All Along The Watchtower (Solo)

[Mordelain]

Merchant-1024x612.jpg
All Along the Watchtower

Set following the events of The Daughter of the Desert, before the Storm.

Route Exploration: The il’Jhain is, by necessity, a beast with an almost-constantly-changing face. Each faction looks for their own tricks through the deadly wilderness. Can you find a better way through a treacherous pass, or a shortcut that shaves a precious hour off your time?
Reward: Successfully finding a new route earns a gold bonus (size dependent on the practicality of said route), one token, and one additional enchantment.

My name, in your tongue, is Mordelain Saythrou.

Nearly seven hundred years ago, I did something I have regretted every day since. I did something that can never be forgiven, never be forgotten, and certainly, never be explained away with rhetoric or reason.

I destroyed Fallien.

In trying to save Althanas, I succeeded only in exiling it forever from the glory, the prosperity, and the once radiant potential of the entity known as the Kalithrism. Its people would have been gifted with the wonders of eight other worlds, and all the discoveries and adventures those mystic realms had to offer. Without the portal I had to construct in the heart of Fallien’s verdant edifice, I could not stop the Cataclysm.

I failed to save billions of lives.

Excerpt from the journal of Mordelain Saythrou, the Last of the Tama.

[Mordelain]

“Are you drowning in your sorrows again?” asked Suresh. He drank from his goblet before continuing. The ominous paused only served to wind her up more. “It is most unbecoming of you to hide away up in this mausoleum of intellect.” He had taken to interrupting his daughter’s studious attempts to mitigate her guilt by taking quill to parchment at every opportunity. She looked up from her writing only to glare sideways at him. “You’ve been in here for nearly three hours, are you at least going to join me for dinner?” he rested his hands, thick, club like limbs onto his hips and cocked his head. It was an expectant look of obedience he knew would never come.

“No,” she said, flatly, and with a cold, determined, and well-honed ignorance of her mentor’s needs. She had dined with Suresh every night for nearly two weeks whilst the Abdos of Irrakam wallowed idly in the winter months. She needed space, to atone, perhaps, or just to think where the roar of the bazaar could not distract her. “Not today, my friend.”

Though it was still light outside, the chill of the desert’s night was already creeping in through the bed chamber’s misshapen windows. In front of Mordelain, a small ledge overlooked the busy streets below, and to her right, on the convex wall that curved into the main part of Suresh’s mansion, an idle moon ascended over the shimmering horizon. A faint halo of grey and silver straddled the sky that had been broken by the mountain’s formation centuries ago. Soon, Fallien by day would sleep, and a life hidden would dance in the frigid streets.

“I would like to think that whatever you’re doing is,” the merchant mulled his words, rolled them about his tongue, and spat them out sharply, “more important than family.” He took another draft from his vessel, which had to be date wine, if Mordelain’s nose did not betray her. Even over the stagnant air of her room, she could smell the sickly, intensely sweet vapours clear as day.

Mordelain snapped her neck to catch his gaze, burrowed metaphorical daggers into his forehead, and then returned to her journal. She ran a finger down the right page, using the coarse parchment to steel her rising temper. The papyrus like sheet reminded her of the sand stretches and the arid world all around her. Several awkward moments passed, with nothing moving in the room except for their riotously beating hearts. Both Suresh and Mordelain knew that the other would not concede an inch of ground; despite whatever appearances told.

“Nothing is more important to me than you, Suresh,” she said. The sudden exhalation of air, an audible relief, practically struck the Troubadour across the back of the head. It washed over her in waves, which quickly subsided when she turned with a smile, only to be met with the same, stubborn, and stone-faced expression she knew all too well.

“Then I shall see you in the courtyard shortly.”

He did not wait for futile objections, and was gone from view in a trail of sandalwood musk and gold threaded calamity. Mordelain visualised his advance across the marble tiles of the courtyard’s upper balcony before his descent down the latticework iron stairwell on the far side of the house. It leads through a palm retreat to the grand fountain. Beyond the silver recesses and glistening pools the courtyard opened up into an open air lounge. It was an architectural feature that could be found at the centre of most native Fallien households. Suresh’s, however, was more grand than most.

“Yes, father…” she whispered, scared he might overhear her. Even though she was certain he was, after five minutes, long gone, she could not help but swell with paranoia. With a reluctant sigh she set her quill back onto its rest, flipped the lid closed on her inkwell, and leant back into the wingback chair she had purchased just to write in. She had nearly broken her spine in half trying to stoop over the low tables traditional for Fallien households. They were comfortable for eating, but it had become clear to Mordelain that writing was not often a hobby in Irrakam. “Right away, father,” she added, her words dripping with sarcasm.

She rose from her chair with sloth-like determination. As she walked to the doorway, feet scuffing the black and white tiles, she tied her hazelnut hair into a ponytail and secured it with a lash of silk she used as a bracelet. With a deep breath, as if she were preparing for confrontation, she stepped out with swagger into the last dying light of the sun. It caught the artistically arranged waterfalls which streamed down through the courtyard’s secluded expanse, over its lip into gutters and marble streams that channelled the water down to the central fountain.

“It better not be sodding figs again,” she mumbled under her breath. Fallien custom was to dine on figs, sweet meats, and heavy syrup like wine for dinner. She had fallen asleep many a time, long before darkness fell, and the day’s chores were done. With the lull in deliveries and assignments from the Freerunners, Mordelain had to unstitch her hems and adjust her clothing several times. She was, as Suresh said with far too much relish, looking much less like a ghost, and more like a ‘karees’, the Bedouin word for ‘queen’.

The transition caused her skin to break out in goose bumps as the lingering warmth of her chamber gave way to the evening’s air. She patted her shoulders and walked vigorously clockwise towards the stairs, making a mental note to find a shawl before she joined Suresh for their evening meal.

She passed several dimly lit doorways enroute, mentally ticking off what lay beyond the mosaic surrounds a palm tree plants which served as secret markets to the occupants of the house. Some rooms were out of bounds, even to Mordelain, and she had only rumour and myth to paint a picture of what lay in the dark corners of Suresh’s private hamlet. She pictured grand chambers laden with gold and trinkets from across the globe, and torture racks and iron maidens seething with less than amicable business partners or long-term enemies. When she reached the linen store, one of the few rooms she frequented far too often, she turned on her heel and skipped, hopped, and bounced down the stairs into the courtyard.

[Mordelain]

The very second Mordelain turned the corner to meet with Suresh’s gaze, she felt undone, revealed, and exposed. Though they had given one another a frigid reception, the sight of the lavish feast lay out over the low fossil wood table cast aside any thought and doubt she had in her mind about his intentions. The merchant was fervently one to save money where possible, except when a business transaction had to succeed, at all costs.

“I guess,” she said softly, with a warm smile as she advanced, “that you have not asked me here just to engage in polite conversation over Maya’s Spiced Wine and overcooked pitta.” The jab at their housekeeper’s cooking brought a smile to Suresh’s face, but he hid it quickly behind his vessel, still drinking from it deeply as though it were water.

“She does her best with what limited resources I provide her with.” He gestured to the mound of pillows opposite, and shuffled beneath the folds of his Bedouin garb. The cushions today were gold, deep red, and mahogany – the three shades of Suresh’s heraldry that adorned his caravans and market stalls all across Irrakam.

“Her best indeed,” she agreed, plopping herself down and sighing with relief as the stress and strain of a long, whittling afternoon fell almost instantly from her shoulders. The cushions were more than comfortable, and the atmosphere, though chill beneath the palm canopy, was warming at least in spirit. “Why such lavish efforts this evening, might I ask?”

There was an audible silence.

“It has come to my attention that you have been, shall we say, maudlin’ of late?” the turn of phrase used by Mordelain felt like a knife in her heart when used against her. “The servants report you spend long hours in your chambers, wandering the balcony, and resting out in the sun reading from long-forgotten tomes on goddess knows what.”

“I-” she spat, before she realised it was not quite yet time to voice her objections. Though Suresh was a kind man at heart, this particular brand of sternness foreshadowed a profitable discussion. She had to weather the storm before the calm. She resigned herself to her fate, folded her arms across her chest to at least keep herself warm, and waited.

“I am sorry that your first winter as an il’Jhain has not been,” he nodded his head left and right in between another swig, “as eventful as the summer, but this is only normal.” He set his vessel onto the edge of the table, before gesturing to a sister glass on the opposite side near Mordelain. “Please, help yourself to the wine. It’s only a common vintage, but it’ll warm you up.” He clapped his stubby hands thunderously together, and almost instantly, and silently, a servant appeared from behind an ornate pillar.

Mordelain recognised him instantly. Mr Maraca’s face was unforgettable. Amongst the ranks of servants and associates kept in cloth by Suresh’s business, Mr Maraca was a tour de force of charisma and charm. Though by now in his late sixties, and possessing a sinister wiry moustache, he was much loved and admired within the house and throughout the poorer districts of Irrakam. Wherever he walked, or so it was said, candied figs and doves sprouted from thin air. There was much suspicion he was a sorcerer, though the kind that enchanted and aided, as opposed to destroyed and interfered.

“Yes, Mr Paraná?” he enquired, using Suresh’s true surname as was allowed by his station as Head Butler. Everyone else in the house, sometimes Mordelain included, had to settle on Sir, and sometimes, when there were guests, His Lordship.

“Could I trouble you to fetch Miss Saythrou a blanket, or a shawl, perhaps?” he raised an eyebrow inquisitively, more for custom than need. Mr Maraca never disobeyed. Mordelain had to wonder what had transpired between the two men, for him to be so obedient, so blinded by trust. Without word, the butler turned, slipped away, and was gone.

“There’s no need to go to so much trouble for me, Suresh, really.” Mordelain looked almost hurt. She was not one to cause a fuss.

“Nonsense, today we are celebrating, I won’t have us revel in the moment with you shivering and the day ending with you sick.” He picked at a platter of dried fruit, scooped a fig and a date into his palm, and sat back. He squeezed them together playfully, slipped the stone out of the date, and downed them without thought. “Though I daresay,” he said, around moist smacks of his lips, “you know want to know what we’re celebrating for?”

Mordelain did, but she settled on mimicking his choice of appetiser, eating it with more manners, and waited.

“Îdhdaer wants your help.”

Îdhdaer was the leader of the Freerunner guild, the il’Jhain operation comprised primarily out of renegade thinkers and outsiders. Mordelain had only ever heard about the elf’s drunken exploits, his magical misdeeds, and the political discontent he caused in the more backward members of the city guard. He was an enigma, all the same, even though his chaotic nature was abhorrent to Mordelain’s need for rigidity and structure. He was also notoriously a recluse, save for necessity.

“Îdhdaer…wants my help?” she had to raise an eyebrow, to add sarcasm and disbelief to her slack jawed stair. The date slipped beneath her tongue, and she sucked on it. “That must be the bitter to go with this sweet…”

Mr Maraca re-appeared, blanket draped over one hand, shawl over the over. He kept his limbs tucked neatly across his chest, like a waiter with his polishing towel, and approached from the customary left. Mordelain examined the swirls on the shawl, and the strange geometry on the blanket. Both were cream in colour, and bespeckled with flecks of what she assumed were spider silk weave. She had no doubt that both were ludicrously expensive, or at the very least, difficult to acquire.

“Which suits you most, madam?” Mr Maraca asked, his voice as old as time, and as dry as the desert. He leant inwards slightly. Mordelain was sure he creaked, like an ancient birch in a strong wind.

“That one is beautiful,” she complimented, wondering how he knew her taste so well. She took it when it was offered, and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, careful to position it so that it did not interfere with her feasting. “You are too kind, Mr Maraca.” Her thanks earns her a cheeky wink, which Suresh did not see, and dismissed the butler back into whatever unknown world he occupied when he services were not required.

[Mordelain]

“It suits you, Mordelain.” Suresh leant forwards again, lurched inwards over the table, and plucked a bunch of plump, ripe, and blood red grapes from the fruit platter on his left. They were exposed to movement for only a second before he stripped the stalk clean and tossed it into the small copper bowl to his right. It would be full to the brim of refuse before too long. “You will have the opportunity to buy many more like it, if you help our benefactor with his…conundrum.”

“Assuming, of course,” she took her turn on the table, and skipped over the aperitif to take a small circular pitta from the main course section of the table. “That I am willing to help him to begin with.” It was ready filled with a light humus, chive, and hazelnut filling she had taken a particular shine to in the colder season. It was still warm, and vented comforting steam into her cupped hands whilst she waited for it to be edible.

“Don’t be silly, of course you’ll help. It is a trifle, compared to what you have endured with the harpies, harlots, and hauntings of this land.” The glum nod Suresh gave her did little to appease her doubts. Îdhdaer was known for being capricious with those who helped, and did not help him alike.

“I will hear you out, but I make no promises,” she blew with force onto the pitta, her sharp tongue worsening as her hunger began to gnaw at her bones and her soul. She had been entombed in her literary lament for much longer than she had realised. “What does he want with me?”

“Do you remember three months ago, when we went to the Oasis café to meet my father?”

Mordelain blinked, visibly shocked that Suresh had remembered. She had expected Shansi, their mutual enemy, to have erased and reformed his memories.

“I do…yes, what of it?” she tried to keep her surprise contained by nodding her head left and right between greedy chewing noises and much relished rolling of the starchy bread over her tongue. It was peppery, strong, and malted with flour from Corone’s mills. The more traditional members of Fallien society would have vomited at the thought of something so strongly Bedouin being tarnished with outsider cuisine.

“When we returned, Îdhdaer asked to see me. Our attempts to appease tensions between the factions of the Abdos seemed to garner his interest.”

By appease, Mordelain assumed Suresh meant ‘obliterate’. They had intended to begin a serious of events that accused the rival factions of xenophobia, terrorism, and illegal activity within Irrakam’s Bazaar districts. With Shansi’s appearance, their efforts had been waylaid. Their cause had become diluted with a greater need – the Tower of the Ghubar, and the death of the Priestess. It seemed almost childish now to return to such a folly.

“That doesn’t surprise me, since it’d bolster his power and his prospects within the city if the Freerunners were finally given equal status in the city.” She pursed her lips.

“Don’t get me wrong, this is entirely a business proposition. He aims to profit from it, as do I. In turn you will benefit too.” He reached for a pitta of his own, “do try the dip, it’s a marinade from Scara Brae – pungent in the nose, but warming and sensual on the tongue,” he prodded a greasy finger at a silver bowl etched with snakes and dragons and roaring seas.

Mordelain rose, dipped the dog-ear of her pitta into the sauce, and then sat back down with a boisterous drop to the cushions. She made no attempts to be lady-like. When they were alone, etiquette swiftly left the table, and the alcohol, already swilling in her light-weight head, left them rolling on the floor with laughter and lute song. She bit into the soggy bread, and instantly recognised the cinnamon, paprika, and wild black poppy seeds. It was a strong menagerie, but it reminded her of winter fires and smouldering pine logs in a blazing hearth.

“Hmmm,” she mumbled, taking another, much larger bite.

“All he wants from you and I guess from me is a way to increase the Freerunner’s ability to traverse the shifting desert sands to the Spice Fields of Ruuya.” When she first heard Îdhdaer request, she gave it no heed. When the word shifting echoed at the back of her mind, she keened her gaze into a curious scowl. Her enjoyment of the food subsided momentarily.

“Shifting sands he now has control over…” she corrected. When they had retrieved the Tower of the Ghubar from the renegade wizard in the ruins to the east, they had used it to further theirs ends, and then entrusted it to the elf for safe keeping as much as for helping their business. “Or did you forget you made me give him the relic?”

“I did not forget, Mordelain. The Tower is a potent aid in controlling the sandstorms that mar the Dagger Spine and the Oasis, but it is only a tool. Without the correct environment,” he returned her stare, “or the correct workman, there is only so much one can do to abate the natural dangers Fallien holds even for its own.”

“He is a sorcerer,” she spat, dropping the last of the crust into her own refuse bowl. “I am just a messenger, skitter leaping back and forth to augment his fame and diminish my dignity.” Whilst content in many ways with her position amongst the il’Jhain, whilst outlanders were scorned so much in Fallien, she felt like she could never truly take pride in her work. “If he wants a guide, tell him to go and find a junta, or better yet, a well-fed camel.” She reached for an apple to clean her palate for the next course, which she eyed eagerly whilst she awaited the likely reprisal.

“He has asked for your help, you petulant girl, because he respects you for what, and who, you say you are.”

Mordelain narrowed her eyes until they were practically shut. She felt compelled to scream, but realised Shansi was merely using Suresh to test her conviction. She had reworked Suresh’s memories after the encounter in the desert just enough to leave out the truly heart wrenching truths about Suresh’s true identity – about his death, six hundred years ago. She opened them slowly.

[Mordelain]

“I am a Troubadour no more, Suresh. I have no one to guide, no one to aid, and no one to walk to the world beyond worlds.” This, in theory, was the truth. There were no tenets and temples to act as priestess and politician awaiting her on any of the nine worlds of the Kalithrism. In the Nexus, she was nothing, but here, in Fallien’s strange heat, she had become something much more. “I am of the il’Jhain now. I am the White Marred messenger, the spice runner Kaleesi.” She spoke the titles and nickname she had been given by her Freerunner colleagues with just enough pride to arm her with a shield against Suresh’s attempts to pursued her.

“A queen,” he used the common word to diminish her vanity, “is only a queen if she has something to govern. Without the Freerunners, and without routes to rally along and deliveries to make, you will be a Queen of Nothing – a pauper princess.”

“You’re using parables a little thick tonight, would it mean that much to you?”

“It means as much to me as your journals do.” He retorted and his chin wobbled with his shudder of earnest belief.

“Okay,” Mordelain slumped. “What do I have to do?” she took a second, much larger bite out of the ripe red apple. It was crunchy, tart, and sweet. It was also moist, which she assumed implied it had been shipped in barrels of spring water from somewhere ludicrously far away. He truly was trying to garner her support.

“Run recon, essentially. He wishes for a new map of the landmarks of the desert. Though the dunes change the relative position of the ruins and mountains, and the river, of course, have shifted along with it. Help him as a cartographer, show him where the new dangers lie, and where the tribes migrate in winter, and we will be one step ahead of the competition in these difficult times.” Suresh plied his oratory talent, which was considerable, to every syllable, word, and description.

Mordelain rolled her eyes. “I am many things, Suresh, but a cartographer is not one of them. I know nothing about geography, little of geology, and the less said about my artistic lack of talent the better,” she took the next quarter of her apple into her mouth and ripped it from the core. She chomped it noisily.

“You have eyes, and ears, and I daresay common sense.”

“So does everyone in the guild!” she chuckled. Her echoing laughter bounced around the courtyard and mingled into the soft trickle of water over silver and distant bird song through darkening skies. “He must be as mad as they say if he thinks I am the best of what there is to offer.”

Suresh sighed. “You are the only one in the Freerunner faction that could…” he mulled the possible words over in between mouthfuls, before settling on the simplest, “teleport.”

The word sounded clunky coming from his lips, but it was true enough and close enough to the truth. Mordelain could walk across the desert. She could flicker back and forth between Hudde’s ochre landscape and the mottled safe havens from wyrm and witches much quicker, though with no less difficulty than any caravan or Huda could. With that statement of fact, she threw any hopes of climbing into bed full, but untethered to any potentially dangerous obligations.

“You mean planeswalk, but I appreciate the observation.” She took a final bite from the apple, dropped the spent core into her bowl, and chewed on the flesh whilst Suresh poured himself another glass of wine.

“Whatever you wish to call it, Mordelain, you could map the route through the Eastern valleys in half the time, if not quarter the time anyone or thing known to the elf could. That, I am sure I do not need to explain, is a very potent bargaining tool.”

“How did he find out?” she raised an eyebrow with an accusatory smirk. She helped herself to her own refill from a taller, slender vessel, and leant back in unison with her mentor to allow their first courses to digest, and their thoughts to be ruminated upon with belching and contemplation. Dinner in Fallien was never a short affair and business arrangements more so.

“You appeared in the Abdos in a flash of purple vellum scented smoke, immediately behind a known assassin. I think he, shall we say, ‘put two and two together’ when the news reached him.” He smiled as Mordelain rolled her eyes and clucked, before they took a tandem swig of the wine. It was thick and luxurious on their tongues. They shook the impact of the first burn together, and then set them down on the table’s edge.

“This is starting to sound suspiciously like you planned this entire evening, down to every word spoken, months, if not years ago…”

Suresh chuckled. “Nothing happens by chance, I believe you once said to me. Consider this evening a well-rehearsed occurrence. People come and go through those doors,” he pointed over his robust shoulder to the large oak portcullis, clad in iron rivets, which lead out into the street beyond, “far too often for this to be difficult.”

“Is that all I am, then, a customer?” she smirked again, but snapped her lips together when she realised her cheeks were already beginning to hurt from chewing, over expression, and the cold that still danced across her pallid skin. She pulled the blanket together around her shoulders.

“You are an associate or an ally, if it makes more sense to call this that. It is, after all, an alliance between two…with a third profiting,” he made no attempt to stop himself smiling. “Work out who is who in that equation.”

“Has he spoken about rewards, if I am successful in delivering him a better route?”

Suresh pulled aside the folds of his attire, reached into a secret pocket, and produced from within the golden threaded swathes of fabric something Mordelain recognised all too well. It was a simple, small, and guilt leafed envelope. She took it when it was offered, and fingered it slowly. The paper was soft between her fingers as she ran it between them, and the writing, an elegant but spidery scrawl on the front identified her as the intended recipient.

“Is this…” she pulled back a shudder of self-pride and vanity. “Is this…a promotion?” she looked into Suresh’s pleased eyes, and could only burst into a smile so wide you could have fit a camel into it. “Okay, okay,” she tried to fight the shaking and the excitement, but continued to resemble a feverish wise woman lost in the desert. “I’ll do it.” She flapped the envelope back and forth mid-air, “I’ll do it!”

[Mordelain]

“I expected as much,” Suresh said, taking a fig from the central tray with indifference. Mordelain waited for him to sit back down before she shot him a glance that could fell a hurda at twenty paces. She had done just that, once, though she had suspected the great beast had already been on death’s door at the time. The legacy, though, made Suresh pause for thought, and swallow audibly.

“I daresay you would find such an offer difficult to turn down. Two tokens, for one assignment, is not something a Freerunner hears about in her lifetime.” True enough, most assignments garnered only one. The Abdos, regardless of your heritage and place in Fallien society, was notoriously difficult to rise in the ranks. Mordelain had done tremendously well just to acquire her present two. “I do not fancy spending what could be months acquiring the three I would need to achieve the Captain’s rank, to wear the white robes, and to ride the most dangerous, and secret routes known to our faction.”

Suresh sighed. “Forgive me. I am weighing a lot of gold on this, shall we say, transaction. Though I was sure you would rise to the challenge, it was not until Îdhdaer put his part of the bargain onto the table that it became…” he minced his words as he wrapped his tongue about the remains of his fig, “paramount you were on board.”

“Clarity and openness would have done wonders for your cause,” she quipped.

The momentary elation of her good news left her with a slump, and she dropped the envelope to the floor as she let her arms hang loosely by her sides. She scanned the table, dancing over the dishes strange and familiar to her, but settled on the only thing that piqued the curiosity of her dwindling appetite. “A celebratory drink it is, then,” she said mournfully, forgoing her glass to pour a slug of the liquor straight down her throat.

It was hot, fiery, and distinctly sweeter than she remembered. The last time she had drunken so openly had been Hath Drama, a Fallien festival that celebrated the dead. She had a lot of souls to see off, many of them her responsibility. The festivities had gone on, at least in Mordelain’s head, for quite some time. She shook the bottle with relish, and tried to remember where it was from. Fallien, though small, had a diverse culture from dune to dune in some cases.

“Nirakkal,” Suresh said, recognising the inquisitive expression. “It is fig wine and date spices, spliced with flecks of Nirakkal.” He rolled his eyes as she set the bottle down heavily, with disgust, and a guttural attempt to clear her throat.

“That could kill me!” she said, as if stating the obvious were perfectly acceptable.

“They are so tiny, that not even the greatest assassin could find a way to still his quarry with them.”

“It is a strange thing to have at dinner,” she hissed, partially through stupor, partially through genuine hate. “But then again,” she leant forwards, pressed her fingers over small half-flat bread, and brought it up for Suresh to inspect. “So is this.”

“I represent a lot of regions and a lot of people, guests are always presented with the best, and the worst, our lands have to offer.” There was an erstwhile patter to his talk, the same sort of delectable oratory he used to charm people into becoming lucrative customers. “You asked to be treated like any other dignitary whilst living here, and I have followed through on that promise.”

Mordelain looked genuinely apologetic. “Forgive me, Suresh. I just can’t help but feel as if you’re hiding something from me.” She stuck her tongue out tentatively, touched the edge of the bread, and got a taste of strong, crushed black pepper-corns. Pepper, bread, and expense usually meant humus and olives were nearby. She peeled the bread slices apart curiously, and rolled her eyes at the two small black egg shaped spheres sitting in brown paste within.

“What makes you say that?” he leant forwards, and he too picked up the olive pockets, called Pinna. “I have done nothing more than procure an assignment for you, a difficult feat, given the recession and the lock down by the Keep of all non-essential visitations.” Which as far as both parties were concerned was the straight forward truth.

“You,” Mordelain set her gaze on his, “are never one for altruism, Suresh. Even I can see through these,” she patted the envelope defiantly. “Whatever reward Îdhdaer has offered me for my services to be rendered, he will have offered you something much, much more.” She chewed noisily. The humus was rich, laced with garlic and chives, and exquisite. “What is it?”

[Mordelain]

“There is little I can slip past you, is there?” Suresh could only smile. His demeanour was neutral, but Mordelain could see through the cold façade of indifference. Suresh was all too happy to engage his progeny in the motions of a game she could not yet play.

“I’m tired of the dishonesty, the subterfuge, and the spontaneity of your constant revelations.” Mordelain levied the bread against the dam of her lips, moistened it, and then devoured it noisily. She reached for another, but thought better of herself, and despite her grievances, of her host. She sat back and got comfortable on the mount of mismatched cushions.

“I have spoken nothing but the truth, my dear. All I have said, it is for a purpose. All I have done, it is with good intention.”

“So why do I get the impression that you are going to benefit from this, and I will, as ever, be left in the roil, alone and embittered? Just be honest, no,” she shook her head. Her hair fell from behind her ears into long, auburn curls, “just be forthright.” Next to honest, it was difficult to tell the difference between the two, but what Mordelain wanted amounted to the same thing. She wanted to know everything.

Suresh, at first, could not find the words. For once in his life, he was silenced. Mordelain tried to work out if it was through defeat, or through consideration. The bushel of hair atop each brow moved little, and his face curled into neither a smirk nor a frown. He remained unreadable, much to her annoyance. Skipping another morsel, she reached for the tall, cylindrical bottle next to the date wine, and poured herself a glass of conventional grape vintage – a cheeky, as she had heard it referred to in the markets, little white from Corone.

“If you complete this assignment for Îdhdaer, he will solicit you an audience with Nasr Moghadam.”

Nasr Moghadam, as Mordelain knew all too well, was known in the Outlander’s Quarter as the Poison Master. His skill with cooking and toxins alike was, at least in Irrakam, unrivalled. She had been spying on him for months, trying to solicit where he worked, how she might gain his trust, and in turn, how she might hire him for his talents. For fate to simply deliver it to her, after all this time was highly ironic. Pensively, she rolled her glass clockwise, and took a deep draft of the wine’s peaky aroma. It reminded her of Petra, where evergreens and palm trees were abundant, and whalebone palaces gleamed in the sunlight – it was also the world where wine was as common as water and drunkards as accepted as saints.

“Why would I want a cooking lesson from a pig of a man?”

Suresh chuckled, “you know full well cooking is the least interesting skill you will learn from that happenstance.”

“Why him, though?” something made Mordelain suspect that Suresh knew more of her agenda than she had hoped. The man truly was a seller of songbirds, a charlatan in the shadows that knew everything there was to know in the city.

“Mordelain, it has come to my attention that your intentions with the Priestess, though aggressive, cannot be completed in the manner you are accustomed.”

“I was not planning on,” she scanned the courtyard, to make sure there were no servants, at least those she could see. Certain they were alone, or hopeful, she continued, “bludgeoning her to death.” She erred on the side of caution. “I had not, in fact, aimed to kill her at all.”

Suresh narrowed his gaze. He took the time to consider her reply. “You said, in no uncertain terms, that your goal here in Irrakam was to be the end of Jya. Your time here, you said, was to be the catalyst that severed faith from fact, and undid the Vhadya.”

Mordelain rolled her neck, slouched her shoulders, and leant back on her right palm. Arranged comfortably and courtesan like, she could only sigh. Now she understood the secrecy in everything Suresh did. He had, completely and utterly, misunderstood her intentions. “I meant a metaphorical end, Suresh. I wish to destroy the Jya as a religious avatar, to cripple the Keep’s theocratic hold over the island.” She sipped her wine, swigged it about her cheeks, hamster like, and then drank it greedily. The game Suresh was playing was over, and now, the Troubadour could gauge the heart of the matter.

[Mordelain]

Suresh weighed the evidence he had at his disposal, shifted the sands of the ever flowing desert of his life, and resorted to a half-formed smile. It was weak, like his resolve, and showed signs of tiredness. He had under estimated Mordelain, which he knew all too well could lead to great difficulty.

“Forgive my misunderstanding. Your vehemence, determination, and zeal about this…it came across as malicious.”

“Oh,” she snapped, cutting into his apology without waiting to see if he had finished, “do not worry. I have every intention of hurting Jya – one cannot crush a woman’s hope, and in turn, a people’s, without a little tyranny.” She leant forwards, cutting her own smile with a hint of shadow and malice. “I will do it on my own terms, though. Why do you think I went to so much trouble to retrieve the Tower of the Ghubar from the harpies?”

“You,” Suresh frowned, “intend to summon a sandstorm?” it was a hesitant guess, but one that sounded hopeful. The Tower, after all, had only one use – to conjure the sand themselves, to make Fallien itself do the bidding and wish of its newfound master. If it possessed magical properties beyond that, it was beyond Suresh’s limited knowledge of pre-Vhadya culture.

Mordelain nodded cheerfully. “Fear is a powerful took in the hands of those who wish to use it.” She nodded her head back and forth, “in the hands of those who wish to use it for a good reason,” she corrected. It sounded off, to consider tyranny as a form of salvation, but that was exactly what she was going to do.

“I remain unconvinced,” her mentor replied sourly. He, deciding he had done with appetisers, leant forwards and picked up the large silver platter with a dome over it. Setting it on his lap, he lifted up the cover, and disappeared momentarily behind a swirl of steam that instantly filled the courtyard with the smell of braised lamb, rice, and minted pottage. Mordelain’s stomach rumbled in reprise. “Your audience will help you all the same, I should imagine.” Suresh’s tone suggested that whatever the outcome, Mordelain’s hand would have to turn to conventional murder. She did not like the insinuation.

“No,” she shook her head. She followed his suit, picked up her own plate, balancing the wine glass in her left hand as she haphazard balanced across the banquet, and sat back with a clatter. “No, Suresh. I vowed, by the edict of my people, never to directly kill another.” It was an edict she had broken only through the fault of another. When the Exile, Coradan, had betrayed her at the Council seven hundred years ago, her actions had killed thousands. She would not break it again. “Do you hear me?” she disappeared behind her own cloud, but found stewed beef in a thick gravy, boiled, rosemary laced potatoes, and a pile of vegetables that could have fed an ox.

When the smoke cleared between them, like a morning dust over a lingering battleground, they stared at one another. Slowly but surely, Suresh nodded his acknowledgement.

“I may have learnt much from you during my time here,” she waved her hand over the table, “from the language to the food, but I will refuse to take on your traits.” She downed the last of her wine, and set the glass onto the table, “I refuse to reduce myself to your,” she grinned, “salaciously guttural business methods.” This meant she would not sell her morals down the Acadia to gain profit and power.

“An admirable stand to take, but one you will find testing in the weeks to come.” Suresh cut through the lamb with a knife he flicked out from the hem of his sleeve. “These are going to be dark times, Mordelain. Even if you are successful in changing Irrakam, and its people, for the supposed better…” he put the meat into his mouth, and chewed noisily. He continued to speak, through slurps and chomps, knowing Mordelain was beyond caring about the etiquette of courts, “the fallout will be…potentially devastating.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she chuckled. She put a potato in her own mouth, and bit through the starch layers. Whoever had cooked it had seemingly done so in three stages. Butter, mint, and then the rosemary – there were hints of pepper throughout, reflected in the gravy by big, half crushed peppercorns. “I am ready for whatever the sands of time throw at me.” She continued to chew in silence until both had clear mouths, and calmer temperaments. “If I see this, ‘cook’,” she said slowly, “will that appease you? Will you begin to trust my motives, Suresh?” If he would not continue to support her, even after their exploits in the Ruins of Kuresh, then it was time, high time, for the Troubadour to move on.

[Mordelain]

“I do not think anyone in their right mind would trust someone so completely as to never doubt them, Mordelain. It would be a fool’s folly to be so forthright and open, so I daresay secrets and lies make me the paranoid man that I am.” With weighty chews, Suresh tore through half the lamb before Mordelain could move onto her third potato. By the time she had started the carrots, laced with sea salt, Suresh was slapping the last chunk in the juices that were curdling with the coconut milk of the curry.

“I guess that is the best I can hope for, given all said and done.” It was the answer she did not want to hear, but the one she knew was right, heartfelt, and to form. Suresh would not be swayed that easily, just as she would not be swayed by his usual haughty rhetoric. She stabbed a broccoli stalk, cooked just right, and rolled it about her plate gingerly. “Perhaps we should separate the business of the home, from that of the Abdos.” She gave up, stabbed the stalk, and bit into it greedily. Her appetite was spiking, mainly due to adrenaline, but much to do with falling in love with the food.

“Then let us drop the matter of Jya, and return to the request from the Abdos.” Suresh, having not denied Mordelain’s request, let his thoughts return to the sprawling mountain ranges and the ever shifting trade routes that gave the Freerunner guild, and in turn, his mercantile it’s providence. Even if Jya was killed, and faith destroyed in the desert, the people would still need to send and receive spices, goods, and delicacies.

“I will go after dinner,” she said. “No use in delaying the possibilities two more tokens, and a new title would grant me.” A Captain, even outside the il’Jhain, was a respected figure in Irrakam. Even an Outsider would be able, during the daylight, to walk into the upper quarter, where native and nobleman alike dwelt in relative luxury.

Suresh paused. “I’m sorry?” he said, bemused. He looked up through the canopy of palm and spruce, at the twilight of the late dusk, and wondered if their conversation and debate had sent her quite mad. “You’ve had a little too much to drink my dear...” his bushy eyebrow arced, and his lips curled into a curry stained smirk.

“Pfft,” she spat, reaching for the aforementioned glass, woefully empty, and tilted it towards him. “I can drink his bushy eyebrow arced, and his lips curled into a curry stained smirk.

“Pfft,” she spat, reaching for the aforementioned glass, woefully empty, and tilted it towards him. “I can drink you under the table any month of the year,” she threatened, though she knew she would have no chance against the constitution of an ox.

Suresh would have guffawed, had his mouth been empty. He chewed his lamb slice down, clapped his hands, and continued to eat as the sound of footsteps grew exponentially in the courtyard. Well sewn moccasins carried Mr Parana into their view again, and his moustache anchored him to the spot, some ten feet to Suresh’s right. He bowed, though parts of him remained stiff as a board, and placed his palms together dutifully.

“You rang, and I come.” He said, a whispery voice stained with the smoke of the hookah and the whiles of a man winding down from a long day in the surface of his paymaster.

“Mr Parana, my good man. The lady has got it into her good mind that she can drink me under the table. Would you do us a great service and render us with the silverware drinking set from the study, and the good liquor from Alerar I keeping the library?” Only Suresh could study economics quite as inebriated as he did.

The request sent Mr Parana away just as quickly as he had appeared. Mordelain’s head span. “Is that a challenge accepted, then?” she slapped the fork against the edge of the plate, rattled out a drumbeat, then set her glass onto the table’s edge, leaning over her dinner plate, to fill it with another measure of the glistening wine.

"Would I ever pass such an opportunity?" he chuckled.

“I will get warmed up!” Her laughter melted glaciers a thousand miles away, and her smile shattered all tension in Suresh’s bones. Perhaps, just perhaps, she could do as she’d pledged, and all of Irrakam would profit from her climb up the ladder of the Abdos.

[Mordelain]

Epilogue

Mordelain was not amused. The combination of alcohol, oily foods, and a late night had done away with her usually robust stamina. Though the sun was low over the mountains, and her steed, Kales, was by her side, the journey north had not been easy. As the dunes began to slope upwards, the il’Jhain cursed her enthusiasm for the assignment, and wished to her long dead gods that she had just stayed at home. An unemployed winter, compared to this, did not seem so bad.

“I hope you are enjoying this, Suresh,” she seethed. Somewhere, back in Irrakam’s relative sanctuary, her mercantile mentor was no doubt guffawing through his gullet and third meal of the day. By lunchtime, news of her difficulty would have reached the Abdos, and even if she were successful in shortening the routes for the Freerunners, they would laugh at her expense for months.

She trudged on, examining the horizon for signs of life. The bleak hostility was humbling, even to one who had walked through the fiery conclave of Hudde, or the idyllic loneliness of the sky cities of Petra. Each of those worlds, though alien, was gardens of peace and tranquillity compared to Fallien’s wilderness. She covered her eyes, to stay away a roil of sand as it clattered down the dune in a freak gust of wind, and when it died down, she shook violently to keep herself from becoming too encrusted. Fallien, or so the il’Jhain said, was the only place on Althanas were you could drown in sand whilst still walking.

“Can you see anything, old girl?” she patted her horse on her back end, and spurned her to cantor up the remainder of the dune. Instinctively, when she reached the crest, Kales turned noisily to glance down at her companion. The brilliant white mare waited, mockingly, whilst Mordelain drove her hands into the Luke warm sand and quite literally climbed for her life. One false move and she could tumble down the incline, disappear, and not emerge.

She had, as per her instructions, followed the Attireyi river north three leagues. The route, so the map said, then turned to the east, and the needle range of mountains that divided Fallien in two. She was to find a way from the base of the dunes razed by earthquakes, halfway between the river and the Zaileya hills, and up through the valleys and crevices that made travel to the Outlander’s Post treacherous, to say the least. Once a runner or a caravan fell down into the troughs and peaks of the region known only as the Watch Tower Bluffs, they were at the mercy of a creature more deadly than a harpy, a sand wyrm, or a storm crow combined; they were at Fallien’s mercy, and her weather was an efficient killer.

“Urgh,” she moaned, finally upright atop the first bluff before she descended down the far side. She took Kales’ reigns into her grip, checked her trap was secure, and stared down into the landscape beyond. Her keen sense of direction, augmented by the enchantments on the silver tokens mounted on her belt, honed in on the narrow ravine that split the far trough asunder. “Sandstorms, and now this,” she shielded her gaze again, but kept her eyes fixed on the solitary gateway to the unknown. She had taken this route herself, many a time, but there had never been a way through the bluffs.

Kales whinnied. “Yes, yes, do not worry. I will feed you so much hay when we get to the Outlander’s Post,” she stopped. “If we get to the Outlander’s Post,” she corrected herself sarcastically, “that you will become as fat as a show horse.” The horse approved, and nuzzled the back of Mordelain’s neck with moist, yet affectionate softness. “Come on,” she grumbled, “let’s see if this new pathway cuts the journey in half…heavens,” she chuckled, somewhat delirious with fatigue by now, “maybe it’ll be so quick, that old oath Îdhdaer will give me three tokens!”

Her laughter, captious, mischievous, and somewhat too hopeful about her efficiency echoed out across the bluffs. All along the Watchtower, the creatures lurking in the windswept shadows flinched, scurried for cover, and hid from view. These were uncharted realms through and through, but if anyone could reform and rewrite and scribe the maps and charts of the Freerunners, it was Mordelain Saythrou. If Suresh had confidence in her, and what’s more, if Îdhdaer did, then how could she fail?

“There must be some way out of here,” she began to sing, though only she heard her voice above the fiery din of the growing sandstorm. Soon, the flusters of sand would become engulfing swarms of blindness. “Said the il’Jhain to the thief…”

The End

Spoils Requested:

Two il'Jhain tokens: as per the mission statement, and the urgency of Fallien's mercantile troubles. I would like to forego the additional enchantment reward to gain this second token.

Promotion: The rank of Captain in the hierarchy of the Abdos will be the result of possessing 5.

Trade Routes: A 5% boost in gold earnt by any member of the Freerunner Guild for threads exclusively written in Fallien - the thread should, somehow, utilise the new maps and charts, and embody the ethos of the guild itself.