Mustafa Visits The Barracks

[*Tisiphone]

Using a small hand-held spade, Virto Hym carefully lifts the tiny tree from its pot, revealing a rootball bound with dark earth. "Tell me, do you garden, Cryptbane?" He does not look up. "No. Don't bother answering that. Your hands are callused, but your nails are clean."

He begins teasing the earthen ball apart, exposing more and more of the roots as he does. "People look at trees. They see the thick trunk, and they think of strength. They see the long branches and think of growth. They see green leaves and they think of life."

As he speaks, more and more of the fine, hairlike mesh of the roots emerge. "They don't see below the surface, do they? They don't see that the source of that strength, growth, and life is not up there at all. It's down here!" He taps the roots, shaking more dirt free. "It's down at the root."

Gently, almost lovingly, he plucks small portions of the roots away. "Most people think that to create harmony, it's about pruning the branches. They think they can just cut away what they don't want, and that what is left behind is going to be strong, and grow the way they want it to."

For the first time, Cryptbane notices the division insignia on the Mover's arm: a shield, viewed from the obverse side so that the hand holding it is visible. It is the mark of a group that he had always assumed to be a myth. The Auditors. Every Notary has heard a story or three about the nigh-invisible Auditors who monitor the Harmonium from within.

"They fail to understand the truth, eh? That the source of a tree's strength is in its roots."

The man falls silent for a time, thought it is not a silence that invites Cryptbane to speak so much as one that demands that he think.

After a suitable time spent inspecting the bonsai's roots, he places it into a different pot and begins shoveling earth over it again. "Wiser men understand the truth, eh? Men like us?"

For the first time, he rests the full weight of his attention on the younger man. "Mustafa's sources," he hisses, his voice losing all traces of its avuncular air. "You find them, do you understand me? You find them. And when you do..." He seizes the shears from Cryptbane's hand and makes one tiny, delicate, almost surgical cut to the miniature tree. A tiny twig falls, a single leaf. Somehow the tree that is left behind looks stronger and healthier than it was before.

"And when you do, well... Sometimes a little pruning is the only way."

He turns away, already gathering up his tools. "The portal is opening again. Go."

The entire audience took less than three minutes.

[*WhenWizardsWar]

Later that night Christopher sat with his back against an oaken tree on the plain of Brux. He often came here in thought though it had been some time since he was last here.

The Movers words echoed over and over in his mind.

Could the auditors be real? They had to be...no one would dare forge that symbol...

He was being asked to undertake the most important of tasks he had ever been given.

It had to be done, Harmony at all costs, peace through might...

But could he? Yes he could he was already on that path he knew the Harmonium needed cleaning...

The branches needed to be pruned.

He stood and walked over to a nearby bush and, for reasons unknown to him pulled a dagger from his boot and began to even the branches out carefully.

Later that night before lights out he sat in his office on a small cot and simply whispered "I'll do it" knowing deep down inside that they heard him.