Chapter XII: Questionable

I stumbled over to Ironseed’s personal hut, trying to shake off the sleep deprivation before I had to start speaking coherently. Last night had been hell; a constant sweat-stained miasma of sleeplessness and heart pounding nightmares, soaked in blood and muck and scored by the frantic sounds of screeching violins. My brain was foggy, foggier than usual, which was really saying something considering the level of brain fog I’m usually dealing with. 

Ironseed and her assistants, half a dozen other women who had apparently spent years traveling with her, all lived in the same large structure. Even taking into account how many people were staying in it, the building was huge compared to where Anna and Unity and I were staying. Not that I was envious or anything.

I knocked four times on the stout red wood door, only to find that it wasn’t even latched, and promptly opened at my touch. “Uh, I guess I can come in?” I said. I didn’t hear a response, and it seemed that Ironseed was already talking to someone, so I walked through and shut the door behind me. 

The inside of Ironseed’s office was a miracle of doing a lot with very little. It had everything you would expect from the office of a well-traveled archaeologist/anthropologist. There was a bookshelf including dozens of tomes on language and history, the skulls of half a dozen strange animals set on a shelf, a shockingly neat desk made out of some kind of hardwood, a portrait of a finely-dressed woman I didn’t recognize, and a few other objects I didn’t recognize, a multicolored woven scarf or something and what might have been a musical instrument carved out of bone. And yet, all of it was designed to be easily transported, and even as I took it all in I could start to feel how they had done it. The skulls, though festooned with horns and exotic teeth arrangements, were all from creatures about the size of a cat. The bookshelf was probably the largest object in the room, and even it was only tall enough to reach my upper stomach. Even the desk was made of thin pieces of wood, and cleverly hinged and slotted so that it could be folded into a much more compact form. Everything about Ironseed’s life was designed such that she could always pack it up and bring it to the next destination when the time came. I wasn’t sure if I should have been impressed or worried for her mental health. 

Ironseed was there, in a state of partial disarray, her hair a mess and her shirt only mostly buttoned up, though it was expertly cleaned and pressed. Talking to her, of all people, was Miss Rook, dressed about as well in a heavy woolen shirt that had clearly had the sleeves cut off and replaced with a heavy pair of elbow-length gloves. Those bizarre shoulder scars, the series of perfectly parallel lines, were totally exposed. 

“You really think that the condenser could be repaired so quickly?” said Rook in her false Bluerose accent. “You’d need at least an Ellengrave socket girdle, if not a Terlenmeyer, trust me.”

“Oh, come on, you are vastly overthinking this. An Ellengrave isn’t even the best tool for the job, though I guess it would do in a pinch.” Ironseed paused for a second. “The easiest solution would probably be to reuse any left over bracework you have from whatever piston complex you’re using.”

Rook sneered with annoyance. “That’s what Sir Margaret suggested. I’m not using any bracework. That’s when she told me to go to you about it.”

“Not using any bracework?” Ironseed said, her eyes going wide while she smirked slightly. “What are you working on, you brute?”

“None of your business,” said Rook. 

Ironseed shrugged. “Alright. I suppose you could use an orthogonal lemniscate bracket if you needed to. If nothing else, the versatility means that… Oh, Emma, I didn’t see you coming in!”

I froze, grinning like she’d pulled a camera on me. “Uh, yeah, hello. Didn’t realize Rook was… here.”

Rook started moving almost the moment that Ironseed was done speaking, shouldering her way past me and towards the door. “I was just making my way out, actually.”

“You don’t need to go, Rook,” said Ironseed. “I am capable of holding conversation with two people at once.”

Rook paused, her hand on the door frame. “Trust me, we were done speaking. Thank you for your help, Ironseed.” And then she left.

The sound of the door shutting echoed in the air, and Ironseed and I both gave it the necessary time to leave the building before we resumed conversation. “Well, that was that,” said Ironseed. 

“Yeah, Rook has been weird for the last few days. I tried asking her some questions about herself, and I guess she takes her privacy seriously, so… Anyway, I also had something I wanted to ask you about, if you’re free?”

Ironseed froze, brow furrowed and her lips pressed together. “Delilah?”

“Yes, d— Doctor Ironseed?” responded someone in an adjoining room of the house.

“Am I free today?” Dr. Ironseed asked.

“You are, Meredith.”

Ironseed unfroze, moving to sit down behind her desk and looking up at me with a smile. “What might I help you with?”

I slipped my hand into my pocket, toying with the object I’d found on the chargerthing, considering if this might be a bad idea. Even if it was, this was my only lead. I showed it to Ironseed. “What is this?”

Ironseed looked at it with intense curiosity. “Come closer, I need to examine it.”

I handed her the object, which she proceeded to turn over and over in her hand, looking very closely at its surface. “It’s… nacreous in material…”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Mother-of-pearl, my grandmother had a necklace made out of the stuff. It’s made from seashells, right? Where would they get seashells up here?”

“Trade,” Ironseed said with a shrug. “There’s a community of coastal Durkahns, living on the thin strip of land between the Urcos Plateau and the Northern Imbric Ocean. It was probably sourced from there.”

Ironseed turned it around to see the edge, carefully rubbing her thumb against it without cutting herself. “Of course, the carving work is what I would describe as distinctly Urcosan. The raw material was valued for its beauty and traded overland, but it was made into this on a relatively local level.”

I folded my arms. “That’s nice, but what is it?”

Ironseed looked up at me like she’d forgotten I was there. “Where did you find this?”

My heart rate spiked. “I, I would really, uh, rather not say. I found it without an owner or any indication what it was, and I think it’s important that I find any clues about whose it might be.”

Ironseed looked at me curiously, nodding slowly. “Well, that’s going to be easy, I think. It comes in pairs. I’ve never seen one of them before, but I believe this is an item known as a glinggatluk.”

I repeated the name under my breath a few times, just to make sure that I didn’t mispronounce it later and sound like an asshole. “So what is it, is it a religious thing?”

“Errrrrrrr, somewhat?” said Ironseed. “Durkahns are a pious people, even compared to us, and the distinction between religious items and those that are merely cultural can be thin at best.”

“So what is it for, then?”

“I’m not entirely clear, my information on this subject being rather limited, of course. I believe it was originally a tool, but over time grew to become a status symbol of some kind, thus the construction and material.” Ironseed handed me back the glinggatluk, which I put right back in my pocket. “Maybe your friend Sarnai might know more?”

“Friend? We aren’t really friends, more acquaintances, really…” I said with an uncomfortable grimace. 

“Could have fooled me,” said Ironseed. 

“I mean, okay, she’s nice to me and I helped her with the scouting thing, but that was more of an empathy thing than anything else,” I stammered. “We aren’t friends friends or anything.”

“Well, she seems willing to speak to you, and I’m sure she knows more about her culture than I do. Is that all?”

I nodded. “Thanks for the help.”

“Not a problem. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m still somewhat busy with other things, so I don’t want to waste time.”

I turned around and started to leave, trying to remember where Sarnai might be easily found.  Before I could fully leave, Ironseed cleared her throat loudly, and I stopped. 

“If you are going to be asking questions, could you do me a favor? I keep seeing reference in some of my texts to something called ‘the Council of One’. Could you, perhaps, ask her for any information she might have on that topic?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. 

…

It turns out that the hardest part of getting Sarnai to talk about the Durkahn culture was finding her in the first place. The treaty grounds were busy that day, especially with the constant stream of workers and craftswomen moving between the grounds and Zrimash, bringing supplies and expertise for the ongoing repairs of the main mess hall. I asked a few of the soldiers hanging around where I might find Dinara Murahnok, and presumably Sarnai with her. Most of them didn’t talk to me, and of the ones who did, most of them didn’t have an answer. Not having gotten any sleep the night before didn’t help, as I repeatedly lost focus in the middle of my search, and often ended up speaking semi-incoherently when I was able to focus. Fortunately, Grenadier Noble was on duty that day, and took pity on me, pointing me to the stables where Dinara was taking care of her personal steed.

The stables didn’t exactly look like what you’d expect from an Earth stable, mostly because of the wide variety of creatures that Durkahns had the ingenuity and recklessness to tame and ride. There were straw-lined stalls for the falts, large and furry creatures like giant capybaras, except with enormous horns like a bull. There was a pair of bessel pits, five feet deep and forty feet across, full of water and mud for the giant arthropods to crawl around in. The centerpiece of the entire thing was a single huge enclosure, ringed by an enormous fence made from posts the size of trees, which was where Dinara and her guards had gathered.

Dinara stood out from the crowd mostly by virtue of being the only one with a huge tankard in her hand. When I arrived, she was pacing back and forth around the enclosure, rambling out some long story and not seeming to care that her guard escorts were standing stock-still and silent as a stone. It occurred to me that I had probably picked a bad time to talk to Sarnai, given that she was on the job and all. But, of course, I had no idea where she went when she wasn’t on the job, and there was no harm in trying anyway. 

I jogged up to the knot of Durkahns, weaving around a bale of hay as I waved at Sarnai. “Hey, Sarnai! How’s it going?”

Sarnai was at the outer edge of the group, eyes scanning for intruders, a musket hanging from a strap around her neck. “There is no task more fulfilling than ensuring the safety of the Chanter’s most holy person,” Sarnai intoned with as much dry sarcasm as she could muster.

“Oh. Well, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about. Think we could go somewhere else and discuss it?” If only I hadn’t been completely dead tired, I might have realized how ridiculous of a request that was. 

Sarnai sighed. “Emma, I’m not about to abandon my post because you wanted to have a chat.”

“Okay, but maybe you could be convinced to reposition for a better, uh, line of sight. Into a place further away from Dinara and the others, maybe?” I gave Sarnai my biggest and cheesiest wink, an action guaranteed to improve people’s chances of listening to you.

Sarnai looked over her shoulder at Dinara, taking a long swig from that same tankard she always seemed to have on her. “Alright, what—”

A gunshot rang out through the treaty grounds, coming from somewhere behind me. Sarnai’s eyes shot open, her ears flicking forward like a deer. My eyes met hers, only for a second, and I tried to nonverbally indicate that I had no idea what was going on. 

“Chanter Murahnok, permission to investigate?”

Dinara grinned. “Of course.”

Sarnai nodded at me, unconsciously taking hold of the stock of her musket. “Here we go again,” I muttered.

We both set off at a jogging pace, or at least we did until I realized that Sarnai had about two feet of height on me, and I was going to have to speed up if I wanted to keep pace. We followed the rough direction of the gunshot, and thankfully there were no others for us to follow. Adrenaline coursed through me, more than enough to keep me going, and I prepared for another fight. I had my revolver and my saber, and Sarnai had her musket and a sword of her own, a basket-hilted design with a straight blade. 

Sarnai was breathing heavy when we reached the source of the commotion, but I was less exhausted than I was racing with fear and tension that I was going to have to risk death again. If only I’d known. 

There were two groups, right at the edge of the treaty ground, each a group of soldiers clustered nervously around a single one of their own. Up against a building at the edge of the grounds was a group of about twenty Durkahns, with one of them on the ground and bleeding heavily. The other was about a dozen Bluerose soldiers in full uniform, with one of their member looking as pale as a ghost. Several of them on either side were yelling, hurling insults and small stones, and a couple were nervously fingering the triggers of their guns. Both of the Halflances, Sarah still injured, arrived about the same time we did, with Doctor Charcharias in tow. 

“What’s happened here?” shouted Halflance, loudly enough to cut through most of the arguing.

“One of your soldiers shot our own!” shouted one of the Durkahn, gesturing towards the bleeding woman. The entire Durkahni group concurred with an uproar.

All at once, people started taking sides. Sarnai rushed over to join the Durkahns, followed by Doctor Charcharias, who dropped onto her knees next to the injured woman and started applying pressure. The Halflances, meanwhile, moved to stand at the head of the Bluerose platoon, as if planning to block the Durkahns’ musket balls with their bodies. 

“I didn’t mean to!” shrieked the nervous woman at the center of the Bluerose group. “I was nervous, and I saw something moving, and, and…”

Lady Halflance shot her a withering glare, and she collapsed into whimpering. 

I had to do something, because I’d seen enough armed standoffs to know that this wasn’t going to go well. I suppressed a flinch as the bad memories tried to resurface, and I slowly started to step in between the two groups.

“I think it’s important that we figure out exactly what happened, but now is not the time for investigating, okay?” I held out one arm to either group, showing that I wasn’t carrying anything. “First I think we need to drop our weapons, calm down, and deal with the injured woman.”

“That’s not going to happen, Emma,” said Sarnai. “They started this, they lower their rifles first.”

I glanced over at Lady Halflance, who didn’t even seem to notice me. I could almost hear a few of the Bluerose soldiers tightening their grips on their own firearms. “Please. Nobody else needs to get hurt,” I said, as quietly as I could.

A lot of things happened at once. Halflance made a wide gesture of her hand, as if to indicate an order, but she never got the chance to speak a word. At the same time, the injured woman screamed in agony, a sharp and harsh noise. An instant after that, the thunderous noise of a gunshot tore through the air as a puff of smoke emerged from the barrel of a rifle, held in the hand of a Bluerose soldier.

Total silence fell. Sir Margaret moved in a flash, snatching the just-fired rifle from the hand of its wielder and tossing the weapon to the ground. The girl couldn’t have been much older than I was, and she didn’t resist, looking like she was about to throw up. Halflance’s expression dropped, her eyes widening into a thousand-yard stare. A few of her soldiers couldn’t bear to look, averting their eyes. I glanced behind me, at the Durkahns. The only injury was the woman still under Dr. Charcharias’s care, though she had stopped to look around with horror. Nobody was injured. I let out a breath. 

Except, I couldn’t. My lungs refused to follow their command. I tried to inhale, and got only an awful sucking, gurgling sound. It was only then that the pain hit, a screaming pain that bloomed in my stomach like a fire roaring to life. I tried taking a step and I couldn’t. My hands, half-numb and sluggish, clutched at my torso. The fabric of my shirt had a hole in it, and it was soaking wet, drenched in something warm and sticky. I looked down. Warm and sticky and red. I was starting to feel faint, the pain overwhelming all other sensations. As tears formed in my eyes, I collapsed onto my hands and knees. 

Nobody was injured except for me.

SaffronDragon

Well then. There goes Emma, I suppose. If you want to see what happens next without having to wait two weeks... why not click the link below, and check out my patreon? For only three dollars a month, you can see the next three chapters right now, and there are more benefits at higher tiers, including exclusive voting access and two Selene prequel short stories. Otherwise, see you in two weeks for Chapter XIII: Spilled Blood, Part 2