Chương 125: Chapter 146: On a Hook

Not every party takes place on Sixthday or Sevenday obviously. Just the ones I get invited to. After all, there would be no point in inviting an Academy student to any event they won't be able to attend. So, for example, if someone was hosting a party they did not want me to attend, they'd put it up on, for example, a Threeday evening. Short notice, small guest-list, exclusive event.

Much like the Greater Houses tend to latch to one another and prioritize one another, the Lesser Houses also have a certain bond between them, a fellow-feeling and shared perspective. And while not every Lesser House finds invitations to every event posted by a Greater House- I'm circling the issue. This party was put together in the aftermath of the Fashion Week renovations. Meadwhite hooked in a number of its associates, the Tsilven, Uncin, Pailser. Snairlin, Tannerly, Kadot, Toil and Elyrga and Jamiris.

Meadwhite had been given their walking papers and told to hit the bricks, all their holdings were divested and all their titles were due to be revoked. At this point we were stripping them of their properties as fast as the signatures could be processed. But the thing about divided loyalties is that it means their flagship house (mine) is not their only recourse. And now, while they still have a fingernail's worth of legitimacy, they're scrambling to retain anything they can.

So there's a nice big Meadwhite send-off party. The various functionaries and appointees of the Meadwhites are holding a collective event to bring everyone they've got good relationships with, to carry over to their new digs. Just another attempt to make sure that Harigold doesn't get anything and that the Meadwhites are able to retain their backstabbing affluence. Now, some levels ago I took a skill point in Disguise.

Originally it was so I could move in and out of the Swooning Spear tavern in Port Noit to poison the crew of the Glorious Curmudgeon. God, that was so many years ago. But I remember the tricks. The way that oak galls give that easy brown dye, the way a simple scarf changes the shape of my face. I did not need to cover my eyes, I could just style my hair to cover one of them and I became quite unremarkable in short order. But, unremarkable in the way of someone trying to attract attention.

I presented a card for the House Bawnoth and a faked title for a dame of the realm, and was passed in immediately. There are thousands of dames, hundreds of minor houses, and Meadwhite clan has not paid for the good heralds. My credentials should not have made it past the front door, but they are throwing a party to shore up their diminished circumstances, after all. For a while I circulated, and donated a significant amount of gold into the coffers that was holding the center of the room.

Enough that people were charitably disposed towards me, not enough that anyone looked at me very closely. It's fake gold, it will disappear when I'm done with it. With a drink in hand I circulated the room, took the temperature, felt how the wind was blowing. I did not have a lot of time to put towards this, I was missing my common-room time with my friends, and soon would be the bell for lights-out. I picked out the guards, and took their measure.

A couple of jumped-up footmen with low stats and little training, dressed as ceremonial guards but really not much more than ornamentation or valets on call. But also some meaningful protection: mana warriors with their powered weapons kept just out of sight, or their armor accessories worn under coats. I did not need to stand particularly near them, or pay them any visible attention, in order to keep them in range of my sorceries.

And from there, I started using my affinity for ink to start loosening the scribed sigils from the material, pulling it out of the metal and bone and wood it had soaked into. Ink is a rather rare affinity for sorcerers to acquire. I think if more people were aware that it could denature sigil-work and cheaply-made enchantments, it would be illegal just like gold and silver. Some of the other attendees and I shared some jokes and wit, recommendations for the finger foods.

Then, I made sure that I was clearly and publicly seen to be gathering up a distinctive bright-white velvet cloak, and ducking into the restroom. Inside a stall, take care of business. A few minutes later, the woman in the white velvet cloak was walking to the door, waving to a few acquaintances, her hands covered in white linen gloves, her hair draped over one eye. She walked out and into a carriage, and everyone saw it. I've practiced that trick to make it convincing. The cloak is easy, and the glove.

The hair took me ages, but it turns out that if you slit willow bark fine enough and dye it, it matches the texture of my hair. Then a simple wooden mannequin filling out the clothes is all I need, I just puppet them out the door and after a mile or two in the carriage, the decoy just fades away. Give it fifteen minutes or so for the association to die away, so that other events become relevant. And then when I dropped out of the rafters, the ceiling caved in with me.

Black leather and blued steel, gaudy gold embellishments that looked like the crest of some minor house. Long black cape, closed-face helmet. Shattered scraps of wood and plaster rained down over me, letting in the starlight of the Cliffside night. I stood up out of my superhero-landing, and brushed broken furnishings off my sleeves. Not just too damn cool, I was action-hero cool. Swaggering, unstoppable.

There were two mana warriors standing guard at the back of the room, and they charged forward as soon as the first piercing scream of surprise tore through the air. They were not yet ready to believe that I was as unstoppable and badass as I looked. My appearance was sudden and dramatic and quite surprising, after all, and not everyone has time to really adjust to it. Some scream, and some draw steel and charge. I turned, and gestured towards the two sprinting warriors.

And their glowing weapons, streaming with magic and hellfire, suddenly went cold and quiet, as if they had been overloaded. That's their own fault. The cheap stuff, the weapon enchantments were invested into ink instead of into the steel of the blades. With engravings I would have trouble, the runes and sigils enchant the metal they're pressed into, so the blade enchants itself. With these, there was ink enchanting the steel but nothing enchanting the ink.

So I can just tap my affinity and have the ink slide off, and the sigils are gone. The gift of mana channeling was not rare. Warriors of that type were not hard to find. The magic weapons that they used were the bottleneck, restricting them from dominating all warfare. So to compensate, cheaply-made items find a flourishing market. Mana warrior mercenaries can charge high coin for their services, even with magic weapons that could be denatured by rubbing alcohol.

Or by a sorceress who's had enough time to unbond the ink from the pores of the weapons. But all that anyone else can tell is that two powerful, magical guardians who do not work cheap came running at me with their weapons drawn, and I just... shut them off. The trick to intimidation is knowing something that nobody else knows. Then the door slams shut, and the guards are thrown back. Screams are erupting, but I'm not worried about it. This was always going to be loud. I stalked to the middle of the room.

The boots were very built up and the shoulder pads were extended so I look much larger, but still move convincingly. I swept a harsh gaze across the room, shadows in my helmet giving away nothing. My glare landed on the Matriarch Meadwhite. Ash-gray hair. Sallow skin.

"We did good work with bad information," I said.

"And you were told to pay your debts. Now we find out that you cannot pay those debts. And that you are gathering money to run from the city instead of paying what you owe." She stared at me, and everyone stared at her. I could see, corner of my eye, the Baronet Ommanuol Tsilven. Perfect.

"We have been only too clear about our terms," I said. I flicked a hand, and the brass curtain rods launched off the walls and slammed into her. One coiled, wrapping her in the fabric drapes, while the other struck her in the face, breaking her jaw. Screams, fuss, lots of movement around the edges of the room. I did not look away from my target while the minor nobility tried to scramble some exit from this room.

The two brass staves cracked against her again and again, and I stood, staring, impassive, while she was slowly and methodically beaten do death. Ommanuol was hiding now, crouching behind a table, avoiding my attention. I've got all the exits sealed up tight. Nobody's leaving. Someone has broken out a window, but the broken glass shards do not move, they just hover in place, blocking the passage with glinting-sharp edges.

And one by one, as they give up hope of leaving, everyone finds themselves either pressed into some meager hiding place for safety, or pressed against the wall and staring at my work. Dozens of witnesses to the rhythmic thudding of the brass bars against her body. The mixed crunch and squish of her form being thoroughly broken into something unrecognizable. I could hear whimpering, these poor traumatized aristocrats were seeing violence in person instead of filtered through servants and intermediaries.

I paused, and glanced sideways to the donation jar that they had set up for their maintenance. I lifted it, hefted it, and gave it a shake to judge the contents. Then I dropped it with a jingling crash, and stepped away.

"Second fucking time in this city," I grumbled, my voice echoing low and ominous inside the helmet. The Meadwhite leader was basically a hundred pounds of raspberry jam mixed into some expensive clothes and wrapped in drapes. Nobody challenged me, and I crouched, flexed, and leaped out through the ceiling by the same hole I'd come in. Almost- I clipped the edge just a bit and broke out a bit more of the roof.

Someone that rushed over to see me from within would get a look as my leap arced away, losing momentum and dropping away. The Debt Collector strikes again. The first time was on behalf of the Duskare family, today was all for me. Partly because I needed the release. Partly because I cannot have enemies of my family running around and plotting revenge. So getting rid of her was part of that, but also generating rumors.

If I was lucky (and later I would find out that I was lucky) people would come to assume that she had ordered a Duskare hit against Wendy Harigold, and gotten caught, and gotten thrown out. And now the Duskares sent their now-famous debt collector after her, because the Meadwhites can no longer fall back on their old resources.

It closes the question of who killed Wendy, it closes the question of what the Meadwhites will do next, and it assures that no more of the Lesser Houses are going to associate with what is left of the Meadwhite clan. And now Ommanuol is going to run around to everyone and tell them who I am. He used to be the only witness to my Debt Collector disguise. Now, I'm building a secret identity as the dark-cloaked last-resort fixer for the killers and violent criminals of this city.

Distinctive methods and abilities and vocabulary, I made sure to use several uncommon key phrases that Ommanuol will remember. He will be able to confirm details that only he knows about. Another narrative I have control over. I slipped into an alleyway, into shadows, and then changed clothes. I walked a block to find an isolated corner and from there, the portal. Meanwhile, the Duskare have been quietly circulating rumors about this individual, building up a legend.

I've got a masked identity whose credentials are quietly established far and wide. Never openly, never easy to find... but if someone starts digging for details, they'll find more and more answers the harder they look. Perfect for my purposes. Now I just need to make sure that the Debt Collector and Natalie Harigold have some distance between them. That there is never reason to associate his goals with her objectives. I may need some red-herring missions to establish his work outside of my aims.

I can talk to Quarl about that in the morning. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. Well of course I felt bad about it. I just bludgeoned a woman completely to shambles in front of all her family and allies. And I did so by insinuating really hard that this was because of a debt she had not paid that could potentially be levied to any of her family relations. So they're scared as hell right now. And traumatized.

Probably the first time they've ever seen violence render a human person down into something that is fundamentally not-a-person-anymore. It's something that tends to change people's perspective permanently. But I could feel a lot worse. She did try to kill me, years ago. She has been getting away with that for years. And when I called her up, she asked me to my face whether I know enough to blame her, and when I told her that I did she still tried to hustle me.

People that have betrayed their liege in much lesser ways have been killed in far more grotesque ways. It's the sort of thing that you make an example out of. If anything, I had soft-pedaled the whole thing. I could have done much worse and gotten away with it.

"You the defendant Natalie Harigold Esquire have been accused of turning Whatsername Meadwhite into a mile-wide stain. How do you plead?"

"Liege rights of justice in the face of lethal betrayal, your honor."

"Oh shit, my bad, you are free to go, the bailiff will validate your parking." That damn easy, right? But I want Bruce to think that Meadwhite was behind the killing of his sister. He's not going to quit looking until he finds a source, and I want pressure off of Yheta. I do not trust that he's actually covered his tracks all that thoroughly. And, I want to establish my Debt Collector alter ego as a public figure. And I don't want to go up in front of court even if I am dead-certain that I could beat the charges.

Not four days after I accused the royal family of doing dealings with necromancers. In some video games, necromancers are just another form of spellcaster. Not necessarily evil, maybe kinda icky. Morally, probably not any worse than enchanters or anyone with mind-control powers. In Hearstwhile? Look, just bundle "terrorist", "child molester", "litterer", or whichever three groups you hate the most, and shove them all into one label. That's where necromancy fits in Hearstwhile. Some other time, I will discuss why.

But "death-mage" is a crime far, far greater than the sum of its parts. When you're describing how awful something is, you might describe it in terms relative to necromancy. On a scale of one to ten, if "just fine" is a zero, and "necromancy" is a ten, then how awful is "whatever thing we're discussing"? It's going to be less than ten. I was laying in bed, sleeping peacefully. And I was also hovering about, sulking, brooding, thinking deeply.

For one thing I am aware that using human death to work through my anger issues is terrible. But I am frequently within arm's reach of my fucking limit, and I can feel it. I've put up with a lot. And my anger issues do stem from the fact that evil-minded bastards have frequently used me and my family as punching bags and have gotten away with it. So lashing out against them is, if not justified, then certainly understandable. That's not the same thing, but they can wear the same shoes.

Also, I know that most of the methods I used for suppressing my very-understandable anger are even worse for me. While it's not a good sign that I can emotionally decompress by methodically beating someone into pulp and slurry, it's probably better than the alternative of channeling void until my feelings disappear forever. I'm pretty sure that the violence I'm capable of in anger is nothing compared to my capacity for violence in apathy.

Boiling over as a vaporous soul, I swished over from the window overlooking the quad and around to the end table, where I seeped into the sample casket where bags, parcels, chips, and patches were arrayed around for me to absorb. Wolf, hawk, rose, sodium, arsenic, asbestos, pyrite... all sitting in their compartments waiting for me to finish absorbing them. Only a handful were responding to any measurable degree. And as usual, it was the minerals and trees.

Sometimes I would stumble upon some animal I can learn easily, but it was never one of the very impressive ones that I keep chasing after. Okay, except thunderbeasts. I am still ecstatic that the dinosaurs respond to me so easily. I've got bone chips and teeth from several samples, but most of them I have already mastered. I should take a day to head out into no-man's-land and test out all my memorized dinosaurs, but for right now I'm glad just to have them in reserve.

The tin canister is one thing, the body I live in too... I can't focus but I know I should be working right now. Songs. Stories. Whatever. These are worth money to me, sure, and also they contribute to me saving this world. But I can't concentrate on them. I can't make myself work on turning Genghis Khan or Pompeii into a symphonic masterpiece, not right now. I am all embroiled in my emotions. Anger, guilt, anxiety, anticipation. I feel better because I destroyed this woman but now I feel bad because I feel good.

Just seething over it. If someone does something terrible to me, I feel bad. But if I do something terrible back to them, I also feel bad. See, this is how you can tell there's no justice to be had. This is wrong! It should not work this way! When I lash out and devastate the people that have been hatching evil plots against me for years, I should feel good about it!

This is someone who took up firebombing my house and killing my family as a part of her plans, and when it failed she made lying about it and getting away with it the new plan! She was going to just live with that betrayal indefinitely, like it didn't even matter.. and yet, when I decide to pummel her until her corpse is a soggy and broken remnant while her whole family watches, I still feel like the bad guy! My emotions are broken, it's really the only explanation.

My compulsive need to feel guilty and remorseful for extremely reasonable and understandable actions is becoming burdensome. Maybe this is just a teenage hormone thing. Just the overwrought and unreasonable emotional responses of a chemical stew that cannot be reasoned with and consistently generates the most possible drama. It could be that all this turmoil, all this self-doubt and self-castigation is just me being a teenager and this would not be happening to someone who was not boiling in a sentiment stew.

Or that's just an excuse. I can't really tell, now can I? But all of this second-guessing and reservations is just getting in the way, because ultimately I do know they're not going to change my path.

I might twist like a worm on a hook going 'ohhhh noooo all my nasty feeeeelings' but I'm still going to buckle up, crack my knuckles, and kick seven shades of shit out of the Freckentops, the Uncin, the Blind, the Dominionists, the Federalists, the magister's college, Meadwhite, and anyone else that gets in my way and does not move. That seems to settle me. Yes, I'm allowed to feel insecure about myself. Yes I'm going to have my misgivings and moral quandaries.

But ultimately, the things I need to do are already predetermined. It is not going to matter whether I like them or not, whether I'm comfortable with them or not. Whether I'm scared, guilty, repulsed or angry, I am already committed to this path. Ultimately, wallowing in my feelings like this is only going to be masochistic or masturbatory. In either case, it serves no purpose. There's a world to save.

I can take time out to squirm on my feelings, but I do need to acknowledge that in every evaluation they're just window dressing compared to the magnitude and inevitability of the plan. I am going to crush my enemies. I am going to overthrow the social order. I am going to lead armies that are going to kill in great numbers and die in great numbers. I am going to preside over an unspeakable amount of torment, confusion, heartbreak, mourning and rage. And, I'm going to tell a lot of lies to do it.

And they will never see it coming. That, also, is part of the plan.