“Time to figure out how to open the book. He needs to hole up some place that he thinks is safe from me, to give himself time to study the book. By going through the legal process, he has good reason to be at Freehold, and further, to try and keep me and mine away from him while there.”
“So you don’t think he’s succeeded in opening the book then?” asked Bess, staring at him intently.
“Would we still be standing here discussing this if he had?” responded Exador.
“Perhaps,” interjected Ramses, thoughtfully, “it might take him a bit of time to get around to us. With his ego, he’d likely try to fry bigger fish than us first.”
“Maybe, but I doubt he’s so insane as to start out without some practice first. And if he had started, the Courts would have been in a state of total uproar.” Exador countered. “If he’d succeeded with someone higher up than ourselves, he wouldn’t lay low about it, and if he’d failed, he’d be dead.”
“What about this fourth order he pulled out of nowhere? Are you sure this isn’t his practice.” Bess asked.
“No, it’s legitimate. He either had it around for some time, keeping it a secret, or he just got lucky. I think the latter. I’d almost have to say it’s a fresh catch. While extremely powerful, it isn’t using its abilities to their fullest potential. If so, we’d have had a hell of a lot more trouble from it. That would indicate that it’s either new, or it’s playing political games with Lenamare.”
“How often does one end up finding a newcomer that’s fourth order? Not that often. If it’s not using its abilities, I’d assume its master-demon politics and Lenamare just really doesn’t have a clue to what it should be able to do.” Ramses stated.
“Or doesn’t want to push things, by allowing it too much freedom. Lenamare is not stupid, I remind you,” added Bess. “He may know exactly what it can do, and just doesn’t want to chance giving it a free hand.”
“Either way, I am sure the demon is incidental. Lenamare hasn’t opened the book yet.” Exador insisted emphatically.
“So what’s the next step?” Ramses asked.
“Well, one of our bungling search parties located a fleeing caravan. They intercepted it and got trashed by the fourth order. This was probably Jehenna’s caravan. Lenamare may have been in it also, but he is already in Freehold, the caravan couldn’t have made it there yet.
“I’ve sent out demons to intercept the remains of the caravan and hopefully they can tell us where the book is or more precisely what Lenamare is up to. I am relatively sure, however, that Lenamare has the book with him in Freehold. He’d be a fool to let it out of his sight.” Exador explained.
“So we can confirm what we’re already pretty sure of. How do we recover the book?” Bess asked.
“We’ve got to get someone into Freehold to steal the book for us. If we get anyone from the caravan, I may be able to influence them, or trick them into stealing the book from Lenamare, once they’re reunited with him.”
“Any possibility of a more overt move?” asked Ramses.
“I don’t like relying on one of Lenamare’s people being subverted. What about one of our people going in directly?” Bess proposed.
“The council members are blind fools, wrapped up in their own petty concerns. If something went wrong with this, and we were exposed in doing something; it would complicate things enough to get them questioning the whole situation. We don’t want them to know about the book,” Exador stated.
“What about one of our people or us, shape changed to look like one of Lenamare’s people?” Ramses asked, pacing back and forth at his end of the table.
“Possible, but we’d need to know who to impersonate. It would have to be someone relatively high up in the school, and someone we’d have in our custody, dead or at least out of the way.”
“Jehenna?” asked Bess, licking her lips.
“If she is with the caravan then maybe we can. However, as if impersonating her wouldn’t be hard enough, if she’s not in the caravan then getting her out of the way in Freehold would certainly be difficult and noisy.” Exador stated, exasperated. Bess had a couple three bones to pick with Jehenna.
“We must come up with something, however.” Ramses insisted, trying to get the others to start coming together on a plan.
“We will,” stated Exador, “our lives depend upon it.”
“Let go of me you stupid, lichen eating, moss bearing, demonic scumbags from hell!” Jenn shouted as she squirmed trying to make the demons let go of her. By any measure that she could think of, she should be scared out of her mind. Her anger seemed to be keeping fear at bay. For the moment at least; or maybe the close proximity of that stupid fourth order demon for a prolonged period had numbed her sense of self-preservation. Jenn didn’t know, but she did know she was upset.
