The ball was an unprecedented success. Since Wrenmae’s return, Zeltiva had once more suffered its abusive relationship with disease. The healers scrambled to come up with solutions and the Wright Library was turned inside out seeking clues to the string of maladies. The Doctors were baffled. Certainly if it had been one disease, the cause could be ascertained as the disease, but much as the first time…this was infection on a different scale. A myriad of illnesses had assaulted the caretakers with radical symptoms, strange resistances, and unexpected death. After the Djed storm and the short reprieve of hope in Fall, Winter solemnly closed a cold and bitter blanket around the Zeltivan streets. People had begun to lose hope. Crime ran rampant, strangely orchestrated from the Underground by a small group of individuals…sickness claimed many and the ground was frozen, hard to break. Some had taken to burning the dead, and the corpselight shed bleak shadows along the cobbled streets.
But here, in the banquet hall, personalities of great import mingled with the common masses, trying their best to assure people that Zeltiva would always prevail. Soft faced nobles, the removed and the moneyed…those who had little concept of how dreadful it was from alley to alley. A sick servant was immediately let go, cut away like so much excess flesh. Those who felt they had the power to buy and trade lives like baubles were the head of the stagnant serpent Wrenmae had targeted. Their time would come, certainly, and when he’d gone…the people of Zeltiva would marvel that they had ever felt weak at all.
Dressed in his Waveguard uniform, wearing the splendid black cloak Rayage had given him as a cape, Wrenmae drifted from circle to circle. This season, he had proven himself an unexpected philanthropist and dedicated opponent of the sicknesses. Even hidden beneath a splendid white half-mask, his handsome features seemed to glow in spite of the sickly pallor most Zeltivans had adopted like a well-worn cloak. He nodded to the Waveguard and the Martial Association both, each group making themselves known in separation within the hall. Wrenmae resisted a frown, still working his influence to try and marry the two organizations into one force. The Waveguard recruited the bored and untrained, giving those who wore the uniform the brunt of the people’s security. With so many attacked and hospitalized over the season, their faith in the Waveguard had fallen…and with good reason. Its antithesis, the Martial society, may have allowed open membership for coin, but they trained their members in the art of combat, utilizing those trained members to train new ones. It was a successful model for a private army, Trente had certainly done the work of a tiny tyrant. They rallied around him as though he were a shard of Leth’s light, ever aglow even under the darkest of conditions.
In a perfect Zeltiva, the Waveguard would join with the Martial Society to re-forge the floundering security force into hardened scions of justice. Order would be maintained, they would be paid more, and membership would be dependent on rigorous tests and training. It was a small price to pay for security, certainly, and with the vandals of East street flooding out into the city proper, Maria would have to respond soon.
Wrenmae had already made his opinion well known…as a member of the Martial Society and Waveguard both, and a distinguished member of the Zeltivan society, his word carried clout.
Perhaps it was because he had recovered from his crippling illness and seemed to strive in spite of it, or perhaps it was his natural charisma, but the people of Zeltiva looked to Wrenmae as their adopted son. He came to them a stranger, but he had returned after the Syliran quest to Sahova…albeit after most others, and had poured his heart into fighting the crime on the streets, the sickness in the homes, and the hopelessness in so many hearts. Tonight he seemed radiant; the picture of perfect health, and it comforted several of the attending. Certainly if this slight man could recover and now walk with such confidence, poise, and health…it would be possible for them as well.
Among the higher powers in Zeltiva, however, Wrenmae was well aware his name was not met with much ardor. His radical ideas of reforming the Waveguard, reallocating funds, and renovating East street were viewed as extremist…almost to the point of subversive. The coin required for such change would tax the Zeltivan coffers considerably and although they might have time to recover, there were some among the rich who felt their secure position in the Zeltivan hierarchy shaking. Ignotus Everto and Wrenmae Sek had risen from outsiders to command considerable respect in as little as a few seasons. Perhaps the masses would consider a change of station themselves.
Tradition was security, and the sickness had broken morality to a point where tradition no longer seemed to be working…and people like the nuit and the Waveguard were capitalizing on it for their own political gain.
To the people, they might be considered heroic by some.
But to the intelligent, the earmarks of good fortune marked a suspicion to their swift rise into the public’s eye.
“Good evening, Trente,” he greeted to the young swordsman, “Quite a fetching mask you’re wearing…it suites you, I think…and quite the regal ensemble to go with it.”
Stepping around the youth, knowing he would follow if interested, Wrenmae stepped behind his partner, Ignotus, and clapped the nuit on his shoulder.
“You look splendid, Ignotus, like a well-respected king out for an eve…to be buried on the morrow.” He chuckled, striding alongside the lavishly regaled creature to observe the ballroom. So many souls, so many opinions and lives all cascading together for a moment. Since their disastrous meeting two seasons ago, the two had grown much closer. In a certain respect, they had acknowledged each other as more potent allies than enemies and worked together to control Zeltiva from the shadows. What Ignotus did not know, what he should never know, is that Wrenmae served a dual purpose here…orchestrating the collapse of Zeltiva even as he pushed for its revival. He would leave the Zeltivans stronger than ever, with the weak culled from their ranks. Ignotus would find it difficult to manipulate the hardened Zeltiva, but the hypnotist had no doubt the wily creature would find a way.
More arrived, the hall swelled.
Wrenmae smiled, joy-drunk. Truly, all the pieces were falling swiftly into place.
