Chapter 273 - Frustrations

Divir fell early again. It was only the next loop that Mirian and the others realized just how inaccurate her forecast was. With Ceiba Yan’s roots just over the Labyrinth, the Uxalak Gate offered a way to siphon even more energy from the leylines than the Jiandzhi Gate. According to her calculations, six Gates attempting to stabilize the cascade should have delayed armageddon eight, maybe even nine months.

Instead, Divir fell on Nerevain 28. For two more cycles, Mirian attempted to adjust leylines and change Gate linkages, but the results were the same: moonfall came in six months.

That gave them a deadline: six months to build the leyline stabilizer. Six months to save Enteria.

In the meantime, Liuan, Jherica, and Celen worked on developing a new strategy for manipulating Akana Praediar. They were quickly able to purchase Akanan construction contracts. That part was easy, and immediately compounded the problem Mirian had already been dealing with: moving a city’s worth of materials, crews, and artifice deep into the remote desert.

With the Mahatan Gate deep beneath the oasis and both the Palendurio and Alkazaria Gates deep underground, the teleportation they offered only alleviated some of the logistical nightmare. For the two Baracueli cities, materials would have to go up and down the narrow elevators Mirian had developed. The neighborhoods near the Gates weren’t designed for hundreds of spell wagons to move through them each day. For Mahatan, any materials moved to it would need to be both waterproofed and depth-proofed.

The train infrastructure between Palendurio and Alkazaria was already running at capacity, and unlike Akana, the trains were used to move people far more than cargo. Train cars could only be built so fast. And, if material was to cross the East Sound then down south by caravan, it would have to cross rocky canyons and a sea of sand with very little water. Mirian had already tried moving supplies and spell engines down that way and found even with mage escorts, the treacherous route and high incidences of myrvite attacks made the route inefficient.

The Setarab River that ran through Persama was the fastest way to move the most material. The Akanan ships could easily dock at Urubandar’s ports, but then the primary bottleneck became moving the material upriver to Alatishad, then northeast the desert. Gabriel took charge of attempting to deal with the logistics. Ibrahim was withdrawn for a few weeks, then rejoined the effort with his usual reticence.

As they worked, Mirian kept running into problems. She could use her mastery of the glyph-seals to essentially give herself as much money as she needed, but fabricating too much and then using it had caused problems with the banks realizing their system had been compromised. Even if she was careful, Mirian had already created multiple economic crises with her purchases. Buying a few supplies never did much, but buying up mass amounts of magichemicals would send the various guilds into frenzies. She had easily contracted a few construction guilds to help the priests build the furnaces and spell engines needed to forge Equinox, but building the leyline regulator device meant buying up entire cities worth of construction contracts. If she hired too many at once, there was a panic in the market.

The more she tried to scale up her operations, the more problems she ran into. The noble families maneuvered ceaselessly whenever they thought they could. The merchant guilds, supposedly known for keeping their word, started breaking contracts they’d signed. When Mirian asked one guildmaster—in his bedroom, where she telekinetically pinned him to the wall—he’d admitted that he’d thought he could simply tie up the contract in a year-long legal battle while using the money Mirian had deposited with him to fulfill the more lucrative contracts that were popping up because of the inflationary crisis she’d provoked. By the time the courts forced him to pay a penalty, he might have made double that in profit.

One thing was becoming clear: neither the monetary system nor the Baracueli markets were designed to suddenly cease their normal economic activity and go build a city-sized structure off in the desert.

Day by day, Mirian became more and more frustrated with the joint-stock companies and guilds. She could crush their resistance one by one, but for every one she conquered, three more would squirm out from under her hand to go cause trouble somewhere else. Mirian had a very good memory, but even the pages of notes she’d made, crammed with hundreds of names, companies, guilds, and strategies for dealing with them, became insufficient. She simply would forget to do something, or the small changes in the timeline would alter events so that a previous strategy didn’t work.

To make Equinox, she had moved the Luminate Order, switched the Sacristar family’s allegiance, manipulated the Ennecus Guild, and then cut off the heads of enough prominent members of the Palendurio Conspiracy that she’d put them on the back foot.

For the leyline device, she needed to do more.

Much more.

She needed thousands of arcanists from guilds across Baracuel. She needed dozens of construction guilds. She needed as many trains as she could get, and passenger travel to all but cease on the rail lines. She needed thousands of spell wagons, and all the foss needed to fuel them. She needed the resources of the noble families, the security of the army, and the legality of Parliament. And on top of that all, she needed currency to pay for it, because as often as people were willing to say a Prophet was above all laws, they didn’t believe it. She had already run into problems trying to simply command work be done when she was digging up the Palendurio Gate. However, pulling strings from the shadows wasn’t getting her much better results. She was not Gabriel or Liuan, who were both deft at politics. Neither was she Zhuan, whose reputation already provided her with respect, or Xecatl, who had the legitimacy of both title and holy blessing.

She was a student. A nobody. And while she could terrify just about anyone into obedience with a show of spellpower, that motivation only lasted as long as the caution of the target.

Often, Mirian felt fury welling up in her as she dealt with yet another merchant who thought she was more clever than she was, or another trader who thought she hadn’t already considered moving goods through the syndicates.

She suppressed it. She knew they couldn’t help themselves. They were much like water, set to flow along a certain path. When she pushed them out, they settled back down into the worn grooves they were familiar with.

Part of her frustration was stemming from the same place. The Palendurio Conspiracy had not emerged from nothing. It was a collusion of elite Akanans and Baracuelis precisely because it offered, as Zhuan would say, the largest power-benefit. The river the conspirators had cut was like a deep canyon through the heart of Baracuel, and Mirian had run out of excuses for herself.

Preventing the Akanan Embassy from being raided, stopping the coup, purging corruption from the Luminate Order, and killing a few members of the conspiracy wasn’t enough.

She had to deal with it, root and branch.

As the 256th loop started, Mirian set her sights on the Department of Public Security.

***

Shortly after establishing the first round of Gate linkages and her usual research efforts in the Academy, Mirian pried open the secret hatch to Specter’s hideout.

“Hello Nikoline Brunn,” she said, shearing off the soul-disguise the agent had laid on herself and telekinetically disarming her.

Specter reached for one of her hidden weapons, but Miran had already snatched it away and was in the process of melting them all inside an incandescent sphere. The woman’s eyes went wide and she backed into the wall.

“First, there’s proof of identity. This is the Sword of the Fourth Prophet,” she said, using the strength-enhancing dervish form to casually drive the blade through Specter’s shirt and into the wall behind her. She left it there as she continued. “Your code words are nightfall, cerulean, and masquerade. The tripwire word is lion. I am a new Prophet, looping through time, and it’s become necessary to clean up the mess you made. You know the magical eruption that killed a few hundred people in Ferrabridge wasn’t the Divine Monument, as you and your handlers have said, but in fact one of hundreds of anomalous eruptions. You even know about the earlier leyline breach in west Akana. I assure you, it’s the first of many.”

“I’m not—” Nikoline started to say, but then she noticed her body was already changing shape back to her own form.

“You’re good at your job. You reflexively lie to maintain your cover story. The last time we had a talk like this, you refused to help me. For—how long has it been?” Mirian chuckled. “I can’t remember. Hundreds of cycles, at least. Anyways, I’ve been killing you in your sleep in most cycles, just like I promised. You’re an irredeemable creature, Nikoline. A hundred times, I’ve snuffed out our life like that,” she said, and as she snapped her fingers, Specter shivered.

“W-what do you want?” the traitorous agent asked.

“I want your help in unearthing the roots of the conspiracy in the Department of Public Security. I already know the Corrmier brothers are coordinating with Director Castill here and Matteus in Akana. I also know—Nikoline. Stop. Stop looking around. No one can save you. Even if by some miracle you escaped, you can’t win against a time traveler. I simply will try again. I’m only doing it this way because I want you to be easier to manage. I already know how to trick you.”

Nikoline didn’t want to meet her gaze.

“You always did have trouble understanding truths opposed to your desires. Let me show you,” Mirian said, and placed her palm on the agent’s forehead. She shoved runic sequences into the soul-communication. Made sure that Nikoline saw Torrviol’s massacre from her perspective. Made sure she saw the leyline shockwave kill thousands in Palendurio. Made sure she saw moonfall and the annihilation of all life on Enteria. Specter started screaming. She pushed the feelings into her too. The ominous feeling of seeing the mass myrvite migrations. The despair of a husband looking at his dead partner in the ruins of the river district. The feeling of hopelessness as the villages along the Ibaihan fled their homes.

Then Mirian took her hand away and stepped back, a bored expression on her face.

Specter continued shaking and screaming long after she’d stopped her soul-communion. She’d cut the palm of her hand to ribbons trying to free herself from Eclipse as she trembled, but it took her a moment to register the pain. Then she was shrieking again as she looked at her shredded hand.

Mirian rolled her eyes and healed it, then demanifested Eclipse. “I’ll offer you the ultimate I did last time. Will you help, and make up for a fraction of the atrocities you’ve facilitated? Or will you perish like all the people you’ve helped slaughter like animals?”

***

A day later, Mirian and Nikoline walked through Palendurio towards the Baracuel Intelligence Gallery.

Remember, Mirian sent to Nikoline through her aura, I’m watching you.

The agent shivered.

Mirian had already tested her several times. Then she’d blown a hole in a hillside—not even needing to wear Equinox to do it—just to make sure Specter really, really understood that if things went south, Mirian wouldn’t be harmed, just annoyed. She was pleased to see that she was much more compliant. It was time to see if that would last.

Nikoline’s posture changed as they moved up the marble steps to the Gallery. What lingering fear Mirian had seen vanished, replaced by a casual confidence. They entered, and three guards stood next to a pair of attendants. Nikoline handed them her glyphkey.

Mirian expected an explanation from Nikoline, but she gave none. Just stood, waiting while the glyphkey was fed into a spell engine.

The attendant looked at the spell engine, then at Mirian. “She has an illusion on.”

“Correct. Class three informant protection protocol.”

Mirian would have preferred not to use an illusion, but even this early in the cycle, people might start to recognize her, and she wanted to be anonymous for at least a few days while she investigated. That, and the glowing eyes would have been difficult to explain away. The Deeps, unlike Torrviol Academy, also checked for soul-disguises, which ruled them out. But it seemed they had protocols for allowing illusionary disguises in. That was interesting.

The second desk attendant had fished out a thick binder full of pages. He kept the pages out of sight. “Phrase?”

“Eloquent fire blue.”

“Proceed to room three.”

It was that easy.

Mirian considered the protocol as they walked through a door that had just opened and into a hall. The Gallery still had a few exhibits of old paintings and statues paying tribute to Baracuel’s history. Mostly ones involving the Unification War. The rooms had all been renovated to contain offices, only accessible once one had proceeded past the security area. When they were far enough away, she said, “I assume if you get the phrase wrong, they tell you to proceed to a different, more secure room?”

“Yes,” Nikoline said curtly.

Room three was at the end of the hall. They waited only a few minutes until a young man greeted them. He entered the room with a carrying case and a smile. “Specter. How’s the weather?”

“We can talk in front of her about all the topics. This is Nairim. She’s familiar with Operation Zenith.”

“Oh. Then welcome! Name’s Jaern. Nikoline—why are you back? The operation—”

“My cover got blown. Just mine. The cells are fine. They don’t actually need me. But it means the operation has a leak. I want it found and plugged.”

“A leak? Who?”

“If I knew that, would I be back here? It’s not on my end.”

Jaern leaned back. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Damn. Damn!”

“We’ll need to survey the operation. Retest each group, including the ones that are off the books.”

“That won’t be easy. Or quick. Very little of this is on paper. Director Castill will want to know.”

“Yes. Set up a meeting with him. In the meantime, I want to check the operations archive. There’s a pattern I want to look for that might reveal itself in the retrospectives.”

“Could it be our, uh, counterparts?” Jaern said, dropping his voice. The Akanans, he meant.

“No. It’s here. Let’s finish up. I’m impatient.”

“Sure, sure. Lift up your foot,” Jaern said, and pulled out one of the runic boxes from his carrying case. He unlocked it with a little bit of soul energy and took out the wand. Then he drew from his own soul energy to cast. Based on the runes Mirian could see, he was double-checking for soul bindings, but also looking for that identification-rune Specter had used on her cells, the one that stopped the trap in the spy’s headquarters from triggering. Hers was on the bottom of her left foot.

Jaern hesitated as he looked at Mirian, and a shiver went through him.

“Is there a problem?” Specter asked.

“No rune on her?”

“If the mark’s been compromised, I don’t want her clearly being identified. No mark.”

“Sure, sure. Uh… I’m getting a strange, uh… sense. Her soul… has she been checked out by a priest? There’s no binding or anything, just, uh…” Jaern was clearly an amateur at soul magic, but even as poor a caster as he was, he couldn’t help but sense the power of Mirian’s soul. She could only do so much to contain it.

“Yes, I’ve seen a priest about it. He said not to worry,” Mirian said.

Jaern wasn’t satisfied by that, but he was eager to move on. He put the wand back in its case and stood. “I’ll go see the Director’s secretary. You’ll need to go get a new glyphkey, though. The usual lock rotations and all that.” He left through the door he’d come in from, and they followed him.

Well done, Mirian told Specter though soul-communication. It was impressive how easily lies slipped out of Specter’s mouth. At least now they were for her benefit.

Now inside the Gallery, Mirian could see bureaucrats, administrators, and agents moving through the halls, working in offices, and sipping tea over by the stained-glass windows. There was so much mundane paperwork. If she didn’t know better, she would have compared it to any of the large merchant companies. It all looked so normal.

But there were all sorts of terrible secrets waiting to be discovered.

The archive first, Mirian thought as they proceeded down a marble staircase into the more secure basement levels. There, she knew the office doors would be closed. She had already felt out some of the wards guarding the secure meeting rooms. Yes, there were all sorts of secrets buried here.

The archives first, though. That was where they’d have information on Project Flayer. The one Westerun had headed.

The one about her.