Maeren Toll unfolded the cord around the scrolls and handed them towards Celia.
"Your morning reports, my lady. Updates from Blackmouth port, the Tine docks, and two from ours in the Seat." Maeren Toll continued as he handed Celia the scrolls.
Celia accepted the bundle without breaking stride, her eyes already scanning the seals.
"Any response from Commander Brael?"
"None yet," Maeren said. "Though we did confirm he met with a Silk Veil intermediary last night. The one who owns the old songhouse near Flint Circle."
Celia paused with her hand on the carriage door, breaking one of the seals with a practiced twist.
"If he's hedging his loyalty, we'll find his price. If he's planning something else…" she gave him a thin smile, "…we'll find his replacement."
"Of course, my lady. I'm sure Captain Holven is always up for a promotion..."
The interior smelled of sandalwood and lavender. Sunlight filtered through the slit windows in narrow, golden beams as the carriage began to roll forward through the outer lane of the Noble Quarter.
Celia untied the ribbon and lifted the top parchment, skimming its contents.
"Three garrison captains have changed their patrol routes without clearance," she murmured. "The new paths cluster too close to the Narrows and the Tine Bridge."
She frowned, unfolding the next report.
"Six crates of glacium missing from the Blackmouth inventory, was bound for Strandcliffe," she read aloud, brow tightening. "No sign of forced entry. No record of transfer."
She pulled out another scroll with a black wax seal with a red sword stamped into it. "A scroll from the Order of Imperial Stability and Security (OISS)," She looked up at Maeren with a confused look.
Maeren gestured for her to open it and said. "One of ours picked it up, was meant for your father, my Lady. We'll put it back once you've read it." Celia had a frown of annoyance on her face, messing with the OISS was playing with fire, and they did not... like their communication intercepted.
It read;
"To the Lord Palatine of Varentis. From Director Viesthal Reyn, by the powers vested in me by Her Royal Highness, OISS Eastern Cell. Operation at Dock Nine; classified entrapment maneuver. Class-Alpha object, codename 'The Artifact,' used as lure. Intended to bait low-tier cult operatives. Target intercepted was not subordinate. Confirmed Decay wielder, Eight Circle figurehead, designation 'Vor-Kess.'"
She blinked once, her tone flattening.
"Enforcer casualties: three dead, two overloaded. Vor-Kess escaped via the tunnels. Artifact recovered, uncorrupted. Transferred to Coldlock."
Her eyes narrowed, the weight of the words sinking in.
"Recommendation: security reevaluation. Suppress dockside rumors. Investigate Brightblood labor sectors. Do not inquire after the artifact again or—"
She stopped abruptly, snapping the scroll closed with a flick of her wrist.
"Get two of our copy-scribes. Fast hands, no tongues. Make a single transcript, then return this before the OISS realizes it's missing." She exhaled through her nose. "And for Basst's sake, burn the pen you write it with."
Maeren nodded. "I'll head back to the manor shortly, my Lady."
Draven, silent across from her, shifted only slightly, the silver of his Barne Scale catching the light.
She took the last scroll and read through it. "The Vultures have been sighted near the quarter again. That's twice this week."
She folded the parchment neatly and set it aside, her expression unreadable.
No curses. No visible frustration.
Just cold calculation.
The city was shifting beneath her.
And she would shift with it, faster, sharper, and first.
Outside the window, the marble elegance of the Noble Quarter slowly gave way to the cold, unforgiving lines of the city's spine. The carriage climbed the mountain path, its wheels clattering softly on the basalt roadway that wound upward like a serpent. The guard presence thickened. The walls rose higher. The air grew colder.
When they reached the narrow archway that marked the boundary between the Noble Quarter and the Administrative Seat, the driver gave a quick knock on the carriage roof.
Celia stepped out.
The light here was different, filtered and thin, the sun unable to pierce the thick gray stone and towering walls. The buildings had no grace to them. No poetry. They were bastions, not homes. Bastards of empire, designed to outlast uprisings, spells, and time itself. Iron-barred windows. railings with peaks like broken teeth. Steel shutters that never opened all the way.
Even the wind felt colder here.
Draven stepped down behind her, scanning the rooftops in silence.
This was not her world, but it would be.
She straightened her cloak and began walking toward the central tower of the Seat.
Her heels echoed on the stone.
She didn't look back.
And with every step, the city bent a little closer to her hand.
And yet it was alive.
The Administrative Seat of Varentis never slept. It groaned and growled at all hours, alive with footsteps, voices, and the ceaseless rustle of paper. Men and women in layered coats and seal-bearing sashes hurried across the walkways with scrolls clutched in their arms.
Messengers ran from building to building, out of breath but determined, slipping between magistrates and recorders like fish darting through reeds. The clink of mail from the garrison detail merged with the clatter of wooden carts hauling sealed crates stamped with wax and ink.
Couriers barked names. Overseers shouted orders. Guard captains conferred in tense huddles beneath archways, their voices low, hands pointing at diagrams drawn across slates with red chalk.
At the far end of the Seat stood the Palatine's Manor, if one could still call it that.
The building itself was a fortress: old Winterfyrian stone, squat and square, reinforced with Imperial steel after the conquest. The kind of place that remembered how to survive a siege. The banners of Newfyre flapped high above it, black silk embroidered with the pale sun of the Eastern Lang, but the smell that clung to the walls was older than any Empire.
Celia passed through the outer court slowly, her gaze rising toward the facade. The walls, weather-worn and soot-streaked, bore the fading remnants of murals half-erased by time and design. She paused, just a moment.
Here, hidden in plain sight between two pillars, was an old depiction of the Free City's glory. A robed figure, almost certainly one of Marmain's Champions, stood with outstretched arms above a cityscape wreathed in smoke and devotion. Beneath him, painted crowds knelt in supplication. His eyes were pale, his hands blackened, his mouth open in what had once been a prayer, or perhaps a command.
The Theocracy of Marmain had ruled this mountain long before Winterfyre or Newfyre ever came. And though the Empire had tried to scrape their symbols from the stone, the past bled through anyway.
History in Varentis didn't disappear.
It just waited.
Celia turned away from the mural and resumed her pace, her steps deliberate as she crossed the second gate and entered the keep.
Inside, the noise softened to a quiet tension. Thick carpets muffled footfalls. The light dimmed beneath the high vaulted ceilings. Guards stood along the halls in polished black plate, their helms resting under one arm, expressions blank but watchful. Servants passed silently, bearing trays of damp cloth and medicine. A pair of clerks stood whispering over a box of sealed orders, one glancing nervously toward the chamber doors.
She didn't need to ask.
She could see it in their posture. Smell it in the air, damp stone and sickness.
The Palatine, her father, was dying.
She continued down the long hallway, the rugs swallowing the click of her boots. Behind the heavy doors at the end, a man who once ruled this city from an iron chair now withered in a bed too soft for what was coming. His body was failing. His mind had started to slip. And the Empire had yet to announce a replacement.
Celia slowed her steps, just enough to take it all in.
The doors swung open without fanfare, and Celia stepped inside.
The chamber was large, high-ceilinged, lit by wide arched windows that let in the thin morning light from over the cliffs. Rich tapestries hung along the walls, faded but expensive, older than the Empire's annexation of the city. A fire crackled low in the hearth, stoked more out of habit than necessity.
Palatine Varro sat near the window, his frame swaddled in furs despite the warmth of the room. A man who had once been made of stone, broad-shouldered, iron-jawed, a soldier before anything else, now hollowed by disease. His cheeks had thinned, the skin beneath his eyes bruised with exhaustion. His hands, once strong enough to bend steel reins, trembled slightly against the carved arms of the chair.
He looked like a general turned ghost.
Celia didn't rush to him. Didn't cry or kneel or reach for his hand. That wasn't their way. They'd never traded softness. They'd never needed to.
"Father," she said simply.
He lifted his head with effort, the motion slow and deliberate. His eyes, so much like hers, piercing, intelligent, unblinking, were dulled now, ringed in grey. Still calculating. Still watching.
"Celia," he rasped. His voice had once carried across drill yards and council chambers. Now it sounded like gravel dragged across old leather. "You came."
"I always do."
He exhaled, shifting his weight. The motion made something in his spine seize, and though he didn't cry out, his mouth twitched at the edges in pain. He masked it well. Always had. Even dying, he refused to look weak.
"How bad is it?" she asked.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Worse than yesterday. Better than tomorrow."
No warmth in the words. No false comforts. Just honesty, wrapped in the kind of grim humor only the dying could afford.
Celia stood there for a moment, watching him. Watching the truth settle between them like dust. The room was quiet but heavy, the silence wasn't peace. It was anticipation. Even the guards outside had stopped shifting. Everyone knew. Everyone pretended not to.
The tonics on the side table were half-drunk. She recognized the smell, bitterroot syrup, diluted Glacium, powdered lotus from the Strand. Expensive stuff. Meant to dull the pain without dulling the mind. The kind of concoction used when the end wasn't quite here, but close enough to taste.
She stepped further into the room, her heels soundless against the thick carpets.
"Has the garrison been told?" she asked.
He chuckled, dry, hollow. "They know. But Holven's pretending I'll rally in time for Winter Court."
"You won't," she said.
"No." He closed his eyes briefly, as if the admission took effort. "But it buys them time. Lets them keep saluting the empty chair without thinking too hard about who fills it next."
His eyes opened again, sharp and clear for just a second. "The vultures are circling, aren't they?"
"They've already landed," she said. "Ilthor came this morning."
"Of course he did." A long silence passed. "And what did that fat-bellied bastard want?"
"Stability," she said flatly.
He laughed, a hoarse, rasping sound that cracked into a cough and left him hunched forward, gripping the edge of his chair with white-knuckled fingers.
"They all want stability," he wheezed, spitting the word like something bitter. "Until they get power. Then they want chaos, just the kind they can fence and sell."
Celia stood still, lips pressed tight. She didn't flinch at his tone. She didn't need to. She'd seen enough of the city to know how the game was played, how favors were bartered in back rooms, how knives were passed behind smiles. She took pride in the fact that she wasn't some sheltered girl raised on manners and marriage prospects.
But there was a difference between knowing the game, and surviving it.