Chapter 42

Getting oriented at your base, as full a briefing as possible, will often save you a lot of confusion later in the field. Just make sure it’s pertinent to what’s going on, and not just stalling to begin.

DIC Manual

In the special operations room at DIC headquarters, Byrony showed Haran to a room to the side of the main chamber.

“We need to reorganize our space,” the Dragonkin said. “This is a big place, but there are times of the day we’re almost tripping over each other. We’ll figure out where to put you pretty soon, but feel free to use this space today while we get you up to date and sorted out. I thought I’d answer any questions before you get overwhelmed by everything being thrown at you at once.”

Haran pulled out the chair to the desk and sat down. Like most of the spaces he had seen at DIC headquarters, the walls were of smoothed stone, with hooks placed at regular intervals to hang charts from, with one wall supporting a bookcase, now empty. The lighting, like it was everywhere he had been, was excellent, close to daylight in color and intensity.

Running his hand over the top of the desk, he felt the smooth surface, and couldn’t decide if it were stone or fine, polished wood, although it did have a wood finish. In front of him was a fine ink and pen set, and a small shelf holding paper and notebooks. He pulled open the desk drawer. Inside were rulers, blotting material, paper fasteners and other small useful things. There was even a set of colored pencils. “This will work,” he said, nodding at Byrony. He grabbed one of the notebooks and a pencil. “So tell me what’s going on.”

“As you probably know, there’s been a series of…well I was going to use attacks, but the proper word might be incidents.” Bryony grabbed a chair and sat down near the Jinn. “As we shifted through the data, we began to wonder if all these incidents on different sectors of Dragonkin industry and economic stability might be interconnected.” Bryony shrugged. “We’re still not sure, exactly, but ever since Grimsbeard reported Gandaran stirred in his sleep, we’re more worried about some group, or at least someone person with a lot of resources is trying to undercut the Dragonkin pact.”

“Tell me again about the pact. Remember, being from the White Circle, you can’t assume I have a real understanding about things that are everyday knowledge of your people.”

“That’s true.” He got up and snagged a cup of tea from the tea service on one of the tables along one side of the room. “Want a cup?”

“You have a tea service in a room you weren’t actively using?”

“We have tea set up in all the rooms. The DIC runs off of it. We bring in fresh tea extract every morning, concentrated and very strong. Don’t try to drink it straight. Be sure to add hot water from the bottom urn to make it hot and drinkable.”

Haran nodded, and watched him as he demonstrated. “All the hot water comes from a central boiler, and as we take it out, it refills the tanks.”

“Amazing,” Haran said. “It would be nice to have something like this back home, although I think the Oldest likes the ritual of making tea. I think she uses it as a way to think, so maybe that wouldn’t work at all.” He accepted the cup Byrony offered him. He sipped it, and smiled. “Surprisingly good.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Bryony said. “Although if you want a fresh cup, Tansy makes an even better cup.” He sat back down. “I think some days that’s the main reason a blue manages to keep her job among all of us grays.”

“I don’t understand much about Dragonkin colors,” Haran said, putting his cup down.

“It’s mostly just color variations,” Byrony said. “Like why Lake people have green hair, and why Jinn are darker than people from Ynys Afel as a whole.”

“There are reasons for that,” Haran said. “It’s more than just coloring.”

“Once upon a time it was that way for our ancestors, too,” Byrony said, nodding. “But for the most part it’s just color nowadays. Another effect of Blazendraught, I guess. Maybe there’s some residual traits left over from the days when our ancestors were really dragons, like Gandaran. Lots of people involved in Transport, for instance, are blue or black, and Financial leans towards red. Not enough to bank on, and it may even relate more to which families are bringing their relatives into the business.”

“But not grays?” Haran said, scribbling a note in his new notebook.

Byrony nodded. “Except for us grays. Most of us have a compulsion to understand things, get to the bottom of things. We have that handy trait that helps keep us unnoticed. And we don’t, as a whole, care anything about gathering riches. We also tend to be smaller than most of the Dragonkin. Rumor is that back in the homeland, we were artificially created to be spies and assassins. Gandaran noticed we’re more immune than most to the Fire Plague, and are resistant to bribed or tempted to look the other way for fun or profit, which really is a rare trait among Dragonkin as a whole, and turned us into his police force. And that’s why we’re where we’re at.”

“So it’s a bloodline thing?”

“Mostly. We let non-grays into the DIC, but everybody goes through a hard weeding out process, and most of them wash out or are content to be lower ranked Web station personnel. After the training academy, which is already hard, we put them through hell during their first year, doing drudge work. Next we put them through a period of doing adminstrative jobs, like that bunch in the main room of headquarters. Still some drudgework, but it feels more like real DIC related activity. If the candidate is in it for money or glory, they usually shake out. We need dependable and trustworthy, or the whole system falls apart.” He scratched under his chin. “There might be a little graft in the sanctioned smuggling business, but we have a lot of checks and balances, and know where the weak links are. And we tend to shift those people around regularly to keep the business more or less honest.”

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“Fascinating.” Haran jotted a bit more into his notebook. “Shows the difference from running a tight police force versus a military operation.”

“We’re definitely not an army. The Dragonkin have no standing army.”

“And the Aos Si have an army, covert and overt, that gets dragged into police work. Some of the big towns do a little police work, but that’s as close as we come.”

Bryony crossed his legs. “That must make certain things happening more difficult to deal with.”

Haran nodded. “That’s what the White Circle and the Birch’s forces are for, to stay on top of things and combat what we can without bringing in the main King’s Guard. They aren’t very good at subtle or diplomatic situations.”

“That sounds about right,” Byrony said, draining his tea cup. Now let’s back to what we were talking about earlier. You had questions about the Dragonkin pact?”

Haran wasn’t quite as done with his tea as Byrony, having been busy taking notes. He put his pencil down and took a sip. “We know it exists, and it constrains what type of work various Dragonkin deal with, and it has a...well, maybe not religious, but sacred place in your people’s consciousness.’

“That it does. It is one of the bedrocks of why we don’t need a standing army.” He got up and went over to the bookshelf and picked out a tall, thin volume and brought it back to the desk.

“To understand why it matters, you have to understand Dragon history. Before Gandaran opened the way to Sunderland through the aid of the Lifebringer, the life on Dragonhame was fast being destroyed. The plane was dominated by three great conglomerates.” He paused after saying that word, and looked around, as if he was worried someone had heard him say it. “Don’t use that word in Dragonkin company, by the way. It’s considered highly rude.”

“I promise you I won’t,” Haran said, shrugging. “I’m not even sure what it means, except for something mixed together, like some types of rocks that seem to be made up of other rocks.”

“Mixed together. Yes, that’s the idea. The Three Great Houses of Dragonhame had done what we consider nowadays a great sin. They each were composed of many companies doing many types of work, squeezing out most other people who would try to make companies on their own. If you didn’t work for one of the Great Three, you probably had no way of making a living.”

Haran nodded his understanding. “It sounds like it forced agreement and loyalty, or else starvation.”

“That’s what the records we have say. And then the Great Three began to war with each other. The war was awful. It poisoned the land, killed countless people who were just trying to make a living. Great sums of money were spent to make weapons, physical and magical, diseases, things to send fire on opponents’ strongholds or collapse their resources. The tales say that one of the great houses created we Grey Dragon types during this time, to function as spies and assassins.”

“Then one of the great houses, with ruins falling around them, released the blow Dragonkind could not escape from – the Fire Plague. It is said they did it in vengeance, because everything they had was ruined in the war. That’s no excuse. The last viable fighters among them were given the plague and sent out not to fight, but to wander through the landscape, meeting as many people as they could before succumbing to it.

“Fire plague is awful. It is used as the ultimate punishment even today,” Byrony said. “The person goes mad with anger, and starts to destroy everything around them. If they can breathe fire, and some of us still can, they will ignite everybody and everything around them. In the old days, all dragons could breathe fire, and the devastation destroyed the last bit of hope. It spread like the fire they were breathing out. There were only a few survivors who had escaped the devastation deep in secret refuges under ground.

“Gandaran was in one of them, a holy man who was also gifted with the most brilliant mind for dealing with healing. He was also, amazingly a natural immune to the Fire Plague. There weren’t many like him. At great risk, and with the help of the other immunes, he managed to create Blazendraught. It was an amazing medicine. As long as a person took it once a month, they remained sane and able to continue their lives. But at the same time it had a harrowing effect – after continued use, the Dragons shrunk, became lesser, smaller, and their offspring, well, they looked like us. We kept our wings and our ability to ride through no-space and our ability to do a certain set of magics that few if any Aos Si can do. Bit by bit, he made contact with all the small groups of survivors, and dosed them. Changed was better than death.”

“Your poor ancestors,” Haran said, his face reflecting the effects of Byrony’s story, eyes wide, mouth agape. “That sounds worse than the Sundering War at its most vicious.”

Byrony nodded. “It was. Even with the last of the survivors given a chance at life again, Dragonhame was destroyed, its waters poisoned, its air almost unbreathable, and life was fast becoming a race against time. I told you Gandaran was a holy man, given to deep meditation and mystical studies. Somehow, during one of these sessions, he made contact with a gracious primordial being, the one you know as the Lifegiver, who showed him the route through no space to Sunderland. He was free to take the remnant of his people to the new land, as long as he would swear to make sure that what they did to their land could never happen there.

“I do not know if the pact was all Gandaran’s idea, or done with consultation with the Lifebringer, or just the other survivors, but it was written to keep the same tendency to consolidation that lead to the Three Great Houses to ever happen again. No vertical organization was allowed. A company that made iron products was not allowed to own the companies that produced the iron or provided the fuel, nor were they allowed to open stores that sold the iron to people that wanted iron goods. A house could dominate all the smithies there are, but nothing beyond that.

“In the pact, Dragonkin society is divided into these areas: trade, transportation, finance, pharmaceuticals, and exploration. There is absolutely no company allowed to combine any two of them.”

“Heh, in Aos Si society, it seems that finance tries to own everything, if given half a chance, and there’s not a clean division between trade and finance,” Haran said, finishing his tea.

“That’s how our troubles started, back in Dragonhame. And Gandaran swore that would never happen with our people here. And to help keep it from happening, he brought us, the Grays who had been spies and assassins, to keep everybody honest.”

“And after he had brought everybody over and sworn to the pact, he went into his magical sleep.” Haran got up, and took his mug over to the tea service, and tried making his own cup of tea.

“A living, if not active seal on the pact,” Bryony said. “There’s a ring around the bottom third of the cup that tells you how much tea concentrate to add.”

“Thanks,” Haran said.

“Gandaran said if we forsook the path, he would arise and destroy every last dragonkin he found with his own hands, for voiding his word to the Lifegiver. Every time he has moved in his sleep, there’s been some plot afoot. It’s been our job to fix it before he fully arises.” He shoved the book he had pulled down towards Haran. “Here, read this later. It explains it all more eloquently than I can. We keep it in all the DIC offices to help us stay focused.”

Haran looked down at the volume. In gold letters, it proclaimed Gandaran and the Sacred Pact: A Short History.

“I will do. But based on what you’ve told me, that brings us to where we are today,” Haran said, bringing his cup back to the desk. He took a sip of the tea and frowned. “Evidently, you’re better at making this stuff than me.”

“You’ll get the hang of it. Lets hope we all get the hang of what’s going on before Gandaran can wake up. This has been the oddest situation in all the years there was a Gandaran incident. All the divisions but Pharmaceuticals has been hit so far.” Byrony dropped his head and rested it on one hand.

“Does that mean you think the perpetrators might be from them?” Haran took another sip of his tea and tried not to wince.

“Probably not, but at this point, I’m not ruling anything out.”

“We never stop investigating,” Haran quipped.

Bryony smiled, a rare toothy smile. “We’ll make a DIC man out of you yet.”