Broken Lands

Chapter 369 – New Data

Sophia had so very many questions now, and few ways to get the answers.

Tiwaz was able to tell them what the Empire’s sigil was: a short stepped pyramid, almost identical to the one Los’en wore or the one that appeared on the floor of the Registry in Izel. It was enough to make Sophia wonder just how old that floor was, but she knew the question was slightly silly. If it was sixteen hundred years old, it wouldn’t have been in that good a shape. It would have been worn away simply by people walking on it for that long. That didn’t mean it hadn’t originally held the tower; what it meant was that it had been repaired or replaced at some time more recent than that.

More importantly, it told Sophia that the followers of the Tower of Kestii, a decentralized group she’d taken as quasi-religious, was probably really made up of people whose families were once either delvers or ardent supporters of the Kestii Empire. By now, it was probably only a symbol of the lost past, but for a symbol to hang on that long it had to be powerful and well known.

It was definitely interesting that it stood in opposition to the Broken Sword and the Temple of the Broken Lord. As much as Sophia wanted to say that was because of the betrayal Isaz claimed the Broken Lord committed when he broke the Tower, she doubted it was anything so historical. It was far more likely that it was mostly due to modern politics; the Izel had three major power bases in the Temple, the Registry, and the Clan that led the city. In theory, Clan Aurora led all three but in practice it was far more complicated.

Sophia hated complicated politics. Maybe it really wasn’t all that interesting.

The sigil of the Emperor was apparently a sword plunged into the top of the Tower from above. Tiwaz didn’t think that was the symbol they were looking for, but he mentioned it anyway. It really wasn’t all that interesting to Sophia; the meaning of the Emperor’s sigil was clear. He ruled the Empire that surrounded the Tower because he dominated the Tower.

No, what was interesting was finding out about the door Isaz wanted them to take the crystal through. Xin’ri had searched all of the records from Registry Master Jessamine, the Shield of the Sun, and found absolutely nothing.

Oh, there were doors in the Maze. They already knew that; Sophia had opened one during the expedition with Arak Shade. Both Arak Shade and the Broken Blade had something inside the Maze they wanted opened, and Sophia expected those things to be locked link-gates, just like this one. It was possible, even likely, that the one the Broken Blade wanted opened was exactly what they were looking for; whether it bore the symbol of the Empire or the symbol of the Broken Lord, Sophia could easily see why the Broken Blade would want in.

She just didn’t think she wanted to accompany the Broken Blade anywhere. Meeting with her during the dyleda competition was relatively safe, but accompanying her into the Maze seemed like a terrible idea.

As for Arak, she didn’t know if the link-gate he wanted opened was the same one or not. She could at least say that she trusted him enough to go on another expedition with him; he was secretive, but open about the fact that he had secrets. He also didn’t seem nearly as likely to be hostile as the Broken Blade did, even if he found out that they were opposed to the Temple. He worked for the Arena, but he didn’t wear the broken sword anywhere that Sophia had seen, and most Templars were fairly overt about the symbology.

Did they even need to look for the door? Sophia didn’t really care about it, Quest or not. She’d happily complete it if she happened to find the link-gate in question, but it wasn’t what she actually wanted to find in the Maze. She wanted to find the Gates and get Dav home to see his parents. He didn’t admit it, but his time apart from them wore on him; he worried about them. They were getting on in years, and -

“Are you going to have dinner?” Dav’s face was only about an inch from Sophia’s ear when he spoke. “I know it’s Ci’an’s turn to cook, but she decided to pick up some bread this morning, and Bai brought a pie, so we should be good even if what she cooks is just meat and greens.”

“She’s not that bad a cook,” Sophia protested with a grin. “At least not when she has spices, and Mazehold has spices. I’m not sure why you won’t let go of the cooking in Othala’s ruin. We ran out of everything we couldn’t gather locally!”

Dav chuckled. “And the rest of us moved to stews and other food that could handle the lack. She didn’t and she’s never going to live it down, it’s funny now that I don’t have to eat it. So. Are you coming?”

“Not until this evening,” Sophia answered with a wink before she followed him to dinner. She knew he’d get the joke, and his laugh said that he did.

Dav and Sophia were the last to arrive in the dining room. The rest of the Flying Stars were there, along with Marcie and Bai. Mo’ra wasn’t, but she never showed up for dinner; she didn’t like being reminded that she couldn’t eat.

It was the first chance they’d had to talk to Bai in private; they’d managed to meet up with Sweetfire on the way up from the tunnels, but Bai was at the Registry, as he often was. 

The story of the visit to Isaz was quickly told while Ci’an and Marcie brought out dinner. Bai’s only real reaction was a comment that Isaz never did like people, even when she was surrounded by them, but she was reliable and precise, and that was enough to land her in the position she held. He didn’t answer when Sophia asked what it was, other than to say that it didn’t matter because the facility was long destroyed. 

He dismissed the question about the door they were supposed to find with the answer that he’d have to check his records; while he didn’t specifically map the Maze, he had heard a lot about it over the years. He couldn’t think of such a door offhand, but that didn’t mean he’d never heard of it.

When Bai brought out the pie, he asked if they could adjourn to the party room afterwards. He needed to talk to Jax, but the rest were welcome to join them. It was more than enough to pique Sophia’s curiosity; indeed, everyone except Xin’ri followed. Xin’ri had cleanup duty that day and refused to let anything stop her from getting it done immediately; she hated having things hanging over her head and would join them once the kitchen and dishes were clean.

Sophia knew herself well enough to know that she wouldn’t have been able to resist. 

Bai waited for them all to get settled before he started. “Since you rescued Mikka from the Maze and reported the death of the rest of her party, I’ve talked to her several times and started asking some new questions of the people who come through the Registry. Some are about people who were lost, but mostly it’s been about the living. I don’t like the pattern that’s started to show.”

Bai sighed and leaned back, but his attention stayed fixed on Jax. “Sebas - Guildmaster ko’Orthlinn - can’t do anything. I’ve gone over it with him several times in the past couple of tendays and he’s made his position quite clear. If I’m right, there isn’t really anything to do. I assume he hasn’t yet pulled you off the mission?” 

Jax shook his head. “He hasn’t said anything like that. In fact, he seemed quite happy that we’ve all officially reached the third upgrade.”

“I wonder what he’s thinking.” Bai shook his head as if to clear it. “I guess he’ll tell us when he’s ready. He might not have figured out what he wants to do yet, he certainly didn’t seem happy when I told him what I found out. Maybe he’s still trying to figure something out.”

“What did you find out?” Sophia was tired of hearing Bai talk around his discovery, whatever it was.

“I didn’t say?” Bai sounded surprised. “Hm, I guess I didn’t. The people who vanish inside the Maze, a lot of the teams look a lot like Mikka’s. Teams that work the edges of the Maze are common, far more common than those that regularly dive deep, and even the ones that do head deep often spend at least half of their trips near the exits. Deep is valuable, but harvesting the shallows if you can find a good zone can be far more profitable, because you can carry a lot more out by making multiple trips. It’s also less dangerous.”

Sophia nodded impatiently. She knew all of that; it was part of the reason there was a robust community in the Registry of people who visited the Maze, with informal rules about claiming zones after each mazestorm shuffled them. 

“I wasn’t asking those questions, before. I knew that a lot of the groups who went missing were once that headed deep, but I didn’t know that more than half of those disappearances happen while the team is on a shallow run, one where they should be safe. Some of that may be carelessness, but it’s too high. I also didn’t know that almost all of the full-team disappearances in the shallows are teams that have at least one person who is in the Maze to gather aurichalc to pay off a loan, usually for Arena bets.” Bai paused after that statement.

Sophia frowned. She didn’t like that at all. With as much betting as there was in the Arena, that definitely seemed like a likely pitfall. She wouldn’t bet with money she didn’t have and couldn’t afford to spend, but she knew there were a lot of people who weren’t that limiting.

“Are you certain that’s actually correlated?” Dav frowned in concentration. “How many trips don’t have someone paying off a debt? I know we haven’t needed to, but that’s because we barely bet at all; we get enough from our appearances in the Arena.”

“That’s not true of all of the Arena performers,” Bai noted, “Even the successful ones. If I exclude the top forty or fifty Arena teams, there’s a clear pattern. A strange one, but clear. Teams that have someone in debt are eight times more likely to die in the Maze than those that don’t but that do bet in the Arena. Teams that have no one betting in the Arena are twice as likely to die in the Maze as those that do bet, but that may simply be happenstance; I could only find five teams that claim they never bet in the arena, and one of them failed to return this year. They don’t really change the numbers much, but it’s interesting.”

“And if you include the top Arena teams?” Dav asked.

Bai shrugged. His gaze was fixed on Dav now. “Only one of the top fifty Arena competition teams failed to return in the past year, and it was on a trip deep into the Maze. Two others lost members on an expedition. Some of that may be their extra practice, and some of it is definitely how rarely the highest performers visit the Maze, but it’s still significant.”

“None.” Dav snorted and shook his head. “You’re telling us that you think someone from the Arena is killing debtors if they don’t bring in a lot of money for the Arena and that there’s nothing anyone can do about it?”