Jacob POV
The council headquarters felt wrong the moment he stepped in.
Not noisy enough.
E'nathyr was a trade city; its halls usually hummed with caravansmen arguing tariffs, surface-clan envoys pretending not to stare at the ceiling, deep-clan runners dodging between them with tablets and messages.
Today, the entrance hall held only guards.
Rows of them, posted like carvings: armor polished, crossbows loaded, visors down. The usual scribes' desks against the walls had been pushed back to clear a straight path down the middle.
A clerk in mushroom-dyed robes waited at the far end. Her smile was tight.
"Jacob of the Tower," she said. "The council is in closed session. This way, please."
He followed. They passed the doors to the main chamber—shuttered and warded—then turned down a side corridor he had never used before. The walls here were bare stone, sigils still fresh, dust not yet swept away.
New wards. Recently carved. In a hurry.
The clerk stopped at a set of obsidian-banded doors. Two Haet'Ra priestesses flanked them, staffs crossed. At a sign, they lifted the staffs, the doors swung inward, and the soundproofing wards sighed as he crossed the threshold.
The room was circular and close. No high tiers, no rows of observers—just one obsidian ring of chairs along the wall and a clear floor in the middle.
The center stone was a slightly darker disc, veined with thin lines of silver and black in the shape of nested circles. Someone had scrubbed it recently; chalk dust still lingered in the grooves.
A working circle. Not for show.
Five matrons sat in the ring: Bael'sha d'Veyn at the center, Haet'Ra's First Matron to her left, Shor'Ith and Dezz'thal like bookends. Veyn'dor stood behind his mother's chair, robes severe, gaze fixed somewhere around Jacob's knees.
Ve'ris sat inside the ring, not among them; a lower stone seat, staff resting by her hand. Bruised, bandaged, eyes clear—and very, very awake.
The doors closed behind him with a dull, layered thud. Chains and wards, not just hinges.
Bael'sha regarded him like a problem column on a ledger.
"Jacob of the Tower," she said. "You act in E'nathyr under our decree as foreign mercenary envoy of the Tower of Bones and as that Tower's ambassador. You were present when our headmistress was taken. You were present when she was pulled from an Orchid altar. Today you will account for those coincidences."
He inclined his head. "Matrons. Headmistress."
Shor'Ith lifted a hand.
"Stand in the center," she said. "The ward-lines there will record your answers clearly. We have no patience for misheard testimony today."
His gaze flicked once to the darker disc. Sigils. Burn rings at the edges where power had flared before. The faint, old scent of blood and incense baked into stone.
A trap, then.
Not a very imaginative one.
He stepped onto the circle anyway.
The wards hummed as his boots crossed the inlaid lines. Something cool brushed his skin, then settled. The priestesses by the wall shifted, adjusting their grips on their staffs, like guards around a cage that had just closed.
Bael'sha set her knitting aside.
"Begin at the circle," she said. "The Orchid circle. What you saw. What you did."
Jacob kept his voice flat and clean. Summoned by the academy. Following fungal residue and whispers. The ritual, the orchids, the chains. Cutting Ve'ris free. Carrying her out while the spore storm built.
He did not mention the first visit to her shrine. Or the switched incense.
When he finished, Haet'Ra's Matron snorted.
"Convenient," she said. "Our priestess stolen, our city shaken, and out of all the traders, smugglers, pilgrims and mercenaries crawling through E'nathyr, it's the lich's envoy who stands in the middle of every disaster."
Dezz'thal's fingers tapped the arm of her chair. "The acolytes smelled Orchid incense in your headmistress's shrine. Sponsored blend. You say you noticed it."
"Hard not to notice," Jacob said. "It was strong."
"Did you touch it?" Shor'Ith asked.
"No," he lied.
Haet'Ra's Matron's eyes narrowed. "Our healers found foreign divinity clinging to Ve'ris. And to you. Not only from the circle. In the shrine. In the corridors. The Orchid stink traces your steps through our holy places."
"Cultists tend to splash their god around," Jacob said. "I was in their circle, then carrying your headmistress. It travels."
Bael'sha turned her head.
"Ve'ris," she said. "Your turn."
Ve'ris did not look away from Jacob as she spoke.
"I remember my shrine," she said. Her voice was steadier than it had any right to be, but the edge in it could have cut stone. "Incense wrong. Orchid where there should be Queen. Silence ring. My own guards moving like puppets."
Her fingers brushed her bandaged shoulder.
"I remember the assassin under my goddess' gaze," she went on. "Not Orchid. Not Haet'Ra. A polite sword who moved like him." She tipped her chin at Jacob. "He kept his right shoulder between me and the altar. When I shouted to take the assassin down, he was the one the undead answered."
Her hand pressed harder into her shoulder. "I marked him here. With my whip. Hard enough that my arm remembers the strike."
A flicker crossed a few matrons' faces at the word assassin. Veyn'dor's gaze tightened.
"I remember waking on the altar," Ve'ris continued. "Orchids. Heat. Chains. The Queen's fury. I struck the same place again. Same joint. Same resistance. Later, when someone carried me out, it was over that shoulder. Sword arm free. Doors opened with the left."
Her eyes locked on Jacob's bandaged arm.
"My body remembers patterns," she said. "Pain remembers. The man who walked through my shrine and the man who dragged me off that altar are the same. He stands in your circle now, wrapped in a lich's contracts."
Shor'Ith's gaze sharpened. "So. The man who took you from your shrine and the man who carried you from the Orchid altar are the same."
"Yes," Ve'ris said. The word was flat, but the hatred under it was not.
Bael'sha didn't blink. "Jacob of the Tower. Do you deny it?"
"I delivered her back," Jacob said. "Alive."
Haet'Ra's Matron leaned forward.
"You walked into my shrine under my goddess's gaze, laid hands on my headmistress, and let Orchid filth into our incense," she said. "Then you put yourself in place to drag her out of a circle you helped set. You want us to praise you for cleaning a fire you started?"
"That's an interpretation," Jacob said.
"It is the one that fits," Dezz'thal said. "Stage a problem. Arrive as solution. Classic mercenary overreach."
Veyn'dor spoke at last, cautious.
"Jacob has been effective," he said. "The Baey'Ra dissolution. The undead levy, the intelligence from the Tower—"
"And all of that came because you brought him into our city," Haet'Ra snapped. "Your recommendation. Your wards. Your blockade. E'nathyr is full of foreigners, and yet it is your lich's envoy who appears in our shrines, our circles, our council hall. That is not chance. That is design."
Her glare cut sideways into him. "Either your defenses are a joke, or you vouched for an enemy."
A flush ran along Veyn'dor's cheekbones. He lowered his head, lips thin.
Bael'sha let that hang just long enough to draw blood, then returned to Jacob.
"The Queen has shaken the city," she said. "Faith is fraying. Orchid filth crawls along our roots. We cannot afford ambiguity."
Shor'Ith folded her hands.
"The Ordination Rite," she said. "The circle he stands in is keyed to it already. We bind him here, strip every foreign touch from his soul. If there is nothing, he walks out cleansed and still… useful. If there is Orchid, if there is anything else…" She lifted one shoulder. "Then the Queen will have what is owed."
As she spoke, the ward-lines under Jacob's boots brightened a fraction, silver threads waking, glyphs along the wall answering in a slow, hungry pulse.
Veyn'dor's head came up.
"The rite risks breaking him," he said. "We may lose an asset our enemies do not yet know how to counter."
Haet'Ra's Matron gave a sharp, humorless smile.
"If he is truly yours, perhaps you should have kept him in your laboratories, not dropped him into our shrines," she said. "We will not let your curiosity get us killed."
Dezz'thal nodded once. "The space wards and blockade are up. No one leaves the city. We lose nothing by being thorough."
Bael'sha raised her hand, the gesture crisp.
"Jacob of the Tower. Under our decree and under the Mushroom Queen's gaze, you will submit to containment and ordination here and now, until we are satisfied you are not an enemy of this city."
The word here struck the circle like a hammer. The ward-lines flared, then clamped down: a pressure around his ankles and wrists, a tightening in the air around his ribs. The priestesses by the walls raised their staffs, tips angling toward him, murmuring as they fed power into the glyphs.
The doors behind him locked with a heavy clack and the soft, sliding hiss of additional bars slotting into place.
Trap sprung.
Jacob kept his shoulders relaxed. "If that is the council's will," he said, "I will cooperate."
His right hand hung loose. His left hand shifted as if to adjust his coat, fingers brushing the seam where a small shard of bone was sewn into the lining—smooth, warm, thrumming now in answer to the circle's grip.
Bael'sha nodded once to the priestesses.
"Begin," she said.
The ward-lines brightened, the room darkened, and the circle's power started to climb.
Jacob let a thin, flat smile touch his mouth.
"Understood," he said.
And closed his fingers around the bone.