Chapter 37: Confrontation

Naereni

I shuffled nervously in front of the entrance to Karsien's room in the Cistern. It had been a while since we had spoken to each other, the secrets he had kept from me looming between us like a chasm.

But I had to talk to him now. Considering what I had planned, there was no way to keep it secret. Furthermore, if I kept what I was planning to do secret from my leader, I'd be doing the exact same thing to him that he did to me.

I knocked on the wooden door, and then waited.

And waited. And waited. I knew the man was in there, but after a minute of staring at the oak panels, I was starting to feel discouraged.

When I was about ready to leave, a bit of irritation bouncing around in my mind at being ignored, I heard the telltale voice of Karsien calling out.

"Come in, Naereni," he called.

Steeling myself, I swiveled back on my heel and opened the door. The inside of Karsien's room was surprisingly gaudy for the thief. Little trinkets were displayed here and there, small prizes taken from our targets. A dartboard was hung next to the door, with several darts stuck around the bullseye.

Karsien himself lounged on a small cushioned chair, a few darts set nearby. He had probably been throwing them before I came in.

We faced off for a moment, an undercurrent of emotion traveling between us. He had his mask on: he rarely took it off, unlike the rest of the crew. He seemed unperturbed by my interruption, but I thought I knew him well enough to sense some uncertainty.

"I came here to tell you that I'll be going out on a mission soon," I said, mustering my courage.

Karsien didn't react, at least not outwardly. "I did not assign you any mission," he replied.

"You didn't."

"Then why do you claim to be going on one?"

"I decided to on my own."

Karsien shifted in his seat, crossing one leg over the other. He scrutinized me from afar. "You haven't ever gone out on your own before," he said. "Is this some sort of attempt at rebellion? Trying to get back at me for perceived injustice?" There was a bit of condescension in the last question.

He phrased it like I was a child, lashing out at my parents because I didn't understand why they kept the cookies away from them. I felt anger pulse in my head at that.

I was not a little girl.

"No, it is not," I said irritably. "I'm going to do something good for East Fiachra, instead of waiting around for pieces to fall into place. I'm going to make a difference. A permanent one, instead of just inflating a sinking ship with air."

Karsien was silent for a moment. "So you located the distillery, then? You plan to destroy it, and cut off the production of blithe to East Fiachra?"

"Yes," I replied, pulling myself up a bit straighter.

"I assume you're not alone in this. And you've planned all of this out? Every contingency, every possible point of failure?"

"We have," I asserted. "We're going to hit every warehouse and the distillery, all in one night. We won't give the Joans a chance to recover or react."

Karsien finally stood up, his cloak unfurling behind him. He walked toward me, a relaxed gait measuring his steps. I took an involuntary step back, but the man simply went to the dart board. He retrieved each of his darts, one by one.

He inspected the darts carefully. "No, you haven't. It is clear from how you speak. What will you do if one of your members fails to complete their target? I assume you'll be splitting up, trying to hit multiple targets at once. That's that many many more places where your enemies can take you down."

I felt my face flush slightly. "We'll use Wade's sentry abilities to make infiltration to the warehouses simple. Their security is lax enough for us to make it through, and I have no doubt Toren and I will be able to burn those buildings to the ground in record time. In and out, quick as lightning."

"Toren is joining you?" Karsien asked, a hint of something I didn't recognize in his voice. He turned to me, easily standing a head taller.

I narrowed my eyes. "He is. He sees the need to act, too."

Karsien inspected the dart in his hand. "You'll fail if you try this," he said. "Maybe you can destroy one warehouse. Maybe two. But the distillery will be guarded by the best the Joans have to offer. They'll see you coming from a mile away, and it won't be weak mages guarding it like the warehouses. They'll have their best."

I ground my teeth. "We won't fail," I said. "I'm strong enough to–"

"Your strength is irrelevant," Karsien cut across my words coldly. "You don't understand, Naereni. You haven't fought many mages. But in an isolated space like this distillery? You'll be cut to pieces. Your plan will fail."

I felt my anger eclipse my good sense. "And what have you done to help me learn to plan?" I spit out. "All I do is follow your orders, going wherever you point like a lackey instead of a student. If you think my plans will fail, you only have yourself to blame!"

I immediately regretted my outburst. I was proving Karsien right, then. I sounded like a child, angry at her parents for actions they didn't understand.

No, I reminded myself. Your anger is justified. It's not childish.

"And that is why I'll be helping your plan from now on," Karsien replied cooly, setting the dart down on a nearby table.

"What do you mean?" I replied, still wary. "Are you going to take over again, and push me to the side?"

"No," Karsien said. He turned away from me, looking at the chair he had recently vacated. "You're right, Naereni. I haven't been teaching you. I have kept you in your nest, unwilling to let you fly."

I took a step back. Karsien, admitting he was wrong? I– I didn't know how to react to that.

"I'll help you with your plan," he said again. "I will work with you to iron out any shortcomings." He turned back to me. "And we'll finish this dance together."

Toren Daen

Knocking on my door pulled me blearily from my sleep. I rolled off my cot, falling with a thump to the floor.

Ow.

"What is it?" I said groggily. I scrambled with my limbs to try and push myself up, jostling my hand in the process.

Damn, that hurt.

"We're gonna have a team meeting in about half an hour," Wade said from outside my door. "Just thought I should let you know."

I blinked the sleep from my eyes. "Oh, uh… thanks." My mind wasn't really functioning just yet. I contemplated just staying on the floor, but finally convinced myself I needed to get ready.

I had stayed up very late last night, completing that evening's assimilation process and working through some of my combat forms. It had been a while since I practiced those, and after the events of last night, I needed to work through some pent-up stress. I also further practiced the use of my telekinesis crest, fine-tuning the control of my pushes and pulls. There was something about the way the mana interacted in my telekinesis that was causing an itch in my subconscious, but I wouldn't be able to look into it until I was clean.

My strawberry-blonde hair had a layer of grease in it that I was determined to wash out, and I needed to change the bandages on my hand. Once again, I could feel a bit of mana buildup in the hand. The wound didn't hurt as much as it did yesterday, but my constant use of mana over the course of the night had certainly hampered my healing.

It was with trudging steps that I pulled myself into the Cistern's shower. It wasn't too dissimilar to the showers from my previous life, though the setup was clearly jury-rigged down here. As the warm water washed over my body, I used the calm the heat brought me to look into my mana core.

There were cracks running along the surface of my light orange core, a network of slivers that shone yellow underneath. I was exceptionally close to the dark yellow stage of core development, which caused my heart to do a little flip of joy inside.

Once I was washed up, I put on a dark long-sleeve shirt and gingerly pulled on my gloves. At this point, I realized I could probably trust the Company of the Rat to see the red tattoo of chains snaked from my palm to my sternum, but covering it up was becoming second nature. I was hiding a lot of things from them anyway.

When I left my room, I was surprised to see the entire company sitting around the planning table. Especially Karsien. I hadn't seen the man for a few days since the blowout between him and Naereni, but now they were standing together.

I blinked, making sure this wasn't a figment of my tired mind. He really was there, going over a few papers with Naereni.

Wade peeked up from nearby, a rat on his shoulders. "Ah, Toren! Good to see you're awake!"

I smiled slightly. "I would've rather you let me sleep," I admonished, then scanned the rest of the gathered Rats. "What's going on?"

Wade shifted slightly. "Well, Naereni went to Karsien to tell him that she was going to go and destroy the Joans' distillery. And, uh… Karsien said he would help."

"How did that happen?"

Wade just shrugged, a look on his face that said he didn't know either.

Naereni noticed me a second later, a slight smile on her face. She seemed a bit unsure to me, but that was smoothed over quickly. "Toren! Is everyone here, then?"

She scanned around surreptitiously. I sat at attention along with Wade, while Hofal was smoking a cigar nearby.

Karsien took a subtle step back, allowing Naereni to be the full focus of attention.

"Okay. This meeting was called to discuss a final attack against Blood Joan's blithe operations in East Fiachra." The young striker conjured a long stick of ice, using it to point at several places marked on the Fiachra map behind her. "There are three warehouses that hold blithe around the northernmost parts of East Fiachra. They aren't directly operated by the Joans themselves, but Bloods Ilason, Farriver, and Jasper."

A couple of the warehouses were in South Fiachra, and I recognized the one from Blood Ilason. The last was along the border of East and North Fiachra.

"But the largest problem is the distillery itself, where the blithe is produced." Naereni whapped another point on the map, this time in North Fiachra. "This is where the Joans make their death drug in secret, then ship it to the warehouses for distribution across East Fiachra. They've gone to great lengths trying to hide its location from all prying eyes, including keeping most records of it off the books and trying to obscure it from everyone, even the Supervisory offices."

Naereni continued to rattle off a few more ways that the Joans had used to try and hide the location of their offices, some of which got pretty convoluted. I was surprised Wade had managed to even discover the location at all.

I raised my hand, and Naereni pointed at me with her stick. "Why are the Joans trying to keep the production of blithe secret?" I asked. "This seems a little excessive to me if they're just trying to hide the location from us."

"They're not trying to hide the location from just us, but everybody," Naereni replied promptly. "Blithe production is barely legal, and from what Wade told me, is especially difficult to make here in Sehz-Clar. Scythe Seris Vritra takes special offense to the drugs, so it's rare that it's actually produced in the Dominion instead of smuggled in. She's made it very clear that anybody who makes it will be on her shitlist."

Scythe Seris herself didn't like the production of blithe? That was an interesting tidbit of info.

Wade piped up after that. "That's why it took so long to put some of the pieces together. For most of my life, any blithe in Fiachra was smuggled in instead of produced locally. I knew the Joans were involved in distribution very early on, but it's very, very bold for any Blood to actually produce the drug themselves instead of smuggling it. And I think they only started into the business more recently."

I was left to stew on these revelations as Naereni continued her speech. "But we're not going to let them do this anymore," the young leader said. "We've got a plan to take all of these places down, and we're going to do it in a way that can't be ignored."

And as Naereni began to lay out her plans, with periodic input from Wade and Karsien, I began to grin.

If their ideas worked, then the ruckus it would cause would be unavoidable. Karsien brought up the very real problem that just because Blood Joan's distillery was destroyed didn't mean they couldn't simply make another one right after. While I wasn't sure they could–I remembered Aban's words about how Blood Joan was struggling financially somehow–it wasn't just about the Joans. Any other Blood could swoop in and pick up where they left off.

And that's where Karsien's prints on the plans showed. The takedown needed to be flashy and gaudy, drawing eyes from every power in the city, and maybe even from beyond. The destruction needed to be painfully visible, to send a message to all who might try and step up afterward.

And I knew that a blow like this would guarantee the fall of Blood Joan. If they were caught producing blithe?

They would never recover.

—

Several hours later, I was walking with Karsien through Greahd's apartment building. He primly knocked on her door, his mask well in place.

I was wearing my own Rat's mask as well. This time when approaching the building, I couldn't take the streets. Being attacked last night served as a brutal wake-up call. If any drug-addled fool would try and assassinate me because of empty promises from Blood Joan, I couldn't show my face on the ground.

So Karsien and I kept to the rooftops, bounding across and trying to stay covert. The snow was melting, making every step dangerous under the slippery conditions, but we made it all the same.

"Can she really help us?" I asked Karsien nervously. "You said her powers as an instiller would be able to give us an edge, but you didn't tell me what."

Truthfully, I didn't doubt that the woman could help in some way. I just didn't want her to see me.

"Greahd possesses a very unique crest," Karsien said, staring straight ahead. "It has proven immeasurably helpful many times before, but now more than ever we'll need it."

I shuffled nervously, but the door opened before I could ask another stalling question. Greahd was there, her brown hair no longer in a bun. Her arm–the one she had landed on when the thug pushed her down yesterday–was in a sling. Naereni had told me she'd dislocated it.

The woman's eyes took us in quickly. And though I was expecting it, the disappointment that radiated from her eyes when they landed on my mask still felt like a punch to the gut.

She looked between us. "No," she said aloud. "No, I won't help you. Not this time. I asked you not to. I begged you to protect him. Not this."

I tensed. Wade had told me that Greahd had asked Karsien to simply watch over and protect me, not recruit me into the fold.

"You need to," Karsien said, undeterred. "We're going to strike soon, Greahd. Truly attack. And we can't rush in without the best preparations possible."

She hesitated; an arm on the door. I could see the indecision warring on her face. She wanted to shut the door on us, and by proxy shut herself off from the violence.

The woman visibly deflated, then moved out of the doorway silently.

Karsien took this as a sign that he should enter, so he did. I followed behind, trying to avoid Greahd's eyes.

When we were inside, Karsien withdrew something from his dimension ring I hadn't expected. I recognized it as a beast core, though it wasn't the same shade as the one I'd taken so long ago from the bark-skin grohd. It was a deep blue, with shimmering lines of white rippling through the surface.

Greahd glanced from the core to Karsien, a resigned look across her face. At that moment, she seemed twice her age. "This is the last time, Kars," she said, laying her hands on the core. "It's getting too dangerous here. I can't go along with it anymore. Not after today."

I felt mana swell from both of them, then churn toward the beast core. Their spells met in the middle, intertwining and converging in a strange mishmash of mana. My mind struggled to understand what was going on, my knowledge of the powers of this world too low to comprehend it.

In a minute, the wavy blue lines inside the beast core shifted, wrapping and twisting to form a new shape. Soon, I could make out straight and legible strokes, coming together to form a single character.

A rune , I realized. The inside of the beast core had a rune floating in the middle, glimmering with barely contained mana. I didn't recognize the rune, but it felt similar to the mana Karsien had been using.

The Rat tossed the sphere to me, surprising me. I caught it in one hand, then rolled it over to inspect it. I could sense water mana within, along with something containing and compressing the rune inside.

"That's yours," Karsien said. "My mist spell is condensed inside the core. Breaking it will release the spell, causing everything nearby to have their senses dampened and obscured."

That was incredibly versatile. Did that mean that Greahd was able to store spells inside of beast cores? Or just runes? How did that work? How long were they good for?

I looked up from the core. "Can you store any sort of spell in any beast core?" I asked, a bit excited.

Greahd shook her head. "The mana beast the core came from had to have the same elemental affinity as the spell that I want to store," the woman said, looking weary. "I can store deviant elemental spells in beast cores with the original element, however, but they don't last nearly as long."

Though the woman's sadness took some of my excitement from my sails, I mustered on. Karsien was right about one thing: this was the final showdown. I'd need all the preparation I could get.

I stored the spell-laden beast core in my dimension ring, then retrieved the trophy of one of my first victories in this world from the subspace. A brown core settled into my palm, with ridges of autumn orange within. I had taken this from the corpse of a bark-skin grohd what felt like years ago.

I stared at it for a moment. "Is there anything you can do with this?"