Broken Lands

Chapter 372 – Sweetfire’s Idea

“So what are you doing down here?” Sweetfire gave a wave that clearly indicated Sophia’s entire group. “Xin’ri comes down here to do her own enchanting sometimes, but the rest of you? I’ve never seen you here.”

“We need your help.” Bai spoke up before Sophia could. “Or perhaps more accurately, I need your help. I have the full statistical breakdown if you would like to see it, but what it all adds up to is that who you are matters when you head into the Maze. It looks like someone is killing people, targeting those who aren’t important to the Arena, especially those with debts.”

Alley Sweetfire picked up the tools he was cleaning and tucked them into a case, then snapped it closed. “I assume you’ve already reported this to the Registry Master?” 

Bai nodded. “He can’t do anything. It’s happening in the Maze.”

Sweetfire frowned, then reached over and turned something off. Sophia hadn’t noticed the slight hum in the background until it disappeared. “Let’s head back to my home. I want the full details.”

Sweetfire refused to listen to the details until they were all settled in a seating area he’d pulled together a year earlier with mugs of his favorite cinnamon tea. 

It took even longer for Bai to explain it all to Sweetfire than it had to explain it to the rest of them. Sweetfire asked for details, sometimes probing all the way down to the individual incidents that Bai used to reach his conclusions. It was interesting enough to keep Sophia’s attention for about an hour; after that, she just felt like she had to stay because she needed to know what was going to happen next. 

Well, some of the specific incidents were awful when she thought about what they really meant, rather than what they sounded like in Bai’s calm, quiet voice. That was probably part of the reason she was losing interest, if she was honest; she didn’t like thinking about the details. It was interesting when it was a puzzle to solve and kind of horrible when she thought about Bai learning about a man’s death from his twelve-year-old daughter. 

The fact that Bai went on to describe how he’d found help for the child and her Professional Cook mother helped, but it didn’t really make it any less unpleasant when he described the next incident that Sweetfire asked about.

Sophia thought it was over when Sweetfire got up and started pulling together materials for a slightly late lunch, but that was apparently just a distraction; he kept asking Bai questions while he cooked. He asked Dav to grab dishes and cutlery, but handled serving the sweetfire-glazed ham and green beans himself.

When he sat down, Sweetfire looked far older than his years for a moment, then seemed to lighten as he smiled and looked at the team. “Eat up. I’d like to say that the conversation is over, but I need to tell you what I know. It’s not enough to take action on its own and you didn’t ask, so I didn’t push, but with this information … it might be enough, now. It won’t be easy, but there might be a direction.”

Sophia glanced towards Dav, hoping he had some idea what Sweetfire meant. His shrug meant that he was just as lost as she was. He took a bite of the ham, then his eyebrows rose and he took another. That was as good an idea as she had, too, so she started in on lunch.

It had the usual sweet and somewhat spicy flavor of anything cooked in sweetfire, but it really worked for the ham, almost like a brown sugar and cinnamon glaze that was strongest on the outside but sank a hint of spice deep into the meat. Sophia was certain Sweetfire had to have done something more than his usual, but she couldn’t quite tell what; was that just a hint of citrus?

Sophia glanced up a few bites later when she realized that Sweetfire hadn’t said anything more. He was busy eating, too, and seemed to enjoy it just as much as she did. That gave her the space to really enjoy her lunch.

The green beans were good, but not as good as the ham. The citrus taste was joined with a healthy flavor of butter, which helped, but they were spiced just a little too similarly. It was a common problem with Sweetfire’s food; he had to really work to make everything not taste primarily of the sweetfire. He had a lot of practice, and sweetfire did taste good, but it definitely limited what he could cook.

Sweetfire waited until they were all done before he started talking again. “We never did find any of the weapons that were taken from Mikka’s team. She was able to give good descriptions of a few other trinkets, as well, but only one ever turned up: a small mana-insulating storage box used for particularly valuable but unstable salvage, like the fireflowers you sold me when we first met. There were probably other things of similar usefulness but relatively low value, but that was the only one with distinctive enough markings that I’m confident it came from her team.”

Sophia frowned. That wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. By now, they should have been disposed of; they wouldn’t have taken them if they didn’t mean to do something with them, after all.

“There are a few ways they could have been disposed of that would not pass through Professional hands that are willing to cooperate, at least not easily,” Sweetfire added. “However, most of those do eventually get to someone who will, even if they don’t want to say how they got them, and even more often they will talk with guarantees. None of that was helpful for this; the weapons and most of their other valuables are simply gone.”

Sweetfire smiled as if that was good news instead of bad. “This leaves only a few options. Naturally, the killer or killers could have kept the items as trophies; some do. This is unusual, however, at least in this quantity. One item per target is as much as most keep, at least according to Guard Captain Lorvet; the guards are handling most of the investigation. It is far more likely that they sold the items somewhere the guards don’t have visibility, and with the Arena connection Bai discovered, one of the options now looks far more likely than the others.”

Sophia blinked. Items plus the Arena did have an obvious connection: the people behind the Artifacts door. Jax had managed to trade them a few things, but her ability to unlock things never really turned into the in with the Artifacts personnel that she expected. They would trade items, but they never asked her to do anything or said anything useful.

If they were effectively acting as fences for bandits, that made a surprising amount of sense.What didn’t make sense was why it was a good thing.

“Professional League guardsmen cannot audit the Arena; once you leave the tunnels, the Arena allows their presence only as a courtesy, not a right. It is a necessary courtesy for mazestorms, and not one the guards will push on,” Sweetfire continued.

Sophia frowned. She knew Sweetfire was part of the Smiths’ Cooperative, not the Professional League, but he was clearly both directing getting reports from Professional League guards. That implied either a much closer relationship between the two organizations that Sophia really expected or that Sweetfire had some sort of position she didn’t know about. Her guess was that he probably did, but it seemed entirely likely that both were true. Sweetfire wouldn’t be able to hold a position that was important to the League unless its relationship with the Cooperative was closer than Sophia thought.

“However,” Sweetfire’s voice sharpened as he finally got to the point he’d clearly been driving at. “Arena Artifacts does not accept artifacts from Professionals, no matter who they are. They claim that Professionals cannot be recognized by their second chance system, so they simply disallow it. There is, of course, more to it than that, but right now, I don’t care and neither do you. What I care about is that we have a starting point.”

Sweetfire bared his teeth in something that could charitably be called a fierce grin. “The idea that this might be driven by someone with a harvest or enforcement Anchor. Neither of those are necessarily tied to murder, but they both can be, especially once you move into the third upgrade; many people specialize, the way I went into Sweetfire. We have a list of people who might be problematic, along with those who won’t help and those who might. Since this doesn’t affect Professionals, I can’t act, but you might be able to and you already know someone who might be able to help you. Arak Shade.”

“The healer and expedition leader?” Sophia remembered Arak Shade well. They’d been on several of his expeditions, though the first was by far the most memorable. “Wait, he can navigate the Maze, has a way to find places he’s been as long as a mazestorm hasn’t changed them. Could that have something to do with this?”

Dav shook his head. “It doesn’t need to. Bai said all of the anomalies are shallow, exactly where we have the marking setup to tell which zones have been claimed. All they have to do is look for a zone that’s been claimed, then check out the link before it. They can probably even set up there and hide and wait for their targets to return.”

“There’s still someone targeting them,” Sophia objected. “There has to be, or the pattern Bai noticed wouldn’t exist.”

“Or maybe there’s a list of people they’re not allowed to kill,” Sweetfire countered immediately. “That’s why I spent so long asking Bai questions; I was looking for a secondary pattern. It’s there, but it’s weak. The people most likely to die are the people who owe debts, yes, but those are also the people who spend the most time in the Maze in the shallow zones without an Arena-related reason. The people who collect monsters are the only people who spend more time in the Maze, and they have an extremely low death rate, at least as far as Bai can tell.”

“Most of them don’t spend much time in the Registry,” Bai admitted. “It makes it hard to get their information. I have been able to collect enough to know that much, however, and that is all that seems to be relevant.”

Sophia frowned. Bai’s explanation made sense. Unfortunately, however much she disliked it, so did Sweetfire’s. “They’d have to recognize everyone on the list. That’s a lot of people, isn’t it?”

“Or pick a team and follow them in,” Dav proposed. “Or maybe they make sure to meet enough of the people who could be targets that they recognize them and simply skip anyone they don’t recognize. I don’t know how they’re finding people; for all I know, they could claim a zone themselves then set up a camp outside it and wait for people to come through and talk to them, then kill them on their way back out. That’s not what happened to Mikka’s team, but it could work.”

Sophia paused at that. Mikka’s team was not the only one they’d ever seen inside the Maze. Most of the encounters were either early in the day when they ran into a team breaking camp or late in the evening when they were headed out of the Maze and ran into a group that was staying longer. They often camped in the Library of Monsters, since it was effectively completely safe, but most teams camped in links. The Flying Stars did the same when they couldn’t reach the Library. Most zones weren’t safe. “We’ve been invited to share a camp more than once.”

“Yeah,” Dav agreed. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Even if we encountered the killers, we were probably safe, but what if we were another group?”