This post has the following content warnings:
A utilitarian Easterner lands on Vanyel during the Karsite War.
Permalink

There is a knife in Janos's chest!

Total: 603
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

This makes it an excellent time to think about the future of the empire!

Permalink

As an Imperial Kinsman, Janos is only under seventeen compulsions, carefully ranked in priority in case of conflicts. The first five of those are irrelevant, since he’s not being issued direct imperial orders prefixed with ‘obligatory’, learning that the Emperor is dead, attempting to or planning to attempt to alter his compulsions or orders, or receiving communications attributed to the Emperor. This meant that the sixth, ‘Serve the interests of the Emperor,’ and the seventh, ‘Serve the interests of the Eastern Empire’, are the highest priorities.

Permalink

(His apartments are luxurious, apart from the blood on his carpet, the blood on his hands, the blood on his robes, the fire, and both dead assassins.)

Permalink

If he goes to the palace healers, they are all part of Sorim’s faction, so they’ll stop his heart. That would be suicide, which would serve neither Emperor nor Empire. If he reports to the commercial healers, Majon will know and he can outbid Janos. Suicide again. If he goes to the illegal healers, Daron can also outbid Janos. More suicide. If he leaves scrying range for healing, by the time he returns, either the Emperor will be dead (and Compulsion Two will come into effect) or whoever is dominant in politics will have him assassinated.

Dying is not an efficient way to serve the Empire.

Permalink

On the other hand, there are a *lot* of ways of contributing to the good of the empire from outside assassination range.

Permalink

So, bound to loyally serve Emperor (long may he reign!) and Empire (may it be eternal!), Janos throws his farsight as far west as possible - raises a Gate on the threshold of his room - steps through, brings it down, taps the node - farsight - gate - steps back through - down - tap - farsight - gate - down - tap - farsight - gate - down (staggering, now) - farsight, gatedown, farsight, gatedown (blood, falling, when it touches the ground he is gone) - farsightgatedownfarsightgatedownfarsightgatedown

Permalink

It's shockingly impressive, really, that given his condition, he nonetheless makes it almost 1400 miles. 

Gating mostly between different random remote patches of forest or field, he doesn't notice when he leaves behind the borders of the Empire, and by the time he's crossing Hardorn, he's barely able to track his surroundings at all. 

 

Somehow, almost miraculously, he traverses all of Hardorn, and crosses the border of Valdemar. 

(Elsewhere, unknown to him, an alarm is triggered. But Herald Vanyel has yet to carry out his plan of adding the vrondi as watchers, and so he has no way of knowing his presence has been observed.) 

Eventually, at some point, he won't be able to go further, and if he keeps pushing it then he won't be conscious for much longer, either. 

Permalink

As he prepares for his final Gate, his eyes are blurring, his feet are shuffling, his chest feels like there's a knife in it, he's only standing up because he's compulsioned to do so (serve the empire), and he needs to keep going. He's in the middle of a forest, he can't stop here - 

One final Farsight, can he find a person - yes - gate - step through the arch of branches - down (and at that point his legs stop working).

He manages to say, "reward," before his eyes close. He says it in the language of the Eastern Empire, unfortunately, but it's still impressive he manages to say it.

Permalink

It's incredibly lucky that the person he's just collapsed in front of is a Healer. It's even luckier that she's experienced, including with mages; in fact, she was recently at the Border, assisting in treating casualties from the war with Karse. The last battle was brutal, though, and she requested leave, which was granted immediately; it's the first time that she's asked. She's currently visiting her daughter, who several years ago fell in love with a merchant visiting their hometown up north, and ended up traveling with him for a year – accompanied by her young daughter, from a first marriage that ended in tragedy. When her daughter was pregnant again, though, they settled down in a village near Haven, shortly before the war began. 

She's in the garden, picking herbs for their supper, when out of nowhere there's a Gate, and then a man, and he gasps out a word she doesn't understand and then collapses in a heap at her feet. 

Roa knows what a Gate looks like, though she's never seen a Gate like this one before, shaped on midair rather than using a doorway. She's seen enough Gates to note, in the few seconds it's up, that this one looks....sloppy? 

Which is probably explained by the fact that the mage - Adept, he must be, and dressed in foreign, strange clothing - was unconscious within seconds of taking it down. Also there's a lot of blood. A pretty concerning quantity of blood, actually! Which is explained by the knife still buried in his chest! 

(She spends about three seconds worrying that he might be a Karsite Adept, maybe even the Adept who's given them so much trouble, but he doesn't look Karsite any more than he looks Valdemaran, he's not wearing a priest-mage's robes, and besides, would it matter? She's a Healer. She's not going to let a man die just because she hasn't yet confirmed that he isn't their enemy.) 

Roa hollers for help; her daughter should be just inside and, having grown up with a Healer for a mother, she knows what that tone of voice means. And then she drops to the ground at the man's side, and reaches in with her Gift even as she checks for a pulse. It's weak and rapid, and his life-force is dim, he's in shock and it's not just the blood loss, though that would be bad enough - she recognizes the signs of backlash, which is easily explained by the fact that he just GATED FROM MIDAIR AFTER HAVING BEEN STABBED. 

She leaves the knife where it is; best to wait for backup, so she can be in a full Healing-meld before she has to try to stop the bleeding that will inevitably result from removing it. For now, she gets a link to him and pushes energy across until his heart beats a little more steadily. He's breathing - mostly fine? The knife didn't pierce a lung. Lucky for him. Luckier for him that whatever he was running from, because it's clear he was fleeing something, he somehow managed to make it as far as her. 

 

Once he's a little more stable, and she's commandeered her son-in-law's strong arms to carry him inside and get him under blankets, she stretches her Mindspeech to its very limits, to reach the twenty miles between here and Haven. 

:Herald Tantras?: 

Permalink

:Roa?: He pushes with his own much stronger Mindspeech, and Taver's support at his back, stabilizing the link from his end. :Is it urgent?: It must be, or why would she be Mindspeaking him directly, he didn't even know she was nearby - 

Permalink

:Tran! Did you find a Farseer yet to–: 

Permalink

:A moment, please: This is yet another incredibly inconvenient downside of having Vanyel unavailable; Van could Farsee the site of the Web-alarm himself. It's even more frustrating because he's right here, just out of commission and only the gods know how long his recovery will take this time. 

(Guilt. Grief. It feels as though the war never stops destroying everything that matters and all he can do is hurt the people he loves by demanding the impossible of them, and it's harder to believe, each passing month, that it will ever end or that if it does it can possibly have been worth it...) 

:Roa, what?: 

Permalink

Her mindvoice is very flat. :An Adept mage just Gated on top of me and collapsed. Looks foreign. Not Karsite, I don't think, but can't be sure. Also he's been stabbed in the chest: 

Permalink

:Figured the Senior Circle needs to know. ...Wasn't a normal Gate either. Didn't use a doorway, just - right in midair:

Permalink

:- Herald Tantras. Listen to me. He's in bad shape and I'm the only Healer in town. Have to get him to the House of Healing: She gives the name of the village. 

Permalink

Herald Tantras is having what is possibly the worst week of his life so far and this is TOO MANY THINGS. 

Permalink

Roa presses ahead. :Reckon we've got to keep him alive, so you folks can ask him what in all hells he's doing here. Savil must've ridden through here. Can she Gate?: 

Permalink

This finally snaps him out of the baffled surprise. 

:I'll ask. That must be the Web-alarm. - You're sure it's safe? I was going to have someone Farsee the site, first...: 

Permalink

:Herald Tantras, he's unconscious from backlash and completely out of reserves and he's losing blood. He is not going to be a danger to you right now. Haven may be in a lot more danger if he dies before we can get an explanation: 

Permalink

Which is why, after a frantic and incredibly confused emergency meeting with the Senior Circle, ten minutes later Herald-Mage Savil is raising a Gate to the town hall - the only building she remembers clearly enough from riding past on her way to other circuits - and another fifteen minutes after that, the mysterious unconscious foreign Adept is in a bed in the House of Healing, with trainees flocking to the room to join the Healing-meld.

(They see a lot of war casualties later in their recovery but they almost never get fresh stabbings, the front is too far away and injured combatants are stabilized down south before being evacuated. It's very exciting.) 

 

Janos will wake up in a comfortable bed, still in considerable pain from the half-healed wound and also the backlash headache, and a bit fuzzy-headed from having been dosed with pain drugs. 

There's a woman in Herald's Whites sitting at his bedside, waiting, her shoulders tense and her face a wary mask. Also, for some reason, his wrists are bound and restrained to the bed-railings, which would not normally be especially effective on a mage but his Gifts have been badly overused and aren't really cooperating right now. 

:He's awake, I think: Savil informs Tantras, reaching through the hasty mage-shielding on the room; they can't put him in the proper shielded room, Vanyel's there, and they still have no idea what he's doing here and whether he's a threat. Then she casts a first-stage Truth Spell, which won't feel like anything to the recipient, and turns to the man. 

"Do you understand me?" she asks him curtly, in Valdemaran and then repeating herself in Karsite, and Rethwellani too because why not. 

 

 

(Vanyel has been Mindspeaking her every two minutes for the past candlemark, while they waited for the mage to wake up, and Savil thinks it's a good thing he's still too weak from blood loss to get out of bed unaided, because otherwise there would be absolutely no keeping him out of this room.) 

Permalink

Janos is awake! This is better than he was expecting! Even with the chains and his focus being missing, this is still better than he was expecting!

He's also missing some layers; not surprising, given that the knife's been removed. (It was an excellent knife; the hilt of an eating knife and a stiletto blade. He wished he'd been the one to come up with that idea.) His coat, waistcoat, shirt and baldric are all missing; at least he still has his breeches.

(Janos does not, on court-trained mindspeaker-defense reflex, think that the clothes he's carrying matter because his concealed purses were in his coat, waistcoat, and left sock, his enchanted daggers were up one shirt, in a coat lining, and in his right boot, and the extremely subtle ward-spell was attached to an opal on his shirt-collar. At least the forged imperial writ entitling the bearer to whatever assistance he requires and the true imperial writ permitting him to use the Canals were both concealed in his breeches.)

He does not understand the woman! (He might recognize Rethwellani if he was in better shape, but not well enough to speak it.)

Permalink

Quick scan of the woman. She's old but healthy, wearing white, so she can't be poor - the white would be muddy and she'd be bent - but the whites are plain, not court clothes or even servants' clothes-at-court. Not surprising, most places are poorer than the Eastern Empire. A uniform? The cut suggests it, but he has no idea what it's the uniform of. Someone who has the power to imprison him, which means he has the power to help them.

"I don't speak your language," in the language of the Eastern Empire. Then - "Do you understand me?" in the same. Then he goes through the others he speaks - a few eastern dialects, some Treterine, a few of the northern languages he learned a little of on campaign, his heavily accented Hardornen - 

Permalink

He shows no sign of recognition or understanding when she asks in Karsite. So - either he's an implausibly good actor, with a story planned in advance because there's no way he had time to think it through in the last fifteen seconds after he woke up, or he's not from Karse. 

She relaxes fractionally. 

- Hardornen! Interesting. What is that accent? 

"I understand you," she answers in Hardornen. "Where are you from, and why are you here now?" 

Total: 603
Posts Per Page: