Chapter 3 - Part 5

“We are losing, Du’Bray, you understand?” Duke Farmi said, knocking back his fifth brandy. “Cyre is in the center of everything! Brelish factories, Valenar raiders, Karrn undead, Aundairan magic, even those midget scalpers on their dinosaurs are chewing on us!” The Duke was an older man, his hair almost entirely white. He wore breastplate armor, barely polished since his last foray into the battlefield. His jewelry was modest, for a Cyran anyway, but his gloves were from the skin of a very rare species of bear native to the Mror Holds.

“I know,” Du’Bray said to him soothingly. “I know.”

“Doesn’t your House have any feelings for your host country?” the Duke demanded. “Can’t we get more warforged, and cheaper?”

“Honored Duke,” Du’Bray said, pouring the distraught man another brandy. “We do give Cyre certain discounts, we just cannot flaunt them lest we be accused of taking sides. And warforged are expensive things.”

“They’re our last hope,” the Duke sighed, sipping on the new drink. “Our last hope. Until you began producing them we lost ground every year. Now they are the only thing standing between us and disaster.”

“Yes, well I did advise you not to rent hobgoblins from Deneith, I warned both of you and the elders of that House that Haruuc had larger designs.”

“By the Host, three whole provinces gone, a dagger in the back!” the Duke exclaimed, nearly weeping. “I would love to see every goblinoid in Khorvaire wiped out, even the Cyran ones! We send them against the northern border you know, can’t trust them on the southern lines.”

“Yes I know, this war, it drains everyone,” Du’Bray said sympathetically. “Karrnath lost the dwarven areas, Breland its western territories, Aundair the entire Reaches, everyone loses in war.”

“Not you,” the Duke said, his drunken eyes turning angry, directing raging and impotent frustration at Du’Bray. “You dragonmarked, you remain above the fray, answering to no government, you profit handsomely from all of this!”

“We are loyal to Galifar,” Du’Bray answered him with forced calmness. “There is nothing my House or any other can do about the unlawful rejection of Mishann.”

The Duke sighed and swallowed. “Forgive me old friend, I rage at myself, you know that.”

“Of course,” Du’Bray said, patting him gently on the arm while mentally tacking on a fifty gold piece surcharge per unit for the insult. “Look, we have some promising work. Not just new models, but upgrades of older ones. Runes placed on the bodies of the warforged giving them extra strength, extra defenses. Warforged trained as artificers, performing battlefield repairs, upgrading efficiency in an orchestrated fashion. It’s really quite good. A test squadron of them recently destroyed a Karrn zombie legion twice its number.”

“Where was this?” the Duke asked.

“Eastern Aundair,” Du’Bray replied calmly.

“You sold it to the Aundarians first?” the shocked Duke asked, nearly dropping his brandy.

“No, we sold them the prototypes first,” Du’Bray explained with a smile. “You’ll be getting first bid at the completed model.”

The Duke glared at him, but composed himself and said “Generous of you.” He even kept most of the sarcasm from his voice.

An elven woman in a deep blue robe embroidered with Cyran regalia came near and nodded his head in greeting. “Your Highness,” she said. “Lord Du’Bray.” She has long, wavy golden hair, with silver chains holding expensive gems woven in it all. Her gloves were long and black, with an Eberron dragonshard the size of a robin’s egg on the back of each one.

“Du’Bray, you know my chief adviser, Sisrais,” the Duke said.

“You mean your spymaster, a mistress of divination magic,” Du’Bray said, extending a gloved hand. “The woman who obtained the information that led to the siege of Korth. You are as beautiful as ever, Sisrais.”

“Your grandfather was a flatterer as well, Lord Du’Bray,” she said, shaking his hand briefly. Neither of them removed their gloves for the handshake. To pretend that level of trust would have been a gross insult.

“Shall I leave you two to discuss matters then?” Du’Bray asked, preparing to go. In truth he wanted this tiresome business over with. Pienna should be awake soon, and he needed to see her, to make sure she was safe. To make sure that the cabal seeking to unseat me was not behind her collapse.

“Actually I came here to talk to you, Lord Viceroy,” Sisrais said to him, giving him a frank, unfriendly smile. “About an excursion into the Eldeen Reaches.” The Duke was staring at Du’Bray expectantly now, nowhere near as drunk as he had seemed before. Apparently this was something that the two of them had set up.

“And why do you need to talk to me about one of the few governments in the world that is not attacking your land right now?” Du’Bray asked her bluntly.

“Our land, Lord Du’Bray,” she said to him, no longer bothering with the smile. “Warforged from your facility at Whitehearth, bonded with permanent enchantments to fight fiends. They went with a powerful artificer via Orien Stonecoach to the Reaches and conferred with the Gatekeeper sect, killing several evil things that had crossed the border from the Wastes.”

“Your point?” Du’Bray asked, outwardly calm. His mind was racing, trying to figure out how she had found this out so quickly. Was House Orien selling information on its passengers now?

“You were providing very expensive, very direct, very helpful aid to the insurrectionists who have seceded from Aundair, while at the same time placing several new prototypes in the Aundarian fields to fight off incursions from augmented, undead Karrn regiments. It just seems like you are playing both sides against each other.” The Duke was back to sipping his brandy, his eyes locked on Du’Bray.

“One, House Cannith sells its services to whoever can pay,” he told her, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “Two, we were speaking to the Gatekeepers about a matter that was necessary to our internal workings, and their relationship to the insurrectionists of the Eldeen Reaches was and is irrelevant. Three, I prefer to field-test new models for countries other than Cyre, should they fail. Do you have a problem with any of that?”

“What is Project Curtain?” the Duke asked suddenly.

Du’Bray turned to him, truly astonished. “And where did you hear that word?”

“From documents captured when we overran a Thrane camp,” Sisrais said flatly. “They had it from an attack on Brelish infantry, who had captured several crates before they could be destroyed when –”

“When the Cannith surveyors were caught in the middle of an artillery duel between Cyran and Darguun forces five weeks ago,” Du’Bray finished. “Project Curtain deals with the Cyran border.”

“That much was obvious from the surveyors’ notes,” Sisrais told him.

“Protecting the Cyran border,” Du’Bray said.

“Oh so you are patriots then?” the Duke asked sarcastically.

“To Galifar, yes,” Du’Bray told him. “But as a practical matter, many of our facilities are in Cyre, and much damage has been taken in the incidental course of war. We seek to protect Cyre in order to protect ourselves. Project Curtain is an idea on the drawing boards. Its expense will be enormous, assuming it can work, and it will only be implemented if several other stages of experimentation are passed through. And that is all you are getting from me on the subject.”

A tall figure made of adamantine walked towards the group, it’s heavy footsteps were muffled by a sound-reducing enchantment that Du’Bray had permanently infused onto its feet. Sisrais watched it approach carefully, aware of the warforged’s power.

“Lord Viceroy Du’Bray,” the construct said in its cheerful voice. “You asked me to remind you about the expected afternoon shipment.”

“Yes, yes, thank you, Assitant,” Du’Bray said. He turned to the Duke and Sisrais. “This is Assistant, my bodyguard and personal secretary.”

“Greetings honored Sir and Lady,” Assistant said. “This unit stands ready to offer assistance.”

“You give them names now?” Sisrais asked curiously, gesturing to the ‘0020BA’ branded into the warforged’s shoulder.

“Some of them,” Du’Bray said. “Look, I understand your frustrations, but business is business. I am not your enemy. I am someone who tries to support his House as best he can. Please review what we have and place your orders. And remember that you are getting first pick.”

Sisrais made to say something more, but Du’Bray turned and strode away from her and the Duke. Assistant followed him.

“Shall I fetch pen and paper, Lord Viceroy Du’Bray?” Assistant asked him as they walked out of the large reception area to a private hallway. Some Cannith guards saluted as they went by.

“No, not now, you go receive the shipment and take my signet ring to sign,” Du’Bray said to him. “I am going to check on my cousin. Where were you earlier? I wanted you to show up fifteen minutes ago and get me away from that fossilized bore.”

“This unit regrets that it needed to finish the tasks –”

“Forget it, I don’t care,” Du’Bray said, stepping onto an enchanted platform. “Go take care of the shipment and then meet me in my secondary office, I need to go over the ore proposals with you.” He took out a bejeweled key and turned it into the wall. The illusionary ceiling over the platform disappeared, showing a long tube upwards, and the platform began to rise.

“This unit acknowledges,” Assistant said jauntily, and turned to stride away.

Du’Bray said nothing, watching the platform rise, cutting off his view of the cheerful warforged. Assistant’s unusual personality had been part of Du’Bray’s picking him to be his personal bodyguard, but it got grating sometimes. The Cannith Lord rubbed his eyes, trying to think clearly. Someone had tried to poison him four weeks ago, and he had not found the culprit yet. Likely the same person or persons were involved in the movement against him. Du’Bray had told Pienna that he could trust her as an outsider. It was true for reasons beyond what she knew.

The lift stopped at the top and Du’Bray touched the hidden brick on a plain wall that opened the secret door. He removed the bejeweled key and the platform began its slow descent as he stepped off of it. The secret door was locked by magic, only opening to someone with Cannith blood. The hallway beyond was lined with lead and black basalt, and came to a dead end after a mere ten feet. A lever was bolted to the wall.

Du’Bray pulled the lever, and a soft grinding noise issues from stone that separated as if on a zipper. A small crack appeared in the wall, pushing through the invisible protection fields. The break in the physical and magical defenses was specifically calibrated, and only six beings in the world knew the coordinates.

Du’Bray pulled out the special dragonshard and rubbed the mixture of oils on it while murmuring the unlocking words. The infusion sucked the oil into the stone greedily, and broadcast the beacon outwards.

Du’Bray waited.

After some time, less than five minutes, but to a man like Du’Bray a near-eternity, the return pulse warmed the shard. Du’Bry tapped the shard in the preset pattern, and a beam of light cast a shape in the air of the face on an elf with a dragonshard-studded eyepatch.

“Ollimast d’Phiarlan,” Du’Bray said by way of greeting.

“Du’Bray Crin’kola d’Cannith,” the elf responded, tipping his head.

“Thank you for responding so quickly.”

“I was waiting for your call. I love this device by the way.”

“I made it myself, there is no record of its existence,” Du’Bray told him, understanding the elf’s curiosity as a mask for reassurance of confidentiality.

“You are ever cautious, my old friend,” Ollimast laughed. “But of course, by virtue of it you have lived long. For a human, anyway. No disrespect meant.”

“None taken,” Du’Bray said calmly. “What have you got for me, Olli?”

“Someone has watered down your enclave’s supply of chemical number five-three-nine,” Ollimast told him.

“The flash paper,” Du’Bray said, suddenly understanding how the Project Curtain papers found their way into enemy hands.

“The same,” Ollimast said. “Someone wants to make it hard for your documents to remain secure. I tested the watered-down application on some parchment this morning, It burned no more quickly than regular paper. In fact I think it burned slower.”

“Someone is plotting against me then,” Du’Bray said. “I did not imagine it.”

“Looks like it, I assume only someone in your House enclave has access to the supply,” Ollimast said.

“We brew it on-site,” Du’Bray told him.

“Well then, it’s definitely someone trying to make you look bad,” Ollimast told him sympathetically. “You really want to act on this Du’Bray, you don’t want it to fester. Look at my House. Civil war because we ignored the signs. A wholesale extinction of the Paelions because we didn’t share information.”

“I know, I know,” Du’Bray said. He and Ollimast were not friends. Given their position in their respective Houses they could not be friends, not with anyone. But they had a strange, almost-friendship nonetheless. A shared loneliness of command. “Have you got anything else for me, Olli?”

“Sisrais, the diviner.”

“Yeah?”

“She told Dannel that she thinks you should be secretly arrested and interrogated. The King declined.”

“That f’tesking bitch!” Du’Bray yelled, punching the wall.

“I’m pretty sure that she isn’t associated with the coup,” Ollimast said reassuringly. “She doesn’t trust your entire House.”

“Alright, thanks, Olli,” Du’Bray said, forcing himself to calm down.

“For what it’s worth, Patriarch Starrin doesn’t seem to be moving against you either, although that one is obviously well-guarded from espionage.”

“If Starrin wanted to move against me, I’d be dead,” Du’Bray sighed. He did not mention the two in between him and the Patriarch, there was no point. They dealt in different areas than he did. Du’Bray was not like other viceroys in that he was not confined to a region, his responsibilities had been personally assigned by the Patriarch, and he had done them well. The threat to him came from beneath, not above. “I sent you a list of those who protested most against the druid I brought in,” Du’Bray noted. “Maybe there’s something there.”

“I’ll keep digging, but I doubt I’ll get farther,” Ollimast told him. “No one would want the Gatekeepers involved. Especially since that sect is so entwined with a third of Tharashk.”

Du’Bray frowned. “Someone tried to hurt her, Olli.”

“Feeling guilty?”

Du’Bray sighed. “Yes.”

“Pienna isn’t just ‘a’ Gatekeeper, Du’Bray,” Olli pointed out. “I gave you a dossier before you sent for her. She’s the most powerful member of her sect in the Eldeen Reaches.”

“That’s wilderness,” Du’Bray said. “This is a world of machines. This is not her world. This is a world where they’ll do something to her to get to me.”

The elf nodded. “I’ll find answers for you, Du’Bray.”

“Alright, I’ll speak to you in three days.”

Ollimast laughed. “We’re seated next to each other at that luncheon tomorrow!” he said. “Have you forgotten than I’m less than five miles from you right now?”

“Yeah, but we’ll pretend not to know each other then. Speak to you in three days.”

“Understood. Good fortune to you.”

Ollimast’s image winked out, and Du’Bray put the lever back in its original position.