The Effaced: Chapter Nine

A moment after the door shut, lights blazed across the wall as layer after layer of wards engaged, wrapping the entire room in a cocoon of protective magic. The attention diverting ward that surrounded me faded, and I rubbed my arms to get some of the tingling sensation out, then looked at Zone. 

“What was that?” we both said in exact unison. 

“Those weren’t the constables,” we said, again speaking at the same time. 

We both took a moment to breathe and focus, and then she gestured to me. 

“What did you notice?” she asked. 

“Whoever they were, they were not constables, as you said. A new type of enchanted gun. Heavy rounds. Almost looked like it would be more suited to airship combat or punching through heavy wards. Which means they came prepared for your skills, in case you weren’t willing to be so obliging. If the enchantments were right, then it might have even been enough to kill me before I could break the guns, so they were prepared for my skill as well.” 

As soon as I stopped speaking, Zone took a moment to process and break down the information I’d given, then started giving her own observations. 

“The wands weren’t the standard battle and utility wands given to constables,” she said. “Obviously, I can’t do a full analysis on the spellwork without having one, but the material they were made of was slightly different, and it put more strain on the wards than I would have expected. Maybe it’s custom work, maybe military, or maybe from a lab’s personal armory. They thought that it would be enough to punch through my wards. The staves that the mages had were… strange. Again, it’s hard to tell on sight, I’m not an archmage who can read magic in the air. But I think they may have been imbued items.” 

My eyes narrowed at that as I thought about the implications. 

Imbued items were a type of enchantment that required the use of an aura spark for its creation, not unlike how the aura spark from Truelight had been used to awaken my aura. The sparks were valuable, since they could turn a non-mage into a mage, or be used to significantly increase the auric capacity of someone who was already a mage.

When someone with an aura passed certain age requirements, suffered severe injury, or had a serious illness, they could get a tidy sum for their last will and testament if they donated their aura spark to someone under twenty-five, who had scored well in the magical theory courses.

Using an aura spark to create a magical item was rare. A well planned enchanted item was able to sustain itself on local ambient aura and the recharge used to create it, or else it would be hooked into an aura generator, like an airship’s core.

The only reason to use an aura spark to create an item was because you needed it to have more power than what a normal item could give, but also to fit into a compact space. Even the smallest aura generator was the size of an overgrown watermelon. 

In short, it meant that getting an imbued item legally was difficult and expensive, since it was illegal for private citizens to pay for someone to be donated to them directly. You basically needed a friendly, dying, mage to pay for the construction of the magic with their life.

If you looked outside of legal avenues, there were other options. The Arenamaster had collected the spark of anyone who died in her arena and used them for her plans and work, as well as to improve her band of child soldiers. 

If she had escaped prison, it was possible she’d tapped into hidden caches, not unlike the one I had in my apartment. 

But the Arenamaster wasn’t the only shady person in the undercity, she’d just been the biggest and baddest. There were other ways to procure an aura spark – the black market being the biggest one. 

The woman who’d run a component store that Zone occasionally shopped at when we’d been allowed out of the arena had sold illegal components, as did a few other places, and it wouldn’t have shocked me to learn that they could procure one. There were also a few of the demonic clans that could certainly procure one by calling in deals that had gone poorly…

“We’re dealing with someone who is either very rich, has strong connections to one of the power players in the undercity, or comes from a family of hoarders and mages that stretches back long enough for them to loan out staves to a strike squad,” Zone said, and I nodded my agreement. 

“Could be both rich and undercity connections,” I offered. “I don’t think it’s the last one. Even in places where mage families are more common, I don’t think they’re common enough to hand them out like that.”

“You’re probably right,” Zone agreed. “Though… Maybe not. The aura generators have meant the old families who used it for stable ward schemes are now able to free up the power, and they could have put two into outfitting a military unit.” 

“Yeah, that’s possible,” I agreed, knitting my eyebrows together. 

“It’s probably the least likely, but we don’t want to eliminate any possibilities, including the Arenamaster,” Zone said. “But if she was trying to capture you, she would probably want me too. Then again, I never had the crowd draw that you did, if she was trying to get the arena up and running again…” 

“I don’t know if it was her, but it is possible,” I agreed. “I think it’s more likely to be connected to whatever group or person is framing me for the murder of the senator.” 

“Why was the senator killed?” Zone said with a frown. “I hadn’t dug into that, because that was a topic for your attorney, but I’m not sure if that’s… safe.” 

“Agreed. What do you know about Senator Ermonte?” I asked. 

Zone closed her eyes, and I could see her and her demon doing mental calculations, trying to recall every bit of information they could about what was going on. For a moment, I felt the pain of having lost Odril again, then pushed it down. That was not helpful to surviving. 

“Senator Ermonte was a member of the Workmanship Party,” she said. “For being a politician, he was a good egg. I voted for him when he was up for re-election last year. He was… fifty-nine, if I recall correctly? So this would have been his second to last term.”

“What made him a good egg?” I asked. “Maybe that holds a clue?” 

“He supported the building of multiple new schools in the undercity, as well as using druids to clear out an area that the Throne of Pain had made uninhabitable. He was one of the ones who put in the term limits for senators, that was what made him have a big splash.” 

I remembered hearing about that in college, but at the time I’d been working to deprogram myself from some of the worst habits that I’d picked up, and politics hadn’t exactly been on my mind.

“Then if this was a politically motivated murder, it would have probably been from someone who was looking to stop something he was working on, probably something that was good for the people who couldn’t afford to live on the skyways, but bad for the people who did. What, was he working on creating a new tax code or something?”

“Hold on,” Zone said, and even though her eyes were closed, I could see them twitching as her eyes darted around. I couldn’t see magic, but I would have bet anything that she was using her memory enhancement arch-star. 

I waited patiently as she sorted through her memory bank, and then finally she nodded. 

“He was working on a budget restructure, but… it wasn’t anything like that. He had his standard things he was arguing for, that all the Workmanship party wants – stronger rights for blue collar workers, better wages for people on the ground and even in the undercity. The Ligature’s senators were arguing mostly alongside them, with the Steelair Party and Three-Falcon Party arguing against, and Westman Party not having much to say. The other parties with one or more senators woul–”

“Ermonte,” I said, snapping her back to focus. With as much stuff as Zone crammed away, I thought it was a miracle she could find any information at all. Even with her organization, though, tangents became easy.

Her eyes flickered around wildly, but she nodded. 

“Two reporters, one for The Daily Rabbit, and one for Westman Political Papers, had a small line or two in their issues from two days ago that he was apparently trying to allocate a large sum towards setting up a new program with Elucidate Labs.” 

She frowned. 

“None of the other papers that I get issues from mentioned this. Not even Rapid Report, who’s usually pretty good about interesting political things.” 

I leaned forwards. This might actually be something that I could use. 

“What was the project?” I asked. “That has to be it, right?” 

Zone’s eyes flickered, then snapped open, and she shook her head. 

“I don’t know, Mist, I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t expect you to know everything.” 

“Just almost everything, right?” Zone said, the corners of her lip curling up some. 

“Now you’re starting to use your brain,” I said. She threw a crumbled piece of paper at me, and I snagged it out of the air. 

For a moment, I felt like we were teenagers again, bantering while we broke down information about a challenging opponent in the arena. 

“What kind of tools do you have for me?” I asked her. 

“I’m not exactly on the dark side of the law anymore,” she reminded me. 

“Mhm,” I agreed. “So you’re really going to tell me that you don’t have anything that can help me that you’re able to part with? Come on, I know you stole a planar locker as well. Plus, who said anything about it being illegal? I’d be happy to get some protective spells, and I’m confident you can sell those.” 

She smirked at me, eyes glinting.

“Well, if you’re paying…” 

I grumbled and made a rude gesture in her direction. I made decent money working on repairs, but I didn’t know when I’d be able to get back to that, if I ever could. Besides, I had to pay for my attorney. There was always the slim chance that he’d be able to put all of this to bed.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “You’re charging the reserves back up in exchange. Your auric capacity is way too high. Have I ever told you that?” 

“Only every day from the age of eleven until… Today.” 

She slid open a small, cleverly disguised, hidden panel inside one of her filing cabinets, and I expected that she was going to pull out one of the enchanted cloth sheets, but she didn’t. She did pull out a piece of cloth, but it was a scarf, sewn with enchantmetnts that I thought might be a veil? I wasn’t a master enchanter, but I’d had to pick up a few things, working on airships.

“What’s this?” I asked, running my fingers over it. 

“Patience,” she told me, before she proceeded to remove several more items from hidden compartments – a pair of brass buttons that had fine runes on them indicating protection from stranger forms of attack, a bracelet that didn’t have any visible runework, but probably had some clever hidden method to disguise the enchantment, and a wooden necklace with chunky beads, covered in cramped runes. 

That was when she finally finished, and nodded. 

“I don’t actually keep my locker with me here, and that’s where most of the more potent stuff is. If you can meet up with me at my home, I’ll see what I can do. But that scarf is a mobile attention ward, it should last a few hours, then it needs to be recharged by soaking it in water for about ten hours. It’s not as powerful as the one in this room – it will help you blend in with an urban environment or crowd, not slip through high security vaults.”

“The buttons I can figure out. One use only?” 

“Yep, but they can stop even some pretty powerful curses. They’ll get hot and turn to powder when they’re used up. The bracelet is one use protection also, but for physical damage, a mobile security ward. The necklace is the real thing, though. It’s not mobile, but it can be set up and taken down, and fueled directly by your aura. It creates a ward two feet in front of you. Three meters high, and a meter and a half long.”

I raised my eyebrows. That was pretty good – as she’d said, my auric capacity was pretty high. More than that, I’d squirreled away a lot of power in one of my arch-stars over the years. 

“Thank you,” I said as I put the small armory on. “Now, where’s your reserve crystal?”