entered the room, heading straight for their table. They’d all jumped to their feet, assuming defensive postures, but after a few words, they’d sat, Crymson’s ears particularly attuned.
After Quintel’s death in Fayne, somebody had picked up on his disappearance and reported it to his superiors, who scrambled to find a replacement for his now vacant seat, one that normally bore the brunt of the Cao Fen’s labor on the eastern side of Prolifia. The discussion had been brief, almost nonexistent, and rather than asking, the group had summarily elevated her to the rank of Archbishop, filling the stark void. Crymson had figured that they had meant her to be a temporary fix until they’d found a more suitable replacement, so she had taken steps to solidify her new station, a task that had busied her for some months.
The others had left her behind, heading back to Dradenhurst, letting Crymson put the pieces together, new post allowing her a degree of unprecedented power, formerly sealed records opening and knowledge normally whispered out of earshot now written up for her as reports.
Alocar walked inside Brewmaster’s, his beard newly regrown, white without a hint of grey. He’d managed to shed more of his prosperous man’s gut, and all that remained of it was a slight bump in the shirt’s fabric, the leanness of his figure lending him a more commanding air. The stump of his left hand was hidden beneath the fall of his sleeve, but he strode with it out to his side, a natural rhythm to its swing.
Seconds behind, the door opened, admitting Slate and Teacher. Slate struck a pose, hands on his hips as he surveyed the room. Nothing had changed about him, nor Teacher, the big guy standing there with his perpetual half-smile, living life as one did a slow-moving dream.
Alocar slid into his chair with a gentleman’s elegant dignity while Slate pulled his out and turned it around, placing his forearms atop its back and his chin atop his forearms. Teacher fell into his, a beer somehow already in one giant hand.
“Where’s Isaac?” Crymson asked.
Turning his chair so that he faced the crowd, Alocar answered, “We don’t know. He’s been missing this last month you’ve been gone, haven’t heard a word from him.”
Crymson nodded. “We have a problem.”
“So nothing has changed.” Slate lifted a finger to the barmaid. “Problems are the only things we know how to handle, everything else is a fucking bore.”
“This one is perhaps a bit more serious than the others. You remember what Angras told us of, about this army of the undead? Well, it’s there, and it’s real.”
Alocar leaned closer. “How do you know?”
“Does it matter? My new position gives me leeway to things I wouldn’t otherwise have access to, and it’s enough to say that the little I’ve found was more than I needed to scare me into coming here. Those guards we fought with the king? There are more of them, a lot more, and from what I’ve heard, they’re still being created, mass produced.”
The barmaid, long red braid swinging behind her back, brought a beer mug over and handed it to Slate, which he accepted with a small wink but no words. After she’d walked away, a blush on her cheeks, he said, “We’ve done our parts – more than our parts, if you ask me. I’m not getting wrapped back up in this mess.”
“The entire country is at risk, Slate!” Crymson had to strive to keep the heat from her voice. “You don’t care at all?”
A sip of his beer. “Not really.”
Crymson didn’t have a reply.
Slate nodded, pushing the last half of his beer Teacher’s way, who promptly gulped it down. “I’m assuming your bleeding heart can’t take the idea of your precious Prolifia drowning in dead people, can it, Old Man?”
“You assume correctly.” He licked a forefinger and smoothed his wooly eyebrows into place. “But what would you propose us do?”
“I can’t do anything from the outside. It’d be too suspicious, and I’m expected back in Fayne, soon. But this thing is big, really big, and I can do more work from within anyway. Plus, I’m high enough in the hierarchy now that they’ve requested a favor of me, one that I’m looking to you with, Alocar.”
“And what is that?”
“The Cao Fen have sent word out to a few of their middling-upper people – namely, ones like me. They need a few old-timers, ones with qualifications to lead, and they asked me to find somebody. And so here