Praetor Khaldun had called it a survey — and Eresthanon supposed that was as accurate a choice of word as any — but it was likely going to be scored in some fashion and that made it an exam. The elf didn’t know when, if ever, he’d last taken an exam, but he wasn’t relishing the experience, novel though it may have been.
Still, the questions on the first page were straightforward and Eresthanon was confident in his knowledge. His aim was to be concise in his answers, but it did give him a chance to consider things from a perspective that hadn’t existed until a couple hours ago.
Each asked Eresthanon to describe one of the Four Pillars — the ostensibly simple laws the Vigiles investigated and enforced among the Creaturae — and any issues he was aware of around their enforcement. They were the bare minimum needed to prevent chaos and even then most had only been widely accepted for a little over a thousand years.
The First Pillar: Death is a loss to us all, murder the greatest theft.
Murder. Almost every civilization made this one of their first and most grievous criminal acts. The connection with theft might confuse a regular person, but for Creaturae death wasn’t always final, so framing it in a way that made sense to the selfish and powerful made a twisted kind of sense.
Along with the usual debates over what qualified as justified killing, the Creaturae had long-standing — and bitter — disagreements over whether the First Pillar applied to the killing of other Creaturae or to mundane humans, as well. Eresthanon knew that, more often than not, the Vigiles had not extended the protection of the First Pillar to mundane humanes.
The Second Pillar: Thy essentia is thine own.
Prohibiting a more literal form of theft, the Second Pillar effectively forbade the taking of another’s essentia against their will. Magic was possible because of aether — an omnipresent, intangible substance that permeated all of existence — and essentia was the name for aether when given a physical form, particularly when unrefined.
Enforcement was probably the most complex of the Four Pillars, as what was considered a violation was the subject to many arguments. Raw essentia — and its sources — were usually protected, as was the currency that was generally made from it. Other forms essentia took, particularly objects imbued with the substance to create powerful magic items, were trickier. Everything else — land, buildings, servants, normal money, and so on — were up for grabs in the shadow games of the Creaturae.
The Third Pillar: The secret must be kept.
Added in the 16th century, almost a thousand years after the Vigiles was formed, the Third Pillar was a radical departure from the status quo, seeing the Creaturae go into hiding from the rest of the world. Some scholars might have argued that things like the Inquisition were the cause of this Pillar’s creation, but Eresthanon knew it had been loosely enforced in its infancy. The Enlightenment changed things.
As humanity began to turn away from superstition and the mystical, it quickly became evident there were dangers in a more rational mankind the Creaturae had never faced before. Not only did this diminished belief weaken magic in general, these new, rational humans would seek to understand and exploit what they didn’t understand. While some Creaturae might effectively be invulnerable to anything a mundane person or group could do, the vast majority were not.
The Fourth Pillar: Time is inviolable.
Meant to curb the rarest and potentially most dangerous magic, the Fourth Pillar had become less of an absolute ban and more of a labyrinthine framework of precedent over what was and wasn’t permitted and under what circumstances.
The difficulty of manipulating time, even on the smallest scale and the most minimal results, made the Fourth the Pillar that was broken the least often. It was, however, tested. Unlike the other Pillars, those accused of breaking the Fourth were far more likely to argue the law didn’t apply in their specific circumstances than that they were innocent of manipulating time.
Any form of movement through time — even purely sensory acts meant for observation — remained completely prohibited.
The rest of the survey was more complex, containing a mix of short answer questions that checked Eresthanon’s analytical thinking, personality, and knowledge of history. Each contained clever prompts and traps meant to tease out insight into who Eresthanon was. He found the exercise thoroughly enjoyable because he wasn’t exactly sure who that might be. The questions on history were the most noteworthy, because they contained a number of references to events Eresthanon was fairly certain hadn’t happened.
There were few purposes such questions could serve. One would be to test how thoroughly the Rite of Renewal had scoured his memory, which suggested that some of the fake historical events weren’t as fake as they seemed to him and there was the possibility he had personally participated in them. That would mean his involvement was so extensive the Rite had removed even general knowledge.
Or the questions could have been designed to see if he would fixate on trying to glean clues about his previous Cycle. There was another possible trick to the questions: if none of them had happened, they would show if he felt compelled to produce an answer even when he didn’t have one. That was a personality trait you definitely wouldn’t want in someone who would be investigating crimes.
Rather than dwell on them, Eresthanon marked each question that fell into that category with an X, as he’d been instructed. His past was interesting — and he found he did like a mystery — but among the elves it was considered an insult to the Rite of Renewal to dwell on it. More importantly, though, Eresthanon truly was more interested in who he was going to be, not who he had been.
It took a little over an hour to complete the survey. Praetor Khaldun and Quaesitor Dean returned to the conference room a few minutes after he told the receptionist he was done. Khaldun scanned the survey quickly, then handed the folded back to Dean.
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“Everything looks in order, then,” the sphinx said. “All that’s left are the formalities.”
Khaldun rose from his seat and withdrew a small clay tablet from somewhere in his suit jacket. It was six inches by four inches and three inches thick. An eight-pointed star was engraved into the face of the tablet, just like the one on the appointment card.
Eresthanon hadn’t thought about it much earlier, but he recalled that the symbol was commonly called the Star of Shamash. He suspected the other side of the table would be engraved with the scales. The elf rose from his seat, as well.
Khaldun cleared his throat and held the tablet flat before him. “Now begins the swearing of oaths. I name you, Eresthanon of the elves, and call on you to bind yourself to the Vigiles Creaturae. Will you freely give your allegiance to our cause?”
Eresthanon, in the tradition of the elves, held up his hand, flat with fingers together, and placed his fingertips against his chin just under his mouth. Even if he turned out to be a die-hard New Yorker, he would never mix up the ancient gesture for speaking solemn truth the elves had been using for much of their history with the somewhat similar beginning of a common hand gesture. That usually started under the chin, after all.
“I do give my allegiance to the cause of the Vigiles Creaturae,” he replied.
“And do you give your promise to uphold and support the Four Pillars, abiding by and defending them?”
“I do promise to uphold and support the Four Pillars. I will abide by their strictures and protect them,” Eresthanon pledged.
“And will you conduct yourself as an agent of these laws faithfully and without reservation?”
“I will conduct myself faithfully and without reservation as an agent of those laws.”
The star on the tablet shone with a faint blue light at the conclusion of the oath. Eresthanon maintained somber eye contact with Khaldun, though he had the smallest impulse to smile. How many initiates to the Vigiles had thought the oath magically binding because of that bit of theatricality, he wondered.
A geas, a proper magical geas, had certain conditions that simply weren’t being met here — for instance, Eresthanon knew the terms of the oath, but not the consequences of violating it — but more importantly, a geas settled into the mind like a kind of intuition, easy to tune out but impossible to ignore, like pants that were slightly too loose. Eresthanon had no such sensation and he was keenly attuned to such things as both an elf and a wielder of magic.
It was possible the tablet applied a curse, which could be more discreet, but it would have to be carefully done to avoid notice, which would be entirely counterproductive considering the accompanying light show. More likely, it was meant to impress the unwary with the severity of their oaths and disincentivize them from shirking their duty. Eresthanon thought that would be a clever application of psychology without directly infringing on the will of others.
“Having so sworn,” Khaldun continued, “you are hereby appointed to the position of Tribune Legatus, pending the satisfactory completion of a probationary period, at which point you will be elevated to a full Tribune. I now present to you your badge of office.”
Khaldun withdrew a thin leather wallet from another pocket , flipping it open to reveal a gleaming golden badge, another eight-pointed star. All the rays of this one were straight, but the points at the cardinal directions were longer. The sigil of the scale was also emblazoned in the center. Words arced along the top and bottom of the center of the star. The top was the name of the agency, Vigiles Creaturae, and along the bottom was their credo — Iustitia per Vigilantiam, justice through vigilance. The Praetor slid the wallet across the table to Eresthanon.
He lifted the wallet from the table and stared at the gleaming badge. To think, when he’d realized his appointment was with the Vigiles, he had been worried his Cycle’s purpose was to somehow suborn or bypass the law. Instead, he had discovered that he was going to be an instrument of that law, a defender of order and justice.
The Vigiles stood in stark contrast to the laws of men, which were used for control and maintaining the status quo as often — or more — than for the well-being of the people. But they were also more like a basic framework than a full system of government. The various factions and races were trusted to handle their own affairs so long as they didn’t violate one of the Pillars. That could get very messy and brutal conflicts were not uncommon; the Four Pillars ensured things never escalated too far. In theory, at least. That wasn’t to say the history of the Vigiles was free of blemishes.
When it was formed in the early eighth century, the Vigiles was a collaborative effort ostensibly meant to create a standard of conduct to limit how warfare was conducted among the Creaturae. It was spearheaded by numerous influential orders of magi who asked for representatives to be sent from a number of major factions.
In practice, the early Vigiles had been a tool wielded by the magi in charge for their own ends. An internal revolt in the fifteenth century led to the First Reformation, which brought about major changes in the organization. Before then, members hadn’t been required to disavow their former loyalties and pledge themselves to the Vigiles and the Pillars.
The judiciary of the Vigiles Creaturae was inquisitorial, rather than adversarial, and the highest duty of all officers of the court was the pursuit of truth; determining guilt was simply a byproduct of such inquests. Trials were conducted by a panel of three magistrates, two prosecutors, and two advocates for the accused. Eresthanon wondered if they’d modeled their system after the elves.
When a dispute or crime affected members of two of the three elven High Courts, a representative of each Court sat in judgment, with an additional two representatives on each panel. An advocate from each of the two Courts involved would sit on a panel and the third Court would be represented on both. This design was intended to keep the proceedings in search of the truth, rather than in search of victory.
It raised the question of what, exactly, Eresthanon’s duties in the Vigiles would be. Each of the titles mentioned so far — Praetor, Quaesitor, and Tribune — were judicial positions in Roman antiquity, but they served a number of other functions, as well. Eresthanon didn’t think he was signing on for some sort of administrative posting.
It had only been a few hours that Eresthanon had been himself, but he had the distinct impression that paperwork and bureaucracy would be deeply unappealing to him. Was he a man of daring action? He couldn’t say. But he certainly didn’t think he was a pencil pusher.
“Thank you, Praetor,” Eresthanon said. “What will the duties of the office involve?”
“As a Tribune, your role is largely investigative, not unlike a police detective,” Khaldun said, then gestured to the woman behind him. “Quaesitor Dean will be your partner in the field as well as your training supervisor. She’ll take you to get your equipment and start getting you oriented to the job.”
Dean inclined her head slightly to acknowledge that she’d been mentioned, but didn’t respond otherwise. He couldn’t have said why, but Eresthanon had a sense that she was not happy with the situation.
Khaldun took a step back from the table, nodding to both Eresthanon and Dean. “I look forward to seeing what you can contribute to our vigil, Tribune Legatus.”
The Vigiles didn’t go for the whole saluting thing, apparently, as the Praetor departed the room without further fanfare, leaving the elf and the young woman alone.