Interlude 1c

::: subchapter Marka clicks her timepiece closed. The sun is reflecting sharply on the metal as it lowers, and the motion of closing carves a harsh line of afterimage across her vision. When she glances up, Wik is walking away, lingering smoke leaving a trail like a wake. The tallowbane looks back, waving a raptorial. "Come. There's no reason to stay on the roof." Marka looks away, her eyes drawn toward the Church of Blue Welkin. From most parts of Wentalel you could see it, and a younger Marka would look to it for the double purpose of placing herself in the city, for direction, and placing herself in the order of things, for purpose. She'd left it all behind, but it was --- if for today only --- once more salient to her purpose. Amusingly. And she was abandoning it, yet again. (Marka, my daughter...) But she stops thinking about the matters she's neglecting right now. Instead, she thinks of Wik, that vesperbane who was white in the way ghosts were black. This situation bore a few correct responses, reactions drilled into her by training. (Oh, if only every choice were so amenable to correct, logical solutions as in training.) First of all she should press this 'Wik' harder, firmly establish countenance or lack thereof, and perhaps report this to some wound-faced warden official --- that is, if Wik admits to being a defect, a defect, dreamless. Really, she should be writing an intel report to the wardens, request some warrant for what was turning into a mission --- one that involved termite-tech and sketchy tallowbanes. She'd have to run by her superiors all of her potential actions going forward. Get the direct supervision of someone of fiend rank or higher. It wasn't... proscribed for a lone warden, even one of arch-wretch rank, to act on their own --- but procedure was a virtue. But the bluntness of procedure feels like a piece unfitting here. Wik has stopped walking. "You don't look like you're following." Marka thinks. And she tells the straightforward truth; it's what she prefers. "Why should I trust you?" the warden asks. Wik's pure white head tilts. "Would I have saved your life were I some manner of villain?" "Bluntly, I don't know what to think." That issue of countenance --- and why this vesperbane would be so cagey about it --- weighs on her palps, but would asking a third time provoke any different a response? A different track is taken: "It's suspicious, right? That you were there to save me at that exact moment?" Wik sighs, a wet sound, and turns around. "You're falling down a pit that swallows so many vesperbanes. One of caution heightened to paranoia, and assuming nothing could possibly be precisely what it is." Wik takes a step forward, pale raptorials lowered, nonthreatening. "It makes sense, in a world like ours. But indiscriminate suspicion is a fool's caution." "Calling it foolish isn't an explanation, and not a reason to trust you." "You saw me twice before I leapt in to save you. I did not come from nowhere." Wik whirls around, abdomen to her, and resumes walking away. "Simply put, I am not in a position to run a blade through your abdomen. You risk nothing by taking me at my word --- for now. Pray save the suspicion until you have something to lose from trusting me, at the very least?" Wik jumps over the edge of the roof. A moment's thought, for procedure unattended to, and the possiblity of simply walking away. (Marka, my daughter, if you take one more step...) Marka follows after. The tallowbane did not jump straight down, instead sliding down the building's side till the leap was from a height just two mantids tall. Marka picks a conventional route and climbs down. "What, exactly, is your plan? 'Infiltrate' is vague." "I've been researching this city. Access to the sewers is limited to a few guarded maintainence entrances or locked hatches, all in the interests of not having the underground be a haven for mavericks and defects. But Wentalel is old, and there's ---" "Wait, guarded by whom?" "City guards. I might have seen antennae-bands once or twice, but they had to have been freshblood wardens." "I'm a warden. Why not just walk up and flash my countenance, and we're in?" Wik's palps cross, and cotton-like antennae work for a second. "I worry for word of us making such an entrance running up the command ladder --- what will the arch-fiend think? And we could be seen by the wrong person. Which, circumstances considered, might translate to forewarning or ancipation." Marka senses a sloppiness of reasoning. Her suggestion caught Wik by surprise, and what results is weak justifications thrown up to support a conclusion already erected. "Alright," she says, "what were you saying before I interrupted?" She can bring it up later, after the idea had really registered. Pressing now could just turn into an argument. "My research suggests there's an ancient catacomb deep below, and accessible from caves beyond the walls. Rumor --- and a few sources --- give me the idea the catacombs connect to the sewer in a few key places. Fevalel's a decently modernized district, and some digging into city plans confirms the gang's base has plumbing." "And that translates to a secret entrance?" "Not quite. That's where you, or someone like you, comes in. You're a blackbane, right? Nerve user? Demolition shouldn't be hard for you." Marka flexes her forelegs, distinctly aware of the nerve-circuits running through them. Even now, they hum with lethal amounts of enervate. "Sure," she says. "So, we blast up from the sewers and into their bathroom or kitchen or whatever. And that's any better than just kicking down the door? It's not going to solve the problem of getting to their stash. Hardly worth the trouble." "That is where I come in. Believe me, once we're in their base, we will not be blind in navigating it." "You can just say why, you know, instead of asking me to believe you." "It's a matter of technique. I'm a vesperbane. It's surely understandable why I wouldn't share my trade secrets with just anyone?" Marka sighs. It's not calculated, but it is willed, to a degree. "So you're asking me to trust you, again." She glances away. "For all I know, this 'secret technique' could be familiarity with your own base, and you're navigating me to a cell or chopping block." "I could swear an oath, if you like. By my vespers." "I'm not a spellbrand, I wouldn't have much way of knowing you didn't leave an out in the scripting, or if the oath is even legitimate." Wik's head leans closer, as if to get a better look, antennae twisting confused. "They don't teach that much to everyone in the wardens? So what, you're a pure nerve specialist?" "Pretty much. I have the wretched raptorials, but other than that --- all nerve." "Are you at least a sensor?" Marka frowns. "I... gave it some attempts, but umbradivination is not my school." "Not a sensor. Damn, you'd be more useful if you were." "Well," she starts, and then twists so that she can unlatch the bag tied to her prothorax and access its contents. She produces a clunky box, whose weight is evident in the sag of her forelegs. One face has depressed cutout where the metal gives way to glass. To the sides are handles, and atop are knobs and buttons. "I have this." It's the same kind and caliber of construction that lies in her timepiece, but put to a different, more advanced end. "You're going to need to explain what 'this' is." "A Vindicator-issue nerve scanner. It relies on a special class of pigment which reacts to enervate-emitted radiation in tailored frequency bands. This new Mk.II model even has a special upsilon-lifted internal aperture that allows it to tune to emissions that come from specified arcs extending anaward or kataward, meaning ---" Wik was smiling, but they interrupt. "Look, I'm not a blackbane. If you want me to actually understand, rather than be dazzled, you're going to have to condense the explanation." "It's basically a sensor box. It can detect distant enervate, and there's some room for focusing on certain types or processes." "Never heard of something like that existing. Okay. Yes, that will be useful." "Useful for what?" "Detecting vesperbanes, as sensor-types do? I don't expect dangerous enemy vesperbanes, but a guarantee is better than a guess." "It's not unheard of for vesperbanes to suppress their emissions, hiding their presences from sensors." "And supposing they have a blackbane that advanced also supposes a need for them, and every technique known translates into a higher commision rate --- and the Fevalel gang is a struggling operation. We don't know if they have the ability to hire one vesperbane, let alone some fiend-level stealth wizard." "About that," Marka starts, tapping her palps together once. "I think we can guess that there'll be enemy vesperbanes. There was a male I met --- it's how I found out about the gang in the first place --- and they mentioned an other vesperbane who spoke to them in the same breath as her dealings with the gang. It---" "...That was me." Wik had been twisting palps a few sentences before, and took this long to finally interrupt. "He was probably talking about me. I had seen what was going on once before, and I had approached him offering protection." The tallowbane looks distant. "I'm not sure I have grounds to think the reaction could have been any diffferent." "And you're not affiliated with the gang?" Marka tried to smile, but it wasn't much of a joke when the intent was sincere. "Back to the matter of enemy vesperbanes," Wik says, "I think there's a way to investigate, if you want more certainty." Wik stops there, expecting her to ask the necessary: "How?" That too-flexible smile of theirs. "I know a guy." "You never explain anything if you don't have to, do you?" "Everything will either become clear when it needs to, or you didn't need to know it." Wik starts walking, and beckons Marka to follow. "If taking me to this guy of yours