Interlude 1f

::: subchapter I. {#a6-1} "Marka? Wake up." She isn't asleep. She is laying down, letting her legs relax, mind wandering free after so many actions, so many decisions. Objectively, official missions from the wardens had taxed her more --- but she hadn't come to Wentalel for a mission, and she deserves this moment of rest. She expresses this all with a dignified, "Huhmphf." "I have soldier pills," the botherer is saying. "I think you need them. Unless you'd rather sleep down here tonight?" "No," she says, meeting the tallowbane's skeptical eyes. After a few attempts, she stands. "No.We have to get out of here." "Very well. Here." This 'pill' is more of a greasy rind. The center is a core of red fat, the shell made to be digested quickly. "What are we gonna do about the --- the two...?" Marka asks, her palps flinching from specifics. She'd think about it later. "Will we bury them? Attend their spirits?" "There's nothing to bury," it replies. "And souls, spirits, it's just mysticism. You know that. Mindless, lifeless waste enervate." "I guess." Marka stretches, working her joints, readying up her relaxed muscles. Wik points at the... remains of the two. It says,"We should retrieve their antennae-bands, though. You can confirm the kill with the Wardens." Marka nods, glancing at Wik's hanging around its neck. A vesperbane's antennae-band is fancy cloth sporting a plate of amalgam metal. Each is stamped with the insignia of the bane's stronghold alliegiance. It's not just a symbolic bit of engraving, though. Enervate circuits twist throughout every one. Hunter-banes all learn a certain umbral technique to check whether an antennae-band's countenanced, and to whom. Of course, defects don't want to be identitified, and Marka has heard certain rumors: of techniques that tracked, or even a technique, which if cast, could make a band explode --- but it has to be uniquely signed by an overscourge. Still, having a unique 'I am a vesperbane, be afraid' signal is useful, and antennae-bands did that. Thus, you have the tradition among defecting banes, of scratching across the antennae-band's insignia with a knife or endowed claw, distrupting the circuits in the thin plate. "Did you get a look at the Golden Lady's band? I was --- distracted," Marka says, crossing the courtyard back to Wik. She carries Essi's antennae band. It feels heavy. "Yes. It was an old symbol for 'dream.' Not canonical, to my knowledge." "What is the Dream?" Marka asks. "I was raised Welkinist." And kept a foreleg's distance from heretical modernity --- as much as one could, in a Panthecan city. "I could tell." Wik places Angwi's band in its bag, and then Essi's. "Well, then this is one blind mantis asking another about color. But to my understanding, the Dream is... equality. An end to all hierarchy. All needs met. For every kind and creature." Wik meets Marka's eyes. Its face seemed to be slipping, dripping more than usual now, after everything. It continues, "All the power and potential the vespers hold, for what? Mantids to kill and bind each other? Reduce everything to a static, bloody stalemate?" Wik runs a dactyl between an antenna, its tendrils still unbound and wriggling. "I sympathize with the sentiments, if not the mysticism." "So, making everyone exactly the same? Removing any reason to strive or better ourselves?" Wik closes both raptorials, and lowers them. "It's not my belief, Marka." "I just thought there'd be more to it. More than what every city nymph hears in the mandated lectures." "Perhaps there is. Neither of us are --- can be --- syndics." "Or night-prophets. They obviously have something to do with the Dream." Marka looks at the tallowbane, cocks her head. "Why do you think the Lady being one explains everything?" "Night-prophets are, hm, I had dismissed them as mysticism, until now. But annulling an oath is hard to fake," it says. "That is, if it happened. We should check --- but you are too inept, in that regard." "Sorry." "Nothing for it. I do not doubt much of it still is mysticism. Regardless, night-prophets, according to the most sober sources, are manipulators of arete, where most vesperbanes, even spellbrands, and even haruspices, are subjects to it. Bear in mind, historically, the Dream as a movement is a reaction to the overwelming hegemony of the clans in the wake of state after tyrannical state collapsing. Any true believer in the Dream would hate clans. And there's a tendency to... sentientize vespers, project mantid-like minds onto them, and then see oaths as something imposing." Marka nods. A early part of her wardens instruction was cutting through the myths and superstition about vespers. Think of them like machines. Her father had supported her and her siblings by doing work with a punch-card loom, and sometimes as punishment, he had her work it. So when Marka learned to mold endowments, the practice held some familarity. Vespers followed precise instructions executed mindlessly. Wik is still talking. "Spellbrands, of course, peddle oaths, and, while haruspices are less inclined, they appoint themselves speakers for vespers, often in the way soothsayers are speakers for tea leaves." Wik pauses to stretch its palps, relax them. Then, "So, it's clear why and how a supposed night-prophet could strip a clan of everything that makes it a clan. And you can easily imagine one objecting to spellbrands and haruspices ideologically. Or perhaps they were just the first likely to comprehend her presence and --- whatever it is she's doing. Does that cover everything?" Marka nods. "What is she doing, do you think? Any guesses?" After a moment, Wik shakes its head. There's a texture to the silence -- Wik no longer meeting her eye --- that Marka is too tired to analyze. Not tired enough to miss it though, huh. "An easy way to find out, I guess," she says when Wik doesn't reply, "is going to meet her. But then we might miss the percipient. And I should report all this to the wardens." She sighs, then scratches her palps with a dactyl, then stops. She doesn't like the taste of it. Wik makes a bland affirmative sound. "E'yama's last breath," she mutters. "Decisions, so many decisions. Today's had more of them than all last month. We're stuck at the bottom of a buried ruin, and apparently I've two different people above expecting to meet me tonight." "You are a busy lady," Wik says. Something about the phrasing prickles her, but she's not sure. "Hm," she sounds, as much with her spiracles as her twitching palps. "There's no telling how much of what Alunyene's said is true. And the Watching Lord --- they sound ruthless and evil. Do you think they have something to do with what was wrong with Ress?" Wik doesn't respond, so Marka continues thinking aloud. "Still, if they're telling the truth, what if they are up to something that'll save lives? At the same time, a percipient. Who wants to meet with me. That feels important? 'Where I was supposed to be' is surely the Church of Blue Welkin. And those answers... I--you understand why finally learning what was up with my mother is so tempting? I told you the story." Marka breaths in. "That's not all. Could we go back to Felme's? The courtesan --- he wanted to meet me tonight, and he seems to know things. I want to go everywhere. But I have only one body." "I get the impression," Wik starts, "from you telling me all of this, that you expect me to accompany you, whichever you pick." "Yeah?" "Why would I?" "Why wouldn't you? You have to get the sense something important is happening, right?" "That's exactly it." Wik turns away from Marka, now regarding the courtyard. "Tell me, Marka," it starts with the tone of rhetorical inquiry, "how many mavericks have you met today?" "Felme, Angwi, Essi... you? Unless you still count as a Stewart somehow. So, three or four?" "How many of them are dead?" The conversation lurches here. Part of it is the reminder --- mantids they'd seen, talked with, are dead, killed, and the death's presence seemed to linger with them. Part of it is Marka seeing Wik's game. "Essi's been here for a few months at best. And Angwi? I'd be surprised with a personality and methodology like that, if she could last a year, or three at most. Particularly when her very endowments spread from its users being killed. A malign incentive for vespers if there ever were one." Wik pauses, long enough it could have said 'but I digress'. It gives another look over the courtyard, then continues. "What happened today was extreme, but it was extreme in a very unexceptional way. Vesperbanes die everyday. But contrast those two with myself. I've been here for years. How do I do it? I stay away from big plays. And this has every indication of being a big play. I'm already too close, far closer than I'd like or need to be." "Then what's one more step?" "My work here is done, Marka. I appreciate your help greatly. And more than simply being compentent, you were a good mantis, one I at times even enjoyed working beside. But I won't walk beside you into the inferno when it's not necessary." Marka's tarsi tighten, digging into the ground beneath her. It hurt. She's grappled with Wik's betrayal, and reminded herself of the good in the tallowbane, at length bringing herself to continue working with it. Facing this --- the only word for it was rejection --- she realizes; it was never her decision to make. "I suppose in the wardens, you grew used to bonds you'd die for, rather than mercenary partnerships." She shakes her head. "It's not like that. The best of us, sure, are lucky enough to have consistent teams. The rest have assignments that can vary with the mission. The Wardens aren't mere mercenaries. But we are mercenaries." "Ah. I concede the point." Marka gives the tallowbane another look. Her brain's not entirely slow with exhaustion, and she latches on to something it had said. "Wait. Earlier. Did you say years? Didn't you tell me you were countena