Unfortunately, he could not simply tell his superiors of the girl’s connection to Gohvis. Even if they did believe him, they could decide to simply kill her the way Artemis would have done--or worse, begin asking questions about his involvement in the Elroy massacre.
No, it had to be more discreet than any of that. So instead, he manufactured false leads in order to convince the marshals to revive the old intelligence-gathering mission on Gohvis. Which worked out better than expected. Project Blacksong was conceived around it--though by now, Blacksong had grown into an entirely new beast with many different objectives. Excepting Jackson here, all of the marshals had their own goals for Blacksong. Jackson seemed to be of the opinion that there were already far too many cooks in the kitchen, as it were.
As for Gema, her name was too famous for her to become a plant inside of Abolish, but at the same time, Parson needed Abolish to know her name, otherwise Gohvis might never even realize his connection to her. Therefore, the only viable recourse was to change her family’s affiliations. If the Elroys became fugitives of the Vanguard, Gema’s credibility with Abolish would improve tenfold. Whether that would be enough or not remained to be seen, but Parson had confidence in the girl.
And besides, even if she did fail, at least the resulting conflict in Sair would offer plenty of new angles from which to work. Like Zeff, for instance. Finally, that boy’s potential had begun to surface. And then, of course, there were the Sandlords. Ideally, they would secede too, before any of the Vanguard’s maladies began to infect their ranks. Parson just hoped they weren’t too afraid of Abolish to let go of the Vanguard. He would’ve liked to take more steps to ensure their departure while he was in Sair, but the Gargoyle’s intervening had rendered that impossible.
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.