01.03: The Blue Sails Warehouse (Arui, Nathan)
@Nathan
The raid on the open-air market the mage specialist had directed them to had been a wash. If the little princes had been there, they weren't there now.
They'd taken a questionable approach--a show of force where perhaps some dicrestion would have been better. Fifty blue-coats swarmed through the market, questioning merchants and selelrs, buyers and casual browsers, alike.
The Sigiled Fist had a couple of members among the group, but it was mostly rank-and-file who were interrogating the public.
Nathan knew that most of the public displays were a sideshow, a distraction for one or two specific Fists to get inside the new Mage's research campus. It was rumored that this was the most likely place for the ley-lines to shift to in the very near future. ANd, therefore, this was likely where the ritual was done to sever the prince's fate-lines or hide it from discovery.
That, in itself was likely to be a strange advent, should it prove to be permanent. If others could not read your fate, even in the most general of terms, what did it mean? Was the threads of the the tapestry of fate still woven or had they become unbound? Considerations for more scholastic mages than he, but still, one had to wonder what--if any--lasting repercussion this might have.
By the time it was done--not even a whole hour, word had come to Nathan that a situation had been arranged for him to bring in a Tarenti Guardian. Menkliia was the Queen's man, but he was a brutish lout with tiny piggy eyes. and a crass, heavy-handed manner. But he spoke with the queen's authority, so Nathan was bound.
He was to get to the Blue Sails Warehouse in the South district, the Dockwards area, and find a way to win her trust. Her thread, it seemed, had been traced in the tapestry...