BECMI Chapter 221 – Folding up the Furtive

“Betrayed by your Life-name,” I said to Clanmaster Demonhunter in a cruel, deadpan manner. “You’ve also been . Likely to ignore evidence of shadenelven infiltrators and where they might be coming from, misdirecting scouts and downplaying reports. Minor things nobody would notice if done right and the shadenelves were careful.” I lifted the to wash over his mate Coolhands, who was a warm and rich Yellow, but had no fluctuations.“Life-names when used by the trusting and foolish are a vulnerability, not a protection. WishGeasesTruth

The air rocked. Both elves staggered as something popped and crackled around them, but few of them saw it, as most of the elves were staggering at the power of ripping through them and holding up their lives for judgment.

If my nose popped a few drops, they were gone as they appeared as Healing Reserve dealt with them.

Judging by the amount of blood coming out of the noses of many of them, Heaven was being pretty sharp with exposing all their faults to their vastly superior selves and letting them know they weren’t all that.

would naturally blast away the magic used to make both suborned Clanmasters what they’d been told to do, laying out every insidious command they’d taken and obeyed, much to their horror if their faces were any indication.

“Whitemoon!” Demonhunter howled in shock and dismay, followed immediately by building rage, the blood streaming down from his nose like a badge of honor.

“Swiftstrike!” spat General Crimson likewise, his Sword already out even as he staggered, his own nosebleed staining his white surcoat a true crimson. “With your leave, my king!” the proud soldier swore as he tore out of the room at a run, not waiting for permission. Clanmaster Demonhunter was not far behind him, his wife hurrying to keep up.

“Wait, let’s try to catch the other three without alerting them!” I said after their backs as they raced off, using a completely deadpan voice that obviously wasn’t going to stop anyone, especially with most of the elves here on their knees in shock as the lies of their lives played out before them in exquisite detail.

King Lymeril was swaying, but still on his feet. “Perhaps you might be able to lead us to them in time, Lady Edge?” he managed to get out as he regained some composure, eyeing the blood on his hand from his nose and licking his lips at the salty tang of it.

“Mmm. One is on the other side of the city. If you don’t mind, I’ll have my Familiar round him up. If Your Majesty would care to keep up?” A flicker of her hand, and a appeared, all of black and rimmed in skulls and crimson roses. It dropped down to merely shin height, and Lymeril stepped onto it without hesitation.

Lady Edge blurred into motion while taking nary a step, sliding across the floor smoothly and sharply. The elven guards converging, spaced with clan retainers who had spun about to race after their clanmasters, saw their king in motion and raising his shining sword to point ahead of them as Lady Edge dragged him along, and with singsong cries, they charged after the pair of them.

It had gone very wrong, very fast.

Among the Sidhe, he was known as Garonfiel. He had lived among them for nearly two hundred years, ingratiating himself within the merchant clan of the Sidhe, the Rokku, and working his way up with a very non-Sidhe work ethic and aplomb for the job that dovetailed very nicely with the espionage activities he undertook.

He was only a step away from the leadership of the clan! Clanmaster Hydruis was an old and overweight fool who could be disposed of at any convenient time with a subtle poison that would imitate some unknown illness, and since so few Sidhe had any kind of tolerance for the workload of a master merchant, he would have smoothly taken control over a whole clan of the Sidhe without their knowing he was an agent of the shadenelves!

But now grim soldiers were racing about, and if he hadn’t decided to investigate what was going on at the Palace by a somewhat circuitous route, he would have run right into the squad sent to arrest him!

He needed to get over the wall NOW, and away from here without being traced. He had already tried to out of the city, and it felt like he had smashed his brain into a brick wall when he tried.

He slipped out of his alleyway , drifting above the ground, watching for elves acting abnormally, and swiftly picked out the soldiers atop the walls, their eyes aglitter with magic, looking for anyone who tried to flee using magic. They were not in ideal positions, and he saw a gap in their range of vision. He timed their scans to dart for a corner of the wall between them, then paused a moment, before shooting up and over and down the other side before he was seen.

He heard the faint edges of the screech of a very large bat, way up in the registers, and had only a moment to wonder what a bat was doing here in the Relarin forest and out during the day before he was slammed aside in midair.

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“Hello there!” a very sharp and unnatural tenor exclaimed in his ear as two massive claws came crushing closed about him, pinning his arms to his sides and tearing him off his course with contemptuous ease. Excited cries from at least two children and a sprite sounded off above him. “Yes, yes, I’ve caught one of the spies, little ones. We’re going to deliver him right to the king himself!”

Completely unable to free himself from a grip so crushing it was hard to breathe, yet tensing tighter with every inhalation so that he couldn’t even draw breath, Masarno of the Sternvult could only curse at his luck and wonder how everything had gone so wrong so quickly. He was whipped through the air like a fish plucked out of the water by a bird of prey, completely helpless as the bat leisurely banked and shifted direction with the deftness of a much smaller animal.

When he saw the Royal Guards gathered in the plaza before the Palace, pointing up at him and waiting for him, his heart finally sank in utter defeat as he realized what was coming.

This, this was not going to go well for him, or any of them…

Lady Edge was gone, and said she would be back tomorrow after she dropped off some human students she was escorting back to Zanzyr.

Before she left, she had calmly all six of the shadenelf spies, all of whom had been captured alive, to reveal the whole truth and nothing but the truth to their Sidhe captors, not batting at an eye at the ruin it would make of the shadenelf infiltration of Sidheduiche.

It was a ledger of red written in elven blood, going back centuries now, started even before the shadenelf diplomatic mission that had ended in such discord. Its foundation lay in devastated elven families and orphans or clanless elves whose heritage could not be absolutely confirmed, but who were adopted into other Clans as was their way. They had turned the community spirit of the Sidhe against them, using it to infiltrate them with their own trust, goodwill, and belief in one another.

Every major clan had been infiltrated. Clan Rokku’s assistant Clanmaster, who had used the name of Garonfiel, had wormed his way into the highest ranking spot among the clans, it was true, and from his position had made it easy for shadenelves to take up positions among the Sidhe and then move on into other clans. But he was not the first or most dangerous, as Lymeril’s own best friend had been a spy for over three hundred years, and the spymaster of the rest of the infiltrators.

The Lady Edge had absolutely destroyed centuries worth of work by the shadenelves, AFTER admitting she was one of them. It was hard to reconcile without a great deal more explanation, but it seemed that politics among the shadenelves could be as murderous as their own espionage efforts were. Her cold ruthlessness to the spies was noteworthy, her magical power was beyond question, and as far as any of the elves involved with this matter was concerned, her every word would be believed at this point.

Truly, she had taken the concept of being an honored guest and good neighbor to its absolute height.

King Lymeril had no shortage of lovers, but a woman like that made him think of the lack of a seat behind him, and the fact that he had no heirs to his own name, not that he had any lack of company…

Now, he had to consider how to deal with this matter, and what the Sidhe would do against such a blatant and sometimes outright murderous level of intrigue. Clearly the shadenelves had rulers that held very ill tidings for Sidheduiche, indeed…

He sighed. They needed more information. The Shaden had information on the Sidhe, but they had almost no information on the Shaden in return. But that, that might just be going to change…

“Well, you certainly had a short and interesting visit. I’ve never been in Sidheduiche. Maybe I’ll stop by on my way to Zanzyr,” Sama told me as the day came to a close.

My fellow students had whizzed about town, seeing the sights, buying stuff and selling stuff at Briggs’ direction, wondering why they were obeying the huge Ancient, and then deciding they were making too much money to care.

There were already quiet rumors floating that Sama and Briggs were preparing to leave, to the immense relief of many established powers in the city that had been tiptoeing around them for most of a decade, and that included the Emperor himself. While Emperor Magni was as skilled as a human warrior could be in this situation, the idea of facing off against Briggs seriously and in public was not something he wanted to see happen, and plying imperial influence against whatever Briggs did was a good way to get a hammer to the skull, if various folk found with their skulls reduced to a pancake had found out over the years after they’d irked him and thought blades or magic in the dark was a good way of dealing with him.

Sama was also Magni’s sword instructor, and The Emperor been laboring at trying to master the Ways for years. He didn’t want to fight her, either, not the least because the people who irked her just tended to vanish into the night and shadows they thought they were using, along with all the cutouts between them and her when they got fancy with things. Sama didn’t mind pruning the bad fruit from the Empire of Siricil at all, everybody knew she did it, and when people decided to do something about it, they fell off the tree, too.

“I believe I have found two of the three Immortals in the city, and I’m suspicious of a third,” Sama informed me as we walked down a road late at night. She clearly had a purpose in mind, and I just glided next to her, wondering what she was going to tell me.

“Analytics or experience?” I asked her calmly.

“Once you told us that, some things started to fall into place, machinations normal folk can’t see and don’t know the meanings of when they happen.”

“I see. I can verify exactly one.”

“You’re after Thanatos.” I inclined my head slightly. “He’s affiliated with the top levels of the Blitzengard, who dominate Angru,” she judged calmly.

“Very good. You came about that because?” I asked, when a clattering of metal presaged a rush towards of us darkly-armored bodies and cries of ‘Cursed Hag!’ and ‘Vile witch!’ and similar heartfelt praise of my escort.