Tirmanak Oathbinder, Hand and Guildmaster of Order’s Guild on Ranar, Tier Six Sword of the Path, watched out the window as his last remaining Hand left the Guildhouse for Asihanya. Something was very wrong there; so far, it didn’t look like it was something against the rules of Order’s Voice, but he still needed to have someone there to watch things and there were no living Hands on Asihanya.

At least, not if Grandma Tillon was really dead. Tirmanak wasn’t confident she was; it wasn’t the first time he’d heard news of her passing. She was old enough that he had no idea how old she really was, but she was tough to go with her age. He didn’t know how she’d covered half a planet on her own, but she had. More than that, she’d been right there when whatever-this-was started. Somehow.

He believed the other seven deaths he’d heard about. They were younger and far less resilient; four of them were Knives instead of Hands, anyway. They hadn’t found anything, but that wasn’t a surprise with Knives. Most were a little mad and few were worth much outside of the direct duties they were given; that was why they were all bound, after all. It was a sad result of their pasts, but most were not much wiser before in any case; otherwise, they wouldn’t have ended up where they did.

“Sir?”

Tirmanak turned away from the window to face the aide who interrupted him. “What is…”

There was a box in the aide’s hands, a box Tirmanak recognized. “Zon? There’s a message from Zon?” He almost didn’t believe it. All of the Guild Houses on Zon were long since closed; they were poor enough and backwards enough that he hadn’t even needed to station any secret Knives there.

They were doomed; he simply didn’t know when. It was entirely likely that the primary population, humans, would be entirely gone by the time Zon was next relevant. They were the cause for Zon’s decline, and Tirmanak had never seen a world so low redeem itself without a major change and a great deal of time.

There was only one man left trying to save Zon as far as Tirmanak knew, and he doubted old Kalo knew just how bad it was. He was stuck in his little corner, managing a Duchy of all things. While he was old enough to remember better times, he wasn’t old enough to remember when Zenith ruled the continent, much less the long-lost countries elsewhere on Zon. Tirmanak was old enough, so these days he only visited Zon when he had to.

Even so, no one else on Zon would have been able to send a message to the guild’s Zon box, and anything Kalo felt was important probably was.

It was a short note.

Tir,

Ran into a seemingly young man earlier this week; an interesting one, older than he looks. Why, he might even be older than you!

He says he’s not associated with Order’s Guild, but he’s on a Quest to “assist the Voice”. I’m pretty sure he also talks to the Voice and gets answers.

Seems nice enough. Isn’t interested in my daughter; too bad.

I’m in Zenith. You know the house.

Kalo

Tirmanak stared at the note. It was either an answer to his prayers or the last nail in his coffin. Most likely, it was both; the Voice liked to test the adherents of Order, and this certainly looked like a test. It hadn’t chosen a new Hand on its own in the Cluster in centuries; worse, the Voice had rejected all of the possible Hand candidates for the last three Choosings. It was almost like the Voice was preparing to abandon the Cluster to its own devices, to manage the peoples’ interfaces but be no more active than that. It’d happened before, to other Clusters, but Tirmanak had never expected it to happen to his own.

If the Voice had chosen a Hand on its own, that was the best news Tirmanak had heard in decades.

Zon was in worse shape than Tirmanak remembered. The problem wasn’t the infrastructure; that seemed to be in good shape. Still, exactly three off-planet-allowed portals? And the only one that allowed anyone to use it was nearly abandoned?

Zon didn’t have centuries left. It probably didn’t even have more than a few decades. In some ways, that was for the best; if Kalo could hold out, he might be able to save his people. Tirmanak was confident there were some other strongholds that would have a chance, as well. Zenith wouldn’t; Zenith was doomed.

Tirmanak watched the population around him as he flew to the old Guildhouse, the house Kalo now used as his Zenith residence. The signs of Zenith’s decline were all around him.

Most of the population was mid Tier Two or low Tier Three, even the elders. The few people he saw at high Tier Three or low Tier Four were clearly wealthy and looked down on the rest of the population. If the wealthy were only managing half-a-Tier higher than the poor, it was a very bad sign. Either the wealth wasn’t enough to let people rise, or rising high didn’t result in wealth.

No matter which it was, it was a very low cap for a Tier Five to Tier Seven world; Tirmanak couldn’t remember which Zon was, but it was somewhere in there. The first time they had a real monster tide, Zenith would fall, and that would bring down a lot of other settlements.

The fact that everyone he saw was human didn’t help matters any. Humans had their place, certainly, but populations that were entirely human tended to become insular. More than that, Zon had once held significant populations of other races; for that matter, he’d seen some of his own people the last time he visited. Where were they?

When he arrived at the house, he hopped off the flyer, tucked it away, then headed inside, only to stop a few feet from the door.

When had Kalo added wards to the building? For that matter, how? They were complex, even if they didn’t seem particularly powerful.

Tirmanak turned to look behind himself and realized that he’d actually already tripped some of the wards. They were hidden; it would take a skilled wardsmith to set something like that up. Where had he found one on Zenith?

Tirmanak shook himself and continued inside. All of them so far were concentrating on warning people; the inner layer appeared to have a complex Intent-based shield woven together with another shield Tirmanak couldn’t immediately decipher. He raised his estimation of the wardsmith; this wasn’t just skill, this was the work of an expert.

The door opened easily. Tirmanak nodded; its built-in recognition must still recognize the Guildmaster as an authorized resident. That was as expected, at least.

The young man sitting just inside the door wasn’t. He jumped to his feet, dropping the book he was examining, and said something completely incomprehensible before darting away, still shouting. Had he recognized Tirmanak’s species? One of the words sounded somewhat like it.

Tirmanak picked up the dropped book, mildly annoyed at the thought of damaging such a valuable thing, only to find that it was both incredibly skillfully made, with all of the letters the same size and shape as the same letter elsewhere, and just as incomprehensible as the running human. It was in a language he didn’t know.

Tirmanak sniffed. There was an odd scent in the area; he thought it was the human’s scent. It had some odd hints that made him think of the E!kta, a species native to the underground areas of Ranar. That was strange. The language in the book was definitely not E!kta, and neither were the words he’d spoken.

“Tir!” Kalo’s voice led the man himself down the hallway. “Come on in; I was worried something was wrong when the new doorman ran to me in a panic.”

Tir sat the book down on top of the chair the doorman was in when he opened the door. “When did you get a doorman? Why? I saw the wards.”

Kalo led the way to a room set up for three people to talk in comfort; Tir didn’t remember a room like it from his previous visit. “Serenity’s Quest involves freeing some specific slaves, and you know how I feel about slavery. I offered them positions while they learn Bridge. Can’t afford to pay them, but food’s cheap.”

Tirmanak grinned at Kalo’s discomfort. “I do remember how you felt about them. Food is cheap, hm?” Food was not cheap. Food was never cheap; even a Tier Six like him had to spend a good bit of his income on food. It would be easier if he spent most of his time in dungeons, but he simply didn’t have time for that anymore.

Kalo shrugged uncomfortably. “Cheaper than the other options. Or than putting people on the street to die. Some of the work needs doing, and I can afford it. If it gets too bad, I’ll ask Serenity to kick some kopeks in; he’d probably be happy to. Plus, I’m not paying him; covering food even for a group is cheaper than what I’d pay someone else to guard Andarit.”

Tirmanak straightened. Andarit needed a guard? Something big must have changed in the years since his last visit to Lowpeak; if he remembered correctly, she ought to be old enough to take care of herself by the normal Lowpeak standards. “Tell me about what’s going on and about this Serenity.”

“...don’t ask me how we tracked it, I still haven’t figured out how Doreen was able to track something that wasn’t there most of the time, but we eventually caught up to it in a small mining town…” Tirmanak’s story was interrupted by the door opening.

Two people stepped through the door. Tirmanak quickly dismissed the woman; Andarit looked almost exactly like her mother, and Tirmanak knew the Duke’s wife was long since dead.

That meant the man had to be the person he was looking for. He was on the tall side for Zon, but not for humans in general, with brown hair and mismatched eyes; one was an odd purple, while the other was a seemingly normal green, and Tirmanak couldn’t be sure if they glowed or if it was just an odd trick of the light.

Even more alarming, he couldn’t feel the man’s aura to tell how strong he was. The only possible reasons for that were if he were extremely weak or if he had excellent aura control. Tirmanak wasn’t going to bet on extremely weak; he knew Kalo better than that. That meant that even once Tirmanak felt Serenity’s aura, he wouldn’t be able to entirely believe it; anyone trained or talented enough to restrict their aura could also lie with it, at least to an extent.

He spread his aura out a little farther; it wasn’t entirely polite, but Tirmanak didn’t care under these circumstances. The feelings he got back were unusual and slightly disturbing. Tier Three or Four, yet ancient in a way Tirmanak had rarely felt. There was a darkness tinged with sadness and guilt, yet at the same time a restful peace that whispered of the chance to lay down his burdens. Lying under it all was a sort of rich, magical feel that Tirmanak couldn’t place even though it seemed familiar.

No, wait. It was the same as what he’d felt from the wards. That made some sense of the good aura control; poor aura control could disrupt wards while they were being built. Still, a Tier Three ward specialist who might be a Hand chosen by the Voice itself? That was most unusual. Hands were always meddlers; they tended to get involved in all sorts of things, especially dangerous things. It was part of why he was always short of people. A specialty in something as narrow as wards was extremely unusual.

Tirmanak smiled at the stranger. This was going to be interesting, and it held the potential to be very good.“I assume you’re Serenity? Kalo has told me a great deal about you. I’m Tirmanak, of Order’s Guild on Ranar.”

It was better to leave off most of his titles, especially his Name. People tended to become upset when they realized they were in the presence of the Oathbinder.