Embers in the Wind
Rundellfall Chapter 15 - Everyone runs home to their respective corners and plots their next moves. Ratcliff and Daleannah find themselves becoming involuntary allies.
If you’re new to the Rundellfall story, it’s probably better to start here!
And if you missed chapter 14, you can read it here.
Embers in the Wind
A match flared, struck against the side of an old desk. The sharp scent of emberstone filled the room as the tiny wooden stick flared. This was followed by the pungent smell of tanbâku, as the match fulfilled its destiny of spreading its flame in his worn pipe.
Sheriff Ratcliff sat in his office, staring at the reports from his immediate staff, his inspectors, and the watch. The chaos of the day before had subsided, and the work of cleaning up the mess he found upon his return to the Exchequery had begun. A news hawker, Ephraim ‘Ink’ Tallow, had been shouting just outside about “The Fall of Ylan Plaza” and government overreach—until a few edgy city watchmen encouraged him to leave.
A blatant assassination attempt on the Captain of the King’s guard had occurred during the riot. And the city was ablaze with the story that the Evil Wizard Sheriff of Rundell had destroyed part of a citizen’s townhome with a fire spell in retaliation for the protest and his smashed window.
Ratcliff let out a groan and laid his head on his desk.
It had taken his staff several hours overnight to clean up all the rotten vegetable matter that had been strewn below the broken window pane. One of his nicer office tables had been right beneath that window, and had caught a sizable quantity of the thrown refuse. The wood had been stained thoroughly, and he’d had his valet send it off to be cleaned and re-varnished.
The documents that had been on the table had been utterly destroyed. Records pertaining to an investigation his inspectors had been pursuing into smuggling rings operating out of the docks and sewer systems. He hoped his inspectors had kept backups of their reports, otherwise many months of work had been lost.
He leaned back and stared at the other oddity on his desk, frowning.
He had smelled it the moment he’d rushed to the desecrated table, shoving the overripe and ruptured vegetables off in a vain attempt to save the paperwork he’d been part way through reading.
The smell of shadows and must.
He picked up the fist sized slightly hardened potato.
A potato that was still giving off a noticeable smell of magic.
A magic potato.
He frowned. Of all the cursed artifacts he’d confiscated in his career, this one offended him the most.
Someone had thrown a magic potato at his window. And it had broken through his rather expensive wards - then broken his equally expensive window. He looked at the involuntarily opened window that looked out over Ylan Plaza. The smoke that had lingered there the day before had cleared away, and it looked like any other day - only more of the noise of the busy plaza came through unabated.
Today it sounded like labourers and soldiers, as they worked to clear away the destroyed wagons, stalls and barricades left over the strange protest and disobedience festival that had been entrenching outside his office for the last week.
It was an improvement over the chanting and the projectile vegetation banging off his windows.
He looked back at the potato. Such a small thing, and yet capable of unleashing a level of chaos and destruction on his life the likes of which he’d never experienced before.
The odor of the magic felt disconcertingly familiar.
There was a knock on his door.
“Come in.” He said, eyes not leaving the potato.
He heard the sound of his office doors opening, and then the clearing of his assistant’s throat. He looked up to see Trevyon.
“Captain Daleannah Hood of the Red Riders is here to see you, my lord,” Trevyon said with a stiffness that was remarkable even for him.
Of course she’s here, Ratcliff thought. Why wouldn’t she be?
“Show her in,” replied Ratcliff, finally putting down the potato.
He looked up to see Trevyon give a bow, and then back away, leaving the door open as he went. A few moments later, he heard the clomp of Daleannah’s boots as she made her way up the hallway and into Ratcliff’s office. He stood up from his desk as she marched in, her right arm in a sling, and carrying a sealed letter in her left hand.
They locked eyes, and he could see a weary tightness in them.
“Captain Hood,” he said, giving her a very slight bow of his head. She gave a tight military bow in return.
“My lord,” she replied, and tossed the letter onto his desk. “This is a letter from Lieutenant-Colonel Maeron Varr of the Royal Aerial Corps—my commanding officer. He has sent me to… assist you… in your enquiry into the magical assault on the Exchequery.”
Ratcliff’s eyebrow raised, “Assist me?”
He picked up the letter, carefully examining the seal before breaking it. He felt the minor enchantment holding the seal in place break apart the moment he touched it. It had been keyed to him, ensuring that Daleannah wouldn’t have been able to read it without performing an obvious counterspell that would have left traces. Maeron was a thorough man, and a stickler for operational security. He wondered what the consequences of breaking the seal improperly would have been.
Ratcliff unfolded the letter, his eyes darting over the single sheet of paper.
Sheriff Ratcliff,
Given the chaos of the previous days events, and the occurrence of not one but two magical attacks during the riot - followed by the appearance of a Cat-Sith in our city - we have determined that Captain Daleannah operated within her rights as a Gale-Knight of the Rundellian Aerial Corps in using combat magics within the city limits. We understand that is a controversial decision in these times, yet the threat of the fey aiding a civilian protest is a possibility we cannot ignore.
As such, the Gale Knights are going to lend their assistance to YOUR investigation, in the form of Captain Daleannah’s service. She will be reporting to you directly, assuming she listens, and you will, of course, assume responsibility for her actions in your city.
There is no need to thank me. I wish you the best of luck.
Regards,
Lieutenant-Colonel Maeron Varr
Royal Aerial Corps — Commander, First Aerial Wing
“Huh,” Ratcliff grunted.
His mind whirled at the strangely worded letter, settling on: this isn’t a gift. He looked up at Captain Daleannah, a woman with whom he’d had few interactions in the past, and largely unpleasant ones. She looked back at him, and he could see lines of anger in her face.
“I’m assuming that Lord Varr is… unhappy with you,” he said, carefully.
She snorted, looking grimly amused. “His letter makes that clear does it? I should have known.”
Shaking her head, he saw her shoulders drop a bit, and she looked frustrated.
“I had gone outside of my operational orders on a hunch, and was attacked by a noble-fey monster that no one even knew was in the city. And to make it worse, I failed to kill it, requiring your help to even stay alive. It’s… not a good look for me,” she said, frustration evident in her voice.
Ratcliff nodded, but didn’t say anything. He was well aware of Daleannah’s reputation as a maverick commander of the Red Riders, a highly decorated and sometimes controversial squad of aerial wizards who had recently been pulled off the frontlines to help with the recent unrest in the city. If it weren’t for his actions, electrocuting a citizen, she likely would still be off on the frontlines. He had a vague memory of there being some ugly rumours surrounding her promotion to the role of captain at her age - but her results in the field had mostly quelled those.
“So…” Ratcliff said, looking back at the letter, “Lord Varr wants this Fey found and killed, but is concerned about blowback on the Gale Knights if another house ends up in pieces, and so is sending you to me as what… a convenient sacrifice?”
Daleannah smirked, “Well… my guess is that the controversy around you might overshadow my controversy, so he wouldn’t be terribly upset if we both went down in flames. That may even be his preference.”
“I’m also assuming, that despite him saying that this is ‘my’ investigation, he’s also going to demand frequent reports from you about what I’m doing,” Ratcliff continued, eyeing her. She looked uncomfortable.
“So you’re an asset, a spy and a potential liability to me,” he finished flatly.
Silence took over the room for a moment as they eyed each other.
He took the moment to re-light his pipe, and took a long pull of tanbâku.
He looked up at her, “Can I decline this offer of assistance?”
She laughed, but it reminded him of the kind of laughter he made when a merchant asked for leniency on their taxes after they’d been caught with fraudelent books.
“You could try, but the “offer of assistance” was sanctioned by Lord Marshal Vygore. Maeron said he was keen to have operational involvement in the investigation into the attack on the Exchequery,” she said, shrugging.
Ratcliff openly groaned. Of course he did, thought Ratcliff.
With the tanners guild directly involved in the protest leadership, the Commander of the Rundellian War Office had a personal stake in understanding just what they were capable of and up to, so he could use it as leverage in his ongoing trade war with the guild. There would be pushback from the army’s high command if he refused this offer of ‘help.’
—Excerpt from the “Report on Ongoing Rundellian Market Investigations, 997 A.O.W.” - Master Auditor Calven Dros - Second Auditor of the Office of Civic Oversight and Historical Expenditure Records—
Lord Vygore’s alleged treatment of the Tanners’ guild is a major contributor to the ongoing unrest in the trade district. While we haven’t yet found any compliant witnesses, there have been reports of intimidation and extortion of importers of domestic and wild hides, while bringing their goods into the city. The merchant houses that are rumoured to be operating on Lord Vygore’s behalf have done a good job covering their tracks, but it is entirely suspicious that these importers are consistently selling select houses their goods at below market rates - particularly when they could make substantially more money selling to the Tanners directly.
The Tanners as a guild have launched many unfair trading practice suits against these houses, but it would appear that the interior trading judges are siding with the merchant houses in case after case, preventing the Tanners from breaking those houses control of leather goods supply. The fact that no one is willing to testify against the house’s manipulations of the market suggests that the threat of violence against whistleblowers isn’t just speculative.
It is likely that if something isn’t done to break this impasse, we’ll be seeing unrest boil over into the streets of Rundell itself in the near future.
Daleannah looked at him with a raised eyebrow, clearly not understanding the implications of what she’d just said.
“Are you… also in trouble with the Lord Marshal?” she asked, cautious but sounding amused.
Ratcliff snorted, “Not yet, but that’s only a matter of time. You and I are going to need to set some ground rules Captain if we’re going to be working together. The first one being that if you’re going to report on me to Varr, tell me that you’ve done it. I’d rather be stabbed in the face than the back.”
“I don’t answer to you,” she said, bristling.
“On the contrary,” he replied, throwing the letter to her, “You do. And I’m going to be held responsible for your conduct on this investigation.”
She caught the letter out of the air, the anger clear on her face. She quickly scanned the text, swore, and threw it back on the table in front of him. She crossed her left arm over her bound right arm and looked at him, displeasure in all her features.
“Assuming I listen?” she said, bitterly.
“I like the part where he assumed I’ll take responsibility for you,” Ratcliff said.
“What, you’ll just throw me under the cart if something bad happens?” she replied.
“Ah, Captain… I imagine that if something terrible does happen, there will be a lineup of people to throw us both under the cart.”
Light from the fire flickered on the sewer walls, casting disproportionately large shadows of otherwise quite tiny people. A small crowd had gathered in the Nook, to hear the latest telling.
“And after the entire crowd of Tanners had been trying all day to smash the evil Sheriff’s window, Klem and I did it one try! Two potatoes later and the window had shattered into a million tiny pieces. The roar of victory swept through the crowd as they cheered our names, calling us the heroes they need in this time of sorrow and unrest,” Iatr exclaimed, his shadow depicting a huge warrior, his fists planted on his hips, and a billowing cloak behind him.
In reality, he was more of a thirteen year old with an untucked shirt and coat, but the fists resting heroically on his hips was accurate enough. The crowd of homeless kids whispered to each other their approval of this gallant visage.
“But with all the protestors chanting our names, it brought our enemies to us, and the vile Bracken family came to stab us to death in front of all our admirers. Too terrified to help, they hung back and watched as we danced with our blades, knowing this could be our end.”
He swiftly drew out his knife, adopted a fighters pose, and faked a series of dodges and cuts—pretending to slash an invisible man in the groin. He then let out a great war cry that had the whole audience cheering.
“Just as I was about to lay the killing blow on Jake, my own vile step-father and murderer of my sister Beatrix - there was a roar and a scream that ripped through the crowd,” Iatr said dramatically, sweeping his hand in an arc across the room to imply how vast the crowd was.
“Huge balls of light and smoke smashed into the ground all around us, scattering the crowd and spreading chaos. The King’s Guard had come to SAVE JAKE from my blade of justice, and they had to beat their way through the crowd to get to him,” Iatr pantomimed exploding balls of light, and accidentally dropped his knife in the process of communicating his enthusiasm.
Not letting this fumble stop him, he immediately adopted a posture of cocky confidence, crossing his arms and said, “Naturally, we would have finished the job and run, like the proper professionals we are. But one of the King’s Guard’s spells landed right in the middle of our duel, blasting all of us in separate directions and filling the whole area with thick choking smoke.” He held up his fist and shook it. Then bent forward and hung his head as if in shame.
Looking up after a moment, his eyes watering with insincere sorrow, “And that’s how Jake got away.”
Boos erupted from the crowd. One of the kids in the back yelled something about getting him next time.
Snapping back to attention, Iatr continued his tallish tale, “But now we had to escape! For the King’s Guard were coming for us! And as we ran through the plaza and into the streets and eventually the sewers of the city, we were pursued!” The crowd gasped, but kind of insincerely since they expected this.
“One of the GALE KNIGHTS THEMSELVES chased us through a house, through the streets, and into the sewers. She flung fireballs and lightning at us!” Iatr exclaimed, to gasps of actually genuine astonishment. And one scoff of disbelief. “But her aim was TERRIBLE! Because we. ARE. PROFESSIONALS!” With each punctuated word, he stuck his hand up in triumph, and to the cheers of his audience. Iatr ignored Klem shaking his head in the back.
“But never forget how dangerous the Gale Knights are, because she pursued us with a speed most uncanny. Because she’s a witch!” There were boos. Klem’s face hardened, his stillness colder than the firelight. Iatr continued to ignore Klem, going on with the story. “And to our shock and surprise, she ambushed us most foul as we turned a corner, and threw a glowing net on us that began to choke the air and life out of us!” More gasps.
These gasps were particularly noticeable because something had happened that had never happened before. Iatr had admitted he’d been overcome by an opponent. This was -most- unusual, and now everyone was paying a lot more attention.
“I screamed Klem’s name, but all that came out was a gargle and a gasp, as the net was crushing my body, and I was barely able to speak. She was going to murder us, without a trial or a judge, right there in the sewers. I know my rights! And I know how these Gale Knights would viciously ignore the rule of law in this city and murder a child most foul in the sewers if it served their interests,” Iatr folded himself into a ball on top of his soap box, pretending to be squished into a lump.
He stayed that way for a time, quiet, and small. Playing on the moment to amplify its drama.
After a time, when he could hear the group listening beginning to get a bit restless, he looked up.
“We were dying. Blackness was closing in. She was laughing. And that’s when I heard it,” he said.
“A voice crept into my mind and said, ‘it’s time for you to run, little one,” Iatr said with a dreamlike quality. The audience looked rapt at this turn of events, with at least one of them wondering if Iatr had gone mad.
“It sounded… like a cat. Whispering in my mind,” he continued. And then he leapt to his feet, pointing one finger up at the sky. “Which is why I was completely UNSURPRISED when a huge Black Cat, the size of a horse, leapt on the Gale Knight from behind!”
The children began to look at each other in disbelief, and one of them out loud said, “What the fuck? A cat?”
“YES. A GIANT CAT attacked the Gale Knight. Black as night, with a white flame crest on its chest. It battered the witch around like she was a toy. Her cruel spell vanished, and we were freed,” Iatr said, triumphantly.
The crowd immediately turned on him. They had been so invested in his story and then he messed it up by including a giant cat. Small lumps of random things began hitting Iatr and he curled into a ball trying to protect himself.
“No! Really! OW!” he said in panic. He had never been pelted for telling the truth before and it hurt on a level he struggled to comprehend.
“It’s a potato,” Daleannah said flatly. She held the root vegetable like it offended her.
“Yes,” Ratcliff said.
“And it’s magic,” Daleannah said, in the same tone.
“Yes.”
“Potatoes are not good vessels for magic,” she continued.
“So I’ve been told.”
“And this enchantment was… clumsy,” she added, peering at it as though it were about to grow roots in her hands and try to self-propagate like that potato left too long in back of the pantry.
Ratcliff didn’t say anything, because this was new information to him. He just waited.
“I think… whoever did this didn’t have training. They weren’t Fey, of that I’m sure. Most likely human. But not a trained wizard. The potato doesn’t have the right kind of structure to be able to hold a trained wizard’s enchantments with any reliability. It would likely just fizzle out,” she went on, peering into the potato with that glassy look that Ratcliff had learned to associate with a wizard using their second sight to examine the auras of things. Her dark green eyes had an luminescence to them that hinted at light emanating outward from inside.
She frowned and her eyes darkened as she looked back up at Ratcliff, “I would wager this is wild magic. Maybe from one of the Pagan traditions.” She gingerly returned the potato to Ratcliff as though she were afraid of getting contaminated with something.
“The magic should have worn off by now,” she said. “But it seems a lot of prāṇa was infused into it, and…” she trailed off, a frown crossing her face.
“Should I be concerned?” Ratcliff asked into the silence. “Will it sprout legs, arms, and start wearing a top hat?”
Daleannah shook her head, “Nothing so performative. But I would definitely recommend against planting it and trying to grow more, making it into soup, or—Gods forbid—feeding it to anyone. The downstream effects of that magic would be hard to predict, and the risk of some kind of magical contagion spawning from it is high enough that you should probably send it to the College to be disposed of.”
“Unfortunately it’s evidence, and one of the three magical incidents that occurred yesterday. And if my hunch is correct, this potato came from Klem himself, one of the boys you chased in the sewers last night,” Ratcliff said, taking out a small purple velvet bag with a golden drawstring, dark golden runes stitched into the fabric all around the bag. He dropped the potato into it, and then put the bag into a drawer on his desk.
Daleannah looked momentarily surprised — then nodded her approval. “Wise, best to contain that thing if you won’t destroy it. Why do you think Klem was responsible?”
Ratcliff leaned back in his chair and picked up his pipe again, drawing a deep lungful of tanbâku smoke into his lungs before letting it out slowly, the plume drifting towards the ceiling. Daleannah’s nose wrinkled with mostly concealed disapproval.
“Klem has some talent. I smelled it on him when we had the two boys locked up in the watch’s jailhouse. The smell of the… wild-magic potato…” Ratcliff snorted “Is similar enough to what I sensed from him that I suspect he is the culprit. But I didn’t spend enough time with him to be certain. It was just a moment and he hadn’t worked any magic in front of me.”
Daleannah’s eyebrows rose. “An untrained pagan mage… likely from one of the old coven lines. That would certainly explain why these two have been so much trouble…”
She smiled - the kind of smile that you’d expect from a hunter who just found a deer trail.
“If that’s so,” Daleannah said slowly, “we can use the potato to track him.” Ratcliff paused, tapping the end of his pipe against his chin.
“Can we now?” Ratcliff responded.
“The enchantment is still going, which suggests to me that he, with his lack of training, probably isn’t aware that he cast the spell in the first place. If he’s working magic unconsciously, that’s… dangerous. Untaught magecraft tends to explode before it matures…”
“But he fed enough power into it for the enchantment to last multiple days and never thought to end the spell. So… as long as the enchantment still has power in it…” Daleannah said.
Ratcliff nodded, this much of arcane thaumaturgy he had some grasp of. His sister had made it very clear he had to protect the Māyāpātra she had gifted him. As long as it still had power in it, it could be used as a ritual link to direct magic towards her. Her gift was a rare endorsement of trust — one most wizards would never risk.
“So we could use some ritual magic to find them?” Ratcliff asked. Daleannah shrugged.
“A scrying spell, a location spell. Something like that. Limitations to either choice. It’s likely either path would consume the magic of the potato in the process, so we’d only get one shot at it. Alternatively, we could use a Sandhānadīpa that would warn us if Klem comes into proximity of us. That wouldn’t use any of the potato’s magic so we’d get more functioning days out of it,” she replied.
— Excerpt from Collegiate Devices for Field Thaumaturgy, Vol. II —
मन्त्रसन्धानदीप (Mantra-Sandhāna-Dīpa)
or the “Spell-Seeking Lamp.”
This diagnostic lantern detects the presence of the originating spell-caster when an active enchantment linked to them is placed within its copper core. Commonly called a Sandhānadīpa or seeker lamp, its flare range depends on the quality of the lamp, the strength of the residual enchantment, and the spell-caster’s prāṇic signature.
“Interesting. Why not just locate them if that’s an option?” Ratcliff asked, curious.
“Because we’d locate them at a specific moment in time. What if they’re walking the streets? We’d have an incredibly short window to get to them, and they may be too far away for us to get to them in time before they’ve moved on. Finding rituals are tricky inside large cities,” she answered.
“So we do it while they’re sleeping?” he asked.
She nodded approvingly, “But we’d be making an assumption about what hours of the day they sleep. If we’re wrong, we could blow our chance.”
Ratcliff tapped his pipe against his chin, thoughtful. “You think it would be more reliable for us to set a trap, and wait for them to come to us,” he said.
“Assuming we can predict where they’ll be going, yes,” she replied.
“We can manage that,” he said, a smile growing across his face.
The four denizens of the Nook sat around the tiny fire, the tumult of the tale-tellings having died down, and the audience members dispersed to their various tiny holds through the city and sewers. A bead of water dripped somewhere deeper in the tunnel, echoing like a coin falling down a distant well. The Nook always breathed like this—dark, damp, and listening.
Many had been shocked when Klem had confirmed his friend’s story about the Giant Cat, but not nearly as shocked when Lucy said they knew about it as well.
“I don’t understand. What is it?” Iatr asked. Lucy shrugged.
“It’s something. It’s smart. It hunts things in the sewer. It was small when I saw it, but it was exactly as you described, and it spoke into my mind telling me to run along, and mind my own business. I thought it would kill me, but it said I wasn’t worthy of being hunted by it. It did say that I should steer clear of the puppy, because it was a lot less picky,” Lucy said, arms wrapped around their knees shivering, even though the fire was plenty warm.
Lucy stared into the fire. “It doesn’t hunt like an animal,” she added quietly. “It chooses.”
“And it knows the Mauthe Doog,” Klem said grimly. Iatr shuddered.
“Well, whatever. It helped us, and we’re free. That makes it more of a friend than anyone else in this city,” Iatr said firmly.
“But the Mauthe Doog tried to kill us…” Klem said, frowning.
“We don’t know that they’re friends. Just the cat knows the dog. The dog tried to kill us. The cat saved us. That’s all I know,” Iatr said firmly.
Klem shrugged, and sighed. Iatr’s way of looking at the world may often seem too simplistic to him, but he had to admit his friend wasn’t wrong.
A faint scuttling echoed along the far wall—rats, or something worse. Nobody bothered to check.
“So… did you figure out if the Sheriff kidnapped your mom?” Teek asked, chewing on some leftover day-old baking they’d managed to pilfer earlier. “Y’know, between starting a riot and escaping and everything?”
Lucy snorted.
“Yeah. I mean… I don’t know… but I think so,” Iatr said, his expression going sad and dark. “Jake was there, and people in the crowd were talking about his wife being taken by the Sheriff. Who apparently is an evil wizard. So my bet is that he sent her to the Kenton Quarries to pay off some debt he thinks I owe.”
“Shit… that sucks, Iatr,” Teek said, around mouthfuls. “I hear people get sent there and get worked to death.”
Iatr swallowed hard, the firelight catching the sudden sheen in his eyes.
“Except that one guy… what was his name…” Teek trailed off. Iatr, Klem and Lucy all looked at him.
“Timon Guttersnake!” Teek snapped his fingers. “I heard Shamshir owed him a favour and smuggled him out of the quarries.”
Iatr and Klem exchanged looks. Iatr grinned. Klem grimaced and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, the way he did whenever trouble was gathering. He did not understand why Iatr loved Shamshir so much, but he knew what was coming next—and that it would end with them owing favours they couldn’t afford.
“Is that so,” Iatr said, his eyes twinkling.
fin