Clocksong Ch. 04

NOTICE

I apologize for the incoming info dump. Its a bit of a story rather than a hard info dump, but I do understand that stories in stories are tough to read and I'm working on trimming it and giving it more flaire. Cheers!

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Tito looked the woman with the grapefruit red hair over, as recognition settled in. The panic, confusion and anxiety that had coursed into him through the last half hour boiled into anger as he gritted his teeth and took a step forward. "You- you killed Huli," he said hoarsely.

She tilted her head for a moment until a glint of recognition flitted through her eyes as well. "Burris, you idiot. This is the clockmaker's apprentice. He's probably in on it as well."

"In on what??" Tito demanded, though his voice was not as strong as he'd wished.

"Doubtful," the man, presumably Burris, muttered, lowering himself into a chair with a grunt. "He seemed completely frazzled when I found him. Confused and scared."

"So?? Could be a ruse to find our place of operations. I don't--"

"Hey!!" Tito shouted, pulling his pistol from his hand to aim at the woman. "Why did you kill my friend?!" He felt his brow furrowed and his voice was raspy but he didn't care.

The woman backed away, a brooding but wary look in her eyes, but the man just sighed. "Put the gun down, lad. I don't think this Huli is who you thought she was." Tito still kept his wavering arm pointed at the woman though. Burris sighed, and pointed a finger at Tito. A wispy white glow emanated from his finger, quickly spreading until it touched Tito's chest.

Tito crumpled to his knees, a sharp pain in his right hand, accompanied by an involuntary clenching of his arm, causing his aim to move away from the woman. Tito gasped and dropped the pistol, bracing his fall with his left arm, which remained unhindered.

The feeling that crept though his spine and limbs was unlike anything he'd felt before; the sensation of spiders crawling through his skin, accompanied by the loss of control of his right arm, was violently discomforting. Grimacing at the feeling, he whipped his head up to snarl at the gentleman, but Burris was leaning back in the chair, his skin paler than before, and his eyes glazed over. "What..." Tito managed to croak out.

Just as suddenly as it had struck him, the sensation was gone from Tito. He gasped in relief as his body returned to normal. His right arm was no longer clenched, and the tickling in his bones had subsided. He scrambled to his feet. My gun, he noticed in despair. The girl had picked it up in his wrecked state.

Before he could say a word, Burris spoke again, looking at the lady with exhaustion in his expression as he sagged against one arm. "He's not one of the cult's agents, Aris."

"You sure?"

Burris nodded, brushing a tuft of greying brown hair from his weary face. "The clockmaker never brought him in. Might have cared too much about him to induct him into their ranks."

The girl Aris rolled her eyes, opening her mouth to retort, but Tito cut her off with a snarl. "What the hell is going on?! Why did you kill Huli?! Tell me what I'm doing here, why the city is burning, tell me-" his voice gave out in another croak.

The gentleman looked at Tito in surprise. After a moment, he sighed and patted a chair across from him at the table. "Take a seat. Both of you."

Tito didn't move, but he suddenly realized how exhausted he was. His limbs were heavy, and he felt his eyelids droop. He licked his lips and watched as Aris sat down, keeping a watching eye on him.

With great hesitance, he sat down opposite the older man, ready to jump at a moments notice. But Burris just pulled out a pipe, tucking some tobacco in and lighting it with a small contraption Tito had never seen. It appeared to be a handheld oil lamp of sorts that lit itself, though Tito had no idea how it worked. Probably some of his magic, he thought bitterly.

"What do you think of the city?" the gentleman said as he took a puff from his pipe.

Tito blinked. What do I think of the city? Such a bizarre and irrelevant question. "Why?"

Burris ignored the bitterness in his tone and took another puff. "When I was about your age, probably twenty something, I was the humble owner of a diner. It has since been closed down, but my skills in the kitchen were renowned. We -- my sou chefs and I -- made the best soups in the city. Most famous was my lobster and rosemary bisque. The recipe was passed down to me from my mother, who was an excellent chef in her own right. But when I started making money off my food, I perfected it.

"One day, the Lord Elgeath of the time -- long since passed away, but still fresh in my memory -- came in to my establishment. He ordered the famous bisque. I had never fed such a guest, so I poured my soul into the soup. To this day, I have never crafted again such a perfect dish. And Lord Elgeath saw the effort. So impressed was he, that he hired me as his personal chef. Not only could I not refuse, but I did not want to. The chef of a court nobleman! The highest dream of any cook in the city."

Tito bit his lip. "What does this have to do with Huli??"

Burris ignored him, to his chagrin. "So, I begun my work with the Elgeaths. I did not grow up in wealth, so I treated the opportunity with the most gratitude. I had the chance to see the workings of the noble court, and see how people in high society behave, what they expect, and most importantly, how they think," he emphasized with a tap to his forehead.

"One day in particular, probably a decade and a half into my tenure, I was intrigued by a particular interaction. Lady Elrond, responsible for the mining industry around Toredil, approached Lord Elgeath, likely with some business opportunity. I do not know what the discussion was about or what the results were, but I did see Lady Elrond leave the palace with a look of disgust and irritation on her face -- not a common sight, among the nobles. Lord Elgeath, whom I saw later that day, did not look pleased either, though his expression was one of concern rather than derision.

"I thought nothing of it until a week later, when the lady returned. This time, she looked smug. Lady Elrond and Lord Elgeath were together in his business room for quite some time; so long, in fact, that most of the servants of the palace thought they were having an affair. I thought so too -- the Lord was a bachelor at that point -- until I saw him later that evening, serving his evening meal to him. He looked incredibly tired, but also vacant. His eyes stared blankly ahead, as if his soul had been sucked from his very body."

Despite his earlier irritation and impatience, Tito found himself listening intently, though he tried not to show it in his face. Burris went on. "The very next day, he made an announcement. A trade deal was made between the two Houses, one wherein the House Elgeath offered a large swath of populated land they held in exchange for discounted metal costs. The offer was bizarre, and very much favored the Elrond family."

"So... what, you're saying she mind controlled Lord Elgeath? With sex?" Tito filled his voice with as much disdain as he could, though he was not very practiced in the act. "A little bit of a stretch." And what does that have to do with Huli??

Burris looked Tito dead in the eye. "That's what I thought. Until I saw it happen between two others, just a month later. Lord Elton gave up his stewardship of the new mercantile district of the city to Lord Eldithe in exchange for just a few dozen thousand tokens. And that wasn't the only occurrence. As I found more of these exchanges, I looked deeper, and found nearly a dozen trade deals between nobles, where a ludicrous trade offer for a large piece of land in the city was traded for something of much lesser value. Every single time, the trade was rejected once, before being agreed upon at a later date."

Tito didn't know much about politics in the city, but the thought did make him uncomfortable. Trade deals were not common in the city's elite, and he had never heard of Lucienne revisiting a trade offer after denying it. The elite did not like to appear needy. "What are you suggesting? And what about Huli?"

"Every single trade offer gifted land to one of four houses; House Elrond, House Eldithe, House Elunne, and House Elgrav. Four houses known to have tight relationships, all intermarried." Burris paused, letting the motion sink in.

"One more interesting character comes in to play. Pierra Elunne was the third daughter of the House Elunne some years ago -- an important figure, but not one that would ever receive much inheritance, including the house name. It was widely rumored that Pierra Elunne was a flirtatious lady; I once heard she had slept with a hundred men by the age of thirty, all within the nobility of the city. It wasn't too surprising to anyone; she was a gorgeous thing in her heyday, and loved playing with people's hearts.

"About a year ago, I was running dry on some leads, so I decided to look into Pierra's history. Despite the rumors of her promiscuity, I could not find very many names of people she had slept with. Only nine names. But the nine names were damning, as they were all names of people scammed out of land. Every single Lord, and several Ladies, that denied a trade offer, only to accept it a week later, had supposedly slept with Pierra."

Tito felt discomfort rising in his spine. "Ok. What's -"

Burris cut him off, and leaned forward, his tired eyes growing serious. "Lad. Pierra disappeared from the circles of nobility, ten years ago. It was rumored she ran off with some House's fourth son, that she was killed by a lover's jealous partner, and many other credulous theories. However, there was one I found interesting, and I think you will agree," he said softly, his eyes growing dark. "That she left her life of wealth to pursue a spontaneous passion in clockmaking."

Tito paled, the dread that had been rising for the past few moments slamming into him. That couldn't be Huli. She didn't grow up in nobility. She'd always been a craftswoman. And she would never show interest in a man.

The events did line up, however. Huli had shown up at the House Elriss ten years ago, months after Tito had been brought into the House. And he had heard rumors that she was once a noblewoman, though Huli had dismissed them as nonsense.

Tito gritted his teeth. "I don't believe it. You easily could have found out she apprenticed me when you did your magic thing in my mind." But it was a shallow excuse.

And Burris knew it was too, by the look of stern concern in his brow. He didn't say anything more. Aris, who had been silent, shifted in her seat. She looked coldly at Tito, though he had seen a flicker of surprise at his proclamation. She probably didn't know he had been apprenticed so early.

"No." Tito stood up, brushing his doubts aside. "I know Huli. She is a good woman, and has always been a clockmaker. I won't believe this."

"Stop whining," the redheaded girl said, though her voice was more tired than cold. "The truth won't change no matter whether you accept it or not." Tito could hear a bit of spite in her voice, but he sensed it was directed at someone other than him.

"You don't know her. You haven't known her like I have the last decade." Tito snatched his gun from Aris, who didn't stop him. He stormed down the murky stairway he had come from. "I don't know what you're trying to achieve here, but leave me alone. And don't spit on the memory of the soul of such a wonderful person, moments after you kill them." A thought tugged at his mind, to exact justice for Huli's death, but he ignored it. He wasn't even vindictive anymore. Just tired.

The pair didn't stop Tito as he ran down the dank tunnel, wiping tears from his swollen eyes. They didn't even say a word. He wished they would, instead of leaving his chaotic mind scream. It's not true. That's not the Huli I know.

Minutes later, he found himself at the entrance to the slums again. By some miracle, the massacres of the streets were no longer in this part of the city. Tito swallowed bile that rose in his throat as he passed dozens of corpses of brutalized, innocent civilians, most of them too poor to even afford a piece of armor.

What seemed like an eternity later, yet also less than a second, he found himself stumbling through the back of the workshop again, in front of the dead body of Huli. She still lay there, pale and cold, the blood in her shirt hardened. In that moment, Huli seemed less like the craftswoman he had known, and more like some high lady, one who, decades upon decades ago, would have made many swoon. Her face was a peaceful alabaster white, her hair a pool of silvery silk. The wrinkles seemed somehow majestic on her face, less a sign of maturity and more a sign of intelligence and strength.

Tito fell down and wept. He wept over the body of his closest friend, his mentor, and his savior from the despair of ten years ago. He cried until there was no more tears to cry, and then he kept crying.

He wept as shouts were cast outside the workshop. He wept as commands were thrown at him from somewhere behind. He wept as he was dragged away, hands tied in l

a knot as a Knight took him to some unknown location. He didn't care what was happening.

The person who had showed him that life was his to live, lived no more.