In light of the recent episode, I think we’re starting to zero in on the core of Murray’s recent mini arc regarding Azune VS Demodus. Really, the issue of Azune, period
Two episodes ago, Azune approaches Murray about the upcoming Einfasen meeting. Already nervous. Terrified. He needs all the evidence he can bring against Tachonis. The moment he mentions needing to ask Demodus to come as a witness, Murray flips from ‘I’ll help how I can’ to a scene-long spiel of veiled how dare you endanger this child sanctimony, insistence that Azune’s so good at this, he can’t stop lying now, dangling ice cream as a consolation prize if Einfasen doesn’t kill him, and poetic babble about how his pretty sunset eyes mean he’s still innocent et cetera et cetera. Only for Marisha to confirm on Vaelus’ insight that Murray 100% knows that Azune is right but ‘That doesn’t matter right now.’
Eventually, after Vaelus steps in with actual words of connection to Azune—showing up an entire speech in 2.5 sentences—Murray caves enough to say she’ll talk to Demodus. While still talking to Azune like she’s deigning to let him borrow some forbidden treasure, she’s going to be glued to his side to make sure you don’t fuck this up for him, Azune.
We move to the meeting with King Gus. Lots of good moments. Murray donated an important portent and won Gus as a solid ally! Nice!
And then we get to this recent episode, where Gus asks Murray:
Gus: “You’re not a sorceress, are you?”
Murray, immediately disgusted: “No, everything I have I’ve worked my ass off for.”
Gus, slowly: “I wouldn’t have known that that’s not true.”
Fast forward to Azune and Murray heading over to talk with Demodus. She tells Azune she’ll do the talking, Demodus trusts her most, he’ll see Azune as ‘stranger danger’. Azune, who was also there in the sewer, helping in the rescue mission. Azune, who Demodus himself gawped at with googly eyes and conjured an illusory knight for to help in battle.
Murray: “I trust you, Azune.”
Murray: “You’re my best friend in this whole cursed fucking world. If you ever do anything to betray that trust, I swear to god.”
Azune: “There you are again, talking to me like that way that I told you you do sometimes. Like I’m a part of something that you know I’m not.”
Murray: “Trust keeps people in danger.”
Azune: “If you say no, I won’t take him.”
Murray: “You’ll help me get him out of the city after this?”
Murray: “Skepticism keeps people alive. Let’s go.”
Said by a bursar who’s been behind a desk for decades and started actively scheming a week and a half ago, to the young man who’s been living a double life since he was a teenager.
They get to Demodus. Murray ‘Let me talk to him’ Mag’nesson offers her sweet honey bear:
Murray: “Listen to me, you are going to be able to get out of this apartment. I’ve got a plan for you tomorrow. You are going to go away tomorrow. I need you to pack all of your bags.”
Demodus: “I don’t have anywhere to go.”
Murray: “You do now. But we need one more favor from you.”
Demodus: “You got it. Whatever you need.”
Hot-potatoing the talk immediately to Azune himself, as though hoping (expecting) him to fumble it. Instead, Azune brings up the need for testimony and…
Azune: “Demodus, are you brave enough—”
Murray: “Listen to the full proposition before you—"
Demodus: “I thought you were done talking.”
Azune goes on to be as explicit as possible about how dangerous the situation is. How potentially fatal. He can’t just let Demodus march into the lion’s den without clear eyes. The way Murray was fine to let him do solo before being embarrassed into budging on Demodus.
We get to the Stahlkeep. Azune adds some Einfasen to his face. Presents his evidence, Demodus included. This, combined with whatever Harondus has already told his house of him, powers that glorious Nat 20, and Lord Otto himself pours on the commendations. Murray and Demodus are dismissed before all of it comes out.
Demodus: “If you ever need anything, or if a bunch of demons attack tonight, I’ll make sure that whatever I do in Timmony—”
Murray: “You’ve done enough.”
(You can’t stop now, Azune. You’re so good at this.)
In the midst of the big departure, Murray misses the rest of the meeting. Captain Nayar gifted a new weapon, the symbol of House Einfasen, all laced through with half-joking insinuation of relation and queries about the source of his sorcery.
And we’re left to wait on the fallout when Azune inevitably brings this to Murray’s attention. The I-told-you-so of it all, see how good you are at this, Azune? The villains see one of their own in you! A fellow sorcerer, practically family, ha ha
Maybe it’ll be papered over. Ice cream and all. Or maybe it’ll finally be the thing that takes the lid off the whole mess that’s been simmering under the surface since the moment Azune mentioned Demodus at all.
More, an issue that has clearly come up again and again in their relationship, as Azune clearly clocked it well enough to mention it to Murray down in the sewers. His fear that Murray’s view of him might be stained by the institution he’s a plant in. (No, no, she could never hate him! It’s all in his head! He’s a good egg!) But this whole bit of the story arc has proven that even if Murray doesn’t think she lied then, she definitely wasn’t telling the truth.
Because the thing is, no, I don’t think the institution—be it the Arcane Marshals or House Einfasen or any other labeled faction—is the problem.
I think it’s always been the sorcery.
Demodus doesn’t have two copper to rub together!
Azune came from a village so blasted and destitute it’s possible they didn’t even have currency anymore. They shared hovels and starvation. Azune and Mayali probably only encountered money for the first time when the mercenaries came to harvest some children.
Everything I have I busted my ass for! The way all wizards do! The way my good little children students of 20+ years do! Unlike all those nepo baby sorcerers.
Azune was born into below-poverty living, starving every day of his life until age twelve. At which point he and his thirteen-year-old sister were swept into a war to avoid said starvation at the cost of their own parents’ lives. He was a soldier until he was sixteen, meaning Thjazi and the Torn Banner kept him on the battlefield until the very very end of the Falconer’s Rebellion, at which point Thjazi handed over a teenage veteran to his brother who had two kids the boy’s age. Not when he was twelve. Not when he was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen (bleeding to death and forgotten in the mud as the wyverns came down). From age sixteen to his hiring in the Arcane Marshals, he lived on another family's couch.
These rich bastards are trying to take over my school!
Said the woman who comes from a family with a well-known name, formerly big money, now moderate money, with a mouth full of jewels and one hand on a university’s purse strings, who accepted a teenage war vet when Thjazi Fang passed him into her mentorship as a favor. Not on the books, we can guess. Azune came from a void of education. King Gus had to sneak out of the dog kennel to creep into the house and learn his letters. Did Azune's home have any books to its name, any starving teachers? When and how did he get to learn his letters? What schooling did he have, if any, before Murray took him on as a side gig? Obviously on the side, because while the students of the Pentevral might need financial aid, they would at least have some kind of record of living and/or schooling prior to that, unlike the youth from a dead village and a boyhood spent at war.
It’s all in your head. I could never hate you, Azune.
Because Azune’s not just a good egg, not just a boy scout, but ‘one of the good ones.’
Who never questions her. Never doubts her. Champions every feat she accomplishes. Soldiers up and silences himself when he dares to ask for permission to speak with one of her (real) students (who actually matter) about testifying and she purges all the excuses and platitudes he already suspected were coming, swallowing it down as he has likely swallowed so much more in the length of their friendship. Drinks and knife-throwing lessons when he was just budding out of adolescence, being shined up and sharpened for Thjazi’s needs, both mentors knowing all along they were handing him over to the Arcane Marshals to be a useful plant for the rebels at age…what? Twenty? Nineteen? Doesn’t matter.
Murray knows he’s right. But that doesn’t matter right now.
Because for all that she cares about him, for all that she’s had his back in scheming and battle, the fact remains: Azune Nayar wields sorcery. A form of magic so entrenched in Murray’s mind as being the stamp of Sundered Houses and upper-class power, that when that trait appears in an individual whose every single fact of lived history not only aligns with the level of scrappy, do-it-yourself, pull up by the bootstraps origins she champions, but wildly outclasses them in terms of sheer horror, trauma, and destitution, none of it matters.
Azune being a child soldier. Azune living two thirds of his life in varying levels of constant starving malnutrition. Azune being actively molded by every person in his life with a constant stream of speechifications and attaboys to keep him living as a useful thing, with not one person, including his parents who sacrificed everything to get him a sword and a meal, telling him his life was worthwhile for its own sake; that he didn’t have to fight for others’ causes, that he deserved access to joy and safety and comfort like all the people he was told to fight and lie and kill and die for.
Azune reveals his sister was the faux assassin for Photarch Yanessa. Murray latches onto him, insisting she must be found, she must speak out against House Halovar and vouch for Murray’s testimony. Azune asks her if he can ask Demodus to come as a witness before the Einfasens. How dare he? This could ruin the kid’s life. Now get in the lion’s den, friend, you’ve got this.
Azune, who she has known for at least a decade, who she tutored after a life of combat and not a single classroom or unbroken roof to speak of, who has proven himself over and over and over again to be trustworthy to his friends and venom to their enemies…
You’re my best friend in this whole cursed fucking world. If you ever do anything to betray that trust, I swear to god.
Trust doesn’t have shit to do with it. It isn’t even the same brand of constant fumbling of care that every other peer has exhibited in Azune’s life when it came to reducing him to a utility with a face. The math in Murray’s head boils down to Azune is a sorcadin sorcerer -> Sorcery is a hallmark of the Sundered Houses and high society rich bastards -> Sorcery is bad -> Sorcerers are bad -> Azune is only my friend as long as he stays within the lines I’ve drawn around him
And oh, but those lines are cramped and crooked.
He’s an equal and a peer among the Schemers, expected to always punch above his weight class, so competent, so good at what he does, him and his lists and his proactive work and his battle prowess and his finessing of villains, 10/10
Unless he isn’t. Unless he’s a lost little boy scout (who is also too useful to the mission to stop now) who only needs a pep talk and a tissue and an ice cream party to get his ass out the door and away from daring to think of including her helpless 22-year-old sweet honey bear baby boy grad student in his evidence. If Azune dies, he dies. But he’ll probably be fine. He’s so good at this. Any sorcerer would be. And if he isn’t? Well, that’s one less sorcerer.
And now. Now, after she watched him physically alter himself to better assimilate with their enemies, after she’s about to learn of his promotion, his new weapon, his successful absorption into House Einfasen as their own official mole to infiltrate the Candescent Creed and House Halovar, how much bigger will this bias grow in her? When will the inevitable hit, with Azune joining Thjazi in her realm of ‘suspect and accuse first, ask questions later?’ What scene will we have, to Azune’s face or behind his back, Murray ruefully shaking her head…
It’s just. He’s so good at it, isn’t he? I swear I meant it as a compliment before, but now I’m worried that he’s too good at it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he really was part of the houses. Best to keep a close eye on him.
And in the face of that, what will Azune be able to say? What reaction can he possibly have that doesn’t dig the hole deeper in her eyes?
He’s been meek to her. He’s been in awe of her. He’s been a wreck in front of her. He’s never, not once, raised his voice against her. The most he’s ever done is point out that—for all she swears he’s her best friend—she still talks at him like someone she doesn’t trust, someone who’s part of a thing she hates. Even after all this time.
Azune is trying so hard to be seen as ‘one of the good ones.’ A good soldier. A good Schemer. A good thing person. ‘Sorcerer’ has never been on his mind as an identity. Sorcery’s just a thing he has, despite coming from a commoner family. And so I wonder if, in light of that moment shared with King Gus, Azune might be zeroing in on that factor for the first time. Finally seeing the invisible box Murray’s put him in to explain why she treats him the way she does.
I don’t know if he’ll be able to bring it up to her. I’d hope so. It would be the most cathartic version of that confrontation. This young man, standing so clearly as a symbol for the unfair position of those left othered by their heritage in a place not their homeland, forced to assimilate to have any chance of survival, forced to bite their tongues and take the barbs of their peers’ biases or else lose their position as a friend, as one of the good ones. To do otherwise, to express anger at this lot, would mean--gasp!--they might not be good. They might be like those entitled sorts. Perhaps a true bastard of the Sundered Houses, after all.
If it isn’t him who calls her out, it either has to be Murray having an awakening on her own, or someone in the party who can properly clock the situation and be an equal or greater caustic force than Murray once her hackles come up. Julien is far from afraid of playing the asshole and was quick to stick up for Occtis when he and Thaisha were having their prickly moment in Tannesar. Thaisha would probably see the signs and have no issue calling out the hypocrisy on the wall. Bolaire’s Bolaire. Not sure who else could handle it.
Or, for maximum knife twist, have Murray confronted by someone with her same issue, turned up to its logical awful conclusion.
Maybe a fellow rebel mistakes Azune for the things he’s pretending to be and takes a shot at him. Either verbally shitting on him or perhaps actively attacking what looks like a Sundered House minion. In that moment, Murray gets to hear her biases parroted back to her without the shield of internal excuses to mask it. Worse, what if it’s a fellow wizard? One of the Pentevral faculty or another grad?
Come on, Mag’nesson, you know it’s true. The guy’s just another sorcerer lackey with the Sundered Houses. Probably one of their bastards they boosted up the ladder. Fuck him.
And what would she say? Murray, who worried for Occtis Tachonis, redeemed of his family name by being a wizard student? Murray, who saw Wicander Halovar, freshly horrified by some revelation about his corrupt family that sent him running, shaken with the reality that he is no cleric, but a sorcerous descendant of a monster, and insulted him for his naivety all the way out the door? Murray, who has coasted the line between friendship and distrust with Azune ‘Came from less than nothing’ Nayar, for at least a decade as the latter jumped through every hoop to stay in her good graces, to earn his place as a friend, only for it all to prove as conditional and flimsy as a business transaction?
