Surviving Arkadia

As soon as I had got on the outside of a few sips of hot chocolate and a mouthful of cake, I had the time and attention to be suspicious of the haste with which Marie had ushered us outside.

“So what is it that Agnes doesn’t want us to see?” I said.

Marie turned pale and swallowed her mouthful of tart with some difficulty and little sign of enjoyment. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Look, we appreciate the cake,” said Jethro, “but we know Agnes and that’s not how she usually is.”

“Promise you won’t get angry,” said Marie.

“We’re certainly not going to get angry with you,” I said. “And Agnes can more than take care of herself.”

“What she said,” said Jethro.

Saleh took a sip of his hot chocolate and looked serenely thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t know enough about the circumstances to get angry. I’m delegating Petra to get angry on my behalf.”

Marie didn’t look particularly convinced but she sighed and then spoke anyway. “Agnes is having trouble setting up the command centre. She wants to use the Remote Mirror to troubleshoot the crystal ball network and she’s worried that Saleh will be insulted by using such a high tier arcane construct to calibrate things he probably thinks are hedge magic trash.”

We all looked at Saleh for a long moment and watched as surprise forced his eyebrows up into his hairline. Then he laughed, a hearty guffaw of a laugh. “Do I look like a university administrator? Nobody else cares what it’s used for. The last time I used that thing it was to watch the opening night of Three Barbarians and a Nymph in the Amphitheatre at Kahlin because I couldn’t get tickets.”

“Excellent,” I said. “So there’s no problem and we can consume our bribes with a clear conscience.”

We took our time. It seemed only right to give Agnes plenty of time to finish her set up. There was even time for Jethro, Saleh and I to take it in turns to hold Marie’s baby, Walder, so that she could drink her hot chocolate without having to worry about spilling on him.

Walder was an extremely placid and happy baby who was content to use each one of us as a platform from which to stare at his mother’s face. He also took time out of his busy schedule of sleeping, shitting, and suckling to deliver one of those soul scouringly profound stares deep into my eyes. The way that babies do.

It wasn’t the first time I’d experienced one of those, though it was my first as a Hyena-Kin, and I thought I was prepared for it. I realised, in that moment, that no one is ever truly prepared for it. A human infant is an intelligent void that you cannot look away from. A baby is a living question that will spit up milk all over you if you jiggle it too much. Walder pinned me in place with his vast eyes and demanded that I find a coherent answer to the whole ‘existence thing’.What was the point? Where was all this conflict leading? What kind of future did he have to look forward to? Most importantly, what was I, personally, going to do about it all?

###

When we returned to the council room there was no one to keep us out of Agnes’ tent. Inside we found Agnes sitting in front of a complicated wooden frame set with dozens of bronze rings, each one carrying a crystal ball. The balls ranged in size from something like a cow’s eyeball all the way up to a couple of feet across. Each crystal had a coloured ribbon tied to the ring it was nestled in. To one side stood the remote viewing mirror, freed of its crate and showing an image that looked for all the world like a drone shot of a forest.

Seated throughout the tent, focused on Agnes and looking tense, were most of the Emergency Council. Amris was there, looking rough but not as rough as he had been when we saw him earlier. Gertrude was there, sharing a wide armchair with Geraldine, with Ursula standing behind them, clipboard in hand. The Mayor was there too, staring at the array of crystal balls with rapt fascination. Osred Kaye, the Chief Priest of the Temple of the Source, was sitting closest to Agnes, as if worried that she might need spiritual guidance.

There were a couple of faces that I recognised on the crystal balls. On one of the larger balls I saw Mistress Magdalene, the witch from Uln, with Franz, the vulpine Beast-Kin mayor of Uln looking over her shoulder. That crystal was marked with a bright red ribbon.

On a smaller ball I recognised a white-haired man with a deep tan. I couldn’t remember his name but I’d seen him attending council meetings in Moonstone and knew he was something high up in the Guild of Navigators. The ribbon marking his crystal ball was golden, not just golden yellow but with a metallic sheen.

There were two crystals marked with bright green ribbons. One showed a feminine looking face that seemed to be carved out of oak with a tumble of foliage for hair. My earth instincts insisted it was a statue but my SURVIVAL, WOODLAND skill insisted it was a Dryad. The other showed a person with so many facial tattoos that I was unsure of heritage or ethnicity. They wore a hat that seemed to be made of moss and were absentmindedly feeding nuts to a squirrel that reclined across the brim with its tiny paw hanging down over the edge.

There were several balls with black ribbons but I only recognised one face. Akira was there, dressed for a fight and clearly crouched on a branch, high in a tree. His image swayed in a way that suggested that he was holding his own ball at arms length as if taking a selfie. There was a second ribbon hanging from the frame that held this ball. A sky blue ribbon. As I watched Akira I realised that he wasn’t alone. There was a slender young Elf-kin wearing fine green clothes with him.

“Is this thing finally set up then?” said the Mayor.

“It’s certainly ready to be tested,” said Agnes.