Chương 127: Chapter 148 : Negotiation

After spending all of Sixthday in Broghton among the people, and then all of Seventhday morning attending church in Skydown among the people, it might seem surprising that I am choosing to go back to Broghton. But there is someone here for me to meet. In the afternoon, the sun is slanting down and drawing long bars of shadow across the streets. In this district, full of established workshops and trade bazaars, nobody painted murals of my image or built statues to my memory.

They mostly went about their own business, as they were neither threatened by the prosperity of the Fifth Quarter, nor benefited from it. I ran some hydrangea blue through my hair to color it, and nobody looked at me twice as I walked the street leading up to Kurosake's Import/Export. The woman with the white face and blue hair is not a local legend that everyone wants to talk to. I had walked past four times now from different angles to get a thorough look at the place, and now I was ready to finally approach.

Not the front door, obviously, that's where the traps would be. And not up to a window, that's where the rest of the traps would be. I'd already assaulted this lich a couple of times and he had to be getting wise to my methods by now. I lifted into the air, and soared up over the roof, and then slowly swept over, picked my angle and position- And a message popped into the air, carved in light.

"Please wait. We can talk this out. Tell me where you would feel safe to meet me." Well, damn. That's unexpected. I was all ready to blast my way in through the roof, but it seems he wants a more polite conversation than that. Now how did he get this message to come out here, so far from any surface he could have written his sigils onto? That was not something I thought his brand of magic could do.

My plan had been to bash through the ceiling, scramble all the ink and carvings in the place and neutralize whatever sigil-work he has set up to defend him. But I'm currently hovering fifty feet above his roof at an angle, and he has sent what looks to be an automated message as a projected hologram.

I'm inclined to believe that if he could automate a system to detect me, place me, and project a message to me, then he was capable of creating an automated system to detect me, track me, and shoot mana bolts at me until I am thoroughly dead. Which means I've badly underestimated the capacity of his spellwork. And that's not good. But if he could have killed me and instead chose to offer me a chance to talk?... that's better than just getting dead. And his mortal descendant did say he wanted to talk.

Not that I entirely trusted her. But this is not a situation where I get to engage only with people I trust. So, if he's offering me the chance to pick our meeting place, that's a fine offer of good faith, but since I already know that he wants to talk and doesn't want to kill me, it's rather unnecessary really. In any case, it looks like I'm scrapping my plan of bashing in through his rooftop. I fly back down, across the street, to a bench placed there. I paused, and extended my senses.

Runes and sigils carved into the wood, tickling at my awareness. I chuckled, and instead of sitting down I moved about a half block down the street and then started conjuring and curving. Paper and ink, and an owl to carry it. A note that told the lich that I would take a meeting with him at the fountain park near the butcher's guild. I rolled the paper, and handed it to the bird, and sent it flying away on its errand. I may have some trust for this, but I'm not ready to overdo it.

I could meet but I would try to guarantee neutral ground that he could not set up traps. There are a lot of hidden sigils near his office, but he can't have warded the whole city. I waited and made sure the door opened in front of the owl, and then I turned and left. I don't want to be visible from the door if anyone leans out looking, but I want to make sure my message is received. I hung around just that long and then I headed for the park. It was a very public space, very hard for anyone to do anything untoward.

There would be a hundred witnesses to any nastiness, and anyone trucking in necromancy cannot afford any attention to their doings. So, about as safe as I could get, really. I sat patiently for a half-hour, and less patiently for another ten minutes. And I was getting annoyed by the time the disturbance started. Good news! It's not a 'here comes a lich' disturbance. Bad news! It's a 'here comes a palanquin' disturbance.

A carried litter for four bearers, with an enclosed cabin with curtained windows to ensure total privacy for the occupant. Four hired porters were moving steadily, counting off a work song to keep their steps level and on the same beat. The litter was elaborately decorated with gold trim, ebony wood and thick waxy lacquer. And it was heading straight for me. I looked the thing over, and considered how many sigil defenses could be built into its frame.

Or how many sheets of paper worth of magical explosions could be packed inside it. It looked light, it might be carrying nothing but a few reams of paper with high-power area-of-effect wreck-your-day spells printed on them. An instinct tugged at the back of my neck, get the fuck out of here, get out, don't be here when this arrives. I do not have a history of finely-tuned instincts or intuition. More likely this is just my "I'm aware that there's a lich" instincts tingling.

So instead I tried to appeal to myself for logic. I was in one particular pub all day yesterday, and everyone knew where to find me. If this lich had really wanted me assassinated, that would have been the time to pursue me. Or shooting me down over his shop. This is an unreasonable fear. Except that I'm not necessarily worried about him throwing a death-hex or a mana-bolt or a firebomb at me. I'm worried that he's got something more insidious than death.

Some spells that will reveal my secrets, or that will twist me in torturous ways. Something much more involved than just an attack, and proportionately more awful. Something that you can't just set off at a moment's notice, and requires real set-up and prep-work. And that seems like a very legitimate fear to have. So, when they were fifty feet out, I formed a wall of air to hold them back.

"That's far enough," I told the porters.

"Set him down there." We were attracting a little bit of attention from passersby. Now, I don't expect him to shout back and forth across fifty feet to me, but I'm hoping his spells can't carry that far. And yeah, there's a bit of hope and guesswork involved. I'm not an authority on what sigils can and cannot do. I know what they did and did not do in Glitter. But that game left out a lot. And I've spent years here studying sorcery, not scrivening.

And even scriveners will give wildly different answers as to what their craft can and cannot do. It's practically a field of engineering; any time you ask "is this feasible" the answer will be "well yes but also no". I craft a paper cone and a length of string, and I sail it across to the palanquin which is being lowered to the ground. The curtain inside twitches aside, and something grabs the paper cone I've brought over. I tug the string taut, and speak into a matching paper cone.

"Can you hear me now?"

"I... I can?" came a rusty dusty voice.

"How is this? Not sorcery, surely."

"Just vibrations in the string converting to vibrations in the air," I said.

"We can speak this way, safe from one another." I could see a row of guards spreading through the crowd in the park, urging people to give me and the palanquin space. I don't recall telling him to bring a company of mercenaries.

"I see," he said.

"This is clever. Something too simple to be trapped. Simple paper, unmarked." He's giving me more credit for planning than I would have.

"I did not expect you to show up in a vehicle," I said.

"I had rather hoped we would speak face-to-face in the open." A crusty, musty laugh came down the string.

"You would need a place far more private than this park. I can hardly be asked to show my face in public, after all. Not without setting off a lot of hasty reactions." Oh. Right. You can't ask the lich to walk in the open down the street, people would freak out and set him on fire. I guess I just assumed that he has ways to disguise himself or divert attention, but I wouldn't know what those would be. Apparently, palanquin is easier.

"I am still learning your limitations and abilities," I confessed.

"Ah, and what an opportunity this is for us to discuss our mutual concern," he said.

"I wish to learn so much more about your abilities. You have done what I would have thought could never be done. I was once impressed by your abilities to wreak widespread devastation. And your abilities to travel vast distances. Intriguing. But that you were able to bypass a ward against the living and the dead and the undead as well. I can see your soul like smoke in a glass jar, occupying your body but not sealed to it.

I believe you may be alive in every conventional sense and yet still somehow be a lich in every way that matters. And this is far more unique even than your method of using simple air to blast a building to pieces."

"Oh," I said.

"Is that all? It's a unique condition I cannot explain or elaborate or recreate. It was given me directly by a goddess and to the best of my knowledge it has no parallel."

"Really?" he said, sounding disappointed.

"Because it looks like a simple Untethered Essence from here." I blinked in surprise, and stared at the paper cone in my hand like it had betrayed me.

"This is a surprising conversation. Yes, it's an Untethered Essence. So what does that mean?"

"Ah," he said.

"Now we have reached a point of mutual interest. And here is where we may begin to negotiate. You need the information I have, and you do not have any other way to -""No," I said.

"I've been offered the books on your craft and I turned them down. I don't need a damn thing from you." His voice was a strained hiss.

"Howwww? How could you refuse to know what you are?"

"Well, for one thing first: I don't trust you at all. Fuck's sake, dude, you took three major pieces of information from me rapid-fire and then when you finally found something that you thought might benefit you, then you decided it's time to talk terms. In that one step, you're someone I can't trust, even if there was literally nothing else between us. And there's a lot between us. You've been coordinating the secret betrayal of my family for over a century. I cannot leave that behind.

Also, nobody should ever trust a lich. For another thing, whatever you're about to offer me is just going to be some degree of necromancy. And I don't want to learn necromancy. I know enough about it to know that it literally cannot be used for any good purpose. That the best-case scenario is that I would be very bad at using it. Your whole life and unlife is a model case study in why people should not want to study necromancy. Third, this is not about knowing what I am.

I have got so much other shit going on, and this is just one small part of it. The stakes are a lot lower than you think." There was a long pause on the line.

"Is this the part where you explode me again?"

"Don't talk stupid," I scoffed.

"I couldn't detonate you right here without injuring many innocent civilians. This park is so we would be at a mutual impasse. I thought you might have something useful to me. Strategy. Secrets. If all you want to talk about is my essence, I think we're done here."

"How long have you known about me?" he asked.

"All my life," I told him.

"And I have moved against you every time it was permissible and feasible for me to do so. By the way, your family is no longer the Lesser House of Harigold. There will be no more easy wins with that cheat." A clattering sigh rattled down the length of the string.

"It would have been too much to hope that they would last forever. Such a shame. But not unexpected. You do understand that now that there is no chance of my family inheriting Meadowtam, I have no further use for discretion and secrecy, right?"

"What?" I said. Which is not a useful thing to say under those circumstances. The four long poles that the porters had carried all twisted like serpents for a second, the palanquin coming to life. The four strong men all shouted in surprise and backpedaled, as the four brass ferrules on the caps of the wooden poles all slammed down against the ground and pushed, heaving the cabin up into the air like a living creature atop four strong legs. I started to craft singularity, and pulled back.

"Get out of the way!" I yelled at the porters. They stumbled back, unwilling to take their eyes off the thing. It made them slow and clumsy, they were still too close. The fucker brought hostages to a mage battle. Evil fucking lich. And I, like a goddamn moron, told him out right I wouldn't use explosions until the civilians were safely clear. I really do get overconfident. Well, time to do everything I can except blow him up. Step one: channeling lightning.

After all, I run into trouble when I don't have time to think things through. So I should activate the ability that gives me time to think things through. Lightning in my mind, everything slowed down so I could make out the details, and start forming plans. The palanquin was turning itself, and the decorative golden dragon's head on the front of it seemed to be limbering itself up, stretching, snapping its jaws.

It had been a large, ornate golden boss on the front, but now the neck began to unwind and unfurl, from a tidy spiral shape to a long, sinuous appendage with some very sharp teeth and jagged horns on the end of it. It was moving in slow motion right now, but its eyes were turning to track me, the neck bunching up for a strike. I gathered the levinbolt speed into my mind and perceptions, and got ready to tap it briefly into motion, just for short stretches so it could not exhaust me too badly.

I move the essence from one part of my being to another. With one hand I started the gestures to allow me to curve gold, I could sense the dragon-head lash and the dense, glamorous metal. He was smart to use gold, it was easily carved in tiny detail, gold could hold an amazing amount of layers. And almost no sorcerers in the world could direct their powers against it directly, gold was one of the rarest essences to attune. Those that could tended to be very quiet about it, as it was quite illegal.

Unfortunately for him, I'm that second category, the quiet ones. But with my off hand I whipped out some well-needed distractions. I needed time for the porters to bail out, and for the citizens in the park to get out of here. And- dammit, I just realized that he also arrived with an armed honor guard and I did not even pay attention to them. He's got mercenaries. I really had hoped they weren't going to be a factor because I really hoped that this was not going to turn into a street battle. This is gonna be rough.

The distraction I needed was owls, I had already cast to conjure them and I hurled a flock and flurry of the huge, flapping creatures at the covered wooden coach. I know that his specialty is sigilry, which uses definitions and associations unlike sorcery's use of affinities and essences. So if that golden dragon is moving sinuously like a snake, he has probably worked it to respond like a serpent rather than just up-down-left-right movements. And like a serpent, it had an almost-reflexive instinct to snap at prey.

It wasted its time lashing at the owls, and I watched in slow motion as its curling coils drifted to pursue the feathery diversions. I was plotting my move, to cast my spells in order, when his next gambit became obvious. The "legs" of the palanquin had been the four poles that these four porters had held onto and carried along. And now those legs were glowing. Not the whole thing. Just the small iron staples that were driven into the wood at specific angles and distances.

Iron sigils pressed into the smooth lacquered wood. And when those iron sigils lit up, so did the hands of the four porters that had carried them in. The marks pressed into their palms by the staples. Shit. I started backpedaling, engaging flight to get more distance. Two of these porters were actually really close to me, I had been maneuvering to try to get myself between them and the lich's conveyance so I could protect them. And now that glow in their hands is sinking into the flesh, and mutating.

The mutation happened fast, shockingly quick. I could see the whole thing in glorious, revolting slow-motion detail. The crackle of bones expanding, the phalanges suddenly extending and protruding, splitting open the flesh of the fingertip like a flower blooming, sharp red-stained bone now showing talon-like at each nail.

The bodies began to desiccate rapidly, their living organs cannibalized by the sudden transformation, teeth jutting from their lips, cheekbones swelling upwards while the browbone closes down, hiding the terrified eyes from the world. A rhythmic crackling sound like running a rolling pin over potato chips, and the ribs began breaking up and reorganizing into - Nah I'm not hanging out to see how this ends. Hostage time is over.

"God I hope you can feel pain," I muttered, and black holes began consuming the palanquin, rending it into shards and splinters. I saw a flash of bone-white skin and flapping gray-orange beard before the body within was pulled into the compactor. Man I hope all the innocent noncombatants are safely far away. I tipped backwards into a portal and sealed it, then released the blast.