Eight 5.23: In the Lair of the Beast I

The streets were dark and the air still heavy from the smell of meat butchered earlier in the day. Looking out the window, I saw a pair of patrolling soldiers, their lanterns bobbing as they walked past.

The common room downstairs was quiet. The inn’s staff had all gone to their beds except for a lone night watchman. He made his own patrol through the building and was seemingly more interested in our door than being wary of intruders.

I felt the Deer God’s spirit move through the corridor, descend the stairs, and then pass through the inn’s locked front doors. He and I were back to communicating through feelings and intentions, since Yuki wasn’t able to join a host on their spirit journeys.

Also, because the Deer God wasn’t able to reside in the herd while spirit journeying, his body lay motionless beside by the bed. Thin, fuchsia tendrils extended from between his shoulders—Yuki would be standing guard over him for the duration of the evening’s operations.

The Deer God trotted along the street toward the soldiers to check on them before turning toward the administrative hall. So far, nothing seemed to have alarmed him.

Fala and I waited for the soldiers to turn the corner down the street before going through the window and silently dropping to the ground below with the Light Fall spell. Camouflaged, we flitted along the path the Deer Guard had taken, pausing at the corner to make sure the soldiers were out of sight. The way was clear, so onward we went.

The land spoke to me of how the outpost mostly slept. A few people stirred behind their walls, but their attention was on matters closer to home—a man stitching a hole in his jacket, a woman tending to an ill child, a couple sitting together and murmuring.

At the end of the street, an old woman watched out her window, her gaze dutiful. The next street over, an older man filled the same role. Their talents were unremarkable, but both their spirits were dizzy with their allegiance to the empire.

They weren’t soldiers nor spies—at least not officially so. More like… volunteers, a kind of neighborhood watch looking for traitors and troublemakers.

Neither of them saw us pass by. No one did, not even the black cat with white socks. She was outside the administrative hall again, this time crouched and inching closer to a small mouse unaware that his doom stalked nearby.

The hall doors were locked, so Fala and I sneaked to the rear of the building, while the Deer God searched the interior for guards. He found a pair moving from floor to floor.

As the guards passed through the rooms, we saw the light from their lanterns spilling through the associated windows’ shutters. Every once in a while, one of them would hold an alarm stone up to see if there was anyone hidden.

Their patrol pattern turned out to be a simple one: up and down they went, opening doors and checking each room, from first floor to third and back again.

The pattern didn’t change after a second round of the guards’ patrol, so Fala and I moved again—this time to the window of the office of the man we’d seen working earlier in the day. I opened the shutter, while Fala manipulated the stone sill to extend a pseudopod up to unlatch the lock.

We slipped inside, closed the shutter, and then shut the window, re-latching it.

The air was still, the corridor outside quiet. By this point, the guards were up on the third floor. The Deer God confirmed it, and I felt his satisfaction as he began to consume the power within Sister Moon’s painting.

Fala moved to examine the books lining the shelves, while I started on the neat stacks of paper left on the desk, and it became quickly apparent that the office belonged to the local tax assessor. He seemed to have been reviewing the amounts collected from residents in advance of sending a report to the capitol.

Looking at the numbers, I wanted to whistle in surprise. All the rates were noticeably higher than in Albeityel, especially the death taxes—the amounts people were required to pay when there was a death in the family. The interesting thing was: relatives could offset the tax entirely if they were willing to entirely forego the dead person’s light.

I flipped through the papers to double-check, and it looked like a family could nullify two years of death taxes with one offset. That… that was a terrible deal, one that cut into their long-term growth. The light inherited from one’s elders was critical for developing the younger generation’s talents and abilities. But then again, what could the empire’s citizens do? If they couldn’t afford the tax, then they had to find another way to pay it.

The whole setup was insidious, a drain on the populace to keep them under-powered. No, not the whole populous. Not the wealthy and powerful among them. Just the poor and under-leveled.

Meanwhile, Fala flipped through the pages of book after book, letting Yuki scan the contents into their memory for analysis.

Their qi hummed in thought. ‘There are records here of regular shipments of light to the capitol, minus a percentage that fell under the regional master’s discretionary use.’

‘Does the book explain how she used it?’ Fala asked.

‘No, nothing,’ they replied. ‘The records are concerned with the sources and movement of money and light. What happens after is left undocumented, at least in these books.’

I set down the papers as I’d found them and began to flip through the books on the shelves too. They were lists and lists of families, their members, and the various taxes owed and paid. Just to confirm, there’s nothing related to the Eagle Fortress, Project Birthright, or anything like that?

‘Not yet,’ Yuki said, ‘but we’ll know more once we’ve had a chance to dig into the numbers.’

We’ll likely need to search Ashkandal’s office for the real goods, I thought.

‘Of course,’ Yuki replied.

###

The process of scanning the last five years of records took about an hour. That was long enough for the guards to have come by and leave twice. Each time, though, we’d simply gone out the window to wait them out.

Exploring the first floor, we found that half of the rooms were dedicated meeting spaces without anything of interest in them, while the other half included: a small room where staff could rest, an indoor latrine, an office devoted to the licensure of lodges and their members, another office that kept track of goods bought and sold, and so on.

Everything seemed to be well organized. We had no problems sifting through the records and storing five years’ worth of each room’s contents inside Yuki’s memory. Ideally, we would’ve gone farther back than five, but we had to stop somewhere.

A soldier and alarm stone guarded the basement landing, so we went up instead. Earlier in the day, we’d skipped the second floor entirely, and we quickly realized why. The space was split in two with a large ritual room occupying one side and the other devoted to storage. There were locked rooms containing enough weapons, gear, and preserved food to last the staff about two months. No spells, reagents, or magic, though.

The patrolling guards didn’t bother to check inside the locked storage rooms, so it was once again easy to slip past them—this time by hiding inside—before heading upstairs to the third floor.

By that point, the Deer God was waiting for us after having fully consumed the power inside the painting. With my spirit eyes open, I saw him poking his head through the wall to the region master’s office.

The door was locked, so Fala filled the keyhole with stone and manipulated the rock to turn the tumblers inside.

Before cracking it open, though, I asked the Deer God, Any magic?

He picked up on the question, a blend of emotion-thought-intention, and turned so that his head was visible. After a moment’s hesitation, he shook it. Then he tilted his antlers so that they pointed deeper into the office.

Nothing on the door, but there’s something inside? I clarified.

He nodded in reply.

Can you eat it? I asked, pantomiming the action.

His antlers tilted once more, this time in thought. From our discussions, I knew he believed there was a difference between power and magic—the first was apparently the motive force for the second, at least on our old world.

On Diaksha, the distinction was a lot less clear. And the Deer God was God-Touched like me. He’d gotten the soul mark as part his deal with the World Spirit, an incentive for participating in the System. In the past, he’d relied on his connection to me to access my copy of it, but now he possessed one of his own. It should’ve translated the abilities he’d had in the old world into this new one, but he’d been reluctant to try it out.

There’d been admittedly a lot to experiment with since the expedition to Old Baxteiyel, but still… I figured he’d want to know his capabilities.

A look came over him then, and his eyes bored into mine, like he possibly picked up on more of my thoughts than I’d intended. But I shrugged in response; this was Diaksha where you either adapted or died.

He’d been so incredibly focused on growing in power since our arrival in this world, and here he was leaving some on the table uneaten. What else was I supposed to think? Diaksha had changed him, just like it had changed me, and the sooner he came to terms with it, the better off he’d be.

The Deer God brought his nose closer, so that we were face to face. His eyes continued to stare into mine, yet my authority refused to let me bow my head. I stood solidly before him, and with a breath, with the most compassionate heart I could manage, I closed the distance to hug his neck. There was nothing to hold, of course, but I let my feelings radiate toward him.

I’d been in his place, yeah? And knew how hard all this was. You’ll figure it out. We’re here to help you do it.

I sensed him soften after a moment, and I saw how his chest expanded and released in a sigh. Through our connection, I felt a blend of frustration and wry amusement.

The Deer God stepped back, his neck moving through my arms. With a complicated look now in his eyes, he turned to enter the region master’s room.

‘Everything all right?’ Fala asked.

Not yet, I replied, but they will be.

###

The office was huge, occupying half the floor. A meeting table and cushions sat to the left and an area for more relaxed conversations to the right. Straight ahead, opposite the door, was the region master’s desk and to each side of it shelves spread like wings. They were stacked with books and scrolls.

The Deer God stood in an open area near the desk, his mouth embedded in the floor as if he were chewing something beneath it. I pushed the door further open and padded inside. Fala followed me in, shut the door behind us, and locked it.

A floor safe? I asked.

The Deer God paused his efforts to nod.

Can you tell if it’s trapped?

He nodded again.

Sulwa’s office had also had a trapped floor safe. Two wasn’t exactly a big sample size, but it was starting to look like standard procedure for these people.

We never did figure out how Sulwa’s safe had been trapped, though. Based on the Deer God’s findings, there was a magical component, but was there a physical one too? When we’d watched Dugo’s lads break into it, they’d appeared to have died from multiple causes.

Magic like the Silent Kill spell? Poison? Oh, poison was likely—it was such a nice way to kill without blowing up your stuff and damaging all your records.

Fala and I carefully moved into the office. While I went to check the shelves, she dropped into the stone floor to examine the safe from below.

‘It’s protected from intrusion,’ she sent. ‘I can lift the safe up so that it’s out in the open, though. Should I?’

Let’s wait until the Deer God is done eating the magic, I replied.

‘Then I’ll check the rest of the walls for now,’ Fala sent.

I nodded at that and started flipping through the books. Apparently, Ashkandal kept her own set of tax records. In her case, though, she did document how the money and light were used. I found the soldiers’ payroll information, the fees paid to the lodges for their services, and journal entries for “converting” visitors to Maltra’s interests.

Right there, in plain ink, was my pseudonym. The entry included my physical description, a personality profile, and the amount of time I’d spent in the presence of Sister Moon’s painting. “John” was noted as being particularly motived by greed, but also pleasantly open to new ideas.

Ashkandal expressed confidence I could be turned to Maltra’s interests after a second session within the painting’s influence.

There was also an entry for Emma, no less detailed than John’s. Her information seemed to be based on Sonasen’s observations, though.

Speaking of which… I went looking, and my finger stopped when I found Sonasen’s entry. Six years ago, she’d been caught smuggling goods into Bashtencru. Her weakness had quickly been identified and exploited. Namely, Ashkandal bribed her and her team with enough light for them all to become silvered.

Ashkandal expressed great satisfaction with this particular set of conversions. Sonasen and her team were quite knowledgeable of the alliance’s smuggling routes and had a surprisingly wide network of contacts along the border—all of which were now exposed and slowly being turned to Maltra’s purposes.

I steadily flipped through the conversion entries, making sure Yuki had a good look at every page. The information would likely prove critical to the alliance’s anti-espionage efforts.

What I couldn’t believe was that the records were out in the open, not even coded. It seemed Ashkandal took it for granted that these conversions were… right and just and good, and therefore didn’t need to be hidden.

Was that truly the rationale? If so, then Ashkandal was as brainwashed as the people she turned. I shook my head and kept scanning the pages.

Fifteen minutes later, Fala popped out of the wall. ‘There’s nothing else hidden, just the safe in the floor.’

Then come help me, I thought. I don’t want to leave any of this information behind.

‘Not yet,’ she replied. ‘I have an idea for how to deal with safe’s traps.’

I looked up and saw that she’d unloaded two piles of granite onto the floor. One was used to create a shelter in the corner farthest from the safe. The other was shaped like a balloon on top of the safe.

‘So if there’s fire or electricity or poison, it’ll be blocked by two different stone obstructions,’ she sent. Then a thought came to her. ‘If it is poison, I can seal it inside and keep it.’

That’s brilliant, I thought. You never know when a deadly gas will come in handy, but we’ll need to make sure it’s well-well-well sealed.

‘Of course!’

An hour later, and we were both working through the books as quickly as we could. Yuki practically hummed as the information flowed into them. If anything, we wanted more bodies to help us collect it all.

That was when another flair of satisfaction arose within the Deer God. He’d succeeded in eating the magic hidden inside the floor safe. That opened a whole new line of opportunities for him and us, but first we needed to pop that sucker open.

Fala and I put down our books and moved to the fortified shelter in the corner. Then, she manipulated the stone around the safe to raise it up into the second shelter she’d created above it. A dollop of rock felt onto the safe’s surface.

My beloved closed her eyes to commune with the stone; it became her body as she felt along the top of the safe for the keyhole, filled it with the rock, and then turned the tumbler.

All my senses were wide open; I’d cast every sensory spell in my position, so I heard the faint sound of glass cracking, followed by a short hiss. It had been a poison gas, after all! I didn’t smell anything, though, which was a glorious sign that it had been contained as intended.

The stone flowed up along each of the safe’s sides, then it flowed down the interior walls to make sure all of the gas would be captured before rising up once again. Fala shaped the granite into a sphere and levitated it in the air.

Rock fell away as she shrank the sphere smaller and smaller, compressing the gas inside.

Not too much, I whispered. We don’t want the pressure to crack the stone.

Fala shook her head. ‘I can feel the resistance. It’s fine.’

In the end, the sphere finished at about two inches across—much smaller than I’d anticipated. And there were still no unusual or unexpected scents. Just in case, though, we waited for half an hour with the windows cracked and Fala turning a stone fan she’d created to blow any stray gases outside.

We didn’t mess around, the two of us, and we only moved closer once we felt for certain that it would be safe. The poison gas ball got put into the Hoarder’s Pocket, along with all the stone we’d brought with us.

Finally, it was time to examine the safe’s contents.