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Surely, the emperor of the Vanguard would want to prevent an emperor of Abolish from acquiring new and dangerous power. But other than himself, how many people knew about this situation, Hector wondered? It certainly seemed like the Sandlords had been trying to keep Rasalased's existence a secret, so it was a fair bet that Sermung didn't know what Morgunov's plan here was.

Which meant that someone needed to tell him... unless, of course, the Sandlords had already managed to. But from the sound of things, they'd been far too busy.

Agh. He was probably just being presumptuous, though. This was the Vanguard. They had all kinds of resources at their disposal. They even had their own teams of Sparrows, according to Hanton Gaolanet. Their spy network was probably spectacular.

...But if that were true, then why had Sermung allowed this to happen in the first place? If he knew what Morgunov was after, he would've surely come to Sair himself and stopped him, right?

Hmm.

Yeah, this was above his pay-grade for sure, Hector figured.

He could worry about that later. He didn't know how much longer this conversation would last, so he tried to think of what else he should ask about.

It didn't take him long to come up with something. "The last time we spoke, you told me to be wary of pretenders."

"Yes."

"What did you mean?"

"Was that not clear? Those who sought to use you for their own gain? Those who hid their true intentions from you? Those who harbored dark secrets within their souls? There were many who fit the term."

"Ah... but could you, like, gimme some names or something?"

"I am not good with names."

"Oh, right, you told me something like that before, didn't you?"

"Ah, did I? Splendid. No further explanation is required, then."

"Well, I don't know about that. Maybe you could narrow--"

"What are your intentions for my kin, Young Hector? You are going to meet them, are you not?"