Gane Thestle watched the rough-looking trapper leave with a weary patience. Ever since the attack, he had nearly forgotten about Aaron Hildesman’s mission to survey the new mineral rights. And here, the very day after that horrid attack, the man returned to the city, turned in his logs, handed over a letter from a former Sister and one of Gane’s personal heroes, and went on his way.
After Hildesman was out of sight, Gane unfolded the recounting of the attack on a farming stronghold. If it was related to the attack on the city, he might very well have to send for Hildesman’s arrest. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The man seemed honest and reliable.
He scanned over it. Other than the infiltration, this was fairly typical for cultists. He was pretty sure he could even point to the specific heretic sect that had perpetrated it; uncured animal hides were a mark of devotion to one of their many-faced gods. The Houndkeeper, if Gane’s memory of the heretical cults was any indication. They were a violent sect already. The Frontiers Corps would want to know that the Houndkeeper sect had implemented new tactics, but sadly this was a fairly straightforward occurance.
He checked his message tubes. Nothing new; most of the arrangements for the expeditionary forces had already been made, and it would be several hours still before the engineers had their assessments and supply requests ready. Crossing to his office door, he flagged down a junior administrator.
“What’s your name, Jay-Six?” Gane asked.
“Franklin, Third Administrator, sir. Davey Franklin.” the Junior Six answered.
“Current duty?”
“Current as in emergency, or current as in normal schedule, sir?”
“Emergency,” Gane clarified. Brother Franklin, he thought quietly to himself, was a perfect bureaucrat. Exact wording.
“Running secure messages, sir. I’m supposed to report back to Sister Lamine for my next delivery.”
“That’s Sister Ingrid Lamine, Senior Fourth Administrator?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m overriding that order. For the next half-hour, you’re now the message relay. I’ll reroute my tube to this office. Anything marked Fourth Admin or below you may direct to its proper location without question. If a message is unaddressed, you may read the contents if it is Senior Five or lower and determine its destination from that. Use your best judgment. If you can’t determine a recipient or receive a message of higher rank than I’ve described, set it aside and put on the notice light. You can use my assistant’s desk,” Gane indicated the correct seat. “I suggest you send a tube to Sister Lamine explaining the situation first. Any questions?”
“Sir, what rank should I consider an emergency worth fetching you immediately?”
Gane considered it. A letter from Gertrae Follickken would likely be important. She wasn’t overly given to correspondence. “Senior Second or higher.” The odds that any seconds, let alone the senior ones, would be routing messages through the tube system right now were slim to none. He should be undisturbed while he figured out what piece of the puzzle Hildesman had discovered.
“Understood sir. I will perform the duties you have described.”
“Thank you, Junior Sixth Admin. See to it.”
Gane went back into his own private office and unlocked the desk drawer where he had stored the letter. He examined it again. Glasspetal fragments made the wax glitter iridescently under the room’s artificial light. Being careful not to cut himself, he snapped the rigid seal and opened the envelope. Three pages were folded up within. The first was labeled “Supply Requests”. He set that one aside. Former Sister Follickken wouldn’t have put important information in such a letter.
The other two pages were folded together and were labeled URGENT NEWS: SENIOR THREE OR HIGHER. That was what he had been expecting. He unfolded them and began to read.
For the eyes of Sister Poriss or her replacement from Gertrae Follickken, former Senior Fourth Administrator, former trapper under the guild of trappers and freelancers, code indicator by year nine-fox-dire-dire-ashbark.
Gane blinked. That code phrase was old. He dug out his archival code book. It checked out. It was old enough to be of debatable security, but it had been the most up to date at the time Sister Follickken had left the Order.
I have taken in a child, eleven years of age, to stay with me under my care. The reason I report this is that the child is Marked. The more important issue, however, is the nature of her mark. This child bears a unique mark, not one of the nine recorded by the Order. I fear what this means for the Order. The child’s sponsor is likewise unknown to me or to the Order at the time of my departure. On top of this, my student Aaron Hildesman, trusted to deliver this letter, reports that the child first activated her mark without an identified source of Tessenite charge.
The sponsor the child reports is known as the ‘Listener’. The girl’s mark seems to allow her to expel some type of enhanced vocals capable of disorienting or even harming other creatures. The Listener shows the extraordinary awareness of the host’s surroundings typical for all sponsors, but rather than the more common identifier of the host as a ‘subject’, it instead identifies this girl as a ‘champion’.
In addition, the Listener manifested to the girl over a week prior to the girl’s first development of the mark. As her mark is in a visible location (left forearm, near the biceps), it is unlikely that she missed its arrival. According to the girl, the Listener gave her insight and assistance for eight days prior to the first activation of the mark’s power. It was only after that power was activated that the girl noticed its presence.
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These details are concerning in and of themselves for the incredible overthrowing of our understood framework of marks, but there is an additional problem. The sponsor gave the girl a warning, in the form of a crude poem, similar in form to reports of pre-Order incantations, including what is now the ‘Chant of Faith’. I have recorded the warning on the second page of this letter. I trust that the Order will understand the implications of that warning in conjunction with all I have mentioned here.
With respect:
Gertrae Follickken, retired trapper.
She had not chosen to reference her former rank within the Order. That made sense, her exit had been infamous with the younger ranks due to how tumultuous it had been. Some grudges lasted for decades.
Gane set that page aside to read the poem on the second page. It was laid out in stanzas, each notated by Follickken herself. At the top was an extra notation that Follickken had asked the girl to repeat the poem four times at separate points in a conversation and was unable to sense any changes to cadence or wording. Learned by rote, then. Except this poem was unknown to the Order.
Three and three and three again,
This seems to refer to the sponsors, as in the ‘Chant’. Its revelation by a tenth sponsor is concerning, as it would mean sponsors outside the nine described here. The similarities of the rest of this poem to the ‘Chant’ are extremely noticeable when spoken aloud.
Our creed and realm and form.
The older forms of the ‘Chant’ have separate stanzas for form and creed. Realm is unknown, but could be referred to by the fourth stanza of the ‘Chant’, (‘to share within the fold’).
Tombs of stone were laid on us,
I cannot be sure, but mentions of the last sibling being made of stone in the ‘Chant’ are unlikely to be coincidental. The common interpretation of the fourth sibling as representing civilized thought prevailing over superstition may need to be revisited.
Our sister’s mask and shame.
The ‘faces’ of the fourth sibling could be ‘masks’. Get a linguistic historian to investigate the original forms of the ‘Chant’.
Yet we liv’d, outside the cell,
The nine entities of the ‘Chant’ seem to correspond to the nine in the first line of this poem. Using common interpretation, they would be superstitious ‘gods’, recognized only by heretics. This line would then be consistent with the cults of those gods being banished from the city’s walls.
And dreamed of our return.
Following from the previous line, this seems to indicate the cultists forming a dedicated push towards capturing or destroying the city or its walls. Gane noted that this notation was underlined twice and bolder, as if Follickken had been pressing her pen against the page harder than necessary.
Champions now each we raise,
The girl’s sponsor identifying her as a ‘champion’ is unlikely to be a coincidence. Are there any old records of sponsors identifying champions?
To fight our war once more.
This supports the theory of the warning being about cultist attacks on the city.
‘Til the four and four in stone,
Imprison us no more.
This line seems counterintuitive. The city is identified as a ‘tomb’ and a ‘cell’ in previous lines, but the cultists have been locked outside the city, not trapped within it. Even interpreting the line as being about the imprisonment civilized thought has formed on them is difficult.
Gane read the whole thing, twice. He committed the poem and Follickken’s annotations to memory. He wasn’t a spymaster, but even he could tell that Follickken was trying to communicate more than she said out loud. The exact working might be important later.
He folded it up and locked both letter and poem back in his desk drawer. The supplies requests he skimmed. Unless Follickken and his mentor had some sort of personal cipher, the supplies requests were exactly what they seemed. Most of them would be explained by Follickken having another mouth to feed and body to clothe, after taking in the farming girl. A note was left about the identity of the girl’s most likely surviving relative, her uncle. Follickken apparently wanted him directed to her little hut as soon as he surfaced looking for her.
He folded that back into the envelope and leaned back in his chair. Brother Franklin had not lit up the little warning light for Gane. He hadn’t expected anything of higher security at this stage in the planning, and the fact that he was right could only be good news. He opened his office door. Brother Franklin was dutifully collating and sorting his assistant’s paperwork while waiting for the next message to come in. Maybe not a bureaucrat, then. Just an extremely efficient young man. Gane made a mental note to check into Brother Franklin’s background.
“I need you to send a tube to Sister Porriss,” Gane said without preamble.
“Yes, sir. What designation?”
Gane considered. Officially, he wasn’t allowed to originate anything rated above a Second Administrator. Given the urgency of the city’s current situation, he wasn’t sure if Sister Porriss would even open a Second Administrator immediately. She had her hands full enough sorting reports and approving materials requests for the most secure items.
“Personal,” he decided. “With a note that it’s urgent.”
“Sir?” Junior Sixth Administrator Franklin seemed shocked that a Third Administrator would use valuable tube resources to send personal correspondence in a crisis like this one. Gane hoped it would shock Sister Porriss enough for her to open it immediately.
“Personal,” Gane answered more forcefully. Franklin scrambled to properly code the capsule. He handed it to Gane, who slipped the note he had written asking Sister Poriss to see him immediately into it, then clamped it shut. He locked the capsule closed and passed it back for Brother Franklin to send through the tube lines that filled the Order’s headquarters.
Once the message was in the line, he dismissed Brother Franklin to return to his previous duties, giving a final instruction to report back to Gane when the current crisis was resolved. Then Gane went to his desk, turned off the tube reroute, and spent two full minutes calming his thoughts. Two minutes were all he could spare, though. Two tubes arrived back-to-back. He had a job to do.