Prologue
“Dinpik?”
“Hmm?” Dinpik looked at Miranda’s reflection in the oval mirror that hung above the pair of ornate sinks. The bathroom open to the Royal Library’s visitors was in Dinpik’s opinion a little overdone with regard to décor. She finished the end of the first braid and held her hand out for the tie. Static electricity had been the day’s child-friendly demonstration, and Miranda had been the volunteer. Barnaby’s sister had balked at first, but the lecturer’s demeanor eventually won her over. She even laughed at seeing her hair standing out on end like a black halo.
Miranda passed her the tie. “Why don’t you like Miss Cambrix?”
For a heartbeat, Dinpik lost track of the braid. She retightened the ends quickly, asking “What makes you say that?” She met Miranda’s eyes in the mirror’s reflection and cursed herself for an idiot. Miranda’s expression had taken on the closed-in wariness so commonly seen after Barnaby’s departure, and had just begun to fade recently.
“Don’t know,” the little girl mumbled. “Just the way you acted.”
“Ah.” Dinpik tied off the first braid and began separating the three sections for the last. “She looks like someone I had a really bad fight with a while ago.”
“Oh.” Miranda looked thoughtful; Dinpik gave her a smile. They didn’t speak while Dinpik finished the braid and bundled them both up for the walk back to the orphanage. They had passed the archway to the Dwarven District when Miranda asked, “Can we see if the snowy owl is on the roof of the Pig and Whistle?”
“Sure.”
Stormwind’s seasonal visitor was indeed at its usual perch. They stood across from the Pig and Whistle’s door watching it until it flew off in the direction of the canals, then resumed their own journey. Miranda’s mood had lightened somewhat by the time they reached the orphanage, managing a little smile and farewell wave.
Dinpik’s mood had not. Miranda’s question and her answer dogged her as she trudged through the snow-packed streets. Maggie Cambrix’s only crime was having the same white-blonde hair and sky blue eyes as Sarafel, the priest who had overseen Dinpik’s audit – the assessing every warlock agent of the Argent Dawn had to go through – last fall. Cambrix was forthright and with a sense of humor. Sarafel had been gentle-voiced and mannerly and “just asked questions.”
Questions that had little to do with being corrupted by one’s own demons, to Dinpik’s mind, and more with prying into a person’s privacy for the sake of prying.
“You’re here in the fields every day. You seem to keep very busy.”
“I like being productive.” Dinpik regretted the answer the instant it left her lips.
A quirk of a perfectly-arced eyebrow. “You don’t feel productive as a warlock?”
Dinpik couldn’t remember what her response had been – it might have been the time she stomped off from her weeding, it might have been something along the lines of her vault’s coinage total proving she was productive as a warlock just fine. What she did remember was the feeling of being hounded, a feeling that had lasted for months after her return and left her shying away from priests as a whole. Even priests she knew from Twilight Empire. No matter who they were, they all reminded her of Sarafel.
Problem was, Sarafel had been right… in a way. Keeping busy, being productive: words Dinpik would easily and cheerfully have agreed fit her, since leaving Gnomeregan. Sarafel pushed past that blithe assertion, digging into the whys and why nots of her choices.
Her stint as a wandering adventurer; her work as a caravan guard in Outland and her alchemy, even her indigo chapbooks – they proved something to her that being a warlock did not. She had not been able to – had not wanted to be able to – explain further.
”Being a warlock is something I do,” she snapped, exasperated and tired and wanting desperately for this terrifyingly polite and horribly obtuse human to understand. “It’s not who I am!”
Sarafel nodded. Dinpik knew she didn’t believe her.
The mental examination had been the worst.
It couldn’t be completed. No matter what Sarafel tried, even putting Dinpik into a deep sleep, she couldn’t succeed.
”There’s… interference.” Sarafel was frowning, the first time Dinpik had seen that expression on the woman’s pretty features. “Something is blocking me. It isn’t one of your demons; it has none of the traits or taint of demonic If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was another mind attached to yours –“
Dinpik couldn’t help it – she laughed. “There is. My friend Tanyel and I are psychically linked.”
Sarafel shot her a look that made her want to be on the other side of the room. Better yet, outside the room entirely. “Explain, please.”
So Dinpik had: the day she and Tanyel had spent playing with a gnomish mind-control cap after indulging in one of Tanyel’s special mushroom omelettes, and their gradual realization that their habit of finishing each other’s sentences was the result of more than being good friends. The moments of feeling the other’s emotions, of knowing vaguely where the other was with a little concentration. Sarafel had taken it all in, and then gravely announced that Dinpik might no longer be a good candidate as an intelligence agent for the Argent Dawn. “The audit may be ruled incomplete. “ A pause. “And of course, the Dawn must have absolute faith in its people, particularly in such delicate positions as yours. I’m sure you understand.”
Dinpik had. She spent the next weeks in Pandaria feeling miserable at her impending failure, and anxious about what if anything the Argent Crusade would do.
To her surprise and delight, she passed the audit. She had kept the brief note from Officer Pureheart congratulating her for several weeks before burning it.
Dinpik passed beneath the archway to the Mage Quarter. The snow was a little more slushy here, along the pathways leading from the Mage Tower to the canals. She rounded the corner past the alchemist, ducking automatically as enchanted snowmen lobbed snowballs at her. She ducked inside the Blue Recluse as a pair of draenei were leaving, pausing to shake the worst of the snow from her boots before heading into the common room and the stairs to the apartments.
“Hey,” Joachim called. “Mail for you today. Slid it under your door.”
Dinpik thanked him and hurried up to her apartment. Her latest chapbook manuscript had been turned in two weeks ago. She had paid up for the next three months for her glass-making instruction. She’d just answered Tanyel’s five-page “diary” letter. And her chapbook mail didn’t come to the Blue Recluse at all.
As Joachim had said, there was a thin, short envelope just inside her doorway. Dinpik picked it up. The envelope was cheap, and addressed to D. FOGBUSTER in hand-writing that looked somewhat familiar.
Unable to hold back her curiosity, Dinpik locked the door behind her and sat down on the couch. She kicked off her boots, not caring they were dripping snow over the new throw-rug, shrugged out of her coat and opened the envelope.
Miss Fogbuster,
I write to inform you that after a thorough investigation, you have been cleared of all suspicion of theft, black marketeering and racketeering during your time with the military supply detail in Blasted Lands.
I am a man who can admit when he was wrong. Should you wish to resume your position in my team, I would welcome you back this Tuesday the 10th, for a return trip from the Blasted Lands.
Regards,
Augustus Barrett
Dinpik gripped the letter in her hands, not quite believing it was real. She could have her caravan job back. And Barrett had apologized.
She threw back her head and whooped, the memory of Sarafel and her audit evaporating in her relieved laughter.