Chapter 19: Chapter 17

It's been three months since we were allowed to join the resistance and me and Argentian have learned everything Izzy and Willow had to teach us about it. I'll explain a little about how the resistance is structured. The resistance is divided into cells and each cell has a specific purpose. Only a tiny handful of people know the whole picture and they are probably kept well hidden. We're part of a four-man information gathering cell and report to a cell of handlers. Most members don't know about any other cells beyond their own and the one they report to, this keeps the organization safe in case of members getting captured.

 

In other news, me and Izzy have become closer, I'd call us friends at this point. Argentian and Willow have grown closer in a similar way. She calls him gramps now; fitting, I think. Izzy has told me some about her life, and she's lived a hard one. She was captured at a young age by slavers and put to work as an entertainment slave, though she hasn't told me what all that entails, but I can make a guess. Eventually she managed to gather enough information and lead a slave uprising, securing her freedom and freedom for her comrades. Then the resistance tracked her down and she joined up, now she makes a living traveling around singing songs and gathering information. My life is boring in comparison, though I wouldn't trade it for anything.

 

Anywhoozle, today was like any other for the last months. I was telling stories to the music of Willow while Izzy gathered information from the patrons of this little tavern and Argentian was drinking. Suddenly Willow got a weird look on her face and immediately ran upstairs. I managed to finish my story before following her. I found her in our room looking over a piece of paper. Then she said: “Get the others, we've got orders.”

 

So I went and brought the others to the room and Willow finally explained. “We've been ordered to the capitol, though they didn't say why. We're to signal them when we get there for further orders. They did say it was urgent though, so we should probably hurry.”

 

“Well, alright then. Pack up everyone, we'll be leaving in the morning. We'll rent a cart again. Sorry Argentian you'll have to drive once more.” Izzy said quickly. We've got some money put aside for situations like this. We earned it by taking down bandit gangs. Some of them were connected to the church so we made it our mission to clean up a little.

 

We made ready to leave and the day passed quickly. The next morning we headed out and started towards the capitol in the heartlands of Rustria. It would take us about a week of constant travel to get there so we had prepped as much as we could in the half a day we had. Food and water were the main things we had to gather, plus feed for the horse. We made good time, staying the night in villages and towns along the way. We only ran into bandits once during the trip but a quick Fireball took care of them, no problem. Soon enough we could see the city walls in the distance.

 

That's when Izzy did something strange. She used magic to change her hair and eye color and put on some light makeup to cover her freckles. Going from red hair to brown and green eyed to blue. I have to admit, she looked good like this too. I decided to ask her about it. “Why'd you disguise yourself? Should we do the same?”

 

“No, y'all should be fine. I just figured they'd have us track a high profile target or somethin' so I thought it best to change my appearance. Not to doot my own horn, but I'm getting to be pretty well known in the north.” Izzy answered me quickly. I still couldn't tell how she really felt, so I just chose to believe her this time.

 

We continued on our way and soon made it to the gates. After a quick inspection we were let through and Izzy decided to find an inn where we could use the sending stone. After searching around for a few minutes we found a nice place; tavern on the first floor with three floors of rooms above, making four levels in total. Quite tall for a building in this wold, though I noticed that many buildings in the capitol are just as tall or taller. The castle in the center of the city stands taller than any other building I've seen, making it visible from anywhere in the city. A river flows through the city and around the castle, it having been built on an artificial island in the river. This makes it extremely defensible in the case of an invasion. Bandits steer clear of this part of the country due to the rigorous patrols of royal knights, making this one of the safest parts of the country.

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I've heard through Izzy that the king himself actually supports the resistance in secret. The church's ties to bandits across the country makes them too dangerous, but the king also can't risk alienating the nobles in bed with the church, thus his secret support. It's a complicated situation, but suffice to say that we are not alone in our struggle. Most of the non-human nobles support the resistance too so we're able to keep fighting. Of course the nobles on both sides must keep their support for the factions secret, as neither side is technically legal. A civil war boils under the surface of the kingdom, and has for over a century now. It's actually kinda mind blowing.

 

Once we reach our room Willow pulls out the sending stone and requests further orders. We're then directed to wait in one of the town squares where someone will hand us our orders on a piece of paper. So we head out and wait. A little over an hour later Willow gets bumped by someone, they apologize to each other and the man walks away. Then Willow urges us back to the inn. It seems that was who we were waiting on.

 

Back at the inn we read a paper that Willow found in her pocket and it contains some detailed instructions to head to a noble's estate. Ostensibly we're going there as the night's entertainment, but we're actually going to be meeting someone important there, and he'll have our mission orders. They probably had us wait in the square to make sure there wasn't anyone specifically watching us. If there was, we likely would have been given different orders. The resistance is ever cautious, as they should be. I wonder if they got thrown off by Izzy's disguise; guess I'll never know.

 

We weren't to head to the noble's estate until evening so we spent the day resting in the tavern. Once it was time we gathered up our stuff and headed out. The manor we went to wasn't overly ostentatious, but was a good size and had a nice garden. In my opinion the owner had some good taste. We explained ourselves to a guard and were led inside. We were left in a sitting room that had some nice decor. I found a particular painting to be rather nice. It showed a ship sailing in a storm and the detail was out of this world. If I hadn't known better, and seen the brush strokes, I'd have thought it to be a photograph.

 

After a little bit of a wait a butler-looking person came in and asked us to follow him. He led us through a twisting course through the manor and eventually down into a basement. It was well lit, but undecorated. Bare stone walls greeted us interspersed with magic lamps. We were led to a door where the butler said: “Inside is my master and his associate. Please go ahead.” And then he stepped aside.

 

We opened the door and went inside where we found two men standing around a table. One was dressed incredibly well, looking like your stereotypical noble. He stood on the far side of the table and looked up to see us as we came in. “Ah, miss Blackhorn and associates. It's a pleasure to see you at last.”

 

Then the other man, who had his back to us at first turned around and Izzy got a shocked look on her face. “Papa!?”