Chapter 576: Chapter 576 - Servile Shadows & Counting Coup, pt1

News of what occurred in the city traveled its way to a certain cultivator the same way it always had. Through secretive methods used by friendly eyes and ears... that kept a good memory of things that rightfully, in more paranoid households, should have been whispers too quiet to overhear. Retainers that carried trays through corridors they knew to avoid lingering in, no matter their task.

Or whether or not the people they served seemed to *care* that they had ears and eyes like any being. Ones that were perfectly capable of collecting information for someone in the family who was more important to their continued safe existence in the household. It was hardly insubordinate, in their minds, to keep tabs on things for the eldest woman of the family.

No matter what the prevailing leadership of the Yecine thought - the long serving families at the main estate had very long memories. Lirades er Yecine was their patron and protector - and had been for as long as she had been alive. As had her father before her, creating a chain of tangible goodwill that many mortals held fast to.

So much so that there were even whole layers of stealth and tiers of commitment drafted up that weeded out those not *fully* dedicated to the secret society’s shadowy support behavior. Minimum required skills and blind division of tasks that didn’t infringe on the core secrets were even passed down to a member’s children over the generations, just in case. Truly, they were a force built by mortals that believed in the Yecine ideals as much as any of the cultivators that belonged to the family by blood.

Their time, sweat, and tears made up so much of the tedious sections of history belonging to the heavy blade wielders - including how they dealt with other friendly families. For these servants included a set of extrafamilial members that joined *other* households and snooped on them... for you could almost always count on an enemy being an enemy, but it was very important to know the moment an ally stopped being one.

’Like so many know now. That we cannot be trusted as either friend or foe.’

/ Main gate destroyed. Elua er Goltbred. Further meetings seem split on route of escalation. /

The sealed note carried by one of these very members of the spy network inset within an allied cultivator family reached the hand of Lirades while she was on the evening train back to her home city. Passed along by one of the rare progeny of a former servant of the Yecine, a man who had been born a cultivator but still passed through all of the ceremonies to serve like his mother had. At least fairly rare, as life was a numbers game - and the longevity of their type of existence meant she had many more invisible knights on her playing board than others might expect.

"I see."

"Do you need anything else? I’m not expected back for two more days."

"No, thank you for delivering this. I’ll be in touch."

Game pieces that were capable of limited - to keep their deep cover - but very hard to expect angles of ’attack’. They were best saved for emergencies rather than used openly during events that she had been planning for some time... a plan where it was less about having *any* greater numbers and more about the exact people’s names making them up. Her eyes ticked over to her traveling companion’s own and narrowed.

’Moving tonight to make use of this before they do stupid things... well, wasn’t part of the plan. But it’s the best way to proceed.’

"Listen closely. Here is how I think we should do this. First-"

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

The old woman sat in her room in the wives’ wing, nursing a cup of tea that had gone cold an hour ago. Sitting in a sealed chest next to the black and gold tea set were three stacks of documents that represented years of quiet work. Signed agreements from the landholding heads who managed the family’s actual owned territory. The ranches, farms, mills, forests, and quarries that kept the Yecine as a whole unit fed and their operations funded.

Letters of understanding, passed back through women whose husbands sat on the council... men whose opinions and votes had always erred on the less oppressive side. While some of her pieces were obviously two-toned, she had not forsaken the black at all. Lirades was a Yecine through and through - she just *wasn’t* what the generations after her heyday had become.

To her, the family still meant everything no matter what she had endured. Even if that meant she needed to rapidly erupt from her warning rumbles in recent years, to change the landscape of that line of descent’s playing field entirely for the foreseeable future. Her hand drifted past the handle for her unappealing tea and picked up her quill to begin writing. A sequence of instructions on small cuts of paper, in an unhurried hand.

Each one addressed to a different person within the estate that needed to know that they were expected to take a side. By the time dawn broke, five guards were changing shifts at the less secure gap where the gate had been. Swapping out with men who had been quite amenable to looking the other way, as certain active-cultivator Yecine members carried out business that they weren’t in the *need* to know.

The kitchen staff was in the middle of producing the same efficient, unsentimental meals as every day on the weekly rotation schedule. Soon to be carried out by the house retainers and serve as the ration for the militant men who rose early constantly by habit as much as duty. However, the number of women that were awake and dressed before the men had even opened their eyes to think of training or breakfast was abnormal.

A cloister that had its own rhythms and its own social obligations that *occasionally* required early preparation... but this was usually for events that required full family attendance - and the Patriarch had not called for anything of the sort. Yet. Not that he would have noticed what was happening under his own roof, as evidenced by years of missing the slow and toxic corruption forming in the ranks.

However, ignoring the second very clear sign that something was happening... was impossible. Delivered by a young retainer to the Patriarch’s private area was a certain letter. A beautifully written paper phrased with the formality that centuries of tradition demanded. The eldest active member of the Yecine family was invoking a Rite of Ratification. An old martial cultivator family law mechanism, one that had fallen into disuse by most every affluent family that reached a certain size.

The current power structures preferred the ’democracy’ of consensus decisions. Ones usually made in smaller, more controllable council meetings by those who were often older, more experienced, and knew what was supposed to be best for the family. But the Rite had never been *formally* abolished. The rules remained in the very same founding documents that a certain Illusionist had brought into their sight less than a day ago.

Both the original ones and the clearly modified over time version. One could almost suspect that the centuries old woman had seen both representations herself and used it to pick out the most expedient solution to call for a meeting. Of course, the person calling for it herself felt that young Elua would be a bit irritated to learn that the clever old wielder of family history was planning to use that very method... even before the brunette decided to make a spectacle of herself and the documents.

With a small, very dry thought on how the young do so love to think they are the catalyst to all things, as long as they start shifting somewhere next to them... just because they champion the changes with a more energetic voice. Though Lirades might have even drier thoughts if she actually understood that the Goltbred heiress had all five thousand years of memories of her last life affecting her choices.

In any case, the Patriarch received this request and wondered if he wasn’t getting too old himself. Standing there shirtless with his heavy blade in one hand, letter in the other, he wanted nothing more than to drop one. He just wasn’t sure which. Though that inner conflict said plenty to him.

Outside of honor, there was no mechanism in the charter that compelled him to listen to such an outdated request. Yet, refusing it would require publicly stating that the original founding traditions held no authority. All the leaders of the household had just watched their authority questioned by a vicious young woman in Silver, but forsaking the shreds of honor left simply because an *old woman* in their own black seemed to be up to something he couldn’t fathom...

"Assemble the council. All members. Immediately."

The retainer bowed and departed to complete the task he had now been given... twice. Though the first time was far more polite and delivered through a companion member of the shadow servants. One that had brought a little morning snack, in the form of a particular kind of red candy. A hidden sign among them that meant performing the ask of their patroness, no matter what the Patriarch said, would be rewarded with safety and security.

A guarantee that had never once fallen through on the eldest woman’s watch.

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

Corridors leading toward the underground arena had not changed in the centuries since they were carved. Torchlight which had been lit ahead of time by servants still forewent the technology of essence lanterns... and still cast the same way across stone paths worn smooth by generations of polished shoes. Just as they had looked years ago, decades ago, when many of the men descending toward the space right now had visited as children for their rituals.

The scent of sword oil and iron hung heavily in the air - because it literally hung heavily on the walls. In the form of old weapons that were still as well kept as possible, despite their structural integrity no longer being trusted in battle. Blades with history marking them - and therefore thought worth more for that mere fact than for melting down to reforge. A habit that even Qatrand respected, hence her request to take on her cousin’s own heroic moment blade.

At the head of the procession of men walked Lirades er Yecine - not beside the Patriarch whose readiness with his blade strapped on his back had drawn a smile from the cultivator that remembered seeing him born. Nor was she trailing amidst the other elders as she’d been doing for decades, when willfully attending functions as a thorn. Instead, she considered herself trailing the women of the estate who had already filed in ahead of time.

Cloistered wives sat up on the stone tier that overlooked the freshly raked sandy ground, along with some of the young daughters that had yet to be sent off. Girls that were here for their very own kind of Witness ceremony, even if the plan was a bit haphazard sounding in key areas for many of their anxious mother’s liking. But to the men, all of these details spoke immensely to just how much their ’ignorable’ relative had prepared for this moment.

Some family elders moved to circle the arena, but others walked right up to their marital partners and stood there in solidarity. The schism was as clear as the dawn light growing above ground. Just as comprehensible as the move of the dark haired woman, with carefully managed grey streak intended to highlight her own realization of her advanced age... who took the central seat on the observation platform usually reserved for the head of the family. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Several swordsmen shifted uncomfortably - and a few who hadn’t learned their lesson from their blades being broken opened their mouths to object. But none of them managed to speak a word at all. Because from beyond the gate that usually held the creatures in their cages before the ceremonies came a strong, silencing spiritual Intent. One that started out as a bit of discomforting warmth... often recognizable as a cultivator’s spiritual pressure crossing barely over toward a warning, not yet an environmental force.

But that transmitted feeling had quickly roared into a long suffering ’anger’ as hot as any Fire. Nothing as uncontrolled as ’rage’ that would burn itself out in the physics of an explosion. Radiant, steady, controlled, and *aggressive* for exactly this purpose. An emotion fueled by the tinder of many things, but also hammered into the glowing, two-handed sword shape it took in the wielder’s mind by the Yecine council’s own hands.

One of their own had come for this Rite... and they were *not* most pleased.