"We're going to the Sisters of Elazir." The voice on the other end was tight, as if the man didn't relish the thought. Harbin understood the sentiment. The Sisters might be able to treat diseases others couldn't, but they also took care of those they couldn't cure — the incurable and decrepit from across the Empire and beyond. The Empire. The rebels. The cartels. They all depended on the Sisters for the services they provided, even as they envied the Sisters' power.
Though not all of them were sisters nowadays. The majority were still female, but some were male, and a fair few landed somewhere else on the web. The stories said all of them were diseased themselves. Harbin didn't believe that even though he'd only been to a sanctuary once, when he was a child and his grandmother was dying. The dim lights, the droning chants, the smell of incense not quite covering the antiseptic and astringent concoctions. He vowed never to return, trusting his health to the medicines of Dominion doctors rather than the Sisters' melding of magic and tech. But the people tending to his grandmother had all seemed hale and hearty.
Harbin sniffed. Archon Halcyon Koning would not be pleased. The Sisters were a faction to be reckoned with. They had amassed a dragon's hoard of wealth, though what they hoarded most was secrets. And that was where their power lay. Well, that and the rumours of necromancy and clandestine missions into the Desolation to unearth more secrets.
"Which sanctuary?" Harbin finally thought to ask.
"Which do you think? The mothership."
A tense smile crept onto Harbin's lips. "Across the Wall."
"Across the Wall." He almost heard the smile reflected in the other man's voice. The Wall had no other name; it didn't need one. It separated the worlds of the living from the ghosts of the dead. The Dominion from the Desolation. Few outliers lived beyond the Wall, just madmen and edge cases too far gone even for the Badlands. And, of course, the Sisters. Their headquarters, when it appeared at all, appeared outside the wall. Harbin returned to the present, realizing the man was speaking again. "...slip ahead. Intercept us at the Wall."
"Ship comms are still down?" Harbin asked. The Wall had fallen into disrepair, suffering from benign neglect, until recently. Most didn't know the Empire had begun repairing the gaps, testing the mesh. Now it was fully functional, and he could turn it on at a signal, after which the portals were the only way through. And the only way through a portal was to enter a unique access code given solely into the care of the owner of each ship commissioned in the empire: the Dominion liked to keep track of who had business across the Wall. And the owner of the Lyra never left his villa on Passalida.
"Yes."
"So, there's no way through unless they light up their comms, which might also tell us where you are since you're not capable of that."
Harbin tapped his desk, and the connection cut off. He kept tapping as he thought about his options. He hated what he was going to do next. But he still did it. Flicking his finger, he brought up the screen again and called Ellis Gar.
"I need reinforcements," he said before Gar even had a chance to spew a greeting.
"Why?" Gar's voice was hard.
"They're going to the Wall. With a couple more ships, we can trap them against it." Harbin didn't mention the Sisters, not yet, though he imagined Gar could guess if he spared a brain cell to consider it. Or if he hadn't found all the bugs in his ready room. Harbin glanced at the ceiling then back at Gar. The pursed lips and narrowed eyes revealed the man knew the stakes: they were all screwed if the Lyra delivered the boy to the Sisters. Even the Emperor himself didn't mess with the Sisters of Death.