Chapter Eighteen

  The Plan

  Roman made his introductions. The would-be Aes Sedai was Athena Stall, a sixty year old woman from the United Kingdom. Though she appeared to be barely thirty in the Harbor. She was apparently extremely popular in circles that shared their own Fantasy stories online.

  The page reads she gained from that gave her enough power to rival the strength of even the most well read mid-list authors. All without physically publishing a single novel. Freya took more careful note of her green dress. The Green Ajah was the Battle Ajah. Considering Athena’s membership in the Unbound, the color of her dress was no coincidence.

  The man Freya thought was propositioning her was Lorin Castro, he was originally from the Dominican Republic but emigrated to the United States as a child. He was a freelance editor frequently used by several popular self published authors. Most interesting though was his hobby, medieval MMA. Freya had seen a few videos of those fights, and they were always brutal.

  He explained the white armor and red cloak was some kind of uniform. He was part of something called The Paladin’s Guild. There was one for each common Dungeons and Dragons class. With the Paladin’s guild being the most strict. His core commandments were to always wear his armor, and protect the innocent.

  Finally there was Molly, but she didn’t care to explain herself, despite Roman’s prodding. That was fine with Freya, she really had no interest in getting to know that grouch of a woman.

  It was surprisingly Zora who suggested their first course. After they spent some time drilling with each other, they would test their skills through a raid on a border settlement in the Bluffs. Depending on the success of that endeavor, either another small raid would follow, or they would jump straight into a raid of the Tsar’s palace in Oldport. Specifically, they would empty the treasury, and perhaps burn the place down on the way out.

  “This is perfect,” Roman said looking over a spectral map that Athena had formed in the air. “Build ourselves up on settlements Sulivar won’t care about. Then we strike at the heart of his empire. His mercenaries will scatter when they realize there’s no more gold.”

  “One problem.” Zora walked into the center of the spectral map, keeping a healthy distance from Roman, the image blurred as she stood over The Plains of Mourning. She circled Sulivar’s current location with her finger. Athena made the area glow for effect. “He was with his army just South of the Mind’s Mirror. “Sulivar has pages, a great many if the stories of his childhood are true. His early works have been published unedited for super fans of his work. So all those manuscripts have a large readership.” Ben’s shelf had whole sections full of Sulivar’s work. Dozens of books.

  “Shit. We can’t very well strip those away from him.” Freya look to Roman. “Can we?”

  “That’s the beauty of it, he’ll do it himself.” Roman drew a dagger and sliced through the dot marking Oldport on the map. A little self-serious for Freya’s taste. “Without his gold, he will start paying his army in pages, slowly draining his own strength. No author is prolific enough to keep an army of this size paid through writing alone. Even with how well-read his unedited manuscripts are, he would have maybe a few years. Less with how those pages would dilute the market. This is brilliant. Truly, thank you Zora.”

  Zora smiled in spite of the anger still bubbling out of her. “Don’t think that gets you out of the dog house.”

  Lorin leaned over. “Are they sleeping together?”

  The closeness sent a shiver down her spine. Stop it. “Probably.”

  “I’ll make all this up to you, I promise.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Lorin chuckled quietly. “Definitely.”

  “This is a good plan. Which is a hell of a lot more than what we had before.”

  Freya smiled, then scooted closer to Lorin. “He’s laying it on a little thick there.”

  Roman turned toward her. “Something you want to share?”

  Lorin cleared his throat. “Yes, we should meet to drill our skills and unit cohesion daily.” Lorin’s voice was surprisingly high pitched with a slight rattle.

  Good save. Freya thought.

  “You know you don’t need to talk like that right? All proper and military.” Athena said.

  It was nearing waking hours in the United States, so it had to be something like midday in the United Kingdom. How was she still awake?

  Lorin didn’t acknowledge Athena, he simply looked at Roman expectantly.

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  “Let’s meet in my room at The Mind’s Mirror. Let’s say…every day at sundown? I’ve more or less converted it into a training hall,” Roman said.

  Freya looked over the map. Esselem was at the Northeastern tip of the continent. The Mind’s Mirror was located just south of the continent’s midpoint. How did he propose they do that? Surely they couldn’t constantly teleport back and forth, far too expensive. Though being an editor at a major publishing house, maybe Roman could afford it. She wasn’t entirely sure how all that worked. Did he get pages for everything he worked on?

  Before she could ask the question, Zora piped in. “Fair enough. Where’s your door?”

  “Sixth floor of this tower, my name in this realm will be on the door. The Firebrand.”

  The asshole certainly made it seem like he didn’t have a given name in the Harbor. Another deception to pay him back for later. The Firebrand, so his revolutionary tendencies are no secret. Freya thought. If they had hung around the Mind’s Mirror for a few more minutes would someone have recognized him and revealed the truth? Is that why he was so inclined to have Freya grab her things and get moving immediately?

  As much as the name could be seen as a negative or a positive depending on the person, it was undeniably kick ass. She started to become a little self-conscious of her own given name. The Bookworm, that didn’t imply a threat, it was a woman who spent too much time reading and not enough in the real world. Freya smiled quietly at that. The real world, what did that even mean anymore?

  The group scattered after a few subdued goodbyes. Zora and Freya left first, though the rest weren’t far behind. Once they got out of the tower they crossed the few rope bridges back to the central castle.

  Freya broke the silence. “How does Roman have a door to The Mind’s Mirror?”

  “Not technically to the Mind’s Mirror,” Zora corrected. “To his room. Each floor of rooms in the Mind’s Mirror is its own pocket dimension. That’s how thousands of us can have rooms in an outwardly normal sized tavern.”

  The odd stairs in the tavern made a lot more sense. That probably would have been nice to know before. The Gardener was annoyingly short on important details.

  “But how do we connect that to a door here? Don’t the travel agents handle teleportation?” Every time she learned something new, ten questions came along with the knowledge.

  “Not teleportation, pocket dimensions. Completely different. It took me a while to figure out, but these pocket dimensions exist in a kind of void space between realities. You can enchant a door to draw a specific pocket dimension to it when it is opened. It takes a shockingly small amount of magical energy to do it too, because you are effectively just assigning a type of gravitational force to the door.”

  That…didn’t make a lot of sense. How would gravity propagate across dimensional barriers? Was the void just like outer space? Freya figured there wouldn’t be anything at all, no time, no space. Clearly something in her assumptions were wrong, but right now she had other things to worry about.

  “Right, how do I make one? I still need somewhere to sleep tonight and I’d like to get some things I left behind.”

  “Go find Anodos, he can usually be found in the Commons listening in on the constant debating there. He can lend you a hand.”

  The Commons, that was the dining hall she passed through there on the way to The Minister’s office. She waved off her friend then headed off in that direction. However after a few minutes she realized she had forgotten to ask a critical question. Who the hell was Anodos?

  Freya turned back to find Zora. She was two rope bridges away headed straight back for The Poet’s Tower. Why would she walk all the way back to the the main castle with Freya if she was just going back to the tower? Freya ran to catch up. The bounce of the rope bridges forced her to slow down.

  She didn’t want to fall off, especially not in the dark. How had Zora even gotten that far away so quickly? Before she could close the gap Zora disappeared into the tower.

  Voices from the tower echoed out into the black of night. Freya took a few cautious steps into the tower. The voices she was hearing outside weren’t voices at all, it was a voice, singular. Zora was yelling.

  “Was it all bullshit? Did you ever really care about me? Or was I just a convenient fucking cover!”

  Freya froze. She shouldn’t be listening to this. But that perpetually nosy part of herself refused to leave. Maybe she could use what she heard to help? It was a fine excuse. But in her heart she knew this was wrong. She silently climbed the stairs anyway.

  After the fourth flight of stairs she could make out Roman’s voice.

  “None of this means I didn’t care about you. I still love you, I still want to be with you.”

  “How can you say that? How many times could we have been killed? I thought it was because you were just a lovestruck adventurer, taking stupid risks so we would have stories to tell our children. But you knew exactly what you were doing! You were a spy! And if the Tsarists found out what you were up to I would have been executed right along with you.”

  “You didn’t have to come with.”

  A long silence followed. “Fuck you Roman.”

  Frantic footfalls sent Freya diving under a musty pile of curtains on the floor. Another set of more steady steps followed. The once-sleek curtains made Freya want to vomit. A thin layer of black mold rained down on her. How long had this been sitting here?”

  “Zora please! I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “You meant it exactly how you-”

  “Just stop!”

  “Get your hand off of me.”

  Even under the curtain Freya could feel the air in the room stiffen. She tasted metal. This whole tower was built of stones. If this went south she could put a stop to things before anyone got hurt.

  “Are you going to quit the group? It’s important to Freya, you can see that can’t you?”

  “Don’t talk about Freya! She went through unspeakable things trying to save your ass. And what did you do in return? Lie to her? Force her to reveal her true name?” Zora sighed. “I’m not an idiot. I want Sulivar gone for what he did to her. So I’ll play nice with your little group.”

  Was that the only reason Zora wanted Sulivar taken down a peg? Because of Freya?

  “You might die,” Roman said. Was he trying to convince Zora to stay or go?

  “Freya almost died for me.”

  “And me.”

  Now Freya felt properly guilty for eavesdropping. They had such a high opinion of her. What would they think if they knew the truth? That she was vain, arrogant, with an unhealthy need to be fawned over by the masses. These two were filling that need pretty damn well at the present moment. There were plenty of good things about Freya, she knew that much. But did those good things really count if the driving force behind them was a need for others to like her?

  “Can we start again?” Roman asked. “Whatever you need, I’ll do my best to provide it.”

  “Total transparency. Are there any more secret terrorist organizations you’re part of?”

  “Just the one.” The smile in his voice gave Freya hope that maybe Roman hadn’t irrevocably fucked everything up.