“Serve someone other than Order’s Guild?” Serenity had no idea what Esma Tillon was talking about.
She waved a hand towards him. “The fancy sigil on your shirt; I can read symbols, I’m not an idiot and I’ve been around a while. Two worlds, if I’m not mistaken. There aren’t that many empires that stretch across more than one world around here, so you must be a long way from home.”
Serenity looked down and realized that he was, as usual, wearing one of the T-shirts Rissa had made for him before she left Earth. Unlike his chest and armor-self, the shirts hadn’t changed when he “conquered” Lyka and Aeon. Come to think of it, serving another power was the story Zanzital came up with to explain the sigil as well, wasn’t it?
“You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to,” Esme offered. “I can see you’re legitimately a Hand; you’re a valid Quest target. I just want to know, I don’t need to.”
Serenity wished he knew more about the Hands in general. From what Guildmaster Tirmanak had said, Hands tended to be busybodies who did what they thought was right instead of following normal accepted practice. That was all good when Serenity was the one being a loose cannon, but he wasn’t sure what it meant about working with another Hand and he certainly didn’t know enough to share who he really was with her. The Final Reaper was far too deadly a secret to share.
He also didn’t want to share the fact that he was a Sovereign with her. It would answer her question about how a Hand could work for someone else - he didn’t. It would also open up other questions. No, he needed an authority that wasn’t his own to fall back on.
A smile spread across Serenity’s face as he thought of the perfect answer. He’d have the Guildmaster to back up the answer, too; Tirmanak was quietly walking towards the two of them, coming up from behind Esme. “You’d have to ask the Voice. It’s the one that made the decision.”
Esme’s eyebrows fled into her hair. “You’re a Voice-called Hand? The last one I remember in this sector was back when I first became a Hand, over a century ago.”
Serenity smiled. His distraction worked. “That’s pretty similar to what Tirmanak said, though I don’t think he gave a timeframe.”
Esme shrugged. “Well, he hasn’t been Guildmaster for that long.”
“Long enough to sneak up on you, apparently.” Tirmanak interrupted Esme and nodded at Serenity. “I should have guessed you’d stick your nose into the attacks. You’re almost as bad as he is.”
----------------------------------------
“How did you do it?” Coyote looked away from the moving image. He’d allowed Dragon to gloat for long enough; now he wanted to know how it was done. He shared his secrets with Dragon after he finished a trick, Dragon should do the same.
“Do what?” Dragon met Coyote’s gaze with a serene expression.
That was seriously annoying; Dragon knew just how annoying it was, which was definitely why he was pretending to not know what Coyote was talking about. Fortunately, Coyote knew how to get Dragon to yield. He changed his expression to one of severe disappointment. Dragons weren’t nearly as social as coyotes, but that didn’t mean they were solitary. Disappointment was a powerful force; the fact that it was being shown on a canine face didn’t make it any less powerful.
As Coyote expected, it only took a minute for Dragon to shake his head and grin. “Well, it was worth a try.”
Coyote chuckled. “No, it really wasn’t. Stop delaying already.” He really did want to know how Dragon managed to deliver a Guildmaster to Serenity right before Serenity was to meet the oldest, most experienced Hand in the Font Sector. If it had really been about getting the child back to his parents, there were a dozen other things Dragon could have done; this was about delivering the Guildmaster, not the child.
Dragon shrugged, then resettled his wings around him. “It didn’t quite go as planned,” Dragon admitted. “With as much trouble as Hand Tillon has had, I expected Serenity to have more trouble. He’s gathered an exceptional group of people, but they’re still low Tier compared to what little I can see of their opponents.”
“Serenity has a way of making Tier less important,” Coyote commented. “When you get right down to it, at least half the reason Tier’s as good an indicator of power as it is is simply how long people have had to practice and gain experience. Instructors are supposed to be on the high end of that; I don’t know why Serenity is, but he definitely is. So it was to be expected.”
Dragon waved off Coyote’s comments. “I know that; I planned for it. I didn’t expect what he did. How could I predict that someone his age could read an entire runic inscription in an unknown runescript? Especially so quickly?”
Coyote shrugged. “That wasn’t even necessary. He could have skipped that step and just followed the flyer. That’s what he did anyway.”
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Dragon shot a glare at Coyote. He didn’t say it out loud, but Coyote was pretty certain that the main content of the glare was “stop ruining my excuses!”.
“So anyway,” Dragon started louder than he needed to. It was nice to know he’d gotten under Dragon’s skin. “It was really pretty easy. I guessed how long it would take before Serenity and Tillon would encounter each other, then figured out how long it would take Tirmanak to get there if he hurried. I gave some extra time because Serenity is always faster than I expect. I couldn’t have started much earlier anyway; Tirmanak had to know Serenity had made it to Asihanya before I could get him moving.”
Coyote nodded. He wished there were a way to tell Dragon to move ahead to the interesting part; sure, the timing was important, but he hadn’t really said anything other than “I guessed”. Guessing wasn’t interesting.
“When the time was right, I did the simplest thing possible: I appeared to little Jenna and taught her how to shift her shape to her draconic form. It took a few nights, but she was a fast study. I didn’t teach her how to shift the other way; she’d be able to figure it out if she really wanted to, but there’s no reason she would want to at this age. A baby dragon is much more capable than a baby human or half-dragon.” Dragon nodded happily. “So when Tirmanak came to me for help-”
Coyote yipped his displeasure. Dragon’s complicated wing movement said he was both startled and puzzled, so Coyote laid it out clearly. “You’re telling the story backwards. Why would Tirmanak come to you? How does he even know you exist?”
Dragon looked positively startled by the question. “Don’t you keep an eye on the various Guildmasters? There aren’t that many.”
“There are over four hundred, most of whom run a single planet and some of whom are masters for only a single continent or even a city,” Coyote countered Dragon. “I keep an eye out, but that’s far too many people to keep up with the way we’re keeping up with Serenity. They certainly don’t all have a way to contact me; only a few do. So why is Tirmanak one of your few?”
“The Voice has been pulling away from the Font Sector for decades, maybe centuries,” Dragon started.
That was something they’d discussed before, so Coyote just nodded. They’d taken it as a sign that there was no chance of recovering the kernel, since the Voice had given up, but it was beginning to look like that assumption was wrong. “That’s why the worlds are generally so weak, usually under Tier Ten, and there’s so little need for Hands. It’s not new.”
Dragon’s grin became slightly wider. “New, no, but that means I had time to do something. Decades ago, when Tirmanak took over the Guild on Ranar, I contacted him as the member of Order’s Council responsible for the sector and told him to bring me anything important. I’ve been able to funnel a few resources his way, but most of what I’ve given him is advice and stories of how other Guildmasters handled things, both good and bad.”
Coyote’s mouth dropped open in a grin. He could appreciate a well-laid scheme like this. It was exactly the sort of funny trick he liked to use. “The members of Order’s Council aren’t responsible for sectors.”
Yes, Dragon was definitely grinning now. “Tirmanak doesn’t know that. The short training he had after the previous Guildmaster died and he was selected didn’t cover it; it barely touched on the Council at all. That’s one of the reasons I proposed the rule changes for training a few decades ago. It’s mostly fine where there are enough Guildhouses, but in a place like Font, there’s no one to reach out to.”
Coyote nodded and acknowledged the point. He’d wondered where those proposals came from. They were still being debated and the Imperial delegation to the council was firmly against them. They’d argue about that term, but everyone knew it was true; the mortals on the Council who lived within the Empire promoted its policies, not the ones that best fit the vision of Order’s Council.
Coyote would have to give them another look after he dug the rest of the story out of Dragon; he hadn’t looked at them in a few years. He should have plenty of time; the Council was never fast.
“Tirmanak reached out to me for advice a lot at first. As time went by, it became a monthly discussion with a few letters traded back and forth. He knows I’m a dragon and that I’m on Order’s Council; he doesn’t know I’m Dragon.”
“So he knows you as Althyr, just like Serenity does? Clever, but it won’t keep you out of trouble if it pushes him into a Path conflict,” Coyote warned Althyr. “You know the restrictions on Guildmasters. We can’t afford to lose Tirmanak; he doesn’t have a trained replacement. Tillon’s not willing, Serenity’s not eligible, and the other Hands in Font aren’t suitable. Too much time putting out fires, not enough time managing things.”
Dragon nodded. “It would have to be Tillon, even if we had to move the Guildhouse to Asihanya. That’s not a real threat, though. I’ve never shown him my aura; I’ve let him think I’m only a few Tiers above him. He’s in no danger of starting to worship me, since he’s decided I’m more of a friend than a superior. I’m not sure he’s noticed that I’ve never given him an order, but he definitely acts like he knows on some level.”
Coyote nodded then realized they’d gotten off track. Again. “So. You befriended Guildmaster Tirmanak decades ago. It paid off, probably again, recently. You snuck into the Guildhouse, taught a child something she was too young to manage on her own, then used the Guildmaster’s panic to send him where you needed him. Does that about cover it?”
Dragon nodded. He looked a little guilty.
Coyote needed to teach his friend better than that. Looking guilty meant you thought you’d done something wrong. “I love it! You got your student’s daughter back to him once it was safe and managed to get Tirmanak in place without ever giving him an order as a Councilor!”
Dragon made a sound suspiciously like “Hrmph” before he spoke. “Can he even be counted as my student? Serenity always seems to forget that he’s allowed to ask me for help.”
Coyote grinned again. “After your last student, you swore you’d never take anyone on who wasn’t capable of being mostly self-sufficient.”
Dragon grumbled, “I didn’t mean quite this self-sufficient.”