Chapter Six: Pen to paper.

27/5/997.

As a priestess of the Silver Flame, Berlith was sworn to certain oaths. The bottommost oaths were to champion goodness in the form of good morals and promoting joy, alongside vows to combat evil. As a friar, she had sworn to speak of the Silver Flame to those who asked, and to provide church services to the poor. And finally, as a priestess errant, she was obligated to own no more than what she could carry. Handbags larger on the inside than the outside certainly helped toward that end.

But all these oaths came together to result in a conundrum for her when the lump sum she had negotiated for her time as a spy in Thrane came in. When she was young, she did not imagine a time when she would look at money and have no idea why she wanted it. After a day or so pondering the uses for such a large sum - she came to an unfortunate conclusion. She would have to spend at least some of it on the aberrants, but perhaps she could invest in the facility itself as a half-measure.

She enlisted her secretary, Alyssa, for this purpose - and they went out to the settlement. The two made a strange duo - Berlith with her all-black cassock, and Alyssa with her more modern fashions.

Alyssa showed up for their afternoon shopping spree in comfortable clothes. A brown floral dress that looked formless on its own, an earth tone cardigan coat, and unflattering but apparently comfortable boots. Physically, the two women were similar in that they were both 'scrawny' from a human perspective. Khoravar women tended to be thinner - it was the elf in their genes. However, Alyssa's hair was braided into many strands and weighed down with beads. On top of that, the younger woman's freckles were more noticeable.

Berlith squinted, and vividly remembered how her sisters had looked when they were young - from there it was easy to see the similarities. The topic came up on the walk out of Glyphstone Keep into the settlement. "Tell me, am I your great-aunt perchance?"

Alyssa shook her head and caused a small cacophony from her beaded braids. "Just my aunt. My Pa was born after you left - his name was Bernid."

At first, Berlith had a moment of joy - a little brother, at last - but then she heard the 'was'. She hadn't had the time to smile - so she developed a somber look instead. "Ah. He was a soldier?"

Alyssa shook her head and smiled. "No, around the time West Breland was taken over, he came out and said he didn't want to be Bernid anymore." As they crossed to the other side of the narrow bridge, she put her hands behind her head and looked upward. "Now she's Bernice, and I have twice the Ma's I had before."

While they walked, Berlith processed that. It was one thing to know her parents had children after she'd left. It was another to work alongside the offspring of a sister she never knew she had. Part of the cover for her mission had been a strict no-contact with her family, to give the illusion of being disowned. Two sentiments warred within Berlith as she continued to shop - one who was bitterly angry that her family had continued their lives without her, while the other regretted that she had left.

That was an odd feeling for her, regret over having done her duty. She advanced her House, she saved lives, and she hadn't totally thrown away her hundred years in exile. But perhaps it would have been better if she'd never come home. Perhaps, in Thrane, she could have done just as much good without the baggage she carried in Breland.

It distracted her as she purchased things in the settlement and gradually became burdened down with items such as rolls of fabric, ceramic cats, an inspirational poster of a llama tied to a log going over a waterfall, and shoes suspiciously close to Alyssa's size. All the while, her niece chattered away.

Berlith tuned back in when the topic came to the orderlies.

"...we're probably going to have to put Coolander in the closet with Decimbus," Alyssa muttered as she examined a teapot. "According to the workshop we sent him to, a Titan arm fell on him and broke his legs off - but they said there was rust damage on the metal so maybe it was Ide's power?" She shrugged.

Berlith blinked and set down the flamingo-shaped teapot she had picked up. "Wait, what? Why would you put a warforged who can be repaired in a closet? And who is Decimbus?"

Alyssa looked up and arched a brow at her. "You looked at the budget - we can't afford a full-time artificer for repairs to the orderlies. When they get too damaged, we shove them in a closet so that they can be repaired when funds allow. Decimbus was the last one to be damaged that badly."

Berlith quickly wrote a cheque to pay for the thematic teapots she and her niece desired, then pulled said niece toward the Keep. "Show me."

Decimbus was a warforged, though how much that could be said in the present was up for debate. The limbs of the warforged were barely attached to the torso which had been hollowed out by some calamity to the point where even the spine was exposed.

Berlith had seen such a fate befall those who fought Karrnath's undead armies. Hollowed out, and left behind. The Karrns liked to say their armies held only skeletons and zombies - but Berlith had fought too many ghouls and vampires in Karrnath red for it to be entirely coincidence.

Her first conclusion was that Ide had been the cause, but the injuries didn't match up. Most of a warforged's torso was made of wood, stone, and obsidian which were all the parts scooped out. Ide's power over metal could not have done that.

As she examined the injury, Berlith looked up at her niece. "The Prince?" It seemed the only logical conclusion.

Hesitantly, Alyssa nodded. "He did not wish to comply with the doctor's experiments. He fought back when his wishes weren't respected. I… guess we forgot to add that to the file."

Berlith pinched the bridge of her nose. "I want you and the rest of the staff to rack your brains for other things you forgot to add to the file, alright?" She looked over the warforged one more time, and her face tightened in a frown. A full refit would be necessary to get the warforged up and running again - and that would be expensive - on top of Coolander's repairs. If Alyssa said it wasn't in the budget, then there was only one route - a solution to an earlier problem. "I'm going to be sending a cheque to fund Coolander's repairs and Decimbus' refit, inform the Baron I expect to be compensated for my expenditures with an increase in base pay." Berlith quickly left the closet and waited for Alyssa to follow before she closed the door, but did not lock it.

As they walked through the halls toward the office, Alyssa, obvious as a novice, worked up the courage to ask Berlith a question. "Ma'am…?"

"I know a wizard in Thrane," Berlith answered, and kept moving forward. "He's worked with Cannith crafters before, he knows some tricks. Specifically, he helped develop a relative of the warforged production line which used a mostly hollow chest." Berlith kept her pace brisk, as she clenched her hands at the necessity of working with the former nobleman. "Which we can use to save on repairs for Decimbus."

She remembered the first time she saw the leonine metal war machines. They were made of a silver-and-steel alloy to allow for combat against undead, and they carried an ember of the Silver Flame in their chests to impart holiness. It also let them breathe silver fire, a useful thing in the Thranish winter. Silvereye marauders was their name, and they earned it from villages burned, livestock destroyed, and enemy soldiers mauled. Designed by House Cannith with help from an Aundarian turncoat - Kaldor Ravalek.

And like any Aundairan noble, Berlith had to stomach at least two paragraphs of needless flattery when she wrote to inquire about the refit she had in mind. Along with a bribe on top of her initial pitch for the job. She did that first, so the task of ordering Coolander's repairs would be a break in comparison.

"Ma'am," Alyssa spoke up as she took the messages and cheques from Berlith's desk afterward, "is there anything I should tell the other orderlies? About the refits and repairs? They might want to know what could happen to them if they're damaged too."

Berlith arched her salt and pepper brow before she focused on other paperwork. "Tell them I'm taking precautions in the event of future escape attempts. Because someone has to."

Silvereye marauders were a bit savage for medical purposes, but they could chase down prey. And she had heard such good things about those mechanical krakens Cyre had fielded….

'The weather is nice today, I wish we could garden.'

'Springtime, by the looks of it.'

'Living in the sunshine, having such a fun time, having a wonderful time!'

Malarai Roole could more easily be 'himself' around the orderlies lately. They were allowed to speak to him again, and he could dress like a priest again. The new viceroy, Berlith, had found his Silver Flame amulet in the doctor's old quarters and returned it. With these things, he could more easily remind himself which of the three voices inside him was his.

The medication helped, even if it tasted like poorly made haggis. He'd never eaten haggis, but Dalin had - and he made the comparison.

'Tastes like ass.'

'Needs some seasoning and fresher sheep's stomach.'

'Just drizzle cheese on it. Do it.'

A large vanity mirror had been provided for his chambers, which let him glance over and see when his shapeshifting was out of control. Changelings, in their native appearance, were quite unpleasant to look at. Thin lips, so their mouths appeared as horizontal slits. No nose, no iris in their eyes, and no color in their hair. Malarai never had a problem with his appearance, and neither did the orderlies.

But his parish had. Most humans did. So he wore a mask.

Not a literal mask, but he used his shapeshifting to give himself more human features, and to thicken his hair. He was still pale, milk-eyed, and white-haired, but he had the look of a blind albino human - not an obvious changeling. He was a few years out of practice, so he would slip up every so often.

Imagine his surprise when he was escorted out of his room - for the second time in months - to the library. The library was bigger than even the chapel he had tended to back in his village - without factoring in its many floors. All the books the village had were kept there - all six of them. Glyphstone's library would have made the knowledge-hungry children die of happiness.

Like a hood placed on a light, that memory sucked the cheer from Malarai all at once. He'd only been spared because he was a minister of the faith. No one else had been allowed to live, not even the children. They were all gone.

'But you're not. You're still here, and you remember them.'

'It was a mob, what could you have done?'

'Becoming a tiger - as I suggested - would probably have not ended well. Would still be fun, however.'

At the bottom of the library were old friends. Mankarr, in a chair in front of an easel, working on a portrait of some sort. Seated before him was the most rarely seen of their happy band of misfits - the Prince.

When they had been rounded up, the Prince was still a boy of eleven. Nine years later, and he was a young man. He sat straight, as a Prince should, and stared at the artist impassively. Aejar had been mauled as a boy, and lost an arm, an eye, and had many deep scars over his left side. In their place there was an emerald green mark that coiled into his tissues like ivy. His missing arm, eye, and flesh had been filled in with plantlife - a gnarled branch in the shape of a limb was attached to his stump. When the Prince turned to look at him, it was with the cherry-like new eye his mark had grown for him.

"You're in control again," he commented, a brief flash of his teeth showed how half of them had moss growing over them. "That is good. We were worried."

"Aejar," Mankarr scolded. "Your fronds need to hold still."

"Apologies." Aejar's head, where previously deep scars had parted his scalp, was filled with fern-like growths. They moved unnaturally for plants, like feelers. Suddenly they stopped their motion.

"You can paint, Mankarr?" Malarai stepped away from the orderlies and gently sat down in one of the heavily cushioned library chairs. He immediately sank deeper than he planned, with his knees almost up to his torso. "It doesn't agitate your mark?"

Mankarr shook his head and mixed some paints together on his palette. "I have a fancy-shchmancy potion drip going on, like in the old days."

Malaria's mark let him feel the ease inside Mankarr as he worked long-atrophied artistic muscles. Satisfaction, a return to normalcy, expression! And mixed in with those feelings were Aejar's - a greater dichotomy Malarai couldn't easily imagine.

While Mankarr was bright and energetic, Aejar was dark and silent. Aejar's emotions made Malarai think of a dark, moonless, night where one knew something was out there. Was Aejar the 'something' in the dark, or was he the person out in the dark - an interesting thought experiment.

"The new viceroy wants us to have our portraits updated," Aejar commented, monotone as ever. Malarai couldn't remember how the Prince's emotions had made his voice sound - he'd been monotone since his mark manifested. Since it had been induced. "What do you make of her?"

"I might be a bit biased," Malarai admitted, "in that she and I are of the same faith. Though not of the same order."

"Our biases reveal much about ourselves." Aejar's wooden hand clenched the chair so hard it creaked. "Such as Weir's repeated bias toward rescue tactics rather than escape."

Mankarr sighed. "I can't say I'm… upset with him still being here. I'd rather he be free, but…."

"A castle surrounded by water, and he hasn't escaped yet. He could have gotten to Sharn, to Thora."

"Or the new viceroy would have caught him." Malarai spoke up. He'd sat down on the side of Aejar's human eye, a far easier eye to meet. "Unlike me, she has divine magic. She placed it on all of our doors."

"Or she is marked." Aejar's human hand tapped on the arm of the chair while his wooden one became a fist. "Or both. A most troublesome jailor."

"We aren't prisoners," Mankarr said, and returned to his painting. "We're patients. She says we will go free when we have control of our marks." He leaned over to glance at the two of them. "And I'm better at spotting liars than either of you."

"We will always be prisoners," Aejar responded, tension colored his emotions - Malarai's mark told him so. "The moment we leave, we will be watched every hour of every day." Aejar's human eye met Malarai's again. "And some of us have nowhere left to go."

Malarai's hands touched the holy symbol - the arrowhead of silver-steel. All he had left of home. "You have a family, at least," he offered. "The King did all this because of you."

Family talk with Aejar always shut him up. But not Mankarr.

"Oh, you should see the Chronicle. Ide's family is, as the children are wont to say," he leaned over to meet Malarai's eyes with a smile, "moderately upset."

One of the quiet orderlies, Adjustus - Malarai remembered - brought him the latest paper and the headlines made Malarai's heart drop. "Well," he commented as he read through. "Beggar Dane does warn about going into debt."

There, in massive print, was the lead story of the Chronicle. 'Kundarak bank cashes in - Boranel on the hook'. Over the course of the Last War, every government and every noble family had to go into debt at some point with House Kundarak's bank. The national governments were in debt so deep it would take decades of repayment before they saw daylight.

"I'm sure the King doesn't appreciate being asked to begin repaying Breland's debts so soon after the war ended," Mankarr went on. "But he had to think something like this would happen when he told them what happened to Ide."

"You think a man who keeps tigers in the same room as his children," Aejar drawled, "gives significant forethought to his actions?"

"It was the right thing to do," Malarai said. "Telling the Kundaraks, not keeping tigers in the same… you know what I meant."

"I'm sure that thought will comfort him as he signs cheques to them for the next," Aejar stopped to feign calculation of the debt, "forever."

"Hey, that's not fair." Mankarr wagged his finger at the Prince. "Eventually he'll run out of cheques, and they'll just take it out of his vaults directly."

'Kundarak Cashes In! Boranel on the Hook!

By Hisver Umpos, Korranberg Chronicle contributor.'

'On Dravago fifth, Kundarak Baron Morrikan d'Kundarak announced that the House had big news coming later in the month, and the economics division of many papers have been busy imagining what it could be. Imagine no more! Last week, as of this writing, on Dravago twentieth the bank announced a policy it would use to end deferments on payments of wartime loans. There was a fair bit of economic jargon in the announcement, which you can read on the next page.

To simplify and summarize, House Kundarak will be conducting regular surveys and polls to get measures of economic strength and health from all indebted nations and organizations. Once a nation or organization crosses the threshold the House has set, their deferments end and they must begin payments immediately. For the big four, this has been a cause for concern as now they have to worry that the economic growth of their nation means they'll have to beggar themselves - as there currently is no policy to reinstate deferments in the event of an economic downturn.

Currently, the only nation doing well enough to qualify for the program is Breland - and HRM Boranel ir'Wynarn specifically. We are not allowed to disclose the exact sum, but our crown informants have made it clear - do not expect any major public works, infrastructure repair, or expensive legislation for the next thirty years.

King Boranel is expected to meet with House Kundarak to begin a negotiation to lower the payments or to accept goods as well as gold to lower the burden. To be clear - there are multiple organizations that have also qualified for the end of their deferments - such as Houses Cannith, Deneith, and Jorasco. However, their debts are much smaller and more likely to be negotiated down.

As each nation grows in economic power enough to begin paying their debt - and the interest on that debt - it becomes clear that this is a move to hamper their growth altogether. House Kundarak is going to be mind-bogglingly wealthy when all this debt is paid - and their neighbors in the Mror Holds are likely to see a massive economic boom as a result of this wealth. The day may come when Krona Peak is the place for movers and shakers to be, rather than Sharn.

Have a pleasant evening.'