

She kept being rude to people, without meaning to. “I am so sorry.”

“And it is what my profession is based upon.”

She hugged the pack, not sure if she was protecting it, or herself. “Master Peanut, since I arrived, I have been mugged, vampire bitten and stabbed.” Was any of that an excuse?

He relented. “It has been a very interesting journey for me, the association with the Adventurers Guild, and the Lhuvenhead Trading company, so I sympathize, and understand the pressures of the close retainer work. If I can impart one thing to you, Miss Gardner, it will be this: It is alright to say No.”

“Oh, I'm good at no,” she muttered, then raised her voice. ”Last night I said no and off they traipsed, without me. And then we went to the bookstore, and that man jumped us and…” She was complaining. Again. Nobody wanted to hear that. “You didn't tell me. Would the person who killed the person who knifed my person be in trouble?”

“It depends. I understand that answer is vexing.”

“I prefer black and white to gray, yes.”

“Was the killing reported?”

She shook her head. “I don't want anybody to know.” Because somebody would probably go off and do something foolish, and somebody would be hurt, or in worse trouble. “But that seems to break the Law.” She had thus far done just that. An omission, not a commission of a wrongful act, but still.

Master Peanut clearly saw the problem. “Let me show you what a Magister might see. From the window, a citizen works to draw shut a shutter swung open by a winter gust.” He mimed a shutter being closed, and latched. “They see a struggle on the street. Obscured by snow, a man falls, and is left there.” Her hand rose to her holy symbol. “A knife in his back, or side, or however it happened.”

“Hammer,” she whispered. “Head.”

“A man fell, his head caved in. Or worse, face.” He winced.

“I don't remember.” Her voice quavered.

He looked her over, as if searching for the offending implement. “If nothing else, Miss Gardner, I suggest throwing the hammer into the harbor.”

“I very much doubt that will happen.” She tried to steady her voice.

“That is certainly your decision. It would be against my counsel as the guardian of your freedom though. However, at this stage I would point out, that I have not been engaged thusly, and this, this has just been a conversation between friends and fellow retainers. However, I am more than happy to discuss my rates, if you are interested.”

She had to get a hold of herself. She would do Cornelius Tauber no good as a hysterical wreck. “Master Peanut, I have been replacing my wardrobe at a spectacularly profligate rate of late. I fear I could not afford your retainer.” She came to her feet. “I need some air.”

“I am sure we could come to an arrangement, perhaps even an exchange of services.”

She was grateful for his flexibility, but she couldn’t possibly put an exchange value on something she would do for free. “If you need scribing, it is yours. As friends. And coworkers.” She had to get out of here. Loremaster Sandrew might be able to see her by now, surely? “Do you have work here? Or were you on your way out?”

“I was stopping by to see if Vale was available.”

“I haven't seen him today.” Her chilly tone was another failure of understanding on her part. If Nipsy Peanut said the Guildmaster was in danger, than he was in danger. “I am going to walk in the sun, such as it is. These days the afternoons are the only time I feel comfortable outside. Thank you. I appreciate your counsel.”

“Do you wish solitude?”

“I…” She hesitated. “I do not. But I can't stay inside any longer. I wouldn't impose.”

He gave a small shrug. “It is no imposition. I, too, enjoy the sunshine. Rare as it is.”

She had to see Loremaster Sandrew, about the death of her attacker, and the Trumpet’s lies, and Aglorus’s flask, and the Codicil, and her own future at the Temple. Probably a dozen other things. There was no sense hiding any of it from the Witness, who had only her best interests at heart. “Would you fancy a coach ride to the Font?” she asked shyly. “I would like to be there and back before dusk.”

She was so glad when he said yes.

[Wynna]

Loremaster Sandrew had stern words for her. Clarianna wilted. He was right. She should have brought the flask to the Font before going to Serpentil to translate it. Especially now that Jannaxil Serpentil had turned out to be a serpent indeed, a standover man who demanded 250 gold a month to tell no-one of her other business with him, the book sourced on behalf of the Guild.

The receipt for the fragment of the Codicil of White, signed with her name and handed to him before he revealed his blackmailing tendencies, worried her. A little.

The greater blow came when Sandrew pointed out what she should have seen. The runes were not merely Abyssal, which she did not speak. The symbols inscribed on all sides of the beautiful blue glass panes of the flask were a melange of rare languages. Except for two inscribed in Draconic. Which she spoke. Supposedly. How embarrassing to tell Aglorus that she would have to sleep on it, and with Oghma’s grace, translate the Draconic after her morning communion. Using a divine translation tool for a language of which she claimed Knowledge of. Shameful. Not to mention it would take at least a day for each of the languages, one at a time.

Still...she remembered a time at the Vault when the magelings would have laughed at poor Clarianna, struggling along without the arcane gift of tongues. Divine glossolalia put all of those intellectual elitists to shame.

Stepping out of the Font with Nipsy Peanut, after her in-depth and wide-ranging conversation with Sandrew, she made a mental note to add that to a conversation with Keryn, or Aglorus. Glossolalia. It sounded erudite.

She felt unburdened of much, now that the Loremaster and the Witness knew everything she did. Sharing that information lightened the load, and made room for the task that Sandrew the Wise had given her.

The cause of Truth superseded all previous missions. The Trumpet could not be allowed to subvert the citizens of Waterdeep with falsehoods, any longer.

[Wynna]

She stared at Sarenna’s departing back as she hadn’t let herself look into her face at the table. Lie down with vampires; get up with maggots. Clarianna flattened her hand on her belly, and the maggots of fear squirming there. To her side, Adam was reading, his eyes darting over the lines of text.

Sarenna stopped, halfway to the door of the Safehaven, and turned. “Good fortune stay with you this morn.”

“Going hunting, Sarenna?” Clarianna fumbled for a reply. “Where is Kal?” Everything. Every unease she had felt around Sarenna’s lover. Explained. Explained enough.

“He has been in the West Wood. Since yesterday.”

“That is a dangerous place.”

“Mmm, can be.” She seemed languid. “But it’s like a second home.”

“Be careful, Sarenna.”

“I will.” The red leather armor, the weapons. The expression on her deceptively delicate face. All gave the lie to that. “You too.”

At a mutter from Adam, Clarianna turned away from the Siren. Adam had gone ashen. His hand crushed the notes she had written so secretively. Who was the deceiver now? She had stolen into the Guild and eavesdropped. Worse, copied down a private conversation. About vampires. A vampire queen. That queen’s previous master. No excuses.

At least Sarenna was open about her pecadillos.

But…. Vansa. Vanorak. … Vale? Two names new to her; the last newly revealed in a disorienting relationship, never before suspected. Her apprehensions were surely unfounded.

Very very vulnerable. Settling her hand on Adam’s arm, she wasn’t sure to whom that applied. The jolt that went through her at their contact gave the lie to that, too. Still new to her; still fighting it. Seeing his eyes locked on what she had written, though, all she wanted to do was brush away the fear from them.

Adam. Afraid?

[Wynna]

It truly didn’t affect her. Every time the two lovers touched. At any excuse. Whenever they were near the other. The way he called her “Luv,” in every other breath.

Not bothered. At all. Untouched.

“Vanrak….Moonstar….” Perched at the edge of a chair in the antechambers of the Lhuvenhead Trading Company, Clarianna murmured out loud as she took notes. Dreadful habit. One of many the Deneirans and Mystrans at the Vault had derided. Her voice sounded far away in her own ears. “He exists in Undermountain?” Which is real? She did not ask the latter out loud. In general, if it was terrible, or she would look jejune asking about it...it was real. “Where does Vansa live?”

Kal handed Sarenna a glass. “Here, Luv. Miss Gardner?” The man looked a cutpurse. She’d expected to fear him, knowing what she did now. She might have, but she didn’t. She didn’t fear or feel anything.

“Anything but wine.” She watched Sarenna touch Kal’s hand. “Whiskey.”

Sarenna smiled into her cup, a secretive, private smile. She is Truly beautiful. Raven-haired and high-cheekbones. Dramatic and seductive, with her exotic Elven heritage. Kal shared her smile, then returned to dig in the liquor cabinet. “Old One Eye?”

“Is that whiskey?”

“Oh, sorry, no. No whiskey left. Dammit, Kalo.” Head hidden in the depths of the pantry, he nattered like a major domo at a state dinner presented with the wrong fork. This was the man the vampire queen wanted? “Wine or wine, Ms. Gardner?” His raspy voice was suddenly unmuffled. Straightening, he was hardly taller than the cabinet, but more wiry and less open.

“Nothing. Thanks.” The absurdity. The absurdity of manners, and small talk. “Where do either of these vampire lords lair?”

“Well, Vanrak isn’t a vampire. And Vansa...deep sewers.”

Sarenna sipped her secrets. “I’m disappointed, Kal. No street numbers?” They shared another look.

“What is Vanrak, then?” Clarianna drew a line through the classification entry.

“He is the brother of Lady Aethena Moonstar. She is a high priestess of Selune.” Of course he was. “Vanrak is a high priest of Shar.” That family dynamic hinted at an explanation of the event that had ruined Adam’s family. She put that thought away, closing it into a cabinet. And locking it. And pushing a bookshelf in front of it.

“Alathene, Luv.” Clarianna felt Sarenna’s amusement. It wasn’t at Kal. It aimed squarely on the top of her own bent head.

“I never can pronounce her name right.”

“Tel’Quessir?” Clarianna prompted.

Sarenna replied in elven. “They are human, Clarianna.” The Siren’s voice sounded clearer, more resonant. She trilled the tongue of whichever parent had lowered himself or herself to lie with a human.

“But alive. Not undead.”

“Well, no. Not alive. But not vampire,” Kal said.

“Is that true, Kal?” Sarenna's eyes widened. “Vanrak’s not human anymore?”

“What, exactly, is this creature?” Clarianna asked shortly.

“Your guess is as good as mine. We had a falling out…. Well, I had a falling out with Lady Moonstar. We are trying to find out more about her brother.” His indifference to her question changed to intimacy. “I smelled the breath coming from him, Luv. The one time he brought me to his lair. When he wanted to release the darkness.”

Clarianna made a note. Find out what ‘release the darkness’ alludes to. “So you have been to his lair. You are on close terms with these creatures?”

Sarenna frowned. Kal shifted where he sat on the ground beside her chair. “Yes. He used powerful magic to pull me from the Safehaven into his lair.”

“When was this?”

Sarenna ran her tongue over her teeth. “Clarianna.”’

“Months ago.” Kal said, eyes distant. It was Sarenna who glared at her.

“But not years ago. He is still active.”

“Right before he killed Sarenna and me. He has that power, to kill with a thought, it seems. He has tried several times since.”

“So you have been dead as well. Did he bring you back, too?”

“All right, that’s enough.” Sarenna slapped the arms of her chair.

“Why did he bother to kill you, and then bring you back?

“Keryn did,” Kal said, his volume dropping. The set of his jaw did not deter her. She really didn’t care.

“Clarianna.” Sarenna was on her feet. “Get out.”

“Why?” Clarianna did not look at her.

“Because I would not to his bidding.”

“What did he--” Clarianna felt the blow coming at her hand before it fell. She could not be distracted. She twisted the notepad out of reach, still writing. “--want?”

“Kal, stop talking!”

“What did he want?”

“For me to release the darkness and kill everyone in Waterdeep.” Kal’s eyes were...wet.

“What did he want, Kal? What does he want?” Something stirred. Pity? Sorrow. She couldn’t let that in, the soft edge of an emotional wedge. That way lay pain.

Kal’s sigh came from deep within him, deeper than appearances would allow from such an unprepossessing person of a self-admittedly low origin. Tears rolled down his face. “My obedience.”

“Fuck, Clarianna! Will you stop and and look for a moment? How fucking heartless are you! Did you not hear him? Don’t you understand?” Sarenna stood bristling, beside her lover, her hand on his bowed shoulder. She bent to him, holding him by both shoulders, her brow to his. “It’s all right, Luv.”

It’s going to be alright. Clary heard her own voice, an echo of comforting another, just like the broken man...sobbing...in front of her. She’d caused that. It isn’t going to be alright. I was wrong. Things like Vanrak and Vansa walked, and destroyed. Generations of children paid the price. That wasn’t any kind of right.

The two of them held each other.

She closed her notebook and slid it away.

[oldgrayrogue]

“Anything but wine.”

Nice.

[Wynna]

Just her. Finally. The shelves of the basement library stretched away into the depths, stealing themselves away from her single lamp. The sacred hush around her again. In the ceiling, the insulating rush of water. The eponymous Font needed feeding, constantly. Pipes sluiced water in from the city above her head.

Just her, and a thousand books.

She turned a page with one hand, quill scratching in the other, elbow pinning a sheet of paper. The runes on the flask took shape on the page in front of her. Copying somebody else’s work, with her own practiced movements. Soothing ritual. The winged pedestals of that flowing symbol were all Celestial, without a doubt.

Are you going to stand there with a book in your hand and let him win?

The memory of Kal’s voice made her quill jog. She frowned at the broken wing she’d drawn. No way to blot that off.

She ripped that page out and started over, but not on the Celestial. When her mind was more at peace, she could do those elements of the flask more justice. For a moment, she contemplated the twisted shapes that Aglorus said were Abyssal, but she wasn’t quite in that state of mind either.

Do not let your distaste for the manner in which their lessons are taught keep you ignorant of their importance, Mistress Gardner.

She came to her feet and tripped over the practice staff, given to her by the owner of that voice and discarded here to lean against the window frame. Vale’s ridiculous padded stick slammed back toward her head. She avoided it, but knocked over the chair.

The clatter of stick and chair and her own sharp oath died away.

In the disapproving silence, she righted everything, then wheeled and pressed her brow to the cold window. Shiny cobbles, beyond her nose. Huddling here, peeking above ground level like a frightened rabbit, checking for predators.

Not merely frightened. Confused. Frightened. Confusticated. A portmanteau, which is what she felt like. Not the literary device, a hybrid word, bridging two worlds of meaning. Actual baggage. A handbag. A pack, to be put on and taken off at other’s needs, carried from event to event to hold their requirements, forgotten once that supporting role was accomplished.

Gladly forgotten. Happily alone.

I was like you once. Holding my own book bag in front, like you do. I understand. You don’t want to get hurt.

Godsdamn singers, and their facile grasp of motivation. Restlessly, she prodded at the chair with the stick in her hand. A shove sent it back over, so she hit it, with the stick.

Breathing hard, standing over the defenseless chair, she pulled back to hit it again.

“My dearest of dears…. If you break yon chair, you shall pay for it.”

Clarianna squeaked, and wheeled. “Jhasper! I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” The senior scribe didn’t even duck as the cloth-wrapped staff whistled over his head. “I’m sorry!” She dove under the desk, dragging out the chair, squaring the feet onto the darker squares where it had sat for ages, unmoved.

“Clary.” The little man gestured firmly. “Sit.”

She sat. “I just want to be who I was.”

He hadn’t asked. “Well then, dear Clarianna, what is keeping you from that? Besides this city and your choices that indicate you almost certainly do not want that.”

She interrupted. “I don’t know. I don’t feel self-contained any more. I’m a scribe, Jhasper. That’s all. A good one.” She was talking too much. She did that. When she was anxious.

“You are at that, dear. Understand that you have been, for a good part of your life. But what we have been is not always what we must be.”

She knit her brow, staring at him. His funny little face, with the bushy eyebrows and the wise eyes. “That is not what I thought you would say.”

“What did you expect? If we only ever gained knowledge that we already had, how would the Binder be glorified? Ever the page must turn. Rarely is the next page the same as the last.”

Come home, Clarianna. Leave the fighting to others, Clarianna. Forget wordly messes, Clarianna. That’s what she had thought he would say, but that was her voice in her head. “I...don’t know.” She repeated it, in the more elegant tongue of the Tel’Quessir. “I do not know.” And draconic, hisses overlaid on round vowels. “Know I knot.”

His smirk faltered into a grimace. “That one needs some work, dear.”

Awkwardly, she leaned the staff up against the desk. “I’ve been praying for my draconic, as I know you are now.”

“More mages. They throw it about all the time.”

“More….Oh!” Her gaze darted to the flask, and her work. Forgotten. “Aglorus!” The smile on Jhasper’s face said Sandrew had sent him, to prompt her. To remind her of her responsibilities. She picked up the flask. “Do you see the runes? All over?” She turned it, brown metal tarnished with age, the runes variously embossed and etched. “I want to try to translate. Oh, please Jhasper, let me call on Oghma’s Knowledge for the draconic. I need the focus.” Jhasper pulled a pair of spectacles from his breast pocket and took the flask. “They’re a jumble of languages, do you see? Which I find strange. If they’re decorative, then why not stick with one tradition?” This felt good, bending over him to point out what she had gleaned thus far. “Unless the tradition is eclectic arcanity….”

As she nattered on, alone with her skillset and the little scribe who exemplified them, she felt the rest of it dropping behind. Focus, indeed. One task, the one at hand. Tymor’s request of this afternoon, fading. Laird’s dragon, gone. Sarenna’s foul-mouthed aggressions in defense of her man.

Jhasper shifted and the light fell on the training staff behind him, so out of place.

Vale, finding that she had run away, again, no matter how she disguised her flight as research. Vale, hearing that she had come by while he was out enjoying his short-lived freedom, and that she had left with that staff. Why was that again? Why did I bring it with me? Here?

Vale, finding the note she had left for Adam, occupying the space where the staff had been.

Adam’s voice, reading what she had written to him. Not that he would read it out loud, but words did not need be spoken to be heard in a reader's own tones. One's own background and experience shaped meaning. Even so, goodbye sounded the same in any tongue, no matter how many words it took to say it.

Just her, again.

[Wynna]

She had walked across town, at night, alone, in the dark. Now who is luggage? Of course, if she’d known she was coming here, she might have carried that mace instead. The staff had been an afterthought. Loathe to leave it where others might see, she had only needed a breath of air. The Font had been unwontedly stuffy. She’d been as surprised at anybody by finding herself near the Company.

She rapped with the padded staff again, even as the Lhuvenhead door began to open. Assuming it to be somebody she had offended was a safe wager. She let out her breath and launched into prepared words. “I am sorry. I owe you an apology. For my behavior. Last night. My manner was rude and my questions were impertinent.” After a moment, the edge of Kal showed. Just the edge. He did not silhouette himself against the flood of interior light, which inconveniently made him somewhat hard to see. “Based on an intimacy ... on information I should not have--”

“Are they keeping you waiting?” Behind, a voice, amused, sultry. Feminine. But cold. It cut her off, apologies shriveling.

“Yes?” Kal clearly had not heard any of it.

“Sarenna?” Clarianna turned, squinting into the dark street. She hadn’t been able to renew her grasp of the simple homily that would bring Oghma’s blessing of light. The entire way, in the dark. With Binder-knew-what out in it. Her flesh crawled, belatedly.

“She is inside.” Kal was abruptly next to her, without sound to prove how so. “Why.”

Clarianna shuddered, skin rising at the back of her neck, on her arms. It crept on the insides of her wrist, which ached with an abominable cold. “She is not out here? A woman was just...talking to me.”

“Oooh, there he is.” The hidden women’s consonants drew out sibilantly.

“Who is there?” Kal’s hand fell to a buckle on a scabbard, and drew it loose.

Movement to her left sent Clarianna shying like a startled bird, but it was Adam, from out of the darkness, watching a shrouded figure across the road. His back slid in front of her. His hair fell inside the hardened leather of his collar. She remembered her fingers beneath it, matted with blood, on the flesh of his neck. “I am with you, Kal. Clary, go inside and shut the door.” She was having trouble grasping basic things, like how he was here. Or whether his tone meant he had come by the Guild, first, and found a letter.

“May I come in….” The woman’s laugh ran down the words to rest lightly on the last. “Kal?”

The silence of the street surrounded the question. The night felt as if anything sensible had found a hole to hide in. “No, you may not,” Kal said. “Vansa.”

[Wynna]

A glint in a violent hand drove into Nipsy’s back just where a gusset pleated the Witness’s bright green robe. Through the trampling bodies, past Adam’s blade swinging at movement, she saw the attacker pull free the knife. Nipsy. He has a knife. Words. Unsaid. She stood as frozen as if one of the mephit’s blasts had struck her.

It played over and over in her thoughts, a thousand times in the seconds during which she could have screamed over the chaos of the panicking mob, or called on Oghma to shield her friend, or moved. During an endless time when she could have saved him.

But none of that happened, and the gnome fell in a billow of fabric rapidly soaking with a dark black stain. Out of sight as a surge in the rabble blocked him from her. Finally, when it was too late, she ran, shoving through buffeting bodies.

He lay on his side on the cobbles before the Plinth, his eyes open. So small. So old. Those ridiculous mustaches bore a rime of ice. “Nipsy!” They were co-workers. “Master Peanut.” She fell to her knees, the world a chaos of blades and shouts and flashing arcane distractions around this little bubble where she could do something. Anything. Muscles in his jaw eased and she thought he would speak, the voice too powerful for his body ringing out to impose calm and order.

Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Crystals of ice melted, mixing with it, to run into his ear.

Through the tips of her fingers, Knowledge poured up. The pattern of the intra-abdominal injury to the posterior abdomen had brought colonic disruption. Other organs had suffered, as well, one in her own chest. “Binder!” Dizziness swarmed, with a sobbing intake of breath. “Binder, heal him.” The hidden filth of any living body. Poisoned from the inside out. In two days, disease and the fevers of what the Ilmaterians called peritonitis would rage. That I might be able to help. She did not have anywhere near the power to fix this, right now, in any way. Blood and waste, beneath her pressing palms. Keep pressure. A sharply-edged blade had completely separated muscle tissue at the precise angle needed to cause maximum damage. Not an accident. The heels of her hands slipped. Assassinated. Nipsy Peanut had been assassinated. Beyond the frail flesh beneath her hands, the death knell, echoing up her arms and into conscious recognition. Spinal cord severed between the two highest lumbar vertabra.

The little man who had been so careful to stay out of danger’s path had fallen. The Witness was dead.

[Rumple C]

... ridiculous mustache???

Words are the cruelest cut of all

[Peter_Abelard]

No one is as talented at cutting text as an editor and scribe. It is what they are trained to do.

[Wynna]

She had told...Jhasper. That was the chief scribe’s name. She had told him she would be home before nightfall. She should hurry; it was growing dark. Or was it that it had been very, very bright, as if all the lamps in all the planes beckoned, shining on all the Knowledge that ever would be?

The only problem would be in finding her way in time to the...fountain. To the Font, some vestige of precision corrected. Whatever that was, from wherever this was. Clarianna. Some place, surfacing now into brief focus. Clarianna Gardner, do you wish to return to the world?

******

She was becoming nothing. Everywhere.

Her thoughts, her body, her heart. As if no boundary could hold between them and they flowed as one, into an absence that pulled all into itself.

Neither darkness nor light surrounded her, and that neitherness grew apace, unfolding from the dissipating kernel she made at the center of it. The neitherness had swallowed the loss and anger, then it had tempered the fire of a shattered set of cervical vertebrae and the cold of the snow that rose up to bury her. It took the reek of blood-matted yeti fur from her nostrils and the screams of her friends from her ears. It took.

******

Asher gave her a hood. She hardly knew him, this fellow member of the Guild. Her working hours coincided with his absences, for the most part, but he had been among the first faces she had seen within these halls, on her first day in Waterdeep, fresh off the barge.

She had a momentary feeling that she had a barge to catch, to somewhere.

Asher gave her a hood, to protect her from the cold of Kringus. Made with his own hands. His own skills at evasion and his own experiences fighting the demon’s minions were woven into it. He hadn’t had to get her something so nice, and she wasn’t the only recipient of his thoughtfulness. Such a pleasant stranger, steady, with a friendly word as he pointed out traps his keen eye spotted, with a chuckle at Aglorus’s covetous eye on a clockwork horror. There were always people to Know better, and always time to Know them, but his hand dropped away in the act of loosing an arrow of lightning and blood ran from the corner of his smile. He pitched backwards, flung into a glistening wall. A winged demon of crystalline angles and shattered planes ripped into him.

I come for you at last, Varra my love.

The words had his voice, though his mouth did not move where he lay on stone. She touched his face and wondered why they were doing this.

******

When the neitherness had grown enough that her otherness became apparent, she felt a twinge of concern. Stubborn, so stubborn, Clarianna. Clary. Refusing to be subsumed into the whole was hardly polite when all it wanted was everything.

******

Someone suggested that someone destroy that fucking portal. Kalo floated towards it.

She’d had no idea. None. No idea what a warrior he was. At the front, he cut through the forces arrayed against them.

All of them, so much more than she had grasped.

The portal swallowed Kalo in a deluge of frost crystals and a spray of elementals. Vale turned to Nipsy, discussing lightning breath, as if he didn’t see the crossing cones of shards abrading away one of their shield wall. Kalo swung, shattering the structure with ringing blows, but the hoarfrost began to weigh. It plated him, edging his weapon with daggers. His face lost color, then form, becoming nothing. Ice stiffened his joints as the oncoming storm of abyssal creatures engulfed him.

Kalo lay beside Asher, now, and then receded to his own stony bier, before she could reach out to him. Such waste. Anger followed.

******

She realized…. Well, first she realized that realizing was a thing, an action. That there were such things as things, and actions.

She realized that the thing in her active realization was herself, sleeping on top of an altar with her hands folded on her breast. How strange.

She slept on her side, normally.

Not that that is common knowledge. Or a conversational topic.

That voice in her head was hers, and it was called a thought.

Even more strangely, the Plinth -- this was a thing called the Plinth, and, moreover, it was a place, which was a subset of things -- was not where she belonged. Nor was it where her friends belonged. Realization expanded outward, encompassing the bodies of adventurers laid out in the Plinth, one to every alcove.

******

Adam fell.

Adam loved her. Adam thought he loved her; said he loved her. Believed. He loved her.

She had told him it would happen. That he would leave by death’s door. She had told him so tonight, when he convinced her to follow him following Vale because he needed her. To keep him safe. He is dead. She could never tell him.That Cornelius killed a man to protect me? Was that it? If so, it seemed somewhat silly, now. Small change.

Pain blossomed above her hip. Interior abdominal oblique. Twelfth rib chipped. Somewhen earlier in a patchwork time, before he was her Adam to her and was only potentially Adam, a vampire took her innocence.

Pain awoke in her neck, a numb wash down a paralyzed spine that somehow managed to have no feeling, and simultaneously to be the definition of agony.

She explained to Vale that it was his fault. Not hers. Never hers. Vale begged to differ.

So many thoughts, now, tumbling one after the other, in this neitherwhere.

Adam fell.

******

Aglorus occupied a pyre of broken wands and staves, which from a new angle was another stone bier in the Plinth. She had no idea how he could have gotten there. No memory of seeing him climb up. No concept of what angle it was that she saw him from, as she lay alone in this apse of the Plinth, walls arcing over the otherwise empty chapel.

She, herself, had come here in a coach drawn by yeti. A creature had raked her, fetid claws opening her neck and the back of her scalp but bouncing off the collar of scale mail. Her legs had been unable to hold, even before the monster’s other fist came around. Spun to to her knees, in time to see the other yeti behind her.

They had torn her apart.

Memory meant...past. She had one of those. Past implied future. Did it? Necessarily? The neitherness around her seemed somewhat less sure of itself, her otherness driving it back.

Clarianna, do you have unfinished affairs on this plane? Or will you stay in the House of Knowledge with the Binder, who welcomes you?

That was not a thought. That was a voice.

The walls of this chapel did not arc completely over. There were those lamps, she noted with a sense of relief that they had not gone while she was so distracted by the deaths of her friends. The lamps shone above her, in the beckoning radiance of Truth, though it was clear from this strange angle outside the existence of sight and senses that her eyes were physically closed.

Still, she could tell that the lamps were receding. Shrinking. Fading? The right word was difficult to select, although she was certain that but moments before all the words ever expressed had been within her ken.

The roof became stone outlined by mortar and the patina of centuries of beeswax candles.

Her friends were dead. She was dead?

*****

Yer going to die. I’m sorry…so sorry, Luv.

Like Asher’s voice, Sarenna’s was a breath that fluttered the candle flames around her body. Bodies. For, unlike Asher, some did not fall alone.

Give me all your pain and let me bear it. You do not deserve it. It must be mine to carry.

The air stirred around them, Kal and Sarenna, laid out side by side. The Siren and the Scout. To one side on the bier that bore them up to their goddesses of luck and moon, the silver body of the instrument that beneath her hand cast lightnings in wailing assaults of sound. Still now. Like the face of Kal, so mobile in life. His tears fell in memory. Hurt. He hadn’t deserved to be hurt. He hadn’t deserved to die. The short blade beside him was an expression of his angry inner longings, its electricities as silent as the stratocaster. As silent as the jolting love between them. The Siren and the Scout, flanked by the weapons that filled their hands when they weren’t clinging onto each other.

She’d hated them, in life. Hated them for what they had, because it had always been this end for them. Together, into death. Kal leading, no matter that he called her his beacon. Sarenna ferocious in his defense, for all she called him her rock. One soul; two bodies.

She’d hated them, and envied them. Now, she loved them, with all the sorrow of loss.

*****

Seven dead heroes. Six, and one scribe. Seven was a storied number, a classic motif in literature. Seven swans. Seven brides. Seven busy dwarves. The thought of researching the origins of a literary motif suggested itself. That implied future.

Seven questers, the closest this could come.

“Clarianna, will you return?” Was that Sandrew’s voice? The Font was not so far from the Plinth, so perhaps.

You will return. A meaning straight to her core, carried on lamps she no longer comprehended, but would again, someday.

Clary. Only a memory. Adam had fallen. If he chose, as she knew she had already chosen to return to life, then someday he would leave her.

The voices of the fallen in her thoughts. The memories of their deeds. The emotions each of them raised, all tangling in her self. They were all the sum of their interactions, each pair of them, each trio. Each quartet a different sum, a different story. Beyond the seven who had laid themselves onto the altars of the Plinth by choices made, there were the ten who had taken the fight to the demon, Kringus, and laid it low. Beyond them were the entire Guild, the entire Company. The citizens that called her witch. The vampires in the night. An undead threat from Adam’s past. The messy world.

She wanted it. There was so much more to Know.