Pepper / INK /

What the steward said

"Honored father," His voice was barely a whisper. "May I enter?"

"You may."

Daniel was surprised to see the Steward of the City here. He rarely came down from his tower, and he was not wearing his robe of office.

"I need your help."

"Since you call me Honored Father, I assume that you don’t need Ink."

"Not unless it is living ink."

"You have my attention steward, Undivided." He wiped his hands and came around the front of the counter. He needed the Inkwalker for something. "What do you need?"

"Compel me."

"Pardon?"

"I am forbidden from speaking what I know. But you can compel the truth from me regardless of the spell cast against me. And it cannot be held against me that I spoke, or my life is forfeit this very hour."

"That is true, but are you certain you want this?"

"I cannot live with these secrets anymore, but I am forbidden against speaking Ill of the Prince while she serves. But I know your magic is stronger than any other. That it can compel even the most bound. And if I do not speak, I fear much worse."

For a moment Daniel’s eyes glowed silver. "You have our attention." Inkaru said. "And by the moon and all the light it casts, by the sun and all the heat it gives, you shall speak. This you shall do or the Light of heaven shall fall upon you and strike you where you stand."

Daniel’s eyes flashed back to their normal brown with silver rim. He had let the Inkwalker use the highest form of magic to compel him. If the man didn’t speak, and didn’t speak soon and truthfully, the clouds would gather, the lightening would come and he would die.

"You don’t have long Steward." He reminded him.

The man swallowed hard as the wash of the magic came over him. No circle needed, he had called the very magic in the air.

"My name is Makhlas and that also is my curse." My father was steward, and I am steward, and if the Magic allows, I will have a child to be steward. But I am sworn from betraying the one who wears the crown even if every word she has said is a lie. She is not a solar, she is lunar, and her sister is a Solar, but the are both Presidium, one has lived outside the walls most of her life, and the other within.

But I know also what is happening. The necromancer is a diversion Daniel. He’s to keep you looking while she gathers what little strength she has left to trigger the cleansing. And I know another secret, for the tower rooms are mine to roam. And within them I have found a secret she did not know I knew. The one she speaks to in conference every morning and every night, His name is Sebastian Emmett."

"And you know this for certain?" Sebastian was his uncle, missing since his father was young, presumed dead. No one had so much as spoken his name in decades, except to name him among the dead.

"I have seen him with his elder brother Zebulon. He and Seb were twins. But Zebulon was born first, so he counted as the seven, and Seb was passed over."

"Twin sevens would be rare. Very rare, usually they are counted as a seven and a non, because one is not fit for the ink."

"And in the generations since Seb’s mind has twisted. Around a hundred years ago he left the confines of the city, shortly after his brother came to see him. And he went to Cold Iron. That night the lightening flashed and the water fell, and the Emmett homestead was wiped off the map. And Seb went back to the Presidium convinced more than ever that he was destined to rule all. And he has never left since."

"So my cleansing of the land was the trigger?"

The steward shook his head. "Whatever malady is there is not your doing. His mind has been diseased for hundreds of years. And that was why Zebulon left swearing never to return. He knew there was no hope for him and could not hope to judge him. But there is something else that happened. When Zebulon went, he was normal. But when he left the forbidden city something was wrong. His magic failed him. And he fled. The judgement of the Ink had fallen upon him, or so he said. Your father went to the Presidium and the Presidium madness took him, his magic broke and so too did his mind. It was only a few months after he left that the homestead was judged."

"My words are all but spent sir, I have only a little more to say." The Steward bowed to him. "In all of this I hope I did not wait too long, I had to find a time when she was asleep and I could leave, for I am what I should not be, prisoner in my own tower."

The steward sighed. "Whatever he has done, is not finished, I know this because the Prince keeps asking about the cleansing. And he tells her to abide. And every day she grows weaker. For everyone knows she is sick. But no one knows that she has Plague."

The steward grimaced. "And what is more, When she worked in the city, she was a doctor. She studied the plagues and their cures.  She still keeps some of the books and scrolls with her personal things in the Tower."  He sighed.  "But there are tales that they did not just try to cure the diseases."

"What?" Daniel asked. "Tell me plainly."

"There is some rumor that they did more, that they--changed the plagues to see what would happen, to see if perhaps they could make them not so bad, but some they made much worse and a few they made specific. She is Presidum and they hate the moon, so the Plague, the cleansing only attacks those who use moon magic. Or so is the tale. This is the cleansing of which they speak. Your father, he was a lunar, and he shared food and wine with his twin, it may be that the madness is not madness but plague. And this I fear, that between them both they plan to end this city as the Prince of the nameless city has ended many others."

Daniel nodded. "Have you more to speak?"

"No more of the prince."

"The geis is lifted then."

"Thank you, but the brother you thought you lost, is not lost, but has lost himself. A man who thinks you abandoned him, he cast off his name, and took another, but you thought him dead and buried with the rest, and so it did not dawn on you that he was not. But still, he seeks revenge for what he believes to be. And plays into the hand the Presidium deals."

"My words are done, I take my leave."

"You have my word Steward, I will not rest till I have put this right."

"I know." He bowed. "You have honored me. I take my leave."

"Go in peace, serve in honor"

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Next Chapter: Prince of All cities