Firebrand

“Please accept my deepest apologies,” she said, placing her hand over her heart, “for my transgressions.” She bowed low.

“Well, now.” Agemon pushed his specs onto the bridge of his nose. “That is tolerable. But I would like Sergeant Quinn’s assurance that this highly suspect status of ‘honorary Weapon’ is not a sham.”

“As a matter of fact,” Brienne said, “I can give you that assurance.” She pulled two letters from beneath her cloak. One held the king’s seal, and the other a seal of black wax imprinted with a black shield.

Agemon took the letters.

“One,” Brienne told him, “was personally written by the king ordering you to accept Sir Karigan’s presence here, and to reassure you she is not breaking taboo. The other is from Counselor Tallman certifying Sir Karigan’s status.”

Karigan shifted her weight with a sense of unease. It seemed like people had gone to an awful lot of effort on behalf of her honorary Weaponhood. Now she couldn’t back out of it even if she wanted to, and it felt like there were those who wanted to ensure she didn’t.

When Agemon finished reading the letters, he said, “I suppose these are genuine.”

“Oh, for the sake of the gods,” Brienne said in exasperation. She was uncharacteristically expressive for a Weapon, but Agemon was enough to try the most patient of souls.

“It is quite unorthodox,” he said. “There is no precedent.”

At that moment, a light gray cat rubbed against the door frame, entered the office, and jumped onto his desk.

“What are you doing here, Lizzie?” Agemon demanded of the cat.

“Meow.”

Stepping lightly over papers, books, and pens, the cat looked at Karigan and unceremoniously leaped into her arms and started to purr loudly. Karigan scratched her under her chin.

Agemon sat hard in his chair, looking confounded, or perhaps even betrayed. “Lizzie likes her.”

“One of the others has claimed Sir Karigan,” Brienne said with a smug expression. “She calls him Ghost Kitty.”

Agemon shook his head mournfully. “I guess I must accept it, this green. Not because I want to, but because I cannot ignore the signs.”

Karigan set Lizzie down on the floor. Letters from the king and the head of the Weapons had not convinced Agemon, but a cat did?

“There may be no precedent for this,” Brienne said, “but Sir Karigan is the precedent. Shall we get on with business?”

“Yes, yes.” He blinked at Karigan like a wizened owl. “The king tells me, ‘Agemon, you must search for the dragonfly device.’ And I say, ‘Dragonfly device? I do not know what this is.’ The king says, ‘It may be in the tombs.’ You—” and he pointed again at Karigan, “—you put this notion in his head.”

Agemon’s various accusations were wearying, but she took a deep breath. “Yes? What of it?”

“Do you realize the hundreds of thousands of artifacts down here? The time it would take? And what is this thing, this dragonfly device?”

“I don’t . . .” She tried to remember. When she’d returned from the future, she’d attempted to tell the king and captain everything she could before her memory failed completely. Fortunately the captain had made a transcript. Karigan had written down her recollections, as well. It must have made sense at the time, but a certain amount was garbled nonsense, and trying to understand it was like trying to apply logic to a strange dream. Her memory of the dragonfly device was really what she recalled of what had been recorded in the transcript. “It’s a . . . an object that is supposed to repel Mornhavon’s great weapon. If found, we might be able to prevent the fall of Sacoridia.”

“You were informed,” Brienne told Agemon, “that Sir Karigan brought this information back from the future, that she knows what a defeated Sacoridia looks like.”

“Yes, of course. There are many layers of the world.” His dismissive tone was almost amusing. “But what kind of object is it? I do not know what we are looking for.”

That was the question, wasn’t it? Karigan had drawn a stick figure that appeared to be holding a shield and sword or spear. She could not remember the source. “Something about the Sealenders,” she murmured. “Were you shown a drawing?”

Agemon sighed loudly. “Yes, yes. You know nothing more?”

“I’m sorry. Just that maybe the stick figure is holding something that is the dragonfly device.”

“Waste of time.”

Karigan clenched her hands at her sides. It was perhaps the single most important piece of information she’d brought back. She stepped up to his desk and looked down at him, no longer apologetic. A great cold fury overcame her and it was like frost drafted off her body. Darkness closed on the edge of her vision where stars shone searing and infinite. In a voice that wasn’t quite her own and was layered over by the frozen depths of the heavens, she said, “So you prefer a world in which your country falls? In which Sacor City is destroyed and your countrymen oppressed and enslaved?”

Brienne gave her a sidelong glance, as if not sure what it was she was witnessing. “It is pointless, Sir Karigan. Agemon’s world is here, and he has no connection to the outside except on the occasion of a royal death.”

Karigan stared unwaveringly at Agemon. “If you believe you are safe here, you are mistaken. In the future I visited, the tombs remained and were attended by Weapons and caretakers, but they were soon to be breached and invaded by those who wanted the dragonfly device to eliminate its threat to the empire.” She leaned over his desk in her intensity, and he quailed in his chair, his face paler than normal. Her voice took on added power and authority. She felt great wings beat the air about her. “Do you wish outsiders to invade your tombs? Godless invaders with no reverence for the dead? What do you think they would do to those you’ve cared for all these years, and all the artifacts? What would they do to the living? Your descendants?