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(Twelve) ◀◀◀◀◀ Chapter Thirteen ▶▶▶▶▶ (Fourteen)
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Torrissio couldn't recall the last time his sitting room accommodated so many people, flesh and metal alike. Though this case the appellation sitting room would prove to be a bit of a misnomer as it had only one place to sit and Torrissio intended to fill it with his own backside as soon as it felt socially acceptable to do so.
He ushered his guests into the cozy chamber with few words and a calm, if complicated expression that revealed nothing of the riot raging inside his head. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS, HOW CAN THIS BE, WHAT IS GOING ON HERE, WHAT, WHAT, WHAT, HOW, WHAT?! hollered the part of his brain that always devised his best schemes. He presumed that this one would not, nay, could not backfire, a most artful proposition specifically concocted to keep Mortegro & Co. out of his hair for the foreseeable.
That Ophidian artifact was real enough, as was Torrissio's inability to read it. He really did yearn to plunder the indubitably potent (and wonderfully gruesome) secrets it kept within its impenetrable cipher. However, this craving of his was always but a pie in the sky, one so distant he never even dared to imagine the taste of its fulfillment. An impossible possibility.
A needle in a haystack.
And yet, Mortegro seriously expected him to believe that within mere hours after his dismissal, he actually found one—or to Torrissio's eyes, he found some Initiate's College sprog plucked straight from the audience of one of adept Melino's excruciating lectures on ethereal waveforms.
(Rather, Mortegro would have done, if any of those things were still operational; adept Melino included.)
Anyway. Torrissio supposed the sprog looked acicular enough, but only in figure. Otherwise his mystified mien did not inspire anything beyond the ghastly notion that Mortegro was simply attempting to meet a sham with another sham. To make matters worse, a much more stunted part of his brain kept repeating the words SERVES YOU RIGHT and would continue to do so until sufficiently drowned.
But not yet; Torrissio wanted to remain sober for whatever nonsense threatened to transpire.
He folded his hands somewhere behind his back and tried to make his leer look inviting. "So then, what did you say your name was, son?"
The sprog opened his mouth, but a stronger voice from behind overpowered whatever words he meant to speak.
It was Stefano. "This fine fellow is Mortegro's cousin, Seth," he said, adopting a casual lean against the mantelpiece.
And he was so close to the blaze, too… More pressing business remained at hand, but Torrissio would allow himself the pleasure of a single malicious daydream. "Seth… Seth…" he muttered to himself, while the tiny imaginary bandit in his fireplace burned to naught more than ash and bone and gold teeth. "Ahem. And Mortegro here is your cousin?"
"That's correct," Mortegro sternly replied. Since entering the sitting room, he found a spot against the wall opposite the doorway and parked himself there with no intention of making himself any more comfortable.
"Your cousin? Really?" Torrissio returned his scrutiny to Sethys. "He doesn't look nearly old enough to be your cousin."
"I don't know what to tell you."
"Oh honestly, old friend. If your goal is to pull one over on me, you've got to at least try to—"
"Signore. Forgive my interruption. I have acquired the two bags of ice as requested," declared Marvello III as he lumbered into the sitting room, his substantial steel arms hardly burdened by two large insulated sacks stuffed to capacity with chipped ice.
Roughly four stones' worth each—56 pounds or about 25 kilos to put a finer point on it. One four stone sack to settle atop Torrissio's head, one to wrap around his bruised foot.
"Hell's bells, are you seriously… Oh, never mind," he groaned, tempering his exasperation with a pinch to the bridge of his nose. "Never mind, we'll simply have to refine the arithmetic in that particular algorithm later—eh?"
A chance glance towards the fireplace brought Stefano back into view, as the shadows of flames underlined the contours of a small bottle of liqueur he had plastered against his lips…
"Where did you get that?" Torrissio zeroed in on the bottle. "That looks like one of mine! That label! That… That's the Old Empath Abbey White Corn Wine miniature that Erstam smuggled in from Britannia! That was one of a kind! A priceless antique!"
"No it's not," Stefano lied effortlessly. "This is mine, I brought this from home."
"In that case, it's terrifically poor manners to loiter around someone else's sitting room while imbibing your own beverages. Perhaps that is how you behave in your reprobate parlors, but never in a good old-fashioned Moonshade sitting room," said Torrissio. "Marvello III will serve you a drink if you need one that badly."
Stefano eyed the besaddled automaton and smirked. "On the rocks, I presume?"
Marvello III's eyes winked in the affirmative. "I am capable of mixing many different varieties of drinks."
"I bet you are. Heh. Know how to make a Sherry flip?"
The automaton clicked faintly. "In a shaker, add one part sugar syrup to four parts dry cream sherry. Add one whole chicken's egg and ice. Shake. Strain into coupe glass. Garnish with grated nutmeg to taste."
"Hello? No no, you tell her you saw a spider crawling up her—"
"Enough! Stars in hell, you made me forget what I was trying to repudiate!" Torrissio threw up his hands and whipped around in botheration, but happily found himself once again standing face to face with Sethys's extreme bewilderment. "Oh yes!" he remembered instantly. "The sprog you've dragged into my house for some reason."
Sethys raised a finger to speak. "I—"
"I must insist you set aside your misgivings. Seth is, in fact, a Xenkan scholar monk from an obscure cloister," Mortegro assured his fellow mage.
"And he really is Morty's cousin, yes! It's just that he's never been off the mainland before so it's likely you've never seen nor heard of him," added Stefano.
"I know that much is true, at least," said Torrissio. "So. Cousin Seth the Xenkan scholar monk, eh? My, how fortunate for you, that such an advantageous entity should appear in Moonshade now."
"No, no! You've got it all wrong! See, he's been travelling with the Avatar! He came with us," Stefano continued. "Morty told him about the deal you proposed and he agreed to take a butchers at that rotten old stretch of carcass you've got stashed in your pantry. He reckons he can read it!"
"I presumed so." Torrissio furrowed his brows, as if trying to dig his way out of a deep thought. "It's just... That name. Seth."
"Is something the matter?" asked Mortegro.
"That name came bubbling to the forefront of one of my research excursions, and not too terribly long ago either. But why…? Seth… Seth…"
It had to have happened well before Anarchy. The last time Torrissio went exploring was over the summer, one year prior. He and Marvello III traced a dicey doodle around the Big Isle's frozen northlands, veering all the way beyond the far side of the Spinebreaker mountains and across the northeastern coastline. A brutal route even by Torrissio's standards, the duo sustained heavy losses (mostly in the tinned sausage department) and injuries (again, the tinned sausages), and at least one breathtakingly violent disembowelment (a tinned sticky date pudding). Despite such gustatory tragedies, the outing proved its worth when Torrissio discovered the remains of the ancient Ophidian Temple of Enthusiasm and a trove of artifacts within, including many books and scrolls.
As a complete aside, later on the Avatar's company would also locate the Temple of Enthusiasm by "following a trail of empty sausage tins". However, her efforts were met with considerably less academic success, for Torrissio had already plundered (er, accessioned) most artifacts of interest.
One such artifact—a remarkably intact journal belonging to a young lady—stood out in his memory, if only because it brought to mind something very personally irritating. Although time and weather had forever obliterated the author's name, her surviving scrawls revealed her profession as an acolyte of Enthusiasm, a struggling artist who came to the temple in hopes of finding inspiration. During her residency, the temple got sacked by the Ordered Forces of Discipline—automatons all, whose relentless assault ensured the deaths of all trapped within.
Anyway. Amid the journal's seemingly endless output of maudlin, waterlogged dreck, a mote of interest flagged Torrissio's attention like a singular star in a black sky: One of the journal's final entries departed from the usual snivelling to recount a spot of eavesdropping that involved the author's younger brother, an estranged acolyte of Harmony who got swept away in the winds of war like all the others. He had arrived at the temple most unexpectedly, bearing some sort of message or warning for the Chaos Hierophant; in return, the Hierophant entrusted this brother with something and some thing—a tangible object, but also a sworn secret. But what was it, exactly? Alas, the girl's hazy observations stopped frustratingly short of a full revelation. Neither the brother nor the Hierophant nor the What-Was-It received another mention in the journal, for her writing ended abruptly at the start of the next entry. Her last words: Chaos preserve us.
In a way, it did.
Anyway, anyway. Regarding the aforementioned What-Was-It, one could only speculate, and Torrissio duly speculated that whatever the thing was, it must've been vitally important to the Ophidian people, if not something personally meaningful to the Hierophant. Torrissio maintained only a passing interest in the personal lives and histories of these long-dead philosophers as they often bore too close a resemblance to the pathetic bathoses of his fellow adepts. But how dearly he valued their knowledge of the esoteric, their bizarre auguries and forgotten dweomers, their secrets…!
The mere prospect of ripping into yet another long lost secret made Torrissio salivate even more than the thought of ripping into a tinned sticky date pudding after weeks of trudging across kilometers of glacial monotony with nothing else to eat but tinned sausages and no other conversation besides the dithering of one's automaton valet trying (and failing) to identify every single bird it detected.
Anyway, anyway, anyway. A nonsequitur to be sure. The journal, the doomed sister and brother, all the other dead Ophidians and all their dead secrets, and those blasted tinned sausages—none of this related in any way whatsoever to the matter at hand. Only that Torrissio remembered that the younger brother in question's name was "Sethys", and translating that name forced him to remember that his despised rival Mortegro also had a younger brother named "Seth".
Damn! One way or another, that officious Necromage always managed to stick a beak into his research. Torrissio got so annoyed then, he snapped his last fountain pen in half and had to postpone his transcriptions of the other documents until Marvello III could locate another.
"Seth, yes," Torrissio repeated. "You did have a brother named Seth, didn't you?"
"Who, me? Yes, I did," said Mortegro.
"Seth Shumway was his name in full, yes? You told me he was the town healer back in Fawn."
"Shumway…?" Stefano repeated to himself.
Mortegro ignored him. "He was, yes."
Torrissio then took another good look at Sethys. "You told me that he got eaten by goblins."
"And that is the unvarnished truth." Mortegro thought quickly. "But, uh, this lad is his son, Seth."
"Right! An also-Seth!" added Stefano. "A sort of Seth Jr.! As it were."
"I see."
"And that makes him Morty's cousin!"
"His cousin?"
"My cousin?"
All three of them mulled over the conundrum at a frankly embarrassing length.
"No!" Torrissio blurted first. "Nephew! For Void's sake! Son of a brother would make him Mortegro's nephew!"
Stefano broke into a sheepish chortle. "Oh! Of course! Of course he would be Mortegro's nephew, wouldn't he? How silly of me. Why in the world did I say cousin? Why ever do we keep saying cousin, Morty? When he's so obviously your nephew! My my, I haven't the foggiest faintest! Words seem to fail me these days."
"Words seem to be failing most of us these days," Mortegro wistfully agreed. "Indeed, this young man is Seth, my nephew. My nephew Seth, who is my nephew now. Evidently. Hah."
"Likewise, I never knew you had one of those either, Mortegro."
"No reason why you would," he said. "As I told you before, until recently he was a cloistered something-or-other, some subspecies of Xenkan who spent a very long time holed up in a little shrine on the mainland studying ancient history."
"Can this nephew of yours speak, or did he take a vow of silence?"
"How do you do?" Sethys spoke at last.
"Miserably, thank you," replied Torrissio. "Tell me, Seth. Are you at all familiar with the more obscure ciphers of the Ophidians? For I cannot imagine that your alleged uncle would have bothered me for any other reason if not."
"Oh no, please rest your doubts, sir. I am natively literate in many forms of the Ophidian script. In fact, it's all I know how to read," said Sethys.
Mortegro cleared his throat. "Remarkably dedicated, those Xenkans. Are they not?"
"Hmmph. We'll see about that."
"My uncle told me all about your predicament and I'd like to have a look at the artifact for myself," Sethys resumed, carefully. "I should like to be of some assistance, especially if it would mean helping someone in need."
He searched for those eyes that burned blue with artificial life, the only thing visible in the darkest corner of Torrissio's sitting room.
Petra wordlessly shifted even deeper into the shadows before being found.
"Then I bid you follow me into my workshop downstairs so that I may show it to you," said Torrissio, his sigh ragged and low. "But don't hold your breath."
At last, the conclusion of this ridiculous farce had shimmered into view, radiant with the promise of an emptied sitting room, an awaiting recliner and a stiff drink. Torrissio envisioned a brief demonstration in the workshop, ending with the sprog sadly shaking his head as he beheld the folio as uselessly as anyone or anything else. Then the best part: Mortegro's lot would utter their farewells of total defeat and leave, forever, with "Petra" secure in his possession.
Unless! Unless that damned fool bandit intended to…
Torrissio came to a dead halt but a single footfall from the basement door.
"On second thought…" he muttered as he started to rummage around the inner pockets of his jacket. Before anyone could even think to utter the first Eh?, he whipped around and lunged towards Sethys with what he surely thought was insuperable dexterity. However, once again his haste to frighten caused him to nearly fumble the brass implement that he now thrust in the general direction of Sethys's neck.
"Ahh—!" The lad shrieked and raised his hands, as one would when held up at nib-point.
"The notion has just occurred to me that I should endeavor to keep this transaction equitable for the duration," Torrissio stated, his words slick with malice. "Do you know what equitable means?"
Sethys squinted down the length of his nose, though the low light of the fireplace provided little visual assistance. With quaking fingers, he unpocketed his pince-nez and tried to nestle it into place—slightly crookedly in the end. He could just make out the object's narrow brass shaft and its sharp silver tip, engraved to resemble a serpent…
"Uh? Fair enough, sir?" he replied, swallowing the crack in his voice.
"Fair!" Torrissio burst into a fit of humorless laughter. "Hah! Fair! Good answer! In fact, sometimes I think I'm the only person in town who understands the meaning of the word! Marvello, guard the exit!"
The automaton obeyed immediately, dropping his sacks of ice with a crushing thud against the terrazzo. "Yes, signore," he said as he blocked the sitting room's sole egress to the outside with the bulk of his chassis, unmoving, unmovable. His eyes flickered from friendly amber to formidable red, indicating a change in service program: Sentry Mode.
"What is the meaning of this?" Mortegro scoffed at a possibility that even he had failed to predict.
"I suppose it would be the fair thing to do, letting your uncle know in no uncertain terms that if he should attempt to escape this manor with my Elissa before I declare my satisfaction with the information that you are about to provide, there will be severe and irreversible and potentially rather disfiguring consequences!" As Torrissio rambled on, while that device of his edged closer and closer to Sethys's neck. "Know you what this is, expert? Hm? Know you what this can do to a healthy chap such as yourself?"
"Oh Torrissio, you ghoul!" Petra's voice pealed out of the darkness. "Leave him alone!"
Sethys shook his head, flabbergasted. "N-no worries, it's only a fountain pen."
Torrissio froze. He blanched like a scalded cauliflower.
The show was over, even though—at least going by the obnoxious chortling from someone he would refuse to acknowledge in the moment—it just got to the funniest part.
Sufficiently embarrassed, Torrissio grabbed Sethys by the shoulder and shoved him into the stairwell, barking all the while. "Alright, that's enough cheek—move it, you! Down that way! And don't touch any of my apparatuses!"
Before he followed, he addressed his guests once more, still waving that pen around in lieu of anything even remotely threatening. "I meant what I said. Don't try anything clever, Necromage, unless you feel so compelled to test my automaton's mastery of the art of spinal readjustment. You are to wait here until we have returned. And don't touch that crock!"
Caught. Stefano innocently lifted his hands from his roost by the fireplace, where the Lady Columna's funerary urn now rested a few suspicious scootches away from her portrait and a few suspicious scootches closer to a fearsome statuette of a balron lording over the other tchotchkes on the mantelpiece.
"Don't touch my furnishings! Don't touch my books! Don't touch my rug! Don't even touch the air! Don't touch anything—! Stay put!" was Torrissio's final warning as he too disappeared into the basement.
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