Sarya has a chat with Tom.
Chapter 53.
The Hidden City.
Sarya walked into where Tom was going over the ongoing operations and said, “You are up to something with your brother.”
Tom grinned and replied, “What gives you the impression that we are up to something?”
“I know you both and I notice that your ships are chasing the old ships around, but not catching them and you haven’t given me my cameras back. A little birdy says that Albatross is at sea. Then Richard suddenly goes ballistic at the emperor in public, issues a Letter of Intent and starts moving his army around during seeding.”
“Sarya, the one thing we have never had is the ability to have unrestricted access to the Empty Lands so that we can clear them out. There have been a lot of nasty surprises coming out of there and the Darkmage hides there. So does Paeris, but other than playing fun and games, he isn’t that big a threat. Some surprise Scourge devises are. Richard and I are using this Hunter character to draw out the other side and expose the remaining devises they have.So far it’s working.”
“I know that Paeris isn’t working for me. Perhaps the question is if he is your deep mole.”
“Sarya, that would be rather unbelievable.”
“I wouldn’t know. He and Captain Pinch seem to be pretty buddy buddy and Jorge worked for him. He’s also still afloat and you all seemed to be awful friendly during that thing at Flinder’s Island.”
“That was coincidence.”
“A bit too much coincidence. After all, you let Paeris get away.”
Tom started to shake a bit. “Ok, what do you want?”
“What Richard is doing? As I said, you and he are up to something.”
“What Richard is doing is using the Letter of Intent to make noise and attract attention so that Jorge can go in back doors and remove Primaries from devises that the owners may not want to give up and we suspect are working for the other side. At the bare minimum we are setting certain portals so that any ports put you in the Deadlands. If the portals are illegal, we have the portals pulled by the Portal Service with not so subtle hints that if the parties with illegal portals also have Scourge devises, they should arrange for the devises to disappear and be logged as dismantled. The biggest sticky was House Keanorin. They are having their portal dealt with this morning. We are taking advantage of a certain crazy idiot to perhaps get House Keanorin to send a dummy Scourge devise at Richard. That activates the Letter of Intent and Dumag can go in and clean out the Empty Lands at last.”
“What about the Darkmage and his kids.”
“We’re hoping that they are not paying attention and skedaddling before things light off. Dumag has a suppressor and has troops sitting in his Ravathrya raiders right now, waiting for a go.”
“Rather slick, I like it. My sources tell me that Tanyl came out of hiding and is shaking the Ravathrya more than a bit. The House may give you what you want before things kick off.”
“Either way works for us. The other way and the Project leaders being at swords point with each other probably works better for you.”
“Yes, and if you would contact Jorge, I would appreciate if he puts some people onTanyl. He is a landdragon but a lady is almost certainly going after him.”
‘Most of her tools have been subverted. I understand that a faery kingdom is having its aversion revoked and is planning a lot of weddings later in the year.”
“I have heard the same sorts of things. Ok, I will leave you and your minions to your plotting. I was just curious why Richard would just fly off the handle like that.”
“Richard does that from time to time and he’s been under a lot of stress. We are suddenly back in his life and that’s complicating things. Those idiots in House Keanorin made it easy and we needed a patsy. The fact that that Hunter character killed Rosa’s parents is icing on the cake.”
“I hadn’t heard that. How was that discovered?”
“Taeran saw what happened and had files on the character. I’m surprised that you didn’t know. This character had been a little project for him for a very long time. In any case this idiot traveled to the capital, killing one of Richard’s guard and a Post rider along the way and walked right past House Glynynore’s investigator, Lester Silver and then past all sorts of people in the Lower City, you can figure out who, wearing a sign, “Very Dangerous Guy” and right past Taeran, who ran right down to a bank, over to Carl’s and the Guild, to set the character up for what Richard and his family and friends are probably doing to him right now. If we played our cards right, the Hunter is going to pull a Scourge devise out of a vault on House Keanorin’s, push it through a portal to Richard’s estate and be rather shocked when there is no boom.”
“Jorge pulled the Primaries.”
“He didn’t have to. Somebody stored them neatly in boxes so that they would be preserved better. Jorge just put his blank plates over the holes. The blank plates are some Primary covers he found in storage, so the plates are the real thing.”
The Arts Mechanical 