The meeting of Order members had grown large enough that no single room in the small waystation was large enough to contain it. Torit, Wilke, and Marin were joined by four other specialists, one of whom was entirely too obese to stand around while the others talked. So Wilke, having the least to say about things, fixed tea in the kitchen, while the specialists spoke with Marin and Torit, and planned amongst themselves.

“You’ll pardon,” said Erron, the obese wizard who claimed to specialize in mind magic, as the general part of the planning ended and they started to get into the logistics of it all. “I know I’m a bit of a bother about these things, but I’ll be needing something a bit stouter than an average horse. Ideally a cart, but a heavier horse is also fine.” His eyes, Marin thought, were quite apologetic--but a mind mage could control such things, she was sure.

“We’ll need to arrange for carriages, yes. There’s no reason to ride in the open.” Rin, the small, intense woman who had done everything but say she was a professional assassin, let her eyes dart freely around. “In the Order’s colors. There should be one here.”

“One, lady, not two.” Torit sounded as apologetic as Erron had looked, but Marin was sure he wasn’t half as good at faking such things. “I suppose the people going to the Capital will--”

“But you can hire a carriage,” shot back Rin. “Cheaply.”

“...yes. The woodsman to the west won’t mind if we use his, so long as we pay a fair rate. It won’t be in our colors, but...”

“No, not a work wagon. That won’t cover us from an attack. And don’t worry about colors. We have enough mages here to fashion a wagon from scrap if that’s all we have, but it’s better to not show what we’re capable of, or even how many people we have. A little bit of twisting wood and metal into the order’s seal, that is nothing. Half the mages on the continent could do something of the sort.”

Torit thought for a minute, then nodded. “There is a delivery service. Not quite so cheap, but… ah, insured.”

“That would be ideal.” Rin waved him off. “Go fetch them, please.”

Torit bowed and made his exit. The assembled mages felt the wind magic swirl as he departed into the sky, and each monitored him until they could no longer sense him.

Chai was the last to relax. “Smart fellow, that bird. Quite a spark on him.” He took the tea that Wilke had offered, but didn’t drink. He seemed a bit light-headed, swaying just a bit with each action. “I’m pretty sure he’ll live. For a bit.”

“Oh, for… I hate having to work with a voidling.” Erron managed to spit the word, his pudgy face flushed red. “You always seem to think… that people want to know the future. It changes us, you know.”

“Sure. Not much you can do about a disease like his, though.” Chai lifted his cup of tea as though smelling it, or starting to drink, but then set it back down on the saucer. “But really, he’ll be alright. There’s a lot of danger around here, but it feels mostly… pointed inwards. People backstabbing each other. They don’t want trouble.”

“There’s been trouble,” pointed out the fourth specialist, a stout middle-aged woman. “This country is mad, Chai, and when it spills out into violence against the Order, of all things, you know it’s gotten bad. They ought to fear us a lot more than that.”

“Melle… please.” Marin put a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t think we want fear to be the goal here.”

“No.” Melle picked up one of the unclaimed teacups that Wilke had left on the table. “But they should fear us. They rely too much on trade and industry and knowledge. If the Order shut its doors to them… why I’d sooner expect them to declare war on the entire continent than let that stand.”

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“A war still might happen,” opined Chai quietly.

The quiet that settled over the room was palpably strained. Erron, finally, broke it with a long series of coughs, then shook his head. “Look, I’m as worried as the next of you when ...he speaks of scary things, but let’s look at this from our own angle, not his. We’ve got to set things right, here, and war will come or not. S’long as we give them a plausible way forward, and they don’t do anything completely stupid, it’s hard to see this incident leading to anything bad. But that does mean us keeping up our end of the bargain, as members of the Order, and as a neutral party in the investigation of…” he paused. “Whatever they were looking into in th’ first place.”

“Awful treatment of their workers,” replied Marin. “Slavery, torture, kidnappings, worse. Most if not all of the things we have rules against, really.”

“Well, it’s Seyona.” Erron reached, not for the tea, but for the jug of water and a spare glass. Abrupt as his movements usually were, he did make sure not to spill any. “From what I hear, a lot of folk out here are bad. But those stories might have been made up. There are a lot of liars here. Or so I hear.”

“Right, well,” Rin let out a loud sigh. “As long as we’re talking about rumors, let’s make sure we always come back to how none of us have ever been here before and we don’t know anything. Then we can go back to the part where we are supposed to be neutral third parties. No calling people liars, or acting like they are one, unless you have grounds to suspect them.” She paused. “Yes, Order members were killed. There will be liars, and killers around. That’s why we have a mind mage and a voidling. We will find out exactly what kind of people they are, and then deal with that. There will be enough blood spilled, and jail cells filled, just given what has already happened.

Erron tapped the tumbler against the window sill once, then again, and admitted, “Mostly I’m just not a fan of this place. Neither is he, I wager.” He gestured to Chai with the glass, idly. “S’not pleasant to have stray magic in your head, and this whole part of the continent reeks of it.”

Chai looked at him strangely, and didn’t respond.

“The void-sick ones tend to have an immunity to that, from what I’ve heard,” offered Melle. “Doubtless that’s why Chai was chosen, even in his… condition.”

Chai offered a small smile, then set his tea down, still un-drunk. After a moment, he picked it up again, as though he didn’t quite understand why he had set it down.

“Explain one thing to me,” said Rin, looking quickly between Melle and Chai. “This isn’t the full sickness, I know that. A void-sick caster won’t respond to words. What exactly is his condition?”

“It’s complicated. A full voidling--one who’s had the sickness--shouldn’t ever relapse, not even if they try. But most of them develop some kind of… emotional distance from the world. The ones that don’t, that are still bound to the world, they have these half-sicknesses when a strong emotional burden is dropped on them.” Melle’s eyes watched Chai’s as she spoke, and her voice softened. “Like losing a lover, children… for Chai, his uncle.”

“That means he’s not immune to danger,” suggested Rin, looking only at Melle.

“No, but his insight is perfect. It’s just… difficult to get answers out of him sometimes.”

“I am still here,” offered Chai with only a bit of hurt in his voice.

Rin looked him in the eyes. “What do you think is happening, then? What should we look out for? What should we do?”

Chai offered a pained smile and set the tea down again. “The people here don’t understand why what they’re doing is wrong. They used magic as though it is a toy, and it is tearing them apart. A few very important lies are falling apart, and painful truths are endangering the flow of money across the entire country. Redemption is a powerful motivator, if perhaps not so strong as cowardice.”

Melle smiled, sympathetically. “A bit hard to get answers, sometimes.”

Rin leaned back in her seat for a minute, thinking. Then she leaned forward and asked Chai a different question. “What is the most important weakness in their defenses? What can we exploit, to ensure our success?”

Chai picked up his cup of tea, still untouched, and smiled that confused smile. “Their greatest weakness is… a slap across the face, or possibly a scrap of paper? I don’t know.” He paused. “Why and how aren’t questions I can answer yet.”

Erron let out a full-bodied laugh, one that took a few minutes to settle. “Brilliant,” he said between guffaws and gasps, “well then, we’re off to slap a nobleman, and watch his whole empire tumble down.”

Melle and Marin looked embarrased. Rin, however, was deep in thought.

She, more than most, knew what a scrap of paper could do.