Halls of Ivory

Chapter 7 - Breakaway

Past all the pretenses, past all the facades, past all the various parties' attempts to capitalize on Queen Jennah's death, the one person that mourned her loss the most, was Logan Thackeray. He had been pining for the queen in a way that extended far beyond his duty as a Seraph, long before he joined the force, let alone became his captain. His obvious, unrequited love for her was the talk of the ministry and didn't just draw the laughs of the Shining Blade behind his back, but that of many of the more wealthy citizens as well.

He placed Jennah's well-being over everything, even the lives of his closest friends. When the elder dragon Kralkatorrik sought to kill his own spawn, Glint, Logan's guild known as Destiny's Edge confronted the dragon to save her. The elder dragon sent his minions out to attack Jennah and when faced with the choice, Logan rushed to Jennah's aid, forsaking his friends in the process. A mistake that would cost them Glint's life, as well as that of one of their members, the Asuran golemancer Snaff. Under the pressure of Zhaitan's impending threat, he made amends with his closest friend, a Charr named Rytlock Brimstone. But Rytlock and Snaff's student Zojja hadn't forgotten where Logan's priorities laid and would hold it against him for many years to come.

When Logan woke up, it was already past noon into the next day. The minister was gone but the house was untouched. The realization of the situation struck him and shook him enough to almost roll off the couch. He just fell asleep and left all those worried families' children alone with a Separatist! He got up, stumbled over to where the hidden basement was, pulled away the carpet, unlocked the door and opened it. When he peeked inside, whichever of the stressed out young citizens hadn't dozed off where they sat, raised their heads and dropped whatever distractions they were preoccupied with. "Is it safe yet?"

"Not by a long shot. I'm sorry."

So Aldryn hadn't taken them after all. In fact not only were the young nobles safe and sound, there was a barrel of fruits set up in the previously empty kitchen and some of them were downstairs with the nobles. Apparently Lord Aldryn had somehow supplied them with food scavenged from a nearby empty farm house while Logan was knocked out. And yet Aldryn was nowhere to be seen. Then again, he couldn't expect the minister to just wait here for Logan to arrest him.

So all in all, they had succeeded. The young nobles, declared princes and princesses using an old contingency law, were safe. At least for the time being.

Logan slowly moved to shuffle along another bench placed in front of a window to take a peek through the closed curtains. They had bought some time, but Logan had to figure out how to put that time to use. The more of it was wasted not doing something about the situation, the more time the Shining Blade could spend searching for this hideout. He had to come up with some concise plan. And fast.

If he wanted to make a positive difference at a meaningful scale, he had to take back control of the Seraphs. But doing so was sure to create a strain on whatever was left of the relationship between the Seraph and the Shining Blade. He tried to come up with some way to meet the Shining Blade half-way and willingly help them manage the city again, but considering he had to step in to save the lives of citizens FROM the Shining Blade, he figured that was a bad idea. He didn't want to actively assist in endangering or even hunting down the citizenry.

He went through multiple other ideas in his head but all of them had the same problem. Aiding and protecting the people was going to put him in conflict with the Shining Blade and working with - or as they would put it - FOR the Shining Blade meant endangering, abandoning or even purposefully ending the lives of Krytans. No matter what approach he thought of, with the way the Shining Blade was acting recently, they were ultimately at odds with the people of Kryta.

So from where he stood now, he was at a loss. He couldn't come up with a solution, not yet. He figured he had to leave the safehouse without a preset plan on what to do. The hideout was very easy to miss even if someone searched the house. But if the Shining Blade found him here, they would know exactly where to look and eventually, they would find it. Sitting in this house wasn't going to help anyone. So he checked a few more times whether there was anyone in sight around the house and when he was sure there wasn't, he left, locked the door behind him and got on his way back to the city.

He took a very long detour and avoided waltzing directly into any settlements where people could see him and report it to Shining Blade members when asked. For shelter, he kept to barns, stables or abandoned farmsteads similar to the one containing the safehouse. But even from a distance, he could see that the people were in distress. In one village, he observed a small group of Charr push around human farmers.

Even on his way to Divinity's Reach, Logan couldn't come up with a one-in-all solution. As things stood, there was none. The root of the issue was whatever was going on with Anise. Was she going through a manic episode? No, that couldn't be it. Jennah's loss hit Logan much harder than her and because he had to, he braved through it. He spent a lot of his trip to the city running all his interactions with Parah and the other soldiers through his head, over and over. One recurring pattern was that of condescension. They were all talking down on him, dismissing any concerns he had as though they were the bumbling questions of a small child.

His mind was going through one guess after the other. At some point he determined that Jennah's death really must have broken her. He was empathising with what she must have been going through for it to dissociate her from other people so much.

And then he saw Shaemoor.

When he and the minister led the noble families' children to safety, Shaemoor village was quiet, but at least intact. But now, the path into it from the city was covered in blood, there was barely any spot that wasn't red. Disfigured bodies piled up along the walls of every house in the center. "By the gods…" He ran into the inn and called for survivors. "Hello? Is anyone still alive?" There wasn't from what it seemed. All the staff was dead, their bodies tossed to the side. He repeated this with two family households until one of the guards posted at the city gate approached him.

Furious at what he had seen, the Captain marched up to the young man and grabbed him by the collar of his chainmail. "What happened here? You were posted right here in full view! Why didn't you stop it?"

The Seraph was noticeably nervous and unsure about his situation. "They were Charr - we can't touch the Charr we have explicit orders not to. We were told we don't have jurisdiction over them!" Anise. This was her fault. The Shining Blade and its explicit orders for the Seraph to apply Krytan law only against humans and to look the other way with Charr. Law included murder, so their hands had indeed been bound.

Logan let go of the soldier but pushed him away with enough force to knock him off balance. "We will from now on. I'm overruling any orders from the Shining Blade. It's time we stood up for ourselves." It was time for Logan to take back control. First of the Seraph, then of the overall situation.

Seeing what the Shining Blade's new policies had wrought, solidified his stance for good: He was going to ignore any orders from them that he disagreed with and he was going to confront Anise, with no room for apologetics. Her last chance at an amicable resolution to all this would come after she was shown that he wasn't backing down.

But he knew full well that getting through to her just like that would be impossible. She was too full of herself, too convinced of her own ideas' veracity - or at least their moral superiority. She would just dismiss anything he said as below her. The sudden aloofness of the Shining Blade was going to be a hurdle he would have to overcome somehow.

And he had an idea how to do that. Being confronted by more than one high-profile voice with open dissent to her policies in the same room, would force her to try to justify what she had done. And the soldiers informed him of such a high profile voice, readily available from within the Seraph's prison. With a name and rank of his own and thus not as easily intimidated by Anise's status as his own soldiers. So the first thing on his list before approaching the countess, was to release the Commander of the Pact from prison.

Logan marched into the Seraph Headquarters. Groban was back on duty. With the same two Shining Blade looking over his shoulder as he filled out some documents on the table. Logan approached him with a newfound strength in his voice. "Groban. I want you to fetch the Commander's belongings."

"For inspection?"

"No. To give them back to him."

One of the two Shining Blade members to his sides turned to Logan, but with her head raised so much he was barely in her field of view. "That won't be necessary, Groban. The Commander isn't going anywhere."

"Yes he is, bring me his things. I will handle the paperwork."

The lieutenant barely had a chance to get up. The guards' tone became increasingly snappy. "Are you questioning our authority here?" The lieutenant excused himself and went upstairs. Logan locked eyes with one of the Shining Blade.

"I'm questioning your judgment. What did the Commander do?"

One of them gasped upon hearing this and the other was so shocked by what she heard, she dropped her lipstick on the floor. "Questioning our Ju- Who do you think you are? That's beyond disrespectful! Apologize right now!"

When fulfilling his duties as a Seraph, Logan always approached people with a degree of humbleness so that he could level and engage with them. But they clearly showed no intention to do the same. They saw themselves as some kind of saint, bringing their infinite wisdom to the unwashed masses.

That was why he had so much trouble getting through to them. They entered interactions with him thinking themselves not just superior in rank, but morally and intellectually as well. And all this time, he had been playing along with their delusions. Perhaps the key to breaking through this attitude lay in not indulging it. He had to address them with confidence and completely devoid of an apologetic demeanor on his part. Calm, but unapologetic. "I'm the Captain of the same people who run this place. So tell me: What. Did the Commander. Do? Show me the report right now or I will escort you out of the building myself."

"Are you threatening me?" He drew his sword in response. "Okay, okay." At last, she began to cooperate. Instead of just telling him though, she started flipping about arrest reports herself. Which told Logan one thing: She didn't know the charge. The Seraph - Logan's men were out there making arrests on her orders - bringing in the Commander and locking him away on her orders - she was here insisting that he stayed locked away and all this time, she didn't even know what he was charged with. And after almost a full minute, she found the entry. "There, he assaulted a Charr."

"Can I see it?" She hesitated. This was prescient, because 'assault' was an extremely broad term. 'Assault' by itself wasn't a charge that gave tangible information on what happened. It could mean that he tried to kill someone or that he simply directed a mild insult towards the wrong person. Did the Charr die? Did the Charr get injured? Every assault that was worth taking seriously, came with an additional charge that gave insight on what exactly had happened. She knew this, he knew this and she knew that he knew this. "I'm getting tired of repeating myself. Show me the report."

The Shining Blade member stared at him for a few seconds, but when she realized he wouldn't give in, she rolled her eyes and her stance eased up. "Fine, see for yourself." He glossed over it. It was every bit as bad as he had heard. The Commander had witnessed the last few killings of a bloodbath and in fear of the Charr repeating it elsewhere, he picked a fight. He cast one spell, trying to restrain one Charr before getting arrested himself.

While he did show intent to harm the Charr, he had seen the Charr kill multiple innocents right before his very eyes, and had no reason to assume he wasn't next. Even if the Shining Blade was to drag this before a court, they could just get it dismissed on grounds of self-defense. And besides that, plenty of people had been hurt, but none of them by him.

Groban had long returned and put down a crate filled with a robe, two bags and various equipment. Along with a large backpack to boot. Logan looked up from the stack of paper and gave his verdict:

"This is a non-issue. The Commander has no business being behind bars. I'm dismissing the charge."

"You don't have a right to do that!"

For once, the lieutenant got involved here as well. "With all due respect, Ma'am, yes he does. The only event where he doesn't is if the Commander invokes his right to a trial before the ministry. Neither of both cases is in your hands."

"Now you start talking back at us too? The nerve…this is exactly the entitlement Scarlet talked about. We're leaving. There will be repercussions for this, Thackeray!"

Either out of pure rage, or for fear of what Logan was going to do with that sword, the two armored women stormed out of the Seraph headquarters. The relieved lieutenant helped Logan carry the crate into the prison. "Thanks for getting them out of my hair. But as welcome a change it is - they'll be back. And they'll tell Anise about this."

"If she has a problem, she can talk to me in person."

The cells weren't as barren as they used to be. They now had wooden benches which acted as the prisoners' beds. And on the bottom floor, the Commander sat on the edge of his bench. Staring at the floor. When Logan saw him, he went up to the bars. "I've seen the aftermath of it. It must have been devastating."

"Why would they do this? After everything we've been through together."

"I'm not sure. I want to find out, but I might need your help for that."

"Even if we did, what then? We lost our homeland, they're slaughtering our people…"

"They're not, actually. There hasn't been another bloodbath like Shaemoor ever since it happened. The Charr are evicting and attacking villagers, but there's no mass executions like what you saw."

"I've seen Seraph stand and watch as innocent lives were taken and then arrest me for trying to stop it. What are we supposed to do if we can't trust our own soldiers?"

"They were acting on orders from the Shining Blade. I want to know why those orders are what they are as much as you do."

Upon further inquiry, the captain proceeded to tell the Commander everything that had happened. From Anise fast-tracking the treaty's confirmation to the kidnappings and the hired executioners.

"You think you know someone and then they completely change. I guess there were signs, she was a little aloof and did make a lot of dismissive remarks before but Jennah always reeled her in when she was around, so I assumed it was all jokes. I guess I was wrong."

The Commander put his outside getup back on, one piece at a time . "So what is this plan you need me for?"

"Not much of a plan, really. There's no way to make everyone happy anymore. Kryta and the Shining Blade are at odds with each other. I'm starting to feel like I really do have to choose between them. But I want clarity first. If Anise is just having some long, manic episode, I want to know just how far gone she is and whether there's any hope of reasoning with her. If I confront her alone, she'll just dismiss it like she does with everyone else.

"So you think me being there will help?"

"For a start, releasing you against the Shining Blade's orders will take her down a peg. It'll show that her will isn't law. And she'll think because her own subordinates agree with her, that she's in the right. If we have the Seraph AND you standing against her, she'll at least be forced to think through her own stances."

"What if it doesn't work? What if we still can't reason with her?"

"Then I at least know for sure that we can't. Which gives us more options." With the Commander ready for travel and combat once again, they left the prison. "Brogan, if those two come back here and try to push you around, tell them I gave you an express order to ignore any orders coming from them. If they have a problem with that, they can come to me."

"That's all I wanted to hear."

Logan and the Commander stopped and rallied as many Seraph as they could find or spare. Some were still taking shifts guarding the Meade residence and where there once was only one Shining Blade member watching the building, there were now several, almost engaged in a standoff with the Seraph. Anyone bringing in recently arrested Krytans was stopped right where they were found, told to join Logan and the Krytans arrested were released.

Then it was time to talk to Anise. If they weren't prepared now, they weren't going to be any time soon. With enough soldiers to fill a battlefield, the Seraph marched into the upper city, to the palace and opened the gates themselves. Ignoring the protests from the guards to both sides. When Logan and the Commander entered the throne room, Anise was at the throne with a young woman Logan recognized, surrounded by several scholars. The Commander pointed at her. "Who is that?"

"Eliah Hawthorne. Daughter of close friends of the Shining Blade. Her fifteenth birthday was just a few weeks ago. I figured Anise is grooming her to be the new queen."

Speaking of the devil, the countess turned to the troop marching into the throne room and stood in front of the bridge leading over the small indoor creek. "You have some nerve showing your face here. Talking about respected citizens like that! This is your future queen you're looking at."

"I've talked to a judge and know the process. The new king is whoever proves best to fill that role."

"Why should we waste time indulging upstart nobles if we have the perfect new queen right here?"

"You don't get to decide who is or isn't the perfect king."

Anise rolled her eyes with performative exaggeration. "Ugh, I see you are unwilling to cede to the more mature hand. I know what you did by the way. Ignoring orders, going over my head, releasing a criminal?"

"Whether or not he is a criminal was my decision to make, not yours. You overstepped your bounds."

The Commander backed him up and moved almost past the soldier guarding the other side of the bridge. "I did nothing to deserve being locked away. The people of Shaemoor trusted the Seraph to protect them and you just ordered them to watch and aid their murderers?"

"They were to enforce Krytan law on Krytan citizens."

"And ignore it when others come after them? When did 'you have to obey the law' turn into 'you have to let foreigners slaughter you'? This 'Charr-friendly' approach to law-enforcement is complete madness."

For a while, everyone fell silent. Anise wasn't sure how to refute that. Mostly because leaning on feigned superiority would betray her indifference. Logan broke the silence to skip to what he was here for: "What's gotten into you Anise? Why are you doing all this?"

"Don't you 'Anise' me, you're the one that's being unreasonable here. Here's how things are going to go moving forward. Kryta is no longer our jurisdiction. We're going to smooth out the transfer of Krytan land from humans to the Iron Legion. Then, Divinity's Reach will become a city state, Queen Eliah will be your new monarch and you will pledge loyalty to her as you did with Jennah."

"Are we just supposed to tell the Krytans 'sorry, we decided you don't matter anymore, you're all just going to have to live on the street and starve'? Do their lives and what they built for themselves never cross your mind?"

"They will just have to live with it. Let me make myself very clear, we're not going to try to stop this. It's inevitable. The world is moving forward. And it's going to change, whether or not we want it to. We can either choose to embrace the change like I do or live in the past like you."

"So this is really it? The people we're supposed to serve are just collateral damage of some inevitable 'change'? Is this all they are to you?"

"We can't stop the world from changing."

"But we CAN stop it from changing for the worse. You wouldn't be here lambasting anyone who questions your vague notion of 'change' if the change proposed was the reverse. What if I proposed a different change, namely that humans not only get to keep Kryta, but that we take Ascalon for ourselves too."

"We can't just take Ascalon, it belongs to the Charr."

"How is the Charr taking Kryta any different?"

"They didn't 'take' Kryta. Jennah gifted it to them for their cooperation in the war against Zhaitan."

"This whole idea that we need to 'buy' temporary peace by gifting them large amounts of land that we're not getting back just for helping with something that ultimately benefits them too…don't you see how short-sighted that is? So what if the next elder dragon shows up and we kill that one with the Charr's help? Do we just hand over Divinity's Reach? Or do we just hand over one half of it and give them the other half after the next elder dragon?"

Anise twitched "Did you just call Jennah's treaty 'short-sighted'?"

"BECAUSE IT WAS!" Logan lost control of himself and screamed at her. He only fully processed his own outburst when it was already too late. Now he just had to commit to it. "I'm tired of this charade where everyone's too scared to question anything she does. Jennah wasn't infallible!" Anise tried to interrupt him, likely to scold him for daring to say such a thing about the late queen.

But Logan knew she would try and just shouted over her. "She was a person like you and me! She was capable of making mistakes and she did. If she hadn't wasted valuable years of her life as queen turning away even the richest and most loyal suitors just to prop up her own self-worth, she might have left an heir and we wouldn't have to play power games about princes and princesses in underground crypts!"

Anise tried to seize on another opportunity to flip the script on him. "You're just saying that because she didn't-"

"AND THIS TREATY was the biggest blunder she ever made!" He knew what Anise was trying to say and it struck a nerve with him. He was about to lose his composure, but in hindsight, that was perhaps for the better. "It was a big mistake, it was cold, grossly neglectful, a complete abandonment of a people who treated her with nothing but respect and adoration! Yes, the treaty was a mistake AND SHE KNEW it was a mistake, because if she didn't, she wouldn't have kept it a secret until it was too late!"

Logan and the Commander could see the resentment in the countess' eyes, all built up from just a few seconds of opposition. For a while, she was at a loss for words, at least until the captain urged her to answer. "Come on, what do you have to say for yourself?"

Anise stared at him with her arms folded up and didn't budge until she knew how to answer. "Jennah kept the treaty a secret because it means massive changes to many Krytans' lives. She knew they'd be opposed to change."

"If 'change' means living on the street, then they are right to oppose it."

"They're just giving up on some advantages they were born with."

"Most of them are peasants, they weren't born with anything. Not everyone can afford to not work and still have a big house in the city."

"Then they will either adapt to their new situation or be left behind. The city doesn't need them anyway."

That drove the Commander up the wall almost as much as Logan was earlier. Except that for the most part, it was because he knew first-hand how flat out wrong it was on its face. "Yes it does! We use up so much food and other goods produced out there, without Kryta and its farmland, we have to import all of it! Even if the Charr start making those goods, they can slap a premium on the exports and bleed the city dry."

"The legions wouldn't just take advantage of us like that."

"Yes they would! Are we just going to pretend like the Shaemoor Massacre never happened?"

"The Shaemoor Massacre was unfortunate. But growth and change sometimes is painful and Shaemoor was the reminder we needed."

"Are you really going to try and justify what happened? Is that all they are to you? Another 'necessary' sacrifice for the greater good, for this 'change'." The Commander paused for a minute, reeled his anger back in. Something just occurred to him. "All this talk about 'change', where is it coming from? Did you come up with that yourself?"

"The villagers at Shaemoor had an option to leave. They are as you said - collateral damage."

The Commander was close to drawing his weapon, but he managed to pull himself together and turned to Logan instead. "There's no point, she made up her mind long ago. None of her arguments make any sense, she's just making sounds to justify what she planned on doing from the get-go."

"I agree. She can't be reasoned with." He spoke up to make sure everyone clearly understood him. "But never let it be said that we didn't try to reason with her." With strong steps, the Seraph and the Commander marched out of the palace.

As soon as the gates slammed shut, the Seraphs spread in the gardens of the upper city. The Seraph had mustered up all the confidence they had when standing strong with Logan in the palace but now the cracks started to show. One soft-footed soldier snuck up to him. "Captain?" When Logan turned around the Seraph stuttered. "You - you're not - you're not actually going to go against the Shining Blade right? We can just keep things going and then hash things out, right?"

The Captain shook his head. "Absolutely not. The people of Shaemoor died under our care. The Shining Blade gave the order, but their blood is as much on our hands for following the order as it is on theirs. There will doubtless be more blood just like it in the future. I'm not letting us remain an instrument of a state that makes an enemy of its own citizens. So yes, we are going against the Shining Blade. If push comes to shove and the Shining Blade calls for blood, we will have to spill theirs. If that is a problem for you, you are free to lay down your weapon and leave."

The soldier was unsure about it, but upon pondering it for a while, he actually did as he suggested. He put down his sword, he took off his armor. "I can't go against the Shining Blade. I couldn't face my family if they declared me an enemy to them. I quit." And he wasn't the only one. Several dozen soldiers came out of the woodwork, all undoing their armor and adding their swords to an ever-growing pile. Barely a dent in the Seraph's ranks, but a testament to how much public trust the Shining Blade still had.

Those that remained by the end of it though, stood straight with newfound confidence. Logan asked them: "What about the rest of you? As things stand, it looks like we'll all have to make a choice between protecting 'Queen and Kingdom' or the people of Kryta."

The first one that came up saluted. "The people ARE the kingdom. To side with anyone over them is to break our oath." Some more added their weapons and armor to the pile, but most of the soldiers got up and saluted with the first one.

The Commander wasn't sure what the idea was here. "So where are you going with this? Anise isn't going anywhere, we can't just kick her out. The people of Divinity's Reach are sitting on a timebomb and most won't believe it when they're told as much."

Nothing he said was new to Logan, but that didn't discourage him in the least. "It's true. We can't protect the people from the Shining Blade. Not within Divinity's Reach at least. Which is why we won't even try. We're going to leave the city. Possibly for good. And we will give everyone a chance to come with us. That is the most that we can do."