Intelligence Debriefing
Scattering sand ground from a drinking glass that had once touched the lips of a being he could neither remember nor name, Amilar Vondy paced the circuit of a small room in the caves beneath Lookshy. For an hour, he held the Mudra of Separation and re-invoked the Private Plaza of Downcast Eyes, the spell that warded the secret place.
When he was finished, he joined the other two Seventh Legion officers at the long table. “Time for we three to meet again, eh?” He smiled, but his smile was grim.
Yushoto Albia rubbed her gnarled fingers together. “You’re not in a position to joke, Taimyo. It was largely from your recommendation that the General Staff threw the Seventh’s lot behind – ”
“I stand by my deci – ”
“Be crotchety and old on your own time, dammit!” The third in the trio, Karal Linwei, rose from her seat. “Whatever happened in the past, right now we’ve barely managed to pull ourselves out of open war, and the question is if we want to jump back in. I’m in charge of the First Field Force, so it’s my name first on this report. I need information.”
The two older dragon blooded looked away. “Yes, Taimyo,” they muttered.
“Right, then. Just as when the Anathema first tried to parlay with us,” Linwei began, and she ignored the pointed look that Vondy shot Albia, “the Marukan is divided between warring factions. There are more than two, now, though. So start with our oldest concern, the Mask of Winters.”
“We’re certain, at this point," Vondy said, "that the Mask is spreading into the plains. His champion, called the Prince Resplendent in the Ruin of Ages, if you can believe the name, has already butchered three villages and an entire wing of the Vermilion Legion who rode out to stop him. The reports are gruesome, if you care to read them."
Linwei shook her head. "All alone? Just one man? To think there's anyone alive in this age who possesses so much power..."
Vondy spoke on, with grim resolve. "I think it's clear that we've underestimated the Mask so far. And right now, we don't know how far he’s planning to spread. The only information the Security Directorate has is coming from Marukani refugees; the Mask’s rebuffed everything else we’ve tried.”
Yushoto Albia shifted uncomfortably in her seat. When she spoke, her voice was low. “The Intelligence Directorate hasn’t been able to find out anything more than that, either.”
“Taimyo?” Karal Linwei raised an eyebrow.
“This is beyond top secret.”
“This is hardly the time to hold back.”
Albia sighed. “I could be court-martialed for speaking of this...”
“Taimyo.”
“Ghosts.” Albia drew a long, shuddering breath. “We hired three Sijanese necromancers to bind a scale of Seventh Legion ghosts into service as deep-cover operatives. Twisted their corpus, re-shaped their gear, to let them fit in in Thorns. They didn’t remember they were ours anymore, but they had a trigger time to awaken and report back with what they’d learned.
“Our ancestors?” Vondy blinked.
Linwei grew pale. “A whole scale?”
“Understand that we were desperate. Nothing else had worked; no sorcery, no living spies. With the Mask on the move and no Anathema buffer the stakes had become imaginably high. We never thought…”
“The Mask found out.”
Albia nodded. “We’re not sure how. He’s got them, though. Worse, they went native.”
“Tien Yu,” Vondy cursed. “What if this gets out?”
“It can’t. The necromancers met with… bandits… on the way back to Sijan. Only four officers in the Intelligence Directorate know, and now you.”
“And the Mask,” Vondy said.
“He’ll use this against us; leak it when we’re at our most vulnerable, when morale is lowest.”
Karal Linwei steeled her jaw. “Then at least we have a little time. Move on to something more immediate.”
Yushoto Albia jumped at the chance. “The Roseblack and her Vermillion Legion. We have spies in her camp, and they report that she’ll be moving back into our territory soon, under a white banner.”
“Where’s she headed?”
“That’s where things get interesting…”
