The effect of the Vampires on Corlin cannot be overstated. For thousands of years, they treated the living like cattle. They twisted us into monsters for their amusement. In the end, during the Living War, we did it to ourselves to finally be free.

  -The Founding of the Living Nation, the official text describing the Corlin Revolution.

  “So, besides this thoroughly uninformative murder, what else did you learn last night.” Kave asked as they left the store.

  “I found some of the Dean’s personal associates, though none of them were aware of her projects. There was one missing, Trin Rapport. I’ll need to track her down to see if she’s an exception.” Komena answered.

  “Will that be necessary? It sounds like quite the hunt.” Struth said. He wasn’t wrong. It was essentially a missing person case inside the murder investigation. One without any guarantee of useful information. It was the perfect dead end to chase down, until she ran out of time and was dismissed.

  “We don’t have any other leads to follow for now. I could track down Muarim’s contacts, but we could guess what research the Dean of Evocation and a gardener had in common just as well as them.”

  “Some kind of herbicide? A spell to burn away plant life, to starve other nations out should it come to that.” Kave said. Struth shuddered at the idea.

  “It’s possible. It certainly would be effective.” Komena said. She looked down the dusty street to see sparse bushes surrounding a tree at the markets edge. One of a few small gardens, maintained by the Faculty of Agriculture. No practical reason for them, besides maybe a gentle show of power. She imagined what the city would be like if they were all replaced with plots of pristine sand and arranged stones.

  “What a monstrous thought.” Struth said.

  “Making assumptions about what the Dean’s project did won’t do us any good.” Komena said. “I’ll keep looking to see if I can find Trin. Maybe take a brief look into Muarim’s associates. If I have time to make certain while we wait for the diaries to be decoded or for you to find what demon was summoned.”

  The idea didn’t inspire much enthusiasm in Kave, but Struth perked back up.

  “Excellent. Taim said he would send the journals to the embassy when he finished. Come with us. If he’s finished, you can take a look through them. If he’s not, you can have a quick refreshment before you go out again.” He said.

  “You really think he finished them that quickly?” Komena said.

  “He was practically drooling when I gave them to him.” Kave said. “I expect he put in a full workday into them last night.”

  “For Taim, that should be close to enough.” Struth said as pulled ahead, leading them back to his apartment.

  “Those encryptions were made by a dean. Even if she put them together casually, it wouldn’t be sloppy work.” Komena said. Struth chuckled.

  “Yes, but it’s a practical problem and Taim’ excelled at solving those for as long as I’ve known him. A few years that have earned him some faith.” Struth said.

  “Well, unfortunately for you, that trust seems to be mutual. Otherwise, someone else would have been dragged into this.” Komena said.

  “Yes, the Radiance has smiled on me recently. It’s good to be doing my proper duty again.” He said. Komena let that thought sink in silently as they walked sown a street. Kave almost broke the silence, but he was too slow to stop Struth from speaking.

  “Hopefully, resolving this restores some of Corlin’s reputation. Are you aware of how my peers squandered the opportunity here?”

  She answered that with a non-committal hum. The whole affair had gone how she and the rumor mills had predicted when it had begun close to a decade ago. Corlin had sent over a vessel a little less than a decade ago, with a few so-called ‘Holy relics’, priests, and nobles. An envoy for the sake of peace, they’d called it and returned with what scholars had volunteered and what knowledge they could barter for. They’d eventually been joined by an Ao Gungian merchant fleet and some princes for Veldeti. The hopeful gesture had lasted over a year, though no one Komena knew could have said what was accomplished in the affair.

  “We came here with the best of intentions. A fraternity of nations, bound together. Then they threw it away in their thirst for power, like damned leeches.” Struth said. “And I couldn’t even go home to ensure they burned at the stakes, like leeches should.”

  That was what the streets had predicted. An old and simple con.

  “Why are you still here then?” She asked.

  “I had no place in their plots. I was offered roles, but I found them beneath me. So, I wasn’t sent away. I was allowed to continue the little work as I could.” His smile had dropped again, his eyes were wide. Kave had put a comforting hand on his shoulder, glaring at Komena behind his back.

  “Do you still have Corlin’s backing here?” She asked.

  “Barely. They do find it useful to have an official line of communication. I act as a middleman between our countries, mostly passing off or delivering letters. I argue for agreements and against those damnable Necromancers when I can. Maybe my abandonment is punishment for my dishonor. A noble man should have brought the knowledge of what my peers were doing forward the instant he was aware.” Struth said. He sighed and glanced at Kave. The tightness in his frame relaxed as he patted the boy’s hand, before shrugging it off.

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  “Still, it’s been a gentle martyrdom I suppose. It was only after my banishment that I found you, Kave. Honestly, I imagine that if I had been called back, I would have spent these years instead wrestling for the influence to return. And now Taim has given me an opportunity for some measure of redemption.” He said.

  Now Komena could see the political game that had put her with them instead of some academic. Any mage with enough authority for this role would have been more concerned with looting the Dean’s rooms than examining her corpse. Struth had no interest in that and would have naively assisted her no matter what she asked. The other Dean’s wouldn’t oppose the idea. When the investigation failed, it would be simple to push the blame on to the Faculty of the Mundane for their choice of overseer.

  The arrangement was a beautiful display of honor and trust between the two men. Komena would still gladly throw it away for her own sake, but she could appreciate it in this moment.

  “Do you have any contact with back home? A place to return to?” She asked. Maybe escaping the wreckage of this investigation would be the hint he needed to return there. Struth shrugged in response.

  “I send personal letters and reports. I don’t think most of them arrive though. We have moreterritory back in Corlin than a single city and no proper system of communication.” He answered. Kave’s face twisted into a grimace, but he stayed silent as Struth forced a chuckle. “At this rate you’ll both get a rather poor impression of back home. Ask me about something positive. Cathedrals for instance.”

  Komena indulged him for the rest of the walk back. It seemed to cheer him up, rambling about stained glass windows, depicting saints, angels, and battles from the Living War. He would look back at the two of them occasionally, which Komena met with a small smile or a nod. If this would have discouraged him on their own, Kave’s exaggerated excitement pushed him on until they reached his apartment gate.

  The building and the halls were just as empty as they’d been when their group had left. She probably was the most frequent visitor this place had in years. Likely the last too, with how the investigation was going. If Struth was sent back home, whatever contracts were keeping the space would go back to the city, who wouldn’t waste time replacing the building with something more efficient.

  Struth unlocked his door and led them inside. Kave immediately turned to their kitchen, while Struth and Komena went to take a seat. There were a few small figures waiting for them on the coffee table. A trio of imps, perched on themselves in a carefully arranged pyramid around some leather-bound journals, the highest of them playing with a house key. Komena imagined it was Kave’s, left with Taim so the things could come in to make the delivery. Curled under them and the table was a spider the size of a small child. Komena could spots of metal glittering faintly beneath its fur. Each of its eyes was an empty black vortex, and its chittering mandibles clanged together like iron nails. A slight shimmer made Komena notice the thin wires hung from chair to chair, now being drawn back into the spider’s maw.

  Struth went back to the door and held it open for the creatures as they filed though the room, leaving the key and the books behind. He gave a polite nod as the creatures filed by that none of them returned, though the spider did turn two of its eyes to look as it passed. He gently closed the door behind them as Komena went to check the diaries. The creatures had organized them, putting the most recent on top. It was the best place to start.

  The latch keeping them closed was still in place, but the magical seal and the firebomb it was set to trigger were gone. The Dean’s diary was could now be safely read. A mix of fear and instinct towards the potential bonfire she could be holding still made Komena cringe as she popped open the latch. It opened just like the one she had as a girl. The book wasn’t written in code. Apparently, the Dean had thought that keeping it in her fortress of a home and setting it to burn said home down if touched wrong way was enough precaution.

  Struth pulled the rest of the pyramid apart, dividing it evenly between the three of them. After he laid the books acround the table, he leaned back into his seat. In a few moments, Kave joined them with a fully stocked tea tray. As she flipped through the pages, speeding through the days, the two of them poured and prepared cups. They put one in front of her and drank their own. By the time she put the diary down, her drink had gone tepid.

  “So, Komena. Any notes on the research? Complaints about difficult days? Boasts about how they’ll show up one faculty or the other?” Struth asked. Komena dropped the book and the table and picked up her tea. She rubbed her eyes a few times before downing it.

  “No. She only wrote about her personal life, nothing about the research. It’s mostly just a record of her dates. All the names she mentions are ones I learned from old man Long.” Komena said, clicking her tongue. “There’s some steamy stuff in there too. Make sure to keep these out of the boy’s hands.”

  “You don’t have the right to joke around after we wasted time on your idea like this!” Kave said.

  “Well, there are two interesting little details. The one I couldn’t find, Trin, comes up the most. The Dean was meeting her at least twice a week.”

  “Obviously she was very dear to her.” Struth said.

  “But that only helps us if there’s any new leads to who she is. Is there anything like that in there?” Kave asked, turning back to the door.

  “Not that I saw. Maybe the earlier diaries go into detail about them meeting. But the second detail is more immediately useful. The only business event she mentions are some lunch meetings. Same person, once a week for the past month. She doesn’t go into many details. Mostly she seemed to have been working out some kind of ranking list for the appetizers, but she does say she was meeting someone named Selim, and that paper prices are on the rise.”

  Struth obviously did not know what that meant. His face was blank and open in his confusion. Kave was quicker on the draw.

  “Selim Lahazred. One of major producers of magic scrolls in the city. There’s only one reason a Dean would be meeting someone like him.” Kave said. Komena clapped her hands.

  “Full points! The last meeting was a day before her murder, so Selim was one of the last people to see her. If that secret project of hers was anywhere near finished, she would have talked to him about having it published.”

  “Published? Would a project of this caliber be released to the public?” Struth said, arms crossed under his beard.

  “A project like this would need to be published. The university would want as many copies to work with as possible. They want it tested. Its viability proven and any countermeasures accounted for. Should the worst happen, and the spell is needed, they would want as many scrolls to teach from as they could get.”

  Struth nodded. “I see. To Sabbelah, this isn’t some secret to be guarded. Instead, it’s like making spears and stakes for war.”

  Not a bad comparison, Komena thought. If that was how Corlin prepared for war, then it was certainly in line with the other Dean’s assumptions about the project. No matter what the Dean of Evocation had been working on, it would have been published like this.

  “Even if Selim was just competing for Trin’s position, it would still be worth meeting him, like all the others. We can’t know what she let slip. This time, though I won’t need to hunt him down all night. It will be just as practical for all three of us to go see him.”

  “Except that you are describing a very rich and important man.” Struth said. “I don’t have the standing to arrange a meeting like that immediately. Not even with the authority Taim’s given me for this business.”

  “That shouldn’t be an issue. There’s a visit we should make before we go there anyways. We can make arrangements there.”