Chương 98: Chapter 88 - Knives at the Back

++Army politics is a lot like schoolground politics, gossip and popularity reign supreme. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. Agrian's whole body was trembling like he was undergoing some sort of episode. Like he was being electrocuted. I saw tears in his eyes, though they were just as likely from the stench of undead as pure emotion, and a pallour to his face that told me all the blood was rushing elsewhere. The fists, maybe. Those were trembling too.

"What is there to explain?" I asked.

"I saved you."

"With…" his voice was loud, at first, then strangled down to less than a whisper as he glanced furtively around us.

"With necromancy."

"Yes, speaking of the necromancy," I noted.

"Why did our enemy flee? She surely could have defeated us, had she continued fighting while the new wave of undead were attacking. Especially if her necromancers had returned." I felt the problem gnawing at me, that way unanswered questions always did. It was worse now. With the combat behind us, my stimulant was doing nothing but heightening my irritation and quickening my pulse.

Agrian, as usual, lacked any and all empathy for my plight, remaining steadfastly irritating and fully on his original, irrelevant topic of inquiry. Fortunately, I got my answer soon anyway as I felt magic in the air and turned to see men both riding and marching over. Warriors at the front, all with sabres out and pistols drawn, while battlemages headed up behind them. The Garamon Army, it seemed, had finally answered the call for help I sent through Nesariyah.

Interrogation on my experiences took quite some time, and I was in no mood for it. Partly this was the still-felt sting of missing out on what had to be the most fascinating specimen I had ever seen, and partly it was the feeling of that stimulant still rushing through my body. It left me wanting to run and jump rather than stay still for a dressing-down. Fortunately, my lich's intellect proved sufficient to keep all visible signs from me.

"Are you grinning, girl?" Casting squad leader Fiq demanded.

"No," I told him, though found that it was hard to speak on account of my mouth forcing itself into such a fearsome grin. Fiq did not seem entirely surprised, more irritated. He sat back in his chair without quite lounging, eyes flicking around the office around us. It had, I gathered, once been a surgeon's quarters in Orapathaqi, now commandeered for the casting squad leader to go about his business from.

We were alone within it, which was to my liking, and the walls were thick enough to be near-soundproof, which was even more to my liking. Fiq finally decided to continue speaking, his voice as languid as his limbs.

"Great, so I get to spend my afternoon extracting information from a teenaged girl caught in the throes of hysteria and smashed out of her mind on stims." I forced myself to calm down at that, not so much because I cared what the baboon seated opposite me thought, but more because I was intellectually aware such perceptions would determine how easy my life was following this.

"I have told you already what happened," I said, face straight at last.

"My brother's ambush was struck by necromancers, he was able to drive them back to their base wherein I received his signal for reinforcements and sent my servant to get more. We engaged them together, destroyed many undead and slew several of their magicians." The good thing about killing virtually everything that had been present was that nobody could contradict my story. Except for Agrian, and I had made sure he memorised and agreed to support it long before we were taken in to give accounts.

Fiq wrote mine down now, scowling.

"It was bloody dangerous, what your brother did. And what you did," he growled. He had a way of staring at people that I had seen was quite effective at daunting his subordinates. I dropped my gaze from it now, deciding it would be in my best interests to stroke his ego.

"Perhaps," I agreed.

"But my brother was in danger."

"Maybe it's understandable, if still wrong, for you, but Agrian had no excuse."

"Agrian was avenging his comrades, and he succeeded in doing so. If he had not attacked so quickly, who knows what would have happened. That necromancer cell may have disappeared without ever being seen again, or else enacted some new stage to their plan. There were ritual sigils on the floor of the warehouse, you may see them intact enough to analyze. I do not want to imagine what those sigils would have been used for."

I actually had some theories, and those theories turned into yet more theories, which turned into another jolt of anger that the girl had gotten away. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"You had an incident, didn't you?" Fiq asked me.

"You and your brother. A kidnapping attempt. Tell me about it." I was stunned by the question. Stunned enough that it took me a long moment to muster the appropriate reaction, blind anger, and bury any emotions that may have been inconveniently suspicious.

"That is none of your concern," I snapped. Then another thought occurred to me.

"And how do you even know?" My father had deliberately kept that affair quiet, mostly out of his own sense of humiliation at nearly having us snatched. I could think of only one group who would know for certain that it had happened…

"You are affiliated with the Runborg Institute," I guessed. Fiq snorted.

"Am I supposed to be impressed with you working that out? Yes, congratulations. You got the hint." I was wary now, and I kept my face even. He was breaching this topic for a reason. I waited to find it out.

"There's stories told about what happened the night of you and Agrian's kidnapping. Ridiculous, unexpected chaos emerging from nowhere. Everything going wrong at once. Everything unexpected and disastrous, for everyone. Except for you. Reminds me of today. Your brother is tangled up fighting the enemy, and you just happen to be in the area? Odd, isn't it? Odd that this happened, and odd that things like this keep happening around you." A single moment was all I spared to think about this.

Fortunately, a lich's mind can get a terrible amount of work done in any moment, let alone a conversationally-long one.

"It is very funny to me," I replied slowly.

"That you are saying all of this with an accusatory tone. You are affiliated with the Runborg Institute. You are privy to details about one of the worst moments of me and my brother's life. You know, or at least knew, the men who nearly tore my family apart. You have told me all of this. With an accusatory tone. How very funny." His eyes were still narrowed as I said that, then became wide and startled as my magic spoke for me.

Aether formed up around me, soft and flexible as rubber and shaped into grasping limbs that wrapped themselves about him. His own mana flashed and thundered, an impressive display, I had to admit. Fiq was clearly both talented and experienced, but he would never have made it in the Winzorth Institute, and even at close to three times my age he possessed barely half my power. There was no real contest between us. He was trapped and helpless in moments. I could have choked him, even crushed him.

I would probably not have required much effort to reduce him into fine paste, after overcoming his own magical defenses. Instead I just held him there as I spoke.

"People see Agrian punch our classmates, and they mistake me for the nice one," I said idly.

"It is a very serious misconception, as you can see. Because I am not nice, not at all. And when my family is threatened, I tend to allow my lack of niceties to take centre stage. So I would advise you to speak far more carefully about the incident you just referenced, because next time I may not be able to restrain myself." Fear blossomed, and I soaked it in. My heart was pounding like someone was squeezing it by hand. His life was in my grasp, such a fragile thing. So… destructible.

Eventually I released Fiq and watched him drop, panting, to the floor. I turned away from him, but kept my senses keyed to his mana. Battlemages were still soldiers, and thus violent, drunken types prone to all sorts of impulsive behaviour. I was in no mood to be struck from behind by an idiot who did not see why that would be such a bad idea for him. Fiq's breathing dropped from a ragged pant to a more measured inhale-exhale rhythm, one I imagined was deliberate and learned on his part. It seemed to stabilize him.

"You just assaulted your superior," he spat. That, finally, turned me back to look at him again.

"So report it," I suggested.

"I could kill you whenever I want and would face nothing worse than expulsion from the army. I am a Baron's daughter. Who is your father, again?" There were, I had to admit, occasional advantages to such a thoroughly unfair society. Even I enjoyed them from time to time.

"I'm going to fucking keep my eye on you," Fiq spat.

"You hear me? You'll be watched, I don't know what you're up to, but I'm going to find out and fucking sink you with it. You and…" he choked back the rest of his sentence. Most likely, it was another threat to my family. The little performance I had given just now seemed to have convinced him well enough that I was acting purely out of emotional concern for their wellbeing.

"Do as you like," I shrugged.

"Provided you do not get in my way, I do not care. If you do then…well…" I produced another set of tendrils like the ones I had half-throttled him with, and made them flex before his eyes. He got the message. I started to leave his office, then paused at the door as the casting squad-leader called out to me.

"Vornholt," he growled.

"You…and your brother. You've been selected for an elimination force, tasked with disposing of the newly-recognised necromancer threat amid Orapathaqi's rebels." Despite his clear pain, he managed to say it with a semblance of smugness.

"Is this some petty retaliation?" I asked, trying to control my temper and finding it made more difficult than normal by the stimulant.

"No," he croaked.

"This decision was made higher up before you even arrived here." By Nu'chista, I would bet. The Gods and their servants did hate necromancers.

"So what then, I am to be whisked away and forced to abandon my quarters?" Fiq smiled. He really was enjoying himself now.

"No, but you'll be called on for missions soon, and you need to accept at least some of them." I could feel my eye twitching, as much from natural emotion as the chemicals still rolling around in my blood.

"I have been told, then," I replied stiffly. It was all I could do not to start choking the man all over again.