It was three in the afternoon when I got back to my side of town. It had rained and stopped a few times since I had left the café. I went to the baths on Pearl court a few blocks down from my apartment. If a pearl had ever so much as passed through I’d bite my blade. It was a rough place and I kept my things wrapped up in my jacket on the bench near me while I lifted weights and hit the skin. It was enough to wash the mind out but nothing that would have me feeling stiff the next day. I let what Ethelyn had told me roll around in my mind and slide into place wherever it could. All the while Liana floated somewhere nearby in fragments.

The bath was hot for once and I tried not to fall asleep. Some guy asked me about the scars and the war and when he found out I had been in Novera he went off about the Jolan wars and what a real war was like. Normally I might have told him some things, before and after adjusting his vertical position, but today I just sat there until the water had done its work and left.

The suns were hovering at the tops of the buildings to the east as I walked back and the street traffic had died to a trickle. Most people in my neighborhood work in the factories and don’t stop till near dark. There were a few pedestrians on my street and not many carriages. The one parked out front drew my eye, despite being a fairly common make, because I recognized the driver. He was a squat northerner with keen eyes like blued steel and a wooden club on his hip. I went in the gate to the alley and halfway down at the door Sid stood leaning over some slim kid. He had a spike dagger on his hip and about eight tons of attitude in his ten-pound frame. The kid saw me and nodded with a big smile. Sid looked over and I could see I had gotten there just as the kid was wearing out his welcome, or maybe he had worn it out an hour ago. I'd be hard-pressed to tell you just how much patience Sid had tucked away but I would swear on the family grave when it ran out I would too.

“Apartment eight, fourth floor.” I said to the kid. He just smiled and ran off. I turned back to Sid.

“I'll be having company come up. You'll like him better than the kid, I promise.”

“That won’t take much.” He said.

I went inside. What the hell Rodgar was doing hiring that kid I had no idea. Usually, his guys are as square and tight as an arrow slit.

When I got in the room I opened the curtains, cracked the windows and tried to clean up. I pulled a bottle out of the hole in the wall behind one of my shelves and got some glasses out of the kitchen corner. I picked a handful of berries from the vine and put them in a saucer on the low table. I took another handful of nuts from the cupboard and did the same with them. Now that tradition was taken care of, I took off my jacket and was just putting away my knife when the knock came, two strong raps that reminded me that the door wasn’t hollow but the walls sure were. I opened it and invited Rodgar in.

He stood six foot and a half and had to lean down to come in through the doorway. It was just as controlled as the rest of his movements. He took off his hat and set his dark silver-headed walking stick against the buffet shelf for a moment while I took off his jacket. I placed his coat and his hat on the wooden pegs on the wall. We grabbed hands and hugged. As I was bowing and inviting him to the seat he took a paper-wrapped bottle out of his pants pocket like it was a toy and tore the paper from it in one motion. He offered it to me with an honest smile. It was a bottle of wine and I could see the shine on the seal even in the dim room.

“Excuse my coming into your home, Alany. Here’s my amends.” I refused it twice and he offered it two more times before I took it and set it on the table next to the other one. With all the traditional Eaman customs satisfied, we sat down.

“I sent you a letter today.” I said. I poured us some drinks.

“I know, I got it.”

“I didn’t think it should have reached you till tonight.”

“All my post is expedited; I have made arrangements with all the routes in the city.” He said it without a hint of pride, as if he was explaining how he put on his boots and not how he tampered with imperial infrastructure.

“I didn’t think it warranted a response, certainly not in person.” I said.

“I was concerned and wanted to make sure you were in good health. There are always people trying to compromise the work I do.” Rodgar twirled his cane slowly in his hand, the silver heron’s head moving as if scanning the room. His work was heavy work. He supplied bodyguards to those who needed them the most and who could count the least on the state for protection. They weren’t necessarily all the same type of people, but close enough that each job was similar. I had worked for him for a bit over a year now. Before I had worked the same kind of work but with less assurance of my safety or even my pay, and I ran into a lot of trouble from guys who expected me to move into other activities I hadn’t signed on for. Rodgar ended all that and took me in when my life was on the line. He was the first to streamline his game, the first to get the main men of the syndicate and other organizations to agree on hard limits for the work they were paying for and to guarantee the status of his employees as neutral parties. This was almost completely done by the strength of his character. On top of that from what I had seen, he was a straight dealer and the only ones I’d ever heard say a harsh word about him had been those on the wrong end of his business, and even some of them spoke highly of him. In this kind of work, it’s a bad spot to be in to get attached to your employer, but dammit, I liked Rodgar.

“Well, no one’s gotten to me if that’s what you’re thinking. I'm gonna be handling something for the foreseeable future and felt I should let you know.” I said.

“I appreciate it. You’re under no obligation to, as you know.” He said. Rodgar made a point to not know the exact whereabouts of most of his men most of the time.

“Yes, and you’re not under any obligation to see about my safety.” I said.

He smiled and took a drink.

“You’ve given me a year of good work. It's hard to find men like you. Consider my visit protecting my investment.”

“Consider your investment safe for the time being.” I said. I took a drink and he started again.

“Is this business of yours personal, or is it something I can help with?” I hadn’t expected that and I took a moment to decide what to make of it. I couldn’t make anything out of it and he sat there waiting.

“Something you could help with? I'm not sure. I’d say I don’t know the extent of your pull.”

“Does it involve beings of flesh and blood?” He said.

“It does, but I haven’t quite tied down which ones yet.”

Like I said, I like Rodgar, but the idea of being indebted to someone in his business, even to someone I liked, rubbed me the wrong way. However, I wasn’t in a position to turn down help. I thought of Liana somewhere cold and dark.

“What do you know about the Complex?” I said. He finished his drink and set the cup down, then leaned back and looked at me as if I had just made a strange sound.

“As much as I need to for the work I do, which is to say only generalities.” He said.

“Have you ever used it?”

He paused a moment.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“I have made use of its information indirectly.”

“Was the information accurate?”

“Frighteningly so. Do you need an introduction?”

“Are we talking about the same thing?”

“The Complex, the information network operated by magi supposedly outside the realm of the state, correct?”

“Supposedly?”

“Yes, it’s a bit of an open secret that they have operatives inside. Possibly, they allow it’s existence because it provides them with good intel. Some go so far as to say they created it.”

“Right. So, how would one use it without getting hanged for treason.” I said.

He smiled.

“If they hung everyone who tried to use it, it wouldn’t be worth much, would it? However, they do hang some of those who use it for crimes and most of those who use it to attack the state.”

“Any safe way to use it?”

“You're not a magi, are you?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then you’d have to use a door. I happen to know one who I can trust.”

“What do you mean ‘door’?”

He laughed

“I’m sorry lad, you really don’t know a thing about the Complex?”

“Next to nothing besides what it’s supposed to be.” I said.

“Well, then a door is someone who gives non magi access to the complex. They also give magi access to the complex but not in the same way and in that case it's usually to let them into a specific area, so to speak.”

“How does a door give me access?”

“They go inside your mind, and then they go inside the complex, or I should say they speak to it.”

I suddenly didn’t like the turn of this conversation, though I don’t know what I expected. I guess I thought there’d be magi hiding in secret rooms I could put my hands on and rough up.

“Is there any way to get information on it without actually talking to it, or them?” I said.

He looked at me like he just realized something.

“Have you ever had a magi enter your mind?”

“Once. In Novera.” I thought of the sensation on that boat and tried not to shudder.

“How was it for you?”

“It was one of the worst things I’ve ever felt in my life.” I said.

“Did they show you things?” He said.

“No, just told us to head east.”

“Hm, it’s often awful the first time, and some people never get used to it, but I think you will.” He smiled at me like he was sending me off to college and took a drink before he continued.

“And, no, there’s no good way to get into the thing without having one go in your head.”

I poured another drink at that. All the time he was talking I was trying not to think of what it felt like to have someone else in my head, but now the memory kicked down the door.

It had felt like being stabbed. All of a sudden someone else's anger, fear, and whatever else was knocking about in your head, except it wasn’t just in your head, it took over your entire world. All of creation was invaded by something foreign and wrong, and the emotions seemed to cut and tear because they weren’t shaped the same way as the anger and fear your mind was used to, if that means anything. This all happened in a second, and on top of everything it was loud, somehow those words, “head east”, had been louder than anything I’d ever heard, probably because I wasn’t really hearing them. Rodgar must have seen my thoughts on my face.

“What are you hoping to get out of the complex, I could give you better advice if I knew more.”

I looked him in the eye and took another drink. I wasn’t green enough to think this would come without a debt, but at this point, it didn’t matter. If he could help me find Liana I’d brand his family name on my forehead.

“I’m looking for someone. Someone young who was trying to contact the Complex and disappeared.”

“What were they trying to get out of the complex?”

“I don’t know. Might have been just youthful curiosity.”

“If it was just that they wouldn’t have gotten far. The complex only lets in those who have something to offer it.”

“What does it want?”

“Information.” He said before taking another drink.

“I’m running short on that lately, but this person might have had enough of it to get somewhere.”

Rodgar leaned back and took out his pipe and a polished copper leaf case. He opened the leaf case and packed the bowl.

“I can get you in. I have a man who’s tapped into it and has good credit with it.”

“What will I owe you?”

He held his pipe out. “You can start with a light.”

I got up and walked over to the slow fuse in the box on the counter and lit a spill from the jar. I took it back to Rodgar and lit his pipe with it then lit the short oil lamp on the table and tamped the spill out on the plate. Rodgar blew out a smoke ring and I sat down

“What’s my balance now?” I said.

Rodgar Smiled. “I'll have to think about it. What will you do with this person if you find them?”

“I won't hurt them, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m looking for them for their own good.”

“And how do you plan on using the Complex to find them?”

“I hadn’t gotten that far. I didn’t even know I could find it.”

“I'll give you my advice then. You believe this person has been in contact with the Complex recently, correct?”

“That’s right. they might even be in contact with them right now.”

“And this person does not want to be found by you?”

I bit my lip a bit. “I wouldn’t say that for sure. My gut tells me they’re just hiding from everyone because they’re in danger.”

“Hmm.” He let out another cloud of smoke and poured himself a third or fourth drink, I hadn’t been counting but in my experience liquor of any quality tended to evaporate around him without much effect.

“Then my advice is to use a memory the two of you share, one that is unique, to draw them out. Do you have such a memory?” he said.

“I don’t follow.”

He looked at me a bit and sucked enough air through his pipe to lift a sail then blew a ring I could have hopped through at the ceiling.

“Do you know how the complex communicates?” He said.

“With magic, I’d imagine.”

“And by that you mean the way the telepath did when they told you to go east?”

“Is there another way?” I said. I wasn’t familiar with the word telepath.

“Yes. Many magi can send not only words and speech, but images, sounds, memories. Anything the mind can perceive a magi with mental ability can make another mind perceive as well. If you are imagining the Complex as just people talking to one another you would be misguided. All kinds of information go through it.”

I had heard of magic all my life like anyone else, but it was usually stories of waves of fire or someone turning invisible and all that. People talked of magi getting in your head, which seemed a skill so common they all could do it, but I had never had to think about the specifics. Now that I was speaking in detail about it a cold fear was crawling over me, as if a lifetime of folk tales and rumors were coalescing into a real, solid terror.

“So you advise I send a memory. How?” I said.

“The door will explain it to you, but what’s important is that you don’t use names or anything that can let the other people on the hunt find you or determine the identity of the one you are trying to contact. There are more complicated ways to send a secure message but a simple visual memory of a place where the two of you met might work, anything that would allow them to know it’s you trying to contact them, which will hopefully cause them to come find you.”

I had become more and more convinced as the conversation progressed that I had no grasp on what the hell the complex was or how to use it safely. I wanted to believe that If Liana knew I was looking for her she would reach out to me, but I couldn’t be sure.

“You don’t know of any place any of these guys hang out? Is it just the usual dens?” I said.

Rodgar smiled. “If you are asking if you can beat information out of the complex than I regret to tell you that you cant. It's been tried and the very nature of the complex prevents it in almost all cases. It’s standard practice for all members to not disclose their location or any personal details. That’s why I hope for your sake this person has the sense to contact you.”

I finished my drink. Rodgar poured me another.

“You said you can get me in.”

“Yes, I know a door. All your communication with the complex will go through him, and for your safety, he will screen your conversation and make sure you don’t endanger yourself with anything you disclose.”

“When can I meet him?”

“Tonight. After midnight.” He held his pipe in the corner of his mouth and took a leather book out of his vest. He opened it and removed a charcoal pencil from the spine. He took a square of card paper from a stack stashed in the back and placed it on top of the hardcover inside and wrote something down.

“Be at this tavern before midnight, but not too much before.” He handed me the paper and it had an address written on it in squarescript.

“When you come in the door look to your left and sit in the corner seat just past the window nook, against the wall. Order a spiced ale. Be prepared to wait. When the rest have cleared out he’ll help you.”

“What will I owe you, assuming my overflowing gratitude won't be enough?”

Rodgar’s face got still and his body relaxed into an almost regal posture. Up till now he’d been so friendly I could have forgotten he made his living breaking men down to nothing and calling bluffs on killers.

“Sometime I will need your loyalty. I will call on you and I will have it. Agreed?” he said.

I opened my mouth to remind him of my limits, but just then Liana swirled up to the dark doorway behind him. She was wearing the silk gown she had packed in her book bag that hot night. She smiled and floated away into the bedroom, pretending to be carried off by some phantom. The vision faded and I closed my mouth.

“Whatever you need.” I said.

“Then I'll go and let my man know you’re coming.” He got up and moved to the door with his cane in hand. I grabbed his things off the hooks and he let me put his coat on him.

“Good night and safe travels, and thanks again for the help.” I said.

He smiled warmly at me.

“You should have talked to me from the start, but I can understand your hesitance. An old thug like me may not seem like the helpful type. Good night, lad. I’ll see myself down.”

If I hadn’t known better I would have thought I heard hurt in Rodgar’s voice.