Nero Walker, Book 4 Ch.73 (304)

Lately City Lord Cosgrave had been wondering whether or not the initial headache Lord Walker had caused her months ago had ever truly gone away. While not trying to be too melodramatic, she felt as though she’d been suffering from a daily migrane since he’d arrived.

Acknowledging the thought while not dwelling on it, she allowed herself to lean a little more deeply into her chair’s backrest, trading the appearance of proper posture for some sorely needed comfort. It was a concession she allowed herself in appreciation of how much restraint it took to not rub temples in front of her subordinates.

Keeping her voice as calm as possible, she asked, “And how many of these have been made? Wait, no, don’t answer that. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is why is it that I am just hearing about this now?”

On the other side of her desk, the young woman who’d brought this most recent development to her was clearly feeling the pressure. It was understandable considering how many people were crammed into the little office, forced by circumstance to wait their turn.

The city lord was truly regretting having chosen this particular office for this meeting.

The young woman, sounding more in control than she looked, wiped the sweat from her brow while replying, “You have, my lord. Or, we believe you have. What I mean to say is that while we haven’t found any definitive evidence, our conjecture is that this matter is related to the former evaluators who’ve chosen to join House Walker. As you recall, they have been seen all over the city… doing something. We now have reason to believe that that ‘something’ is this.”

Letting go of her glare, she turned her attention away from the young woman, taking another look at the small book sitting in front of her. Leaning forward in her chair, she ran her hand over the cover, noting its impressive manufacturing and subtle but eye-catching appearance. The leatherbound exterior was dark teal, with a pressed image of a man walking toward a mountain on a stone path. The pressing itself was all one color, gray, and considering how simple the image was, she was surprised to find how striking the overall effect looked. Barely larger than her hand, something about it gave the book ‘weight’. Even without a title, or any other adornments, she could understand why people might want to read it.

While the city lord took a moment to pick up the book, idly flipping through the pages as if she couldn’t believe a book like this existed, the young woman continued her report.

“The book itself is only around 150 pages. And considering how small the book itself is, there isn’t all that much content. We’ve found multiple versions, each one similar, but distinctive. The differences being in the cover and binding, while the text itself always remains the same,” she added.

City Lord Cosgrave, still keeping her voice empty of emotion, asked, “And there is no record of this book in the archives? None at all?”

After sharing a brief look of shared misery among the 6 people who were part of her investigatory team, she replied, “No, my lord. Whoever wrote it hasn’t taken credit. Even more interesting is the fact that someone went out of their way to register the existence of the text, without providing the text itself.”

Subtly frowning in confusion, City Lord Cosgrave ordered, “Explain.”

“Someone, likely someone working in the archives themselves, secretly registered the book’s existence. That is to say, in the rundown of all the texts which have been submitted, this book is included. However, there is no corresponding text entry in the archives. The title, ‘The Walker’s Path’ is listed, along with a short description. But, there is no way to read the text through the Thought Hub. There is currently a debate over whether or not this was intentional oversight by the author, in which case the archives would be legally obligated to upload it themselves. On the other hand, if the author intended to limit the book’s availability solely to a physical format, then the archives would be exceeding their authority if they did so,” she explained tersely.

Stifling a snort, City Lord Cosgrave couldn’t help but imagine those self-important idiots wasting hours arguing their overly-artistic personal interpretations of the author’s implied philosophical reasoning behind his actions.

“There must be some record of who wrote it. I understand the author chose not to include his or her name, but someone somewhere must have seen or met them. The Thought Hub wouldn’t have missed something like this,” City Lord Cosgrave argued.

Shaking her head, the young woman replied, “You’d think so, my lord, but no. Through delving into the books themselves, we’ve tracked down several bookbinders who’ve created the books, but none of them have led to the original author. Even after pouring over the interactive records at the Thought Hub itself, we’ve found nothing. It’s as if the book just manifested itself out of the ether.”

While pointing at the book, City Lord Cosgrave’s calm voice began to hint at the anger she’d been suppressing. “Just based on the coloring, it’s obvious that someone from House Walker must know something. That’s not even taking into account the title!” she said while slowly raising her voice until she was shouting.

Not only the people in front of the desk who were currently reporting, but everyone in the room winced at the venom in her tone.

Replying quickly, the young woman said, “Yes, my lord. That’s why we can only assume that the former evaluators are the ones spreading the text. Everyone else has been thoroughly checked. We’ve even forcefully reassigned a few mages to perform some discreet scrying on House Walker’s members by listing the matter as an issue of city security.”

Unable to stop herself from rolling her eyes, City Lord Cosgrave replied, “Even if that were true, that doesn’t explain the rate you’re claiming this is spreading.”

Standing up from her chair, she leaned over the table while decisively pointing down at the book as if passing judgment. Her glare locked the poor young woman in place as she hissed, “This clever but biased interpretation of Lord Walker’s rise, and these… ‘laws of adventure’ are being referenced across the city as if this book was a literary work of historical significance and renown. Surely the articles prohibiting the spread of targeted propaganda apply here. Why hasn’t the archive issued a formal ban on this outrage!”

From the side of the room, a man stepped forward. It was clear to everyone that he didn’t want to, but felt compelled to interject.

“Excuse me, my lord. But, I may be able to answer that. The archives cannot issue a ban on any book listed as supportive document of doctrine by a registered guild or organization. Before doing so, the guild or organization itself would have to be declared a disruptive element and disbanded,” he said loudly, if not firmly.

City Lord Cosgrave stood up from her position of leaning over the desk. Her fury temporarily replaced by confusion, she replied, “Who would dare to add a book like this to their formal registration?”

Coughing uncomfortably into his hand, the man replied, “That would be the Adventurer’s guild, my lord. They registered their application with both the capital and the city approximately two hours ago. This book was included among their documents of doctrine. In fact, it was listed first among them. As they are the first original guild ever to be founded by citizens of this city, the Tower of Law had to look up the applicable precedents. Considering the guild's operating mandate looks to be similar in scope to the Hunter’s guild, but with a more targeted focus on personal development, the Center itself has chosen to endorse their application. As of yet, the Tower of Law hasn’t found a reason to deny them entry into the city’s registry.”

Stunned, City Lord Cosgrave whispered, “Someone’s trying to found an original guild? Here? How? And how in all the hells below have they managed to get the Center involved already?”

The man replied, “From what I understand, the entire advisory board of Gate 11’s Center intends to join the guild as some of its founding members. They, along with several classes worth of aspiring law professionals, helped draft the application themselves.”

Thinking quickly, City Lord Cosgrave struggled to mentally keep up with all the information she was being bombarded with. Voicing her thoughts as soon as she had them, she said, “But a noble house can’t have a guild. They’re an organization themselves. That would be against the founding principles of Oglivarch, the separation of powers…”

The man replied quickly, cutting her off. “That would only apply if House Walker had anything to do with this. But, not a single member of House Walker is involved in their application. While they claim to venerate the principles of adventure put forth by Lord Walker, they have made their position very clear in regards to them not having any ties to his house itself. Technically, this would fall into a gray area of the law. Which is why the matter of the book’s authorship is so important. If it had been written by someone from House Walker, an argument could be made that would prohibit the guild’s founding. However, if the book is simply a collection of his beliefs, or more likely an interpretation of events by a private party, then by law the council would find it difficult to legally stop them from being ratified as a legitimate guild. If you choose to stand in the way of their right to assemble, you’d open yourself up to legal censure if they were to choose to appeal. They’re likely even planning on it, as I mentioned they’d already sent off a copy of their application to the capital.”

Not knowing what to say, City Lord Cosgrave’s eyes dropped back to her table, taking another look at the book. Its entire foreword was an indictment of her and the local nobility. It painted Lord Walker as a champion of the people who defied the odds in his rise to become a unique. Overcoming scheming nobles, spies, military oppression, and even assassination attempts, he was portrayed as a figure of legend. If the book had been written posthumously, it could very likely have become a story told to children to inspire them on their paths. Like the ‘Saga of George’ and others of similarly important historical significance. But, now, with the events described being so recent, she couldn’t begin to guess at what kind of chaos it would cause.

In a whisper, she muttered to herself, “A new guild. An entire guild of self-styled adventurers. Gods in the heavens above save us all…”

—--

The debrief itself was going exactly how he thought it would… which would be slowly.

Cathleen had taken the lead as the Wacko’s representative, with Knight Angelton occasionally offering a word or two in support of what she was saying. Nero himself kept his mouth shut, focusing entirely on his meal. Well, not entirely.

Now that he was back in communication range of the Thought Hub, Nero was taking advantage of the opportunity to train his mind to keep an active connection through his link without distracting him. While he could have spent his time answering pings and addressing all the important crap that had been waiting on him, he instead was practicing reading.

While he poured himself a fresh glass of juice, privately wondering if they had coffee, part of his mind was browsing the archive.

He’d long since known about the fact that many books were ‘digitized’ and available for the common citizenry, but he hadn’t explored the system all that deeply. He remembered having heard it mentioned when he’d visited the Center’s library, and he’d occasionally looked up a text or two when he’d had time. But, now, he was taking a moment to try and actually understand how everything was set up.

Conveniently, it wasn’t all that difficult to find the answers he was seeking. There was even a book available called, ‘Explaining the archives - A practical guide to their establishment and use’.

Having wanted to avoid the history of how they were founded, or any other type of overly dramatic waste of his time, Nero was happy to find something referred to as ‘practical’. And practical it was.

The first chapter explained that every city had an archive. It was an entity associated with, but not part of the Center. Every guild, governmental body, and even private enterprise registered their documents there. The advancement of the archive was considered a key statistic in the evaluation of a city’s level. The entire Center Research department was created to fill it with proven theories which would then be verified by the main archive in the capital.

Nero skipped the sections on how the actual archive functioned, because he honestly didn’t care. What he was more interested in was any reference he could find about how information was restricted. The idea that each city was responsible for its own development sounded too suspect for him NOT to investigate what they were doing.

However, the more he read, the more he could tell that whoever had designed the system hadn’t had any nefarious intentions. More likely, they were being assholes as a result of favoring logic over common sense.

The intention was that each city could contribute to the overall knowledge base while developing in response to local pressures. Nero read about countless examples of differing solutions to similar problems from cities all over Oglivarch. In fact, Towers of Magic were originally meant to be research annexes which would allow the mage council to keep their members from interfering with each other’s research. ‘Identity contamination’ had apparently been a real problem several thousand years ago.

Now that he was seeing how the system had developed, Nero was unable to hold on to what he felt was his rational and irrefutable opinion.

Although, since he wasn’t the type to concede defeat in the face of overwhelming evidence proving him wrong, Nero thought to himself, ‘Just because you’re right, doesn’t mean you’re not wrong. Statistics prove that driving a car is dangerous as hell, but no one in their right mind would argue that we should ban them. It’s similarly stupid to restrict the available knowledge in cities for the incredibly good reason of helping people level.’

Even though he now could understand Jennings’ and Nick’s point of view, he still questioned their intelligence for not seeing how dumb it was to restrict the availability of everything humanity’s forefathers had learned.

“Lord Walker!” a voice called out.

Looking up from his plate, he blinked a few times until he found who’d been calling him.

Realizing it had been douchebag in a fancy robe on the other side of the table, Nero met his angry eyes with a smile. “Sorry. I was just wondering what this would taste like if it had a little more salt. What were you asking?”

Gritting his teeth, the man replied, “My colleagues and I were requesting if you might be the one to explain the details of how you closed the portal. While you’re particular technique in soul manipulation has been deemed legal and a result of your unique status, your insights into portal manipulation would be of great help to our future efforts in dealing with both the enemy and the essence disturbances we’ll likely be plagued with for years outside the walls.”

Noting that the man was doing everything he could to tip-toe around outright accusing him of shady necromantic spell casting, Nero could tell that he and everyone around him were REALLY interested in how he’d closed the portal.

Speaking up, Angelton replied for him, “And we already told you, Lord Walker accomplished his feat due to his abilities. No one else could perform a similar feat by using his methods. Considering that doing so killed him, do you really wish to attempt to document the process in a pointless effort to repeat it?”

The man replied, “Yes! Of course we do. If we can enchant the process, using ritual magic or tools, we can significantly curtail the risks and possibly create a method to close active portals with minimal effort. As of now, doing so requires teams of mages, each with decades of training behind them. It’s a process that cannot be accomplished quickly, and certainly not during an active battle.”

Nero frowned in thought before saying, “Uh… I’m pretty sure closing the portal didn’t kill me. Not on its own that is. Where did you get that idea?”

The other side of the table all went silent. From the general all the way down to the lowliest soldier, each and every person in the room was laserlocked on Nero with an eager look on their face.

The mage who’d been initially asking the question leaned forward, creepily licking his lips as if he were suffering from dry-mouth. In barely above a whisper, the thirsty man asked, “The archmage’s paper on the portal closing. According to it, you said that you had to overpower the identities embedded in the essence the portal collected from the other side when it closed. Is that not what happened?”

Shrugging, Nero replied, “Well, no. I mean, yeah. Ok. Look, I closed the portal. Then I collected all the soul stuff, which included the identities. I needed the power to fuel the spells so I could take care of the kobalds. Admittedly, I might have overdone it a bit, but one thing had nothing to do with the other. I’m pretty sure I-”

Feeling the ether destabilize, Nero snapped his attention to the side of the room as Archmage Jennings teleported himself in. The entire room stiffened, as if a snarling mastiff had just stepped through the door and began sniffing around for its next meal.

His eyes locked on Nero, the archmage walked across the room, waving his hand to forcefully reposition where Knight Angelton was sitting. Replacing him at Nero’s side, he plopped into a summoned chair, having never broken eye contact the entire time.

Nero on the other hand wasn’t feeling all that impressed. He’d grown used to Jennings’ dramatic entrances, and furthermore the man’s intimidating presence had become less and less effective over time.

Running his eyes over the comfy chair Jennings had summoned, Nero ran his senses all over it. He could tell that it hadn’t been pulled from the man’s personal space, and was instead a construct. He was even 90% sure that he’d seen a flash of a spell being cast, but he’d missed it. Either way, the construct Jennings had made was stunning.

‘I wonder how much of his interpretation is included in the spell’s architecture. If I learned the same spell, could I summon a lazy-boy?’ he wondered before suffering a sense of deja-vu.

“Nero, I need you to tell me again exactly how you used your abilities to close that portal,” Jennings demanded.

Hearing Jenning’s tone, and having no intention of repeating his story… again. Nero replied, “Can’t you just delve the area? Wasn’t that your plan?”

Jennings replied with a grimace, “I tried. The essence in the area was too affected by the event. It’ll likely be a decade before I can manage to see anything, if then. And if I can’t do it, no one can. Therefore, we only have your personal account to rely on. So, please describe, in detail, how you used your unique abilities to manipulate the essence of the portal directly, causing it to safely destabilize and pull the area from the other plane into our own.”

Not buying it, Nero replied, “Uh huh. Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I already gave you my explanation. Just try and follow what I said exactly how I said it, and then avoid sucking up all the soul stuff, or identies, or whatever you want to call it. That’s it.”

The man on the other side of the table who’d been trying to grill Nero spoke up. “Esteemed archmage, if you would be so kind as to interpret for us what he’s saying. Are we right in interpreting his words to mean that his unique abilities were not involved in his feat?”

Suddenly, Nero realized that he may have just fucked himself. The part of his mind which had been putzing around in the archive snapped back to his main mind, bombarding him with brainpower and instantly reviewing everything that he’d been missing.

If his feat of closing the portal was a technology, then it was a technology everyone wanted. The Dwarves, the Populators, the Capital, even these local douchebags, they all wanted to get their hands on it. Having tied it to his abilities as a unique, Jennings had arranged it so they couldn’t touch him. If he was the only one who could do it, then they had no legal foundation to try and force it out of him.

Recalling something he’d just read about the archives, Nero noted that every citizen had a duty to record their achievements and insights into the archives for the benefit of all. It was even the basis for one of the noble trials. Sure, there would be rewards for contributing, but it wasn’t optional, not if a formal request was made by the powers that be. So, if he weren’t really careful with what he said next, he might end up stuck in a lab for the next few years trying to record the process so it could be available for every scientist to reference in the archives.

Seeing the look of annoyance on Jennings’ face, Nero could only think to himself, ‘Fuck a duck… my bad,’ while offering him a shrug.

*Chapter 304 - The perils of splitting your attention.

*Spoiler - You ever see any specials on how professionals perform interrogations?  It's kind of fascinating.  There are a lot of good books on the subject which are meant to help you in your everyday life.  For example, when having a conversation with someone, if you state a few things they agree with before saying something untrue, the person you're talking to will almost always feel the need to disagree with you.  The pattern of 'working together' and 'harmony' between you is shattered, and their brain tells them that they need to fix it.  So, they'll likely start spilling their secrets just to make the conversation make sense.  It's a subtle trick, exploiting the way our brains process information.