Deliberation #2
Bashan was not the empire’s largest city—that was Okiakosaa—but it was the seat of royal power and the birthplace of the imperial line.
Great effort had been taken to preserve its elegance.
Church minarets glowed in the light of the setting sun.
No building rose higher than three stories, ensuring the palace walls remained visible from any point in the city.
The streets were broad and paved in crushed stone that muffled carriage wheels.
Flowers bloomed from window boxes and roadside verges.
Gas-fed lamps lined the roads—at night, there would be few shadows left in which a thief could hide.
Chestnut, oak, linden, and willow trees shaded the streets and clustered in lush parks. Once, Math might have found that comforting. Now, the trees set him on edge.
Bashan had begun as a walled cenobium like Isofal and most others, and had set the standard by which other towns grew—first from knowledge, then from necessity. In most cities, that cenobium remained a stronghold of the Idallik Order. But not here. Here, it had become the imperial palace.
As a result, the Order’s headquarters had been built separately, at the base of the hill beneath the palace’s white walls.
Math wasn’t immune to its beauty. He was proud to be a Rokasmaan citizen, proud of what the empire had accomplished. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than anything else he’d seen. They were a light in a world gone shadowed. He still believed that.
And yet, as they rode through the wide avenues, he saw ugly expressions on the faces of the people watching them. Resentment. Disdain. A few openly glared.
This was Bashan. The capital. The heart of the Idallik Order.
If the Order wasn’t welcome here …
He brooded on that until they passed under the white marble gates of the Order’s headquarters. After that, his thoughts were occupied by more immediate matters.
He needed to speak with Kai. He knew he did. They had too much to talk about, and Math had no idea how to articulate everything he was feeling.
Alik was probably right to think Math was a coward, though.
Instead of searching for Kai, Math went looking for his sister.
Math couldn’t find his sister.
When last Captain Nuhzar had checked, she’d been assigned to Bashan Cenobium.
Now, no one knew what had happened to Tanxi or the children.
Some claimed she’d returned to Isofal, others that she’d moved to another cenobium—or left the Order entirely.
Aside from Nuhzar, Math didn’t know many of the knights here. None of them were from Isofal.
It was almost a blessing. No one recognized him—so no one was calling for his arrest, either.
The cenobium itself was overcrowded. Knights slept in corridors.
Math spent the day searching for any trace of Tanxi or the children—without success.
The Master of Novitiates gave him an unfriendly sniff and claimed she couldn’t possibly know.
The children in the Hall of Novitiates weren’t any more helpful.
Math didn’t know where Kai was either. Given the state of the place, he assumed they’d housed her in a nearby hotel.
That afternoon, Nuhzar found him and pulled him aside for a magically enhanced debriefing—likely to confirm he wasn’t a traitor before wasting any commander’s time.
His interrogators were thorough. Math had to thread a hundred needles to avoid incriminating himself.
They asked about the woman in Cherkiss. He told the truth: her name was Kai, and he’d met her outside Sounalla, where he’d rescued her from one of the plant creatures.
No one made the connection to the infamous necromancer.
They were more interested in whether he’d slept with her.
He confessed he hadn’t. Fortunately, no one thought to ask if he’d wanted to.
After a long, exhausting session, they released him. He had no idea whether or not he’d passed. He was optimistic—but also under orders not to leave the cenobium.
He was left in limbo until the Council of Commanders agreed to see him. Alik Nuhzar had no idea when that would be.
Math felt like a wildcat in a tiny cage.
He could’ve spent the time training—sparring, manifesting his shield, preparing to perform for the commanders. Instead, he went to the library.
The Bashan repository held more on Kaiataris than Isofal had, but still nothing from a primary source. Just fairy tales and horror stories written long after the fall of the grim lords. No surviving texts from when Kai had lived. No facts. Just myth.
Which made sense if one considered that she had slept through the entire Age of Bone.
These were stories about grim lords, not the graven wizards who had preceded them.
There were no books about those.
It had to be intentional. The grim lords would have had access to all the repositories and archives created by the graven wizards they’d usurped. It would have been simplicity itself to erase any mention of their living predecessors.
If there was one lesson that any Idallik Knight knew, it was the importance of controlling information.
On the third day, the commanders finally called for him.