B2 Chapter 3: Planning
Amber jumped up from the dining table and waved for Carlos to follow her. "I left my notes in my room. Come on, let's get them!"
"Do you actually need your notes?" Carlos kept his tone light as he walked behind her. "I think your memory is pretty good, and you thought through all of this very recently."
Amber shrugged without looking back. "Maybe not, but I'd get worried that I might forget a detail without them." She started climbing the private stairs toward the guest suites they were staying in. "I couldn't possibly forget the top priority thing, of course: making sure we don't get abducted and almost soul-killed again."
"Of course."
"In the immediate short term, we've already done everything I could think of about that." Amber rounded the landing of the stairs. "Might be worth revisiting the topic in case we think of anything new. ... And bring Purple into the discussion; his unique perspective might see possibilities that we can't."
Carlos nodded, even though she wasn't looking toward him, and smoothly switched to telepathy to include the dungeon core. Purple's attention had focused on them the moment Amber said his name. [Right. So, short-term safety measures for us. To start with, we've already moved into the mayor's mansion, so anyone who considers targeting us now will at least know we have his support.]
[Yeah. And attackers won't be able to bypass the outer wards just by renting a room here, like they did at the inn.]
Carlos shrugged as he reached the top of the stairs. [I'm honestly not sure how much that mattered. They got through the suite-specific wards without a trace, and that's not even the most unbelievable thing they pulled off.]
[True.] Amber opened the door to her suite and went straight to the large hardwood desk against the left wall. [Fortunately for us, we have our own unbelievable thing to counter them. Even if all wards and guards fail, Purple will alert everyone to it immediately.] She sighed and shook her head. [If only we'd introduced him to Mayor Stelras earlier. Those mercenaries would have had every adventurer and city guard in Dramos swarming them before they even reached the walls.]
[Would have been a lot less stressful that way, certainly.] Carlos chuckled, shaking his head ruefully. [On the other hand, the pressure of it pushed us to figure out some incredible things.]
[The pressure may have prompted it, but we could have figured them out anyway without it; it just would have been later.] Amber pulled a notebook out of the desk's top drawer and opened it. [I'd rather avoid the unpleasantness of the experience. Anyway, the rest of the short-term safety measures: We have Esmorana and her party on call, with Purple able to contact them at any time. We have Ressara on call and sometimes standing watch, to check for attention-diversion magic. The Crown gave use two special emergency beacons, separate from the ones built into our guards' armor that got disabled by sabotage, which we have tested and stored in separate locations; one in the city's top security vault, and the other hidden. And finally, we have city guards patrolling and standing watch around the mansion, in addition to Colonel Lorvan and Major Ordens inside the mansion.]
Carlos chewed his lip for a moment. [What about reinforcing the wards here? Or adding more layers of them?]
Amber shook her head. [I considered that, but I don't think we can really trust the Enchanters Guild, and they're the only ones who could do that for us.]Read latest novels at novelbin(.)com
[Hmm.] Carlos leaned against the doorframe and tapped his chin, thinking. [Yeah, that's reasonable. They want our dungeon core, and they're the top suspect for who could have sabotaged royal guard armor. Are they really the only source of enchanting work, though?]
Amber slowly walked over to one of the sofas and sat down, all without more than glancing away from her notebook. [Unless you count items made by dungeon cores, yes. I've heard of people figuring out what runes to write for an enchantment's effect, but the guild is... famously vicious about protecting their monopoly on the secret of how to imbue an item with mana and make the enchantment actually work. And before you suggest visiting a dungeon core, we don't have access to one powerful enough for this.]
Carlos smirked. [Not yet. But helping Purple get that powerful is a long-term thing, so fair point.]
Amber looked over at him, then rolled her eyes and waved at the sofa opposite her. "Come in and take a seat, already! I thought I was the shy one out of the two of us, not you."
Carlos smiled as he complied. "It's your room, and I was taught that entering someone's private area uninvited is rude." He settled into the sofa's soft upholstery and leaned forward, clasping his hands together and resting his elbows on his knees. [I'm not happy about how much our short-term defense plans rely on rescue after-the-fact, just trying to ensure it comes quickly, rather than preventing abduction from happening in the first place. But...] He sighed. [The only short-term options I can think of for that involve abandoning Dramos, which I expect the Crown would frown on.]
[I have disassembled the soul structure I made for finding you and replaced it with the originally planned structure. I have additionally made the next 3 planned structures, and I am currently collecting the essence for the final 10th structure.] Purple sent a small burst of surprised confusion. ["Essence?" Ah, I see. A word you learned recently?]
Carlos raised an eyebrow and saw Amber doing the same. [Trinlen taught us about it. Any issues with establishing all the synergies?]
[I will need assistance for the synergies with the bond maker. Those synergies involve and require interaction with someone I have a bond with.]
Carlos nodded. [Of course. After that's done, are you ready to go traveling to absorb higher-level aether? I know that you have to release most of your... mana? Is that the right one, out of aether, mana, and essence?]
[Partially. What anchors me in place, which I must leave behind in order to be moved, is a mix of all three. Regardless, I have far more essence and mana inside me than before, and that will come with me. The loss of what I leave behind will affect me much less and will be more quickly regained. Travel will be necessary to gain the power to protect us. Do not be concerned about my minor discomfort with the process.]
Amber responded first. [I'm glad to hear that. We also need to make plans for what soul structures you should make after your first set merge, but that will have to wait for the same information as our own plans. Is there anything else we can do to help you grow?]
Purple paused, filled with uncertainty. [I don't know.] He hesitated again. [You humans learn how to grow powerful by learning from other humans how they grew powerful. Dungeons do not. Or rather, cannot, because we do not move, meet, and communicate. Find knowledge of how other dungeons became powerful, and that may help me. That is the only idea I have.]
Carlos laughed. [Yet another research project, hmm? Sure, we can add it to the list.]
Amber duly wrote it down, along with a trip into the Wilds for Purple. [Okay. That leaves staff/resources. For improving the staff that we already have, well... I only have one idea for that. We could try helping them improve their soul plans, but doing that without teaching them house secrets could be tricky, and we'd have to convince them to tell us what they already have. The degree of specific details we might need to know in order to help is... enough that even asking would be rude.]
[I see.] Carlos shrugged. [There are ways around that. If we explain the basic idea of the kind of help we might be able to give them, then they can decide whether to share that information without us ever actually asking for it.]
Amber narrowed her eyes at him, then took a note. [Sure. I'll leave that conversation to you.] She glanced back at her notebook and sighed. [And that leaves acquiring new staff/resources. I suppose we could ask Darmelkon to help, but I'm not sure how much we can trust him. Aside from that...] She shook her head helplessly. [I know how to do small jobs and carefully save up, but that's hardly appropriate for us now as nobles.]
Carlos chuckled lightly. [Don't worry about it. I've seen enough of how people in positions of high authority do such things. There's a related saying I learned: "We have people for that." We can delegate it. Eventually, we will have to delegate it, because there will be too many things for us to even conceivably have enough time for all of them. We've kind of already delegated some things anyway: investigating the mercenaries and the illegal "rotation agreement."]
[Yeah. I wonder how those investigations are going.]
Far away, in a dimly lit prison cell, a heavily muscled man, sitting cross-legged on the floor, sighed and bowed his head. He wore only plain and loose clothes made of cheap cloth, save for the rune-inlaid steel manacles that bound his wrists together. He looked up again at the regal woman, dressed entirely in the dark orange of orichalcum, who was watching him from just outside the cell bars. "Your Highness, I can only tell you the same thing I told your interrogators: threats cannot change the simple fact that I do not have the knowledge that you seek. I intentionally set up ways for clients to hire my company without ever revealing any hint of their identities. That anonymity was part of what the Black Blades became known for; part of why people would choose to hire us."
The regal woman gazed at him impassively. "I am aware of your reputation, Captain Granlan. I also have a report of your company exacting retribution on a client who hired you under false pretenses and set you up to fail."
Granlan raised an eyebrow. "Does that report mention how long it took us to unwind the layers of cutouts and concealments to identify that particular client?"
The woman nodded. "Two and a half years, during which you were also pursuing other jobs, and you began with no specific suspicions. Imagine that you focus on the task exclusively; that you coordinate with the Crown on it; and that you start with a precise primary suspect in mind. How much faster do you think that could make it?"
Slowly, Granlan's weary frown changed into a grin. "Now we're talking!"
