4:19 The call before the firestorm.

The multilevel fort that served as the Merchant Council's Manse was, at first, just another garrison for Sembian troops.  Pohatkon's prison, once just a three cell brig, had been massively expanded, and two of the three original council members agreed that the man who had quietly directed and orchestrated a good part of the expansion was worthy to maintain the place in any way he saw fit.  The fort itself was unremarkable, and stood, silent and grey, against terrain whose gentle slope upward only seemed imposing if one turned around and looked back down the street behind themselves.  Most Urmlaspyr residents assumed that the Council simply hadn't had time enough to make the place appear any more worthy of its purpose, but the honest truth was that none of the original members shared a vision of the place as anything but what it was.  Their imaginations had been limited to turning the soldiers' bedding room into a reception hall, and the various weapon rooms into living spaces, studies, or small libraries.  Master Ranclyffe's rooms were the most successfully repurposed, which made sense when one realized that she had ceded her house to her son, his wife, and an assorted collection of rogue mages.  Mimsa's allotted spaces were little more than fancy drawing rooms or tea parlors, and Jindranae had been so averse to the re-purposing of a place of battle at all that her Sylvan husband, Kayinu, was responsible for making her single allotted room a warm and welcoming space in which enchantments could be successfully woven into clothing or jewelry.  Arnsvold, predictably, collected all the armor and weapons from the other spaces into his own, and anointed himself the city's foremost smithy.  Perhaps not as predictably, he ensured that Kayinue had a space adjacent to his, but far from Jindranae's, where weapons and armor could be safely enchanted.  While the two weren't friends, they were both war veterans, and could be depended upon to at least salute each other as such twice each day.  There were many such stalemated relationships, where true camaraderie could not be achieved, but disrespect was refused any root- Jindranae and Faera both lamented them.  Arnsvold and Master Ranclyffe accepted them as a viable alternative to stronger, deeper ties.  Mimsa scoffed at the pretense that anyone was a true friend or ally to anyone, having been converted long ago to the belief that jealousy and envy powered the world.

All told, the fort remained more ready for battle than for council, and like most of Urmlaspyr itself, it was a place with more going on underground than above it.

In the early, slightly sea-chilled morning, Imaraide Perth's shrieking soprano split the hallowed air.

"Come back here and face me like a woman, you little selfish prat!"

"Name calling won't help your case," Mimsa replied, continuing to flounce her way up the stone stairs to the Merchant Council Manse.

"Right!" Imaraide grunted.  Taking her skirts firmly in her fists, she charged up the stairs and grabbed Mimsa's shoulder at the top, just in front of the large iron doors to the ruling chamber.  "Now, I publicly denounce your purposeful obstruction of education!"

"Publicly?  Before the sixth hour?  Please," Mimsa said haughtily, snatching her shoulder back from Imaraide's grasp and dusting it off as if Imaraide's hands had been dirty.  "Complain to your husband.  Or perhaps Sakoda's wife- he may actually lift a finger, if Makela were to say something useful."

"Please- Sakoda does more in one hour than you do all day," Imaraide rumbled, annoyed.  "The only reason he ignores your research and refuses to listen to your edicts is because they're all prejudiced and thus, not able to be fairly enacted.  If he could call for a no-confidence vote against your seat, you'd have been put out already."

Mimsa's eyes flashed with fury.  "If the Mage's Quarter residents felt that I was doing them a disservice, they would certainly lodge a proper complaint, as the law dictates," she stated flatly, not allowing her feelings to seep into her voice.  "But this... gross disrespect ... I'm no fool, Imaraide.  This is jealousy made sharp.  Now, you're understandably upset about the outlawing of barbarian magic, but your inadequacy is simply not my fault.  Recant your gods and apply yourself, and you could at least become a fine warlock, I'm sure."

Imaraide pegged Mimsa's flat, pale cheek with a slap so solid that the mark of it puffed up blazing red immediately.  With her mouth popped open in shock and her eyes watering, Mimsa at first could only puff in disbelief.  Some few seconds later, she found her voice.

"Guards- guards, arrest this foul witch!  She's struck me!"

The two politely disinterested guards, posted on either side of the doorway, moved not one inch.

"Let my lords and masters come," Imaraide hissed, her hands on her ample hips.  "I invite the challenge!  My oak wand is just as well-used as your little yew branch, and no law's going to stop me from defending myself!"

"What you two here do, Lady Perth, I shall consider part of a mage's duel," the guard on the right side of the door replied.  "You called the Lady Sevignon to combat; I have no magics, and have never imagined such a duel before, but I know a challenge when I see one."

"I'll have you dismissed," Mimsa whispered fiercely, her eyes narrowed.  "Lord Erantun will hear of your unwillingness to defend your lady!"

On the eastern side of the tower, Jindranae stood in the center of the large divination circle, apparently not paying any attention to the altercation some ways away.  In her hands, she held an oval-shaped mirror with no handle, gazing into it as though her image were the most beautiful thing she could gaze upon.  However, her vanity wasn't quite that acute.

"Oh, Triz, did you have to go there?  Anyway, I suppose you see me as well?"

Master Ranclyffe, standing with her arms crossed in one of Arnsvold's locked weapon storage rooms, nodded.  "Yes.  Step forward and turn."

So, Jindranae re-positioned and turned herself around so that the front steps to the Merchant Council's tower, and the street, were reflected over her right shoulder.

"How's that?" she asked quietly, not wanting to give herself away.

"Adequate," Master Ranclyffe nodded, pulling a note pad and a sharpened piece of charcoal out of the pouches at her waist.

"All proper apprenticeships have to be sanctioned- by you," Imaraide said angrily.  "And you're exacting your revenge for the equality edicts by delaying or denying whatever apprenticeships you don't like, calling it 'protecting the interests of the Mage's Quarter instructors'.  Don't you realize that gives the Phoenix a chance to lure them toward their clearly insurrectionist agenda?  You're breeding terrorists- sewing seeds of revolt with your own hands!"

"That's preposterous!" Mimsa growled, rubbing gently at the reddened flesh on her face.  "Accusing the Phoenix of terrorism is slander, first of all, and secondly, I pride myself on taking great interest in the abilities of each potential apprentice.  If I didn't, you'd see diviners trying to teach healers, evokers yoked to abjurers- and what about necromancers and conjurers, who should neither receive apprentices nor be apprenticed themselves?"

"Why not?" Imaraide shrieked with dark eyes flashing.  "Do you realize how dangerous an untrained necromancer is?  That man who had to be registered to Semnemac some months ago was hardly in his right mind- that's what abandoning a necromancer to the winds will do!"

"Ah, I remember him," Jindranae commented.  "So very tender-hearted, for a necromancer; I hope he's feeling better, these days."

"I can't be responsible for every mad mage that runs into this city," Mimsa declared.  "If the borders were properly secured, perhaps I may have a chance at knowing who and what is coming in and out of this place."

"Seyashen," Master Ranclyffe confirmed, scribbling away at her notebook.  "His mental sanctity has improved.  His self-esteem, not so much."

"That's your job," Imaraide hollered, incredulous.  "Your job is to be responsible for the mages that come in and out of this city- did you just blindly hope that between the former High Captain, Ranclyffe, Aric, and Semnemac, someone would do something about him, before you had to?"

"Precisely correct," Master Ranclyffe huffed, looking up briefly from her notes.  "Mimsa owes both the Raven Queen's coven and the Bone College a weighty debt of gratitude."

"Oh dear," Jindranae breathed.

Mimsa finally left her face alone and crossed her arms over her chest.  "Lady Perth, there are many responsibilities that demand my attention, and-"

"And one of them is to properly track mages, and cults, and other practitioners of magic- this is how slavers slip in and out of the Eastern Quarter, unseen and unannounced, to make off with people," Imaraide countered.  "If we had proper accountability-"

"The safety of the borders is Sakoda's job, not mine!" Mimsa objected.

"But how can Sakoda possibly guard against offending mages without defending mages?" Imaraide exclaimed.  "The man is artless!  And with all the effort he's put in to posting sufficient guards on all sides, most of those people are just as artless as he, and you've not answered one of his summons for a defending mage force.  He refuses to comply with the Phoenix on their terms, so your silence leaves us magically defenseless, and you know that the Semmites have Shade mages to back them!  You are knowingly giving us to Thultanthar, worse to us than any Semmite!"

"We're not entirely defenseless, I hope," Jindranae said pointedly, peeking into the mirror to watch Master Ranclyffe.

"Lord Hawke is not, mentally and emotionally speaking, much different than her pet," Mimsa stated, a touch of pride returning to her voice.  "Sakoda must put a collar on him and force the Phoenix to work lawfully, as Lady Jindranae did to Lord Hawke herself."

"The handful of wards that Gimago tirelessly maintains while dodging Mimsa and completing his own studies are being taken apart by well-trained counterspelling mages," Master Ranclyffe answered.  She turned to her right, cast a spell whose glow disappeared into the stone wall, then returned to her note taking.  "They dispel them almost as fast as I can write new warding spells; it's been quite the challenge to stay ahead of them while attending to other duties."

"So instead of having a fully legal mage force, organized by the person who is supposedly keeping track of who would best be fitted to the necessary work, Sakoda, who may I remind you again is artless, and has no social currency with gifted folk, is supposed to resort to 'collaring' hostile magically empowered terrorists?" Imaraide asked, genuinely amazed at Mimsa's line of thinking.  "Are you listening to yourself?"

"Oh dear," Jindranae repeated, with greater alarm.  "Hawke was no easy conquest; I won her compliance with months of artfully constructed blackmail.  People suffered in scores at her hand as I worked, and-"

"Dresan's 'compliance' can be similarly won," Master Ranclyffe answered, briefly looking up from her notes.  "Patience."

"I refuse to continue this conversation," Mimsa pronounced regally, turning her back on Imaraide and moving purposefully toward the door.  Neither of the posted guards moved to open it for her.

"Then grant me audience," Imaraide repeated.

"You don't need an audience; I've listened to all your complaints, and answered them," Mimsa huffed.

"You've minimized and hand waved them," Imaraide countered, straightening herself and dropping her hands into fists at her sides.  "You didn't resolve anything- and it's clear that you won't.  So, I demand audience with the entirety of the Merchant's Council- I'll wait right here."

"Good morning, Lady Perth- no need for that," Faera called brightly from the bottom of the stone steps.  Gathering her skirt in her hands, she began to climb them slowly one by one, a testament to the caution she still carried with her despite weeks of freedom from the Stingers.  "Come on in and have some heavy tea, won't you?  I don't see your purse about you, so don't worry about payment- I'll answer for whatever you wish.  I don't remember how many issues are on the docket, but Arnsvold will know.  Whatever the last one is, or if someone misses theirs, we can add you right-"

"How dare you invite anyone to 'heavy tea' on Council property; the mixing of tea with liquor is simply filthy," Mimsa thundered, whipping herself around again.  "And to interrupt a private audience-"

"What?" Faera laughed as she finished the last few steps up to the door and let go of her skirt.  "You can't hold a private anything on a set of stairs in broad open air.  It's too early in the morning to tell jokes; wait until after tea.  Here, Lady Perth- my hand, since your gentleman's not here to offer his."

With that, Faera and bowed at the hip, as though she were a male partner at a fine dance.  Imaraide, amused, first curtsied deeply, then arose to lay her left forearm upon Faera's outstretched right forearm.  "I thank you kindly, noble companion."

The guard on the right, closer to Imaraide and Faera, stepped forward as if recently relieved of a paralysis spell, and briskly opened the heavy iron door.  Just a moment after the two ladies entered that side, the guard on the left opened the door on his side.  Both guards uniformly stepped in front of the open doors and resumed their previous statue-like postures, and Mimsa glared at both of them before entering herself, with a quiet huff.

"I like Fae's style," Jindranae purred, amused by the goings-on.  "She's odd, at times, but I do like her.  It's been eye-opening to have such a strong Eastern Quarter voice."

"She's useful," Master Ranclyffe admitted.  A returning spell orb of some sort seeped through the stone wall and hovered, with a few strands of green glow circling its center of power, just off her right shoulder.

"Would you rather someone else had gotten the seat?" Jindranae asked as she watched the guards administrate others audience seekers.

"No," the older Human mage replied.  "She's unafraid of trouble, despite her experience with it.  That's useful."

"What will we do about Mimsa?" Jindranae mused, turning the mirror back squarely to her own face.   Once she did, she noticed the green orb and grew concerned.  "She quite obviously is not.  Useful, I mean."

"I heard you," Master Ranclyffe answered.  "And I've repaired, tuned, and tested Ntoru's mirror for more than one reason.  The orb is a reply from Gimago."

"Oh, I love you best when you're sneaky," Jindranae smiled, allowing herself to relax a bit.  "Shall we find some way of ensconcing this thing into a stone?"

"An apparently unowned mirror in the Mage Quarter, however well blended into its surroundings, will be the subject of high suspicion," Master Ranclyffe noted.

"Oh yes, that's true," the Eladrin said thoughtfully.  "We would just stop to gaze at it, but Humans... you're different."

Master Ranclyffe absorbed the racial comparison without remark.  "I did consider shard work."

"Oh my," Jindranae cooed.  Her tone was stranded between concern and admiration, which Master Ranclyffe felt was an appropriate reaction.  "I'm aware of it, but I dislike the idea of using any vestige of Shadovar innovation, however useful it may be.  I hate to say this, but we might see whether or not Lady Kaionne, or any of her students, have followed any similar lines of study, so that we may use their version instead."

"Kaionne is a naturalist," Master Ranclyffe said, her mind absorbing Jindranae's rejection and resorting to her work-around without pause.  "She will likely have alternative ideas about how to ask the stones, weeds, or puddles already in the area to help us."

"Oh my, that'd be a return to my roots, as it were," Jindranae smiled.  "I like that plan better; I shall pen a letter and send it with one of our children to Kaionne right away."

"Here it is," Master Ranclyffe replied, eyebrow arched.  "All that's left is to write the appropriate name and move the draft onto a paper fit to read from."

"Triz!" Jindranae laughed.  "You must let me read it before you put my name on it, at least!  And do please get out of Arnsvold's toy chest at once; I dislike looking at it."