B.T.V. -- Session 07 Epilogue: Dreary Little Town, Grubby Little Plots

Report of Simon Belasz to the Circle of Beldam, the Sixth




As I looked out the window of my room, the dim light of Axildusk hung like a funeral shroud over the City of Adhrilanka. I was in a mood. I won’t apologize for it. Almost certainly someone would die this night, and by a Morganti weapon, due to an indiscretion, even if it was an inadvertent one. The capital of the Empire was a wondrous city, huge, cosmopolitan, full of intriguing odours, spectacular buildings and cosmopolitan people. It was also, from my point of view, a dreary little town full of grubby little plots. Be sure to read to the very end, my friends, to see what brought me to this state.

After Noxter had left me, I set out to begin rewriting some of the scrolls I had used in the laundry shop earlier in the morning. Work that needed concentration and an exacting hand. But the couple next door just couldn’t keep their mouths shut.

Jack was back, it seemed, and talking to Selador again. You’d think someone with “Shadow” in their name would know to keep his voice down. I’d left the window open, and so had they, so the sound carried. Father always said I had unusually acute ears. Now I was paying the price for it. Noxter had taken Bamboo for a walk before she left for the rest of the day. That’s another distraction. What did that mean, to a Draegeran and a Jhereg? Are we involved now? Or does she just like Bamboo. Lots to love there, of course.

“Thanks, Boss,” Bamboo said into my mind. I smiled. Leave it to the lyorn to raise my spirits.

I’m not sure when Jack went into Selador’s room, because they only started talking after my companion had slept, allowing me to get most of my calligraphy done. 

Jack told Selador, “If you want to develop your spells, perhaps I’d be able to join you once in a while in future.” Selador had spells? I stopped writing. His skills with the sword looked magical, but spells? Hadn’t seen the decanter type to me, but you never can tell, especially on Axildusk.

Selador’s spells were rooted to Law, Jack continued, and his ziggurat was the base of it. He’d mentioned a ziggurat before. I’d had to look that up. Selador, in his dense scholastic voice, said his portals would illuminate such portals as the dragons might will. So not just his Acadia, but possibly others, maybe this Typhon?

Jack, by contrast, said he was exclusively with shadow but at the same time was familiar with all the Noble Thoughts. He also claimed that, when it came to Axildusk, the Dragon of Shadow provided the power and the Dragon of Law, or Acadia, the ability to use that power. I’m not sure if that’s just for Selador or for everything. Dammit. Against my wishes, this was getting interesting, but was hard to follow.

He was unsure what dragon I got my power from. Not darkness, unless I didn’t know it. Yeah. Like I know a dragon. “I assure you, my friend, dragons form the sole topic of conversation in the humble mountain village that I come from.”

Selador suggests shadow, but Jack said that was only a possibility. Even light might be the source, so I figure that’s another “Noble Thought” or dragon. Gods, I wish I had some brandy to sip. I might be able to follow this easier if I was just a little drunk.

Light’s a relatively new power, Jack continues, but growing in numbers and strength.

He warned Selador against dabbling with more than one dragon, because doing so opens one up to the others.

Great. Now Selador has me using “one” as a pronoun. It’s insidious, I tell you.

Selador intoned, “The symbol of Law is a straight arrow, while the symbol of Chaos is not.”

Funny, that. You’d think two very different groups might well share the same symbol.

Jack observes that Selador is “quite fixated on Chaos.” “Law is one, Chaos is infinite,” whatever that means.

Selador allows he now had the wisdom to admit that “Law determines Chaos.”

Bamboo’s fallen asleep. Lucky lyorn.

Then Jack calls to me from Selador’s open window and tells me to come over. So he might know I’m listening. Or not. Jack’s above average height for a human, but not by much, but the fact one of his eyes glows slightly with a blue-white emanation might be more of a tip-off to his identify.

Jack says they’ve been talking about decanting, and though I should get involved.

“Odd name for an Easterner,” I observed after he introduced himself. He confessed to, like Selador and Finndo, being from outside Axildusk. I start to wonder how many such visitors were might be having.

He’d come to teach Selador, though he wasn’t a good teacher, he confided to me, at the behest of the Noble Thoughts of Time and Shadow. Noble thoughts, he explained, were the highest points of conceptual reality or some such things. Such Thoughts form a group of concepts important to all things, so much so they were often taken for granted and hence overlooked.

He described my calligraphy as an efficient form of decanting, because I could invoke a spell and do something else, rather than have to continue to concentrate. The Orb, he explained, allowed Draegerans to safely use “raw magic,” by which I take it he means Amorphia.

I tell him his name sounds familiar to me, despite its alien nature.

He replies, tellingly I think, “This is my first visit here that I remember.” I start to imagine how the Dragon of Time might allow his future self to visit Axildusk earlier then now, but I get a headache and I stop.

“Jack of Shadows,” is who he is, he says.

“Axildusk has a great history to it,” he continues, the result of the joint efforts of Time and Shadow. The latter has put Axildusk in a position of important for all of existence, including, I supposed, whatever is outside here. That headache threatened to come back again.

Others, meaning I think more outsiders, are now being “rudely awakened” to that fact, and the unique properties of this place, which they hadn’t previously understood. I refrain from suggesting sending Jack to each of them to give them lessons would make them rapidly lose interest in the entire subject.

Bamboo is asleep but seems to be dreaming about meatballs. Again.

Jack points out that humans are considered third or fourth rate citizens. Yes. Glad he could enlighten me on that. Maybe he should stick around longer and see what it’s really like.

Selador is “something of a practitioner” of decanting, even if it wasn’t a form I would recognize. I certainly haven’t before now.

Turning back to me—he jumps all over the place—four dragons provided the power for most if not all magic, Lightness, Darkness, Fire and Shadow. I also heard him say, though, that sometimes but not often, a decanter used power from within himself or herself rather than tapping an outside source like, presumably, amorphia.

When I point to the House of the Dragon, he says they’re not connected to the Noble Thoughts. In ancient times, “Dragon” was another word for king or leader. Huh. Ask a Dragon. See what he says about it.

“The Splinters are much more important than people understand,” Jack asserted. We’d come across one later, so I guess that’s useful information? Not that he gave me any idea what to do with them. No one has given any thought to what they are, he adds.

He confesses to being a well-known thief. Seems a contradiction in terms. He also seems indifferent when I mention Kiera the Thief. Hah.

“I am this realm’s measuring stick” when it comes to thievery, he boasts modestly. “It is I to whom all thieves aspire.”

Jack then warns that all magic must come from one of the Dragons, not Chaos, for some reason.

I mention that in addition to the Orb, some practitioners employ forbidden Elder Sorcery to manipulate Amorphia. Selador asks if they do so individually or groups. I assure him it’s individuals. I’ve never heard of a group doing so. The type of people who try Elder Sorcery don’t tend to be the warm and fuzzy types who get on well with each other.

“Better and better,” Jack observes. “Things to look into when you have time, eh, Selador?”

Selador suggests his only interest would be to take such practitioners to the Executioner’s Star. That’s Selador, always receptive to new ideas.

When I mention the stones of Amorphia used in Elder Sorcery, Jack wishes for a sample to examine. If he found one, he’d give it to Selador, he promised. For what a thief’s vows are worth.

Selador then went on about a planet divided between Light and Dark, with the boundary between them of Twilight, and how a Jack might be known there. The side of Light was ruled by technology and known for tranquility, and that of Darkness for feudalism—I think that’s like what we have—and energized by sorcery. That Jack could die and revive multiple times.

“You are well read,” Jack responds cryptically.

Selador, equally cryptically, said the knowledge to ensure victory could also destroy everything. Welcome to the Draegeran Empire, buddy. We should have learned that lesson with Adron’s Disaster, and I’m pretty sure we haven’t.

“I am limited in my time here,” Jack stated suddenly, somewhat to my relief. I was in well over my head from the start. “You are not. Perhaps I will read of you someday as you have read of me.” Somehow, I figure, my name will be conveniently left out. Woe is me.

Jack also hoped that Selador wouldn’t come to be haunted by the songs of Minstrels. His name is so familiar….

Then Jack says there’s another reason he’s here, and hands me a soft buckskin pouch, closed by something between a bow and knotwork. He tells me to keep it well-hidden, because its contents might seem “incriminating.” I promise to do so, but I’ve started to wonder if Noxter is somehow rifling my belongings at the same time she’s rifling my, ahem, goods.

Somehow Jack then gets on to the subject of ghosts. Science would claim they were figments of the imagination, given power by the minds of men.

He warns Selador to keep his decanting small-scale for now, rather than trying to summon Jack from outside Axildusk through a portal. While Shadow might return him to us as a “teacher” again, that was far from certain.

Shadow’s partnership with Time is strong, he asserts. “The others will be scrambling no doubt.”

The Dragons were usually supposed to be so superior to anything else they had no benefit from forming unions, yet still they did from time to time, he alleged. He planned to leave Axildusk to see what the Dragons elsewhere were up to, he said in farewell.

Selador said the Truth of Thoughts was beyond us—no argument there—but truths might be mobile and above such restraints. “One wonders, then, how these Dragons will relate to the circumstances of Axildusk, and if other teachers will be allowed to access this play?” He used teacher to describe an entity chosen to enact the desire of a Noble Thought. Jack said a safe assumption would be that other Dragons would try to pierce the veil of time and access Axildusk. I presume from what he’s said earlier only Darkness, Lightness, Fire and Shadow are here for now.

If one was stronger than the others, he stated, all existence would already be ruled by “one overarching Thought.” I decide that while I’m not sure I understand that, I don’t like the thought—er, idea.

“All things living and inanimate are the Thoughts of the Dragons.”

Selador suggests Colonel Jade, who we encountered with the Jenoine the first night we met, was someone who had gained an access point to Axildusk from outside. Jade, Jack answers, is from someplace called the Canticle, but he has found a place where he can enter, via the sword “Nul” stuck in the cobblestones of a street when were encountered the Jenoine, where it remains. The sword pierces the veil. Not a very subtle analogy if you ask me. Some have thought to draw it forth. Some, by which I mean all, subsequently disappeared, Jack says.

'Nul's Lane'


He adds that Jade bears watching with the same respect one gives a death adder. I assume he means that for Selador. I figured that out when I first saw him. Jade’s world, he, by which I mean Jack, says is “technological,” where science overrules magic. They’re more interested in practical magic, similar to but not the same as the “guns” and horseless carriages and airships of Adhrilanka.

“Technology doesn’t have a sense of light or dark, and hence both sides can use it,” he added.

Despite the development of technological weapons to the point where a single hit could kill, he’d rather put his reliance on a Morganti blade, he allowed. Null, he added, was not the only such blade that could destroy a world. Huh? Where’d that come from? Maybe we should at least put a rope up around Null then. Don’t touch or you might destroy the world. Maybe he means it would do so just by giving access to Axildusk. Not much better that way.

He notes that the 28 Great Weapons of Draegara have distinct personas. Selador, whose blade is Massartu, which translates as “Vigilant Guard,” is such a Weapon, Jack contends. I don’t know of any Great Weapons that aren’t Morganti, but hey, it’s not like I’m the Imperial Encyclopedia. Which reminds me. I should look up some of that stuff in that.

Jack, finally actually leaving, saying he has a few small things to leave with others. I suspect he means outsiders.

“One might be interested in who else you taught,” Selador observes archly.

Jack said we could come along and see if we wanted, but time, or Time, was growing short. “The leaves of the book will be closed for the time being.” Selador replies, “One will consider the twilight in your absence.” Guess he’s a poet.

He warns again about me letting anyone seeing what’s inside the pouch without being sure of them. “The contents are most damning.”

He exits via the window, and Selador and I, with Bamboo, depart via the door to our appointment with the Jhereg Drey at the 26th hour at the Imperial Mistake. We encounter three Jhereg, one a woman and two men, who recognize and approach us, asking if we are the ones who we seem. Assuming they wanted an excuse to take a shot at us, I assure them we are just two Easterners on our way to a costume party. She questions me incessantly and obviously doesn’t believe my rather transparent lies, but I want to the meeting on time, so I persist, and eventually she relents. She made a cryptic remark about how they had wanted to talk to us, by which I mean the real us. I think she’s just baiting me further, so I leave it alone. I’ve got enough of a handful with Noxter. Why do Jhereg women find me so irresistible. I can feel Bamboo smirking at me.

As we near the Imperial Mistake, we see a small ghost light rise up from street level to hover over a chimney stack. I’m intrigued and, considering how we seem to have been bombarded with portentous events and signs since I met with Selador, and which I blame him for, I’d like to look into it future, but I can’t climb walls and my companion is disinclined to. So we head for the inn and find Drey waiting for us at the booth. I order Fenarian brandy, thinking I would pay the shot this time, which was only fair because he had treated us the night before, but he later pays for it. (I learn repaying the ones who had you revivified with favours of similar monetary value was generally expected.) We also see a pair of sturdy Orca, and hear them gossiping, one telling the other “the Yendi” had been seen in the Six Towers, and was supposedly, as described, something of a drunkard. I can’t help but think of the Yendi who was in the grasp of the Jenoine, and supposedly later released, as was the Tiassa, who then, supposedly, tried to murder the Empress. I resolved to take us to the Six Towers soon to have a look around. And for Bamboo, a sniff around.

Drey claimed that Noxter liked to inscribe the names of certain of her “useful” conquests in tattoos on her body. I assure him I don’t believe I’ve achieved that honour yet.

Drey then passed on news of the Bones, saying that Auntie Maim wasn’t inclined to take over leadership, and the crew will probably disband. “We are no more the Bones,” he laments.

A bluecoat sticks his head around the corner of the booth, attracted by our talk of Morganti. He takes exception to two Easterners being in his district. “You two Easterners had better watch your step,” he rumbles. “I don’t want trouble in the docks.

“Easterners belong in the East.”

While Drey confesses he’ll probably have to find another crew to join, Lyra of the Stig approaches our table. Funny how easy it is for some people to find us, but I expect it has something to do with being in the Special Tasks Group. She sends Drey off so she can speak to us privately.

“You have been very busy, haven’t you?” she asked. I wasn’t certain Selador would be capable of answering, entranced as he seemed with her. She certainly seemed entranceable. Entranceworthy? Entrance enhanced? In any case, she seems an exception to my earlier, rather forlorn, comments about dreary people. She then confirms her Captain Saderown is indeed in disguise, since the actual Athyra of his name was born without bones and, even if he survived that, be unlikely to engage in as many strenuous activities as the Captain did on a regular basis. His house was a small one, with only three recorded survivors. She was making inquiries about his purported mother and aunt but wasn’t sure she’d get any answers. Saderown, she allowed, the real one at least, had been born under an ill star, on the very night of Adron’s Disaster some 300 years ago. She had also launched an inquiry with the House of the Dzur, but again was uncertain of answers. Selador’s frank stare seemed to suggest he didn’t believe she should ever suffer from frustration of any kind.

Lyra had also heard that a Fenarian ambassador had arrived in the capital only an hour earlier. “I trust it does not end in war,” she prayed, which seemed a strange attitude for a Dzur, but maybe she just thinks fighting Easterners is enough of a challenge. A war could embroil other Eastern Lands, she adds, and Adhrilanka would be no safe place for an Easterner.

Like it is now.

Perhaps, she speculated, the Empress was weary and would not deal well with the Ambassador, which might signal the change of the Cycle. Because, of course, a reign of a Dragon Emperor was bound to be fuzzy kitten parties for Easterners. Selador offers to summon Lyra if we have means to assist her in some way in future. Bit of a big leap in a relationship, but she seemed intrigued.

Why did Noxter walk Bamboo this morning? I could feel the lyorn smirking again.

Selador then takes her hand, presumably to memorize her in some way so he can summon her. It’s obvious he finds her a far deeper spirit than he had anticipated.

While they’re doing that, I tactfully have a chat with Bamboo. He says he has no idea why the Jenoine seemed to want him, and that the Yendi who owned him was named Yeelin Oss Ketation and was in the process of bonding him as a familiar when I stepped into the situation, taking his place. The Tiassa he was with had a name like Naygorvern, Bamboo recalls, as best he can, after scarfing down a bribe of meatballs.

Odd that a Yendi would be practising a ritual of witchcraft. Rare but not quite unknown, from what I’ve heard. The Yendi had only had Bamboo about six days before they were abducted by the Jenoine in a “crazy flying thing.” Bamboo claims they escaped only after he showed the two Draegerans the door, or where it was. Maybe they couldn’t? He still had a connection to the Yendi, and knew he was still alive, so I asked if he could track him. That was a mistake, Bamboo took off immediately for the door, discommoding several of the revelers at the inn. Fortunately, I could call him back, explaining we would search for his former master later.

Meanwhile, Selador the Subtle asks Lyra, given the bias against Easterners, if there were ever “relations” between the races. Because he had no idea what Noxter and I were up to in the room next door. Righttt.

“I supposed we’ll have to find out,” Lyra replies, then departed with the words, “Until we meet again.”

Like a bloody Paarfi romance, it is.

Selador and just about every man in the inn, and one or more of the women I think, watch Lyra as she walks outside. Selador’s verging on being rude, but then he spots a shadowy figure following after her, so I guess that’s alright? We follow the mystery figure, with Bamboo tracking both of the Draegerans to a nearby clock tower and then to a nearby dock, where the suspicious fellow watched her from behind bales of cloth. Turns out to be Michtey. Caught my remark earlier about a small town, right?

“I’m following the Stig,” he admits, but I’m not sure why. He did know she was involved in the investigation of what happened a couple of nights earlier, in the Foundry area. Selador, ever helpful, advised him to follow the Stig captain again. I mentioned subtle, didn’t I? Said watching the captain would be far more useful that following his girlfriend—er, Lyra.

“Help a poor Draegeran out,” Michtey demands, wanting a better reason for doing so, and Selador, who didn’t meet remark he wouldn’t let out of his mouth, said the captain wasn’t who he seemed.

“Good work, good work,” Michtey praised us.

Then he tells us that Auntie Maim had taken the Jenoine weapon from Firebrand almost as soon as he received it from Selador. I decide that must mean she’s jobbed the Bones, and then Nutcracker sent others of the crew in a fore-doomed effort to steal what she already had. Nutcracker died at his crew house, but I figure Firebrand had sent an assassin armed with a Morganti weapon, outraged by Maim’s theft and blaming Nutcracker for it. I explained my reasoning, because in for a point, in for an imperial, right? It’s possible I vaguely contributed to us being compromised, but I’ll still blame Selador for now, thank you very much.

Michtey then told us our weekly pay would double to 250 Imperials, and that the next night he expected Calcitrant would have another mission for us. At the time, I thought after that we might have to take a brief vacation at Candletown. Assassins say it’s lovely there when Adhrilanka is too hot for them.

We caught back up to Drey at the inn. Fortunately, he hadn’t left, and believing some information might bind him to us, explained my reasoning about Nutcracker’s death. He didn’t seem that impressed, but he might have just been playing the cool customer.

After a busy evening, Selador start back to the inn, planning to go from there to the Six Towers to have a look around. But as we near the Coal Fires, we see a larger ghostlight hovering outside a mine entrance and this time I’m determined to follow it. We do so, and within the mine tunnel, around the corner from the entrance, and it expands beyond the walls, leaving a figure in a full helm and bearing strange, gun-like weapons on one side and a strange artifact attached to the other. The newcomer started to raise his weapon at us as it began to work, and Selador rushed forward, rolling near the end and coming up drawing Massartu. With a quick chop he struck out at the weapon, and the sinister whirring ended. Meanwhile, I thought to draw and use a scroll, but realized the tunnel was now too dark to do so, so I rushed to the artifact. Long story short, I secured it and put it away in a pouch, hopeful everyone else would forget it had been there. Yes, I’m not always the world’s nicest person. Selador, as I see to my tasks, takes a rapid swing, connecting with one of the newcomer’s legs, leaving a sore wound. The newcomer goes for a handgun and takes a shot that whizzes by Selador’s still injured left hip.

Selador, still focused on taking the newcomer’s legs out, connected once more for an even more grievous wound, then impales him through the chest. The newcomer slumps, held up only by the sword, and indicates he is ready to retire from the fight.

“You have the splinter,” he says, seemingly meaning the artifact now in my possession.

Selador, giving quarter, eases his blade from the newcomer’s chest, and he slumps further to the ground. Selador tells me splinters are things of great value. I ask him if we should call a physicker for the newcomer, but Selador declines. “It is an enemy.”


We return to our rooms planning to retire for the night, but then I open the pouch, finding a strange sort of picture inside, very lifelike though pale, showing the Stig captain and Michtey together in a room, from sometime in the prior day, from what Jack had told us of his time in Axildusk.

So. The two were in this together, and our (really Selador’s but sure, our) indiscretion earlier in the night had compromised us, I expect beyond repair. I’m not sure if the captain and Michtey are loyal employees of Calcitrant, or working for others, or hatching their own grubby plots. What I am reasonably certain of is that Drey, who Selador had told Michtey was our source of information on the captain, will be dead by Morganti means if no outside agency intervenes. Perhaps the Gods, or just fortune. As for us, I expect that Michtey’s “meeting” with us tomorrow evening will be on the same lines. Despite Selador’s great abilities, and my more modest ones, I expect that without aid we might well not survive the night. My only hope is to confront Michtey with the picture, to see if that unsettles him and allows us to turn him. After all, we did witness him murder a child, and even if a Jhereg, that’s a heinous crime in Draegeran society, I expect. If and when I take brush to parchment to write to you again,



I remain Simon

Simon Balazs's words transcribed by R. Perry