The bead even had the symbol of Order’s Guild on it; it was subtle, but it was there. This was one of the ones anyone could use, with the hand closed into a fist holding a knife. They could be used by almost anyone, but they could only find members of the Guild; they could be restricted to avoid or find specific members, but that was all. The bag Tirmanak gave Serenity also contained some that simply had an open hand symbol, but those could only be used by a Hand, so he’d kept them for himself.
Those weren’t the only things in the bag, when Serenity finally opened it, but he’d chosen to keep the insignia, the small ceremonial knife, and the instructions on how to use them both to himself. The only person he’d told was Rissa. She’d been the one who convinced him to go through with binding the insignia, but agreed with his decision to not wear it openly.
Fortunately, Emery was enough of an enchanter to recognize the bead for what it was when Serenity displayed it to her. Unfortunately, she was at a point where she could simply drop everything where it was and walk out without harming the process as long as she took a moment to cover the platter.
Serenity lifted the bead, told it to lead him to the person who sent it, and followed the bead at a walking pace; the beads weren’t all that fast, even at their fastest speed. Serenity didn’t even realize Emery was following him until she caught up, a dozen buildings down the street. He noticed movement behind him and spun, ready to fight; an emergency bead meant there might be hostility, and that meant he needed to be more careful than he had been recently.
Emery stopped, startled, when he rounded on her. “”Hey, calm down. I just thought I’d come, see if I can help.”
Serenity wasn’t even sure adrenaline was a thing for him anymore, but whether or not it was, he could feel its effects running through him. “Right. Yes, go ahead and follow me. You might be helpful, I have no idea what I’m going to be walking into. I doubt it’ll be just talking, everyone knows I’m not good at that.”
Serenity turned back around. He deliberately moved slower this time and used the extra time to calm himself. If it were truly urgent, an emergency bead wouldn’t make sense; sure, Rissa and Ita and probably Legion knew he’d followed Daryl to Emery’s, but that didn’t mean they knew where it was. Anyone who had to send an emergency bead might not even know he was out of the dungeon yet. It didn’t really make sense. There was no reason for anyone to expect him to respond quickly.
It was possible that there was some long-term situation to deal with; that was why he’d handed out the beads, after all. The fact that he couldn’t think of what it might be didn’t mean there wasn’t one. He wasn’t going to solve this here, but thinking through it had served to calm his fears for the moment.
Serenity followed the floating emergency bead where it led. The bead had a fairly low speed, certainly not enough to need to run, so Serenity had plenty of time to look around. He hadn’t been down this way before; this was a part of Takinat he hadn’t been in before, and they’d come to Emery’s from more or less the other direction.
Even at the brisk walking speed of the bead, it wasn’t all that long before they reached an unusually tall building, twice the height of the surrounding two-story buildings, that startled Emery. “Why are we here? Is someone you know meeting with the Silver Blades?”
The bead was definitely headed towards the front door. Serenity frowned and glanced back at Emery. “Not that I know of? Do you know if anyone is hurt?” His mind had, of course, jumped to Blaze. He simply couldn’t think of anyone else who might use the item, especially not in an area that didn’t seem dangerous.
The use of the emergency bead might actually make sense for Blaze. It could be time-sensitive enough to be worth the use of a bead yet have enough wiggle room to afford the wait for Serenity to arrive if Blaze were healing someone that needed more than his mana capacity could handle. Serenity could transfer mana to him that Blaze could use to heal. It wasn’t something they did often, because Blaze rarely needed assistance, but it had come up a couple of times on the trip to Asihanya.
Ita usually accompanied Blaze on their trips, but sometimes she went off and did her own thing. That could explain how Blaze knew Serenity was out of the dungeon yet not be able to have Ita call for his help; she’d been with him earlier then headed off to something else while he was watching Emery work. Yes, this almost had to be Blaze. He couldn’t think of anyone else that would use a bead with the symbol of Order’s Guild.
When they reached the door, the bead hovered in the opening. Serenity turned to Emery. “Would you like to lead the way? It seems like it might be more polite, since Daryl’s your brother.”
Emery shook her head but opened the door anyway. Once the bead was inside, she explained her thoughts. “The bead is leading. It doesn’t stay that far ahead of you; I stay even with you but there’s no point in me trying to follow the bead then have you after me. We’d be tripping over each other.”
Stolen story; please report.
She had a point. Serenity stepped through the doorway and walked along after the emergency bead. It led the way down a maze of hallways to a stairwell.
The building seemed worn but well-kept; the floors were scuffed tile and the walls had clearly been repainted many times. The hallways themselves showed clear signs of character, with a multitude of framed pieces of art (many of which were not very skilled, but some were impressive), statuary (similarly mixed), and weapons (all well maintained and clearly routinely cared for, even though most were broken beyond further use). None of the doors off the hallways were labeled; it was clear that you were supposed to know where you were going.
The staircase was a loose spiral of wooden steps with a handrail that looked sturdily built; it was anchored to both the floor and the ceiling. The steps looked newer than the rest of the building, but it was clear that whenever the staircase had last been replaced or repaired wasn’t recent enough; the handrail was splintered in several places, as if it had only barely caught someone who stumbled quite a bit higher on the spiral.
Serenity ascended all three flights of stairs in the wake of the emergency bead. Emery was directly behind him, so it was easy to overhear her muttered “but only the Guildmaster goes to this floor” when they reached the top floor.
That made some possible sense but it certainly didn’t make complete sense. The Silver Blades’ Guildmaster wasn’t supposed to be at their Guildhall. Maybe he’d somehow traveled back quickly while injured and Blaze was here to heal him? It was possible, but it seemed increasingly unlikely. Serenity started to question his guess as to who sent the emergency bead, but he still couldn’t come up with anyone else who seemed likely.
When Serenity opened the door to a large bedroom and found himself staring at Daryl asleep on the bed and no one else in the room, he was puzzled. The emergency bead moved over to Daryl and hovered over him; clearly, Daryl had sent the emergency bead.
How had Daryl sent a bead marked by Order’s Guild? Was he a member of the Guild? Serenity knew he hadn’t given Daryl a bead to use, which meant he had to have gotten it somewhere else, and Tirmanak had mentioned that there were others on Asihanya. Serenity hadn’t expected Daryl to be one of them, but then again, Serenity wouldn’t have expected his own membership either.
While Serenity was thinking, Emery shook her brother.
“Gotta … stay … ‘wake …” Daryl didn’t seem to realize he was mostly asleep; he didn’t even seem to have realized anyone else was in the room with him.
Emery shook Daryl’s shoulder harder, but all she got the second time was a snore.
Serenity set his hand on Emery’s shoulder to stop her from a third attempt. “Let him sleep. This can probably wait until he wakes up.” He reached out and caught the emergency bead where it hovered over Daryl.
“While we’re waiting, have you ever heard of an organization called Order’s Guild?” Serenity tilted the bead so that she could see the sigil clearly; it wasn’t very detailed, given the small size of the bead, but it was still possible to make out what the symbol was. “Do you know if your brother was a member?”
Emery shook her head. “He’s never mentioned anything like that, and I think I’d know. He’s always been proud that the only Guild he needed was the Silver Blades; I disagreed with him, I’ve benefited quite a bit from professional Guild membership. He benefited too, not that he’d admit it. I made about a third of the gear he wears, and I’d never have been able to do that if I’d never taken that first apprenticeship.”
Serenity nodded. “I wonder where he got the bead, then.”
Emery shrugged and picked the emergency bead out of Serenity’s hand to examine it. “Most message beads aren’t that hard to send.” She stopped and sighed. “No, you’re right; there are some really odd restrictions here. It’d take me days to tease them apart and the bead is already starting to fall apart. There isn’t time.”
“The restrictions aren’t just on who it can be sent by or to?” Those were the only restrictions Serenity was aware of on the emergency beads Tirmanak gave him.
Emery shook her head. “No, that’s a common restriction set, I’d recognize it. This one’s strange.”
Serenity was interested now. He’d assumed the bead was the same as the ones he had; was he wrong about that or was he wrong about how the ones he had worked? He pulled the bag out of his Rift and extracted one of the beads marked with the hand gripping a knife and passed it to Emery. “Is this one the same?”
Emery took her time examining Serenity’s bead, comparing it to the slowly dissipating one she already held. The initial verdict that they weren’t the same didn’t take long, but it was almost an hour before she gave up; she kept examining them until the mystery bead’s structure was impossible for her to read details from. “As far as I can tell, every restriction on yours is also on the one that was sent to you. I think they may have started out similar, but there’s an outer layer of enchantment laid over the original item on this one.”
Emery shook her head and handed his bead back to Serenity. “I can’t tell what it does without an intact one to reference or being able to see it actually work, but it looks like a crude enchantment job compared to the original, like the person who added it was less skilled than the original maker. I don’t think I’d have gotten that much without a reference; they’re both constructed oddly. It’s like some of the really old designs I’ve run across in ruins.”
“In ruins?” Serenity knew Order’s Guild was old; the fact that they were known to the Broken Mirror under the Library made that clear. “Do you know how old the ruins are?”
Emery shrugged. “Probably from the Terror War. That’s what makes them worth exploring, after all; anything from more recent than that doesn’t have the secrets of the ancients hidden in it.”