The following day, Llewellyn and I met at Haon Station to walk together to TAPESTRY's headquarters.
Llewellyn bought us coffee from a place near the station and filled me in.
According to him, TAPESTRY had been investigating something they wanted our help with—but they'd refused to say what via text or call.
"That sounds suspicious at best, worrisome at worst," I said, frowning.
"My thoughts precisely," Llewellyn said. "Usually, when TAPESTRY reaches out about something they consider 'serious', I tend to get a call from KARMA too, investigating something related to it. But I haven't heard from Ó Lochlainn in weeks."
"Maybe it's not that serious?"
"It's a possibility," Llewellyn said, though he sounded entirely unconvinced.
Well.
"What do you even do when they both contact you about the same thing?" I asked.
I couldn't imagine that being anything other than a problem. If he agreed to help KARMA, the TAPESTRY members would likely find themselves in danger without his support. And if it was the opposite, KARMA might get suspicious or make trouble for him.
"It depends," Llewellyn said, sipping his coffee, trench coat fanning around him as we walked. "TAPESTRY only takes private clients, so unless I specifically ask for their help, the scope of their investigations is usually quite narrow compared to KARMA. In those cases, I'm often able to support both."
Oh. Yeah, that made sense.
Though, now that I thought about it—
"What kind of clients does TAPESTRY even have?" I asked. I'd never even heard of them before Llewellyn mentioned them.
"They generally assist people who've come into possession of destabilized or unpredictable artifacts, or who've been affected by them," Llewellyn said. "Their help can take various forms, from actual fighting to suppression, yeolation, or analysis, but their goal is always to provide aid where no one else can."
That explained why Llewellyn seemed to hold them in such high regard, then. Providing aid where no one else could was precisely what he did.
"But why would anyone call them instead of KARMA?" I insisted.
"Lots of reasons," Llewellyn said. "But primarily because people don't want to lose their artifacts. KARMA confiscates whatever they investigate—either to study it or destroy it—while TAPESTRY always goes for yeolation and returns all the artifacts they can stabilize. Moreover, KARMA works closely with the government and documents everything. People who contact them go on a record and, if anything goes wrong, might be accused of illegally handling artifacts. On top of all that, anyone who was hurt or affected might be classified, taken in, studied, isolated. People don't trust the process. KARMA isn't evil, but it's rigid, risk-averse, and full of paperwork—and if something goes wrong along the way, you can end up in a lot of trouble. I'd never suggest bringing Penguin to KARMA, but I knew TAPESTRY would help if they could."
Okay, I could see what he meant.
"By the way. With all that happened lately, I forgot—" Llewellyn pulled out his phone with the hand not holding his coffee. "TAPESTRY did send something a while ago. I forgot to show you."
He scrolled through, then tapped on something and turned his phone toward me.
It was a text from Roan. The photo on the screen showed what looked like a GPS tag taped to the wall of an abandoned farmhouse somewhere in the countryside. Above and below the tag, the words FUCK YOU had been written in some shiny gold magical paint-like thing.
I couldn't help it. I snorted.
"Pirate dungeon guy?"
"Heh," Llewellyn said, also sounding like he wanted to laugh.
Well.
Something like this was to be expected once he found the tag, but I'd just assumed he'd drop it somewhere. This was funnier.
It was good to see Llewellyn amused again. He'd gone home on his own after the cemetery and I'd been wondering if that had been a mistake, but… he looked like he was back to normal.
By then, we'd reached TAPESTRY's headquarters.
We rang the doorbell until they let us in, and we found ourselves in the bright room with red brick walls from last time—full of floor lamps and weird artifacts floating in jars.
The room was busier than last time. Shea was staring at his tablet, fingers tapping on it. Ejay, Yuè Zhōu, and Jihoon were sprawled on the sofas, while Roan, who'd let us in, went to make tea for everyone.
They all cheered when we entered, immediately asking for Penguin, who chirped and jumped out of my pocket to go and say hi.
From what I could see, the only one who was missing was Phelan. In fact, I hadn't met him at all, except for that time I'd spotted him from a distance at the Rusty Chalice.
Tiernan looked up from his book when we entered.
"Good. You're here," he said, looking relieved.
He was reading the same book on Geusgnosis as last time, but from the page he was on, he looked much earlier, like he'd started over.
He must have really liked it. Maybe I should find a copy too.
"What's going on?" Llewellyn asked.
"Plenty," Tiernan said, looking tired. "It's a mess." He closed his book and stood. "We've got a big problem."
━━━✦❘༻༺❘✦━━━
Once we were all sitting down on the sofas scattered around the room, Tiernan pulled up a map of Baekhaven on one of the screens above the jars.
"There's going to be a big underground auction next week," he said with no preamble. "Someone's planning to sell a Legendary-level Destabilized Artifact."
...Well, shit.
"Do we know what it is?" Llewellyn asked.
"From what we managed to gather, it's a bull ornament made of silver," Tiernan said.
"We think…" Yuè Zhōu cut in, tentatively. "That Destabilized Artifact you fought had a cat charm. We think it might have been a test to see how the cat would behave, before they tried to pull the same on the bull."
"…"
This was bad.
The one we fought wasn't even Legendary-level and two people had died, one had lost her arm, and I'd almost bled out myself.
Penguin chittered anxiously from his place between Roan and Jihoon, as if he wanted to say the same.
"We're going in undercover," Tiernan continued. "The auction's being held at Hyunshore Hotel. We've secured invitations."
"And you want us there," Llewellyn said.
"Not just there," Tiernan said. "We'd like you visible. Your presence might deter whoever's planning this from doing anything stupid."
"Or at the very least, we hope whatever support they might have will be halved," Ejay said. "Nobody wants to fight you, obviously."
"But it might also escalate things," I pointed out. Surely they must have considered this? Not to mention the chaos our presence would create.
"That's… a risk," Tiernan admitted. "But, if someone releases the artifact in public to wreak havoc as they did with the keyring, we'd still need Llewellyn there to contain it. And we don't know how many other artifacts might be there."
I didn't even know what to say. He wasn't wrong but... This was a mad plan, if I'd ever heard one.
"So we go in exposed," Llewellyn said grimly.
"I know it's not ideal," Tiernan sighed, rubbing his forehead. He looked tired. "But I couldn't come up with anything better. We've tracked thirteen other Destabilized Artifacts moving through the black market this week alone. Thirteen. Someone's flooding the market deliberately."
Thirteen?! Where would they even find that many?
Granted, not all of those would be lethal, some were likely just unstable or obnoxious, but still. If someone could manipulate them from a distance, that was a huge problem.
"Who's your client?" Llewellyn asked suddenly, leaning forward.
He was right, they hadn't told us.
The room went quiet. Even Ejay stopped bouncing.
Tiernan hesitated.
Finally, he said, "The Seon-jeong's Office."
What?!
"The queen?!" I yelped.