Quill wondered if he had just missed a clock tower or if the papergirl just judged by the shadows as he did, for she called at exactly the right time. The headline that morning was about the spirit mage being brought in from Spirithome, evidently for purposes of calming any intact undead miners long enough to bury them. Breakfast was sour cream, fish, and onions. Not the most aromatic breakfast, and if he were going to eat it for lunch he might reconsider, but lunch was with Noue at a cafe she evidently liked enough to insist he patronize with her.
Checking the brick in the alley, he found another of the puzzling scraps of paper, this one saying, “again?” He mused over what that could mean while he prepared the library blackboard. Things had been a little slow, and he suspected patrons of Dragon Tales the bookstore didn’t realize there was a Dragon Tales the library. So, he wrote in big letters, “Yes! You can borrow books completely free of charge!” Then he filled in the events calendar, wondering if he should arrange for more lectures on sorcery and the elemental spheres. Maybe something on fire sorcery and branding. It might cost a bit, but a brand like Glue had would save people such as himself from struggling to light kindling. Before rallying his volunteers, Quill took a moment to consider his friendship with Glue.
They had been friends a number of years, longer than he had known Parchment. He couldn’t quite recall how they had met, although he supposed Glue had come into the bookstore. It wasn’t one of the tourist traps that sold stories about the Claws of Fire and Ice, and might even have a few of their treatises on air sorcery. They had met during the fashionable hour for lunch, rather like he had been doing with Noue but deferring to Glue’s sense of inconspicuousness. Glue was an idealist, a trait they shared, but there were definite distinctions in the nature of their idealism. They were a pacifist, while Quill carried a rapier any time he wasn’t going to Church. But they were capable of meddling with people’s minds. It was an advanced use of the air sphere to touch upon the logic of another’s mind, and it was one in which Glue specialized. That had been an early spark to their friendship, Quill recognizing and respecting mastery of any subject.
But—a volunteer tapped Quill on the arm, asking if they should get started without him. They had been tentative around him ever since the terrible headache of Deco’s investigation. He rose and shook his head. He had a job to do, and he would do it well. He’d riddle out what was bothering him about Glue some other time. He suspected it wasn’t Glue so much as their association with Parchment, but he knew even less about Parchment and there was a great vagueness as to what his concern about her even was. He rallied his volunteers, saw them to their various tasks, and set about reshelving volumes four through six of Daring Kaliskast. Whoever had discovered the draconic propaganda was working through them at an admirable pace.
When lunch came, Quill rushed out the door, eager to spend time with Noue, feeling a sense that time with her would only grow more precious. He hoped that was only a reflection of the deepening emotional intimacy they would share, and in any event banished thoughts of doom or gloom for the nonce. She smiled and gave him a quick peck on the lips as they met at their go table, but then she took one of his hands and led him away to a bakery called Fresh Flours, an obvious pun on the growing season and their own baked goods. She ordered for both of them, a croissant roll of some kind filled with ham and cheese. Quill felt a bit at a loss as she both ordered and paid, but she seemed perfectly at ease with the dynamic. It wasn’t that he felt obligated to pay, so much as he was used to taking the lead.
As they settled down at a small table to let their pastries cool, she looked him squarely in the eye and asked what he wasn’t telling her. He raised his eyebrows, both at the question and at the surge of indignance he felt. It wasn’t the sort of question he expected to be asked by her in a cafe. His mind jumped to the piece of paper he’d found that morning. Taking her free hand in his, he asked in turn, “Do you have to leave on business any time soon?” He smiled, his question having startled her. She had evidently made no plans to leave Coldpass, at least for the time being, as she thought she was spending time with him. Certainly, she might move on eventually, but there was plenty of business to conduct in town even once the embargo was lifted. “You are, of course, spending time with me, but I didn’t want to presume. I can’t get into it now,” she nodded knowingly as he said this, “but yes, I’m… do you like surprises? Some people can’t stand them.” She took a smiling bite of her steaming pastry and nodded. Surprises were quite agreeable, when they were of the pleasant variety. “I would certainly hope it’s a pleasant surprise.”
The conversation moved on from there. Noue was finding a great deal of potential profit in buying goods from merchants eager to offload, currently unable to move anything thanks to the embargo imposed by Tome. Once it was lifted, which she had every confidence it would be, she stood to make a tidy profit even if it was currently straining her funds. “Should I have paid for lunch?” Noue laughed gaily. They had very different ideas of strained funds. A lunch with a man she was coming to love didn’t even factor into the same budget as buying trade goods.
They parted ways outside the shop, and it was pure chance that Quill glanced back for one more look at Noue as Burner approached her. He had flowers in one hand, and a knife in the other. This time, they looked to be hothouse flowers. His heart twinged at the thought of Noue in danger, but she had no need of him. In a matter of moments, Burner was disarmed and Noue was adding insult to injury by beheading the flowers he had brought with the stiletto she… had used before. Sometime.
That night, at the lounge, Quill had purposefully had Noue plan to meet them an hour after Glue and Parchment arrived. She was already a known quantity to the staff of the Manners Lounge, and would be escorted to their room when she arrived. As he had before, Quill bluntly put the question of Noue’s membership in the ranks of the Historians. Glue and Parchment exchanged a glance—Quill nearly missed the beginning of Parchment’s reply wondering when he would start exchanging such knowing glances with Noue—and she said, “We’ve discussed it. We both agree that she would make an excellent operative, but we think you’re just asking for heartbreak again, Quill.” Quill once again began the mental calculus of whether Parchment or Glue would be less necessary to the movement, were one of them to be replaced, when he felt a pressure on his mind.
With a start, he pictured his glyph and was locking the banks of fog back in place when it registered that Glue was laughing. “Oh, Quill, you are a romantic traitor. There is no way Noue will stay with us when this cell works so well, and you don’t actually have it in you to kill one of us. Not that you couldn’t, but you wouldn’t. Your identity is wrapped up in the greater good, but under that you’re a decent man.” Quill growled something about mind magic and not ferreting out every last secret. “Yes, I know, the greater good is greater than whether I’m helping people and I’m the morally inconsistent one. I’m sorry I don’t see the good in destroying entire cities to end a single dragon.” Quill snapped back that they hadn’t even had the gall to destroy an office or a mineshaft. “I don’t blow things up, it’s true, but I’ve been passing my research along to my contact—” Quill quipped that they shouldn’t be telling him that. Glue waved an unconcerned hand. “Pish tosh, I’ve put so many layers of sorcery on your mind that you’d go insane before you gave up any secrets. But anyway, I am plenty valuable without blowing things up. I refer you to the aforementioned layers of sorcery keeping our secrets.”
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They passed the next several sandglasses in thoughtful silence, passing around the hookah hose. Quill noted with no small measure of delight that Parchment had ordered the tea-flavored molasses in the hookah again, and hoped Noue would take it as the compliment it was. Finally, Noue arrived, with her a staffer carrying a plate of sandwiches. Of the group, Tome Junior seemed the most excited, and Quill foresaw himself waving the excitable toy drake away from his food again. Noue’s brow furrowed in concentration, and then she was once more fully herself with the group.
She plunked herself down on a cushion next to Quill, giving him an affectionate kiss on the cheek that had Parchment and Glue grinning. Quill waved them off and challenged them to go a day without similar exchanges of affection. Parchment gave him a look while Glue affected horror at the prospect. Evidently remembering their game from before, Tome Junior flounced his tail past Noue, spinning in place before she could even reach for him to try to nip her fingers. She laughed, and called him a smart little beastie. Then she turned to Quill and asked, quite plainly, whether he was ready to tell her what he was going to surprise her with. Once again, Parchment and Glue exchanged glances and smiles.
“Well… I need permission from my superior—” Glue interrupted with incredulity that Quill had even brought it up without permission from Spine. “I’m working on it! He’s already gone from ‘no’ to ‘again?’ so I think we’re a day from him conceding.” This time Noue interrupted, to ask who he’d inducted previously. “Ah, well… a boyfriend I had at the time. He was… why don’t I tell you about the Historians? If you don’t want to join, Glue will need to mess about in your mind—” Glue huffed that they did not “mess about” in people’s minds. Anymore, anyway. They were far more refined in their technique than that. “—but anyway. As you’ve gathered, the three of us belong to a cell-based underground movement known internally, and unfortunately to our enemies, as the Historians. We are so named because, well, because we keep history. The Age of Loss was not some accident, some planet-wide dark age brought on by unknown forces. It was a very intentional effort by dragons to bury their bodies. Millions of bodies, at the very least. They destroyed historical texts, drove prophets mad. Cities are stone, but we know that cities used to be… I’m distracting from the point. Dragons destroyed the history of mankind, and they created the Wholist Church to forward their ends only after the One God made it clear He would send prophets until humanity ran out of bodies to divinely inspire.”
Noue was listening attentively, and nodding periodically. She mused out loud that humans must have some purpose to dragons, if they weren’t simply wiped out. “They tried that, we think. Even our records are fragmented. There was a great dragon war where humanity were the conscripts. And when we tired of fighting our fellows for the gold and gluttony of dragons, we turned against them. We nearly destroyed them, until they changed their tactics. Something was lost, we don’t know what, and the Age of Loss began.” Noue nodded again.
Quill went on to explain the structure of the Historians. While they had informal allies outside areas of draconic influence, the initiated operated in cells of three, each with no more than a single extracellular contact, to prevent dragons from simply rending the society from the face of Orth. He noticed her making a mental headcount, and knew he would have to reckon sooner or later with the four-ness of Quill, Parchment, Glue, and Noue. But he’d known that, in the foggy portion of his mind, for several days, though he was no closer to reconciling with it.
Noue’s eyes lit. “The artifact Tome is trying to find, it’s something you don’t want him to have. The mine collapse… how much of an accident was it?” Parchment looked uncomfortable and turned away. Noue pursed her lips. “I see. So you killed all those people… to delay Tome getting what he wants?” Quill protested that they needed time, that it was for the greater good. “You can’t just collapse the mine over and over, what is your long-term plan?” Glue and Parchment looked at Quill. It was his show to run, deciding what to tell, evidently. He answered that, mostly likely, they would have to destroy whatever artifact had survived from before the Age of Loss. They lacked the manpower necessary to kill Tome, the Dragonslayer was an ocean away and aging besides, the best they could do was deny him his objective. “You killed all those people, just to buy time to… what, kill more people? You don’t even know what you’re destroying! What if it could provide the means to liberate people from dragonkind? What if it could melt the glacier and let the passes be open so that they couldn’t tax merchants to death for the few traceable paths?”
Quill sighed. But with his glyph unlocked, he knew things that were normally locked away, such as events in Fief. He didn’t know the details, getting information out of a warzone was forever complicated, but there was talk of an armed uprising against the radiance dragon who had patronized the lineage of the White Queens all through the Age of Stone. The time was coming that an uprising would be possible. It just hadn’t come yet. “You say it hasn’t come yet, but if there’s an uprising in Fief, couldn’t there be one in Coldpass?” Quill shook his head, regretting the course the conversation was taking. Coldpass wasn’t a mobilized army. There had been circumstances they simply couldn’t replicate, here in the Sevens. At least not yet. “Peaceshield is already moving against dragons! They’ve destroyed the barrier spheres erected in their lands, and reject the patronage system!” Quill acknowledged this, and sighed. A revolution, in Barbery, would take a single squad of powerful spirit mages. The loose and wandering undead raised by the necromantic pulses of Mount Barber could be marshaled into an army. The Historians were moving on this, but it would take months to gather the forces needed and they had, at best, days before the artifact was unearthed. If they were successful in ousting dragons from control of Orth, they would have all the time in the world to unearth the secrets of Ages past.
Noue chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Could I think it over? Glue, your sorcery, is there some way you could cast on me so I can think about it while not being… without it being readable?” Glue took a deep breath of hookah smoke and exhaled it into a swirling orb in their left hand while their right reached for Noue’s temple.
That night, alone in his apartment, Quill meditated upon the concept of morality, sifting through his lore spirit’s knowledge of philosophy. As he asked himself rhetorical questions, he briefly felt a pressure on his mind, but it passed and slumber took him shortly after.
