“Harken unto me, peasants! Your pathetic alliance will splinter and your democracies will crumble to dust, for the shadow of empire is long and tempts all men to wander back into its embrace. Do not resist! In the ruins of my home sleeps my greatest treasure, the seeds from which a new world ruler shall sprout. Go and take it if you can, all ye nascent lords-in-waiting, and join me in the immortal procession of royalty. The king is dead, long live the king!" 

- Final speech of Fridewald Burchard Hrolf Adalia III, Last Tyrant of the Adalian Empire, before the Tetriat Alliance Grand Court on the day of his sentencing.

"That's a reckless thing to do, Master Nemira."

"Oh?" Nemira slipped off her torch, careful to land away from the large puddle growing larger under the steady rainfall that now blanketed the city. Detective Quincy Maybard stood under one of the elegant archways that lead into Supernatural Public Guard's headquarters, an impressive three-story building of brownstone and many a decorative column that dominated Twin Justice Street along with the near identically-built Mundane Public Guard Department situated right across it. He had a cigarette in his hand and looked more relaxed than she had seen him yet.

"Raw pneuma manipulation is dangerous," he told her as she approached. His watery blue eyes swept pointedly over her and her perfectly dry clothes. "Accidental deaths from attempts at the false arts have increased by four percent this year. Safer to just tie an umbrella to your staff next time than burn the rain away."

"I'll keep that in mind," replied Nemira smoothly, tapping the end of her torch against the sidewalk. The dark wings melted away, leaving only a few stray feathers behind. She glanced around. Unsurprisingly, there was no one willing to stand outside with the onset of rain. "And Detective North is...?"

Quincy blew out a stream of smoke. His thick fingers made the cigarette look especially slender between them. "Told that hot head to take a walk and not show her face again until she’s calmed down. We’ll meet her at the dangerous specimen containment room. What about your swordsman?"

"As if I'd bring him here after that mess!" Nemira wrinkled her nose, a little insulted he assumed she’d take such a risk. "Detective, I'd like an explanation from an unbiased source, and I didn't have time to look it up myself before I left. What on earth was all that about? They barely caught a glimpse of each other before it almost came to blows."

"Ah, well..." he gave her an appraising look. "You're from New Yamba, right? I guess the Knights Allegiant don't have much of a foothold over there."

"And even less in Rhuz, where I studied my art in earnest. Honestly, all I really know for sure is that the Knights Allegiant originated from Vittora."

Quincy dropped his cigarette, crushed it under his heel, and then opened the dark glass door and gestured for Nemira to walk in before him. She did as he bid, and found herself in a wide hall of marble tile and white walls adorned with portraits of frowning men and women in dark suits. Two Greys stood at each side of the center arched entryway while a dainty, light-haired woman sat at the receptionist desk in the corner. She felt all their eyes on her, but no one commented anything out loud as Quincy led her down the left wing of the building.

"The Public Guard versus the Knights Allegiant is a tale as old as the end of the Adalian Empire," began Quincy. "Knights have fame and honor backing them up, and even if the good regard of Vittoran noble Houses isn’t worth piss nowadays, earning their favor never hurt the knights. They didn’t have much trouble establishing a new headquarters here in Coine."

"And?" Nemira prompted. Other Grays passed them as they made their way down the hall. All looked to be in some hurry or another. Most gave Quincy a nod and Nemira a curious glance on their way to wherever it was they went.  "I hope all that ire I witnessed isn’t simply some hundreds of years old spat of envy from you guards. I'd really hate for my protector and your partner to have almost wrecked Books on 8th with an impromptu duel just for that."

Quincy let out a gruff, barking laugh. "I wish. That’d have been way easier to deal with, Master. No, we Coinish guardsmen existed in a state of wary tolerance with the Knights Allegiant for a time. They took down the big bad aberrants that lurked around the city-state, we stayed within its bounds and cleaned up all the filth and rats that poured in after the Anti-Imperial Defense Campaign. Balanced out, never in each other’s way. Couldn’t ask for more.”

Quincy stopped them near an elevator just as its cage door slid open and released a great gaggle of Grays into the hallway. Nemira backed up against the wall so as not to get trampled, frowning. Even when she wasn’t focusing her vision on the Firmament where she could see it, the coalescing pneuma that radiated from a large group of people always scratched at her skin, the threat of it drawing blood to the surface lingering despite the impossibility of it. She took a breath, willing herself not to try to rub the sensation off her arms while in public. 

“Hey, Quince!” A tall, gangly man amongst the crowd waved him down. “Just the guy I was lookin’ for. Got some questions about the meeting from this morning—”

Quincy held up a hand. “Sorry Jay, urgent  business. Talk to you after lunch.”

He didn’t give Jay, or any other coworker that might have wanted to chat, another opening. He used his impressive width to part the crowd of guardsmen and slip into the elevator, Nemira hurrying after his wake like a child trying to keep up with her parent. 

"So what changed?" asked Nemira as the cage rattled shut behind her. Thankfully, no one else got in with them. The detective alone was burly enough to have the feel of two people taking up the elevator's scant space.

Quincy reached into his breast pocket, then glanced at her and seemed to think the better of it. The interior already stank heavily of tobacco, and if that was what he had been after Nemira appreciated his restraint. "About twenty years after Fridewald the Third's execution, two big names rose to the very top of their respective organizations. Coine's Knights Allegiant was led by the Arboreal Lord Sir Reth Caidoc-ult, Paladin Arbiter. I've seen portraits of him, y'know. Armored in ironbark from head-to-toe and swinging around an axe we humans could never dream of lifting. He had antlers like old tree trunks and was big enough to make even a man like me feel small."

That got a chuckle out of Nemira. "That's a nephilim for you."

"On our side we had Chief Detective Yvonne Aden. She led the Supernatural department for years, was an artist with the baton and one of the few Scepters we've ever had working as a guardsman. Her arithmancy was flawless and so was she. Hell, she probably could have easily become Paladin of the Aurora Order with her skills. If she didn’t know a formula, no one did."

The elevator dinged to a stop. Nemira glanced up at the floor number. It had taken them down into the basement.

"After you, Master," said Quincy, nodding at the opening gate. "Anyway, the two had all kinds of rumors swirling around about them. Friends, enemies, lovers. Nothing proven. One way or another, they were usually found together during their off hours. The cityfolk started to think of the pair as the hero within the city-state and the hero that guarded our gates."

"Sounds like quite the heady romance," Nemira said as she stepped out of the elevator and looked around. The halls were more plain on that floor, white-tiled and uniformly undecorated. Quincy nodded down the right-hand path and led the way. "But I must confess that if this tale is leading toward the Supernatural Public Guard and the Knights Allegiant hating each other forevermore due to a single couple's relationship going sour, I will have to conduct further research on my own before I believe any of what you tell me."

"Oh, it went sour, alright." Quincy's expression became dark. "Even now, no one knows why they did what they did. None of their surviving records give a concrete answer. But one day, they both took a month-long break from work at the exact same time. They were going on a trip together, you see."

Trepidation slid chilly fingers along Nemira's spine. She glanced up at the detective warily. "Where to?"

"To infiltrate the depths of the Tyrant's Necropolis."

Nemira looked away, her skull ringing with the echo of those words. Of that accursed place. "Complete foolishness. The Council doesn't even allow its summoners to do that."

"I won't disagree," said Quincy somberly. "Sir Reth came back not even two weeks later, bloody and raving mad, dragging Chief Yvonne's body along with him. Nothing and no one could make him talk any sense, and barely anyone could even recognize the scraps of meat that used to be the Chief, let alone figure out what killed her. A month after that, the old buck was found in his apartment with his side sword through his heart."

They turned a corner. Nemira's knuckles ached with how tightly she gripped her torch, but her voice came out quite steady when she said, "I assume pandemonium between the guardsmen and the knights broke out upon their return."

"You bet. According to the accounts I read, the Chief Detective looked like she'd been hacked up with a giant meat cleaver."

"Or an axe," Nemira murmured.

"Or an axe," agreed the detective. "The Public Guard was furious. But what about Sir Reth? He was as stalwart as they come. Unshakeable no matter the danger he faced. The knights were quick to counter that Chief Yvonne must have cast some kind of forbidden formula on him and addled his mind. She very well could have done that for some reason, who knows? She was that talented, and pneuma sensors weren't so much as a vague idea back in those days. No way for any detective of the time to check his body for traces of her arithmancy.”

Nemira nibbled on her bottom lip. There was a lot more to this than she had expected. Maybe she would have to research it on her own time. And perhaps report her findings to the Council. “And so everyone was stumped, and I can imagine no one was very willing to attempt retracing the pair’s path across Ewald Vale and into the Necropolis for any clues that could have led to what happened."

“The knights and the guards were too busy killing each other for that,” Quincy clicked his tongue in disgust. “Something like thirty folks died in the chaos, and that’s not counting all the citizens that got caught in the crossfire. Knights were better in a straight fight, obviously, but us guards were good at catching them unawares. Over two hundred years later, and shit’s never been patched up between us. We don’t murder each other in broad daylight anymore, but it’s not much more civilized than that. Here we are.”

They approached a door at the very end of the hallway. It was an incredibly heavy thing of metal, more like a door to a vault of treasure than a medical examiner’s office. A Gray stood straight and alert on one side of it, and on the other side was Lena. Nemira’s mouth twitched. She had been privately hoping the detective would stay away until she left.

Quincy shot his partner a serious look. “Are you good, Lena?”

“I’m good, I’m good.” Lena flicked a dismissive hand at him. She didn’t spare Nemira so much as a glance, which suited her just fine. “'C'mon, let’s get this over with already.”