Veridian Shores

Chapter 11 - Opposites Don't Attract

Capper dragged a truly enormous volume from the shelves of the cartography section of the archive. Once Gliss had dug out the supposed location of her Keystone, he now had the chance to contribute. After spending a long time fruitlessly pouring through books, most of which he couldn't even read, it felt good to actually be useful. While his companion could unravel the history, he knew this city.

The massive atlas thumped open to display a minutely detailed city map of Veridian Shores – the most recent one he could find the Glaive archive. It was an augmented version of the major human cartography, updated by Glaive's own scholars to marry the two groups. He rarely entered Rune's domain and barely paid attention to the trawl of historical tutoring that newly-turned had to endure, but he couldn't deny the record keeper did his job well.

With Gliss hovering over his shoulder he began methodically leafing through the ink-heavy pages, eyes scanning the grid references and landmarks. Around halfway through it he spotted what he was looking for. About two thirds of the way down the page an enormous building sprawled out over several grid squares; even the functional geometrics of the map couldn't hide its intimidating bulk.

"And there's the Baelock Estate," he said, tapping the sprawling grey mass with his index finger. "The one place in Veridian Shores that we can't go without an invite."

"Very mysterious." Leaning on the table with one hand, cocked her head to one side, examining the map. "And that's where this...Drucatta is?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"How do you know? What is it?"

He looked her in the eye, a thin smile on his face. "If you believe Arcil and his cronies, it's some sort of relic room. It's where they keep all the gold, jewels, icons and every other thing they've stolen from the clans they've destroyed over the years."

"Clans?"

"They've been around for a long time and their history is as bloody as anyone else's."

Gliss straightened up, holding his gaze. "How about Glaive?"

"I'm not hiding from it," Capper replied. "We've done our fair share of stamping through the years. It's how you survive here. Clans play off against each other all the time. You play the game wrong, you lose everything."

"How dramatic," Gliss purred. "So, what's our plan?"

"Our plan?" He gave her an incredulous look. "Hold on – what exactly do you think we're going to do here?"

A flash of confusion crossed her face. "Well...I thought, the Keystone-"

"You thought because I was willing to look into a hunch with you that I was also ready to break into the most dangerous place in the city, full of vampires who'd like nothing better than to have my head on a spike?"

"Err..."

"Just back up," Capper told her firmly. "I'm still not convinced all of this is for real. You show up here with all these wild stories – you lie to my clan Elders about it-,"

"I didn't lie!" she exclaimed. "I was exiled."

"Fine. You...left out some important information." He pointed to the map. "But all we've got to go on right now is that Baelock are getting more aggressive. We don't know why, and you've given one possible explanation. The reason I haven't gone to the Elders about it is because we don't have any evidence. What we're definitely not going to do is pick a fight with Baelock, just the two of us. I don't know how things are done in Iron Hollow, but if you think we can just break into that place then you've got a lot to learn about this city. You'll be dead in minutes. They're not the most powerful clan in Veridian Shores for nothing."