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Chapter 70 - Academic Madmen

Ted and Eknie both came to agree that Madorn was slowing them down, whether there were more spies after them or not. Madorn was to travel alone once he would get better from his mysterious sickness.

Ted and Eknie took a train back to Neul, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, Ted was a bit annoyed by the fact that Mad could be dead, or worse, being tortured by spies. It wasn't because of any love or even preference towards the scientist. Ted just disliked the thought of having to start from scratch again.

What he found in Neul made him angry in that regard.

The cult was now under suspicion of actually being a real cult. This was offensive and infuriating to Ted, who had put so much trouble and care into constructing a deceptive, yet tempting disguise for his activities. There were city watch men taking notes and talking to the baffled cultists.

The number of the cultists seemed to change all the time. They had lost about fifty to gods knew what, and they were not deserters, either. Therefore, there was nothing that could be done about that.

Ted had to direct the suspicions away from the Society. He had to come up with a plan.

"Not a cult, not a cult, a society that centers its very existence on science and reason," Ted mumbled to himself, pacing around in his manor.

Luckily, Madorn appeared and gave them some good news. He would be able to finish his machine soon. They would no longer have to make uneducated guesses about the ingredients of the secret fuel.

It appeared to Ted like the weather forecasts the cultists had given out had not matched the schedule that Smith himself had sneakily brought into the house. This had caused people to suspect that weather might not have been the focus point, after all. Ted was in a hurry, but the schedule was nowhere to be found, and frankly, he doubted its existence.

When he tried to find a Karshaan man to get in touch with Smith again, the fellow turned away as if he had seen something truly monstrous and despicable and walked away.

He sighed. It looked like he had to consult the blind hag, but he didn't know if she even knew anything about predicting weather.

Ted came to Madorn in order to properly let out some steam over a few tankards of ale, and the scientist barely looked away from the machine he was finishing.

A strange, liquid sound came from the depths of the gargantuan collection of cogs and levers, pumping away like the circulation of a giant animal made of brass and gold.

Mad gave Ted one curious look.

"Why did you not ask me?" he asked. "I know how weather generally behaves like, I know its basic principles, even though you certainly would see such science as folly or ineffective magic. Just tell me, how has the weather been?"

Ted did not know whether to be amazed by how the scientist was so confident about his capabilities or the fact that he had, apparently, been inside for a total of three days or more.

Academic people, they were such madmen.

"Well, it's changed a lot lately…"

Ted explained everything that had happened in the skies lately, and Madorn asked for a moment alone.

Ted took the opportunity to have a smoke break.

Madorn came to him with a scarily accurate list of events that would grace the Neulian weather in the next few days.

"I need more information for longer forecasts, but if it isn't cold and foggy tomorrow morning, I'll eat my own hands."

Madorn did not have to eat his own hands, but he had work to do nonetheless, and Ted never got a proper apology from anyone concerning the events that had caused him to lose so many perfectly acceptable cultists.

He sent people out to the streets to look for the lost souls. He didn't have high hopes for that, though – there was an epidemic of some subtropical fever illnesses and the weak and the old were dying left and right. Ted didn't feel overly concerned, but then he remembered that smoking was supposedly bad for the respiratory system.

He abstained from most non-culty social activities for the next few weeks and let other people handle interpersonal relations.

Then the lost ones were found.

They were in such a sorry state that even Ted himself considered just ending their misery. Hiding with the few homeless who had not heard about the Society yet, they were shivering in a shack, too afraid of being accused of tax evasion to even go out to get food, skinny and plagued with runny noses.

This, of course, was both completely understandable and completely unacceptable to Ted. He did not like the thought of commanding such cowards, although taxes were a terrifyingly complicated thing and someone had probably threatened these lost souls vigorously to whip them into a panic.

Ted felt like he wanted to shoot every last one of the critters that dared to call themselves with names that he had approved. Then a ray of sunlight cut through the hazy air in the shack and he remembered all that talk about keeping a low profile.

"We will move soon," he told the lost cultists, smiling like some kind of a benevolent hierophant. "We will not have to hide forever, and you will bask in His light forever."

There, now he had decided the gender of the solar god. It was not because he had trouble understanding women, it was because he liked himself more than he liked anyone, and he happened to be a man. This made him think that nature had made him so with a higher purpose in mind – with his voice all low and honeyed, so dark, he was believable.

People just respected strength more than delicate features, and there was nothing wrong with that, either.

"Will we see the sun for real?" a skinny woman in her twenties whispered to Ted. "Please, cor. I need to see the sun."