Seeker, Soldier, Spies

The sound of her sister’s tread came from the hall just outside the door.  She didn’t turn, simply finished twisting her hair into a knot at the back of her head and pinning the braid there.  The room was small—practically a closet—but it was enough for her purposes.

“Where this time?” Jude asked softly.  Lyyn glanced back over her shoulder with a brief frown.  The commander of the Retribution was leaning in the doorway, her arms crossed and brow furrowed, as if worried.

I suppose that answers that question—either she wasn’t told or she’s trying to make sure that she wasn’t lied to.  “Arathi.  Stromgarde.”  She reached down and picked up her throwing knives, sliding two into the sheathes in each bracer.  “I leave as soon as I’m ready.”

“Which will be in the next twenty minutes, from the look of it.”  Jude watched as she slid two more daggers into the hidden sheaths along her ribcage, then glanced toward the pack that leaned against the dummy where she stored this armor.  A second stood alongside it, a little broader in the shoulder and chest, made for a man rather than a woman.  That one wasn’t bare.  “Have you told him?”

“Not yet.”  She paused, staring at nothing for a few moments before she turned to her sister.  “Will you look out for him?”

“In what world wouldn’t I?”  Jude smiled sadly.  “I was doing that long before you married him, little sister.”

“I know.”  Lyyn drew a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment.  “I just—I don’t like—”

Jude straightened from her lean and cleared the three paces that separated them.  Long-fingered hands settled on her shoulders.  “Then why the hell didn’t you tell Shaw no?”

“Because there is exactly one Auroran sister that’s allowed to do that and it is not me.”

One corner of Jude’s mouth curved up into a grin.  “We could have Quin tell him no for you.”

Lyyn choked on a quiet laugh, reaching up to cover one of her sister’s hands with her own.  “I wasn’t talking about Quin and you know it.  Besides, if he’s asked this of me, it must be important, right?  After all the bluster about us being needed here?”  She turned away again, to finish gearing.  Dagger in her boot.  Gloves.  Cloak and mask next.  “He didn’t give me a lot of detail but caravans keep going missing between Khaz Modan and Stromgarde.  There’s reports of bandit activity.  Whispers about ghosts that should be long dead.”

“So he sends another to sort it through,” Jude said softly, her hands falling limp to her sides.  “Promise me that you’ll be careful, Lyyn.”

“I’m always careful,” she said, forcing nonchalance into her voice.  “You know that.  I’ll be fine.  This—it’ll be a few weeks at most and then I’ll be back as if nothing’s happened.”  She fastened her cloak, leaving her mask dangling around her neck and hood hanging down her back, and stooped to pick up her pack.  “I have to say good-bye to Anny.  There’s a portal mage waiting for me at the edge of camp.”

“I’d wondered why they were lingering.”  Jude studied her for another moment, then sighed, reaching to hug her tightly.  “I’ll tell the rest that you’re on assignment.  Nothing else.”

“I’m sure Quin already knows.”

“Quin’s not the rest,” Jude said softly.  “And she’ll keep her mouth shut and make sure your husband isn’t climbing any walls.”

For a few seconds, Lyyn leaned into her sister’s embrace, eyes fluttering shut.  She sighed, breathing in the scent of woodsmoke and arcane dust that always seemed to linger around her older sister.  “I’ll be careful,” she promised softly.

“Thank you,” her sister whispered, then pressed a kiss to cheek and released her.  “Do I get to know the name I’ll be looking for on any rolls or reports?”

“I don’t even know yet,” Lyyn said with a sigh.  “That’s waiting for me with a gryphon once I get back to Stormwind.  Don’t tell Mum and Da.”

“I won’t,” Jude said, stepping aside to let her slip past and out into the hall.  “They’ll only worry.”

“And they shouldn’t,” Lyyn said as she headed down the hall, her sister two steps behind.  “It’s not like I’m bad at my job.”

“No,” Jude said.  Lyyn didn’t have to turn to know her sister was smiling wryly.  “Not at all.”

Lyyn turned, flipping the key to the storeroom to her sister.  “Lock it up for me, will you?  And make sure he doesn’t follow me.”

Jude’s brows went up.  “You think that he—”

“I hope not,” Lyyn said.  “Thought he was pretty happy out.  But let’s be honest.  You never know.”

All four hailing, ultimately, from Lordaeron. All four formerly of the Retribution of Arathor, two of the Servitors of Lothar, one of the Golden Veil. All four currently in service of the Argent Crusade, stationed near the wall in Hallowfall with the 58th Argent Crusade.

Jude Auroran, Commander Frost, Viscountess Greymantle - eldest surviving child of Sam Auroran, Earl of Ware, and his wife, the half-elven Mina Greymantle. Mage of the Kirin Tor, raised between Dalaran and Lordaeron, she has given her service to the Alliance, the Kirin Tor, and the Argent Dawn and Argent Crusade throughout her adult life. These days, she leads a remnant of her former Alliance auxiliary command under the banner of the Argent Crusade—not a terribly far calling from the one her unit started with decades before her joining. Mother of three, wife of a man many would call a barbarian given his origin and upbringing, she is approaching middle age but no less sharp or spry as she was when she first entered Alliance service nearly twenty years ago.

Karinlyyn Auroran Steelshatter - youngest child of Sam Auroran, Earl of Ware, and his wife, the half-elven Mina Greymantle. Lyyn has spent most of her adult life in the service of SI:7, in part at the suggestion of her father. After the fall of Theramore, her friends and family thought her dead for years as she worked deep cover for the organization. She resurfaced after several years of the work and made herself known to a pair of old friends, who kept her secret until she was ready to reveal herself again to her family. She’s still an active agent for the organization, though up until recently made her home base in Dalaran, where she lived with her husband Anthus and their daughter, Sky. A warning from a distant cousin sent the family elsewhere just in time, leading both to fresh service in Hallowfall with the 58th Argent Crusade under Lyyn’s sister, Jude.

Quin Adama - one of the few survivors of an expedition sent in support of Prince Arthas’s mission, returning to the shores of the Eastern Kingdoms after years trapped in Northrend. A former mage turned paladin, Quin gave her service to the Argents after she began to physically recover from the suffering she’d experienced in Northrend before the fresh campaigns in the north. She was raised as part of the Earl of Ware’s household, trained as a mage by Lady Mina, and was the lover of the late Tanitharil Auroran, former heir to the title. She, Jude, and Lyyn are as close as sisters, and Quin was among those that kept Lyyn’s secret when she revealed herself but wasn’t yet ready to approach their family. She and her husband, Connar, have spent a great deal of time in Northrend working for the Argent Crusade in the years since the end of the war with the Lich King, mopping up remnant forces and investigating rumors of problems. Rumor has it she, like Lyyn, also works for SI:7, but she rarely admits such. She is also assigned to Hallowfall with the 58th Argent Crusade.

[Part 6 is here.]

Several days ago.

“Master Shaw.  I understand that you have a problem that you’re hoping I can solve for you?”

For some reason, her robes felt heavier than usual as she pushed back her hood, letting red hair cascade free to fall across her shoulders.  Shaw glanced at her, then murmured something to the SI:7 agent at his side.  The agent nodded and slipped past her and out the door.

The lock clicked.  She crossed her arms.

“Was that necessary?” she asked.

“I don’t want to be interrupted,” Stormwind’s spymaster said, dropping heavily into a wood and leather folding chair.  Everything about the room’s furnishings screamed that this arrangement was temporary, that it was meant to be packed up and loaded onto a ship at a moment’s notice.  The building itself was an old warehouse, long fallen from use since the collapse of a few mercantile companies in the wake of the death of Theramore, now nearly a decade ago.  That the spymaster had set up shop here, near the docks, suggested that matters were just as serious as she’d started to suspect they were the night before when word had finally come of what they’d feared.

Shaw waved a hand toward another camp chair like the one he’d settled in.  “Have a seat if you’d like.”

“Will this take long enough to warrant that?”  She crossed to the offered chair anyway, smoothing her robes as she sat.  The emblems of the Argent Crusade and the Kirin Tor were embroidered on the breast, two points of a triangle where the last, on the bottom, was the emblem of the old Retribution—her unit of Alliance irregulars, the one all but wiped out when Theramore died.  They’d tried to reactivate them since but never succeeded.

And yet, here she was, settling into a chair across from Mathias Shaw who was either about to make a clandestine case for the same or appeal to her as a former officer of the Alliance in the hopes that she’d help.

Quin had told her what she’d managed to learn from the SI:7 agent that had been waiting to escort her here.  The idea had merit and left her wondering if Shaw had been paying a hell of a lot more attention whenever a mage was around than anyone had ever realized or if he’d consulted someone on the matter.  The way she saw it, there were equal odds for both.  Shaw watched as she settled, leaned back in her chair.  Jude Auroran met his gaze with a steady one of her own.

“So.”

He took a breath.  “Do you prefer Commander or Viscountess these days?”

“Commander is fine,” she said.  “It’s the title that matters in our current scenario, isn’t it?”

He hitched one shoulder in a slight shrug, canting his head momentarily to one side.  “Maybe.  Maybe not.  That depends on how you decide to look at it.”

“Are you appealing to me as the Viscountess Greymantle, then?  Because I’m not sure how far that will get you.  I know that you didn’t call me here to talk about my father or my family.  Did you?  Because if you did, that will take us into a very long conversation about how you hid the fact that my sister didn’t die from me and mine for several years while SI:7 used her for every deep cover operation it could.”

His brows lifted for a moment and he shifted in his chair to sit forward slightly.  “Your point is taken.”

“Good.”  She crossed her arms.  “Quin said this is about potentially being able to open a portal.  What’s the ask?”

“Would I be way off-base to assume that your family had some kind of anchor at your residence in Dalaran?  One that you used to make it easier to portal in and out?”

She watched him for a few seconds, then shrugged.  “You wouldn’t be.  Go on.”

“Would it still work?”

A chill crept through her.  “Would what still work?”

“Do you think you could still hone in on the anchor?  Open a portal to wherever it is now?”

She stared at him for a few seconds, letting the silence linger as she weighed her response.  “Probably.  Do I need to lay out all the reasons that could be incredibly hazardous given what the reports are saying?”

“You mean the fact that the anchor could have been vaporized or possibly be at the bottom of the sea.”

Jude nodded slowly.  “Those are distinct possibilities.”

Shaw exhaled, leaning forward with elbows against his knees.  “I had.  Clearly.  But would you know that before you opened the portal?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” she admitted.  “Depends on how we go about it.  If it’s been vaporized, obviously we won’t be able to locate it.  If it’s at the bottom of the sea, well.  That’s a different can of worms.”

“But if it’s not?  If it’s neither of those things?”

“Then it should be doable,” she said.  “To open it.  I’ll need a few mana stones so I can hold it open long enough for my forces to get through.”

Both of his brows went up.  “Your forces?”

“Shaw.  You don’t get to ask me to do this without it being my people going through and me with them.”  She held his gaze steadily, expression growing grim.  “But you’re not a fool.  You already knew that.  What’s the other part of the ask?”

“You already know what it is.”

She nodded slowly.  “And if I’m unwilling to bend knee to the High Exarch?  What then?”

Shaw paused, studying her for a few moments.  “Who would you answer to, then?”

“Master Shaw.  This isn’t our first dance and I sincerely doubt that it will be our last.  Who would I bend knee to?”

Her regarded her a few moments more, then leaned back in his chair.  “And if I can find a way to make that happen?  Somehow?”

“Then you’ll have us, such as we are, under all the old rules.  Assuming that’s acceptable.”

“What do you think?”

“I think you need us, Mathias,” she said, standing.  “I’ll figure out if there are any surviving anchors I can lock a portal onto.  Send a messenger if you’re able to make the arrangements.  You’ve got five hours before my people are on a boat under the Crusade’s banner.”

“Something tells me that’s a banner you’ll fly regardless of the arrangements made.”

She smirked.  “That’s because you’re a very astute spymaster.”

“Thank you for noticing.”  He stood and moved to unlock the door with a small key from the cuff of his sleeve.  She drifted behind him, waiting as he unlocked the door, his hand on the knob as he caught her gaze one more time.  “You are allowed to say no, Commander.  I’m not an idiot.  I know the price you and your people have paid over the years.”

“Someone just destroyed a place we called home for a very long time in many different ways, Master Shaw,” she said quietly.  “In this world, in this life, the paying never stops.  I’ll talk to the rest, but I imagine whether you can make it happen or not, we’ll still do it—just not under the official banner the Alliance would probably prefer.  Send the messenger to tell me either way.  I’d like to know which way the wind is blowing.”

He nodded and opened the door.  “Thank you, Commander.  For your time and discretion.”

“The pleasure was mine, Master Shaw.  I look forward to hearing from you.”

She walked out of the warehouse with her head held high, ignoring the looks and whispers that she caught from the corner of her eye as she made her way back to the docks, to the others.  Whatever happened, whatever word Shaw sent, if she could find an anchor, they’d go.  Damn the man, though, he’d known that already.

[See @isryael for part 5, @tenebreashember for part 4, @wynilthyrii for part 3, @graceintheshadows for part 2, and @lordaeronslost for part 1]

Several days ago…

“Adama! Where’s your CO?”

Quin pivoted toward the sound of the voice, her brow furrowing at the sight of the soldier who approached her, dressed in a mix of Alliance blue and gold with splashes of brown. The harbor at Stormwind was sheer bedlam, with soldiers and sailors everywhere, some collected into cohesive units that had been called up, some still being sorted. “Who’s asking?”

“Paranoid, are we?” The soldier flicked some hair from his face and for a moment, she thought he seemed familiar.

He knew my name. That accounts for something, doesn’t it? Then again, it wasn’t as if her face was unknown amongst at least a dozen military and auxiliary units across the Alliance and otherwise.

“She’s got enemies and so do I,” Quin said, her voice cool, controlled. “If you were us, you’d be paranoid, too. Who’s asking?”

The soldier grimaced and glanced around, then stepped closer. It wasn’t until he did that she recognized him as one of Shaw’s men. “Master Shaw needs a word with the Commander. Trying to get a small force in quickly to get the lay of the land and her name came up as maybe having an anchor point for a portal in.”

“Ah,” Quin crossed her arms, her Argent tabard bunching for a moment as she did. “She’s with the rest of the unit that was called up, over there by the Lady Grey. Surprised that Shaw is looking for an Argent unit for this.”

“He’s not,” the man—Riley, if she was remembering correctly—said, starting to move past her toward the dock where the brigandine Lady Grey lay at anchor. Quin fell in with him, her brow arching in invitation to continue. He glanced at her and made a face, but said, “You’re all still technically in Alliance service.”

“Technically,” she said crisply. “Now ask me how long it’s been since we acted as an Alliance auxiliary.”

He winced. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll admit that Shaw might’ve mentioned that he thought we could count on the support considering…”

“Considering it was Dalaran,” Quin said. “And up until recently, many of our families were there.”

“I won’t lie and say that the sudden departure of the Earl of Ware’s grandchildren and the scouring of his mercantile’s offices there wasn’t noticed by SI:7, Adama.”

“He would be a piss-poor intelligence service if that was missed.” Quin smirked. “You’re dying to ask, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Riley admitted. “But I won’t. I imagine someone already knows.”

“Likely,” she agreed. “Where does Shaw want to meet her?”

“I’m to escort her back to him.”

He stopped walking as Quin circled around to block his path, holding up a gloved finger. “Then wait here. I’ll bring her to you and I’ll brief the rest.”

He blinked. “Wait, brief? What do you mean?”

“Like you said. We’re still technically Alliance auxiliaries and what I heard was that if the commander can do what Shaw is going to ask, then we’re going ahead as an advance unit to get the lay of the land and do what we do.”

Riley started at her, some of the color draining from his face. “But—”

“No buts,” Quin said. “And Shaw thought anything other than that was going to happen, then we’ve been gone too long. Wait here. I’ll bring her to you.”

The warning had saved their lives.

From his small desk in their shared office at Valiance, Arcavius watched his longtime commander turned mentor as she read the latest report for what was now the third time.  Outside, the wind keened with a storm that had swept in off the water, leaving the windows and exterior walls coated in ice.

Somehow, given the reports that kept coming in, Northrend’s gales seemed far preferable to the fate that had come to so many who’d been in Dalaran instead.  Grimstryke’s warning had saved them to be certain, though the chill that crept down Arcavius’s spine had nothing to do with the cold.

Two more days and they’d have been back in Dalaran.  Half of them had been due to go and meet with some colleagues there ahead of their next duty rotation.  He had no doubt that whatever the plan had originally been for that, it was about to change.

He cleared his throat.  “Is there anything new in that one, Commander, or is it the same as the rest?”

“No,” she growled.  “No, not really.  No one seems to—blast it all.  No one seems to know anything beyond something apparently going terribly wrong just after the teleportation.  Some kind of attack.  This one at least suggests that more information could be forthcoming but I’ll be damned if—”

“Jude.”  Quin stood in the doorway, fully armored and cheeks ruddy from the cold.  Some of the snow and ice from outside was melting into her short-cropped hair in the warmth from the stove in the corner.  In her hand was an envelope bearing an Argent seal and she held it out toward the red-haired mage.  “Another report.  Orders were for your eyes first.”

Brow furrowing slightly, Jude came around the desk to take the letter from the paladin.  “Who delivered it?”

“You sure you want to know?”

Jude winced at that before she slid her thumb beneath the seal.  “Of course I don’t.  Do you think that—”

“I think that everything is coming at us very quickly and that every side is going to need every level-headed commander that they have at the ready,” Quin said, folding her hands behind her in a parade rest.  “Present company included.”

Jude winced again, reading the report once, then again.  Lips thinning, she handed it back to Quin.

“What is it?” Arcavius asked.

“We’re to leave a skeleton garrison here and immediately report to Stormwind for imminent deployment,” Jude said quietly.  “Alert the others, Cavandar.”

“Of course,” Arcavius murmured, feeling his heart start to crawl up into his throat.  “But why is the Argent Da—Crusade sending us to Stormwind for deployment?  Where are we going?”

“Seems that the attack on Dalaran involved nerubians,” Quin said, folding the report.  “Curious, that.”

“Very curious,” Jude agreed.  “But it does explain why they want us.”

“Yup,” Quin sighed.  “Because if there’s one thing that we’re as good at dealing with as undead…”

Arcavius winced.  “…it’s nerubians.”

“Da, did Mathair write to Quel’thalas about this?”

Sam Auroran looked up from the scattered papers on the desk, brows knitting as he regarded his younger daughter.  Karinlyyn stood a few feet away, an unfolded letter in her hand, the envelope tucked between her fingers bearing the seal of the Argent Crusade.  If she had been in a dress instead of the gray leathers, it would have been like looking at both of his daughters at once.  “No,” he said slowly.  “Your mother hasn’t written to anyone there since—hell.  I think since your cousin’s wife had their last child.”

She nodded slowly, frowning at the letter in her hands, violet eyes skipping over the page again as she read it a second time, then again.

Sam drew himself up straighter.  “Why?”

“Do you know if the Crusade reached out to anyone that might have served with them?”

He didn’t like the strange note in her voice.  The elder Auroran rounded the table, moving toward where his daughter stood just shy of a patch of sunlight that streamed through the windows at their townhouse in Dalaran—their primary home these days, with Lordaeron long lost and Theramore gone.  “Lyyn.”

Her gaze flicked up from the letter, regarding her father with a quiet, probing gaze.  “Do you?”

“Everyone I’ve spoken to—everyone that you and Anthus have spoken to for that matter—have been fairly firm about keeping it quiet and refusing to send  another contingent for fear of panic.  Three units in a matter of weeks without warning?  There hasn’t been anything quite like that since the war.”

She didn’t ask which war.  It didn’t matter.  Her gaze drifted back to the page.  “If no one is supposed to know and no one reached out from the Crusade, then why are there being inquiries made by someone else?”

“Who?”

She relinquished the letter to him, starting to pace as he scanned the missive, getting the gist.  His mouth soured, stomach twisting.

“Do you know these names?” He asked.

“Yes,” she said, leaning against the windowsill and staring out at the courtyard below where her husband did his best to keep their nieces and nephews distracted from everything going on.  Her daughter’s laughter echoed off the walls, cheering on her eldest cousin as he squared off against his uncle with practice swords.

Sam waited, but she didn’t seem inclined to elaborate.  He exhaled.  “Lyyn.”

“You know them, too,” she said.

“Not quite the way you do, I imagine,” he said quietly.  “You serve with them?”

“That is a complicated question, Da.”

The ghost of a smile curved his lips for a second before it was gone.  “I meant in the Crusade.”

“It was the Dawn, then,” she said.  “Grimstryke and Brightborn, yes.  Cieltus I knew by reputation.  It was at Light’s Hope, mostly.”

“Strike forces?”

She shook her head.  “Usually not but every so often they’d deploy a combat medic with us.”

Sam nodded slowly.  “But that doesn’t solve our mystery, does it?”

“If Mathair had written—”

“But she didn’t, like I said, not since his wife had their son.  Grimstryke must have found out another way.”

Sam sank down into one of the heavy leather reading chairs near the window.  “Then how?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted.  “I know Anny hasn’t written to anyone in Quel’thalas.  I haven’t had contact since the incident here a couple of months ago, but that was before any of this happened.  I hadn’t heard even a whisper since.”

Sam frowned, glancing toward the window.  “Then how would they know to make inquiries?”

“Perhaps it’s nothing,” she murmured.  “Perhaps it’s—hell.  Coincidence.  Grimstryke’s well-placed, it could just be something he caught a rumor about and pressed on.  The other two are associates of his.  It would track.”

“Does it really feel like it’s nothing?”  Sam glanced up at her with an arched brow.

Karinlyyn exhaled a sigh and leaned against the sill.  “No.  No, it doesn’t.”

Sam simply nodded, gaze drifting toward the window.  “Then I’ll leave it to you.”

“Another wrinkle,” his daughter murmured, taking the letter back.

“There always is,” he said, smiling reassuringly, the expression lingering for only a few seconds before it faded.  “We’ll find them.”