Miles away from the Duchess's crimson gallery, in a damp undercroft beneath the city's grand cathedral, the air tasted of cold stone, ozone, and righteous certainty. The light here came not from gas or candle, but from silver braziers burning with an alchemical blue flame that cast no shadows. This was the sanctum of the Order of the Argent Blade.
Brother Cassian knelt before the central altar, a slab of solid, veinless white marble. The hilt of his consecrated silver sword pressed into the small of his back. He was a young man, but his face was already hard-bitten, his knuckles scarred from training and his eyes holding the unwavering fire of the true believer. For a week, he had prayed and fasted, purifying his spirit for the hunt to come. The signs were undeniable. The pestilence had returned to this city.
The heavy, iron-banded door creaked open, and Inquisitor Malachi entered, his gray robes sweeping silently across the flagstones. Malachi was old, his skin like dried parchment, but his eyes were sharp and black as obsidian chips. He was the will of the Order made flesh.
"The city grows sicker by the hour, Brother Cassian," Malachi said, his voice a dry rasp. "Report."
Cassian rose, his joints stiff. "The omens multiply. Three nights ago, a dockworker's throat was torn out, his body drained. The Guard ruled it a wild dog. Yesterday, one of our acolytes in the market saw a woman, pale as milk, purchase a live fowl and wring its neck in an alley, drinking from it as a babe from a teat before she vanished. These are the works of fledglings, desperate and clumsy."
"The clumsy ones are merely the symptom. I am concerned with the disease," Malachi countered, his gaze fixed on a large map of the city laid out on a stone table. Pins and markers littered its surface. "A nest remains hidden, but its influence spreads. Tell me of the Captain."
Cassian's brow furrowed. "Captain Valerius. He is a problem. For years, he has been a wall of secular disbelief, an obstacle but a predictable one. He mocked our faith. In the last two days, something has changed. He has become... helpful."
"Helpful?" The Inquisitor's voice was sharp with suspicion.
"He has pulled patrols from key areas we wished to observe. He has re-assigned men loyal to us to the farthest sectors of the city. He's granted our 'religious observers' access to the city morgue without question. On the surface, he is giving us everything we've always asked for. But it is a puppet's compliance. There is no will behind it. One of my men tried to speak with him yesterday. He said the Captain's eyes were like glass."
Malachi traced a line on the map with a long, bony finger. "He has been ensnared. A mind as strong as his does not simply yield. It must be broken. This is the work of a Dominus-class entity. A puppeteer. We have not seen one of this potential magnitude in a century."
The Inquisitor moved two black pins into the administrative district, near the Guard's barracks. "And it gets worse. Our sources in the merchant guilds report a sudden, inexplicable alliance. Wilhelm, Sisyphus, and Thorne—three rivals who have spent their careers trying to ruin one another—announced a consortium this morning, pooling their resources. One of our informants, a clerk in Sisyphus's employ, says the decision was made after a private meeting last night. He claims the men are changed, their directives strange, their personalities flattened. They move in concert, a single entity in three bodies."
Cassian felt a knot of cold dread form in his stomach. The Captain of the Guard. The three most powerful merchants in the city. All compromised within days of each other. The speed, the scope... it was unprecedented. "By the Light... Who has this kind of power? To enthrall such men, in their own circles, without raising a single alarm?"
"That is the question that will define this hunt," Malachi murmured, stepping back from the map. It now showed a terrifying pattern: black pins marking compromised individuals at the very heart of the city's power structure—military and economic. But the center of the web was blank. There was no clear point of origin. "The targets are too disparate. The Captain despises the merchant class. Thorne avoids the company of the other two. They do not share a social circle, a vice, or a secret that could be used as leverage. The only thing they share is the city itself."
"Then the master could be anywhere," Cassian said, the frustration evident in his voice. "Anyone."
"Worse," Malachi corrected. "It is someone with access. Someone who can move between these different strata of society without suspicion. A courtier? A high-ranking priest? A foreign dignitary? We are hunting a ghost. One that has seized control of the city's most vital organs while we were watching the extremities for infection."
The old Inquisitor turned from the map, his dark eyes boring into the young knight. "Your fast is over. Your purification is complete. Forget the fledglings. Your new mission is to find the puppeteer. Start with the compromised. Watch Wilhelm, Sisyphus, and Thorne. Watch Valerius. A thrall must serve its master. Sooner or later, one of them will lead you back to the center of the web. Look for unusual meetings, cryptic messages, deviations from routine. Find the point where their orbits intersect. Find the master before it decides it no longer needs the city's pillars, and simply brings the temple crashing down."