Chapter 1 - Part 4

Sister Pienna looked at the classified after-action reports, carelessly scattered over his cousin’s desk. Her cousin, Lord Viceroy Du’Bray Crin’kola of House Cannith, was screaming at a researcher across the ocean in Xen’drik via a crystal lens that had been custom-made by a House Sivis artificer.

“I don’t care what you theorize,” Du’Bray screamed, his face growing purple around the silvery-blue lines of the Greater Dragonmark that covered most of the left side of his face. “I care that another group of the things went berserk, and killed seven men before they were destroyed! I told you I wanted adaptability regimens for the battlefield, and you said that’s what the thing did!”

“My most gracious and patient Lord Viceroy,” came the tinny voice on the other end of the line. “I did tell you that we did not know how the artifact worked, precisely. There is some indication that it taps into Dolurrh, perhaps –“

“If you even begin to imply that these very profitable items, which cost a great deal of money to create, have souls,” Lord Du’Bray said, shaking a finger garbed in a gold-brocaded glove at the lens. “If I even here another word of it, one word, you will not leave that jungle alive! FIX THE KEEPER-KISSING THING, AND DON’T SEND IT BACK HERE UNTIL IT WORKS RIGHT!” He slapped down on the crystal button and ended the call. “By the Sovereign Host, am I the only one in the House who understands that we are in a business?” He slid himself down in the velvet-covered chair behind the massive oak and gold leaf desk that dominated this room, a room in the highest tower in the House Cannith enclave in Eston, Cyre.

“Was that a rhetorical question?” Sister Pienna asked gently. Her thoughts were not gentle, they were actually quite worried. But she had known how to deflate her cousin’s rages even when they were small children. They were very close then, even closer than most siblings, probably due to their mothers being twin sisters. They were not so close now, having followed callings in different parts of Khorvaire.

“No, I invited a druid into the hills of Eston to discuss accounting,” snorted Du’Bray. He opened up a drawer and pulled out some very fine brandy, and two crystal goblets. The brandy was from Arenal, and cost more than any one of the ‘hardship bonuses’ given to the widows and relatives of the seven dead men. “Have a drink with me.” To anyone else that would have been an order.

“I do not desire Deathless products,” Pienna said softly. “My order has been discouraging –”

“Sorry, sorry,” Du’Bray said. “Forgot. Here, some wine from the Eldeen Reaches.” A rock steady hand poured the goblet, and slid it across the desk to the visitor’s chair.

“Thank you,” Pienna said, taking a sip. It was exquisite. “You know, while I was born into Cannith I have no Dragonmark, and I left the House some time ago,” Pienna said. “I have no expertise in this area, no history with it. I came when you called me after the first – incident. But I am not sure why you called me.”

“Because you aren’t afraid of me,” Du’Bray answered her. “Because you don’t tell me just what I want to hear. Because you don’t work for me.” He took the whole goblet of brandy in one gulp, then poured himself another. “All that means is that I can trust you to give me a truthful opinion. Everyone else – I don’t know.”

Pienna looked around the opulent office, thinking carefully about what tack to go on in this conversation. She had not wanted to travel hundreds of miles through a raging war – even via an instantaneous spell, but House Cannith had been very insistent when they finally found her, deep in the snow-covered woods. And they had provided several of these warforged to battle a thing that had come in from the Wastes. Pienna’s companion, a great panther, had not liked the warforged, but the four automatons had fought well. Three were destroyed by the thing from the Wastes, and the fourth badly disabled. Pienna’s druid assistants were surprised to see that a golem could feel pain. Pienna had been surprised to find that her cure spell had restored the warforged, if only partway. And it had thanked her.

Curiosity over these warforged had made Pienna agree to take passage through a House Orien teleporter, far more than feelings of affection for a cousin that she had not seen in three years. Yes, she still felt loyalty and love for her cousin, but her cousin was far more than a cousin. Du’Bray was the fourth-ranking member of a Dragonmarked House, a viceroy whom other viceroys feared. Du’Bray was no longer Du’Bray the cousin. He was Cannith first, and a human being second.

How much of Du’Bray was left under that Dragonmark?

“Penny for your thoughts,” Du’Bray said, gesturing humorously to the giant penny made out of marble hanging from one wall. The huge decoration had been with House Cannith so long that no one remembered where it had come from.

“I’m sorry,” Pienna said. She had been lost in thought for a minute or two. That Du’Bray – a man to whom minutes were weighed like gold – had not interrupted her spoke volumes. “I was mulling over these reports,” she lied diplomatically, gesturing towards the papers.

“Amazing, no? We can train them with skills and battle prowess, we can graft armor onto them, but we can’t predict when they’ll stop following orders. The first time a dozen people died. We covered it up by claiming sabotage, but one of the dead was a kinsman of a Talenta lath. Two days later a horde of dinosaurs led by a halfling bard ravaged an open-air bazaar that we were running in Karrnath. We lost a lot of money. That’s when I sent for you.”

And you did not send for me after the death of the dozen people? “Bray,” she said carefully, using a childhood nickname deliberately. “That man in the lens, you would really have him killed?”

“What? Oh no, well not directly,” Du’Bray said. “I’d just fire him, and he’d have to leave the base. Those dark-skinned jungle elves would find him wandering around by himself or he’d get eaten by a feral giant or something. I wouldn’t actually have him killed, don’t be ridiculous. This is House Cannith, not some gang of Sharn street thugs.” The words came, smoothly, easily, and were quickly followed by another full goblet of brandy.

Th’herg’not, Pienna thought. It was a Sylvan word for animal excrement. Tossing a man out into a wild jungle was murder to her – and under the Galifar Code, regardless of how Du’Bray looked at it. Yes, you are Cannith far to the core. But what would that make him do? She would have to test him, as a doe tapping the water of a stream.

“And you are sure that you want my opinion?” she pressed. “You did not want that man’s opinion.”

“Because he says that to deflect criticism of his screw-ups. Four years ago an eldritch siege engine didn’t work and he claimed that it was because of spots on the surface of the sun.” Du’Bray chortled at this. “I didn’t want to keep him but I was overruled.” She felt that to be a lie, or at least not the whole truth. “If you come to the same conclusions as him, fine. I will look at them in a new light.” He sniffed the brandy now, not drinking anymore. “You’re not to be left in a jungle, Pienna, and even if you were I suspect it would be more a reward than anything else.” His tone was light, his banter careful.

“You’re trusting me with a great deal of House secrets,” she reminded him, gesturing to the documents.

Even this did not shake his control. “I think the risk worth the cost,” he said. “Besides, I do, in fact, trust you.”

“Do you trust me enough to show me the workings of the forges?”

There was a pause, just a slight one, no one else would have caught it, but she knew him well, and she did catch it. “You wouldn’t understand all of it. I don’t understand all of it. But I can show you some of it.” He was willing to show her more than anyone, but he would hold back some.

Or maybe nobody really knows how it works. Maybe that man in the lens isn’t a middle-level supervisor, he’s their main tinkerer, and even he does not understand it. That would explain why he was not removed.

“May I interview the warforged?” she asked him, suddenly changing topics. So too did the hare suddenly change direction when avoiding the wolf. But is the wolf me or you? Perhaps me.

His eyebrows registered surprise. “Why would you do that?”

“You mean no one has?”

“Pienna, they’re golems.”

“Golems that can reason? Talk, read, learn?”

He considered that for a moment. “We never thought of it.” He smiled. “Your outlook helps already, Pienna, I really appreciate this.”

Quite a shift from your earlier attitude. Maybe he was being truthful about believing her. “I may tell you things that you don’t want to hear, Bray,” she warned him.

“I know,” he said, exhaling. “But I can trust you. And I know what you’re hinting at. If you really, really think that these things are alive somehow…I’ll take it into consideration.”

So Du’Bray the man lives, if buried deeply under the House Cannith. “Well, let me see what I can find,” she smiled. And if she did find something that suggested that these warforged were alive, but not natural…her own station in the Gatekeepers required her to deal with that too.