Notes : Special [REDACTED] and chapter 438 have been written and added to the queue !
I wanted to add another chapter to the list but my body suddenly reminded me that I was on the edge of collapse in basically every metric and suddenly I was on my bed.
Which is why this upload is late, fyi, because I was sleeping away the afternoon.
I hope you'll enjoy the chapter ! This one...has been a LONG time coming.
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Chapter 436
First Landing Bay, Royal Capital of Sapphire City
Old City Tunnels
"So." Said Orzal Vek as he sat across Trimmaryn. "Is it done?"
The older woman sighed. The place they were in could politely be described as 'antique', and less politely as 'a shithole forgotten since Sapphire Arkhan had died'. An old service tunnel, back when the city was mostly underground and the Old World ruins were still being explored.
Sapphire City was full of such nooks and crannies if you knew where to look. And the Order definitely did.
Given the degree of knowledge it had in fact, Orzal was starting to suspect they had a hand in the construction of the city. Perhaps of the whole Kingdom.
"Almost." The guild attendant, and fellow Order agent, rubbed her forehead. "I've got enough people onboard with selling out to the Sapphire Kingdom, but the guildmaster isn't budging."
"I thought he wanted revenge?"
The attendant nodded.
"He does. But he's also old guard. He knows helping the Sapphire Kingdom means helping the UDC, and he's one of those that blames them as much, if not more than Crystal for this entire mess."
That made him remarkably insightful, insofar as the guild's leadership went. Though truth be told, even the whole UDC wasn't to blame for this. The Order had given the push needed for things to go this way. At least so the former Republic colonel had gathered from his own people.
Ah. 'His' people. He didn't think of the Order as anything to belong to, but he was already starting to get possessive over the agents assigned to him.
"So. I assume the easy way is out?"
"Depending on how you define 'easy', but yeah."
"I don't have enough assets to mount a false flag attack." Warned Orzal. "And any direct attack will gather attention we do not want. The Church is already on edge here."
Because of him and his operation to nab the makers of Sunrise's slave brands. But this was need to know and she didn't qualify.
"Agreed. But he's a guildmaster. He has more skeletons in his closet than most necromancers."
Orzal frowned.
"You're thinking of discrediting him?"
"No. It wouldn't work, anyway. Who would replace him? There isn't a 'guild leadership' anymore. And if the government arrests him, it's not like he would be compelled then. I was thinking more along the line of...giving the proof to the archmages."
"Blackmail." Orzal leaned back into his seat, thoughtful.
"The Archmages have never been above that. Ulvi, in particular, is pretty good at using it. She's not...direct."
Orzal closed his eyes as he reviewed the possibilities. He'd had a bit of an eye for politics before, you couldn't get anywhere in the Republic without it, but working for the Order had made him truly develop it.
Ulvi was in a position that was both secure and extremely precarious. On the one hand, she had the internal politics of her own country locked down. As Archmage of Life, and minister of the interior, she was the de facto prime minister and ruler of the country. She held the rest of the Archmage council in the palm of her hand, and she commanded the city guard. Which gave her control of the capital, and though the King had his own troops, the Royal Guard was a pathetic shadow of its former self and the city guard could bypass the Palace defenses. After all, they were the ones supposed to man them during a crisis.
But she didn't have legitimacy. She was prime minister in fact but not in name, and if push came to shove, the army and other parts of the country's administration, besides those directly under her patronage, had no reason to obey her orders.
"It will certainly appeal to her." Said Orzal. Indirect control was how the Archmage of Life got things done. "But will she use it? Intel indicates that she's stuck in the past."
"The guild was never truly neutral. It has been meddling for a long, long time. And I know she's cut deals with the guildmaster before. Deep down, he doesn't want the guild's legacy to go to waste. What we need is just a lever to direct who he sends it to."
"...Do you believe he could actually send it to Crystal?"
Doing so would certainly throw a wrench in the Order's plans. Mmmhhh...
The attendant shrugged.
"Possibly. Possibly not. But the UDC is pushing harder every day, and the longer we wait, the more he will resist helping them, even indirectly."
"Pushing harder? Crystal created an Empire. You'd think that would make him lean towards the other side."
"You can rationalize a lot, if you see her as defending herself. Plus, he seems to feel guilty about something." She leaned forward slightly. "As if he had taken something out of the vaults, and he was regretting it."
Orzal kept his face curious. He knew enough to realize it was almost certainly to do with the attempt Sunrise had made on Crystal's life, but this was how the game was played inside the Order.
"Interesting."
"I've considered digging, but it would gather too much suspicion. Plus, on the subject of which side he would pick, Rebirth is half a continent away. The UDC is right on his doorstep." Literally, now that a couple of airships had been stationed nearby, and operations were underway to build a logistics hub at the foot of the city walls in a fortified enclave. "Easier to see what Crystal is doing as less alarming."
"I suppose that is to be expected." He leaned forward. "Very well then. Where do I need to start digging for that blackmail?"
*****
Alexandra staggered back.
"Twenty years of loyal service. I suppose I got a 'special' retirement package after all. I-"
Alexandra grabbed him, and hoisted him up by his collar.
"Who." She ground out, her eyes flashing. "And don't give me the bullshit about not knowing the clients. You people never get moving unless you know who's giving the order and signing the checks."
"Why do you-" The assassin stopped. "You care. You care and you know too much." Alexandra let go of him and he rolled sideways, off of the bed and into an instinctive combat posture. But he wasn't moving to fight. She could see the gears turning inside his head. Literally, as she was being pinged about spikes in neural and implant activity. "They said you always had more mana and tech than you should. People thought you were being bankrolled by the rest of the UDC, but that's not true, is it?"
He met her gaze, and she looked back steadily.
"You're an extradimensional. One who was here. Saw me in person. You recognized me. I thought from an image, but that wasn't your reaction." He looked around. "I iced that customs officer. But even if he was brought back...him and the security squad were goons. Not technicians and certainly not engineers. They wouldn't have known how to build a dungeon of machinery, or wire me into a VR pod." He straightened himself. "You're my target. You're Alexandra Rousseau."
There was a short silence, and she nodded. Her reaction...was ill-timed. Then again...he had enough cards to figure it out.
"I am."
"Then I believe we may be able to come to a more satisfactory agreement than 'I let you live'."
She tilted her head.
"How so?"
He extended his hand.
"I can tell you who wished you dead. And you can tell me why my damned employers sent me after you...and why you were so damned important they 'killed' me to keep it quiet."
She grabbed his hand.
"Deal. But that doesn't mean I'm freeing you. Ever."
He nodded.
"I killed you. Or at least should have. I don't blame you one bit. But just like you are trying to get closure, so am I."
"Then begin."
He smiled.
"I believe I already said one of my parts-"
He hissed in pain as Alexandra's hand closed on his with the strength of a hydraulic press, reinforced bones and implants snapping like twigs as she pulverized the simulated limb.
"I believe I have something called 'leverage'." Not that he seemed to be overly affected by having his hand obliterated. Her smile however, was enough to get through to him that perhaps this wasn't the best moment to be negotiating.
"A point well taken." He said through gritted teeth. She let go of him, and his hand put itself back together as the simulation 'accelerated' its healing. Just making it whole again instantly could cause a bunch of neurological issues, and could dissociate the brain enough it could crash out of the simulation.
"Good. Then?"
"I don't know if it'll mean anything to you. But yes, I did ask to see the primaries who gave the order." Technically it was a heinous breach of security, but those black ops weren't fanatics. They were mercenaries, and mercenaries required trust. Being able to bring down your employer with you was part of that trust, in a way. Of course, there were protocols to prevent them from betraying their employers. Some were retaliatory, but Alexandra had put more encouraging ones in place, like guaranteeing their relatives a good pension and steady healthcare if the mercs kept their mouths shut, even unto death. Turns out, even the most grey of bastards usually had people they wanted taken care of, and if they didn't, they weren't the kind you wanted to hire anyway. "There were three of them for the briefing. Two of them I knew. Admiral Vasquez and Councilman Molvan."
Alexandra's eye twitched. Commodore Vasquez had been one of the EFSN's rising stars when she had been High Admiral. He was...strange. He'd come from the colonies, and basically rose from sheer competence from basically nothing. Everyone said he was extremely competent, focused, but somewhat bizarre, even by the standards of those coming from outside of Earth.
He'd also been under her joint fleet when she'd gone to Europa, and had stood by her without question or flinching. He understood what needed to be done and though he wasn't happy about it he certainly didn't bow under the pressure. One of her last actions was to put him on the fast track to the admiralty, when she had been getting her affairs in order. He wasn't her protégé or anything, she'd barely known him, but it stung.
Molvan she wasn't surprised by. That revolting bitch was older than the building she sat in and she was a human purist through and through. Even cybernetics were anathema to her, and AIs bordered on heresy. The councilwoman was an atheist, but Arcadia was effectively her Satan and she wasn't shy about it.
Yeah. If Molvan had struck at her...she knew about her links with Arcadia and probably had started to unearth some of the things Ghost had done.
"And the last one?" She asked after a short silence, after she finished digesting the information. She knew he'd been observing her reaction, and probably realized she knew them. It didn't matter, she was going to hold her word and tell him who she was really anyway. It was, after all, why he was sent to kill her.
"A weird guy. Old man. He looked like some stereotypical grandpa. You could have put him in a damned dictionary as the example image. I've never seen a more obvious biosculpt in my life, but my scans came back clean. No implants, no signs of surgery or cellular regen. He was dressed like a regular man, out of place, but he was...how do I explain this? Like he was serene. As if nothing mattered anymore."
Alexandra felt a chill down her spine.
She remembered. She remembered how that felt like.
After she gave the order to burn an entire world. The total and absolute serenity when it was too late, and the dice were cast.
Alea Iacta Est.
"The others didn't call him by any name. In fact...The councilwoman seemed to consider him a nonentity, but Vasquez...I don't know. It was like he didn't want to acknowledge his existence." The assassin shook his head. "I'm good at reading people. You've probably figured that. Comes with the territory. I've never seen a man as opaque as that Admiral during the meeting."
"So you don't know who he was?"
"That's the thing. At the end of the meeting, he made a point to talk to me. To thank me. Told me I was doing a greater service to everyone than I could possibly imagine. Typical politician bullshit, but he seemed to actually mean it." He shook his head. "And then he told me his name. Told me it was important to remember." He stopped. Then looked at Alexandra.
Their gazes met.
"I'm not here by random chance, am I? Neither of us are." Said the assassin.
"The name." Alexandra's tone was as flat as her eyes.
The assassin closed his eyes.
"He said his name was Hoeth."
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Right, so a lot of people don't remember the name and that's fair. The story, however, is written to be formatted as a novel, and thus the reminder of who it is is at the start of next chapter.
Hoeth is the God of Light. His Custodian has appeared repeatedly talking to Gift, and the Adjudicator has remarked several times upon his interference.