Chapter 3

Wrong Place and Wrong Time For Politics

The sounds of the aftermath of this horrific event were bleeding into a hallway connected to the embassy lobby, a space which Saint Dastou’s group had quickly taken for themselves. The crowd that had been outside trying to get a look at him had mostly rushed into the closest place where the might be safe, the Stone-State Diplomatic Center. That meant the big, decorated lobby was now full of the hurt, the bleeding, and the shocked. The cries and pained wails sifted down the wide corridors leading away from that entry space like an insubstantial wall of suffering.

Saan-Hu insisted that she check him for injuries, and he allowed it, but he knew he had to hurry. The reason Dastou had stood outside for some time after he so handily won the fight against those shoddily clothes attackers was to collect sensations, gut feelings, background information, and behavioral abnormalities. Now, he sat cross-legged on the floor in a hallway trying to meditate his way back to the fight and his observations. After a few minutes he was finally able to ignore the suffering coming from the lobby only to overhear snippets of a conversation between some of his people. The sounds of talking seemed to echo since the Saint had his eyes closed and was still halfway into a trance despite the distractions.

“We have everything you asked for ma’am.” That was Private Melk, a fourteen-year-old whose voice was easily recognized as a scraggly mess of a thing because it was in the process of changing.

“Good,” Saan replied. “Get to work and help those people. There are two of Constable Renker’s Counterbalance officers, the ones she had with her in case we did something,” she said with a sense of irony Dastou could sense with his eyes closed. “Do not let them get in your way. I will meet you there shortly. Go.”

“Yes, ma’am!” said two voices simultaneously, Melk’s and that of some young lady Dastou couldn’t place as he tried to refocus. Two sets of boots stomped away.

Another conversation had begun, this one between Saan and Nes, the only two left in the hallway, and Dastou was able to completely drown it out and get back to trying to figure out out more about this bombing. He already had a few things to go on, and he rehashed them quickly.

First off, he had identified the smell of fertilizer in the office that got wrecked. The scent had been masked by an equally powerful array of oils and liquid fuel, and could now be identified. In fact, in his meditative state Dastou was able to pinpoint almost everything used to make the bombs by smell and the explosive power of the devices alone. He had already gone ahead and built one from scratch in his head by taking a trip into the Null Bank, the massive library each Saint has in their brain. He searched those deep-seeded shelves for devices to jury-rig, and ended up with a good idea of what the bombs would have been. Part of that mental rebuilding involved adding the radio countdown that accidentally interfered with the intercom. Thinking on it, there was actually no need for that signal to be sent via radio - all it had to be was in sync with the other devices. Unless the bomb timing was being sent to someone other than the attackers. Oh good, more complications, more people who needed a few teeth knocked out.

Another clue Dastou was able to grab out of the back-and-forth scrubbing of his view point was that New Scar was likely the leader of the bunch. All the people had been wearing cloth masks, not atypical for criminal activity, but it wasn’t a secret that Dastou and everyone he directly associated with could read lips. New Scar had been saying something as he ran out of the alley with the final batch of armed combatants, the cloth moving around as his mouth opened and closed. The eye lines and body language of the others meant they were listening to him as they rushed out.

The only other piece of information he could gather that seemed important was that all of the enemies were dressed similarly. Dirty clothes, mostly ill-fitting in some way, and mismatched in style. The Social Cypher maintained the work force via hypnotism, and part of that was paying everyone the same exact amount for every possible job. There wasn’t a ton of variety in clothing styles unless a shop was setup on top of a coverage hole, with a hopeful designer living there and basically never leaving. With money and cost being non-issues, having clothes that didn’t fit, that were filthy or full of holes didn’t make any sense at all. Could these people have gone so far in trying to disguise themselves during this attack that they dumpster dove for costumes? If that was the case, then they all found the exact same way of dressing, one that would be more akin to desperate necessity than being pre-planned. It was more likely that these strangers were already wearing such clothing.

The Saint rewound his mind’s eye to before the explosion once again and was about to try and explore more of what he’d found. Before he could begin, the unmistakable sound of someone walking with a cane took him out of his trance. Before he could try and reestablish, there was yelling. Dastou sighed and opened his eyes to see Constable Chenrov Renker walking towards his group from deeper in the embassy. The constable moved quickly despite her limp and hardwood cane, a finger pointed in the Saint’s direction.

“I heard that machine of yours sink its teeth in below,” Renker said of the Caravan. “You are to get inside and leave this city immediately. You are not welcome here.”

This hallway was wide, but Dastou, Nes, and Saan were close to each other in a defensive arrangement. Renker came within arm’s length of Saan, who’d been facing that side of the corridor, and continued her angry barrage.

“This is your fault,” said the constable. “Your presence here is poison.”

Constable Renker was in her forties, walked with that aforementioned limp, and was as tough as treated leather. She was in charge of the local police, which was only a job with real authority for half of any given day, and not the half they were in now. However, that group had taken it upon themselves to be a presence here during the Saint’s visit.

“I’m sure I’ll leave soon enough,” Dastou told her, straightening his legs so they stretched across most of the hallway and enjoying how the muscles felt to be loose. “But someone came here and hurt a lot of people to get at me. I’m sure you can hear the aftermath. We will be here until this is all explained, and in the meantime we’ll help whomever we can.”

Renker took a step closer, tried to barge past Saan-Hu, her face in a scowl. Saan moved like liquid, put herself perfectly in the constable’s path, and expertly shoved the older woman back a step. Dastou didn’t have a good view and only saw some quick arm movements accompanied by a fluttering of clothes, and now the women were separated by a single step, staring each other down. The Saint had never seen Renker in action, only heard rumors of how talented she was, and being able to put Saan at a stand-still was very impressive, especially for someone who needed a cane to walk properly.

“Listen, ma’am,” Nes said, smirking at the failed attempt to get at Dastou and trying to charm the situation’s heat down a few degrees. “She’ll break your arm in three places if you do that again.”

“She can try,” Renker responded without hesitation.

“Fine by me if you two lovely ladies want to have it out,” Nes added with a clap, “shall I make popcorn.”

“Sure,” Dastou said. “No butter for me. Wanna make some bets, too?”

“You know me so well.”

“Ugh,” Renker groaned. “You are both children.”

“I am inclined to agree,” Saan added, though she’d know Nes was faking his misogyny to diffuse tension and Dastou was joining him for no reason other than entertainment.

Renker was not quite fuming like she was a few seconds ago, but the anger was still in every part of her body. When the constable spoke, her time made it clear that she was not afraid of Saan or anyone else.

“You will listen,” Renker said through partially clenched teeth, “you gaggle of walking grey-eyed abominations.”

Nes tilted a flat palm in disappointed at the insult, as if to say “she could have done better.”

“As the target of this attack,” Constable Renker continued without pause, “your staying here puts all of us at risk. You will not investigate, I will. Climb into that damned headquarters of yours and go back to your school, leave my city be.”

Dastou snorted a short laugh. “This is not your city right now. The Social Cypher is handling the injuries, the cleanup, and canceling work duties for people who live nearby. You and your people won’t have anything to do out there, meanwhile I might be able to get things figured out before these bastards disappear.” Dastou stood up and shook his jacket straight. “It’s going to be worse than usual tonight, and your officers will have a lot to do. We’ll be leaving after we get to the source of the attack, not before, and you don’t have the manpower to stop us and keep this devastated city in check.”

Dastou knew he had to show a certain level of immobility in this situation, but he also recognized that he really shouldn’t antagonize Renker. Despite her sometimes overbearing nature, she was an excellent constable. During the day the police was very nearly useless, but at night, they were desperately needed. The unspoken slime of the soul that was being forced to work some place and have little opportunity to change large parts of your life meant people took their off-time very seriously. While the Cypher made daytime crimes difficult to commit in the first place, night-time was a different story. The revelry came like clockwork. It was not often loud, not often in public, but it was there. Heavy drinking, drug use, prostitution, gambling and so on made swaths of a modern metropolis dangerous and unforgiving during the dark hours. In each of the world’s nine large city-states and nearby connected towns, there was no doubt how absolutely badass the police were. They did their jobs of keeping the crazy under control.

The all-volunteer police were known, in any city, as the Counterbalance. In Stone-State they took the subname Igneous Counterbalance, a.k.a., the IC. Made up of retirees and those with long-term injuries that the Cypher ignores, those organizations are small, self-trained, self-managed, and unshakable. While Dastou always had respect for those groups, Renker was barking at the dead sky by trying to make him leave. Saints rarely did as they were told unless they felt like it, and as the last of his kind Dastou did his best to keep the ideals and jackassery of his predecessors from fading into history.

“So,” Renker said, not intending to back down, but not quite so forceful, “your selfish desire to exact revenge is what’s keeping you here? That’s what you stake the security of this facility and all it means on?”

“Revenge has nothing to do with it,” Dastou corrected, and realized he was trying to convince himself of that as much as anyone else. “Well, maybe it doesn’t. I’ll admit I’m angrier than I’ve been in a good long time.”

Before Dastou could say more, Nes interrupted. “So one of you is pissed that this attack happened. And the other is pissed that it happened?”

That certainly cooled the heating air in the hallway with eloquent swiftness. Nes was right, Renker and the Saint were after the same thing: safety for Stone-State. They just had a different way of going about it. Unfortunately, that difference was entirely based on Renker’s prejudice. The constable didn’t want Saints or members of entourages around before this tragedy, and now had actionable evidence that they were nothing but trouble. The woman wasn’t going to back down, so the Saint may as well compromise at least a little, inherited jackass attitude or not.

“I’m inclined,” Dastou began, “to see things from your point of view. For now. However, we are involved in this. Let’s say in six hours we’ll wrap up whatever leg of our investigation we’re on and leave. No one connected to me will enter the city for one month, I promise.”

“One month,” Renker half-whispered. She must have expected to use this opportunity to make they grey-eyed “abominations” stay away for much longer, possibly permanently.

“Right,” Dastou said. “My people have had business in this area in the past and will continue to do so. I won’t allow you to dictate the movements of my school and organization and slow our progress, at least not for too long. Is that acceptable?”

“No,” said an older man’s voice from further down the curve of the hallway, the same direction Renker had come.

Renker was taller than the average woman, well-built physically, and her form had been mostly blocking the view in that direction. The constable stepped aside at the sound of the new voice to reveal the presence of an older man with numerous wrinkles, pale skin, and gray, thinning hair that all matched the voice. The man was wearing a clean black robe with a dark-blue stripe down the right arm and the Stone-State flag on a forearm patch, and the robe swayed nonchalantly as he walked toward the bigger group.

“Councilor Tryst,” Renker said with respect if not fondness, “you should’ve left with the others. It may not be safe here for some time.”

This older newcomer was Jandal Tryst, speaker and turnkey voter for the twenty-one member Stone-State Council. It was his signature on the bottom of the invitation Saan received two weeks ago to come here today in the first place.

“It is alright, constable,” Tryst said with a practiced, false smile and a hand on Renker’s shoulder. For some reason when the hand pulled away from the shoulder, Dastou was surprised it didn’t leave a trail of milky slime. “The others are all gone as you suggested, Ms. Renker,” he continued. “I had a reason, an important one, that forced me to stay. I see now that I was correct in doing so.”

Tryst turned off the smile right on cue as he looked past or through Saan to focus on the Saint. Was that supposed to be intimidating? Intimidating a Saint is a laughable thing to try and do, and most people have known that for all four-hundred and thirty nine years of known, recorded history.

“I assume from your first word,” Dastou said, “that the deal I tried to strike with Renker doesn’t suit you.”

“Correct. I must tell you that the entire reason we invited you here, to our beautiful new Diplomatic Center and meeting space, is to speak of your incursions into free lands such as ours. Today’s tragic events are, while unrelated, another reason as to why the Council as a whole wants to limit your… travel through here.”

Saan half-turned to look at Dastou, confused as to what this man was talking about. The Saint had no idea either and simply shrugged. At that, Tryst walked past Renker and forced Saan to take half a step to the side so the older man wouldn’t run directly into her. This guy was a bold one. Jandal Tryst walked right up to Dastou as if they were to have a private conversation in this corridor with three other people here and the sounds of a tragedy flowing in their direction. He walked slow and when he opened his mouth, a loud conversation floated in from the lobby.

“No, don’t take that!” said Melk’s scraggly vocal cords.

“These people need help,” an adult male said. This was all barely above the din of cries and pained grunts. “No foreign kid is going to hoard medical supplies.” That would be one of Constable Renker’s people trying to assert authority.

“He means,” said the voice of a teen girl that would be Private Nudrenmbe from Dastou’s team, “that what you’re about to spray on a wound isn’t medicine. It’s an after-care cleaning agent, and spreading it on opened skin will just feel like a burning pain and do nothing.”

“Don’t touch stuff without permission,” added Melk. “If you need something ask, we brought enough for everybody to use. Here.”

The volume of that micro-argument turned down so that the rest of the horrible sounds from that area drowned it out. The sounds of Dastou’s people helping and Stone-State’s loyal citizens causing trouble seemed to make Tryst’s face twitch, as if that went against the narrative he had been pulling together out of this air the moment before. Which it did, and Dastou smirked at the councilor as the older man cleared his throat to speak again.

“As I was saying, Mr. Dastou, you appear to be so used to the old ways,” Tryst said, his voice haughty and slow, “that you cannot understand what I mean. I will explain. We were going to, and still must on a safer day, discuss permissions you were to need in order to travel not only through Stone-State, but any politically allied territories nearby.”

“Is this a joke?” Dastou asked half seriously.

“It is not,” Tryst answered completely seriously. “You, Cosamian Dastou, are both the headmaster of Ornadais Academy and commander of the Davranis Security Force. These groups encroach on lands, traveling as if they were among the residents of every municipality, without regard to local security. You must see how that tramples on our ability to govern properly, and today is ample proof.”

The first part of that was technically true. The Academy’s students and those who later graduated to become full-fledged higher-ranked members of the aforementioned Davranis Security Force - like Saan, Nes, and Captain Hays - were never stopped when traveling anywhere. Those were the old ways, unquestioned until recently. Dastou was perfectly happy to give some ground when it came to folks wanting to know if his people were nearby, especially since he led not only a military academy but the actual military its students went into. It was enough to make people nervous. Honestly, he had been planning to negotiate terms with Renker for weeks now so as not to impose too much or too suddenly on the Igneous Counterbalance. The constable was a protector at heart, dedicated and passionate - despite her distaste for Dastou’s kind, she would have negotiated in good faith for the sake of her officers and the city. That was, of course, before today and the dozens of dead innocents.

Tryst, however, was making a power grab. Dastou didn’t like the implication of a political reason behind limiting the school or DSF’s movements. And he couldn’t allow it. Giving this type of ground now might set a precedent of restricting travel.

“The DSF,” replied Dastou coldly, “is defensive and exploratory. We don’t intend to interfere with independent provinces and have shown very little that would say otherwise.”

“Then surely you will agree, on a temporary basis, to a request for an early warning and permissions system?” Tryst dug into his robe, which Dastou noticed was not only clean but brand new, and pulled out a single piece of paper. There was near-perfect handwriting on both sides of the sheet, and lots of it, with a familiar pompous signature near the bottom of one side. “I had my assistant draft and check this in the last few minutes via dictation. It is a short-term version of what we planned for you to look over during our formal meeting. If you wish to cooperate with Stone-State and respect our independence, as you say you do, please look through this and sign it before you leave, which I hope will be within the hour.” Tryst held out the double-sided contract toward the Saint.

Dastou’s bullshit-detector was screaming on both sides of his brain. “Uh… What? You had what I assume was your entire council agree on the perfect restrictions for me, and it probably took forever for you politicians. Then you make one up just now, during a tragic situation, and expect me to sign it?”

“I would say that smells fishy,” Nes said, “but I like fish and refuse to insult such a culinary delight.”

“Give me that contract,” Saan blurted out as she stepped up up to Tryst’s side. Apparently everyone’s alarms were blaring.

Tryst must have expected all this to go smoothly, because his rehearsed mask of intelligence and logic broke at all the insinuations. The older man stared at Saan as if he didn’t know what she asked. Saan was not one to take that kind of disrespect, and her squint-eyed annoyance was instantly recognizable. Saan snatched the paper from Tryst’s hands and snapped it in front of her face to look at it as if the silence was permission. Nes smiled and nodded in pride at the forceful behavior.

“Sir,” Renker said, “I’m sure the situation outside will be handled efficiently.” She was talking about the Social Cypher cleaning up the mess and bodies from the bombs, but the subject was taboo to talk of openly. “And as this Saint said, he will not be forced out of town so quickly. Unfortunately.” That last word came with a quick glare at Dastou. “If you will go home where you are safe, I will have an officer escort you and, the same as the others, posted outside your door for the night.”

“I will not leave until I have assurances that these people respect out borders,” Tryst said louder than was necessary for such close quarters. The version of this conversation in his head must have gone a lot better. He cleared his throat again and regained his perfect, false composure. “My responsibility is to this city and it’s sovereignty, and being in minor danger will not affect my dedication.”

“I gotta find a replacement word for ‘fishy,’” Nes commented almost to himself.

“Listen,” Dastou said to Tryst, “you already know that there are mountains of verbal agreements as old as this city allowing us free travel. My people made sure we had those in place absolutely everywhere, and triple-checked most of them a few years back. Those local leaders, the ones you in the council supplanted and thought no one cared enough to really notice, matter a lot more to me than you.” Dastou didn’t bother mentioning that some of those leaders were criminal traders. “Ask them to meet up and be part of making some kind of travel contract with your council. When that’s done, I’ll come take a look at what you have for me. Today, though, I’m not going to give your paperwork anything more than an annoyed squint or two.”

“Mr. Saint, Your Eminence, please,” said Tryst plaintively. He either didn’t know that Dastou hated being referred to as a deity in any way or he did and was trying to annoy him. This guy really was a nitwit in fancy clothes if he thought back-handed name-calling would get him somewhere. “Those old verbal agreements centered on small groups traveling as such, but your… student body and its further along graduates,” he indicated Saan and Nes with a wide wave, “are a far larger entity and, to us, constitute a need to change permissions immediately. The contract I have here is a temporary, honorable solution…”

Saan interrupted him. “And so vague that we will absolutely not make it official. At worst, we could be locked away in the Caravan, which counts as our territory, until we get some kind of permit to leave and only allowed to travel directly to the embassy if we need to go to any other ‘allied’ territory. Ridiculous political manipulation.”

“Huh,” Dastou said to Saan, though he had guessed the same already. “You seem upset.”

“My clan would never allow for such obvious, self-serving trickery. And the chiefs and guardians would run this man out of town for the attempt.”

“Oh, dear, Mr. Tryst,” Dastou said, taking a slow step toward the councilor, half of a smile creeping onto his lips. Creeping was the right word for it, the Saint noted mentally before moving on. “It looks like you’re going to have wait until this situation is resolved and I come back before we can agree to anything. I’ll say it again: I’m not going anywhere for a little while, and I sure as the void won’t be locked down while I’m here.”

Tryst’s mouth hung open stupidly and his hands were ready for some kind of choreographed non-committal display of body language. A pointless response was about to come from him before another interruption stopped the show. A rapid, polite knock on a nearby door made everyone look in that direction, glad for a break in the tension whether they’d admit it or not. Dastou was probably the only one having any fun, as he was enjoying shattering Tryst’s practiced facade of authority over and over, and had one more trick up his sleeve. It seems he could save that for later.

In any case, at a door to an office several meters away stood Captain Hays, his handsome mid-thirties face and a cheerful smirk hiding the fact that he had probably been listening in for a couple of minutes. Dastou would be ashamed if the man hadn’t been, actually. The Captain wore a traditional dark-gray and vermilion-trimmed DSF uniform and was unarmed, his sidearm holster hanging empty on his hip. The lack of weapons in the embassy was Hays’s idea to begin with; weapons such as firearms were an extreme rarity, and coming into an embassy armed like they normally would be would have been a cause for anxiousness. Hays always seemed to know exactly how to make people calmer.

“I’ve got some news,” Captain Hays announced. “Sorry for the interruption, but I need to speak with my superior.”

There was no “right now so get out” at the end of the sentence, it was just a coincidence that Tryst and Renker already wanted to be gone from here. Saan shoved the contract back into the councilor’s hands so unexpectedly that he almost dropped it. Nes waved daintily, a big smile on his face, as the two Stone-State citizens turned walked away. Renker almost started to walk toward the lobby to help with relief efforts, but Tryst went the other direction - ignoring his suffering citizens, by the way - and the constable was forced to follow, probably to once more try and convince the older man to leave this place already. Once they were gone, Hays waited several seconds to make sure neither would wait nearby to eavesdrop, then closed the distance to his people and spoke up.

“I heard about the contract,” Captain Hays said as he signaled the the group of four to huddle closer together. He kept his voice down, a surprising low level paranoia on display. “I’m in agreement about not signing it, and not only because it impedes our travel. We have some new issues to deal with that require our immediate, direct attention.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Dastou.

“It can’t be worse than all that’s happened, can it?” Nes added.

“It is certainly stranger,” Hays said. “To start, the Cypher is outside, doing its job and cleaning up. However, it’s also completely ignoring our injured enemies.”

Dastou felt his eyebrows rise to ask for more. “Wait, all of them are being ignored?” he asked.

The Social Cypher was like an obsessive-compulsive, ultra-caring hive queen, Dastou thought. It didn’t let a bunch of it’s own worker bees off for a day at random, and it didn’t ignore them if they were hurt in a non-permanent manner.

“Are the other injured being taken care of?” asked Saan-Hu.

“Yes, all of them. Other brightseers are being treated,” answered Captain Hays. “Everything is flowing exactly as expected except for the attackers. I wanted to take at least a couple of them after they were moved to a triage area in the confusion, interrogate them afterward. Unfortunately, since they are being ignored, those people that wanted to stay in the embassy, away from the worker bees, took notice. The blue-eyes are walking around the people Dastou took down as if they don’t exist. Only one thing explains it.”

“Ugh…” Nes muttered, knowing where this problem was going.

“Yeah,” Dastou said, “they’re all immune. A bunch of naturals. It doesn’t matter if we can grab one of them or not, because hypnotic interrogation will go absolutely nowhere.”

The Saint shook his head in frustration. All Dastou’s team could hope for to start this investigation quickly was interrogation, and that was out the window now. But Hays wasn’t done.

“That’s not really worth whispering over, though,” Dastou guessed. “What else is out there?”

“One of those people being ignored is not someone you dealt with. She’s dressed exactly like the others with dirty clothes, unkempt hair, and so on. There’s lots of problems about where she is, what she could have been doing, so I asked the twins to check it out on the ground since it’s outside the view of any lobby window. Those two told me something very odd. When they were got near her, they recognized remnants of a chemical in the air. It’s something the slave-traders in the Tribeslands use to knock people out, and this injured girl must have gotten a big dose of it recently because they could smell it from a couple meters away.”

The last sentence Hays said made everyone move their eyes up from the huddle and look around at each other. What the captain said meant this girl, whoever she was, got knocked out before the attack, yet a number of clues tied her to it. This bonfire of confusion got bigger every minute.

“Can you bring her into the Caravan?” Dastou wondered and hoped.

“Yet another problem, sir,” Hays said. “The twins can’t get near her without the worker bees going into protective mode. They can take her by force maybe, but not without blue-eyes trying to swarm in that direction, generating unfortunate amounts of attention. I’m going to assume you don’t want that, especially with what I heard that Tryst person say.”

“Right, yeah,” Dastou said. “The Cypher is protecting it’s domain and the work it needs to do.” That’s why when the Academy studies the system, Dastou thought, they do so from far away. Disrupting the queen bee is ill-advised. “We’d basically be kidnapping,” the Saint continued, “and announcing it. We’re unwelcome as it is, I don’t want to seal the deal on that, not yet.”

Not until they make sure no other attacks take place from these same enemies, anyway.

“Then what do we do to get her out of there?” Nes asked.

“Oh, that part’s easy to figure out,” said Hays with a smirk. “We make a bigger problem somewhere else and make sure no one sees us do it.”

Captain Hays then tapped a side pocket in the combat belt he was wearing, which he didn’t need to be wearing at all now that Dastou thought about it. The Saint would wager both his arms and a few toes that Hays had grenades in those pockets.

“Great,” Dastou said enthusiastically. “Let’s go blow stuff up and snatch up a witness.”