Harlan had spent the last few weeks trying to understand what exactly he could do with mercy, and he crawled back to Rosewell with his tail between his legs.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me. I know that-”
“And I knew you would be back. So, what is it? And bear in mind that before anything, you are working for me again, and I will not be as kind the next time you run off with a strange look in your eyes.”
Rosewell seemed jumpy.
“I need prisoners. The irredeemable type.”
“Well, I can’t say that I expected that. Why?”
“Because I’ve gained the ability to force my sense of right and wrong on others, but-”
Safira moved closer to Rosewell and put her hand on her mace.
“How?“
“I had a breakthrough, and spoke with the mana. I tried it on some Fomorians.”
“The ones who you put in that new village? Who spend their days wailing and trying to kill themselves?”
“Yes. I need the prisoners because I need to learn how to tune this ability. If I could make them able to see right and wrong, they could be put back into society, but without going too far and ending up like me.”
“I am denying your request.”
“Why?”
“Because you have imparted on me the importance of not breaking the minds of others.
I am also denying you the right to use that ability within Ragne at all.”
“But I could-”
“No. There is always going to be need for certain people. If you want those prisoners, you could be put in charge of a Black Unit.”
Safira remained stone faced, yet Harlan could feel how anxious the idea made her.
“What’s a Black Unit?”
“Prisoners sent on military missions where they are not expected to return, and in exchange, they are given reduced sentences. The practice was ended under my great grandfather, but could be revived, if those that survive could be put through your experiments.”
“No, that’s… that’s not what I want.”
“Very well. How is Fomoria?”
“We aren’t on speaking terms, you can contact him yourself.”
Harlan’s voice came out harsher than he intended; Rosewell narrowed her eyes, but let it go.
“I want you to investigate an incident, a Frontier village has vanished. Balor is already there. Safira, point it out on the map.”
From the ceiling a gem made a holographic map of the kingdom.
The village was surrounded by a wall, and on that wall were men with guns. The moment that he stepped through the gate, they began shouting orders.
“HANDS UP, DO NOT MOVE OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE.”
“I AM HARLAN-”
“AN AGENT WILL CHECK YOUR IDENTITY, YOU WILL NOT MOVE UNTIL THEY HAVE.”
The wall opened and a dozen soldiers wearing golem armor bearing the crest of Fomoria came out, surrounding him in a half circle.
Then a soldier who had a horizontal golden line on his shoulders stepped forward and pulled out a wand with a large square head.
When the man pressed it against Harlan’s chest, he could tell in an instant that it wasn’t just scanning his soul, but his mind as well.
“That is-”
“QUIET.”
Harlan smirked, thinking what Fomoria might do.
He’d probably point out that technically these men wore his crest, and so they worked for him.
They might try to argue the point, but he would probably force his way through, and they wouldn’t be able to stop him.
The guns they had were slug throwers, not unlike what the Black Sentinels use.
Six shots in total, then they had a sword for if anything got past the barrage.
“HE’S CLEAN.”
The man saluted Harlan.
“Apologies, Sir Fomoria, but we are required by Sir Balor to check any arrivals, regardless of any objections or rank disputes. Even he has to go through this process.”
“I understand.”
The leader whistled and swirled his finger, calling the men back inside.
Strangely, they didn’t turn around, and walked backwards through the gate, never letting their weapons drop until after it was closed.
The leader walked Harlan to one of the buildings, but Harlan felt Balor well before he got there.
“You are…”
“Yes. I went to a village, and a woman awoke the ability in me.”
“Oh. Can we do that with Lugh?”
“I put in a request with Rosewell, but we are waiting to make sure that I don’t suffer some unknown side effect due to not being a complete person. Yet I’m afraid we have another problem. Follow me.”
Balor led Harlan to the other houses, hoping that Harlan would also sense that something was wrong, though Balor couldn’t tell what that was.
“Why are you here? Why does she believe that Nulson did this?”
“Because we ruled out the things that made more sense. Unless an incredibly rare creature known as a Forest Piper did this, then it was the work of a man. And if it was the work of a man, then he had to be very skilled to not leave a drop of blood.”
“A drop of blood…”
Harlan noticed something that the others didn’t, or rather, that they hadn’t connected like he had, a sparkle.
“You never found any remains, right?”
“No. We brought in hounds, my people, Unseen, but there are no traces of where the people went.”
“When you make a bloodgem, some of the blood ends up in the air as it turns into a crystal. If you take the time to do it right, you put up arrays to hold the blood together, which also helps to make them uniform in size so you don’t need to cut them. But if you are in a rush, you forgo the array, process them as soon as you can. Harlan began to put up an array to gather up all of the dust.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Then he separated the dust into the dirt and gem dust.
“Rosewell keeps a list of everyone who knows how to make blood gems, right?”
“Yes, living and dead.”
“Do any of them have an alibi?”
“There is a large stretch of time where this could’ve happened. And it is unlikely that any of them could’ve gone missing for long enough to process a village like this.”
“How many people were here?”
“313.”
“How many houses?”
“80.”
“Two minutes to fully drain someone, put it in a bucket. One to compress it into the right shape.
Should’ve been three minutes to put up the array to catch the fleck, but he skipped that.
Turning it into a crystal takes two minutes.
Making sure that the pathways are correct can take five to ten depending on how badly they were formed during the crystallization.
If they skipped putting up the array, they probably skipped the minute it takes to polish each of them.”
“That’s just five to eight hours. I will look into this. But, I think you already have an idea of who did this.”
“Check everyone first. I don’t want to put strange ideas out here and confuse things.”
It would take a day, and in that time, Harlan spoke with Adina, explained where he was.
“Vivi is going to be angry if you aren’t here to tuck her in.”
“We need to talk about that some day.
I know that things weren’t good for you growing up, but I know that sometimes punishment is needed.”
“I will never raise a hand to her.”
“You don’t need to. Just make her sit in the corner, take away her toys, let her cry it out.
I also want to take her to her cousins more often, she doesn’t get to play with kids being raised in the castle. Everything that Vivi has is her’s, and whenever she cries, we both come running to soothe her every worry.”
“I would love to spend more time with your sister.”
“You didn’t reply to the other part.”
“I just want her to have a nice childhood.”
“I know, I know, but, the nobles that I’ve clashed with, they were raised getting whatever they wanted, only being denied when it went against their parents wishes.”
“You’re right, we do need to talk about this, some day.”
Adina cut the connection, and Harlan could only sigh.
Balor had finished looking into every person who they knew had blood gem creation magic.
The rebels surely had their own people, but the list Ragne had was as complete as it could be after the war ended and people started being brought back into the fold.
“And nobody stood out as even suspicious?”
“We checked that one out, a woman, but she was just having an affair while telling her husband she was working, nothing serious.”
“If someone can’t maintain the bond of marriage, they can’t maintain loyalty to the kingdom.”
“I’ve killed enough men for being disloyal that I believe I have a good sense for it.
But, still, we are trying to find out why.”
“Is the why important?”
“There are a few hundred people who know how to make blood gems, each of them were selected because they could be trusted.”
“Do you know?”
“Yes. But back to my point. Any reason to believe they cannot be trusted must be investigated.
If she hides the affair, but someone finds out and blackmails her, the process could be out in the wind, and you can’t put it back.”
“And if need be, you remove them.”
“Don’t act like you don’t think it is the right choice.”
“I just… I wish that it wasn’t.”
“Has David’s death really effected you so much? Has it turned you into a fool?”
“You wouldn’t know, because you’ve been off in some Fomorian village this entire time.”
“Don’t act like you even tried to contact me. You want to talk to your wife, to Marigold, to our parents, but don’t put it on me to be your keeper. You want to talk, you fucking find me.”
Harlan was taken aback.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”
“Don’t bullshit me. Yes, you meant it, but you meant it because you are living in your own little world with your own little fucking problems. You go months without saying a fucking word to me, we only ever seem to meet if you need something or we are having a family gathering.”
“You could-”
“WHEN, WHEN DO I HAVE THE FREE TIME TO DO ANYTHING. I’M RUNNING EVERYTHING YOU HAVE, YOU NEVER HAD TO MAKE A DEPOSIT IN YOUR LIFE, YOU’VE NEVER HAD TO LOOK OVER A LEDGER TO BALANCE THE WAGES OF THE HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE THAT WORK FOR THIS HOW.”
“Gerad-”
“HE’S DEAD, HIS HEART GAVE OUT LAST YEAR, AND YOU NEVER EVEN NOTICED.”
“I didn’t-”
“I SENT LETTERS.”
There was a long silence as Balor quickly breathed, not having had the chance between shouts, then he took a deep breath and held it in for a time to center himself again.
“I’m not sorry about a single thing I’ve just said, but, we must shelve it so we can work on finding Nulson. Who do you believe was here?”
Harlan didn’t get it, how easily Balor could just close himself off, how he could just go from passionate and resentful to cold and businesslike.
It wasn’t empathic, Harlan could feel that much, it was just Balor.
“Margruder Lillyplate.”
“David killed him. Or was that a lie?”
“No, David killed him, that much I know. But, Magruder was obsessed with me, more than I realized.
He didn’t just want to be like me, he wanted to be me. What I’m worried about is the possibility that he made an Other.”
“I see the sense in it. Making one isn’t exactly hard, you did it with a few years of training on souls as a child. For Magruder, who followed your work from the moment you became the subject of interest, and who had experience with souls and blood before that, it would be possible.“
“If I am right, then at the very least, we know he can’t make another one, since an Other cannot make more Others. What worries me is that we don’t know when he made the Other, we don’t even know if he did, and, if he is working with Nulson, or if they are two separate issues to handle.”
“We don’t yet have reason to believe they two are working together, but, I will look into the possibility that they are. If Magruder is alive again through an Other, then we have a big advantage in that he believes we believe he is dead, so his guard might be lowered.”
“No. Nulson would make sure-”
“Don’t plan on the worst possible scenario. We haven’t heard anything from Nulson in a while now.”
“And that is what worries me the most. He spent over a decade planning for revenge, showed up only recently, and then he decides to go back into hiding? No, I don’t believe that for an instant. Has Lillyplate manor been under guard this entire time?”
“We’ve kept a close eye on it, since we couldn’t be sure that he was actually dead, and the kingdom has been inventorying the entire contents of it since House Lillyplate has been dissolved.”
“They owned other homes I’m guessing?”
“Yes, House Lillyplate owned three other homes, each much smaller than the mansion. We’ve already had them inventoried, but there was nothing out of sorts.”
“And I hope they were checked for hidden passages, basements, false walls, books with slips of paper or coded messages?”
“Yes for the first three, no for the last two. We couldn’t exactly go over each and every book they owned, since the Lillyplate were voracious readers.”
“I’m going to check the books against copies from the academy library for content.”
“That will take weeks, on a slim chance.”
“I will have it done in a few days.”
Harlan and his other bodies split themselves between each of the libraries.
His main body was at the academy, and when his others encountered a book, each would see if the different libraries all had a copy, and if they did, each skimmed them.
If they contained even a single letter off, they would mark down the page number, what number the word with the wrong letter was, what number in the sentence the word was, and so on.
Whatever these letters spelled out was gibberish, but, he wasn’t a codebreaker, he was just doing the gruntwork.
----------------------------------------
Nulson wore a kinder face and a Rangers uniform.
“I’m sure you are all wondering why I’ve called you here.”
The entire village was gathered in the square.
“There is a horde of Hati headed this way. Now, they are normally solitary creatures, packs don’t come together like this, so, until we can find out why, I am going to be stationed here and I am going to ask that nobody goes out past dark. There is a real chance that a Hati finally lived long enough to actually turn into something else.”
The people were panicked by the news, Hati were hunted not only by not only humans, but all prime races, and most creatures of the forest either killed them on sight or found something else to do it for them.
Hati were tormentors, and if they couldn’t find human children, they would turn to the other things that dwelled in the woods.
“But, I was also sent here with a mage specialized in arrays. Each of your homes is going to be outfitted with arrays that will tell us if a Hati or Warg somehow gets past us, you are all safe.”
The people went to sleep that night, yet Magruder’s arrays made sure that they never woke up.
“Get my gems made, quickly. I searched the chief’s home, they are expecting a real Ranger check up tomorrow afternoon. Anything you can do to get this done faster, do it.”
“I am an artist, I-”
“Get it done.”
Nulson was tempted to just kill the people and leave, but a missing village sometimes drew less questions than one that was full of bodies.
In the morning, they had a pile of slightly warm crystals.
For the bodies, they fired them into the air and then used void to turn them into nothing but dust.
Even if someone who had experience finding evidence of void disposed items came, they had been destroyed in the air then blown away, leaving almost no traces left.