Chapter 274 – Old Secrets

The archives were meticulously organized, and even more meticulously guarded. There was no protocol for maintaining an illusion while accessing them, and no way someone who was a mere “informant” would be allowed to see them. However, there was a flaw in the wards. The Deeps were frankly amateurs when it came to runic architecture, and their sequences that tried to detect unauthorized souls were easily modified, allowing Mirian to find an unoccupied meeting room in the third basement level and simply blink below into the back shelves of the archives.

She appeared next to Specter who swore quietly as she did. Mirian reshaped the stone ceiling to seal up the hole she’d made, then began looking around.

“I’ve been told Project Flayer’s records were mostly destroyed, but if Westerun and the Akanans are still working on it, I’m sure there’s fragments left over. Where would you put them?”

“Outside of my expertise. But I know how they would have hidden them. Misclassify the records. For example, if it’s about an operation on smuggling chimeras, label it as routine surveillance of Parliament. Then, the records people don’t even have to lie when they’re ordered to check and say they can’t find anything.”

“There’s routine spying on the members of Parliament?”

“Of course. On the surface, it’s to protect them from the influence of foreign agents. But it also makes it a lot easier to keep blackmail material on them in case they start getting any wild ideas about cutting the budget here.”

Mirian had to remind herself exactly who she was talking to. Specter had a code of ethics more comparable to a bog lion than a normal person. She had no loyalty to Baracuel, but only to her allies within the Department. That she was, essentially, an agent aligned with Akana did nothing to diminish her own view of herself as a patriot of Baracuel.

There was a reason Mirian had been killing her at the start of most cycles.

“Then let’s get started. Routine surveillance is going to hide the worst stuff?”

They began to look through different reports and operations. It took a few hours before Mirian found the first misfiled case. It wasn’t about Parliament or Project Flayer, though. It was about performing a hit on a broadsheet owner. They were reported to have “contacts with suspicious figures from Persama,” but something about the operation tugged on a vague recollection. Agents had been dispatched to investigate. However, when they entered his home, the man turned out to have died recently of an apparent heart attack.

She had to pause and sort through old memories to try and dredge up what it reminded her of. Then she remembered the broadsheet owner who was contacted by one of the priests who’d stumbled on corruption in the Luminate Order. He was one of the priests she now appointed to the anti-corruption inquisition. Without intervention, both he and his contact would die of heart attacks. By Corrmier’s Pure Blade mercenaries, but using a Deeps curse wand.

“Do you contract out work to the Pure Blade?” Mirian asked.

Specter hesitated. By now, Mirian had asked her quite a few questions she’d already known the answers to, so the agent was wondering if this was another test. “Yes,” she finally said.

***

They continued their investigation of the records over the next two days. Then, Nikoline got her meeting time with Director of Operations, Arturus Castill.

Specter didn’t have a good excuse for why Mirian could join in her meeting with Director Castill, so Mirian resorted to eavesdropping. The Deeps had a lot of layered wards and enchantments, but there were flaws in every structure, and Mirian could read glyphs like she could read Friian now. A few hours of work identified the holes, and a few more hours of composing spells gave her ears in Castill’s office.

Nikoline remained obedient. That Mirian started telling her what she was hearing in the director’s office probably helped keep her that way. Specter spun a hot load of eximontar dung. The director thought it was fine dining.

Specter really was good at lying.

That gave them more time to pick through the archives. For a week, they continued to pull reports. Most of them were mind-numbing, as all spy work was, but it gave her new insight on just how much power the Deeps had, especially in western Baracuel. They were spying on Parliament. They were spying on priests. Spying on the noble families. Spying on rich merchants. One of their agents was a bloody bishop in the Luminate Order. They collected blackmail like Viridian collected plants. Sometimes, it didn’t even seem there was a point to the information, they just collected it because they could.

And then, there were the operations. If she’d maintained any illusions in the primacy of the courts, the reports thoroughly dispelled them. She came across three different instances of Deeps agents extrajudicially murdering Baracueli citizens.

Of course, those had been hidden. The operations in Persama were out in the open. Hundreds of reports detailed complex operations involving assassinations, bribery, and blackmail campaigns to bend the different cities to their will. The body count was especially high in Rambalda.

And these were the older reports.

Nikoline was only slightly useful. She claimed to have little knowledge of the archives. Mirian suspected she was lying. It seemed the woman did so reflexively.

The days dragged on, but still, there was no information on Project Flayer.

They kept searching.

Another misfiled report appeared. As Mirian read it, she felt her blood stirring. “Tell me I’m reading this right,” she said, shoving it in Nikoline’s face.

Specter skimmed the report, then looked at her impassively. “Yes,” she said.

Gods’ blood, Mirian thought. The Deeps had assassinated a sitting member of Parliament—and his family. She remembered there’d been talk of his death when she’d started her first year in Torrviol Academy. The report didn’t say he was killed by the Deeps, of course. The report was about investigating the killers, who were then said to be one of the minor syndicates. Except, Mirian knew the syndicates in Palendurio. Had talked extensively with their members, and knew their routes and areas of control. Knew where they could smuggle myrvites. Knew what they would and wouldn’t do. They were stable here.

They didn’t assassinate government officials. And the syndicate listed as responsible wasn’t one that existed. The area where it happened was under the Westfellow Syndicate, the one Mirian had the most contacts in. They wouldn’t have let another organization slip in under their nose.

In short, it was bullshit, and an intelligence agency like the Deeps damn well knew it. So even if they hadn’t killed the family, they’d covered it up.

And killed his kids, too.

It was as they were perusing a shelf of routine foreign intelligence reports that they were finally confronted.

“Nikoline, what are you doing back? And who’s this?” a man asked.

“Trying to poach my subordinates again?” Nikoline said.

“I don’t recall seeing her name on the sign-in sheet. You are…?”

Mirian wasn’t feeling particularly patient. There was a simmering anger in her that needed release. Every operation she read about was another layer of sinister shadows and criminal activity strangling Baracuel. And people like this man were part of it.

There wasn’t anyone nearby.

Her spellbook was in her hand in an instant. She threw up a heat barrier and a silencing barrier, then used a non-illuminating heat spell to burn him into cinder. She used a force sphere to crush the remains into a smaller and smaller orb, continuously applying heat, until the man was a few liters of carbonized ash. When that was done, she had the force sphere pulverize the remains, then took the ash and spread it across the stone floor. With meld stone, she cemented the fine powder to it.

Very little had moved Specter since Mirian had shown her visions of the apocalypse.

This did. Nikoline backed into one of the shelves, face pale, her left hand shaking uncontrollably as she clenched a shelf. It took her a moment to even look at Mirian, and when she did, she swallowed hard.

Mirian went back to pulling records. “Continue,” she said.

***

It took two days for the hornet’s nest that was the Baracuel Intelligence Gallery to be stirred after that. By then, Mirian had most of what she wanted. She’d taken the documents about the assassination of the representative and a few other blatantly illegal operations.

Nikoline lied through her teeth in the interview when investigators pulled her, and because of her connections to Director Castill, came out clean. Teams scoured the Gallery for the corpse.

They found nothing.

“I got him labeled as a possible enemy agent,” Nikoline told her. “They’ve assumed he fled. That will keep the investigators busy.”

She still wasn’t totally trustworthy, though. Mirian overheard a conversation in Castill’s office about reaching out to their Akanan counterparts to see if he was one of theirs. Nikoline hadn’t mentioned that. Maybe she hadn’t known, but Mirian doubted it.

The disappearance of a Deeps staff member had everyone on alert, though. Mirian had to start taking more precautions.

It didn’t stop her, though. By now, her total camouflage spell was nearly undetectable. She could see souls through solid stone. She could blink past walls. Now she knew the procedures and wards.

There were all sorts of skeletons hiding in the archives, but no sign of Project Flayer. They could have continued searching, but Mirian was pretty sure it was a dead end. This is where inactive projects go. Westerun is still working on mind control in Akana. So the project isn’t inactive.

That night, she went on a whirlwind search, rooting through secure documents while most of the Deeps slept.

It ended up being in Director Castill’s office, in a safe embedded in a wall behind a painting—it figured. When her divination spells picked up on mana flowing through an enchantment, she decided she’d triggered some sort of alarm and left, blinking up through the ceiling.

Then she started going through the documents.

That morning, just before sunrise, she killed Nikoline Brunn again.

***

She appeared in Pontiff Oculo’s bedchambers shortly after he woke up.

“Arrange a meeting with the King, Governor, and head of the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee,” she told him. When he started shouting for the guards, Mirian let out a sigh. She hadn’t remembered to have their first conversation yet.

She’d have to explain.

Again.

***

While Lord Governor Quintus Palamas sat in his chair, a grumpy expression obscured by his graying beard, King Aurelius Palamas paced about the room. Mirian had lost track of exactly how the older governor was related to the king. Second cousin once removed? Third cousin? Either way, the King was there because, legally, he was the head of the Royal Guard which included the Arcane Praetorians, Crown Bureau, and the Department of Public Security. His power had become largely ceremonial ever since Unification, but Mirian had already argued with a dozen representatives of Parliament and was hoping the weight of the King and Lord Governor might spur them to finally act.

It wasn’t going particularly well.

“I have no problem with removing Director Castill,” Quintus said. “It’s just going to take time. He was a political appointee as part of the Tarien Compromise, and that legislation is key for the current government. Breaking that breaks the unification of the four parties that make up the current government.”

“Need I remind you he was a political appointee of your enemies who seek to have you assassinated? This isn’t a hypothetical. I’ve seen you die, Quintus.”

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Around them were several secretaries and advisors, some of whom were taking notes. Mirian wanted to scatter them like insects crawling about a kitchen. Between the marble pillars hung purple and orange tapestries showing various armored warriors, each one some famous Palamas fighter who had done some sort of heroic nonsense. The two men in front of her could never have been mistaken for such noble warriors.

Quintus shook his head. “We are not them. This is about the stability of Baracuel. Besides, we can’t act purely on your visions. We need proof. I can’t just simply have Corrmier arrested, it would be chaos in this—”

Mirian levitated one of the files in front of him. “I am giving you proof,” she said, voice chilly.

“State secrets. State secrets that I am legally bound from releasing!” Quintus said, annoyed. “They need to be released by the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee. And undermining trust in the Royal Guard undermines the stability of Baracuel, and our security from our enemies. Did you not say Akana seeks to invade?”

“The other Prophets are handling that. I promise you, whatever chaos you think these revelations will create, leaving the rot to fester in the walls is far worse.” They had already discussed how the Deeps had blackmail material on at least two of the members of the Intelligence Committee. No point rehashing that.

“We are in agreement about that,” Quintus said. “I am just saying we need time. A proper plan. You have come to me for my expertise, and I shall provide it. But only a fool rushes into things.”

Mirian felt that anger bubbling up again. Time was exactly the thing they didn’t have. Six months. Six months, you idiots. And I’ve told you, this is all a prelude to our true task.

“Then you have your time. Spend it wisely, for there is far less of it left than you think. Have your secretaries prepare briefs for me on what you do, explaining both the rationale and the results.” It was blindingly obvious she would need to run through many versions of these scenarios. Best to learn from them. “And see what you can do to facilitate the project in Mayat Shadr. I cannot emphasize enough how much damage is done to this city if we fail to stabilize the leylines.”