Peony Min (blackmagicks) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-03-24 08:11:00 |
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The feeling upon once again entering the EKP offices at Shieldwyrm Hall was bittersweet. She had not been absent since Siana’s disappearance, but nor had she been as frequent a visitor. She had not come at all since the funeral, and several people stopped to nod at her, faces somber. In some ways, she supposed, she had been Siana’s partner as much as anyone assigned to her by the Fighters’ Guild might be; these people saw her as an honorary one of their own, and thus felt the need to recognize her loss. But it was good to be here, too; she had not wanted this collaboration to fade away, for she had thought that there was still good she could do here. Although she had asked Jareth to call upon her at need, she had not been certain that he or anyone in his department would do so. Still today she came not to meet with him (not to sit in Siana’s empty chair), but rather with his superior. She had crossed paths with Bram here and there for years, at first when he had assigned her to work with a then-reluctant samurai, more recently at cross-guild functions. Now it was to him that she would go as consultant. The matter, she assumed, was not an urgent one, but she arrived a few minutes before the hour, greeting Lillith with a small smile and nod before proceeding to the Detective Inspector’s office to knock softly upon the closed door. “Come in, Min” was the answer. Most of the officers rapped against the door with much more authority, if they didn’t barge in entirely, and Peony was running early as she tended to. No surprises here, save the unnatural newness of the meeting itself. It was a strange sensation; he was fully aware he was stepping into Banes’ shoes, that the weathered face sitting behind the desk wouldn’t be the same as the mage’s old partner. Couldn’t be the same. But there was business to be done, and so Bram nodded at the girl to close the door behind her. (Young woman, really; somewhere over the years, Toku’s protege had grown up as all of theirs had, somehow becoming functioning adults in the blink of an eye.) “Thank you for coming in on such short notice,” he said, setting aside some of his paperwork. “Of course,” she said, closing the door as directed and taking the chair opposite his. If she felt any discomfort at the change in circumstance, she did not let it show. There were very few things she allowed to show, especially with those who were not members of her tight inner circle. This was a business meeting, and so she smiled politely and said, “I would have come yesterday if you had deemed it necessary. How may I assist?” “I may not be as strongly Pharist as I could be, but Sundays are still rather sacred. Or so I hear.” The joke was dry, half-hearted, and the man was already focused on pulling open one of the cabinets on the other side of the room. He withdrew a small box labeled with a date (ARIES 1, 2014) and pushed it forward, onto the newly-vacated desk space. Then he took his seat again, hands folding. It felt almost like Faram’s Mass, giving the mage a little container of mysteries. “There’s a memstone inside. We recovered it from a secret compartment in an airship captain’s cabin—it seems to show his cargo, which certain parties were very interested in. Some kind of accessory, and a scroll. Unreadable, though. Do they mean anything to you?” A beat, then, “Take your time,” he added. Peony took the memstone from the box and activated it. Silently, she watched it through, then, after a moment of thought, watched it again. Her face betrayed little, but her posture gave some clues; she sat a bit straighter in her seat, leaning just slightly forward as if to bring the image closer to her face. The second playback completed with a quiet whirr, and Peony said, “I can read some of it. I have recently become quite well versed in matters of magic of a particular sort.” It was not a branch of knowledge she had ever thought to seek out alone, but with the events of last summer and fall, she had chosen to educate herself. The symbols -- what of them showed on the shaky, brief recording -- were familiar. And the tiny script combined with the length or the scroll… “You say that this cargo was not found?” she said. If they were searching the cabin and asking her as opposed to the captain, then he was incapacitated or dead. “I take it the captain is unavailable for questioning?” “One way of putting it.” Bram nodded. “He was murdered on Wednesday, and his ship was otherwise empty—nothing of interest, save the memstone and a letter mentioning his cargo and his buyer. We suspect that whoever killed him also took,” a nod towards the stone held clasped in her hands, “whatever’s on that recording.” It must be valuable, if it was worth killing for. In the back of his head, Bram was running through the few things he knew about magework, mostly cribbed from his years with Toku: surely no one would be this desperate over your average spell available from the shops. It must be rare. A museum artefact? But he didn’t voice his theories; the man was silent, expectant, letting the expert muster her opinions together. “That is unfortunate,” Peony said. “This is not an item that should fall into the wrong hands. It is very advanced, so to most, it is likely only a source of revenue. For someone skilled, however, it is a source of considerable power. It is an instruction list, of a sort,” she said. “A very detailed one.” That was a cause for further worry -- some spell scrolls were incomplete or torn, worn down by time or the elements, but not this. The bit of it she had seen could be followed like a map. “The instructions lead to the summoning of a spell. From what I can tell, a very powerful one. And Dark.” The capital was all but audible in how she said it; this was a magic that the Tower did not teach. Never openly. “It is not unlike the spells used by the necromancer who was arrested last fall,” she finally said, thinking this would best relay the gravity of the situation. “If the ring was taken along with it, it may be some manner of accessory, but I cannot tell you what it does unless I have it in my hands. The scroll, however, can cause a great deal of destruction if its contents are learned. I counsel that you find it as soon as possible. It should be removed from its current possessor, possibly destroyed.” This was one of the few situations where a Mages’ Guild member rejected the acquisition of knowledge. Peony’s warnings sank in, sending apprehension rippling through the other councilor; his limbs chilled, his chest growing heavy at her suggestion. “Dark,” Bram repeated flatly. Fear lurked in the back of his head: the sight of the man named Cerf in his cell, withering away with that thin wolfish smile and hollow cheeks. The animated corpses, the bodies dissolving at his coworkers’ doors, the blood magic. It couldn’t happen again. “Thank you for your help,” he said. This woman was one of few who could see the way Bram’s impassive exterior had been rattled. “We’ll— we’ll try to find them as soon as possible.” A pause, then, uneasily: “How skilled would they have to be to cast it? No special, rare ingredients required for the casting, is there?” They should be so lucky. “No,” she said. “Only skill, and experience enough to access the necessary quantity of mana, which would be considerable.” After a pause, she added, “Such power may be obtained in multiple ways. The simplest means is from within, but if one has not developed the… capacity, one may compensate from elsewhere. It was one of the causes of the ritual murders I aided in investigating last spring.” That would serve to discomfit him further, but it had to be said. “If I may, I would like to assist,” she said. “If the scroll is simply sold by the one who took it, even by less than legal means, a connection of a connection may hear of it. I will ask. And if it is cast…” The problems would be many. “You know of the physical and emotional impacts to those touched by the Dark. If it is cast, you will hear stories that will point to it -- and if it is practiced, as it will almost certainly have to be, in order to be perfected, bring me to the place where you think it may have been done, and I will know. Find the scroll and you will find the killer.” Though by her tone of voice, it was clear which she considered of primary importance between these two items. The conversation had taken a grimmer tone than he’d expected—he’d thought the scroll would have been something flashy, expensive but not deadly—but Bram marshaled himself together. There was something in her words that was almost comforting, an idea of concrete effects, a way for them to narrow in on their targets. With a high-ranking mage on retainer, perhaps the situation wasn’t as hopeless as it initially seemed. “We’d welcome the help, miss Min,” he said. “We’re investigating leads on the buyers at the moment, but we’ll keep abreast of the investigation, as before. You’ll…” The next words were harder for their still-relative newness (any thought of Siana Banes a still-healing scab), but he forced them out. “You’ll be working with Monaco and Finch.” The sadness flashed through her eyes, too, so quickly that it was almost as though it had never been at all. “I have worked with both, in somewhat differing capacities.” Rarely as an equal, with Theodore Finch -- still primarily as an instructor in taming the element of Fire -- but she knew him to be capable with his sword. Hopefully, he would be the same as an investigator. (The loss of Siana had many repercussions; Jareth Monaco was not the most analytical of minds.) “I will stop by and see them before I go, then,” she said. “Thank you for calling me. It is better if this is resolved quickly.” Before the spell is learned, and we face it from the guilty party, determined not to be brought down. “Aye. If we can’t prevent crime in the first place—” and any death was indeed a failing, another statistic in the depressing ledger, another mark against their protecting the peace, “then our goal is to find the culprits as swiftly as possible. Before they do more damage.” From the sounds of it, the prospects of this scroll getting loose were chilling enough. But looking over the composed young woman sitting across from him, Bram experienced a wave of determination, steeling his nerves and straightening him in his chair. They would pour all their efforts into it, and they would have their best working the case. That would have to be good enough. |