Background noise

[Graybeard]

[OOC: Picking up again after Rose and Argus meet Brother Tim over lunch ...]

Sister Rose’s impish mood didn’t last long after she got back into the journal. Quite the contrary …

23 May: Nothing new from Ratherton. I begin to wonder whether he’s worth what we’re paying him. There must be something going on in that hell hole (possibly literally). Meanwhile, another entertaining possibility has come up. The Cardinal has received word that something is happening at that semi-heretical mission in Kiyoka that should catch our attention. He hasn’t said what it is yet, but you can’t expect anything good to be happening when you put a temple in among the infidels – particularly a temple full of Reformed quasi-priests. He says there may be a trip coming over there. I’m not exactly looking forward to that, quite the contrary. Too many damned infidels and magic finger wagglers over there, and not enough real servants of Luminosita. But who knows, maybe I’ll find some new heresy to keep my mind off that bastard down in Gervasiel …

Rose stopped, looked at Argus, whose facial expression at this little bit of information was much as she imagined her own to be. “Whew. Just think. If we hadn’t been sent over here, we could have had the pleasure of Bree’s company a whole month ago, back in Kiyoka.” She rolled her eyes. “We owe the Abbot for that one.”

In fact, however, it would soon develop that they would have had nothing to worry about from Bree in Kiyoka – but other worries were on the horizon.

25 May: Good news on two fronts. The Cardinal has decided that he himself will lead the mission to the vipers’ nest in Kiyoka – at least I presume they’re vipers, they’re certainly not Orthodox. That means I won’t be going. I almost wish I could, just to see how the old goat handles himself in pagan territory, but truth be told, I’m just as happy not to be forced to deal with them myself. The stories one hears … and it’s their country, so I couldn’t have much fun anyway.

The other good news is that Ratherton finally has something. (Rose’s attention grew more focused.) Professor Apostate has let it drop that he found something called “the Artifact of Absonial” up at the dig. Ratherton doesn’t know what that means. Neither do I, never heard of it, but from the way they are acting, it might have something to do with Our Lord Luminosita’s Appearance – exciting! I really wish I could be down there now. Well, maybe it’ll turn out to release a demon that swallows up that bastard Bryce, and I’ll have to go investigate that – “have to.” Two birds with one stone, that would be. Of course, nothing that interesting is really going to happen, but one can hope…

26 May: More from Ratherton, and I don’t think I like it. He says he’s getting the feeling that the dig is being watched. He’s not sure by who, and he’s pretty sure nobody has been on the ground there. From what I understand of the site, there is only one way in and out, and they’ve had Corporal Cock-Sucker and some other low-life splitting time between standing guard up at the dig itself, and checking the access route for intruders. (Ouch, thought Rose. No wonder Bryce didn’t like this woman.) Nothing found, but he’s still sure there’s something going on – in town, maybe, when they go for supplies? They’re supposed to be keeping their mouths shut when they’re away from the dig, it’s all Luminosita’s Secret-level, but Indianel’s doxy probably blabbers like the whore she is, so Luminosita alone knows who all has been told. The head priest there, at least, is supposed to be solid, keeps his mouth shut, doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t tolerate fools or heretics. I should probably see if I can dig anything up on him, so we can lean on him if we have to, but patience …

[Graybeard]

28 May: Ratherton is still concerned that the dig down south is being watched. I don’t like that. The only one who should be watching that dig is me, and I can’t. Have the damnable Tsuirakuans found out about it somehow? Legend has it they can fly over oceans, go invisible at will, sense hidden objects at country-size distances, all that. I don’t know how much of that is real, and how much of it is just the fact they beat us in the Mage/Priest War. I wonder if I can get Cardinal Crotchety to authorize me to get into the part of the Heretic Knowledge Vault that talks about Tsuirakuan capabilities? They won’t let me into that part of the vault with my clearance now, but I think I can convince him that I have need to know. Yes, I bet it’s the Tsuirakuans. They’re supposed to have a non-intervention treaty with us, but they’re foreign devils, and I don’t trust them any farther than I can throw them.

Well, I’ll work on that. For right now, on to more pleasurable things. There is supposed to be a special smiting tonight that I’m looking forward to very much …

Sister Rose pulled herself away from the diary, disgusted. The elements of sadism in Sister Bree’s personality could only be taken in small doses. Besides, this entry had triggered a thought in her own mind. She made sure their own damping field was up before continuing.

“Kurou,” she said to Argus. “Bree, and Ratherton, may be sharper than we’re giving them credit for. They were being watched by a Tsuirakuan down there. I find it hard to believe that he had anything to do with the murders, though, because I thought Drusia had pretty well put him out of commission by the time Avner and Rebekah were killed. Besides, it doesn’t seem like his style. Surely he’d have found some more subtle, less blatant way of squeezing information out of them than chaining them to a chair and torturing them to death – wouldn’t he?” But then puzzlement crossed her expressive face. “Wait a minute. I don’t think Bree and Blaise even asked us anything about Kurou, did they? Even though Bree might have been on the right track, at least as far as the spying went. Something isn’t making sense here…”

[Drannin]

Argus was silent for a moment. "There is a possibility that comes readily to mind," he said quietly "Arsoro Kurou might not have been the only one watching that dig site. Someone a lot less subtle... or secure enough not to feel any need for subtlety."

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose gasped, put a hand to her mouth. "Secure enough not to feel any need for subtlety. You don't mean ... what was her name ... Haniko Goto?"

[OOC: Rose has just put two and two together, and got something like 18.5. However, she has no way of knowing that.]

[Graybeard]

[OOC: If Argus wants to respond to Rose's inquiry about Haniko Goto, feel free to insert it either before this installment, or after... /OOC:]

Sister Rose was still trying to sort out the Kurou/Goto/whatever surveillance as she returned to Sister Bree’s journal, and what came next didn’t make the situation any clearer – far from it.

30 May: The Cardinal has left for Kiyoka, and Luminosita be praised, that actually leaves me in charge for a while, since he’s taking almost everyone who knows their ass from a hole in the ground with him. His instructions while he’s gone don’t inspire me – “don’t screw anything up” is not exactly the kind of thing you tell a trusted subordinate, is it? As if he has such a glorious track record of serving Luminosita himself!

I did do a little checking on Professor Apostate and his floozy down in Gervasiel, however, using the (ahem) authority of the office to knock down some walls at the University of Heretics. That turned out to be interesting – very interesting. The girl with him, Rebekah Codoin, is from Tsuiraku! Specifically, the port city of Kiyoka, which has kind of the same role over there that Saus has here – do all the international commerce, keep the foreign riff-raff away from the capital city where everything important is. She and her sister are in the country on some kind of exchange program to build, quote, “good will.” Good will, my holy ass – they’re here to spy on us, I just know it. And even more interesting, she just got back from a trip “home” to that damned country for a week or so. I just bet she got de-briefed by her handler while she was there. Yes, it all hangs together. “Isn’t that ironic?” I tell Luci. “Ratherton’s right, they’re being watched, all right, but he doesn’t know it’s a spy in their own midst that’s doing the watching.” I wish I could get word to him to keep an eye on her, but there are complications. That old priest at the temple in Gervasiel, Father Amalric, has a rod up his ass, and he won’t take an order from me, or this office, or anybody but the Patriarch or his direct chain of command. I don’t want them to know I’m onto their game, so that channel won’t work. I’ll have to think of something else.

Was Rebekah Codoin a spy? Rose asked herself. Maybe, but she doubted it. The Codoin girl had struck her as just another bubbly college kid, enjoying being away from home and living it up – the word about her from the warp gate, which Bree probably wouldn’t know, had been that she and her sister had been drunk when they used it, which was a bad idea. No real Tsuirakuan spy would have done anything that stupid. (Would she?) Besides, Rose was a pretty good judge of character and knew it, even without her Empathy magic. The Codoin girl had clearly been taken, to put it mildly, with her research advisor. Yes, there could easily have been some self-serving element to that; women who slept their way to the top were hardly unknown in a male-dominated society. (There’d been that “nun” attached to the diplomatic mission at the end of the Albigenish Incident … no, best not to think about her.) But Rose had never had the remotest sense of deceit from her when they were in Gervasiel or out at the ruin. Rebekah Codoin, to all appearances, was exactly what she appeared to be.

And most of all, she’d been killed too.

No, regardless of Bree’s xenophobic, paranoid ranting, Rose decided, the late Rebekah Codoin couldn’t have been the agent of her own demise. Still, there was something about Bree’s reasoning that was starting to catch her attention. The next few entries in the journal might be interesting …

[Drannin]

The thought of Haniko Goto had thrown Argus into a bit of a tailspin. Old grudges died hard, after all. But as he mulled over Bree's journal entry, he shook his head. "Maybe Goto had an interest in this whole business. I don't know. But she's not sloppy enough to leave a trail." He scowled. "But Bree's reasoning... a spy in their midst... I highly doubt it was that Codoin girl, but what if she was right about a spy?" With a shake of his head, he gestured for Rose to keep reading.

(OOC: Sorry. Canadian Thanksgiving stuff kept me away from a computer for a little bit.)

[Graybeard]

[OOC: No prob, hope your holiday was fun! /OOC:]

Sister Rose shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said to Argus. “I just have the feeling we’re missing something here. Let’s keep going.” She turned a page.

1 June: Aha! I have an idea of how to make it so the communication with Ratherton is two-way, not one-way. It will have to wait for the next time he draws the duty of coming out to send a report, but it should work. There is a Millenarian temple down in Gervasiel, and –

“Millenarians,” Rose murmured, looking up from the journal. “They keep cropping up, don’t they? From that clandestine army in Provatiel, to the man that ran off with Brad’s ex-wife, to the fact that that Bindiel boy we rescued from the Peaceful Dead was Millenarian. And above all, Father Egbert was Millenarian too. I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to detect a pattern here.” Without waiting for a reply, she resumed reading.

- I know a Millenarian priest up here who owes me a favor. I bet I can arrange it so I can use them to pass a message. I should be able to talk around what’s going on down there so they don’t learn things they are not meant to know. The Millenarians are closer to us than most of the heretic sects, so I don’t even feel too bad using them to get this done. Besides, if they get uppity, I know a little something that might be grounds for an inquiry …

Is she talking about Egbert? Rose wondered. He hadn’t exactly kept it a secret that he was part of that denomination, and Rose knew, although Bree apparently did not, that the Inquisitor’s trip to Kiyoka was to deal with a mess that had had Egbert right at the center of it. She bent to the diary one more time.

3 June: My idea will work! I called in the favor from Father Horace, and he says the Millenarian temple in Gervasiel will be glad to help make contact with Ratherton. Speaking of whom, some general nattering in his last report, nothing new except they’re getting some package ready for transport back to the university. Transport by what? Dragon? Demon? I should find that out and see if I can learn anything that way. This whole episode in that forty-miles-from-nowhere place is beginning to smell funny to me!

“And to me,” Rose had to admit …

[Graybeard]

Sister Bree’s journal held little of interest for the next few days; even as fierce an inquisitor (small “i”) as Bree, Sister Rose was mildly amused to note, had to do paperwork sometimes. It was also interesting that she passed over the Cardinal Inquisitor’s return from Kiyoka almost without comment. Clearly whatever had happened to Cosimo there was nothing that he wanted to talk about. More intriguingly, neither did his retinue, and Rose knew full well that within a unit, tongues would wag. However, they didn’t seem to wag when Bree was around. It wasn’t at all unlikely that her stern, forbidding – that was the polite word – demeanor might cause the gossip circles not to include her directly, but she’d already demonstrated an aptitude for snooping on conversations she wasn’t meant to hear. As she read, Rose discovered something that she wasn’t expecting, but about herself, not about Bree.

I feel sorry for this woman.

She’d started out believing that Sister Bree was just another functionary in an office not known for its personal warmth and pleasantness. The picture that was developing was definitely not in that “just another functionary” class. She’d been as much of an outsider in the Inquisitor’s operation as here in Umbertiel. Her protestation, earlier in the diary, that her cat was her “only friend” was proving all too accurate. And yet … and yet … really, she was just trying to do her job. Yes, she was going about it with an – enthusiasm for the techniques of inquisition that Rose found sickening. Yes, her personal demeanor was off-putting. But she really believed in Luminosita. And she believed deeply that, subject to her … conservative … views of the way the church should operate, it was necessary to stamp out the heresies that threatened the Holy Church. Wasn’t that admirable in its own way?

Rose was perfectly happy to leave behind her suddenly equivocal views of the late Sister Bree when she found the next entry related to Gervasiel, dated on the exact date when Rose had received her own orders regarding the Artifact of Absonial. [OOC: We haven’t kept an accurate calendar of events in Errant Road, so this may or may not match with the actual number of nights Rose and company spent on the road. Not a big deal, maybe there was time dilation going through the warp gate or something … /OOC:]

8 June: News from down south. My two-way communications conduit through the Millenarians works! Ratherton was able to get my directive to keep an eye on Rebekah Codoin as a probable spy in their midst. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he says he has seen nothing whatever to suggest that she, or anyone else, is doing the watching. He says she seems interested in two things and two things only: working on the dig, and sleeping with Professor Apostate. No secret communications, in fact no Tsuirakuan gadgetry at all, as far as he can see. I wish he had enough magical skill to put up some detection magic, to see if there is something he’s missing. Unfortunately, he doesn’t, but he’s observant enough. So either the foreign devil (succubus?) is more capable than I thought, or someone else is doing the watching.

He also says that there’s now a courier on the way to pick up something found in the dig, something that Indianel is handling with great secrecy. That’s interesting. I haven’t picked up anything around here about such a courier. Is the Patriarch running his own operation down there? Certainly they haven’t brought this office into the picture at all. How can we help them if they don’t confide in us? (Rose snorted at the thought: confide voluntarily in an office that existed to sweat information out of people and use it against them? There was a most incongruous bit of naivete in Bree’s personality.) I think I’ll set some steps in motion to find out more about this courier and prepare to lean on him. With any kind of luck, he’ll be just heterodox enough that a little tickle from this office will make him sing like a canary.

If only you knew, Rose thought wryly, setting the book aside to rest her eyes for a few minutes; there was a little noise in the hallway trickling through the damping field, and she could stand to take a break and see what it was.

[Graybeard]

With the … unpleasantness … in the chapel concluded, Sister Rose went back to work on Sister Bree’s journal, and it wasn’t long this time before she found something interesting.

12 June: I’m most pleased with the cooperation the Millenarians are rendering in Gervasiel. Ratherton says they are not only serving as a conduit for him, they’re opening their temple to him when he goes to town for supplies. That is very helpful. That stiff-necked old priest in our temple down there, Father Amalric, cannot be counted on to be helpful. If I had more time, I’d try to get something on him, although by all accounts, that might be hard to do. A more cooperative temple in town can only be helpful.

Rose turned to Argus with a queasy look on her face. “This isn’t feeling right to me,” she said. “This was a woman who, as far as we can tell, was suspicious of everything outside the Orthodox Church, as well as a good many things on the inside. So where did this sudden love affair with the Millenarians come from?” She blushed briefly at the juxtaposition of “Bree” and “love” – a more incongruous turn of phrase could hardly be imagined. To get the thought out of her mind, she went back to reading … and something else interesting immediately came up.

In other news, Ratherton says the couriers are on the way south, to pick up whatever holy artifact Professor Apostate and his foreign tart found at the dig. He doesn’t know anything about them, and the Patriarch’s office isn’t being forthcoming, either. I’d lean on them for more information if I knew how. Word from the army is that the couriers have a military connection, and are, quote unquote, “weird.” Maybe that offers a way in; this office can damn well develop need-to-know if we want to. I’ll have to wait for Cosimo to get back for that, though.

This time, when Rose turned to Argus, she had a hint of a smile on her face. “Well, we’ve been pronounced ‘weird.’ I’ve been called worse, for sure. It sounds like the security system was holding, anyway; we always resisted tampering from the Inquisitor while I was on active duty.” While Kenny was alive … She resumed reading, to get that thought out of her head.

14 June: What in Luminosita’s Holy Name was the Patriarch thinking? The couriers have arrived in Gervasiel, and according to Ratherton, not only are there heretics among them, there are Tsuirakuans! Surely something must be wrong there! His Stuffiness still isn’t back from Kiyoka, where I hear things did not go well – surprise – so I can’t do anything immediately, but now it begins to sound like there might be a very interesting little inquiry to be made right in our back yard. “Who was the lamebrain that had that idea?” I ask Luci, but she just purrs and arches her back to be petted – no help at all. But I’ll find a way in, I promise myself. I’ll get my pet Gaetan ready for something. Meanwhile, word back to R that the Millenarians might help him be on the lookout for heretics too; I can’t trust Amalric to do anything but follow orders …

Rose shut the diary, her head spinning. “Whew. From the sound of it, Bree was right at the point of arranging a witch hunt, with you, me and Maduin featured in the role of witches…”

[OOC: Probably two more of these to go...]

[Graybeard]

[OOC: This is what Rose sees when she resumes reading the journal on the road to Getsemiel.]

To Sister Rose’s initial surprise, there was nothing more about Gervasiel in the journal for a few days. That seemed odd, Rose thought. Sister Bree certainly hadn’t lost any of her – enthusiasm for pursuing heretic, as was clear from the entries about events closer to home. Nor had she lost any her venom. So why nothing about the dig, particularly since things were clearly coming to a head down there?

Then Rose understood. The whole point, in fact, was that things were coming to a head – the couriers, meaning herself and colleagues, were arriving in Gervasiel, making contact with Avner Indianel, traveling out to the canyon. While Indianel was in town, meeting them, the guards had to be staying put in the canyon, protecting the site against Luminosita alone knew what. (Kurou? Haniko Goto? Something else? She still couldn’t get her mind around that part.) That wouldn’t leave Ratherton any opportunity to go into town himself and use his Millenarian communications channel. Well, that’s good; maybe it means he wasn’t able to tell her anything she could use against us, Rose thought … and then there was an entry that confirmed this hope, in a most grisly way.

17 June: Catastrophe! The Patriarch’s office says there have been multiple murders down at Gervasiel! No details yet, but Professor Apostate and his floozy were found dead in his room in town – and Ratherton is dead too. (I think they called him Rynovial, or something like that, but I know his true name, he was hiding it down there.) No wonder he stopped reporting. No details yet, but they say the crime scenes were hideous, they weren’t just killed, they were tortured for information. (“Amateurs,” I tell Luci. Professionals would either hide the bodies, or get rid of the signs of torture.) And she would know, wouldn’t she? Rose thought, and continued to read. I say a prayer for Ratherton’s soul; he was getting close to outliving his usefulness to me, but he was a follower of Our Lord Luminosita, and he deserved a better death. They don’t have any suspects so far. Indianel, at least, was definitely seen alive after the godless couriers left town – and I was disappointed to hear that that damned Bryce went with them. Well, maybe I can still find a way to hang these murders on him. For now, I’d better get ready for some field work. The Patriarch is supposed to be beside himself, and even Cardinal Crotchety was agitated about it when he gave me the news. That tells me my pet Gaetan and I are going to have a job to do … and this one scares me.

Rose looked up and rubbed her eyes; the reading was difficult because of the motion of the wagon. She turned to Argus. “There’s something here you should see …”