Fourth Interlude - Red Eyes

Chris was transferring the memo to official stationery when a very unusual looking man entered the outer office. He was about five feet, ten inches tall and was very muscular. The coat he wore looked expensive and was a vibrant crimson, with black leather boots coming out from beneath it. His face was most peculiar; his skin was pale enough to make Chris wonder if he was another Revenant. His hair was in a style popular in the Taurenmire swamplands--long dreadlocks that hung down to his waste, partially restrained by a metal clip behind his head. Most unsettling of all were his eyes--they appeared to be red. Worst of all was an intangible sense of...something about the man. It was as if a barely noticeable aura of dread hung about him.

"Can I help you?" asked Chris. Part of the job description to be the Chief Consul's secretary was the ability to maintain apathy to any visitor, regardless of how threatening.

"I'm here to see the Chief Consul. I have an appointment." The man's voice was the auditory equivalent of black velvet--soft, expensive, mysterious, but the slightest bit strained.

"Name, please?"

"Shinnik. Ishmael Shinnik."

Chris consulted the Chief Consul's schedule and found the name "Shinnik" in the appropriate space. Chris let the man into the Chief Consul's office.

"Chris." said Cross. "Shut the door behind you. This meeting is private."

Once the two men were alone, Cross focused on the paperwork on his desk, not making eye contact with Shinnik. "So, we're meeting openly now, are we?"

"I apologize, but I had no other way to reach you." said Shinnik, pacing back and forth, his hands crossed behind him. "There have been some complications."

"How so?"

"It seems that the Grand Marshall may have plans of his own."

"Hardly surprising. What do you mean, specifically."

Cross heard the sound of a glass jar being placed on his desk. He looked up to see Shinnik's hand, a pentagram tattooed on its back, holding a jar that contained a pair of human eyes floating in a clear liquid tinted slightly red.

"I took these," said Shinnik, "from a man who was observing your office through a telescope from the other side of Imperium Square. Under duress, he admitted he'd been working for Holland."

"What did you do with the rest of him?" Cross' voice was flat, devoid of any emotion.

"Suffice it to say that blindness won't be the only thing that keeps him from spying on you." said Shinnik, tucking the jar back into the folds of his coat.

Cross sat back from a moment. "Be that as it may, assassination is a very clumsy way to handle things. If I take power through blood, that is inevitably how I will lose it. For now, keep your distance from Holland. I'll give you further orders if I think the situation warrants it. In the meantime, keep me informed of any other...developments."

"Of course." said Shinnik. "Will that be all."

Cross waved the other man out. Shinnik left the office; Chris was glad to see him go.

Chapter Four - A Corpse and a Cross

Ulgotha was a city of nearly two million. Each night, dozens of people died and dozens more were born. The metropolis' ebb and flow never ceased as dreams were born, lost, made real, and forgotten every minute of every day.

Despite all of this, the sun managed to rise each morning. On this particular day, Nathan Cross was in his office before it had done so.

Cross heard his secretary enter the room and looked up. "Yes, Chris?"

"Savant Helmsman and his Administrative Director to see you, sir." said the secretary.

"Send him in." said Cross' mouth. His mind asked Chris if the Savant was here to make another blusterous demand for an increase in his Imperial grant, or if he wanted to persecute the Sons of Thunder again, or if the Luddites had been bothering his laboratory again, or if his grievance this time was something new.

Helmsman shuffled in behind a fiftyish man in full formal attire, uncharacteristically quiet and, Cross admitted silently, looking like he might keep his voice down this time. Cross had been Chief Consul for the past three years and had seen enough of the Savant for the two to have been on a first-name basis if Cross hadn't found Helmsman so irritating.

The other man extended his hand to Cross. "William Rainsford, Administrative Director of Chimaera Laboratory. No disrespect meant, sir, but I was told we would be meeting with the Imperator."

Cross shook the outstretched hand without getting up. "The Imperator's health is declinining, and so he is rarely ready for his duties before noon. As such, his meeting schedule is somewhat backed up, and the runner who set up this meeting insisted that it was quite urgent. Unless you would like to wait until--Chris!"

"--The twenty-fourth of November--" called the secretary.

"The twenty-fourth of November, I would advise you to sit down." finished Cross.

Rainsford glanced at Helmsman, who nodded. The pair sat.

From his seat, Rainsford realized that the Chief Consul's office had been constructed with the deliberate intention of being intimidating. When the sun set, the large window behind Cross would frame him with light, surely an impressive effect. The architect had clearly had late-running meetings in mind over morning meetings like this one; the morning sun was so poorly positioned that gloom hung around the half of the room beyond the Chief Consul's desk on overcast days like this one.

"What," asked Cross, straightening the paper's on his desk, "brings you gentlemen to my office this morning?"

"The Savant was doing some contract work in Bellaraphon," said Rainsford. This was the tricky part. The code of Sardipan law was murky, but there was a chance the defense work Chimaera had been doing in Bellaraphon could be considered treason. Cross didn't bat an eye. "We met with some...difficulties upon the completion of our project."

"They failed to pay, am I correct?" asked Cross, crossing his arms. "And now you want us to put the Bellaraphonian's under duress, I suppose."

That was when the implications of the architecture struck Rainsford. Cross' view of Helmsman was obscured by the lingering darkness of the overcast dawn. Considering that the color of his skin was the only indication of his status as legally dead and that Helmsman was wearing a scarf over his face, the darkness made all the difference.

"Cross, you've always been one to jump to conclusions." growled Helmsman. "And don't worry, I'm sure one day you'll reach the right one."

Rainsford glared at Helmsman, then looked nervously at Cross. "I apologize, sir, but the Savant has had a very trying week."

"Just spit it out, William." said Helmsman. "It's obvious our Chief Consul hasn't figured it out."

"You see, sir, Savant Helmsman was shot through the heart by a Bellaraphonian sniper on his way out of the city."

Cross' mind began to move in several directions at once. The first was puzzlement that Helmsman had survived the shot. The second was the idea that he might have the justification for military action he'd been looking for. The third was that he hadn't examined Helmsman since he had entered the office. The fourth was him doing so, searching for some trace of his injury. The fifth train of thought left the station a few moments after the others, and it was an answer to the first.

"So...you're telling me that the Savant has become a rotwalker?" asked Cross.

"I believe the term they prefer is 'Revenant.'" said Rainsford.

"Regardless, I am to believe that Viggo Helmsman, after his death, returned to Chona as a corporeal undead being?"

"Just look for yourself." said Helmsman, pulling the scarf from his face and showing Cross the dead flesh beneath. "See? I'm not breathing. The only reason it doesn't smell like rot is because Rainsford here had the foresight to have me mummified before we left Geon."

Cross leaned back in his chair, pushing away from the vision of death looming out of the darkness before him. "I can see that. Now please sit back, Savant."

Helmsman sat back down and replaced the scarf.

"I can see that the Savant's...condition...is verifiable. Now, what do you expect me to do about it?" asked Cross, regaining his composure.

"Revenge." said Helmsman, clenching his fists. "I did everything that spoiled brat of a usurper told me to, and he rewarded me with betrayal. I want to watch that bastard die while his palace burns."

"Savant, I will promise you nothing." said Cross. "But I'll bring your demands to the Imperator, and you will be the first civilian to know if and when we go to war with Bellaraphon."

Helmsman extended a hand across the table. "Then you have my thanks, Chief Consul Cross."

Cross shook the room temperature hand offered him, and breathed a sigh of relief as the two men left his office. Once the door to the waiting room had closed, he called for his secretary.

"Chris, I need you to take down a memo."

"Addressed to who, sir?"

"Imperator Meadows and Grand Marshall Holland." said Cross. "Title it, 'In Regards to the Continuing Economic Downturn.'"

"Yes, sir." said the secretary.