Chương 306: Report

"He's using some of his Academy girlfriends for models," Belisa reported.

"And he's going to be pressing the idea that the new fashion trend is sunlit salons instead of chandelier galas. He's got all these artworks and lighting effects, showing off how light and casual it would be."

"Yeah, that'd just about cripple me," I sighed, setting down my pencil. So much for paying attention in geography class today.

"In one step that would basically remove my voice and presence from the decision-making process of aristocratic society."

"Only for a little while," she said.

"Come autumn, they'll all change their minds. When there's not enough sun and it gets cool again, they'll be right back in the ball room." She patted my hand to comfort me. What a wild transformation from me holding her hands a month ago, when I was the only comfort she had.

"It's enough," I said.

"It's more than enough. And the timing is perfect for him."

"The paintings did look very fetching," she pointed out.

"And it might not be intended as an attack. Everyone is always trying to do something innovative but not disruptive, and the veranda-bonnet look is a good play for him." She gnawed at her lower lip.

"Belisa," I said slowly and low, like calming an animal, "what do you think?"

"He never mentioned you by name!" she protested.

"He might..." she trailed off, whatever argument she was winning in her head was lost as soon as she tried to say it out loud. I did not press, I just sat. If she had a really convincing argument for why my brother was not planning to screw me over, I wanted to hear about it. No irony, if she had convincing evidence it really would be a huge weight off my shoulders and a huge target off my back. I watched her to see if the evidence she had gathered was really enough to sway her. It should be good evidence, right?

She was not just invisible, she was imperceptible, people would rearrange their memories to reconcile the way she altered their perceptions. So after looking after my brother for a few days, I really wanted her unvarnished opinion. Her perceptions, the understanding she had pulled together from everything she saw without my preconceptions. She put her hands together, massaging the heel of her left palm with her right thumb. She stared at them as she spoke.

"He doesn't mention you. Not out loud. Like he avoids saying your name. But there's these silences, or things left unsaid. A break where a name could go. A lot like how you often don't talk about him. You two have that in common." Okay, I'm going to unpack that a lot later. I don't do that do I? Does he do that? Do we both do that? Why? Later. She curled her fingers around her other hand.

"He's got this whole chart on a calendar. Where to go to get attention for his birthday party, which military balls he's going to visit, things like that."

"I suppose the military balls are all scheduled for early summer, peaking at the first week of Summerhigh?" I said, dryly. And bitterly. Her look was sharp.

"How did you know? That's really specific. I would say eerily specific, but, uh, you're you."

"No, you're right, it is eerie," I sighed, and slumped a bit, my elbow on the desktop and my chin resting in my palm.

"All right, I'm gonna drop the really heavy stuff on you, things you're going to need to know. And, honestly, you were going to learn soon anyway. There's going to be a war in a few months-" Her hands slammed down on her desk and she started to push herself upright.

"What? We have to-""No no," I admonished, gesturing her to sit.

"Don't get me wrong, you've got the right reaction there. And if I was just learning this, I'd want to run out and warn people too. But this war is arranged, if you follow me. The right people all made a nodding agreement months ago, they're making handshake deals right now, the wheels are already turning and this is going to happen. The armies are being trained and levied, the strategies are being sorted out, the weapons are getting stockpiled.

And also, the grain shipments for those armies have been scheduled, the interest markets are being invested based on those strategies, and the kickbacks have already been paid for the weapon stockpiles. This thing is not just inevitable, it's economic." She sat, horrified.

"How do you know about - oh, your visions. Right. How does Nathan know about it?"

"Nathan's in the thick of it," I said.

"He didn't need to be but he did choose this. He's going to be supporting one faction, and acting as their figurehead. I will be supporting the other faction, and they're going to hold me up as their public leader."

"Wait, what?" She flinched back from this.

"There's going to be a war, and your brother and you are going to be leading the different sides? Do you know how crazy that is?"

"Intimately," I promised her.

"Anyway, neither of us is really going to be in charge of anything. We're going to help where we can, presumably, but neither of us is going to be in charge of anything of substance. Not enough to stop what is going to happen. Not enough to change the real outcome. But, enough that maybe we can save a lot of lives." Just saying those words made me feel tired. Fatalism is exhausting.

"That's why you're doing this? To save lives?" she sounded skeptical. Under the circumstances, that's understandable. It takes a hell of a lot of background information before this situation starts to make sense. On the other hand, anyone can understand 'power hungry bitch'.

"This and so much else," I told her, turning to give her good eye contact, to make it clear I am not hiding anything here.

"That's honestly one of my foremost guiding principles." She reached up and ran her hand over the sides of her head, the clean bristles that had changed the shape of her hair, her face, her silhouette, her understanding of herself.

"I think Nathan would say the same thing," she pointed out. She was not his love interest anymore, but her loyalties did not shift instantly. Not every love-interest path progressed at the same rate, and it looked like she and I are still in early days, despite me working on her quest line for over a year. Still, I've learned a lot.

"You were listening in on their conversation," I prompted.

"Did it sound like his plans involve saving lots of lives?"

"Well, no, but his plans also didn't sound like he was preparing for a war," she pointed out.

"It was a fashion show. He's working with a few models, girls from the school."

"Hmm. Curigi Ghant, Delizabeth Capstan, Filly Coltorn, Lyric Vainting and Zauria Uncin," I guessed, leaning back in my seat to stare up at the ceiling.

"He probably has Josse Salles and Sicimi Safis in support roles." Her look turned incredulous, disbelieving. She tugged a notebook out of her bookbag and flicked through it, looking for the page.

"Those names again?" she prompted, looking at her notes. I repeated them, and she tapped her notebook's pages seven times as I listed seven names. She turned back to me.

"I want to ask you how you know that, even though I know how you know that. It's just still so eerie! How can you know who he has with him but not know what he's up to?" Gods, how to start explaining that to her, I mused to myself. Instead, change the subject.

"I don't suppose you can tell me anything else that he's doing there?"

"I'm not sure," she said. I'm going to consider this to be a very normal reluctance of someone who does not want to be recruited to snoop and spy on other people. I had teased her in this far with the line that she should keep an eye on him to see if he's doing anything shifty.

And what she's seen so far has not convinced her that she's doing good work for good people- from her perspective this could still be all about a young woman with known instabilities and criminal sensibilities showing a weird obsession with the seemingly innocuous habits of her twin brother. So, balanced on that cusp, she was still holding out on me. But there's a tone to her, like she's leaning to my side. I think she's seen something that helped convince her that she's not told me about yet.

It would be useful if I could puzzle it out. But if he's still talking about his plans as if he's holding a fashion show in front of his love interests, then he's probably not speaking freely in front of them like I have been. He's not showing them as much trust. But to fair: his love interests are the likes of lovable goofball Dizzy Capstan, Filita the childhood friend, the aloof and stubborn Zauria. I've got the Ruthless, the Assassin, the Huntress, the Broken.

It makes more sense that I can go to my coterie and say "hey gang let's fight a shadow war", but his harem would probably recoil in horror. Think Natalie, think. Intellect 11. Charisma 10. You're supposed to be good at this. Draw the connection, his current activities to the sort of criminality that she doesn't want to believe he's involved in. Ah. There's the connection. It's causative.

"Did my brother happen to mention how he got started in fashion design, who taught him, whose designs he's borrowing?" I asked, keeping my tone carefully light.

"He may have mentioned a name. Gharie?" She clenched her jaw. She was not ready to answer. I'm on the right track. I might be out of my league against my brother, but I am actually good at this. So I told the story, and included details. The kind that can be checked up on. About me being accosted last spring, and humiliating him before his peers. About the sigil-marked shears, sympathetic magic. About Nathan's help in capturing him alive.

About his association with Kralcit, verified by Nathan in front of several witnesses. About Nathan and Bruce leaving with Gharie in a carriage, and Bruce coming back alone. My conversations with Nathan, about the mysterious associates that had held Gharie captive for some months. About Gharie returning to Byeview, sent by Nathan as an incompetent double-agent. About Nathan learning fashion design from the captive. And then something concrete.

I opened a small portal, just enough to get my hand in and find something that was too dangerous and too valuable to leave in a big or in my dorm, and too scary to leave in a chest at the Harigold Hearstcliff residence. A pair of steel scissors, more like shears, with long dagger-like blades, and engraved sigils on the inside edges, the cutting surfaces.

"These scissors," I said, passing them over.

"What are the sigils for?" she asked, looking at it. I narrowed my eyes, glaring at the steel device.

"You can't use just any piece of hair or fingernail or blood for sympathetic magic. Sigils are definitions. Taking someone's hair to use in a spell just controls the hair that was used. You need special processes so that the definitions will preserve the association. So that the hair is the person and not just the hair. It's the main reason that sympathetic magic is not used more often. It remains a very narrowly focused practice, a fairly small community." She handed me back the scissors, and shivered.

"What could it be used for? If it had worked?"

"In theory?" I said.

"Anything. Anything at all. They could make an ink that would shape sigils that affect me from anywhere no matter how far. Any spell they wanted." She turned that over in her head. I don't know what she was thinking. But I feel like I know what I'd be thinking if I was in her position. She had just come back from a year spent in someone else's mercy, subject to whatever spells someone felt like working on her. Imagine spending the rest of your life like that.

Even when you walk free, you're still imprisoned, still at their mercy. Every room and every street and every city is just another prison cell when someone holds that power over you. I put the scissors into the portal, and closed it. She blew out a relieved breath, pressing her hands to her shoulders.

"So, it's not really a military look per se, but it is very close," she said.

"He used the word 'homage', that it was about honoring military service. But the dresses, the women's clothes, are all very frilly and floofy, like. And the short one, Josse, said she could not take anyone seriously in a dress like that, and Nathan just, like, smiled and didn't say anything. And Curigi mentioned that she still shivers any time Nathan picks up a pair of scissors. I thought maybe she meant that he had cut someone with scissors, but I understand now.

Oh, and he's been talking to the planning committee about arranging-" [Quest Checkpoint: Cite Unseen. +10XP, Advancement: The Broken] I got my own notebook and wrote as fast as I could, while she unraveled his plot.