Chapter Eighty
Espionage
As the sun rose across Fort Guardian, Michael awoke to a flashing rune-light above his bed and he quickly waved it off, groaning into his pillow. He sat up, feeling a dozen different muscles roar with pain and his bones click in several places. He pulled on a fresh shirt for the first time in about a spell and walked to the door, rubbing his eyes. Michael had only been asleep for five hours or so as he bitterly walked past his sleeping dorm-mates.
Michael opened the door to find Amekot standing in the hall, smiling politely. Behind him were Carter, James, Sarah, Oliver, and Rose, all looking equally tired and irate about being awoken at dawn.
“Mister Williams. I was hoping we could all have breakfast and discuss some sensitive fort business.” Amekot stepped out of the doorway and Michael nodded groggily.
He turned and grabbed his bow and his empty rune-fixed quiver, and the group found their way out of the keep and over to one of the long dining tables. Soon after they’d gathered up meals, eating awkwardly beside their Fortmaster, the man finished his plate of salmon and folded his hands in his lap. Michael noticed that despite probably getting less sleep than himself, Amekot looked remarkably bright-eyed.
Oliver glanced at Sarah as she drank her coffee and looked awkwardly down to his food. When he found out she was a baroness, Oliver did his best to see things the same way as before, but now he couldn’t help but wonder if he was holding his knife and fork the wrong way.
Whilst he looked away, Sarah picked up a stray piece of egg with her fingers, feeling rather like he’d suddenly gotten polite and quiet. With Hillborn sitting at the head of the table, she resisted asking him if he was okay, and instead she simply nudged his shoulder and smiled.
Michael watched as Oliver gave a half-hearted smile and kept eating. He felt his heart ache as Sarah took a sip of her coffee, hiding the upset look on her face as Oliver didn’t return the warm gesture.
Michael had felt something similar when he first visited Carter’s house and realised that using the word ‘house’ was an insulting way to describe it. It wasn’t until Carter brought him stolen candy for his birthday later that cycle that Michael felt like they were one and the same again.
Amekot waited for them to finish eating and then described the day’s itinerary. According to the Fortmaster, he was planning to be in War Council meetings from Rising until Nigh and needed to assign some tasks to a handful of ‘trusted parties’. Apparently, after having evaluated the information which Michael and his company retrieved, he decided they could be relied upon.
“Your assignments are in here.” Amekot produced six official-looking folders, each with a single slip of paper inside and their names in print on the appropriate file. “You are not to share details of your missions with one another. Is that clear?”
James’ hair was beginning to get long, shown mostly by the fact that his wet curls were now encroaching on his eyes. “I thought we were ‘trusted parties’…”
Amekot looked rather blankly at James and straightened his over-cloak collar. “And you shall remain so, if you keep your missions to yourselves. No one will have any need to share details, and if you do I’ll have no choice but to assume you’re attempting to gather sensitive fortress information.”
Carter swept over his thick black hair and put down his coffee so he could properly gesture. “You’ll claim we’re spies if we read a file that isn’t our own?”
Amekot teetered his head back and forth before shaking his head, his rich, dark eyes and oiled hair glistening in the grey morning light. He then gave something of a small sigh and laid his hands on the table. “Look, I’ll be honest with you all. We’re in a bad situation. And I don’t know who to suspect. You are all among my least suspected. And I can’t have you all knowing everything, because if I’ve misplaced my trust, then the spy will know everything. So, please.”
Michael glanced at Rose and she shrugged, as though saying, He sounds oddly sincere, to which Michael gave the barest of shrugs. He then looked across the group and asked, “Where are Nick and Ari? And Magnus?”
Amekot finished his tea and said, “Miss Huntress and Miss Oswald have already been assigned. Mister Andevār has not been back to his dorm, as of yet.” Amekot smiled warmly and said, “Thank you, all for your cooperation. Now, excuse me, I have to go ensure we have some kind of plan for the day after tomorrow.”
As soon as he’d left the table, Carter leant back in his chair and huffed, “Well... I guess being a prick isn’t a full-time job.”
The Legacies chuckled and spent the next few minutes finishing their meals, but no one touched their folders. So, until everyone had sipped their last bit of coffee or tea, the Legacies left the missions where they lay, stretching out the time they had.
After half an hour or so, their conversation lulled and James glanced at his file. Rather dejectedly, he picked up his assignment wandered from the table.
One by one, the others followed suit.
Michael opened his as he walked and read:
Mister Williams,
If you were not already made aware by fortress rumours, the Priority Archives were breached on the morning your company left for the caverns.
You have been assigned a rather peculiar undertaking, due to your rather rare Prophetical Arcancy, to enter the archives, and attempt to view that room on exactly the morning of the Eleventh of Bronzing.
Now, I am the only person with the knowledge of how to enter the Priority Archives, or the authority to do so. Anyone else seen in that room did not have the authority to be there, so if you manage to discover anything, please come see me as soon as possible.
Good luck, Paladin.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
P.S. To gain access to the Priority Archives, you’ll need to remember this: 13 - Back Wall.
Michael rolled up his orders and tucked the scroll into his pocket. Before he made his way toward the library, where the archives were held, Michael made a beeline for the Armoury and hastily grabbed the arrows from a full quiver and slotted them into his quiver designed by Archie, happily watching as the inlaid runes grabbed the arrow-heads and held them in place.
He then wandered through the forum and made his way past the keep, walking between the great central structure and med-bay to see the library in the distance.
It was a low, windowless building made from dark stone, with a small set of steps leading up to the front doors. On its face, the building was rather plain and unassuming. Michael found that amusing due to the sheer number of secrets it held from the world.
Michael hopped up the stairs and pushed open the patterned wooden door.
The lack of windows in the library left it absurdly dark and quite cold, lit only by some gentle Arcancy lights which hovered high above the stacks. It smelled of dry paper and worn stone. As per any library, no one spoke above a whisper, if at all, and no one took a book, scroll, document, or piece of torn paper without telling the librarian.
Upon entering, Michael found himself between the two rows of bookshelves, dividing the room into three parts. The walls were also lined with shelves of their own, leaving no spot of the structure uncovered with literature.
A dozen paces in front of him sat a woman perched behind their desk, squinting down at a thick book. She looked up to see Michael standing in front of the door. She raised her brow at him in question, but when he didn’t advance, she waved him forward impatiently.
“Can I help you?” she asked, still making notes in her ledger.
Michael wandered forward and used all of his power of will to stop himself reading books at random. Thirteen, he thought, wondering if perhaps there was a book titled with just that number.
“No, thank you. I’ll just look around,” he said, stepping passed the woman’s desk and approaching the back wall, as she looked back to her writings.
He scanned the rather large bookshelf for anything that someone else might ignore, for Michael knew it was of little good to have a secret door that enticed people to open it.
There were entire volumes of The Ardician Reign of Talisatia and near-complete sets of tomes on every culture like The History of Draendica and The Four Corners of the World. He kept sifting through the shelves, looking for a title that wouldn’t jump out at him. He unrolled several scrolls and hastily shoved them back after finding them terribly interesting but useless in the context of finding hidden passageways. He ran his finger across their spines, tossing up names for anything familiar or subtly suggestive when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see the librarian standing behind him, wearing a curious frown.
She gestured to the small pile of books he’d left on the floor when digging around the shelves and rather tightly asked, “Can I help you find anything?”
Michael wrinkled his mouth in hesitation and muttered, “No... but by any chance do you happen to know anything about the number thirteen? Maybe some kind of literary reference it would have…”
The hair-pinned woman made a tired face as she gave, stiff, unclear gestures. “In terms of being a Legacy number?”
Michael wasn’t sure how much he could give away and went to offer up something vague when he spotted a book behind her on the centre-most bookshelf.
The title along the spine read, The Hidden World: An Introduction. Above the title was scrawled, Volume 13.
Michael scanned either side of the text to find that it had no neighboring volumes. “You know what, actually, I’m fine.” He leant down and pulled the book out, turning away from the shelves. It was a purely grey book with a symbol inscribed in black on its face, making it difficult to see unless you held it in your hand.
*find reference image in Google Drive Folder*
Michael frowned and traced the lines, whilst unbeknownst to him and the librarian, the entire bookshelf began to lower itself into the ground behind them.
“What’s this symbol mean? Sorry I didn’t get your name.”
“Dolores. That there is a derivative symbol of Highlord Taro Coure. When he couldn’t convict innocent people of witchcraft or the death toll was getting too high and civil unrest was stirring, he’d have them branded as associates of evil. Taro’s symbol was called God’s Infinity. Hold on...”
Michael watched as she moved to the exact shelf with that particular Highlord’s histories and drew out a book.
“Taro the Immoral, right?” he recalled.
“The very same.” She flipped through the pages before showing him two oddly intricate symbols.
One depicted a chain bent in a figure-eight loop. Inside either loop was a crown and a diadem, and sitting at the chain’s cross section was a fortress tower.
The second image was a disfigured version of the same symbol. The chain was broken, splaying out wildly in a X, the crowns were overturned and the fortress split in twain.
The librarian regarded the mark disdainfully. She tapped the disassembled symbol. “It supposedly means sinful or abnormal. See how the White Chain of Riinity is depicted as broken. The citadel is shattered. The crown and diadem of government authority discarded.”
Michael looked at the symbol on the face of the book in his hand. It was a line-work version of the same intricate symbol. Michael tried to memorise it. It was a strange thing to know that at some point, people would brand you with molten steel, and somehow that would make them feel more comfortable with themselves.
The librarian saw his face and said, “Eventually, our people decided that if we were to be persecuted for who we are, then so be it. It would become a part of us. And so now, while the rest of the world believes it means Godless, or Evil, or Anarchist, to us it means Legacy.”
Michael stayed quiet, unsure of what to say, and he turned to put the book back in the shelf, Michael found the entire cabinet had slid into the floorboards, revealing a nook behind the wall and a trap door. He was so startled he accidentally began uttering, “What in the f-”
Dolores, now beginning to sit back down at her desk, frowned and called out, “Everything okay?”
Michael stammered and prayed she wouldn’t turn around. “Yes. Fine. Just, um, loving... Jax Luck’s take on ‘The Crek Invasion of Riniglacia and the Colonisation of the Ringlands from Seven-Seventy-Eight to Seven-Eighty’.”
Michael glanced cautiously around the library once more, only seeing one other person buried in a book close to the door, and the preoccupied librarian. He stepped lightly into the hidden room and found a lever jutting out from the wall. On a hunch, he pulled it.
The bookcase lurched upward, silently lifting back into place, letting in only a single shaft of light where he’d removed the book.
Michael slotted to tome back in place and heard a soft click as the mechanism reset. He turned and hoisted open the circular trap door further along the nook.
He stepped down onto a metal ladder within and descended into a dark cellar, thick with stuffy, cold air, and did all he could to keep his heart from thumping in his chest. Michael reached the bottom and found a stone tunnel edged with torchlight.
He followed the passage to a heavy, metal door and a felt his nerves fraying as he reached toward it. The door swung backwards at his barest touch, revealing a small indoor library-like room.
Like the one above, it was completely lined with bookshelves, though without the rows dividing the room. Instead it had great central table crammed in the centre of the room, all swamped stacks of notes and scrolls.
Michael cleared a space on the table and sat himself down. As he looked around, he noticed, despite the small clutter, that everything was meticulously organised. All in all, there were twelve good-sized bookshelves filling up the wall-space, and each shelf was labelled, from Current Grain Output and Legacy Profiles to Stronghold Communications and Training Assessments, as well as an assortment of others.
Michael ignored his strong urge to snoop and took a deep breath, focusing on the room beneath his feet, the air in his lungs, and the Eleventh of Bronzing. Thoughts of here and now were replaced with flickering images of here, but not now, as light crept behind his eyelids. His tendons crawled up his neck and arms and a cold flame licked inside his veins.
This time instead of going forward, or somewhere else in the present, his Arcancy pulled him back in time.