Chapter 6 (Continued)

[Ianaeveli Tigenet]

"And Section 7 supersedes when there's a theft from the Archives," Katen says, an acid edge creeping into her voice as she crosses her arms over her chest. "You wouldn't know anything about missing materials, would you?" she continues, her voice growing sickly sweet. "You were, after all, digging into that supposed Kasiali noble weren't you? What was his name? Cavan? No, I remember. Chavon."

Missing files about Chavon. With no record of them having been signed out. Despite the heat of the day, a little sliver of ice ice runs through Iana. This is, of course, exactly why Iana is trying to get where she is going.

(A very small, very uncharitable bit of Iana wonders if Katen might be part of the conspiracy, and that she is speaking of those records as a way of taunting Iana. But, no, she has no evidence of that; and just because Katen is not a nice person does not mean that she is a villain.)

Iana takes a very long, very deep breath - long enough to count to ten. Having to deal with Meribel and Katen both in the space of an hour is enough to try even her abundant patience.

But when she begins again, she does succeed in speaking more gently - almost the tone she would use if she were speaking to someone she likes. Almost. "Look. I didn't know there had been a theft. No wonder everyone is on edge." She shakes her head, and does not need to pretend at all to the sincere distress she feels at the thought of those particular documents going missing. "And of course you'd want to be tighter about security. I hope you can recover those papers. Truly, I do. But Garnyn and I still need to do our jobs, just as you need to do yours." She gives those last few words a bit of quiet emphasis: see, she is respecting that Katen is doing her job! "We're looking for the records from the Guild of Carters and Haulers from the western district, related to an assault that took place there a few days ago."

Once again, Iana manages to tell her favorite kind of lie: the kind where everything is technically true, just reshaped into a different story. The name of 'Macie' did come up in relation to the carters in the western district, and an assault. (And the eastern, at the same time.) She just hopes that Katen will connect the dots herself into the misleading picture that Garnyn is there for a legal consultation rather than anything else.

[78rpmlife]

"We've been investigating an apparent conspiracy in this city, one which seems to be aimed at sabotaging the Wards. We don't have any evidence Rothenend is involved—frankly, I'd be at a loss to explain it if we did, since he seems like the last person to want to bring the Wards down—but it's possible that in investigating that we've brushed up against something he's got cooking off-books. We do know that he's somehow connected to the girl who mysteriously came through the Wards and then disappeared." Georg glanced at Elda, knowing she has her own theories about Rothenend's involvement.

"In any event, Master Adaye has been helping us investigate this conspiracy. We think the murder of Jupin Askel—and the framing of a Naucan Scholar for it—is another of their schemes, and she was helping us ensure that we retained access to the supposed murderer's body in order to investigate. Then Rothenend suddenly puts her under lock and key."

Georg knows that he's leaving quite a bit out, and it goes against all the times his mother hammered into his head that he should always tell the advocate working for him everything and all of it true, but he's not sure he can start talking about pages and people being brought from one into another without Risine thinking they're a couple of cranks.

Risine's eyebrows climb her forehead as Georg continues on. "You really were born to the stage, weren't you?" she replies dryly. She glances in Elda's direction. "You're not speaking up, so you must not dispute any of this."

Elda shakes her head, straightening up in her chair. "No, Honored Barimond. The Scholar has given a succinct, accurate picture of the situation."

Risine snorts. "Honored indeed," she murmurs and leans back in her chair. Slouching, really, hands crossed over her midsection as she looks back at her two visitors, thinking silently for a long while. "Look. I'd like to help you. For one thing, if there's one person in this school that needs someone poking around in his memory glass files it's... well, if there's only one person, it has to be Master Iene. That guy is as crooked as they come, but no one's getting anywhere near those files without a legion of Obsidian spies and a company of Rhamian shocklancers. But!" she says, raising a finger. "If there's two people, one of them's Tullen Rothenend. Old, kindly men with snowy beards make my ass twitch, and that one more than most. He's been hiding things for decades, I feel it in my bones."

Her lips curl into a disappointed sneer and she trails off. "Where was I?" she says after a moment. "Right, I'd like to help you. Goddess knows it needs to be done." Then she shakes her head. "But this is too much. Even for me. I'm old, kids. I've been the patron of too many lost causes over the years. One more is likely to do me in. I've got seventeen thousand cold cases and thousands more that have been stonewalled, spiked, sunk or worse. I--"

She cuts off suddenly. Slowly, like she's sneaking up on prey, she leans forward again, eyes narrowing. "Wait. Elsebethson, you said. Of the Peregrine Elsebethsons? Was your grandfather Anselm Peregrine, by chance?"

When Georg nods, a smile creeps across Risine's face. She holds up a finger, gesturing for her visitors to wait. With sudden energy, she hops up from her chair, absent-mindedly humming a tune as she opens up a drawer in the tall cabinet next to her desk. The tune tugs at the corners of Georg's mind, until he realizes where he's heard it. The music department in Opal. It's a very old standard that's still performed in some combo groups. The title? I've Got You Now.

"HA!" she cries suddenly, pulling a file from the drawer. "A suggestion: never store your documents on memory glass. Too easily compromised." Of course, most memory glass recorders don't seem to work any more, and haven't for a while now. She opens up the file and flips through a few of the pages before she stabs her finger down. "Here's my offer. Your grandfather figures prominently in an old case I worked ages ago, but I never could quite pin the connection down between him at the Angousks. Didn't help that one of my best witnesses recanted and another decided to learn how to swim. Down in the Canal District. With a knife in his back." She points that finger at Georg. "You see what you can dig up about Grandpa Anselm and his ties to the Angousk family, and I help you bring down Rothenend. And free Master Adaye, of course."

She extends a hand toward Georg. "What do you say?"

[78rpmlife]

"I eagerly await his response," Asra responds with carefully practiced patience. As soon as the door clicks behind him, however, an emotion carefully hidden behind her calm demeanor erupts.

"O's and A!" she hisses under her breath excitedly, prancing with a little hop and skip over the nearest "wall" to examine it further. Her academic curiosity was burning furiously, angry at how long it had taken for the receptionist to leave so that she could examine the masterpiece of an enchantment that turned the walls fully transparent for such a beautiful panoramic view. Or perhaps they were like the door, and showing an idyllic scene as opposed to the real thing? Whatever the cause, it was masterful, and she had to know how it worked.

This is an illusionist's dream. When she opens her senses fully, Asra can see the incredibly intricate weaves of light and shadow that make up the... walls? Are they really walls? She reaches out to touch one, not certain whether her hand will pass through or not, only to find that they're indeed solid. She studies further, trying to figure out if they're normal walls that simply are transmitting an image from outside or if they're actually light turned into something tangible. There was talk at the university back home in Hara that someone was working on solid light, she remembers, but at the time she wasn't all that interested...

Wait a moment.

What she had taken at first for a seamless interplay of threads of light is, on further examination, not so seamless. In places the threads have begun to fray, in other places they're... well, knotted together is the best analogy Asra can think of at the moment. And those knots are loose in places.

She probes carefully at them, only for her probing to loosen them even further. She can see the glitch in the wall, a flicker of darkness that radiates out from a point like a pebble dropped into a still pond. As she pulls back, she realizes that it would hardly take an effort to unravel the entire thing.

And if it truly is hard light, that unraveling would make it awfully easy to fall through. And down. Down quite far.

"The Headmaster--"

The receptionist's voice, dry as ever, sounds from the door to the Headmaster's office only to cut off suddenly. "What are you doing?" he asks coolly, fixing Asra with an unreadable stare.

[78rpmlife]

But when she begins again, she does succeed in speaking more gently - almost the tone she would use if she were speaking to someone she likes. Almost. "Look. I didn't know there had been a theft. No wonder everyone is on edge." She shakes her head, and does not need to pretend at all to the sincere distress she feels at the thought of those particular documents going missing. "And of course you'd want to be tighter about security. I hope you can recover those papers. Truly, I do. But Garnyn and I still need to do our jobs, just as you need to do yours." She gives those last few words a bit of quiet emphasis: see, she is respecting that Katen is doing her job! "We're looking for the records from the Guild of Carters and Haulers from the western district, related to an assault that took place there a few days ago."

Once again, Iana manages to tell her favorite kind of lie: the kind where everything is technically true, just reshaped into a different story. The name of 'Macie' did come up in relation to the carters in the western district, and an assault. (And the eastern, at the same time.) She just hopes that Katen will connect the dots herself into the misleading picture that Garnyn is there for a legal consultation rather than anything else.

Katen stares flatly back at Iana, eyes searching over her face as though looking to think of another reason to gatekeep the Archive. In the face of Iana's stubborn pleasantness though she finally relents.

"Very well. Just know that we're going to be keeping a close eye on anything removed from the Archive. So make sure you sign out properly."

A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, but it's not particularly friendly.

"Or don't. That would be fine too. I'll know who to look for then."

She touches a panel on the Archivist's desk and an audible click indicates the door to the Archive is unlocked. "Go on. Get out of here," she says a little sourly. Iana has won one more battle in their curious war of wills.

* * *

The Archive is a simple, straightforward word for a space that is anything but. One enters at the top floor, a domed ceiling overhead tiled in geometric black and white patterns. The top floor is taken up by a single large platform connected to the door by a wide catwalk, rails preventing the unwary from falling off the edge.

Which would not be a pleasant experience.

It's hard to tell exactly how far down the Archive goes, at least from the top floor. The air has a faint haze to it, kept cool and dry in order to preserve the items and documents kept inside. Iana knows there are ten total floors until one reaches the bottom a hundred feet down; she's had to visit all of them at one time or another. It's a collection to rival the main library of the School, but many of the things in this collection are not for general viewing. The main platform houses the directories and the lift platforms to the lower levels. There are stairwells leading down on the opposite side of the platform, but for obvious reasons no one likes to take them. On days when the lift platforms aren't working, the word gets around the Bin in a hurry.

Garnyn lags behind, stopping halfway across the catwalk to lean over the railing and look down. "Wow," he breathes. "I've heard stories of the Archive, but it's so much more impressive in person." He looks up at Iana, a boyish grin slipping on to his face. "Do you ever want to, I don't know, drop something over the edge? There's a cliff back home that we used to toss rocks over and count how long it would take before we heard them hit. Though that would be dangerous here, of course, with so many people around."

He stands up again, rubbing one side of his face. "Your... colleague. She's a challenge, isn't she? Do you think these missing files are important?"

[Asralynn Beauchaud]

"The Headmaster--"

The receptionist's voice, dry as ever, sounds from the door to the Headmaster's office only to cut off suddenly. "What are you doing?" he asks coolly, fixing Asra with an unreadable stare.

Asra jumps back from the wall, her cheeks reddening deeply as she becomes flustered by the receptionist's sudden appearance. Quickly attempting to save face, she clears her throat and squares her shoulders.

"My apologies," she begins politely. "I'm from Whitestone, so I had to take the opportunity to admire the masterful enchantments of the walls. Its quite fascinating, but unfortunately, not why I am here. You have news from the Headmaster?"

She offers him only a quick explanation of her behavior, not of her findings. Of course, who would think there was anything to find? Asra had merely been looking for information on its construction, but instead found the trigger that lead to its destruction. She could use that if necessary...

Though in what event would it be necessary to destroy such a piece of art?

She didn't want to think about it. Not when she needed her wits about her to speak with the Headmaster.

[Georg Elsebethson]

Risine's eyebrows climb her forehead as Georg continues on. "You really were born to the stage, weren't you?" she replies dryly. She glances in Elda's direction. "You're not speaking up, so you must not dispute any of this."

Elda shakes her head, straightening up in her chair. "No, Honored Barimond. The Scholar has given a succinct, accurate picture of the situation."

"If I were to try to stage this," Georg says wryly. "They'd tell me no audience would believe in it. Then someone would try to knife me in a dark alley a week later." The fact that Risine is not dismissing them out of hand is promising. Whether or not she believes their story, she's clearly more than willing to believe that something fishy is going on.

She cuts off suddenly. Slowly, like she's sneaking up on prey, she leans forward again, eyes narrowing. "Wait. Elsebethson, you said. Of the Peregrine Elsebethsons? Was your grandfather Anselm Peregrine, by chance?"

When Georg nods, a smile creeps across Risine's face. She holds up a finger, gesturing for her visitors to wait. With sudden energy, she hops up from her chair, absent-mindedly humming a tune as she opens up a drawer in the tall cabinet next to her desk. The tune tugs at the corners of Georg's mind, until he realizes where he's heard it. The music department in Opal. It's a very old standard that's still performed in some combo groups. The title? I've Got You Now.

"HA!" she cries suddenly, pulling a file from the drawer. "A suggestion: never store your documents on memory glass. Too easily compromised." Of course, most memory glass recorders don't seem to work any more, and haven't for a while now. She opens up the file and flips through a few of the pages before she stabs her finger down. "Here's my offer. Your grandfather figures prominently in an old case I worked ages ago, but I never could quite pin the connection down between him at the Angousks. Didn't help that one of my best witnesses recanted and another decided to learn how to swim. Down in the Canal District. With a knife in his back." She points that finger at Georg. "You see what you can dig up about Grandpa Anselm and his ties to the Angousk family, and I help you bring down Rothenend. And free Master Adaye, of course."

She extends a hand toward Georg. "What do you say?"

Georg has a bad feeling when Risine brings up Grandpa Ansy, but there's no point in denying the family connection. There aren't exactly that many Peregrines around. That bad feeling is confirmed when Risine elaborates and makes his earlier joke about alleyways uncomfortablely apropos. There's a tricky bifurcation in his mind as he reckons with the fact that he is enlisting an Advocate for someone else, but that she is not his family's advocate.

Still, he doesn't have much in the way of choice here. With a sigh, Georg extends his hand to meet Risine. "Alright, this is too important, and I'm trusting that you have good reasons for wanting to resolve this case." He's either going to have to convince Ayla to help or go behind her—and his mother's—back. "Can I ask who or what the target of the investigation is?"

After a pause, he adds, "Also, can we maybe make sure helping Master Adaye is top priority?"

[Ianaeveli Tigenet]

Katen stares flatly back at Iana, eyes searching over her face as though looking to think of another reason to gatekeep the Archive. In the face of Iana's stubborn pleasantness though she finally relents.

"Very well. Just know that we're going to be keeping a close eye on anything removed from the Archive. So make sure you sign out properly."

A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, but it's not particularly friendly.

"Or don't. That would be fine too. I'll know who to look for then."

She touches a panel on the Archivist's desk and an audible click indicates the door to the Archive is unlocked. "Go on. Get out of here," she says a little sourly. Iana has won one more battle in their curious war of wills.

A sharp retort rises up in Iana's mind - but, with monumental effort, she makes herself bite it back. She settles for a poisonously sweet smile to match Katen's sour one, and says nothing more than "Thank you," as she hustles herself and Garnyn into the Archive.

As soon as the door closes behind them, Iana lets out a deep rush of a sigh. She has gotten past the obstacle that is Katen. What's more, she is finally, finally back in a place where she feels at home.

The Archive - Katen aside - is a place of peace, order, information. The particular timbre of its cavernous echoes is a familiar sound; the dry scent carries comforting notes of paper and leather and ink. The vast atrium and monumental architecture might feel imposing to some - and certainly seems to be having that effect on Garnyn - but for Iana, it is the most at ease she has felt since leaving her desk in the Bin that morning.

She draws a long deep breath of the Archive's familiar cool air, narrow shoulders releasing a little of the tension they have held onto for hours.

Garnyn lags behind, stopping halfway across the catwalk to lean over the railing and look down. "Wow," he breathes. "I've heard stories of the Archive, but it's so much more impressive in person." He looks up at Iana, a boyish grin slipping on to his face. "Do you ever want to, I don't know, drop something over the edge? There's a cliff back home that we used to toss rocks over and count how long it would take before we heard them hit. Though that would be dangerous here, of course, with so many people around."

He stands up again, rubbing one side of his face. "Your... colleague. She's a challenge, isn't she? Do you think these missing files are important?"

The smile that Iana offers to Garnyn in return carries the same ease that suffuses the rest of her manner, full of genuine appreciation for his reaction - and a hint of mischief, too, when he asks about dropping thing over the edge. "Oh, we've done that," she confides. "If you're here late enough at night, it's fairly deserted, and of course we want to know how it sounds when different things drop to the bottom! Or, if you have a friend on the bottom floor, and a very durable book that you want to get to them in a hurry…"

The fleeting humor fades, though, at Garnyn's next words. "Yes, I'm sorry that you had to get caught up in that. Katen has just always been that way! And I am positive that those files are important," Iana declares - and then, slower and with more thought, "Actually, I would be very interested to know which ones, exactly, have gone missing. Of course I couldn't ask Katen, but knowing what they don't want us to find out will be extremely informative."

[78rpmlife]

"My apologies," she begins politely. "I'm from Whitestone, so I had to take the opportunity to admire the masterful enchantments of the walls. Its quite fascinating, but unfortunately, not why I am here. You have news from the Headmaster?"

The secretary looks impassively back at Asra, no approval, no disapproval. The silence lasts a little too long to be entirely comfortable.

"Headmaster Rothenend will see you now," he says finally. His lips curve ever so slightly. If it weren't for the fact that he is otherwise so expressionless, it would hardly be noticeable. "I trust you will be on your best behavior. Follow me."

He turns without waiting to see if Asra follows and walks down a short hallway. The door at the end, a massive piece of elven-shaped wood, is slightly ajar. The secretary pushes it open further to allow Asra entrance.

The office itself would be rather austere if it weren't for the enchanted wall opposite the door. Like the outer reception area, this wall displays images. Unlike that area, however, this doesn't seem to simply be a trick of light that makes it act like a window. Instead, different areas of the wall display a head-spinning array of moving images that Asra can only begin to take in before Rothenend waves a hand at the wall to blur its contents:

... storm-lashed remains of a harbor where a jungle seems to have overtaken the city beyond it, vines and trees and strange chimeric half-insect half-mammalian flying creatures everywhere while fishing boats have been tossed up out of the sea to lie splintered on the cobblestone streets.

... a sunlit grassland prairie, wildflowers blooming among the waving grasses, but judging by the size of the three horses that feed there, the wildflowers have grown to the size of massive trees.

... a city on fire, a massive humanoid figure towering over the buildings that seems to be made of fire itself.

Asra realizes she knows this city, the shape of the hills behind the fiery leviathan. It's home. Hara.

And then all the images, most of which Asra never had a chance to study, flicker into a uniform soft grey color.

"Scholar Beauchaud," the Headmaster says crisply. "Sit."

He gestures at a chair, and Asra realizes that she hasn't looked at the rest of the room yet. There is a desk in front of the enchanted wall, but it is nearly empty of anything that resembles work. A round table with seating for four is set in the corner; this is where Rothenend gestures. There is a large woven rug from southern Ardraven covering the floor and a glass-fronted case on one wall that appears to hold a variety of magical artifacts. But in all, for having been Headmaster for over ten years, the office has very little in the way of personal effects.

"Tell me what you've learned."

Unlike his grandfatherly manner near the gate, Rothenend is all business now. He does not request that Asra sit, he does not ask that she provide a report. He instructs, expecting to be obeyed.

[78rpmlife]

Georg has a bad feeling when Risine brings up Grandpa Ansy, but there's no point in denying the family connection. There aren't exactly that many Peregrines around. That bad feeling is confirmed when Risine elaborates and makes his earlier joke about alleyways uncomfortablely apropos. There's a tricky bifurcation in his mind as he reckons with the fact that he is enlisting an Advocate for someone else, but that she is not his family's advocate.

Still, he doesn't have much in the way of choice here. With a sigh, Georg extends his hand to meet Risine. "Alright, this is too important, and I'm trusting that you have good reasons for wanting to resolve this case." He's either going to have to convince Ayla to help or go behind her—and his mother's—back. "Can I ask who or what the target of the investigation is?"

After a pause, he adds, "Also, can we maybe make sure helping Master Adaye is top priority?"

Risine shakes Georg's hand once firmly, though it's clear she's momentarily fascinated by how his hand dwarfs her own. With a quick shake of her head, she continues. "Naturally. If I had any other leads to follow on this old case," she says, flicking her fingers at the folder on her desk, "I'd still be working on it. So Adaye's case will be my sole focus."

She folds her hands atop the folder and sits straight. "Ellien Angousk, who would've been Emmenal and Agara Angousk's grandmother, built the family fortune very quickly. Far more quickly than anyone would have expected. More quickly than legal means would make possible. I want to know how it happened. As far as I've been able to piece together, she had help from several places. Your grandfather was known to be an associate of Ellien's, though what manner of associate I won't speculate on aloud. No one likes to hear the shenanigans their ancestors might have been up to, that much I've learned."

Risine jabs a finger into the air. "However. No one in the kinds of businesses the Angousks have their fingers in, nor their associates, give or accept help with no strings attached. I tried getting help from Obsidian to track down some of the more... aspirational accounting methods or even better, some of the sneakier dealings, but I got stonewalled every time. Someone was blocking me from getting at those records, and I'm not exactly in the good graces of the administration to go about trying to overrule them." She smiles thinly. "Being a boil on the collective asses of anyone with a shred of power does that to a girl, you know."

"But if you can dig into Anselm, you could illuminate a lot of things that have been in the dark for a long time. And could help me bring old Cheesebreath to justice. That man -- Emmenal Angousk, that is... his brother Agara seems harmless -- is more crooked than my aged spine and deserves to be drowned in the most backwater shit-filled canal in the district. Figuratively and literally."

[Georg Elsebethson]

Risine shakes Georg's hand once firmly, though it's clear she's momentarily fascinated by how his hand dwarfs her own. With a quick shake of her head, she continues. "Naturally. If I had any other leads to follow on this old case," she says, flicking her fingers at the folder on her desk, "I'd still be working on it. So Adaye's case will be my sole focus."

"I'm more concerned about you getting carried away with the idea of bringing down the Headmaster," Georg says wryly, engulfing her had in his for a moment. "Not that the bastard doesn't have it coming."

She folds her hands atop the folder and sits straight. "Ellien Angousk, who would've been Emmenal and Agara Angousk's grandmother, built the family fortune very quickly. Far more quickly than anyone would have expected. More quickly than legal means would make possible. I want to know how it happened. As far as I've been able to piece together, she had help from several places. Your grandfather was known to be an associate of Ellien's, though what manner of associate I won't speculate on aloud. No one likes to hear the shenanigans their ancestors might have been up to, that much I've learned."

Georg waggles his hand. "Depends on the flavor of shenanigans, but I take your meaning." Hearing stories about Auntie Filomena's livestock vandalism is one thing; finding out that a relative had a habit of knifing people and dropping them in the canal is quite another.

"But if you can dig into Anselm, you could illuminate a lot of things that have been in the dark for a long time. And could help me bring old Cheesebreath to justice. That man -- Emmenal Angousk, that is... his brother Agara seems harmless -- is more crooked than my aged spine and deserves to be drowned in the most backwater shit-filled canal in the district. Figuratively and literally."

"So how does finding out about Ellien's shady dealings help you get at Emmenal? You think some of those deals are still in effect?" Georg twists his mouth. "Again, not saying I won't dig into for you, I'm just not seeing how digging up grandpa's skeletons gets at cheese breath aside from a hit to the reputation." Given how tarnished Emmenal's reputation is already, he's not sure what that would accomplish.