Chapter 188: The Curse of Curiosity

Chapter 188: The Curse of Curiosity

Sebastien

Month 4, Day 16, Friday 5:10 p.m.

Without being able or allowed to cast magic, Sebastien found herself with a surprising amount of extra time. And though she had planned for everything that involved Siobhan Naught or the Raven Queen to be settled with the completion of Operation Palimpsest, obviously things had not gone according to plan.

Sebastien knew she had a tendency toward recklessness that she hadn’t yet learned to suppress, but she liked to think that, as long as she had enough time to plan ahead, she was capable of noticing and avoiding unnecessary risks.

And so she didn’t approach Grandmaster Kiernan for answers. She didn’t do anything that required her to assume her other body. She didn’t even leave the University grounds for the remainder of the week.

Instead, she did her best to act like a totally normal student and kept her eyes and ears open. Sebastien had listened to more gossip in the last few days than she had the entire previous term. She read the rage-inducing newspapers from all the Crown-approved publications, as well as the worrying one from the People’s Voice.

While they might be getting away with publishing something closer to the truth by simply quoting speculation and comments from anonymous civilians, some of those comments might be edging close enough to subversion to be called treason. At least the lack of outright and biased vilification of the Raven Queen showed that Oliver hadn’t—yet—turned on her.

In addition to all that, she subtly probed Professor Lacer for information.

According to him, the Red Guard had probably assigned a pair of agents to investigate her, and she could only hope that they were less easily biased by the things in the newspapers and the gossip floating around than the average person. Surely, they would find that the Raven Queen wasn’t nearly as special or dangerous as people were making her out to be?

But just in case, Sebastien didn’t want to give them any chance to actually meet her. She very much doubted that they would be as incompetent, literally and metaphorically divided, or confused as the Pendragon Corps operatives had been.

During her preparations for Operation Palimpsest, Sebastien had rented several locked boxes at various locations under different names, as that seemed the safest way to communicate with Professor Lacer. Tanya would transport the letters between pickup locations for herself and Professor Lacer, adding a degree of separation. When he deposited a letter into one, Tanya would move it to a different location for Sebastien or some other lackey to pick up. When Sebastien wanted to return a message, she would do the same, and after being ferried to the second location Professor Lacer was aware of, he could retrieve her letter.

Four different lockers for a simple letter exchange was convoluted and created a delay, but it probably made exchanging letters with him about fifty percent safer. Hopefully.

She was pretty sure he had no intention to turn the Raven Queen over to the authorities, anyway. And she was even more desperate for information about the seal in her mind than she was about Myrddin’s journal and what Oliver’s true role in the whole thing had been. But it was best to be cautious.

Sebastien left the keys under Tanya’s pillow with another short note and an explicit order to discard her shoes and buy another pair.

Before the linked bone disk was blown up along with all the other things she’d had in her previous bag, she had given a few shavings to Oliver so that the Verdant Stag could keep track of Tanya during what ended up being the Knave Knoll attack. Who knew how he might use them, if he had any remaining?

Sebastien had yet to confront Oliver, or even see him, since everything had happened. They had only exchanged a couple of coded letters, carried by a trusted runner. She couldn’t help but search them for clues to his mood or intentions, but his words were all bland and inscrutable, conveying only the necessary information and nothing more. Perhaps hers seemed the same to him.

She didn’t want to put off the inevitable confrontation any longer, but every time she thought of going to speak to Oliver, her mind spiraled into questions about Myrddin’s journal. There was such an obvious, gaping hole of information—the only question that the Archaeologist hadn’t answered for her—that she kept worrying at it like a tongue wiggling a loose tooth.

What was in the book?

She tried to distract herself with schoolwork while she allowed time and the most immediate danger of discovery to pass. It helped to keep her mind occupied, but almost immediately she began to miss her ability to cast magic. At least half a dozen times a day she began to set up a spell array and then remembered that the only magic she was allowing herself was the dreamless sleep spell, and that only from necessity.

It became a second loose, aching tooth, sitting opposite her unsatisfied questions and pushing her toward the edge of some sort of distressed outburst. She grew more silent as she felt the urge to snap at strangers and her friends alike every time she opened her mouth. They were all so intensely irritating, and it was a test of both her willpower and her resolution to be kinder.

While studying the items that Professor Lacer had instructed them to learn to create, Sebastien realized that his selection was far from random. Stone, vegetation, and fabric gave them a broad range of experience that would be useful when trying to use duplicative transmogrification or even pure transmutation to create items that fell within that category.

But these items specifically were special. The scab-root, so aptly named, came from a mountainous area on the far-west coast, south of the equator. The plant killed all but the most tenacious of competitors simply by sucking up so many of the nutrients that were needed to survive. If not for how slow-growing it was, it would have been a devastatingly efficient invasive species. It sent out those ugly, knobby roots a long way before sprouting up another plant, and it was endangered because everyone hated it. It apparently tasted disgusting...but it had almost every single nutrient someone would need to survive. If one could supplement even small amounts of animal fats and proteins, they could live off scab-root indefinitely.

They might lose weight because of how disgusting it was, but they would survive.

The diamond had an obvious use: They could be utilized as an alternative to celerium for casting magic. Any diamond she created would need to be as close to perfection as possible, though, otherwise it would take one the size of her fist just to handle basic spells. And, of course, like all non-celerium Conduits, it would be more prone to shattering under the pressure. One could also sell diamonds for enough money to purchase other basic necessities, though thaumaturge-created gems had relatively low values.

Sebastien imagined making a pair of curved, razor-sharp daggers out of pure diamond but was disappointed to discover, upon further research, that diamond was a rather brittle material and not suited as a knife. Or a shield. Or a full suit of glittering armor, alas.

The ribbon was spider-silk from the moon-orb weaver. It had been dyed with magic alone to create the impression of a painting through adjusting the light-reflecting properties of each filament-fine thread. It could be used to clothe herself with a fabric of truly surprising strength. When she ran it between her fingers, it reminded her of honey on her tongue, so smooth and compliant. Like the other two, it had no inherently magical properties.

It was also, despite her original conception of spider-silk, a passable substance through which to channel magic. Not because it was fire-resistant, but because it was an efficient channeler of power and wouldn’t heat as easily as paper. She had plans for it, and put it first on the schedule to master.

Together, all three objects covered almost everything she would need to survive in a long-term emergency such as getting lost in the wilderness.

But even such fascinating study couldn’t fully distract Sebastien from the loose-tooth questions that just sat around calling attention to themselves all the time. “What was in the book?” “How, exactly, was Oliver involved?” The third question was less defined, but consisted of a deep dread that woke her up before her alarms went off, wondering desperately about the seal in her mind and how she should deal with it.

Professor Lacer contemplated her, his expression inscrutable. After an uncomfortably long pause, he said, “Clarity has always been one of the more impressive facets of your Will. If you feel you are lacking, then I will not gainsay you. At your current standard, you should have no trouble with your classes, but adequacy is hardly an achievement. I am interested to see how you improve.”

The satisfaction Sebastien had gained from practicing magic again, as well as her long-overdue success with output detachment, faded away soon after she left Professor Lacer’s office. She couldn’t be sub-par at transmogrification. Things were calm now, but it seemed inevitable that dealing with the seal in her mind would one day require more of her than she was currently capable of.

As Grandfather had said to her, ‘If you don’t know what you need, seize power, for it can be converted into almost anything else.’ Again, as ever, it was true.

Sebastien spent the rest of the evening in her cubicle trying to get rid of that off-balance, unsettled feeling while casting transmogrification-based spells. She did not succeed, and the loose-tooth itch of unanswered questions in her mind seemed to feed on her frustration until she gave up her attempts.

She cast her dreamless sleep spell as she normally did, trying not to think about the parts of it that relied on transmogrification, and then lay in the darkness for a full hour, unable to sleep.

Finally, she rose, picked up her satchel, and walked out into the night, leaving her student token behind in her cubicle. Just that morning, she had snatched a token that an upper-term student had left lying at the foot of a bench outside. Obviously, the lectures at the beginning of term hadn’t worked. Sebastien had pocketed it on a whim, mostly, but if she were honest, a potential use had been in mind from the beginning. And she did try to be honest with herself.

Disguised by a hood, Sebastien walked to the transport tubes and, seeing that there was no one around, rode one down into the city. She tucked the student token at the base of the tubes, hidden under a rock. A long walk took her to a run-down inn that was about as far from the Silk Door as she could get. The whole way, she contemplated what she was doing, but some part of her knew it was already too late. Sebastien had made up her mind. She wouldn’t wait for answers any longer. She used one of their rooms to change into her other body.

Siobhan left still in Sebastien’s clothing, then found one of the more obscure places noted on Oliver’s map of the city as a good place to escape pursuit by the coppers. In an abandoned gate house tucked away in a small copse at the edge of a manor, she changed her clothes and magically dyed her hair the dark of blackest night.

Returning to the University, she retrieved the upper-term student’s token as she passed.

She walked into the darkness of the woods until she found a spot of almost pitch blackness, so dark she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face. There, she slipped on the wire-framed feather ornaments that Oliver had gotten her. Luckily, she had left them and some of her other most precious belongings behind before the Knave Knoll attack, or they would have been disintegrated along with everything else. They wiggled and disappeared into her hair, allowing the feathers to slide naturally through the long dark strands.

The stolen student token allowed her onto Grandmaster Kiernan’s front porch. Any records after would list a visit by that unfortunately careless student, who had no actual connection to either of her identities. It wouldn’t get her past the front door, of course, but she had other ways to make sure he would speak to her.

Siobhan had been planning to simply knock on the front door, but she could hear the shuffling sounds and muffled thumps of movement inside. A peek through the edge of Kiernan’s window showed the man slipping on his jacket as if to leave.

At first, her heart rate spiked with fear that he was already aware of her presence, but she realized quickly that his face held none of the tension of someone who was aware of a visit by the Raven Queen. She might not be the best at understanding facial expressions, but Kiernan seemed slightly absentminded and maybe irritated.

So Siobhan tiptoed over to one of the porch chairs and sat down.

Kiernan had opened the door and stepped past her before registering her presence in the corner of his vision. He froze, did a double-take, and then went rigid.

Siobhan could practically see the shock run through him as his entire body stiffened from toe to head. If he could fly, he would have lifted off the ground.

“Sit with me,” she said, motioning to the other porch chair.

“I had nothing to do with what happened,” Kiernan immediately said. He regained control over his faculties with surprising speed and gave her a ninety-degree bow. “I am not so foolish as to keep doubling and tripling down on my mistakes, my lady. I promise you, I had nothing to do with the kidnappings, or the divination attempts, or—or any of it. I will vow to it, if necessary.”

Siobhan hadn’t suspected him; the true culprit of everything that had happened the Friday before seemed quite clear. “I know,” she agreed easily, exaggerating her sense of ease as well as her certainty. She gestured to the seat next to her once more.

Grandmaster Kiernan shuffled closer, then sat on the edge of the seat gingerly, as if prepared to spring to his feet again at a moment’s notice. She allowed herself a small, vindictive smile at the distinct difference between his behavior now and how he had treated her when she was Sebastien.

“I had no choice but to betray the Verdant Stag,” he announced.

‘Why is he bringing this up? Is he, perhaps, searching his memory for what sin he might have committed to require a visit from me? Like a child accidentally confessing their crimes when given a stern look from a parent?’ “Continue,” she said, curious. “I’m not here to harm you. I simply hope to have a more...open communication.”

“I felt I had no choice,” Kiernan repeated. “I do not know if Lord Stag told you, but I was blackmailed to ensure the escape of several important Morrows by an ally of theirs that had remained free. But it was not only that. The Verdant Stags have been very clearly setting themselves up to take power from”—he lowered his voice secretively—“the Architects of Khronos. They’re edging in on beast core procurement and other smuggling monopolies, gaining influence, and with the book...”

“Yes?” she asked, suppressing signs of her own spiking interest.

“Well, it seems like they want to squeeze us for rare magical components and the end-product celerium while keeping the real power and control for themselves. Perhaps Lord Stag even hopes to play us against the Crowns and try to benefit from civil war. They’ve made absolutely sure to get their hands on a complete celerium supply chain. I hope you understand the kind of...desperation this situation could inspire.”

Siobhan cleared her throat. Somehow, she didn’t think he was speaking about celerium mining. “How, exactly, is the book integral to a complete celerium supply chain?” She knew she was giving some measure of power away by asking so clearly, but this was too important a question to edge around.

Kiernan gave her a strange look. “You can speak freely with me, my lady. I already know that it holds the process for purifying and draining beast cores of power without shattering them, allowing us to turn them into pure celerium that can be used as Conduits.”

Siobhan nodded slowly, trying to make sure that her body gave away no involuntary signs of shock. “Tell me, do you have any other reasons for suspecting that the Verdant Stag wants to take advantage of a civil war?”

“Well, perhaps they have some other plan. If I were being charitable, I might say that Lord Stag is actually attempting to prevent upheaval. But it’s already far too late to stop it. Possession of the knowledge in that book is going to be critical with what’s coming. There will be mass panic once the populace learns that the celerium mines are running dry.”