The Queen's Adept

It is always the uninvited guest who revives the party… or just busts it.

—Qérlex Targerian

Night fell on the city in an abrupt way, almost by treachery, but no one cared. Torches and bonfires had been lit for some time, and celebrations had begun hours earlier. Outside, darkness might quickly become mistress of the world, but no one in the city noticed.

They also did not notice the foreigner who left the party towards the coast. They all had things to do at the time, and probably the foreigner too. A secret rendezvous? Business? A lover? Nobody cared.

He wore a short gray tunic and was half wrapped in a cloak of the same color. Compared with the color orgy of the bacchantes, he was like a furtive shadow.

He soon left the city walls behind and entered with a firm step the olive grove that went on to die almost at the seashore. He paused a moment beside a rock and looked for something in a hollow there. While checking with his hands that everything was where it should be, he glanced back at the distant city lights.

He hoisted a bag on to his shoulders, went on his way and soon he reached the top of a cliff, where he could still hear the nearby tide snoring.

Someone came out of the shadows.

You’re late, a voice said.

The man stopped, and his hand touched the hilt of the dagger at his waist.

Or you’ve come too soon, he replied. His voice had a cold, sharp quality, as if words were a nuisance he had to get rid of as soon as possible.

The newcomer shrugged.

The changing of the guard will be within the hour, he said. We must hurry.

The other nodded and took off his cloak and tunic. He took something from the bag, a dark cloth which he then deployed and began to put on. The material clung to his body as if it were part of him, and when he was fully clothed no part of his body was distinguishable in the gloom apart from his head and the hard glitter of his eyes.

He put the bag on his back.

I’m ready, he said.

His companion nodded and handed him a mask. While contemplating how it was placed over the other man’s mouth, he said, reluctantly:

For the Queen.

The man seemed to find the words amusing, but there was no mockery in his voice when he answered:

For the Queen.

He took a breath, looked back one last time and walked to the edge of the cliff. A few feet away, his walk quickly turned into a run that led him nowhere. With his last step he pushed up and forward, and suddenly his body became a projectile fired into the sky. For a moment it seemed he would take flight, as the legendary Ítastos had done from the maze of War Island. Then, the world caught him with a relentless grip and he began to descend.

A few seconds later, the sea opened to receive him.

The guard never knew what killed him. He had approached the edge of the seafront, perhaps as a way to break the tedium of the watch. With his torch held high, he looked at the dark surface of the sea and could not help but notice, with a frown, the strange trail of bubbles coming in his direction.

He half turned, perhaps to call one of his companions, but he stopped when he heard the unmistakable splash of something coming out of the water.

And what came out was a dark and fluid shape that fell on him before he could do anything. He felt a slippery but relentless hand at his throat and, suddenly, everything he was began to fade away through the cold wound in his side, where a dagger had made its way.

His murderer kept him still until he was sure he was dead. Only then did he take the body to the edge of the seafront and, silently, let the sea take care of it. He checked the time by the position of the moon, little more than a sliver of silver that would disappear in a couple of days, picked up the torch the guard had dropped on the ground and waved it in the air twice; first to the left, then to the right. A point of distant light answered him with the same signal.

He left the torch between two rocks and began to walk, in absolute silence, along the seafront. He did not have much time, but it would be enough.

They noticed the absence of the guard as he was finishing his work.

He placed a charge under the waterline of the last ship and activated it with the proper unpronounceable word. Then he put the mask over his mouth again and dived once more.

The military port was beginning to awaken, and they would probably soon find out what had happened to the guard, but by then it would be too late. Under the water, he had no problem leaving the port limits. He surfaced once, took a quick look at what was happening, and then dived again.

He swam with his arms at his sides; his whole body turned into a giant fin that quickly drove him where he wanted to go. Soon he reached a small beach on the outskirts of the city. There was a group of bacchantes there, dancing around the bonfires, drunk from themselves and from the wine out of half a dozen amphorae lying in the sand.

He swam to the edge of the beach, where a group of rocks concealed the light of bonfires. The same man he had met on the cliff was waiting there.

Once out of the water, he took off his strange costume and mask. The other man kept it all in a bundle, and he began to get dressed with the dry clothes he had brought: a cheerfully colored tunic and a cape trimmed in red. He quickly put them on and, while the other man threw the pack onto his back, he finished tying his shoes.

Was there any problem?

He looked at the distant port, where torches looked like crazy points of light ranging from side to side.

Nothing important, he said.

You should get out of here soon.

I still have something to do before I leave.

The other man smiled grimly.

As you wish.

Without another word, he left the rocks and joined the party on the beach, while his companion began to walk inland.

An unknown woman handed him a jar and he took a long swig of a wine too sweet for his taste. Then he joined the sprawling dance by the fires.

He was dancing when the explosions began, but he continued as if nothing had happened, like most of his companions, too drunk to realize what was happening. For them, the distant explosions and the burning light of the ships were just another part of the party.

There were some who realized what was happening and left the beach, however. Though nothing they could do would be of any help.

The main battle fleet of Painé had just become a pile of burning timbers that no longer served anyone.

He arrived at his villa just before dawn.

He threw the cape down on the floor and splashed his face with the water from the bucket the slaves had prepared. In the kitchen he found some bread and cold chicken and ate it all sitting by the fire while he lazily smoked a long briar pipe.

With hunger satisfied and a clear head, he went into the bedroom.

She was waiting for him there, asleep, and her body, as drawn by the sheets close to her skin, was a promise of another hunger yet to be satiated. He took off his tunic in silence and with two feline movements got into the bed.

The woman awoke soon enough and looked at him for a moment with her dark eyes.

Where have you been? she asked.

He shrugged and smiled almost reluctantly.

There was much to celebrate, he said.

She ran a hand full of rings over his crotch and felt and explored, as if to make sure everything was intact and in place.

Too tired? she asked again.

He shook his head and touched the woman’s belly. She moaned and her mouth took hold of him with a desire too fierce to be genuine.

They had barely started the erotic game when he realized they were not alone in the room. Nothing in his face or his body indicated he had realized, however, and he continued as if nothing else mattered.

But his senses were alert to everything that went on around him and he quickly perceived the stealthy footsteps behind him.

Only one man? Did they believe one man would be enough to kill him? He almost felt insulted.

He continued enjoying the woman, and when he perceived his attacker was about to strike, he turned so that her body received the bite of steel and not his. Before the murderer realized his mistake, he was already out of bed with a sheet in his hand and a fierce smile on his face.

It ended quickly. The murderer was no match for him. He was still trying to get the dagger from her body when the sheet wrapped around his throat.

Then he was dead.

Alone in the room, with no company other than the two bodies, the man sat and thought.

His contact had been right. He should have left when he finished his work. The hierarchs of the city had probably decided quickly enough he had been the one behind the attack that night. Or maybe they preferred to be sure and had sent murderers to take out anyone they found suspicious.

In any case, he could not stay in the city anymore. He had to leave, and he must do it discreetly.

He glanced at the body of his attacker. It could serve. The disguise would not withstand a thorough inspection, but no doubt it would be enough to sneak out of the city.

As he removed his clothes, he heard a groan from the bed. The woman was still alive.

He approached her and realized she would not last long. She had a punctured lung, a wound too serious for her scarce and not very powerful messengers to repair. She was still conscious, and looked as if she did not understand what had happened.

I hope you have been paid enough for your services, he said, with a voice that had not the slightest emotion. No doubt you deserve it.

Then he began to get dressed in his attacker’s garments. A touch of ash stained his face and obscured his features.

He crouched on the floor and searched until he found what he was seeking. A piece of floorboard tilted up with a slight pressure and he began to pull out what he had kept there. He made a bundle of it all and threw it over his back.

He looked out from the balcony: it was almost dawn. By noon, he would be very far away.

He smiled, a leopard devouring its prey and just enjoying its flavor, and quietly left the house.

Nobody saw him. Nobody stopped him.

They soon discovered he was not at home, and that none of the bodies in the bedroom were his. They searched for weeks, but never found him.

They knew the name he had given when he had rented the mansion, but it would turn out to be false. They never knew his real name or where he came from.

He was Yáxtor Brandan, empirical adept on the service of Her Majesty, the Queen of Alboné.

No matter how it may seem, the situation in which two wary enemies continually look over each other’s shoulder and do nothing for fear of what the other one can do in return is the most stable of all. And, indeed, it is the most beneficial one for both sides.

In the name of security and brandishing the threat from the other side (which is always about to materialize) they can create a dynamic that eventually ends up sustaining itself.

This situation may continue for an indefinite time, if each side plays its cards carefully… provided, of course, that a third party does not appear.

—Glaxton Dishrel

The airship from Wáhrang reached Lambodonas at the end of the afternoon, as usual. It lazily crossed the sky, stopped in front of the Tower and, before the clock’s longest hand (a device installed ten years before and still considered a foreign and unreliable object by most Lambodonians) had gone halfway round, the vessel was fixed and its passengers were ready to disembark.

The inevitable inspection arrived shortly afterwards. Inquisitive adepts were as careful as they were discreet and it did not take long for the passengers to have free passage to the city under the Tower.

One of the travelers came from northern Wáhrang, near the border with the steppe. His face and all visible parts of his body were completely covered with arcane characters which, if one knew the language, revealed his lineage. Much of his body was tattooed in that way and it seemed very likely that at the end of his life there would not be an inch of his skin free of tattoos.

He remained silent, almost sullen, waiting to be inspected by the adepts. That did not surprise anyone. Wáhranger from the North were notoriously laconic and words tended to be, for them, something too precious to waste on small talk.

The adept searched him thoroughly, but in an almost bored way, and then let him go. He picked up the little luggage he had (a bag that had seen better days), got off with the other passengers, and headed towards the city.

Unlike other places, Lambodonas seemed to awaken at the fall of night. The largest city in the People’s Covenant, as their inhabitants claimed, had an intense and hectic nightlife. Public baths were part of it, maybe the most shocking part for foreigners. They were scattered throughout the city and offered a complete and cheap service, both to natives and to outsiders. In some cases, the basic services were supplemented by other pleasures.

The Wáhranger went into one of them and asked for a private cabin. The slave in reception looked at him almost haughtily, as if he were too polite to say out loud what he thought. The customer opened his bag and took out two coins that tinkled with the familiar singsong of silver. The slave accepted them with a nod, and, although the expression of his face softened, it was clear he still thought the client was out of his element and that it was a pity some things could be bought only with money.

He led the Wáhranger to a private cabin, reluctantly explained the operation of the bathtub and then left him alone. He did not think about him for the rest of the night.

And, somewhat later, he would not be able to articulate any coherent thought.

Alone, the Wáhranger took his bath and let the hot water open the pores of his body. With his eyes closed and a relaxed posture, he floated in peace for a long time. He was aware of what was happening around him, of the distant murmur of conversation in the bathroom (those damn Alboneers seemed unable to close their mouths, it seemed) but he barely listened.

When he felt the water begin to cool, he sat in the bathtub.

He looked around and listened. Then he nodded, as if he was answering a question he had just asked himself. He stood completely, raised his arms, closed his eyes and muttered an unpronounceable word.

He felt a tingling all over his body and watched how the tattoos began to dissolve on his skin, creating tiny streams that fattened each other just to find his legs and slide down into the bathtub.

Soon, his skin was free of any tattoos. He opened his eyes.

He could hardly stand. He was exhausted. But he knew his strength would suffice for what he had to do.

He left the bathtub with the movements of an old man and sat on the bench by the wall. He looked at the tinted water, which seemed to be humming a song.

He felt empty. And in some ways he was. Almost all his messengers had left his body and were now in the bathtub, along with those that had been asleep in his tattoos.

He knew he did not have much time. Such a concentration of active messengers would soon alert someone and they would come to him.

But not before he did what he had to.

He inhaled, held the air in his chest and then let it out slowly, while three unpronounceable words were articulated in his mouth.

Madness broke out and he was its first victim.

When the militia arrived, there was not much to do but count the dead and help survivors be as comfortable as possible. They would spend the rest of their lives immersed in their own nightmares and, in a short time, most of them would be taken to the Final House by their relatives.

It was not hard to find the place where the bomb had exploded. The Wáhranger’s body was a limp mass of meat with a face that seemed hardly human. The militia captain gave orders to set aside the body for further investigation and then he tried to bring some order into the chaos around him.

What he did not find out until sometime later was that the adepts would find something in the corpse that same night, while they were dissecting it.

The Tower had once been the home of the monarchs. Later, as a prison, it housed many a curious tenant. Thirty years ago, it had become the terminal for Lambodonas’ arriving and departing airships.

And during all that time, the empirical adepts had lived in it; under it, in fact, far below the surface.

The world had been changing around them, but they had done the minimum necessary to adapt themselves to the times and not become obsolete. The maze of rooms and catacombs that were underneath the Tower was almost as it was the day the first hundred empirical adepts, using almost all of their blood and their messengers, had built it with the sheer force of their wills.

As always, they moved in darkness, they lived in anonymity. They only responded to the Queen and the Regent, and very few outside an exclusive circle knew about them, beyond the fact that they existed.

In one of the larger rooms in the catacombs a meeting had been convened. True to tradition, it was the spokesman who was the last to enter. If anyone was surprised by the fact the Supreme Adept himself took that role that night, nobody said anything.

Well settled in his later years, with a body that had once been strong and now was just fat, the Supreme Adept did not lose a single detail of what was happening around him as he entered the room. His face was partially covered with a brown beard, quite outdated in a time when a clean-shaven face was the custom, and his brow always seemed on the verge of frowning, but it never quite got there.

He crossed the room and was about to sit down when he realized they were not all there. He began a gesture toward his bailiff pointing it out, but stopped when he saw someone coming at that time.

He smiled to himself, though his face did not change expression. Brandan, of course. Who else would come after the spokesman to an emergency meeting?

The newcomer made the gesture of apology and, without stopping to see how it was received, took his seat. He received some reproachful looks from his peers, which he ignored completely, and tried to find a comfortable position in his chair.

Only then did the Supreme Adept sit. He took the papyrus roll from his desk and broke the wax seal on it. He read the Queen’s order and nodded.

Then he looked up and uttered the empirical oath. The rest of the men in the room repeated with him:

I do not know much. I know two plus two may be four. I know I was born. I know I will die. I know my blood is at the service of the Queen.

Then each one of them proceeded to break the seals on the rolls they had on their tables. The Supreme Adept took a sip of wine and told himself that, yet again, they had mixed it wrong.

Mentally he shrugged his shoulders.

This afternoon, a man detonated a Madness Bomb in one of the baths of the city, he said. A fanatic, surely, at the service of some absurd ideal that requires faith without proof. We thought so at first. During the dissection of the corpse, however, we discovered some interesting things.

He looked again at the roll with the royal seal.

We believe the bomb came on the sly, inert in his body tattoos. He was a northern Wáhranger, or was posing as one. Then in the bathroom, he woke up the messengers from his tattoos and used most of those in his own body so that the bomb reached critical mass.

He saw Brandan’s pursed lips.

He was himself a messenger, of another kind. The bomb was only a crazy way to get our attention. A bit drastic, you will agree with me, but certainly effective. The real message was in his body, in the messengers from his viscera. It was activated as we opened the body.

He took another scroll from the table, opened it and read aloud:

’We have a Bad News Bomb. We know how to use it and we will in a month from now. There will be no more contacts.’

With a quiet gesture, he crumpled the papyrus and put it on the table.

As you see, he said, they do not waste time: direct and to the point. There is no need to tell you that if someone uses a Bad News Bomb in Lambodonas, Alboné will be paralyzed. Who knows for how long?

How do we know they really have it? one of the adepts, a couple of positions to the right of Brandan, asked.

What we do know is that someone has stolen a bunch of them from a Western arsenal. What a coincidence, he emphasized that word almost reluctantly, for us to find that out only today. We suspect we are not the only ones that have received a message like this. It is possible that most of the People’s Covenant countries have received a messenger as unique as ours. And who knows if the same thing has happened in God’s Hammer as well. He shrugged his shoulders. It is hard to know what happens there. We must act as if the threat was real. We are working against the clock. You have your instructions.

Without hesitation, he stood up and walked towards the exit. He realized Brandan’s eyes were following him. Most likely he was not very satisfied with his assignment.

In fact, the Supreme Adept was counting on it.

The name, recalled the Supreme Adept, had started as a joke in the Western Confederacy, and had ended up becoming the official name.

After all, it is the custom, someone said, probably a worker in a break from work. We always blame the messenger bearing bad news.

The Bad News Bomb. The invention to end all wars forever. It had been used only once, at the end of the Hammer War, when Wáhrang had been broken but Honoi still held out stubbornly, making its enemies pay with blood for every inch of conquered land.

They released only one, in Kyono-jo. One ridiculous tiny bomb. It had destroyed all the messengers in the Imperial City and its effects lasted two days.

The consequence was that the delicate infrastructure web supported by messengers in Kyono-jo, just like in any other civilized city, collapsed almost immediately. It had taken months to rebuild.

And the messengers had been inactive only two days, the Supreme Adept said to himself. Only two days. Two days had been enough to cause unprecedented chaos and humiliate the proudest eastern country.

A bomb that was ridiculous compared to those the Westerners (and Khynainians, if what the spies said was true) had developed later. A toy, said his artifices. A toy bomb.

One of the current devices would kill all the messengers in Lambodonas and its surroundings, and its effects would last for months. At that time, the city would become a barren place that would kill the messengers that entered the perimeter and, with them, would disappear much of what Alboneers called civilization.

They would be helpless.

Alone in his cell, he read again the message from the Queen.

They had to stop that threat at any price. Anything else was expendable.

The Supreme Adept suddenly realized he was not alone. Someone had slipped into the threshold of his cell and patiently waited until his presence was perceived.

Come in, Brandan, he said.

The curtain was pushed aside and his former student crossed the threshold. His face seemed devoid of expression, but the Supreme Adept knew his body language (after all, I made him what he is now, he said to himself) and realized he was once more on the verge of insubordination.

He took a breath and pointed to a seat opposite him. Yáxtor Brandan sat with an economy of movement that, despite the time that had elapsed, still left the Supreme Adept breathless.

Yes? he asked.

Brandan waved the scroll that had been placed on his table. The Supreme Adept noticed the seal was intact.

This is rubbish, Brandan said.

You do not seem to have read it.

I do not need to. I know what time of year it is. And I have seen the other adepts’ faces. I have seen how they reacted to their assignments. The tasks that remain to be allocated must be garbage.

Why don’t you open it and check it?

Brandan hesitated. Then he broke the seal and unrolled the papyrus.

Desk job. Collecting. Coordinating. Supporting others, he murmured as he read its contents quickly. Rubbish, as I said.

The Supreme Adept shrugged.

You know the rules. Seven months of fieldwork. Seven months of deskwork. That is the way things are.

Brandan crumpled the papyrus and threw it on the ground.

Rubbish, he repeated. There was hardly any emotion in his voice. You need me out there. Now, more than ever. The Queen needs me out there.

Maybe. But rules are rules. And I cannot break them.

I can, he said, getting up and leaving the room.

I hope so, Yáxtor, the Supreme Adept thought as he watched him go.

He turned to the left and with a gesture and an unpronounceable word activated the messengers from the communications mirror.

Laboratory, he said.

A wrinkled, placid face took the place of his reflection, bowed his head and seemed annoyed.

Orston, he said. I hope it is not anything trivial. I’m pretty busy.

When are you not, Qérlex? Yáxtor Brandan will see you soon, surely. He will say he has procurement orders. He may even show them to you.

And they’ll be false, of course.

Maybe. Or maybe not. What we do not know cannot hurt us.

Curious words from an empirical adept, Qérlex murmured. Almost bordering on heresy.

Heresy only exists in the presence of faith. We do not believe. We know or we do not know, but do not believe.

Yeah, yeah, spare me the chat. You want me to give the boy whatever he asks.

No. I have never said that. I want you to check his orders. And if they look right, act accordingly.

What if they don’t?

I suspect they will.

Qérlex twisted mouth.

Yes, he said after a while. I suspect so, too.

Of course, the only one who truly understands a field operative is another field operative, even if he is from the other side. That, however, is not always beneficial. Talking to your own reflection can lead you to discover things about yourself you wished you had kept in the dark.

—Fléiter Praghem

Like any big city, Lambodonas was full of places that did not exist: brothels and gambling houses, of course, sometimes difficult to differentiate from each other. There were also less safe places, where the challenge to the law was more than simply ignoring an already obsolete statute that, though enacted by legislators, nobody actually complied with. Everyone knew it was a matter of time before gambling and prostitution were on the right side of the law and only the city guards (for whom the existence of certain crimes was a matter of sheer survival) paid any attention to those things.

Other places were more sinister. Like its predecessors, they did not exist, and their nonexistence was, so to speak, more secret.

Fléiter Praghem, leaning on his cane as always, watched with distant interest the outcome of a battle between a menialbody and a Khynainian and wondered if it would take much longer. He raised his glass and let a slave fill it while the fighting (the butchery, actually) came to the end. The Khynainian, a human wreck, collapsed on the floor while the menialbody, an orange skin mass that did not seem to understand where it was, remained completely motionless.

The ringmaster announced the winner. The bets were claimed and paid. The sand was cleaned. They prepared for a new battle.

Boring, Praghem said to himself. As boring as those damned Alboneers, with their haughty pose of civilization and their darkest desires barely hidden beneath the surface.

He wondered again why he had not chosen another destination: maybe in the city-states of Ashgramor, or among the decadent and insufferable people of Quitán. Or even in the open city of Jarsarén, full of pilgrims, followers, cenobites, acolytes, blessed ones and aspiring saints. Or, for that matter, he could be somewhere in Khynai, trying to remain inconspicuous among the believers of the One God.

He got his answer when he saw Yáxtor Brandan enter the amphitheater. The steel blue eyes of the empirical adept swept the crowd as if it were not there and eventually found Praghem, as he knew they would.

He squeezed the cane, smiled and raised the glass in his direction, in a mock toast. Brandan’s mouth smiled but his eyes did not. Praghem had only seen joy in the eyes of the adept once, and he preferred not to think about it.

Brandan came quickly to his side.

A good night?

Praghem shrugged.

Boring. And I don’t think the next show’s going to improve things. He glanced toward the sand and nodded. This place would gain a lot from an urban guard raid, really.

We can fix that.

I’m sure you can. Also I’m sure, he said, finishing his drink and leaving the glass on a shelf next to him, you’ve not come to see me about this cheap circus. How about we go somewhere we can talk in peace?

I know the perfect place, Brandan said.

Sure you do. But I’d be dead before I let you take me to your maze. No, I know where we can go.

Brandan nodded, as Praghem had known he would do from the moment he saw him enter.

Good food, good drink and good feminine company… or something like that. The menialbodies were, in any case, quite convincing.

Praghem was absentmindedly caressing the breast of one of them with one hand while with the other he pecked a bite here and there from the tray in front of his couch. The long fingers of the menialbody were playing with expertise and indifference with his penis, and Praghem’s face was completely occupied by an expression of placidity that seemed in no hurry to disappear.

Opposite him, Brandan was half resting on his couch and drinking his wine with indifference.

Won’t you ask for one? Praghem asked.

Brandan shook his head.

Not in Alboné.

Praghem grinned and gave a little hop when he noticed the menialbody nails in his scrotum.

Do you fear the Queen will find out? he asked.

Brandan shrugged.

I see. Today you’re not in the mood for trivia. Not that I blame you, but you should always find time for some things.

Not in Alboné, Brandan said again.

What’s that, your family motto? A little further to the right, my dear. Yes peeeeerfect.

You have lost something.

We lose a lot of things. It’s our specialty, my boy, you know. But I guess you mean the cluster of Bad News Bombs that mysteriously disappeared from the arsenal at Elm Site.

Brandan nodded.

Yeah, I heard what happened this afternoon. It was an effective way to attract your attention, no doubt. Brandan did not seem surprised that Praghem was aware of everything. After all, it was his job. And I’m sure in the coming days we’ll discover you have not been the only one to receive a… I was going to say ’blackmail letter‘, but they are not really asking for anything, right? They just said what they had and when they were going to use it. Anyway, I don’t think you’ve been the only one to receive such an original message. After all, there were bombs enough in the cluster to crush a few cities.

What happened, Fléiter?

Ah, Yáxtor, damn it, someone blundered, what else… Yes, now with your mouth, perfect. Somebody screwed up, as I said. But no matter, Washorya bureaucrats have already covered their backs, tallied their balances and decided it is best to do nothing… Oh, yes, yes...

Brandan took another drink and watched with indifference the work the menialbody was doing with its mouth on the penis of Praghem. Fléiter gasped for a moment, breathed out in what seemed an unsuccessful attempt to cough, and his body suddenly relaxed.

Thank you, my dear.

The menialbody, its eyes focused in a vacuum, its face as expressionless as it had been throughout the process, proceeded to clean Praghem’s genitals while he settled himself on the couch and smiled at Brandan.

This place is the best one, Fléiter said. They know how to teach their menialbodies. I have to congratulate the trainer.

Not now.

Yes, of course, later. Now, let’s get down to business. What do you want to know?

Anything you can tell me.

But tell me one thing first. Why didn’t you come to me through the official channels?

We prefer to leave the paperwork on the sidelines.

I see. So, you’re acting rogue. That’s not going to please your superiors.

Only if they find out.

They won’t hear of it from me.

I know.

The menialbody finished its work, replaced Praghem’s tunic and stood up. It began to walk toward the door and, in doing so, passed by Brandan. He extended a hand. The menialbody stopped. Brandan smiled