6th of Season of Air, Year 16 AL

  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary when Newt and Ruby entered the imperial city, but still Newt felt something was wrong. The people weren’t as lively as he remembered them. There were fewer smiles and more worried frowns.

  “It feels like a border town waiting for an onslaught,” Ruby muttered.

  Newt couldn’t say, Harthow and the surrounding lands had never suffered from such an atmosphere while he was there.

  “Where can we ask around about what’s happening?” He truly didn’t know. Approaching a random person on the street seemed like a bad idea.

  “You, commoner,” Ruby stopped a man. “I visited Thunderbluff twenty years ago, and it wasn’t this bleak. What’s happening?”

  The man bowed, and everyone within earshot cleared the street.

  “I… We…” he struggled with his words and fear. “People have been disappearing. Whole villages outside the walls, and even inside Thunderbluff, you wake up one morning to find your neighbors gone without a trace. The night curfew started nine years ago for our safety, and we still can’t leave our homes after dark.”

  The man hesitated. He wanted to say more, but instead forced his mouth shut.

  Newt wanted to ask about the news from all across the empire, but what would a non-awakened know about that?

  “Leave,” Newt said, and the man scurried away.

  “We should head for the rumor house and ask for general information about the state of the empire. It shouldn’t be expensive, since we only want the broad strokes.”

  Ruby nodded. “Our contact should be at the rumor house anyway.”

  Newt followed Ruby, scanning the city as he went. Within three miles, he only detected two people with a privacy screen, both at the sixth realm. The heresy hunters’ headquarters was warded off completely, so some of them must have been there too, but that was about it.

  It was a strange feeling. Newt could probably level the city in a matter of minutes, and nobody could do a thing to stop him.

  How terrifying it must be for the non-awakened? Their lives and deaths hang on our whims.

  Some might have found the feeling of absolute power exhilarating. Newt found it sickening.

  True, exalts could end him in a handful of moves, the more powerful amongst them might even be able to kill him before he put up a fight, but Newt’s power could compare with theirs, even if it fell short.

  While he considered the cosmic insignificance of individuals and wondered about his own place in the grand scheme of things, Ruby led the way towards the rumor house.

  They entered the building together and went to one of the three clerks sitting at identical tables. The man and the women were smartly dressed, with a spell seal obscuring their features. Ruby picked the man and sat before his desk.

  Rather than take a chair from one of the other clerk’s stations, Newt just sat on air, floating above ground.

  “Good day,” the man said in a pleasant yet artificial voice. “What may we do for you?”

  “I wish to know how many people with bounties there are in the city of Allflour.”

  “We don’t have the exact information, but if we had to hazard a guess, we would say seventeen.”

  “And where is the seventeenth sword forged by Grandmaster Skysplitter?”

  “The location of the sword is unknown, Lady Aspirant.”

  Newt watched them exchange half a dozen nonsensical questions and answers before the man nodded.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Please go to the back, Lord and Lady; the manager will see you.” The clerk stood, bowed, and gestured behind the desks where there was seemingly nothing, but Newt knew the wall was just an illusion.

  They passed right through it and found themselves in a wide corridor with a multitude of doors on both sides, a man at the fifth realm standing in the middle, offering Newt and Ruby a bow.

  He wore the same kind of suit as the clerks, but his head was fully visible.

  “Greetings, Lord Salamandra, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. May I ask what you are doing here? It’s not every day that someone branded an imperial heretic comes into our establishment.”

  Newt blinked.

  He was a wanted man. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. Meanwhile, the manager kept talking.

  “I don’t yet know who you are, Lady, but I’m guessing your name is on the long list of imperial heretics as well.”

  Ruby nodded. Not a hint of the surprise Newt felt could be seen on her face.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “We are looking to purchase certain goods discreetly, and we would like a report on the empire’s general state of affairs.” She paused, then added, “What we have seen so far isn’t encouraging.”

  “Well, let’s step into my office, and we can talk there. May I interest you in some tea?”

  “Yes, please.” Newt was surprised with how much he missed good old-fashioned tea, as all they had in the jungle were tisanes.

  The situation in the empire was bleak. With the withdrawal of two whole royal families, two ducal houses, and a handful of orders, the overwhelming advantage the imperial faction held over the cultists, while still overwhelming, had become far more centralized. This left gaps for the madmen to exploit and resulted in a good number of once-protected communities suffering grievous damage, often facing complete destruction.

  The Tidebreaker kingdom was hit the worst, the Ghost Cult killing just about everyone, with only the Lonely Mountain remaining, the order having turtled up behind its defenses before the imperials came to wage war on the cultists.

  In the wake of the exodus, Duke Grandfang and Duke Palestalker went underground along with the elites of their families. The imperials were hounding them, and had branded them heretics, but for the past ten-odd years, they had successfully evaded capture.

  All of that had resulted in a shuffling of powers, with the frontier abandoned, and the forces once guarding it moved to watch over higher quality resources and ensure they wouldn’t fall into the cults’ hands.

  “Thunderbluff is no longer an imperial city, and while heresy hunters maintain a token force, in reality, the cultists are running rampant.”

  “Do you have a way of contacting the renegade dukes?” Newt asked, and the manager gave him a weird look often reserved for children asking obvious questions.

  “If anyone else had come and asked me that, I would have denied it, but considering you’re a heretic with a kill on sight order—yes, we have a way of contacting them. The imperials know it, the remaining royals know it, but all sides pretend that’s not the case, since everyone needs our services and they need our discretion regardless of the circumstances.”

  He straightened in his seat. “Now, you mentioned you also needed our services.”

  Ruby nodded and passed him a sheet of paper.

  “We need these.”

  The man’s pupils started widening for an instant despite himself, but he quickly regained control, perhaps quickly enough for Ruby to miss it, but Newt had an unfair advantage.

  “These are extreme quantities. I can’t move this kind of merchandise without drawing attention, at least not without taking several moons to do it. I can certainly give you everything we have in stock here at Thunderbluff, but it’s not even a fraction of what you’re asking for.”

  He smiled self-deprecatingly. “This city is basically abandoned, and having a lot of supplies on stock would invite the cultists if they caught wind of it.”

  “Don’t you deal with the cultists too?” Newt asked after realizing how mercenary the rumor house really was.

  “No,” the manager said decisively, and Newt didn’t detect a hint of falsehood from him. “The imperial family would smite us to our graves. They may allow a bit of illegal and criminal activity, but collaboration with cultists would get you killed.”

  “Aren’t we considered cultists?” Newt frowned. “You said we were branded heretics.”

  “Those are two different things,” Ruby said. “You can be a heretic for preaching an ideology the imperials dislike or for making a forbidden invention, but that’s not the same as being branded a cultist.”

  The manager nodded, and after hesitating a moment, he spoke up. “Which raises a question, if you don’t mind me asking it?”

  Newt and Ruby exchanged looks, then Ruby shrugged and Newt nodded at the information broker and black market representative.

  “What made two royal families, two ducal houses, five orders, and several previously unaffiliated families pick up and go underground? And where are you hiding all those people?” He paused and quickly added. “If answering any of those questions means you have to kill me, please don’t answer them.”

  Newt considered the questions.

  “If we tell you, the imperials might want to kill you. I don’t especially care if you know.” He looked at Ruby. “Do you?”

  She shook her head. The manager was looking at them eagerly, probably believing he would learn a valuable secret. In a way, he was right.

  “Well, you see, the imperials and the cultists ultimately have the same goals, which involve killing us all. They just disagree about how they are supposed to do it.”