“Are you quite done, Mr Asano?”
Jason let out a tension-relieving sigh.
“You did ask,” he said.
“I think we’re done here. You can have your thief, Mr Asano. The agreement with the city is quite clear on this point, and I will see it is enforced. Try not to make more trouble than you have to.”
The Adventure Society holding facility was a stone tower. Not the usual Greenstone, but a dark grey. It saw little use and had little capacity, which is why the Ustei had been penned up in the marshalling yard. Only the Ustei leadership had been held in the tower. An adventurer entered, shoving two surly men in manacles ahead of him. Inside the only door was a small administrative area, where an Adventure Society functionary sat behind protective glass.
“I need to put these two in lockup,” the adventurer told Albert, the man behind the glass.
Albert regularly worked the jobs hall a lot and had an eye for faces, but he didn’t recognise this adventurer. That had been happening a lot lately. With so many people on the expedition, the director had been pressing the more nominal members of the Society into service. This adventurer looked more rough and tumble than the usual noble fop, though.
“I’ll need to see a copy of the contract they were taken under,” Albert told him.
“No contract,” the adventurer said. “These two idiots tried to mug the wrong guy.”
“If it isn’t contract related,” Albert said, “then we can’t keep them here. Take them to the courthouse gaol.”
“I’ve got stuff to do. Just let me stash them here and we can sort the rest out later.”
“This isn’t a hostel,” Albert said. “We’re not taking them.”
“You’d rather I let two hardened criminals loose right here?”
“If you like,” Albert said. “We’re in the middle of the Adventure Society. If they have half a mind, they’ll run like there’s a fire behind them.”
The adventurer threw Albert a sneer, but dragged the two men away. Around an hour later he was back. Along with his two prisoners, he had brought Guy Spalding, the Adventure Society official that was Albert’s supervisor.
“Bertinelli,” Spalding scolded Albert. “This adventurer’s prisoners need to be taken upstairs.”
“Sir, he didn’t have a contract.”
“I don’t care,” Spalding said. “Have them sent up, right now.”
Albert frowned.
“If you insist, sir, but I’ll need to process them first.”
“Don’t bother with that; just send them up. On my authority.”
“With respect, sir, you have the authority to tell me to do my job. You do not have the authority to tell me not to.”
“What? If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do as I say.”
“With respect, sir, I strongly suspect what’s good for me is not factoring heavily into your reasoning.”
“Are you going to do it, or not?”
“No, sir, I’m not. It’s quite obvious something shady is happening and I suggest you give it up before you do something that comes back on you.”
Spalding glared at Albert through the glass, then turned on the adventurer who had brought him there.
“Let’s go,” Spalding barked.
“You’re joking,” the adventurer said to Spalding.
“I said let’s go!”
Shaking his head, the adventurer followed reluctantly. Outside, the adventurer turned on Spalding.
“What the hell was that? I did what you said and you messed it up twice. Now there’s no way to get to the girl quietly.”
“Don’t talk at me like I’m another one of Silva’s lackeys,” Spalding warned.
“A man who gambles as hard and as badly as you,” the adventurer said, “should be concerned when he can’t keep his promises.”
“Don’t threaten me,” Spalding said. “Look where you are.”
“And how would it go for you if your new director found out how deep in you are? The world’s changing, Spalding. Being on the take isn’t as easy as it used to be. You have to know what you’re doing these days, and you’ve had it too easy for too long. Silva isn’t his father, willing to indulge your whims. You need to show us you can adapt to the times, or things are going to get very nasty for you.”
107
All the Good People We Can Get
The expedition was going island by island, searching for traces of what was disrupting the astral space. They made their first discovery on the third island, a five-sided column, about as tall as a person and covered in magical engravings. One of the adventurers, who was also a member of the Magic Society, examined it while Danielle Geller hovered nearby.
“Well?” Danielle asked.
“Definitely some kind of astral magic,” the man said. “We could have used Landemere Vane, if someone hadn’t gone and killed him. He was a dab hand at this kind of thing. Even Clive Standish would have been a good pick. He’s only iron rank, but he knows his astral magic.”
“I didn’t pick the expedition members,” Danielle said. “Complaining about what we don’t have isn’t productive, in any case. What can you tell me?”
“Not much,” the man said. “It’s a relay for a larger effect. Some kind of astral magic on a very large scale but I’d need to find a central node to get more. Even then, this isn’t like anything I’ve seen. We need an astral magic specialist.”
Danielle scowled. The makeup of the expedition was an absolute mess. Every prominent family in Greenstone wanted to go along and Elspeth Arella had accepted them all. It was too many people with too little ability, to the point Danielle had wanted to pull out her family’s participation entirely. She couldn’t convince enough of the family leadership for that, so she ended up agreeing. When things went inevitably wrong, she could at least mitigate the damage if she was present. She did lodge a formal protest over Elspeth Arella’s head, however, directly with the Adventure Society’s Continental Council.
“Large scale,” she said unhappily. “Large enough to disrupt a massive, desert-spanning astral space?”
“I would say exactly large enough. If we can find some more of these, I might be able to pinpoint a central node. That might lead us to whoever set all this up.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Danielle said, patting the man on the shoulder. “Good work.”
Jason and Vincent rushed through the Adventure Society campus towards the prison tower. With them were Jory and Belinda, who had hurried from Jory’s clinic after Jason sent an anxious message through his voice chat power. The four of them were walking swiftly, not breaking into a run only to avoid attention.
“I’m an idiot,” Jason said as they marched. “I was so impressed with myself. Pure hubris. I stupidly forgot that the most fundamental aspect of corruption is working around the rules, not within them.”
“I don’t know why the director is doing this,” Vincent said.
“She has a number of compelling reasons. Leverage on the Duke, to start with. If one of his judges makes a shady ruling regarding the service agreement between the city and the Society, the director gets another arrow in her quiver. Then there’s Lucian Lamprey. I bet he was willing to cough up some reforms he couldn’t care less about in return for the director going along with it.”
“But getting rid of corruption is her whole agenda,” Vincent said. “I don’t understand her turning around and using it herself.”