Starbreaker: Volume 4, page 8
He cast a glance back to his friends. Now that the eidolon’s influence over him had faded, they’d shuffled awkwardly back to the base of his podium. He mouthed a thank you down to them, too, which Malachai pretended not to see, and Kaya grinned at.
Veilbohr cleared his throat. “As to the matter on which you will be deployed—”
Malachai surprised them all by speaking out, “Do we know where the Truthseekers from Strife went?”
Veilbohr seemed to deflate a little. “We have found no trace of any of my treacherous archaeologists as of yet. Though we continue to seek them. We must assume that they’ve gone to ground somewhere outside of Empyrean space. Given that they intended to transport an eidolon with them, one must assume that they have a secured base where such a thing could be safely contained, but as of yet, we have not been able to identify where it might be.”
Malachai continued, “Given that they had a gravity mage on their ship, I imagine that their range would be near-limitless, given how much time has now passed.”
“You understand our problem, then. Given how easily a gravity mage can travel, we have been forced to turn to other means if we are to have any hopes of discovering where they may have hidden themselves. Assuming it is even possible at all this point,” Veilbohr stated, his arms coming up to shrug helplessly.
But at that news, Sylvas found himself straightening as Strife started to pace angrily inside him. “I want to find them. I need to find them.”
There was another brief moment of discomfort among the council at the bestial tone in Sylvas’ voice.
“As soon as we have sufficient information to direct you to them, we will be happy to do so,” Elenya said quickly. “But for now, there is the matter that your soon-to-be mentor is looking into, that we hope might lead you in a similar direction.”
With a gesture, Greenmantle summoned a great illusion into the center of the chamber. An image of Inquisitor Caymar—the supposedly loyal mind mage who the council had used to probe him just before the whole crisis on Strife. The one who had tried to implant the idea of committing suicide in his mind. The image slowly shrank down as more information began to appear beside it. Star maps, shipping routes, and known business partners.
“The Thesulan Consortium are trading partners of both the Empyrean Alliance and the Obsidian Dominion. Formerly assumed to be minor players on the galactic stage, their attempts upon your life have suggested that they intend to be more involved in politics moving forward,” Greenmantle explained in a serious tone. “Now that we know that they are involved in Vault Hunting, we have come to believe that they have also been engaging in the illegal transportation of eidolons between planetary systems, and they may also have been involved in the dissemination of information to uncontacted worlds that may have led to their destruction via eidolon incursions.”
“Adding to that, the Hammerheart Consortium has been butting heads with them for years, calling them smugglers and worse,” Ironfist added. “We haven’t had anything official to work with. Certainly not beyond the typical fines and minor infractions that any company that scale would incur, but we’re hoping to change that, and quickly.”
Elenya nodded eagerly at the dwarf’s words and quickly took up the reins of what Sylvas realized was now a full briefing. “While their official base of operations is outside of our official jurisdiction in contested space, they are not beyond our agents’ reach. There are several locations throughout the border worlds of the Empyrean that we believe may be hubs where they conduct their illicit trade, and that will be a good place as any to track them down.”
“The Consortium have the advantage of mobility. Their myriad fleets are in constant motion, so any contraband that they may be in possession of can be shuffled between ships and kept out of sight of our inspectors.” Veilbohr looked like this was a personal insult to him specifically. “Unlike typical mega freighters, Thesulan ships are designed to dock and transship with one another in space, without the use of shipyard facilities. This allows them to shift materiel between them beyond the view of the worlds that they visit. Thus, a ship might make a long flight across the galactic arm without any apparent stops and arrive at its destination with an entirely different cargo than it commenced with. As such, their legitimate and illegitimate business operations are impossible to disentangle.”
“And believe me, we have since tried,” Elenya stated with a shake of her head. “Your mentor’s task will be to investigate this Consortium and to ascertain whether their illegal activities represent a serious danger to the Empyrean. Then act upon them accordingly.”
“Right, and does this mysterious mentor have a name?” Kaya seemed to have forgotten who she was talking to once more, giving her usual degree of lip.
It was right then that Elenya Starweaver, covenant mage and one of the most powerful people in the entire Empyrean, allowed herself a faint giggle. One that the other members of the council looked as taken aback by as Sylvas, until she managed to bring her tittering to a halt.
“Hector,” she said with another broad smile. “Your mentor’s name is Hector.”
Chapter 10
“At various times throughout the development of the Empyrean, there have been crisis points when the entire enterprise could have crumbled. Times when internal disagreements or external pressures might have resulted in the dissolution of the system of government or the destruction of the political or trading power of the collective. Yet at each of these points, there has been an invisible hand guiding the Empyrean through troubled waters. Information that was pertinent to the situation would suddenly be uncovered. A key agitator driving one of the crises might find themselves inexplicably unable to continue their agitation. Someone operating outside of the public eye was working to keep the Empyrean safe, and while the more religious among us might ascribe such things to fate, I am of a more literal bent. My belief is that there is an Empyrean Intelligence Service capable of markedly more than we are aware that its operatives achieve openly.”
—The Invisible Hand: A Thesis on Empyrean Intelligence Services
Hector walked into the wine bar with a predatory stride, his gaze sweeping over Sylvas and the others as if they were not there. They had been given a description of him along with the illusions woven over them when they were released from their private quarters in the Palace of the Vestige, and he more than lived up to it.
The elves of the city favored pastel colors, flowing, layered clothing, and simple elegance in their personal decoration. Hector was dressed in a black vest, a pair of oil-stained trousers that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a dwarf, and a substantial pair of boots the same color as his T-shirt, but at least a decade old, judging by how badly scuffed they were. Where elves were entirely devoid of body hair, so far as Sylvas had seen, Hector had a bristle of curly black hair right down the length of his arms and protruding from the front of his shirt. The only part of him that was clean-shaven was his face, but even that bore stubble. He was an average-sized human who would have been almost entirely nondescript in most places throughout the universe, but here, he stuck out like a sore thumb.
Malachai leaned in to whisper to Sylvas, “I was under the impression that this gentleman was meant to be a spy. Surely, he could have done something to blend in?”
Meanwhile, Kaya was just staring at the man, and his arms in particular, with a sort of glazed expression. Sylvas had to nudge her to get any sort of response. “Yep.”
Yet in spite of the fact that he should not have fit in at all on Alvarhain, a few moments after he’d sat up at the bar and started chatting with the elvish woman behind the counter, he seemed to fade out of everyone’s memory. No eyes were turned his way, and even when he laughed at some quip from the bartender, nobody so much as glanced around. Sylvas turned his magical senses in Hector’s direction, trying to work out if there was some sort of complex illusion at play to hide him from the awareness of those around him, but there was nothing. He was just blending in purely by behaving as though he belonged there. Presumably, there were other humans on the planet, tourists making a visit to such an important cultural site, and presumably his appearance was commonplace enough that he’d be forgotten about almost as soon as he left, but even so, none of the now ex-Ardent were impressed.
Time began ticking by, five minutes, then ten, without any sign that their contact was going to make contact with them. He went on chatting away happily, pretending that he’d never seen them.
“Are we meant to make the first move, do you suppose?” Malachai finally asked, his patience running out a little faster than Sylvas’ own.
“We were told to wait here, and he’d contact us,” Sylvas repeated verbatim from his perfect memory. “And that is what I intend to do.”
Kaya had failed to look away from Hector after his arrival. While the other two had maintained their cover as two elves just having a drink, the illusory avatar covering her form and doing some rather complex re-ordering of light to make it look like the honey wine she was glugging was going into the elvish mouth about a foot above her actual mouth had remained locked onto Hector. Sylvas nudged her again. “Any thoughts?”
Following her exact line of sight would have informed Sylvas that she wasn’t staring at Hector so much as his arms to the exclusion of all else. “I bet he could pick me up with one hand.”
“Very helpful.” Sylvas sighed, settling back to mime drinking his own wine. He didn’t hate elvish wine, but he was informed that it was something of an acquired taste, and the length of time that it took to acquire that taste sometimes outlasted a human lifetime. It mostly tasted like fizzy water to him, with the odd hint of something floral mixed in as an aftertaste. He knew that much of elvish culture revolved around subtlety. He just wished that the food and drink weren’t so subtle as to be completely bland to his palate. Then again, he was now quite happily consuming what would be a lethal cocktail of heavy metals and chemicals or anyone but him as a dietary supplement with every meal, so perhaps his palate wasn’t the most refined to begin with.
“His arms are very well-defined.” Malachai kept trying to make polite conversation with Kaya, even though they had nothing in common other than their mutual friend, and it was endlessly entertaining to Sylvas watching the usually suave and refined crown prince struggling to make a single topic connect.
“I wonder if the muscles go down the rest of the way?” Kaya replied. “I wonder if the hair does, too…”
Malachai’s upbringing had been somewhat conservative, given his position as major nobility, and he still wasn’t entirely accustomed to the way that the lower classes talked about attraction to one another. His illusory elf form blushed to a soft blue tone.
Sylvas cleared his throat, perhaps a little too loudly. “Malachai, please don’t encourage her. Kaya, please dial down your hormones by about seventy percent.”
Who taught you about hormones? Mira’s voice immediately chimed in. And don’t you want to get my opinion on the matter? On his rather shapely hands and the way that they could be wrapped aroun—
I absolutely do not. Sylvas sent back as he promptly muted their connection and watched as both of his companions looked down at their drinks and tried to compose themselves.
At the far side of the bar, someone playing one of the intensely complex stringed instruments that the elves seemed to favor began strumming it on the raised stage, and all eyes were turned in that direction. The first chilling notes of some long-forgotten tragedy had just begun to unfold in a ballad when Hector slipped into the booth beside them.
“Nice to meet you.” He had a wolfish grin that made Kaya’s mouth open and shut a few times without any noise coming out. Sylvas held out a hand to the man and was unsurprised to find it squeezed hard enough that it probably would have cracked bones if he hadn’t been magically reinforced.
“Sylvas Vail. Malachai Dusont. Kaya Runemaul.” Hector rattled off their names, pausing only briefly as he said Kaya’s to take in her overabundant excitement. “First time meeting someone like this?”
“Did we get something wrong?” Sylvas glanced around at the empty booths around him.
“You don’t look comfortable.” Hector still had his own glass of wine in his hand, and he swirled it, allegedly unleashing a bouquet of complex aromas that entirely passed Sylvas by. “People who don’t look comfortable stand out in places that are meant to be comfortable.”
“I am perfectly comfortable,” Malachai complained, stiffly.
Hector leaned in against Malachai’s side, making the man, and the elf projected over the man, bristle with annoyance. “You’ve got the experience, you know how to project confidence, and you know how to own the room, but now you’re in a room you don’t own, you don’t know what to do. Formal rules hold up in formal settings.”
“Out of the three of you, Sylvas is doing the best job, and he looks like he just made planetfall.”
Sylvas opened his mouth to object but honestly couldn’t. He had no idea what he was doing. Kaya pouted, though. “What’s the stanzbuhr doing that I’m not?”
“Well”—Hector rolled his head on his shoulders, loosening up—“he didn’t make the illusion of an upper-class elf drool over some stray human.”
“What, elves can’t appreciate the view?” Kaya was smirking now, trying to be flirtatious. Sylvas once again found himself about to intervene, to tell her off for trying to fraternize with a superior officer, then realized that, strictly speaking, none of them actually had a rank anymore. They were all equals. They were just bowing to Hector’s experience.
“Elves appreciate the view the same way they eat, drink, and do everything else.” He nodded up at the mirrored panes lining the wooden engravings lining the ceiling of the bar, where a half-dozen different elves had been glancing until just a moment before. “Subtly.”
The elves out drinking in the bar had been watching Sylvas and the others surreptitiously the entire time, using the mirrors positioned around the bar to reflect reflections back and forth and give the impression that nobody was looking at anyone else. He let himself sink into his chair a little, groaning. “Have we just blown the whole… undercover thing?”
The wolfish smile looked a little more genuine this time. “Wouldn’t worry about it, kid. This is our home turf. A capital city on a capital world of the Empyrean. Most of the ears here are ours, and even the ones that aren’t won’t know what to make of us.”
Sylvas frowned. “Why would the Empyrean have… ears here?”
“Funny thing about building a great big conglomeration, inviting everyone to live together under one roof.” Hector knocked back his drink in an entirely un-elven manner. “You end up with most of the trouble inside your house before you even start.”
That seemed to surprise even Malachai. “You are suggesting that the Empyrean spies upon its own people?”
“Spy… That’s a word that just sounds nasty. Like you’re doing bad to somebody by listening to what they have to say for themselves and believing them.” Hector hoisted himself out of his seat, startling them all after so long waiting. “Ready to see your new rooms?”
They made their way out of the bar, trying to be inconspicuous and making themselves much more conspicuous as a result. The only one who was doing a halfway decent job of looking like somebody leaving a bar with friends was Kaya, and Sylvas was pretty sure that the reason she was hanging onto Hector’s arm had nothing to do with verisimilitude and more to do with his biceps. Sylvas leaned in to hiss in her ear, “Remember subtlety?”
“Screw subtle, I’m having fun!” She laughed back.
Once again, Sylvas couldn’t really complain as she was doing a far better job of maintaining their cover than either he or Malachai. The crown prince looked over at him, “Should we also… cuddle?”
Sylvas nearly choked on his own tongue before he got his coughing fit under control. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“I fear that I may not be as well equipped for this role as I had assumed.” Malachai spoke so softly that without enhanced hearing, Sylvas would have missed it.
Trying to gather his wits and not accidentally lead Malachai into thinking that he was going to remain in physical contact with him for a moment longer than necessary, he gave the other man a pat on the back. “We’ll learn together.”
“Perhaps,” Malachai agreed in a tone that felt all too cheerful and upbeat compared to the grim attitude that he’d shown through the evening so far. “Or perhaps we will fail together and die.”
Chapter 11
“A man who owes nothing to anybody is not free. For in his pursuit of freedom, he has instead found ascetism. Detachment is not freedom, it is simply the absence of all. It is only on the bridge of a ship that true freedom is found, when all of reality stretches out before you, not as an enemy to be faced but a frontier to be explored, that you finally understand the truth of freedom and its immensity.”
—Foreword to Introductions to Interplanetary Flight, Volume One, Kail Hjernbard
While Kaya and Hector had a loud conversation about all of the sightseeing destinations they’d visited on the planet—entirely a fabrication of her own imagination since they’d been locked away in the palace for the whole time—Sylvas tried to work out where they were headed. He’d loaded a map of the city into his memory and fed it to Mira, but she hadn’t flagged any suggestions as to where their new base of operations was liable to be as of yet.
According to the council, Hector operated without oversight, so they had no idea where he based himself. All of their covenant operatives did. By keeping them isolated from one another, the council could ensure that if one did happen to be captured, it wouldn’t leave a trail to any of the others, and the Empyrean as a whole had some degree of plausible deniability about whether it employed them. Not that there was much in the universe that was likely to be able to take down a covenant mage once they had mastered their power.
