Chapter 462: The Value of Trust

“Maeve? Fucking Maeve? Again?”

Kerr’s incredulous shout mirrored Jadis’ own feelings on the matter. Her suspicion had been raised by Cora failing to use her typical mode of overly formal address when it came to Jadis, and it had only increased when the priestess had delivered a long speech on a topic she didn’t think the woman would ever go on about at such length. Maybe it was the influence of all those cliché old spy movies, but Jadis had felt it a strong possibility that the infiltrator could be pretending to be Cora and was purposefully going into such detail about spy craft to deflect suspicion from herself. Her hunch had only grown stronger the more Cora spoke. While she admitted that she didn’t know Cora as well as her lovers, she felt like she knew the priestess well enough to tell the different between her, and someone performing an imperfect imitation of her.

While Jadis wasn’t too surprised to find that she had guessed right about Cora being an imposter, she had to admit that she had not been expecting to find a familiar face under the mask.

“Caught again,” Maeve murmured behind Syd’s hand, her appearance and voice still in the guise of Cora. “I don’t normally have this kind of trouble. You two are really quite the challenge.”

There was an immediate furor in the room as confusion overtook some, while upset recognition spread through others.

“Wait, Maeve? Is that the one from Jadis’ story?” Villum asked as he got to his feet.

“So it would seem,” Nevan replied with a cross look while his hand fell to the hilt of his rapier. “We have been bamboozled by a sneaky wretch of a Fetch!”

“What’s happening here?” The real Cora asked as Aila and Eir went to her side. “I’m confused.”

“Hold her still,” Kerr commanded as she stalked towards Jadis’ two selves and the captured shape changer. “I’ll take care of this.”

“Woah, woah, woah!” Syd said as she let go of Maeve’s face and neck to stop Kerr from smashing a chair over the Fetch’s head. “We’re still at the talking stage, not the beating stage. Fuck, I thought I was supposed to be the impulsively violent one.”

“Maybe you forgot, but I’ve got a reputation for impulsiveness too. What the fuck is she doing here!?” Kerr shouted as she tugged on the chair.

Realizing that Syd’s grip was iron, Kerr cursed and let the piece of furniture go with a frustrated huff. She pointed an angry finger at the Fetch, her expression as fierce as her stylized wolf helmet.

“Are you telling me this bitch was spying on us this whole time? And we let her walk away back in Brightstone without breaking her fucking skull open!?”

“Well, I don’t know if she’s the one who’s been spying on us,” Syd said as she put Kerr’s chair down so that Dys could put the Fetch onto the seat. “That’s why we’re going to talk.”

“Anything you want to say, Maeve?” Dys growled as she set the Fetch down and moved her grip to her shoulders.

“I don’t currently have a skull,” she responded while locking gazes with the furious archer. “See?”

Maeve’s monotone words were punctuated by her pressing the tip of one finger into her right temple. Jadis curled her lips in amused disgust as the Fetch’s head deformed like it was made of clay around the digit.

“Oh, gods,” Cora gasped in horror. “Please stop doing that!”

“Don’t be a moron,” Kerr sneered at Maeve. “It’ll take more than that to freak me out.”

“I’ll try harder next time,” the Fetch replied in a flat tone.

Dys used her grip on Maeve’s shoulders to spin the woman around to face her, the wooden chair squeaking against the stone floor. Crouching down so that she was closer to eye level with her, Dys gave the shape changer a look that spoke volumes about her current mood. While Maeve’s expression didn’t even flicker, Jadis could see the people behind her all flinch back.

“Enough playing around. Tell me what you’re doing here, Maeve, or I’m going to consider this intrusion a breech in our agreement.”

Jadis punctuated Dys’ implicit threat by having her Jay self slam the giant barn door closed with a loud bang.

“Do we need to visit a dragon?”

Maeve was quiet for a few breaths, her wide-eyed but otherwise placid expression unchanging. Abruptly, her mouth contorted into a wide grin at the same time as her face and body changed shape to resemble Eir. It took Jadis a heartbeat to realize who the Fetch was mimicking because of the similarities, but she had not made an imperfect copy of the elven oracle, but had instead changed to look like Eir’s mother, Svana.

“I do not believe I have gone against the spirit of our agreement. I haven’t caused any harm at all. In fact, I believe I’ve provided a valuable service.”

“A valuable service?” Dys echoed the Fetch.

“I have shown you, through a simple demonstration, that your security is truly abysmal. You really need to do better. Cora’s room wasn’t even locked.”

“What, you were in my room? Wait, are those my clothes?”

“Not the most important thing to focus on right now,” Aila said quietly to the upset priestess.

“You breaking into my home is going to be a hard thing to sell as a service,” Syd shook her head as she stood over the Fetch with her arms crossed. “Especially if you’ve been selling information on me to other people.”

“I have done no such thing,” Maeve denied the accusation without taking her wide eyes off of Dys. “I have been in Countess Voclain’s Service for nearly two months now. This is the first time that I’ve been in the capital in almost a year.”

“You were just in Count Holtz’ territory,” Aila pointed out. “Yet you somehow made it back to the capital before we did. You could have been coming and going, gathering your infrequent information, since you are apparently capable of such fast travel.”

Maeve turned her head to look at Aila, her expression once more emotionless, though her tone had that strange intensity to it that Jadis remembered from their last encounter.

“I would not have been able to leave and return to that nitwit Voclain’s mansion with the frequency that you imagine or would be required to perform any kind of effective espionage. You can confirm my whereabouts with the countess, if you like. Or, you can use your brain and realize that if I was actually trying to spy on you, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to be caught so easily.”

 “Don’t insult her,” Dys commanded in no uncertain terms. With one finger against Maeve’s chin, she redirected the Fetch’s gaze onto her. “It doesn’t do you any favors.”

“Are you seriously trying to say you snuck in here, pretending to be Cora, and let yourself be caught?” Kerr asked with her sharp teeth bared.

“Yes.”

“Why?” Dys firmly asked.

“As I said, your security is abysmal,” Maeve changed her tone to that of a scolding school mistress. “Truly, it is lacking in almost every regard. Once I took a few minutes to investigate and saw how lackluster your attempts at warding off intrusion are, I felt it was my duty to the champion of my God to point out the flaws as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

Dys squinted her eyes at the fake elf, her expression decidedly unimpressed.

“I thought it would be fun,” Maeve amended her answer in a monotone voice. “And it has been. We’re together again, after all.”

“Che cazzo?” Kerr threw her hands into the air. “She’s worse than Jack! At least he fucked right off and we only had to deal with him once!”

“That we know of,” Jay murmured.

“Okay, time to leave,” Dys said as she picked the Fetch up. “Anybody know where the nearest guardhouse is? I don’t know if impersonation counts as fraud, but breaking and entering is definitely a crime. Let’s go.”

As the people in the room started to move to get out of Dys’ way, Maeve’s body rippled as she changed form once more, this time into a copy of Bridget. Of course, she was still wearing Cora’s priestly robes, so the look was an odd one to say the least. Her voice didn’t stray from that strangely intense yet inflectionless tone she had when she wasn’t mimicking anyone, but more importantly, she didn’t copy Bridget’s voice at all. The voice that came from her mouth was strangely inhuman in a hard to describe way. It was almost like the sounds coming from her weren’t generated by vocal cords, but some other alien mechanism that failed to copy human speech without some indefinable error.

“There is another reason I came here today,” Maeve said. “All the criticisms I’ve made regarding your security, as well as my suspicions concerning the spy, are true. You do have a spy problem, possibly a Fetch, but it isn’t me. I came here to offer you my services. You need someone trained in spy craft who can enact counter measures. I would be delighted to provide those services for you.”

Dys slowed her steps and held the woman up so that she was level with her.

“I would even be willing to do some espionage on your behalf,” Maeve continued with that same dark hunger in her strange voice. “You have enemies. They are daily prying into your business. Your life. The privacy of you and your lovers. Don’t you want someone on your payroll who can do a little spying for you, instead of against you, for once? Don’t you want an agent working for your cause who you can trust?”

“And you think you’re someone that I can trust?” Dys raised an eyebrow at the Fetch.

“You can trust that I will do anything to help you succeed in your disruption of the status quo,” Maeve emphasized one word with an almost sultry purr. “You have my attention, Jadis. My full and undivided attention. You cannot ask for greater loyalty than that from a Fetch.”

Dys stared at Maeve for a long, drawn-out minute. Then, stepping to one side, she sat the shape shifting woman down onto Gunnar’s desk with a thud and let go. Crossing her arms and adopting a stern, on guard position, Dys watched the Fetch while her other two selves motioned for everyone else in the room to gather together.

“Group huddle,” Jay said as she got down on one knee. “Bring it in.”

Once all had gathered together in a fairly tight circle, Jay looked around at the faces of all her lovers and companions.

“Okay. What do you all think about Maeve’s proposition?”

“Terrible idea. There’s no way we can trust her,” Bridget said immediately. “She’s a bloody chaotic stalker! She’ll turn on us the second she thinks it’ll be funny.”

“I don’t think so,” Eir shook her head. “She seems to be far more devoted to Destarious and his cause than Jack. Since Jadis is Destarious’ chosen champion, I don’t think Maeve would purposefully go against Jadis.”

“She is a Fetch, after all,” Orla quietly mused with one finger pressed against her lower lip. “While my love and I are hardly noble in origin, we have worked for noble houses in the past. Spies are a common feature in such places. There is no more natural spy in the world than a Fetch. Any noble would sell their left ear to have the loyalty of such a creature.”

“But does Jadis truly command her loyalty?” Nevan asked in response to his wife’s musings. “Or is this all just a passing fancy that will quickly flee the mercurial mind of a deranged madwoman?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” Syd replied with a frown. “Honestly, I can only think of one way to confirm her disposition. And I’m not sure she’s worth the cost.”

“What do you have in mind?” Aila asked with a cool expression.

“Probably exactly what you think I’m thinking,” Syd smirked at her.

As the gathering talked in hushed tones, Maeve continued to stare up at Dys with unblinking eyes. While her expression was as still as stone, the Fetch was kicking her legs like a bored child as she sat on the edge of the desk. The strangeness of her copied visage was made stranger by the unnatural expression and oddly innocent body language.

“Do you have to look like my friends and lovers?” Dys asked the Fetch.

“I can look like whoever you’d like me to,” Maeve answered with focused intensity.

“Don’t you have a look of your own you can revert to or something?”

“No.”

The short answer made Dys’ eyebrow raise, but she didn’t press the issue.

“Then at least be someone I’ve never met before.”

“How can I be sure that whoever I might chose to copy isn’t someone you already know?”

“Don’t be a smartass and just change,” Dys sighed at the woman.

Without another word, Maeve shifter her form into that of a human woman. Her appearance was somewhat similar to Sabina, with dark tan skin and short black hair, but she clearly wasn’t a half elf and was far thinner than the well-muscled smith.

“Thanks,” Dys said. “I appreciate the cooperation.”

“Any time,” Maeve gave her a wide, unsettling smile.

Before the Fetch could follow up her creepy expression with anything creepier, Dys held up a hand. The group huddle was breaking up since a decision had been made for the next course of action.

“Okay. You’re going to come with me and sit nice and quiet in that room over there. Aila, Kerr, Nevan, and Orla are going to keep you company while I go have a couple of words with your boss.”

“My boss?” Maeve asked, her expression actually changing to one of confusion. “I don’t have a boss.”

“Oh, yes you do,” Dys corrected her. “Even if you don’t like to think of him that way. D pointed you in my direction. I’m going to go ask him why.”

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