14.8
Havel had not expected to be coming to the Capital of the Realm. He’d honestly not expected to be leaving the Pantheon building itself for most of his assignment. But there was something that had the entire place in an uproar which had just required he shadow them all the way here.
Something that Havel still didn't properly know about!
He’d been trying to get a chance to slip into one of the Zodiac Council’s meetings but such affairs were impenetrably observed.
In those chambers there was no way to slip in before a presence of awareness filled the room like beer in a cup! Unlike literal rooms full of silver and gold, the place where magical secrets that allowed mortal men (not wizards, diviners or sorcerers but simple artisans!) to create diminutive vaults, or any of the scheming of the Bulchavan enterprise to do what Havel was pretty sure was the assasination of some of the very same council?
All of that was a difficult but possible place to infiltrate with Havel’s knack, but the meeting of the esteemed and highest ranking of the Pantheon? That was where he suspected the full gaze of the gods themselves fell upon the world and left not even a sliver of unobserved room to remain.
So he’d sent a message informing Adelyne of where he was going and got enough pilfered silver from the Pantheon to see the rest of the guild’s team in Old Cantor with enough along side the pay they had found in various professions to act on Adelyne’s orders.
None of them were as good as Havel at the guild mistress’ spell, but all of them were past their apprenticeships.
He’d been about ready to stay back until he found out that even Peter Bulchava was going to make the trip! For all the time Havel had watched the man, the limber beyond his years old man seemed loath to leave his place, like some wrinkly liverspotted spider!
But that sallow walking corpse of a man had been summoned to the council of the zodiac chambers to discuss something, and afterwards that fiery obsession of his eyes was alight and unlike every other time he did not speak a word in private or otherwise on to precisely what the secret was!
Whatever this secret was, it was dire enough to draw a tick like Peter Vulchava out of the juicy blood soaked ass that was the Pantheon’s seemingly endless wealth. So Havel had slipped in among the entourage using the dress of an acolyte servant-child and joined with the three council members on their way north to the Valley of Man.
It had been somewhat relaxing all told, beyond having to wince, scurry and go to tasks as he was expected in ways that really strained his grasp of the Guild Mistress’ spell Havel had not suffered.
One more pair of hands to work and another albeit small mouth to feed on the road didn't really go noticed among the several hundred that the Pantheon alone was sending.
They didn't even have to sleep in a camp most nights at all! Instead taking roads to stay at the temple grounds of one village or another. Even when considered a lowly orphan servant of the highest of diviners Havel would often get a bunk to sleep with the other dozen or so youths.
He’d had a few close calls when asked by his ‘fellow servants’ about his life but a few voiceless breathy noises and some pantomime had convinced the other children that he couldn't speak. Havel would have been happier to go without the four or five girlish names that had settled onto his disguise after that but no one quite agreeing on just who he was helped him avoid over straining his use of the Guildmistress’ trick.
It also helped just how many orphans had been working for the Pantheon back in Old Cantor.
Now here they were, the highest authority of the Pantheon and its temples riding down the streets of the Capital of Cantor Reborn. The temple guards joined by an equal number of Bulchavan Enterprise mercenaries, Havel was sure it was all very fancy and impressive and likely there was incense and chants and miracles for the crowds and important personages witnessing it.
Havel in the guise of a mute acolyte orphan was not included in any of that. He was sent ahead with the rest of the ‘staff’ to make the accommodations ready for the three members of the Zodiac Council.
Which was the perfect time to slip free of the deception, shed the coverings of a child acolyte and begin making his way through the halls of the Palace grounds of Cantor Reborn.
It was not the way of the guild that he would be informed in a missive from Adelyne on just how things had progressed here, but last he had heard there was going to be some loyal noble’s son trained up in the guild’s arts as best as could be managed.
He listened to the servants, he shadowed them, stood where no eyes would land and after getting a feel for the way that other’s eyes moved over the garments of their fellows slipped into the laundry and procured an apprentice’s costume, he briefly considered trying for the one meant for young boys, but without a mask Havel’s face was just that bit too ‘feminine’.
Properly disguised he settled into the motion and gait that made him disappear. It varied with observers, for the adults among the staff he had to focus hard on how he absolutely ‘needed’ to be where his mistress required him. Make sure that extra bit of rush was in his steps but not so much that he needed a reprimand to ‘remember his lessons’ or worse actually be taken into an out of the way corner for a proper ‘punishment’.
He found that it helped to also have a carefully folded basket of laundry to hurry with, without of course looking like he was hurrying. Honestly the technique was a very solid one, not dissimilar to the training that Adelyne and the other guild members had settled on for their own apprentices.
If you moved too quickly it drew the eye, measuring his steps helped with the other most common observer he needed to be beneath notice of.
Nobility and those that thought themselves such.
Stolen story; please report.
For those the palace was riddled with an excellent series of secondary passages, slender doorways and other servant’s halls to mostly avoid disturbing the sight of the guests that occupied the many guest wings of the palace grounds.
Havel listened and felt the eyes, ears and in one peculiar place the very familiar noses of the guests of the High King of Cantor Reborn.
A very familiar set of noses indeed.
He set down his bundle of laundry in the servant’s quarters and then took a step out into the room that contained three sets of very familiar noses.
Goodness! The twins had sprung up like weeds! Weren’t they only hatched just two years ago?!
It took the trio no time to notice Havel, but it was Gem who sniffed hard and then all three eyes snapped to him. They shared their mothers unfathomable black eyes, if it was not for the Guild Mistress’ gift he’d have no idea where they were looking.
As it stood he felt almost like he’d been skinned with the ways all three sets of eyes parceled him out and checked him over.
He walked up to them with the gentle smoothness of the servants of the palace. On reflection he was going to have to share what he’d seen here, it was honestly slightly better then what they were teaching the apprentices.
“Lady Gem, greetings again, Havel Nightmanson, from the Guild of Orphans, Infirm, Cripples and other Assorted Beggars.”
He kept his face down shielding him from her gaze as he spoke, without a mask or the obscurement of the Guild Mistress’ trick it made him feel naked, his cheeks already flushing with the sensation, eyes twisting into honest consternation, lips now unable to take on any shape but his own shame of showing them.
“Ah, Havel! Did you follow us from Rochford? We didn't smell you in the caravan with us.”
The two looming twins were very imposing specimens, all hard angles, lean muscle and hard pointed scales, their horns and manes making them look far more like woman shaped versions of their mother then Gem ever had.
All three of them were garbed in the style and cut of dress that Gem had always worn when Havel saw her in Kaeketeh.
He shook his head, using the motion to get a better glance around the room.
“No Lady Gem, I came here from the Pantheon, in the party of the Council of the Zodiac, something has stirred up the highest of the temples and the diviners. They saw reason to come here directly. Precisely why I could not know.”
He licked his lips, unable to stop his face from showing his trepidation, he knew what Adelyne said, he’d seen it with his own eyes, but speaking to Gem still felt like a child, she had a sense to her despite the years that matched Heidi more than the woman of nearly twenty years she was.
Apparently it was not only the waifs that had something of a ‘curse’ from the Wyrm.
He could feel those eyes, Jewel now was intently looking at him, but each of those two other ‘spawn’ were taking turns sweeping their gaze over him, then the room. Never leaving any of the entrances to the room unwatched.
Finally the first daughter of the Countess of Viznove spoke.
Gem tilted her head to the side then sighed.
“It is a matter that w- that our ‘Mother’ and Priest Leo uncovered on the nature of the heavens. A secret that needs to be kept in confidence for the moment.”
Havel mulled on that, something uncovered about the nature of the heavens? He was pretty sure if Adelyne was here she’d order him to find out anyway, but he’d been instructed before that Gem’s word was to be taken as the same as the Countess herself.
And Adelyne served the Countess.
He rose from his kneel and met the Countess’ eldest daughter bare-faced, all the worry and determination plain to see, an assurance of the truth written in his squirming features.
“I understand, I’ll drop my investigations into the matter, but that is not the only reason I have followed the Pantheon’s envoy here. Have you read my report on Pantheon's Partner regarding True Wyrm Eggs?”
Gem nodded, Havel felt the slight shift in gaze that meant a flex in the necks of the two towering figures, their heads and shoulders shifting but held off from actually overtly nodding with their smaller yet elder sister.
“The head of that group is one Peter Bulchava. He’s a dishonest and dangerous peddler of a man, as I already wrote he is plotting ill towards some members of the Pantheon’s highest Council for how they have judged their partnership continues. But at least as far as I’ve discerned, not even he knows which ones are against him yet.”
Gem frowned and nodded again, again the looming twins almost moved. Now that he was looking for it Havel could see the shifts out of the corner of his eye while he faced the Countess’ daughter.
“That man loves his place in Old Cantor, but whatever you and your mother have uncovered drew the old spider out of the middle of his web. Either that or he’s decided that these three members in the council are the ones deserving of his ire.”
Finally the first ‘born’ of the Countess of Viznove spoke.
“You expect he might seek to assassinate them while they were under the protection of the High King of the Realm?”
Havel shrugged.
“I don’t know, It’s your mother and the Guildmistress’ place to put these things together, but unless that secret you are keeping is of a substantial interest to a decrepit peddler of a man obsessed with wyrm eggs I’d worry about it.”
The girl who despite her age and serpentine features almost seemed more youthful than even Havel’s frame and face taunted him with in his reflection nodded grimly.
“I see, thank you for your report Havel Nightmanson, be about your guild business now and since you did not come here with our party, you should reach out to your counterpart, Marcel Petrason of Ostara.”
Havel took the dismissal for what it was, he’d reported to his ‘superior’ Adelyne might chew him out later for not going further, but he missed two years with his girls for the Cantor mission. If she wanted him to go further here she could have come with the Countess herself.
He slipped out of the room via the servant’s entrance, picked up his laundry basket, lifted it up to obscure his face from passerby, then continued making his way through the guest wing.
Seeking out word that might lead to this Noble’s Son Adelyne had convinced to work with orphans and beggars.