Chapter 36 — Reviews
“I’ll sell off these harvests, hire some extra mercenaries, and go knocking on your castle’s front door,” Theo said with a grin that wasn’t any less pretty for all the smugness it carried.
“My last dozen card draws were worse than useless,” Rína grumbled as she beheld the doomed state of her and Theo’s second game.
“Oh yeah? Well look who’s the sore loser now,” Theo said as he moved his armies into Rína’s castle.
Rína grumbled again, chewing her lip as she played out the missteps that had gotten her to this point, “Alright, well played… Do you want to go again? Have game three be the tie-breaker?”
“Tempting, but I should get to work. That is unless you’re willing to pay for my time, and I should warn you that I charge extra for the really sexually deviant stuff like this.” Theo said with a straight face, motioning to their game.
Rína snorted as she started putting the cards away, “It’s too bad I’m flat broke then.”
“Uh, huh, sure you are.” Theo derided, helping with the cards.
Rína frowned, “No, really, I’m broke. My aunt and I used the last of our money just paying the gate fee.”
It was then Theo’s turn to frown in confusion, “If that’s the case, where’d you get those clothes?”
Rína looked herself over and didn’t see anything amiss. We wore a simple green tunic, belted at the waist along with a black ankle length skirt. Even with the armlet and scarf, her outfit wasn’t too different from what she’d seen people wearing around Westreach.
“My aunt made them for me,” Rína said, “Why, what’s wrong with them?”
“Oh nothing’s wrong with them, but that’s the thing,” Theo said, “They’re pristine, seem to be a perfect fit for you, and I can’t even see any stitching. If I didn’t know better I’d say this was your ‘commoner’ outfit you asked mommy and daddy to commission for you so you could walk around without attracting attention.”
“Uh, no, my aunt and I are just traveling healers,” Rína said on reflex, “She used to be a seamstress, though,” Rína quickly amended, “Is it that obvious?”
“Not really,” Theo shrugged, “I don’t think most people would notice; it’s just that there are more than a few rich folks that visit our humble neighborhood. They usually dress down as a kind of disguise so it pays, literally, if you can manage to pick them out.”
“Huh, well anyway, I should be heading out,” Rína said, “Thanks for the games.”
“Anytime. In fact, if you want a rematch feel free to swing by again, but probably during the afternoon. Today’s kind of an exception because of the holiday, but I usually work nights.” Theo said as he led her to the door, “Oh and Rína,” he continued, his voice turning solemn, “Thank you, for stepping in how you did.”
“Oh… well, you’re welcome, but it’s not like I had much choice.” Rína said, giving him a hug goodbye.
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Torture as a means of intelligence gathering was an ineffective thing indeed. Though a common refrain, it is no less true that the subject will simply say whatever they believe will make the torture stop. It is unfortunate then that too often the ineffectual nature of torture is obscured from various rulers. Typically this occurs when the ruler’s subordinate managing the interrogations cares less for their assigned task of intelligence gathering than the indulging of their own sadistic appetites.
There are of course cases—mired in confirmation bias—where the interrogators truly believe that torture is a necessary evil. And indeed the true sadists may even claim to be among said believers, but there are always ways to differentiate the two. The tell lies in their methods. The sadists will always gravitate towards acts of violence that permanently injure or disfigure their captives. Theirs is not the business of interrogation nor even the application of pain as a motivator—they seek only to take the broken, tattered state of their own mind and mirror it onto the flesh of their victims. In that way, the violence is a kind of sick, twisted intimacy and as a result the torturer will typically—albeit unconsciously—use shorter tools or even just their fists so as to be physically closer to the poor soul they were given power over.
Take for example the present subject. They had run afoul of a mage lurking in the shadows of Westreach, and though they could have no way of knowing the answers the mage sought, abducted they still were. The mage asked their questions, but hardly waited a heartbeat before using their victim to vent their deeper frustrations. Disregarding both steel and spell, the mage struck with their bare hands, again and again until their victim looked more like a lump of misshapen dough than an actual human being that—
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The wagon door unlocked, snapping Yvette out of her halfway trance. She looked up from the kitchen counter and the ball of over-kneaded dough to see Rína returning, right as the sun was turning to golden red of dusk.
“Welcome home,” Yvette said.
“Hey aunty,” Rína said with a smile, “Whatcha making?”
Yvette frowned as she looked back to the dough before her, “Bread rolls as a side dish was my original thought but… I think now it will have to be pasta instead.”
“Like, maybe beef stroganoff?” Rína asked, the lilt in her voice appending a silent ‘pretty please?’.
“Sure,” Yvette smiled in return, “Can you get the rest of the ingredients from the pantry and start chopping the mushrooms?”
“Sure thing,” Rína said as she quickly did just that, taking up a position beside Yvette at the small kitchen counter, “So what’s wrong?”
“Bold of you to assume that something is wrong,” Yvette dismissed, “But I’m rather curious how your day around the city went.”
“It was…” Rína paused before shooting Yvette a glare, “...both more and less than expected, but I'm rather curious about what's wrong.”
Yvette sent back a side eye before sighing, «My attempts at information gathering were less than fruitful.»
«How come?» Rína asked.
«The primary culprits were labyrinthine bureaucracies… and fly swatters.» Yvette begrudgingly wrote as she measured out more flour for the pasta. Silently, Yvette asked this new batch of dough for homestead locations, but just like the previous dough ball, it definitely played dumb.
Reluctantly, Yvette described her day's investigations, «…I only found a few reports that mentioned settlements and only in very specific sub-regions. None of them looked to be suitable candidates for us to settle down in, but I will be continuing the search tomorrow and for as many days after that as needed.»
«I don’t know if it’s creepy or awesome that you’ve got spy bugs tucked away inside your body,» Rína wrote as she pulled out a pot and started working on the sauce.
«That’s your takeaway?»
«I mean, not the only one, but someone with spiders inside them is something straight out of a horror story.» Rína wrote.
«I only had three spiders and two flies with me—it was hardly a swarm. And besides they were all destroyed by office workers,» Yvette tsked, «Which reminds me that I will have to regrow them all before tomorrow.»
“But…” Rína hazarded, «what if you never find one? Never find a good place to settle down in, I mean. What if all the good spots already have settlers headed there? Is there any kind of plan B? Also, how do other Weavers deal with house hunting?»
Yvette couldn’t help but smile at the sudden deluge of questions, «Other Weavers house hunt just like everyone else, it is just that if there are non-Weavers around, they must gradually age their appearance and eventually move away before they ‘die of old age’.»
«That seems kind of annoying, having to pretend to be old and frail,» Rína wrote, «Couldn’t you just, I don’t know, pretend to be your own kid? Like, if you look like you’re forty, couldn’t you just go on vacation, ‘die tragically’, and come back as your own twenty-ish year old heir?»
«You definitely can,» Yvette wrote, «And there are a number of Weavers that do just that. The only risk, besides getting too attached to a non-Weaver, is having your aura identified between generations.»
Rína furrowed her brow, «That can happen?»
«Oh yes.» Yvette wrote, «It is a matter of skill and how many aura-aura interactions you have with the specific person, but eventually you will be able to identify them when your aura brushes up against theirs. It’s one of the things that makes undead such a hazard for Weavers as an undead could theoretically identify us even centuries after our last encounter with them—assuming they previously got a good feel for our aura.»
“Huh,” Rína stared blankly, «That’s weird because all the aura-aura stuff I’ve felt was like a slightly burn-y kind of fizzle. I can’t imagine ever being able to id someone from that.»
«That probably has to do with my aura being the only one you have encountered repeatedly,» Yvette wrote, «Once you encounter more you will be able to spot the differences.»
Rína nodded, «So why’s finding a new place so hard, and what’s the plan B?»
«The difficulty arises from my requirements for a homestead being more stringent than the average Weaver.» Yvette wrote as she took a rolling pin to the still defiant balls of dough.
«Right, the lab beneath the cottage.» Rína wrote.
«Correct. I would rather not go through the effort of growing the full laboratory complex beneath the cottage only to abandon it a few decades later—well before any of the experiments could conclude—all because prying eyes found their way to me.»
“And plan B?” Rína asked.
Yvette sighed, having tried to avoid this, «If nowhere in the Serric Highlands can be found, then both it and the Serric Peninsula as a whole will have to be written off. If that is the case we will naturally have to look elsewhere.»
Rína froze, “You mean leave, like, on an island?” She said with her voice tinged with both uncertainty and excitement.
“Gods no,” Yvette shook her head, «A few square kilometers full of mages of unknown temperament with nowhere to flee should things turn dire. No, it would barely be more preferable, but if we were to leave the peninsula, it would be overland through the mountain range that separates it from the rest of the continent.»
Rína gulped, turning her head to Yvette, “But doesn’t a ley line go through those mountains?”
«Indeed one does.» Yvette nodded, «So let us hope that I have better luck tomorrow.»