Both of the skycloak guards reared back in alarm, like Valerie had just swept her cloak aside and revealed she’d been hiding a tiger beneath it. The man on the left of the door had an unfortunate combination of curly blonde hair and big eyes that made him look comically childish as he stared at Valerie, gaping like a fish gasping for air. On the opposite side was a tanned woman with soulful dark eyes blown impossibly wide in shock, and she was the first of the two to regain enough composure to ask:

  “For what reason, Captain Vayon?” Her voice was deep for a woman, but the effect was rather undercut by the tremor that ran through it. She seemed to be determined to look anywhere but at Valerie, ostensibly searching for a threat.

  “Enemies manoeuvre in the city,” Valerie said darkly, “and they almost certainly intend to take action against the Order. We must bar entry to outsiders until the threat has been dealt with.”

  The man with the curly hair rushed into the guard room, hissing for someone’s attention. Lucas decided to take that as a good sign, feeling optimistic. Valerie’s declaration was being taken seriously rather than summarily dismissed, so they were already on track, rather than careening into one of the failure scenarios his companions had described.

  Their plan was, admittedly, an audacious one. An attempt to kill two birds with one stone.

  “Enemies? Here?” The remaining guard said, sounding panicked.

  “Human enemies, Arryl,” Florence clarified, drawing the woman’s wide-eyed attention. Florence’s tone was placating as she continued, “Captain Vayon has been investigating rogue elements in Dawnguard who seek to depose Lady Claire’s position and pursue their own agenda.”

  “Is that why you’ve been away from the front lines so long?” Arryl asked. The sight of Florence had seemed to calm her somewhat, her voice gaining confidence and her expression evening out. She couldn’t quite meet Valerie’s icy stare though.

  “I remained here to handle a threat to Lady Claire and the Order at large, yes,” Valerie said. “The present situation as posed by Master Haddem is not quite accurate. The Order needs to have all the information available to make a decision, but before that, we must secure our safety against outside threats.”

  The woman seemed to find her confidence at that. “The Order is composed of the greatest warriors on Aerth! Even with Lady Claire absent, who could pose a threat to us?”

  “One that greatly outnumbers us,” Valerie said.

  Arryl opened her mouth to reply, but she was interrupted by a newcomer appearing at the door and growling in a deep voice, “What’s this I hear about someone ordering the gates closed?”

  He was a short, pale man, and he was wearing only the Order’s signature armour, his cloak evidently left behind in his haste. Scars crisscrossed all over his face, and one eye was closed. The remaining eye was a milky white, but it fixed on Valerie when he saw her. His lips pressed into a grim line.

  “Captain Hull,” she greeted him just as the blond guardsman returned, cowering behind the newly arrived Captain’s shoulder despite being a head taller. There were a dozen more lingering back there in the room, too, all stretching to get a look at what was happening.

  “Captain Vayon,” he replied, eye narrowing. There was a tension in his jaw. “I will ask again: what’s this about closing the gates?”

  “A threat to the Order is making moves in the city as we speak,” Valerie said. “There are organisations who believe that Lady Claire is undeserving of her position, and the Order should be forced to withdraw its support for her. It is urgent that we close the Moontower to outsiders until the threat has been handled.”

  “You don’t have the authority to make that kind of decision,” Captain Hull said, frowning.

  “But you do, Captain,” Florence said.

  Captain Hull’s frown deepened. “You vouch for Vayon’s words, Wynn?”

  “I do.”

  The pale man sighed. His gaze turned to Lucas next. “And what about you, boy? You appear to be an outsider, to my eye.”

  Lucas was taken off guard for a moment. He hadn’t expected to be brought into this conversation at all, and he scrambled to get his brain into gear. “I’m in training, but I’m confident the wards will let me through.” Whatever Claire had done to let him into her quarters, he was fairly sure the same principle would apply to the magical barrier that would enclose the Moontower. “And I’m here because I’ve seen the threat for myself, Captain. One of them tried to kill me.”

  “He’s my apprentice and assistant,” Valerie cut in smoothly. “He has access to magic that helps me with my… condition.”

  “Something happened to whatever Lady Claire gave you?”

  “It was destroyed. Ser James here has been an adequate replacement.”

  “I see. And was its destruction anything to do with this current crisis you’re describing to me?”

  “Tangentially,” Valerie said. “Regardless, I have strong enough suspicions Dawnguard is about to go through significant turmoil that I must insist on closing the gates to outsiders as soon as possible.”

  “Hm.” There was a beat of silence as Hull flexed his jaw. “When I heard your name thrown about, I assumed this would be part of some play to force the Order to throw everything at retaking Pentaburgh. Was I incorrect?”

  “You were,” Valerie said. “As I was telling your comrade, the Order doesn’t have all the information on the matter. Retaking Pentaburgh may not be necessary.”

  “That’s significant, coming from you,” Hull said.

  “Lady Claire shared with me some theories of hers, and I recently went on a mission to confirm them.”

  Hull’s one good eye narrowed. “Explain, Captain.”

  ~~~

  Closing off the Moontower wasn’t so simple as pushing a button at the order of one captain. There were five guard posts much like Hull’s, and they all had to activate their own elaborate magical matrix. Lucas only got a glimpse of the arrays employed, and they made his head spin. They seemed to employ hundreds of branches of magic, requiring countless materials and incredible amounts of mana. In Valerie’s words, it was designed to defend against almost anything. Nothing was impenetrable, but the Order’s defences were meant to be the closest thing.

  Theoretically, anyway. The big problem with that declaration was that they’d only ever been activated in drills and tests, to date. They’d never truly been tested.

  Lucas hoped things would remain that way. He hoped their little ruse turned out to be a deception they’d have to beg forgiveness for, rather than an inadvertently prophetic move. They were sure the Harwyck situation and Claire’s absence would indeed lead to political strife of some description, but they weren’t at all certain what form that would take. If it escalated enough for the Order to genuinely come under threat to the degree that the barrier was needed, everything had gone dreadfully wrong.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  But it was a genuine possibility. They weren’t being completely deceitful, at least. Still, Lucas felt a little bad as he watched the Wands of the Order rush around, frantically working to activate the barrier and close the Moontower to outsiders for the first time in living memory.

  It had to be done, he told himself. They hadn’t had any perfect options before them; this path was just the most convenient of the bunch. The one where, hopefully, the least skycloak blood would be shed.

  A better part of an hour went by before the Wands were ready to activate the barrier, and that was more than enough time for word of what was happening to travel. People were gathering in the courtyard outside the atrium, watching from a distance. Tension built. The low din of conversation quietened until only the buzzing static of whispers remained. And when they fall started to feel it activating, silence fell.

  It was unmistakeable. Lucas was sure even someone who had zero ability to sense mana would have noticed it. There was an electric hum in the air. Cold washed over him like an invisible wave, only for a warm wave to follow it. They alternated for a time, until the temperature reached an equilibrium. His ears popped. Goosebumps pricked his flesh. A shiver ran down his spine and jolted all his limbs at once.

  Then came the light, like a second sun had erupted high in the sky. He looked up. It was coming from the top of the Moontower. It should have been far too bright to look at, enough to sear his eyes, but he stared straight at it without issue even as it somehow seemed to brighten. Except, no, he soon realised it wasn’t brightening. It was spreading. Growing.

  Like a translucent curtain was being draped across the world, the magic of the barrier glided down from the very top of the tower and slowly, ponderously reached for the walls that surrounded the Order’s territory. The walls themselves seemed to glow as if they were absorbing the barrier’s power. In the distance, he could see that same translucent white light spreading over the archways.

  And then, just like that, it was done. The Moontower was closed to anyone but members of the Order. He didn’t know what the barrier would do to anyone who attempted to intrude. Considering how many people walked through the area on a daily basis, he hoped it wasn’t lethal.

  “Step one done,” he murmured.

  Beside him, Valerie nodded.

  The Moontower and the rest of the Order’s territory had been a hive of activity, but everything seemed to come to a halt as the barrier snapped into place. Skycloaks started to flood out of the atrium, filling the outer courtyards. Everywhere Lucas looked, people stood around, staring up in awe. All of them would have seen the barrier before. Never like this, though.

  Florence took the lead as their little trio made their way back to the atrium, heading for the grand staircase once more. As expected, the Masters of the Order were awaiting them.

  The Order adhered to a simple but odd structure. Simple, in that the ranks were fairly well-defined and delineated. Odd, in that the actual power wielded by the members of those ranks were far more varied.

  Only Lady Claire, at the very top, held absolute power over the Order of Five. Her word was absolute, unquestionable. If she wanted advice, she’d ask for it. Otherwise, you shut the fuck up and did what she said.

  Below her were the Masters, and, even though they were nominally all leaders of the Order, their influence tended to vary. Each of the Masters were in control of different aspects of the Order. There was a Master of the Front Lines (a Shieldmaster with a brilliant head for strategy called Azym), a Master of Logistics (a female Star called Kyo), a Master of the Tower (Haddem, who they’d met briefly earlier), and several dozen more, generally assigned based on what Claire didn’t want to deal with herself.

  After that came Generals, who were only active on the field of battle, in charge of different sectors of the Front Lines, and Stewards who were tasked with overseeing a region, like Deryn had been back in Taunton. Both were leaders and their commands were expected to be followed, but the resources assigned to them varied. Deryn hadn’t had any subordinates to command, for example.

  The masters were all able to assign adjuncts as they saw fit who could speak in their name, but Generals and Stewards didn’t necessarily have to follow their orders unless it came from the mouth of a Master, since Adjuncts were equivalent to Captains, which sounded awfully messy.

  Sitting below Generals and Stewards, Captains, too, were a complicated rank. Valerie was a good example of that. Though captains were generally supposed to be leaders of small squads, Valerie had never actually been given a position of command. She’d only ever been involved in missions as a co-leader.

  Then there were Rangers like Florence who were generally known to be the elite of the Order but hadn’t been given the rank of captain yet, and finally, the lowest full members were known as Acolytes, if they were referred to by rank at all, and they didn’t really have any actual power, save for their own personal strength. There were apprentices and students below that, but they didn’t really count, seeing as they were still in training.

  So the hierarchy of the Order was simultaneously clear and unclear. It generally worked when Claire was around, since it was understood the Masters were just doing what she wanted them to, and if there were disputes between them then she could come down from on high and untangle the mess with but a few words.

  But when she’d been gone for months, things weren’t so simple. It wasn’t that the masters were individually power hungry, according to Valerie; it was only inevitable that powerful people would have strong ideas about how things should be done, and even in an organisation dedicated to averting the extinction of the human race, petty rivalries would still pop up.

  Which made it difficult to know who could be trusted among them. Neither Valerie nor Florence knew any of the masters well enough to gauge how they’d react to Lucas’ appearance. As much as he despised the sneaking around, Lucas didn’t want to risk sparking a civil war in the Order over him. Their plan was to take things slow, scout people out one at a time, and bring people in on the secret only once they were thoroughly vetted.

  Eleven masters were present in the Moontower at that moment, and every single one of them stood at the bottom of the Grand Staircase, arranged in a line. It was notable to Lucas how there was no insignia or mark of their rank. They wore the same white armour and blue cloak as everyone else. Apparently, only Lady Claire wore a different uniform to the Order’s ranks. That felt rather symbolic.

  Master Haddem was the first to speak, “What is the meaning of this, Captain Vayon?”

  Under the gaze of the masters, Lucas simultaneously frustrated and relieved that he couldn’t involve himself in the coming confrontation. The Great Star bestowed upon him a translation spell that made all who heard him speak understand him in their native language, and it would’ve given him away instantly when he was surrounded by such a diverse array of people.

  He had to trust in Valerie and Florence, here. Luckily, they’d both proven themselves competent plenty already. He had faith.

  “Many have questioned why I remain in the Moontower despite the current crises ongoing along the Front Lines,” Valerie said, projecting her voice. The atrium went quiet as all the skycloaks present shamelessly listened in. “This is why. A threat seeks to strike at the Order directly, relying on Lady Claire’s absence and the distraction of the ongoing situation.”

  “This threat waited until the bulk of the force sent to Harwyck returned to act?” one of the Masters asked, a dark-skinned woman with short hair coloured gold.

  “Nhiti, Master of Defence,” Florence whispered to him, and Lucas nodded. Master Nhiti was a prime example of someone whose remit could easily find itself clashing with other Masters’, like the Master of Security.

  “It did,” Valerie said. It stung a bit that so much of this strategy relied on misleading the members of the Order. There was a threat out there in the city that was hostile to the Order, and it was very likely they would be planning something, seeking to take advantage of the ongoing crisis. But they didn’t actually know that for sure.

  That wasn’t the only thing they were going to shamelessly lie about before the day was done, though.

  Valerie spent a while conversing with the masters, essentially repeating the arguments that had gone down at the five gates. The Masters questioned her much more in depth than her fellow captains had, and some of them seemed outwardly hostile about it. The Moontower’s barrier would be visible throughout the city, and many claimed this action would spark off the very hostile actions Valerie was worried about.

  Rightfully so. That’s what they’d been hoping for when they enacted this plan.

  Eventually, it became clear Valerie really had done a lot of investigating, and actually had reason to believe there were significant hostile elements in the city the Order would have to deal with. That wasn’t a lie, either. She’d been working on weeding out these groups for quite a while. She even gave information Lucas hadn’t heard before, about groups other than the Darkstar, though none of them had silly names like that, acting more informal about it.

  Eventually, they got to the heart of the matter. “This comes at an inauspicious time,” Master Haddem said, frowning at Valerie. “You know well that the Order stands at a crossroads, and I have to say I am very surprised to see what road you’re advocating for, Captain Vayon. I would have thought you’d be one of the strongest supporters of retaking the Lost City.”

  Valerie took a deep breath, and Lucas felt himself holding his.

  Now came the part where she started outright lying.

  “I am not in support of retaking Pentaburgh,” Valerie said. “Because I believe that Lady Claire will have the means to summon Lucas Brown upon her return.”

  Discord :)