webcrawl/APGTE/Book-4/tex/Ch-092.md.tex

\hypertarget{interlude-heretics}{%
\section{Interlude: Heretics}\label{interlude-heretics}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``It is common practice among the lower classes of Praes, who lack
surnames, to name their children after themselves in the hopes of
confounding any devils coming to collect on debts.''}

-- Extract from ``Horrors and Wonders'', famed travelogue of Anabas the
Ashuran
\end{quote}

Masego had not missed court.

At least this was not Ater, where a formal session would be held in the
Tower with corresponding pageantry, but Thalassina was wealthy enough
its ruler was near as indulgent. The floating fountains and illusory
interior garden were proof enough of that. High Lord Idriss Kebdana was,
he'd been told, an old ally of the Empress. Two years ago that would
have made him Masego's ally as well, but things had since changed.
Catherine and Malicia were enemies now, and he'd already had to give
thought as to how he would attack the Tower's vicious set of protections
when that enmity finally led to blows. He'd considered killing High Lord
Idriss, since he was already here anyway, but he \emph{was} a guest. It
was apparently very different to kill someone on the battlefield
compared to killing them in their bed -- which was irksome since
practically speaking the end result was the same -- so he'd eventually
decided against it. Still, he'd made a note of the weaknesses in the
city's wards. If the Army of Callow ever had to assault Thalassina, he
was confident he could collapse the central array with the right ritual.

``A glass, Lord Hierophant?''

His eyes moved under the cloth to study the pair who'd approached him.
Twins. Soninke, or close enough: native Thalassinians tended to be mixed
blood, taking in appearance after the last infusion from either side.
The man had the Gift, and heavily enchanted robes. An utter waste, he
thought with disdain as he took them in. Silk might be costly and take
well to sorcery, but it also dispersed it at an unusually high rate. The
Yan Tei supposedly had their ways around that, but secrets from across
the Tyrian Sea were not easily obtained. Those robes would require
regular maintenance just to keep up\ldots{} warmth, shifting patterns of
gold and a lesser illusion anchored in the man's face? What a waste of
the art. Three different workings in this difficult a material: they
were throwing away a skilled mage's time just by owning it. The woman of
the pair was offering him a delicate transparent glass filled with wine.
His eyes narrowed in on it, finding no poison within. Unusual. They put
poison in everything at events like this.

``That won't be necessary,'' Masego replied.

He belatedly remembered to add a slight inclination of the head as
thanks, as was polite.

``I would have thought you eager to taste a proper Wasteland vintage,
after your years abroad,'' the man said with a friendly smile.

``I usually can't tell where wine is from,'' he admitted. ``Not without
alchemical tools.''

They both laughed, which surprised him. Had someone told a joke? He
should pay closer attention to the conversation then. The woman laid a
hand on her brother's arm and leaned forward as she laughed, the
elaborate straps of her dress shifting. It was a strange apparel, he
thought. Thalassina was known for its seaside breeze, would she not get
cold walking outside attired in this way? Maybe it was a dress meant
purely for receptions like these.

``Still, it must be pleasing to have returned home,'' the woman said.
``The provinces are not known for their\ldots{} comforts.''

She was leaning forward again. Must have a bad back.

``I usually sleep in the Observatory,'' Masego noted. ``So I wouldn't
know.''

``Ah, the famous Observatory. I have heard much of it, lately,'' the man
smiled. ``Your own work, it is not? Would it be indiscreet to ask how it
functions?''

The blind man cocked his head to the side.

``Have you read Serebano's ten volumes on scrying?'' he asked.

There was a heartbeat of silence.

``I have not,'' the man said.

``Then there would be no point in telling you,'' Masego replied. ``You
lack the necessary grounding to understand the basic underlying
tenets.''

The man's smile grew stiff, though his twin seemed amused.

``Then I will obtain copies, my lord, and perhaps we can pursue that
discussion at a later date,'' the other mage said.

``If you'd like,'' Masego said. ``Although I've been told I should kill
anyone who tries to figure it out without permission, so that seems
counter-productive of you.''

``Is that so?'' the male twin blandly said.

His face had gone blank. \emph{Ah, I offended him}, the mage realized.
It must have been that he'd made it clear the man was ignorant. His
friends kept telling him it was impolite to do that, though they might
as well ask him to stop remarking that the sea was wet. Ignorance was
everywhere.

``I am told you've never visited Thalassina properly,'' the female twin
said.

Masego wondered if it was too late to ask for their names. It probably
was. Father had provided him a list with names and descriptions, but
he'd needed something to wipe an acid stain and he hadn't felt like
getting up to fetch a cloth. That might have been a tactical mistake of
sorts, he reluctantly conceded. In his experience, if you asked people
their name after conversing with them for more than four sentences they
tended to get angry.

``I am uncertain what you mean by properly,'' he said. ``But I have only
ever seen a few streets and parts of this palace.''

``There is much I could show you, then,'' she replied smilingly. ``It
would be a grave sin if I never offered to escort you to the seastone
walls or the corals.''

He was uncertain what religion had to do with sightseeing, but
Thalassinians \emph{were} known for their strange practices.

``If my work allows,'' he said.

By reputation, the corals were rather beautiful. Also filled with old
wards and traps for any seeking invasion through the sea, which to be
frank interested him rather more.

``My sisters knows the city well as any native,'' the other twin said
encouragingly. ``And I've no doubt the company of your own kind will be
a balm after your time amongst the savages.''

``Most legionaries are actually well-behaved,'' Masego noted. ``And I
spent little time with them regardless.''

They laughed again, to his growing confusion. He went over the spoken
words carefully. His own kind? He'd thought they meant humans, which was
rather odd since as far as he knew the Army of Callow was human in
majority. Assuming they were not idiots, which he almost never did in
situations such as these, they might have meant `his kind' as Praesi
instead. Oh. Was he supposed to be feeling patriotic since the Empire
was at war? But then he was technically at war with it, since his
friends were, so the logic was not sound. Baffling.

``You meant Callowans,'' he tried.

``I suppose some are barely civilized,'' the male twin mused. ``They did
spend a few decades under our rule, after all. And they are now led by
the Carrion's Lord castoff, no doubt thanking all their Gods for her
Praesi education.''

``I was not aware my uncle had cast off anything,'' Masego noted.
``Except scruples, but he's always insisted he was born without those.''

Which had led to a thoroughly wasted evening when he'd been nine and
trying to find those in his anatomy charts, worried Uncle Amadeus was
missing an organ. The woman smiled over the rim of her cup.

``There is no need to be coy, my lord,'' she said. ``We have kin in the
capital. The breach between the two is common knowledge in the right
circles.''

Who had Uncle Amadeus been arguing with recently? The Empress, he
remembered, but that hardly fit the rest of the conversation. Did they
mean Catherine?

``It must have been tedious to humour the fools,'' the man drawled.
``Yet you did benefit: an unprecedented Name. Your foresight is to be
praised.''

Oh, they'd been insulting his friends the whole time. Maybe. He should
check to be certain, Hakram had noted it was important.

``By the fools, you mean the Woe,'' he asked.

``What greater fools are there?'' the woman laughed.

So now the list. They were nobles, since no one else would be allowed
here. They weren't visibly being forced to speak to him. There'd be no
collateral damage to innocents. Was it legal? Probably. Callow had some
kind of treason law about insulting the queen, didn't it? It counted.

``Right,'' Hierophant smiled, and raised his hand. ``\emph{Boil}.''

Casting without proper incantation had become much easier since his
transition, save when he was molding miracles. As a rule Trismegistan
sorcery put greater emphasis on precise manipulation of magical energies
than the use of mediums like incantations and runes -- they were a
crutch to visualize and measure, not a requirement -- but that same
precision made it difficult to actually dispense with those mediums. The
acceptable margin of error before collapse in a Trismegistan spell
formula was barely a tenth of what it would be in a Petronian equivalent
or, Gods forbid, a \emph{Jaquinite} one. As a result Trismegistan
sorcery usually produced superior results for inferior costs while
serving the same purpose, but also required greater skill and longer
practice from of the mage using it. The portion of practitioners that
could transcend those limitations was small, and even among those such
transcendence was usually reserved for a few especially well-studied
formulas. It was possible to lower the bar so badly any blunderer could
tinker with the spell, of course, as the Legions had done with their own
arcane roster. But only at the expense of every single boon save
flexibility.

Fortunately, Masego's sensitivity to the forces he manipulated through
his will had greatly increased since transition. He'd initially been
disinclined to rely on anything as fallible as \emph{senses} when using
magic, but he'd overcome that reluctance after proving he could
reproduce that sensitivity through adjusted measuring tools. Indeed,
he'd since come to theorize that aside from magical capacity -- one's
inborn talent to use sorcery -- there might be a second, more discreet
aspect to the Gift. Sensitivity to those same energies, which he'd
ventured on parchment might be what distinguished mages capable of using
High Arcana from those who could not even after a lifetime of dedicated
study. It might even finally solve the mystery of why the Taghreb
produced fewer mages than Soninke stock but a proportionally higher
amount of mages capable of using the higher mysteries. Many Taghreb
lines had twined with creatures, after all, wich were said to have a
natural grasp of magic humans did not. The paired screams of the twins
as their blood boiled in their veins and began to waft out through their
eyes and nostrils shook him out of his thoughts. Ah, yes, that was still
happening.

The spell had been crude, its formula still fresh and untested, but
being able to affect blood without a sympathetic link or a ritual whose
sheer power would make the matter irrelevant was excitingly new grounds
for him. He paid close attention to the rate at which their blood
evaporated, committing the numbers to memory, and was rather irked when
they both only died after ten heartbeats. Much too long, it meant part
of the heat was being dispersed into the broader body. He'd have to
scrap the entire containment vector, and since that was tied into almost
every part of the formula that effectively meant scrapping the entire
spell and starting from scratch.

``Masego.''

Papa's tone was chiding, and there had been a time where that would have
given Hierophant pause. Before Keter. Before he'd seen Tikoloshe walk
the grounds of what had become the single most significant magical
phenomenon in Calernian history without speaking a single word of it to
his son. Much had been cast into doubt by that revelation. If Papa had
been human there might have been uncertainty about his motivations, but
unlike humans devils were\ldots{} direct. Unequivocal in what drove
them. There were only two reasons that Tikoloshe would have failed to
fulfill Masego's desire when he so easily could, and both were ugly
things. \emph{So} \emph{which are you, father -- a stranger or a slave?}
Either was betrayal, if owned by different pair of hands.

``Father,'' he simply replied.

``That was unwise,'' Tikoloshe said, eyeing the corpses.

Masego frowned.

``It would have been better to test the spell on animals beforehand,''
he conceded. ``But pigs are expensive and the physiological differences
really are rather minor.''

Whispers spread across the hall in the wake of his words. No doubt they
were agreeing with him. Apes were even better for experimentation,
admittedly, but those could only be obtained from across the Tyrian Sea
and they were \emph{ridiculously} costly to import. Even the small ones
that didn't know any tricks. He'd asked around. Well, asked Vivienne to,
which was basically the same thing. Papa sighed. More than a few nobles
flushed at the sight.

``That is not what I meant,'' he said. ``You should apologize to High
Lord Idriss for disrupting his reception.''

Masego's brow rose. Wasn't it already enough that he hadn't killed the
man? He'd been very courteous so far.

``Will he apologize for them insulting my friends?'' he asked peevishly.

``He is not responsible for their words,'' Tikoloshe said.

``Then it has nothing to do with him'' Masego said.

``Mas-''

``\emph{Enough},'' Hierophant hissed. ``Father asked for my help and so
I came, but my patience is running thin. I agreed to lend my time, not
\emph{waste} it. There is work to do, and none of it takes place here.''

He could be at the Obervatory right now, plumbing the depths of a
hundred Hells. He could be with Catherine, taking apart drow sorcery and
learning from ancient secrets. He could be picking at the minds of the
Wild Hunt to understand what set them apart from the other fae but no,
instead he was at court, talking with blind children who -- Masego took
a deep breath. He would not get angry. Not over this, when the true
source of his anger was other. He would be fair, and hold only the
responsible to account. They'd shown him. It was \emph{better} when the
world worked that way. And when it didn't? You just had to make it.

``Enjoy court, Father,'' he said through gritted teeth. ``I am done with
it.''

---

Wekesa watch his son stride away in a swirl of dark robes, leaving
silence behind him. A few heartbeats and then whispers bloomed, even as
servants took away the corpses of the Serali twins. Their father was
stuck halfway between terrified and furious, his little gamble to curry
favour having proved rather costly. But this was court, in the end, and
so the conversations moved on. Lord Hajal Serali's blunder would be the
talk of the city for a few weeks and that would be the end of it. The
man was not so influential as to risk taking revenge on a Named, not
unless Alaya tacitly allowed it. Which she would not. Warlock had set
this as a condition with his old friend before sending for Masego. So
long as certain boundaries were observed, the Eyes would disappear
anyone even considering raising a hand at his son. Tikoloshe returned to
his side, and decades of marriage told him his husband was feeling
rather irritated even if his face betrayed none of it. The two of them
were given a wide berth after they reunited, the implicit courtesy
nothing less than his due. He and his son were the only thing that stood
between Thalassina and a sack, after all. Idriss might get snippy about
the dead bodies, but he would not forget that.

Wekesa was not above simply leaving if he felt like it, and had made
that much abundantly clear.

He was here on Alaya's behalf, not the High Lord's, and she knew better
than to ask to tedious a favour of him. Wekesa had not thrown away his
hours teaching imbeciles when Amadeus had requested it, and he would not
do the same fighting this chore of war if he had to watch for knives
aimed at his family's back. Not even for a single battle, however
interesting in nature. If Procer and its crusading fellow insisted on
testing the Wasteland he'd discipline them appropriately, but what did
he care if Nok and Thalassina burned? He had no laboratories or
correspondents in either: there was nothing to defend. If Kahtan or
Okoro were on the line it would be a different story, but they were too
far inland to be threatened by Ashuran raids. Tikoloshe came to stand by
his side, almost close enough to touch, and Wekesa idly brushed his
fingers against the rune-carved jewels on his belt. The contamination
ward bubbled out a heartbeat later.

``He used to be such an obedient child,'' his husband mourned.

``He's an adult now,'' Wekesa said. ``With the opinions of one. He won't
always agree with us. He's no longer the little boy that used to chase
the hem of our robes.''

The incubus made a moue. It was a wonder, Warlock thought, that even
after all these years the sight of that could cause a low stir of desire
in his belly. He'd never taken another lover after wedding his husband
-- how could any mortal man be half as good in bed as a creature born of
desire itself? -- and still it amazed him he'd never felt the need to
seek a partner outside their marriage. It wasn't like Tikoloshe would
have minded, though he'd certainly gotten more possessive over the
years. Love, Wekesa thought, was a strange thing. For what else could it
be he felt, when other desires failed to move him?

``In public, `Kesa?'' Tikoloshe said, sounding flattered.

``It's nothing they've not speculated about,'' he replied, sliding a
hand around his husband's firm waist and bringing him close for a kiss.

There was little chaste about it, but they did not linger.

``You're attempting to distract me,'' Tikoloshe sighed. ``It won't work.
This is more than growing up, Wekesa. He is angry with us. Which one I
cannot tell, but-''

``I know,'' Warlock admitted. ``And while I mislike Foundling, she has
done wonders to keep him even-keeled. He would not act so sullen without
a reason.''

Amadeus' apprentice might be a little twerp as arrogant as she was
ignorant, but she'd done right by his son. He'd seriously considered
asking Alaya to keep her alive just for how she benefited Masego, but
the situation was too far gone. It'd become a mess between her and
Amadeus, and while those were rare they also tended to get exceedingly
nasty. \emph{He should have adopted some orphan years ago and settled
the paternal urge}, Wekesa thought. More than once he'd hinted
fatherhood might do his friend some good. He and Alaya acted like they
were married half the time, a shared child would only have served to
channel that tension more productively.

``Then he's learned something that angered him,'' Tikoloshe said.
``While he was abroad.''

And there was the trouble, for while Wekesa knew neither of them had
been perfect fathers he was genuinely surprise anything he'd done would
wound his son this way. He should have spent more time with Masego when
he was younger, instead of studying. That was one of his great regrets,
for he'd not truly understood back then that those days would never come
again. All those he cared about, save for his husband, were Named. He'd
gotten in the habit of treating long partings as being of little import.
Yet where would his son have learned to resent this? None of the Woe
were close to their parents according to the reports, save for the
Thief, and her father hadn't even known she was moonlighting as an
apprentice to a member of the Guild of Thieves. Trust and closeness
could be different matters, true, but it was still baffling.

``I cannot think of what would have led to this,'' Warlock admitted.

``He's been to Keter,'' Tikoloshe murmured.

``That matter is long buried,'' Wekesa frowned.

``The Dead King-''

``Would not deign to indulge in games with a mortal mage, however
talented,'' Warlock flatly stated.

``Then it might have been the journey,'' his husband replied.

Wekesa did not contradict him. The reflection of Keter in Arcadia must
be highly perilous, but he knew little of it. Hye had passed through
there once, but getting anything useful out of her was near impossible.
It wasn't that she lied. That would have been of some use, as even
boasts and exaggerations would hold a kernel of truth. No, it was the
opposite: she was concise to the point of uselessness. \emph{I walked
through Arcadia and then cut my way out and then I beat up dead people
all the way to Hell.} That was the whole sum of how she'd described her
experience assaulting Keter through the realm of the fae, to Warlock's
despair. Trying to tease more information out of her inevitably ran into
the wall of Ranger genuinely believing she'd given him all she needed to
and getting irritated if he implied otherwise.

``Perhaps a conversation is in order,'' Wekesa finally said.

``Perhaps,'' his husband gently mocked.

He grimaced. It would be a delicate matter to approach, even more so if
it proved to be a correct guess. Warlock was not unaware that decades of
being able to dictate on what terms he interacted with almost everyone
else had atrophied some his former social finesse. On the other side of
the room, Lady Gharim dropped to the floor screaming and clawing at her
face. Her veins had turned dark, thick with rot. Sloppy spellwork.

``People,'' the Warlock said loudly enough his voice could be heard by
all attendees, ``should be aware of their own limitations.''

His gaze lingered on the dead woman, who might still be alive if she
hadn't tried her hand at an eavesdropping spell. Contamination wards
were not forgiving.

``I believe we will take our leave, High Lord Idriss,'' Tikoloshe
smiled. ``And let that particular reminder linger in our absence.''

The hall was silent, at least for now. Whispers would resume as soon as
they left.

It was not the first death of the night, and it would not be the last.