On their fourth day on the road, they hit Brecklund. A nothing village of less than a hundred souls, it was originally intended to be a mining camp. Someone failed to notice that the mines had been dug out more than an epoch ago. Whatever useful minerals they might have once contained were long gone.
Or maybe they did notice, and it was all a real estate scam. Wouldn’t be impossible. Now the village was a glorified caravansary. The steady stream of traffic through the Roooksnest Pass kept a little community going. Mostly trade to and from Red Mountain. There were better routes to Vast Green Isle and the rich lands to the south.
’Te decided that this would be a good opportunity to rest up for the push through the pass, and to test how far his conditioning had come. The associates were looking rather punchy. The combination of positive reinforcement when they did well and very light negative reinforcement when they did poorly, combined with his consistently associating himself with food and warmth… well, they weren’t thinking terribly clearly right now. Or they might notice that the person who they were coming to see as a combination of father and mentor was keeping them sleep deprived and physically exhausted, while he could nap through the day in the Landau.
If only they had someone to talk to, who could understand them. But then, they were kept socially isolated too. The guards weren’t about to chat with them, nor were the Customer Development officers, nor the Phrenlick the valet. ’Te made a point of summoning them individually before bed, praising them for their good work during the day, scolding them gently for their errors. Reminding them that, as scions of the Main Line, much was given, much forgiven, but even more expected. The Associates had, separately, made discreet offers. Those offers had been gently rejected. Such a thing was not impossible, ’Te said, but only if they excelled during the journey.
It had only been three days of brainwashing. He had barely gotten to work on them. But then, the Clan had already set a strong foundation for his… persuasive education.
“Alright, it’s early, but we will spend the afternoon and night here. Phrenlick, organize the rooms. If my usual room is available, take it. Otherwise I will sleep in the Landau. Xiachoram, Xiachoii, attend me.” The rest were dismissed with a look.
The two associates looked ready to fall over, but stood grimly presentable in front of him.
“You two haven’t excelled these last few days, but you haven’t made any serious mistakes either. We are spending the afternoon and night in this hideous dive for two reasons. The first is to make sure everyone is in their best condition for the push through the mountains. I know it doesn't seem too bad down here in the foothills, but you may be quite assured things are very different under the eyes of the Seven Saints. The second… I am presenting you with your first opportunity.”
Their eyes, formerly empty with exhaustion, took on a hint of steel.
“Not many caravans through the pass right now, as winter is coming down. But the villagers are still here. Your job? Learn all you can about the road between here and Red Mountain. I expect you to maintain the dignity of the Xia, and the confidentiality of our mission, as you do so.”
They nodded silently.
“Good. Now. Before any of that, Phrenlick will have organized baths for the two of you, as well as ordering lunch. Go wash up, then join us at the table.” He smiled warmly at them. They smiled back.
“Expert Xiatokte, how wonderful to see you again!” The innkeeper beamed. “We were expecting you. The Sky Runners’ brat asked to be told when you came by.” This wasn’t unusual, in Xiatokte’s experience. It was pretty common for messages to be sent ahead and wait until he arrived. The inn at Brecklund was a logical spot for the Sky Runners to set up a small office.
“Thank you, Caudice. I think I know the way.”
“I expect you do!” Caudice laughed politely. “Just give us a moment to freshen up your room. It will be ready for you by the time you finish lunch. Are you sure I can’t send you some company?”
“I’m all set. Though you may well find my entourage more interested.” It was the same exact exchange as always. He looked over to the table set up next to the front desk of the inn. He didn’t recognize the youngster. That was pretty normal, the Sky Runners liked to keep their people moving around. Combined with their extreme reluctance to share their own name, it made developing relationships irritatingly hard. The brat in question, fourteen and rangy, waved him over.
“Message for you, Expert. Rush from Cold Garden. Grandpa asked me to remind you that sending something in code is a waste of time, as we already swore the secrecy oath.”
“Tell your grandpa it isn’t about him, specifically, or the Sky Runners generally, and he knows it.”
The kid shrugged, collected the fee, and went back to repairing his carrying frame. ’Te snorted and retreated to the Landau for a little privacy. It did take an annoying amount of time to decode these letters.
Three characters in the first block, so a book code. Slightly ominous, but fine. Four in the second block, and this is a journey to Red Mountain, so the book is Valgoransin. A book I am convinced ’Tok picked to fuck with people, but never mind. He pulled the book from its chest under a bench. Seven characters in the third block, so this is… a simple substitution code? Oh this is really, really not good.
The decoding went very quickly. It really wasn’t good at all.
The night passed quietly, to ’Te’s surprise. They had tipped off the hotel about the raids, and that this was a very appealing target. ’Te would have told the Sky Runners kid too, but apparently he had only been waiting around to deliver the message. Once ‘’Te collected it, the boy slung on his carrying frame and jogged off. No shouted warning in passing, or a veiled hint. Just… grabbed his pack and off he went.
They still left a little before dawn. The associates were allowed into the servant’s portion of the landau, at least until they had made it into the mountains. It was only about five miles, but the time seemed to crawl. The guards were scouting heavily, all armed and armored for a serious fight. ’Te made sure the Dreadful Mrs. Crump was ready to deploy, just in case. But she continued not to be needed. Once he could see Barn Peak through the window, he kicked the associates out and back onto their cheves.
Lunch saw them dining in a pull over with a stunning view of snow covered mountains. Five of them stuck up like saw teeth on one side of the road, two more stood lonely and proud on the other. Somehow, the land between, where they had pulled over, was perfectly flat and open. It was… disorienting. As though distance and scale were no longer fixed. The green pine curved over knurled mountain ridges that only looked small due to the distance.
“You think this is something? Tomorrow we pass by the closest of the Five Saints.” ’Te chuckled amicably. “So. Last night didn’t go exactly as planned, but that’s life for you. What did you manage to discover?”
Xiachoii licked her lips. “There are three settlements that got hit by raiders, moving north towards Spke. Which is well south of the Disputed Territory, but not all that far south. So far, they are all commerce raids, targeting transport and finance. This is particularly pertinent because, firstly, the bank branches that were hit were the First Commerce Bank of Red Mountain.” Also known as the Nomeki’s personal piggy bank. “And second because an organized army looked like it was rolling up the road about a week behind the raiders. The caranvers I talked to didn’t know whose army, but the Collective’s Fourth Pioneers are based out of Bakerton. Combined with reports that the Fourth was mobilized, it becomes much more plausible that forward elements of the army were spotted.”
“Assuming the reports are correct and these are forward elements of the Fourth Pioneer Corps, what conclusions do you draw from these data points?”
“That one of two things are likely- the raiders are running ahead of the Collective and pillaging while they can, or they are Collective irregulars being used to soften up local forces.”
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
“Not bad. In practice, we simply don’t know enough to make a firm conclusion. Still, a pretty decent start. Xiachoram?”
Xiachoram looked calm and collected. This was immediately, and correctly, interpreted by Xiatokte as “Her thing was better than my thing, but I’m damned if I admit it.”
“My discovery was a little more… strategic in nature. Someone is running a surprisingly effective influence operation. Largely aimed at the Cold North Sea Confederation and the conflict on the Eastern Edge, but with spill over impact on this side of the Mud Dragon river.”
’Te looked mildly skeptical.
“Hardly news, is it? It would be more surprising if there was someone who wasn’t running some form of influence operation. Elaborate.”
Xiachoram didn’t flinch, to his credit. His very, very minor credit. Xiachoram reached into a satchel and pulled out a small bundle of crudely printed pamphlets. Each was a little larger than a man’s hand. ’Te looked at the cover.
A stern older woman, shaved head covered with a thin cloth, looked out at him. A stunning beauty, aged hard. But the lines of her skull! Gods be praised, what a skull! Eyes that burned holes into your soul too. ’Te yanked his eyes off her face and looked at the rest of her. She wore a loose, shapeless robe with a peasant’s leggings. In her hand was a long staff with a big ring at the end. Hanging from the ring were lots of little rings. A wasteland of twisted rocks and dead trees were behind her. Clutching at her waist were two little children, a boy and a girl. The boy was missing a leg, and had been badly burned. The girl was blind, and something about her suggested that her final visions made her welcome the darkness. In a large, fine font at the top of the page:
MOTHER MALIMA’S SANCTUARY
The associates got the rare treat of watching a very senior vice president alternately laugh and swear until he couldn’t breathe any more. Xiachoram might have won this round, but really, they were all winners.
’Te read the pamphlets as they raced southwest. There were eight of the pamphlets, all similar in style. They were illustrated stories, more like pictures with text around them to elaborate on what you were looking at. You could see that the writers and artists weren’t the same from pamphlet to pamphlet, but three of them clearly did have the same artist. The art style was fairly consistent- figurative, simple, with heavy lines and an emphasis on characterization and motion. Broad brush stuff, except for the covers where they clearly put a lot of work in.
All the pamphlets started the same way- “The people pray for a peaceful world in this life, or the next. But as demons ravage our land in this world, so too do demons feed on and slaughter us in the next. Children, lost, alone, scared, suffer the worst. Until Mother Malima finds them, wraps them in her robe, and takes them home. To Sanctuary.”
There would be a panel or two of Malima stomping through the desert, the rings on her staff chiming. Then she would hear a voice, or someone would call to her, or she would spot a demon and smash their skull in, and rescue a child. She would carefully lift the sobbing child, sooth them, and wrap them in her robe before carrying them back across the wastes to her painfully picturesque little farm. The Dream Stone, rare and precious, hung in the window. It always lit her way home. There were loads of other little kids running around, all bearing wounds of one sort or another, but all cheerful and living well. It was a happy place. A sanctuary.
The child would tell her about their problems on earth- they starved, or soldiers burned down their village, or the soldiers hurt Momma and then Papa tried to stop them but they hit him with an ax and he fell down, and then someone yelled and-
’Te had a lot of kids. He… couldn’t always finish those panels.
Then Mother Malima would comfort them with a mix of matronly affection and the brutal stoicism the Ma were famous for. “There’s no changing dying. But you can change what’s in front of you. So what can you do, right this minute, to make things better?”
“I don’t know, Mother. My eyes are gone, I can’t even see what needs doing.”
“You have hands, a nose, ears and a tongue. You can feel that this bed needs sheets! So do a lot of the beds here. Come, you will help me fix up your bed, and help some other kids too.”
Then they would run into a problem- no sheets, no food, no trees or grass or animals to play with. Something broke and they didn’t know how to fix it. So one of the stock guest characters would turn up.
Fairy Xi, a cheerfully plump young lady with tiny fangs poking out of the corner of her mouth. Whenever something was missing, she would go “HMMF! And why should I give you one of my treasures!” And then the kids would give her a sweet and she would dive at it, yelling “MINE!” throwing dozens of blankets or whatever out behind her.
Doc Bones, a cadaverous looking young man with a habit of imitating trees, then denying he had done any such thing. He would patch up the children, tell them what lovely petals they had, or that their stems needed thickening up. With a wave of his hand, the softest grass and the best, shadiest tree was there- ready for picnics and climbing and swings.
Then there was Pipi, the mischievous troublemaking monkey. Pipi was forever knocking things over, and forever inventing strange devices to tidy up the mess. Whenever there was a big, complicated problem, Pipi could be relied upon to joke around, then whip out a machine that would magically solve the problem for them.
The kids never healed, exactly. They just learned to live with their wounds. They learned to find joy, and safety, and warmth. In the sanctuary of Mother Malima.
One of the stories was a little different. The rescued child was one too many. There just wasn’t any room in the sanctuary. The kids all said that they would share their bed, but Mother Malima just shook her head. “That’s not the way. Soon you will be stacked up like carrots!” There was a running joke about how much she loved carrots. “No, what we have to do is make the sanctuary bigger.”
“But Mother Malima, the demons are out there.”
“So? Things will get worse and worse unless we do something. So let's do something.”
A broken child pushed open the gate of the sanctuary. It had been an empty wasteland in the panel before she opened it. It was full of demons afterwards. A clawed, rotten hand grabbed the gate to keep it from closing. A putrescent demon, still in the tattered remains of a uniform, looked down hungrily at the girl.
“We were waiting for you.”
“No demon.” Mother Malima pushed past her charge. “I was waiting for you!”
For a full page, Mother Malima battled demons. She swung her iron staff and drove them back. She chimed the rings, and they couldn’t bear the holy sound. She even shined the light of her precious Dream Stone, only to be used in the direst emergencies. It cost her. Each panel, she was cut. Clawed. Boots slammed into ribs and broke them. Each step was priced in pain. But in the end, she stood over the last demon.
“It doesn't matter. You can’t save them. Look around you. Look at this world. We already won!”
She drove her iron staff through his skull, planting it in the poisoned earth.
“I can’t save them? So what? My sanctuary lets people save themselves!”
She put the Dream Stone in the middle of the ring at the end of her staff. Faint, flickering.
“Children, my Dream Stone is fading. I need your help. Dream for me. Dream of the world as it should be. Then don’t just dream about it- demand that it become real!”
The kids opened their palms to the sky and closed their eyes. Those of them that still had eyes, or hands. They imagined the thick grass and spreading trees heavy with fruit. They imagined the rushing rivers and the fish shining like gold and silver. They dreamed of sweet breezes and the smell of the earth after a summer storm. Then they called it into life. Their dreams, their will, flowed into the Dream Stone. It grew brighter and brighter, until a blinding flash crossed the page.
“Did it work?” Asked the girl with no eyes.
“No.” A little boy with no arms sobbed. “It’s still a desert. Dreams don’t work.”
“Pish. Dreams don’t work… without work! And sometimes, you need a little help from your friends.” Mother Malima gasped, fingers wrapped tight around her iron staff to keep her upright, if on her knees. “Get out here, you freeloaders!”
And out walked Doc Bones, who shook his head and started scattering seeds. “I’ll make things grow. Kids need grass to run on and trees to climb.”
“And food.” Fairy Xi came with a bulging sack.
“Nonsense. They can turn sun and soil into food!”
“Tch. This is why you are no good, Boney! Here, kids! I brought tents! And food. Good food! And nails, and plans to build the best, best sanctuary ever!”
“Huh, and where will they get planks? Or cut stone? You don’t even have an oven to cook the food.” Pipi jumped up and started building wild machines from rocks and sticks. “Don’t worry kids, I’ll have it done in a wink!”
Mother Malima smiled and watched her friends bring the kid’s vision to life. She slowly collapsed off the staff, sprawling onto the ground. It took the kids a minute to notice, but then they ran over to her.
“Mom! Mom! No! Not again. Not again!”
“Doc, Doc! Help!”
“There there kids, there there. It happens. It’s ok.” Mother Malima murmured, at peace.
“You can’t die. We need you!”
“Die? Who said I was dying? I’m just taking a nap. Well earned, I might add. There will always be a sanctuary, kids, with a Mother Malima to guard it. For however long you need me.” The Dream Stone lifted up from her staff, and drifted over to the new window. Ready to lead the next child home.