Of Councils and Conspiracies

[memoryandtheft]

We managed to make it in and out of the Council offices in one piece.

[That's the sort of statement that should sound celebratory. It doesn't. Even with the flattened affect provided by the psychic network's rendering of tone, there's an undercurrent of carefully restrained anger.]

The plague's gone. The plague's been gone for almost two hundred years. The Council's been keeping quarantine all this time in order to keep from having to admit they've been drugging people blind for no good reason for centuries. Their biggest concern right now is the fact that more and more kids are being born resistant to their drugs.

That's where the Duskling population boom is coming from. And the kids born on the wrong side of twilight - apparently, immunity to one side doesn't guarantee immunity to the other, and they aren't all that careful about making sure their shipments don't get mixed up, since an adult probably isn't going to notice any change after a few doses of the wrong thing.

Comments

[memoryandtheft]

If we can do it without all of us winding up in lockup, maybe one or two of us should encourage that interest. We're not locals. We don't have anything to lose if we're exiled.

[dreamingking]

Indeed, we might even learn something interesting out there. I wouldn’t mind volunteering, but it would require vacating my current position as a spy.

[He’s fully confident he could make it back to the city, or to Liminal for that matter, without any trouble.]

[memoryandtheft]

Let's not do that. We need someone on the inside.

[There's a pause before she adds, humour stretched thin even with the relative flattening of affect forced by the psychic network,]

We both know I can piss off a city's leaders enough to get thrown out.

[dreamingking]

I will hold my post then.

[He understands it is a joke and is ready and able to joke back, but goodness, there’s that tiny little blip in his heart. Well, to be fair, Toby does have a spectacular ability to get into life-threatening positions. Surely the tiny thread of worry can be excused.]

You do have that particular skill in spades. You’re getting quite skilled at employing it only when you want to, even.

[memoryandtheft]

You think so?

Well, I guess one of us has to be the optimist. Might as well be you.

[dreamingking]

Call it a work in progress.

[There's a brief pause.]

Although, with any luck and a little information spread, the council will be too busy playing damage control to think of sending anyone for the Tithe.

[memoryandtheft]

Or they'll all be sent themselves. That would be a nice little piece of poetic justice.