Searching for leads on Sanction in Charligan reveals very little, save the fact that they appear to be causing great upheaval in the city's criminal underground. While attempting to investigate at the Slovenly Siren, an inn on the docks, Cei overhears two strange men– one bearing a tattoo of crossed blades, evidently the insignia of a mysterious group of assassins called the Brotherhood of Sleep– discussing an assassination to occur at the tourney planned for Tyron’s coronation. The men elude the party’s attempts to follow them.
Cei's old friend, Purifier Emelius Endicott, returns to warn the group that they are being tailed by a criminal syndicate called the Bludgeon.
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| Purifiers rarely work together. It's very scary when they do. |
They manage to waylay the tail, and learn that he was to report back to the innkeep at the Slovenly Siren. They return, and Sevara and Bartholomew employ some unusual tactics to be granted entrance after being ejected the previous evening.
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| Onward, Aeo's soldiers! |
A messenger pigeon is dispatched, presumably by the bartender. A comedy of errors ensues; they retrieve the message, but it's written in a cipher.
They decide to spend their last evening before the tourney investigating Sanction and the Brotherhood of Sleep as best they can.
Cyrus returns to the Circle of Thorns emissary and learns of a Brotherhood assassination fifty years earlier, in which a noblewoman was bloodlessly murdered, and the swords insignia discovered under a table.
Cei, Sevara, and Emelius head to the Campus of Saint Michael. Cei first visits a famed healer among the Ordo Solatium– a strange nun whose odd speech has the ring of either madness or prophecy– in an attempt to restore Bartholomew’s eye. They then search the archives of the Cloister of Saint Vicius for references to vampiric cults, or the Brotherhood of Sleep. Cei finds one reference to the Brotherhood, purely by chance– an ancient document stating one attempted to assassinate Charl, who at the time was endorsed by the Church– but who suicided to avoid capture.
Tensions and conflict flare within the group. Ren wonders aloud if perhaps there were some sense in Kalli’s attempts to bring about change in the world via sacrificing them; Lyra angrily shouts him down. Both Ren and Cei’s feelings for Kalli bubble to the surface. No clear resolution is had; the group return to their rooms at the Magpie and retires.
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| The Argument |
They awake to find a note in the womens’ quarters, evidently from Sanction, advising them to mind their own business. Enclosed is Cei's broken arrow. They investigate the room and find a strand of red hair on the roof, identical to both the red hair of Cei’s pickpocket earlier, and the red hair in the vial taken by Silas Grange from Kalli’s possession in Blackhall.
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| A message from Sanction |
The group travel to the tourney outside town. They decide to split up and remain vigilant. Cei and Emelius mean to position themselves in the stands to gain a vantage point. Cei is utterly discombobulated when she encounters a person from her past– Sir Abelard deMarcus, a Knight of the Reclamation assigned as her escort on a brutally dangerous and disastrous Purifier mission several years prior. Abelard intends to joust in the tourney. The connection between them still smoulders, but Cei puts duty first; she tells Abelard of the potential assassination, and departs.
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| Well Met, Sir Abelard |
Lyra competes in, and wins, the archery tourney, acquiring a powerful new bow.
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| Lyra, triumphant |
Cei glimpses the assassin from the inn in Charligan and alerts the group, who move to intercept him. She also (in a truly Aëo-given flash of insight) notices a servant girl poisoning a cup of wine intended for Lord Tyron and manages to intercept it… then sees, and cuts down, another would-be assassin, who upon investigation appears to have been a red herring. The group manage to seize the real assassin, but he dies by his own hand to avoid capture.