Chương 20: House of the Mockingbird

The first phase of Initiative Sunburn has concluded within predicted bounds, and all field commanders have been instructed to proceed to the second phase under plan variant 30-C-Moderate. Auspex analysis has identified the following primary complicating factors: The Safid naval forces have not retreated to a more secure position, opting instead to continue a largely-nonviolent blockade of Leik.

Material impacts will occur if the fleet's position has not changed when phase three begins, at which point the public opinion management burden following the operation begins to increase exponentially. More resources should be preemptively allocated to those teams in that event. Supplies of both men and materiel are limited in the Leiko hinterlands, partially due to Daressan sabotage efforts and largely due to Sever's deviation from his assigned role.

Management of Sever and any nearby Swordsmen may require additional effort to bring associated project pieces back into ideal bounds. A non-identifiable Category 4 probabilistic anomaly has prevented all auspex investigation of twenty-seven minor municipal regions adjacent to Leik and its territories. A map and a list of known souls capable of a Category 4 obfuscation is attached in the first appendix of this circular.

Given the difficulty of identifying the source of probabilistic anomalies and the unstable nature of this particular instance, units in the affected areas should prepare for the eventuality of a shift to plan variant 30-C-Defensive or 30-D-Moderate. Although the appearance of a Category 4 anomaly presents a complication to project planning, the benefits to operational security during the latter phases of Sunburn are significant and should not be overlooked.

The current recommendation is that the phenomenon be monitored for signs of expansion but not reduced below its current levels until after phase three is complete. - Institute Circular #3409, 7 Bounty 693. The soldier hauled Michael upward by his arm, scattering the remnants of his dearly-purchased meal across the bar.

"Wait," Michael protested, his free hand grabbing the soldier's arm. It was like grabbing a mass of steel cable; the man was obviously some sort of Form ensouled. His mind raced as the officer made a slow, disinterested turn in his direction.

"You're not going to claim you had a leave pass, are you?" the man asked.

"I'm not a soldier," Michael said.

"I wrecked on the shore last night, ask the verifex." The man from the front gate shot Michael an annoyed look, sliding his reward money into his pocket.

"Lie," he said.

"He is a soldier. I wouldn't have turned him in otherwise." Michael stared at the verifex in disbelief. The man met his gaze unflinchingly - then smiled, quick and thin while the soldiers' eyes were elsewhere. Disbelief shaded into anger as Michael realized what had just transpired. His heartbeat surged, pounding in his ears, and his mind lingered on the image of a tough, gnarled tree with unspeakable darkness coiled within. He could unmake this man with a word. The smile died from the verifex's face.

A foreign stab of fear lanced through Michael's midsection, sick and acidic; it splashed like water over the hateful embers in his chest. He closed his eyes and focused on the tree, on Jeorg's soul imbuing it with strength and vitality until the pulse of fear from the verifex faded and Michael's emotions were his own once more. When he opened his eyes once more the verifex had fled outside, unwilling to linger beside whatever truth he had seen in Michael's eyes a moment ago.

"It was at least a novel lie," the officer sighed.

"Take him to the stockade for now, we'll send him back with the next convoy." The man took his cap off and gave Michael a level stare.

"Behave during your confinement and I will send along a letter noting temporary battle fatigue. It will ease your reception considerably." Michael nodded slowly, allowing the burly soldier to lead him out of the bar. Adrenaline still pulsed through him from the sudden anger he had felt towards the verifex. It had not been a close thing, now that he had some distance from the event. Spark's soul seemed to let the emotions of others filter through to him with even the slightest weakening of the barrier around it.

It was a warning sign; it was also dangerously useful. When he realized the verifex had lied, anger's first impulse had been to take one step down that path. If he were to indulge in Spark's gifts, where would a second step lead? A third? Michael shuddered. He knew where the end of that path led, if not each moment along the way. He took a deep breath and thought instead of Stanza's soul, increasing his focus until the tree seemed to hover half-formed in front of his eyes.

His thoughts were settling into a semblance of order now that the initial shock of his arrest had passed; there was no need to do anything hasty. Wherever they confined him would likely not be made to withstand Stanza's soul. He would bide his time for the evening, take his rest, and slip free of the stockade after night had fallen. The walk through the town was short, as there was little enough of the town to walk through.

A low building near the town hall had been given over to Ardan soldiers, with two standing at a disinterested guard outside and a few more milling about within. It was interesting, despite the severity of the situation. As much as the papers and breathless recruiting pamphlets painted a lurid picture of the war on the continent, Michael had never seen soldiers on active duty besides the occasional march or parade through Calmharbor.

These were not the coiffed, polished troops that showcased the military might of Ardalt to an adoring city. If one attribute encompassed these men, it was that they were tired. Weariness seeped from each motion they made, lingered in each line of their face. The soldier guided Michael to an office near the back of the foyer, where a disheveled clerk looked up from an equally-askew stack of paperwork.

"What?" the clerk asked. The soldier muscled Michael into the office's sole remaining chair.

"Deserter," he grunted. A flash of annoyance crossed the clerk's face.

"That isn't our priority right now," he said.

"The operations near Leik-""Spector," the soldier said. He raised his head to look at the clerk, lifting an eyebrow as if daring the man to make him say a third word. The clerk sighed.

"Damn it," he said, opening a drawer and withdrawing a neatly-printed form. He looked at Michael with irritation writ plainly in the set of his jaw.

"Name, rank and identification."

"Um," Michael said, feeling his plans of quietly waiting in a cell slip further away with each passing second.

"I don't have any rank or identification. I'm not actually a soldier." Michael could swear that he heard the clerk's pen creak as his knuckles tightened on it.

"Stabsgefreiter Obermann," he grated, looking up at the soldier who still held his massive hand upon Michael's arm.

"Did you or did you not bother to verify that this man was actually a deserter?" The big man sighed.

"Verifex," he said.

"I see," the clerk said, his gaze swiveling to Michael.

"And in spite of a verifex confirming your enlistment, you maintain that you are not a soldier." Michael shook his head.

"That man lied for the reward money." Another creak came from the clerk's tortured pen, and a small vein in his neck began to pulse worryingly.

"Then why," he asked, "do you have an identification tag?" Michael looked down and saw the thin, broken chain of Elias's tag glinting from his shirt pocket. Obermann bent to grab it, handing it to the clerk before Michael could move to prevent it.

"Gefreiter Elias Keller," the clerk said read, pronouncing it with studied distaste.

"I will note your lies and obstruction in my official report. Obermann, this has everything I need. Get this idiot out of my office." Obermann jerked Michael roughly upright and marched him out of the room. It was no use trying to protest further to the clerk, there would be no convincing him of any mixup. As far as they were concerned he was Elias - a deserter whose mother was now very unlikely to receive her pension.

Michael muttered a quiet apology to the woman as Obermann shoved him into a cell, slamming the door shut behind him. Michael slept - or, rather, he lay face-up on the bare concrete floor of the cell and thought tired thoughts. In the quiet of the cell the building sounded incredibly busy, with shouts and hurried footsteps sounding in muffled cacophony from outside the door. He had hoped his confinement might come with a meal, but none came.

Whatever strange alteration Stefan's soul had wrought on his stomach left him feeling hungry much faster than he thought was normal, although he had to concede that this was his first real experience with starvation of any sort - Jeorg had fed him well, and Helene had considered hunger in the Baumgart household to be a personal nemesis. When the slot in the door did open it was not food that came through, but Elias's tag.

The metal bounced and skittered over the floor before it came to a rest at Michael's feet; the person who had tossed it in left without saying anything. Michael picked it up and stared at it for a moment before putting the metal slip in his pocket once more.

"That isn't yours, is it?" a voice said from behind him. Michael rose to his feet in a panicked half-scramble, his back slamming against the door as he jumped up and away from the speaker. When he looked at the far wall he saw - nothing. Not an empty cell, or the blank expanse of the wall, but nothing. A patch in the center of his vision was blind, bordered by a crawling, scintillating border of light and sparkling chaos that he couldn't bring into focus - spector's sight notwithstanding.

The effect was nauseating; Michael wrenched his vision away and looked down at the floor. The distortion hovered unabated at the far wall of the cell, shimmering in place. The voice came from it again, a scratchy and distorted noise that betrayed no hint of age, sex or accent.

"Please don't be alarmed," it said.

"I just thought we should speak." You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Oh," Michael said, feeling mildly absurd as he edged his sight back towards the blurry void.

"That's fine, I had no other plans." A short, grating laugh came from the blur, and Michael winced.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Is there any way you could stop - whatever that is that you're doing?" The blur laughed again.

"I normally don't give information out for free," it said.

"But you seem polite, and as it happens the answer to each of your questions is the same. Who am I? What am I doing, and will I stop doing it?" The blur shifted.

"The answer to all three: I am Sobriquet." Michael nodded absently, his mind shooting in several directions at once. Sobriquet, counterpart to Sibyl; a soul dealing with obfuscation and secrets. He had never heard anything about the soul's current holder save that they were unknown. And here they were in his cell. He nearly laughed at the absurdity of it all, but didn't trust himself not to vomit.

"So," Sobriquet said, making a motion and a noise that resembled a clap of its hands; another wave of vertigo pulled at Michael's gut.

"I have given you a little secret, and now I should like one of my own. Did you witness the shelling of Leik? One of my associates overheard something to that effect at your arrest."

"Your associates?" Michael asked.

"The three that disappeared. That was you?" Sobriquet shifted position.

"Out of order," it chided him.

"Your turn is to answer, not to ask."

"I need to ask at least one more," Michael said.

"Why do you want to know?" The blur went very still for a moment, then shifted slowly away from Michael.

"Because a great many people died in Leik that night," Sobriquet said.

"Not Ardans or Safid. Daressans. Noncombatants. And when I began lifting stones to see what lay underneath, I found only secrets. Explosions, not where they should be. Bodies, not where they should be." It leaned in closer to Michael; even through the spector's sight the strain was beginning to draw tears.

"I have an eye for secrets," it said.

"Great truths sequestered in but a few minds, they have a scent, a flavor, a shine to them that I can follow. I found nothing but secrets around the bodies of the fallen, and then my associates tell me of a strange thing, an Ardan who is likewise not where he should be. An Ardan who lies to Ardans." It leaned closer still.

"And so many secrets, this Ardan has. Positively overflowing with them. So now I find that I am very much interested in what you saw that night." Michael felt a small chill.

"I had nothing to do with the shelling," he said.

"I saw it from a distance, and passed beyond sight of it before it ended."

"And that has the sound of a truth once hidden, now disclosed," Sobriquet said, sounding mildly surprised even through the distortion. It stepped back and appeared to regard him for a moment.

"Well, that's unfortunate. I suppose I should apologize for my earlier - manner."

"I don't suppose the apology could come in the form of breaking me free from this cell?" Michael asked.

"You don't seem to be associated with the Ardan military, and at the moment I'm rather more associated than I'd prefer." Sobriquet shifted.

"Possibly," it said.

"Didn't you have a plan to escape? You seemed rather sanguine about your confinement earlier."

"I had an idea or two," Michael said, wincing again as he looked too long at the blur.

"But now I just have a headache. Besides, you seem like you've done this before."

"You really did have a plan?" Sobriquet murmured, moving dizzyingly close to Michael's face.

"Oh, now that - that touches close to something grand. I can feel it around you. You know a thing or two of great importance, and at least one…" There was a muffled noise, like an intake of breath.

"There is one secret bound within you that has never before been known in this world," it said.

"And it is vast, vast like I have never seen, yet only exists within your mind." Sobriquet stepped back and cocked its head to the side.

"I would very much like to know who you are." The words had evoked a shiver from Michael, and he turned his sight away from the blur. Sobriquet's words were vague, but troublingly incisive.

"I might have some things to share," he said.

"Help me get where I'm going, and we can talk about a trade."

"And where do your plans take you?" Sobriquet asked. Michael shook his head.

"You'll have to earn that one," he said.

"Get me out, then we can talk." Sobriquet laughed once more.

"A fast learner," it said.

"I could grow to like you, secret-keeper." And then the blur was gone. Michael wiped tears from his eyes and lowered himself back down to the floor, reveling in the sudden clarity of his sight. His head was pounding from the strain of looking at Sobriquet's bizarre apparition. With a grunt of weary effort, Michael lay down on the floor and abandoned all hope of sleep. A noise from the wall drew his attention. He had not slept, but his thoughts had wandered far during the intervening time.

Hours, probably, although the windowless cell left him little reference for the state of the outside, and he had not cared enough to investigate. It was surely night by now, at the very least. Michael let his vision slide away from him, floating disorientingly through the wall of the cell until he could see the other side clearly. It was night, as he had guessed. There was nothing there, only a blank stretch of brick shrouded in the darkness of a rear alley.

As he watched, however, the brick began to flow and twist away until a dull sheet of metal was exposed. There was a pause, and Michael moved his sight forward in front of the hole. The metal, too, began to flow and twist outward until an expanse of concrete was revealed beneath; Michael recognized the material of his cell wall and retracted his vision to stand in front of the opening. A moment later the wall parted.

Rather than empty air, he saw Sobriquet's three associates from the tavern and another man he had not seen before. Sobriquet itself was nowhere in evidence, although at this point it appeared as though it did not need to be particularly close to act.

"Come on," the woman said, gesturing sharply for Michael to join them. He did not require additional prompting; he followed the four out into the alley and down a side street. There was a curious shimmer in the air around them that set the lights dancing and turned the stars into blurry motes. Curious, Michael extended his view out from his head - and nearly stumbled as the entire group disappeared from view, including himself.

He hastily withdrew his vision and saw the four others reappear, one of the men giving him an irritated glance.

"Keep your eyes in your head," he grunted.

"You can play games when-""Quiet," the other man from the bar hissed.

"Don't test the masking." They walked in silence for a time. The town was small, but densely-built; in the darkness the alleyways seemed to shrink to claustrophobic channels that hid all view of their position. Michael followed through twists and turns until they came to a stop in one particularly-disused passage. The man Michael hadn't seen before moved to the front of their group and held his hand against a nearby house's wall, which parted to reveal an unlit stairway that led down beneath the structure.

They proceeded down until Michael found himself in a surprisingly spacious and well-appointed room, albeit windowless and somewhat cluttered besides. Barrels of various sorts were in a stack along one wall, while the other bore a neat row of rifles and other assorted firearms atop crates of ammunition. At the far end of the room stood a thin screen that stretched from wall to wall, blocking his view.

Once they had filed in, only the woman and one of the men stayed with him, the other two turned and left the way they had came.

"Welcome, secret-keeper," Sobriquet's distorted voice came from behind the screen, mercifully free of the disorienting visual chaos that had accompanied it in the cell.

"Please find a chair. Now that I have delivered on my promise to free you from that place, I would like to discuss the remainder of our agreement. Shall we start with your name?" Michael shifted. Sobriquet acted friendly enough, but certainly had an agenda of its own.

"Elias is fine," he said. There was a tutting noise.

"Not very friendly of you," it said.

"And here I thought we were beginning to understand one another."

"I'll trade in real names, if you'd like to give me yours," Michael retorted.

"Then Elias you shall be," Sobriquet replied, sounding unruffled.

"On to the matter of your rather more tempting secrets; you had mentioned that you intended to travel. Where, in particular?" There was no evasion possible here, not if he wanted their help.

"Mendian," Michael said. There was a subtle change in the room as everyone present focused on Michael just a bit more. Even the distortion in Sobriquet's voice sounded a bit sharper when it spoke again.

"Mendian," it said thoughtfully.

"That is not a trivial request." Michael spread his hands.

"All I need is transport to the border. You don't need to get me across, I can handle that on my own." The focus grew sharper still.

"Can you, now," Sobriquet murmured.

"Interesting. But still, not as easy as one might think. The War has increasingly limited travel options where the Sunlit Land is concerned. Not just any border will do; if you were to approach the Daressan border with Mendian then you would be cut down before you came within eyesight of their land. Likewise the Rulian border. Travel by ship might have been an option were Leik not blockaded and bombed to rubble." There was a long pause.

"No," Sobriquet said.

"With things in the state that they are, the closest crossing is the sole land access left to the continent: the Northern Goitxea Locks, at the Esroun border."

"Esrou?" Michael muttered, rocking back in his chair.

"That's - I'd have to cross the front and travel through Saf, then again across the Esroun border. One's an active war zone, the other's merely an inactive one."

"As I said," Sobriquet agreed.

"Non-trivial. But not outside my capabilities, nor the scope of what I'd be willing to provide in trade for some of the secrets you hold. There would, of course, need to be some payment in advance."

"I'm not telling you what you want to know and just trusting you to act in good faith," Michael said.

"You seem like the sort of person who would understand."

"And I am!" Sobriquet said.

"No, it wasn't that sort of payment I had in mind. You are a spector. Am I right to think that you're of the disassociative variety?" Michael paused, then nodded - they had already guessed most of what he would be telling them if he spoke of Beni's soul.

"If you mean that I can move my view independently of my eyes, then yes."

"Any increased acuity?" Sobriquet asked.

"No," Michael replied, shaking his head.

"I can see a bit better in the dark, and perhaps a tiny bit sharper than my eyes. I'm not a battlefield Scope. I can move my view in an area about the size of this room, no further."

"Limited, but useful," Sobriquet mused.

"And perfectly adequate for what I had in mind." There was another pause, and the screen's form began to waver; Michael had the impression that Sobriquet was standing up against the other side.

"I told you that I was investigating inconsistencies surrounding the attack on Leik," it continued.

"My own sight ranges further than yours but does not render the world in quite the same way - ah, suffice to say that different ends of our axis are good at different things, and yours is what I need for this type of work. Your sight can quest under the rubble and refuse that was once the city and find what I fear is there."

"And that is?" Michael asked. The pause that followed felt like a smile.

"A secret," Sobriquet replied.

"So what do you say, Elias? Look in the rubble of Leik for the truth behind those deaths, and regardless of what you find I shall do my utmost to speed you across war and horror to sunny Mendian. Once my task is complete, you shall tell me that secret you are keeping." Sobriquet stepped directly through the screen, insubstantial, to stand in front of Michael.

"Do we have a deal?" it asked. Michael stood from his chair, trying not to wince overmuch at the dizzying blur before him.

"Just looking?" he asked.

"No violence?"

"That will depend entirely on your findings," Sobriquet said.

"But none while you are there. The whole reason I wanted to retain the services of a spector like yourself was the need for stealth, which would be rather ruined if we were to go around poking holes in all of the fine Ardan soldiers. The mission is to arrive, inspect, and depart."

"Then I accept," Michael said.

"I'd offer a handshake, but that seems inadvisable."

"Oh, you have no idea," Sobriquet said.

"Headache doesn't even begin to describe it. Consider my hand properly shaken." Sobriquet moved back towards the screen, then paused.

"I did have a gift I wanted to give you, as a celebration of our newfound partnership. Gentlemen, if you would?" From the entryway, the two men who had left returned. Between them they dragged the limp form of a man; as his head lolled to the side Michael recognized the verifex that had sold him to the military as a deserter.

"You seem like the sort of man who pays attention to future potentialities," Sobriquet said.

"If you wish to resolve this one, please feel free." Michael stared at the verifex. The man's mouth hung open, smeared with blood from a blow that had broken several teeth. The echo of that hate that had pulsed through him sounded weakly, then faded.

"This man did me no harm, in the end," Michael said.

"I have no need for him."

"How equanimous of you," Sobriquet said.

"Then I suppose I shall apply my own need for those who sell innocents to the Ardans. Charles?" The man who had stayed nodded, pulling up his sleeve to reveal several thick, metal bracelets on his forearm. He walked up to the verifex, looked down, and made a quick slashing motion with his hand. The verifex's head fell to the floor. Michael had felt the familiar pain burning weakly in his chest as Charles approached, but the death likewise felt oddly muted.

He saw the verifex's soul as it hovered uncertainly, and even that usually-vibrant light was washed out. Or rather, the world shone more brightly, a brilliant ambiance. He puzzled at it as the soul began to drift - upwards, thankfully, and not towards Michael. His vision of it faded. He was still standing in the room, facing the dead man's chair. A chill informed him of the light sheen of sweat on his brow, but he had remained standing throughout.

Nevertheless, he felt the sense of intense scrutiny from behind the screen as he watched the thin metal blade in Charles's hand shift and flow up his arm. In a moment there was only the bracelet remaining, quickly hidden under a sleeve.

"And now that's sorted," Sobriquet said.

"I'm glad to be working with you, not-Elias. Your particular arrangement of secrets gives me a good feeling, and I'm seldom wrong."

"I'm flattered," Michael asked.

"But I had little to do with most of it." Sobriquet laughed.

"I wouldn't worry," it said.

"I doubt events will conspire to exclude you forever."

"No," Michael sighed.

"Probably not."