The Unbottled Idol (Chapter 7)
“Ifrits aren’t as powerful as they want us to think. Their ability to grant wishes comes from using powerful magical items, such as Philosopher’s Stones, that would extract a prohibitive cost from the rest of us. Without such items, an ifrit is merely a paragon among mortals. Its disguises are better than a rakshasa’s, it warps gravity better than any parī, and it can wield the Soul in ways that make it a natural master of both alchemy and Black Hand – but it is still mortal. Strength of numbers and modern firearms can overpower it.”
- Major Akif Mirzaei (Yanülevi Chapter of the Imperial Inquisition, Gatekeeper Directive)
My first stop after the Prelate’s office is the chapterhouse locker rooms, both for a shower and to change into a proper uniform.
The hot water of the shower feels good on my aching muscles. It’s a good thing my next tournament isn’t for another month. Even with Black Hand, the body needs time to heal.
There is, however, one ache that no amount of warmth can soothe.
My severed pinkie still feels like its burning. I rub the knuckle, trying to massage away the pain. When that doesn’t work, I tap into the Soul. Power flows up through the tiles and into my hand.
The burn only gets sharper.
Three years without phantom pain, and now this happens.
It wasn’t hard to guess why. I haven’t invoked Kambūjiya’s wrath since my daeva hunting days. Back then, he’d been by my side, regulating the flow of power and ensuring I didn’t overdo it. I’d been on my own this time. Not entirely on my own, of course – Kambūjiya is always with me in a spiritual sense, the same as any other guardian yazata – but he was a bystander.
This wasn’t truly a hunt. Just another fight that I chose to involve myself in. I massage the severed knuckle again. Just like when I lost this.
Does that mean tracking down the ifrit ring isn’t the right thing to do? Am I actively working against Kambūjiya’s will? Against the Shepherd of Dust? Against Truth?
I hate these doubts. Things were so much easier when I could speak to Kambūjiya face to face. I could gather my questions and ask him when he called on me again. Uncertainty answered by unending silence is maddening.
Don’t dwell on that. If you do, you’ll end up an Archonite again.
Prickling dread fills me at the thought. I shudder. I can’t go back to being that person, especially not now. The Register children are counting on me. I can’t be their advocate if I start seeing them as mere assets for the Archon’s vision.
I need to focus on finding the hunter Amāstrī chose. That much, I know Kambūjiya would approve of.
The pain in my pinkie lingers, but it does at least fade a bit.
* * * * *
After I’m properly attired, I go to return the dress to Kowsari, but she’s nowhere to be found. A clerk informs me that she departed the chapterhouse almost as soon as Dutt dismissed us. I’ll have to leave the bag at her office.
Like all Chapterhouse Inquisitors – those inquisitors who report directly to Dutt and handle the day-to-day enforcement of public morality – Kowsari is based out of the ground floor of the chapterhouse. My plan is to leave the bag in the carpeted hallway outside her office. However, as I set the bag down, a thought occurs to me.
Kowsari couldn’t possibly leave her office unlocked, could she?
The handle turns easily at my touch. The door swings open to reveal an office much like my own: filing cabinets, a desk that’s little more than a table, a chair, and a couple of stools, all in aluminum. The only noteworthy differences are the heat sink on the ceiling and the jumbled files that cover every surface and overflow from every drawer.
“And you complain about how I organize my office?” I mutter, dropping the bag just inside the door.
Something prickles at my mind as I start to leave. I pause, trying to pinpoint the source. The sensation coalesces into another idea.
Is there evidence about her mystery hunter in here?
It’s doubtful. If anything, Kowsari might have planted false evidence in case I ever came sniffing around. She’s too careful to just leave her office unlocked if there was a real threat to her secrets.
But if she’s so invested in this girl that she slips up during an investigation, she might have some momento here.
I peer around the files. There’s a trio of framed photographs crowded into the back corner of the desk. I gingerly extract them one by one. The first is Kowsari at her inquisitorial commissioning ceremony, surrounded by three people with the right features to be her parents and an elder brother. The second is a university-aged Kowsari with a group of her peers. The last photograph shows two girls of maybe fifteen or sixteen. For a moment, I think I’ve struck carmot, but then I realize that one of those girls is Kowsari. This is a picture from her childhood, not of the hunter she’s hiding.
That girl she’s with, though …
I double-check the second photograph. Sure enough, the round-faced woman with full cheeks, standing on Kowsari’s immediate right, is the same person as the girl with Kowsari in the third photograph.
Kowsari was saved by Amāstrī when she was sixteen. What if she was friends with the hunter who helped Amāstrī back then? And what if that hunter had a daughter, one who’s old enough now to be a hunter herself?
I restore the photographs to their original positions and head downstairs to the Internal Morality Directive.
Internal Morality has more people working the night shift than any other directive. After all, spying on the rest of the Inquisition doesn’t stop just because the rest of the Inquisition has clocked out. It takes me less than an hour to find someone to pull Kowsari’s last background audit for me. From there, it takes me less than two minutes to identify the friend from the photographs: an alchemist named Daria Fayyaz.
There’s little doubt now that Fayyaz is the hunter from Kowsari’s story. Being neighbors when they were girls and attending the Imperial University of Kadmía together is a coincidence, but the fact that she and Kowsari stayes together through the in-between years of Service Corps conscription hints at something rather more deliberate. There’s also a note indicating that Kowsari’s request to be assigned to the Yanülevi Chapter came after Fayyaz accepted a position with one of the alchemical houses here. Kowsari has gone out of her way to keep close to Fayyaz.
If she’ll go as far as she has to protect a hunter, why wouldn’t she go out of her way to keep an eye on the friend who saved her?
I consider the black-and-white photograph attached to Fayyaz’s profile. It’s less than a year old. Her face hasn’t changed much from university, though she now wears oval spectacles, and her face bears those distinctive stains that all alchemists eventually get from their goggles. Aahil’s description of the hunter isn’t detailed enough for me to confirm that Fayyaz is the hunter’s mother, but I see nothing that would rule out the possibility, either.
The only snag is that Fayyaz doesn’t have any children … on record.
There are three noticeable gaps on the audit forms. Fayyaz’s family history is completely blank. On her personal history, there’s a space right between her starting and graduating from university and immediately after she moved to Yanülevi. Easily five years of her life are simply missing.
I check the other files in the background audit. Sure enough, every other person who was audited is missing their family histories and at least one portion of their timeline. It appears as if whomever Internal Morality assigned to this audit cut a lot of corners.
Internal Morality is a lot of things, but they aren’t this negligent.
I sniff the page where Fayyaz’s family history should be. There’s an odd smell, like freshly ground pepper. When I hold the page up to the lamp beside me, I see stripes where the paper is thinner than the rest of the form.
Someone’s washed the ink.
It’s impossible for me to tell whether this was done with chemicals or some magic I don’t recognize. It’s also impossible for me to ignore that Kowsari’s fingerprints are all over this. Of course she wouldn’t stop at just washing her friend’s audit. She’d wash all of them, both to hide who she’s truly covering for and to shift blame onto the negligence of others.
Pieces click together. If Fayyaz got married in university, that would absolutely make her daughter old enough to be a hunter. Maybe the father of her child is guilty of some heinous Code violation. That would explain Kowsari’s efforts to keep the girl hidden. A troubled family history tends to bring intense Inquisition scrutiny.
I can resolve this tomorrow. Kowsari will be distracted by acquiring the binding ring and tracking down the ifrit. I can easily pop over to the Fayyaz residence and test the daughter for the Golden Veil. If the child’s not there, either due to custody lost in a divorce or having been given up for adoption, I can at least interview Fayyaz. She’s too old to be a hunter now, but she can provide some insight into Amāstrī’s approach for dealing with Shapiev and the ifrit.
No sooner do I resolve to do this, though, when a strange certainty prickles along my spine.
It’s not time for that yet.
Where this thought comes from, I can’t say. I just know in my heart that it’s true.
Dutt won’t let me be hands-off for a hunter with a troubled family history, not if she’s involved in assassinating diplomats. I’ll be expected to break Fayyaz’s daughter, to keep her away from temples and feed her propaganda until she’s a devout Archonite. That’s how the Register used to be run. It’s what was done to me and my contemporaries, and it’s not even like we had anything dubious in our family trees.
Is this what you’re worried about, Kowsari? That the Inquisition will rob your friend’s daughter of her personal connection to Amāstrī?
It’s all speculation. Still, Aahil was right. I can’t serve both Truth and the Archon, not if their interests are in conflict. I can’t take the risk.
This girl will make a mistake, sooner or later, and lose that connection to Amāstrī … but it won’t be on my account.
“You win, Kowsari,” I mutter, and I close the folder.
Thank you all for joining this week! Chapter 8 releases August 19th!
Kowsari has recovered the ifrit binding ring - but not the ifirt. When she recruits Mohsen to help her resolve that problem, Mohsen finds himself drawn into Yanülevi’s underbelly.
I hope to see you all then!