How likely do you think the Red Guard is to discover Siobhan is Sebastien? I’ve been wondering recently about just much they really know about Siobhan and how much they can infer.
I think I’ll start by listing the things they absolutely know. Add on in the comments if I miss anything.
First: They know her past. Ennis talked at length about her past with Thaddeus.
Second: Thaddeus basically knows she’s a null having connected “naught” and “null”.
Third: She knows blood magic: From using ravens to talk to Ennis, to using her healing spell they know she has experience with blood magic.
Fourth: They have ample evidence to suggest she’s a free-caster. Her first real mission stands as an outlier with her holding visible runes in the air. Otherwise her shadow familiar having been denounced as an actual familiar leaves only that it is a complex illusion being free-cast. The fact that it has caused nightmares notwithstanding.
Fifth: She is allied to or works with notable criminal organizations The Verdant Stag and the Nightmare Pack. This gives her access to potentially restricted materials and support from other mages(?).
I think this is all that can be said to be iron-clad with evidence.
I don’t think we can assume that the Red Guard knows what Thaddeus knows. Thaddeus at this point is actively trying to protect her, enough so that he directly argued with the red guard that she isn’t in their purview and directly attacking the forces of the high crown.
The red guard probably also knows anything he has shared with Titus
The Nought = Null connection might seem obvious, but imo is probably just a connection that he made due to his particular studies of the People and the Blood Empire. It wasn’t something he ever mentioned and probably isn’t something the Red Guard knows.
On the other hand, additional things that the Red Guard would know:
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Her anti-scrying mechanisms resemble techniques developed during the Haze War.
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She killed their rogue former agent with an artifact similar to those used in mines in the Haze War. The Red Guard might be vaguely grateful for this though.
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They presumably also know that she goes out of her way to preserve civilian lives, which makes the threat to humanity classification they need to truly go after her dubious, but also they continue to receive a lot of pressure, so it may not matter.
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Since Thaddeus has shared it with Titus, they presumably know that Siobhan’s grandfather has some sort of Blood Empire connection.
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Thanks for commenting, you’re definitely right about Thaddeus hiding details he’s uncovered from the Red Guard, I sometimes forget he’s been helping Siobhan. I’m having trouble remembering what was shared between Thaddeus and Titus, but wasn’t the comment on the anti-scrying methods made by Thaddeus alone? Also I thought the cause of death for the rogue mage was indeterminate thanks to the various potions caught in the disintegration mine. I definitely don’t think they’d ever classify her a threat to humanity unless they genuinely believe she’s an aberrant, but their cooperation would hinge on how much they care about the kings feelings. I really gotta re-read some chapters.
The comment about anti-scrying methods was Thaddeus’s internal musings, but I feel like if he can notice it within half an hour of testing then a team of some of the most powerful thaumaturges available to the coppers and the university would’ve figured out that much our after a few dozen attempts, right? Liza wasn’t particularly trying to hide that she used anti-scrying techniques from the war.
As for the mine:
The three prognos Titus had called in to the site, along with the Red Guard’s reconnaissance and assessment team, had examined what killed the group of Architects and left behind such an alarming after-effect as thoroughly as possible before it faded.
All agreed that it had been the same particular blend of disintegration magic that Lenore’s army used in their mines during the Haze War, combined somehow with a space-bending spell to increase the sheer gruesomeness while also decreasing the chances that any standard shield could ward against the damage. There were several other twists of different types of magic that seemed random and had been hard to define, but which seemed to have increased the spectacle. They had all agreed that there was a strong flavor of darkness, along with some strange extracts of meaning related to sleep, the moon, and a few dozen other things, all too fleeting to be pinned down properly.
So they know it was a mine or something made the same way, and think all the extra stuff was her putting her own twist on it to make it harder to resist.
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Naught is not the same as Null; Null’s can’t cast. Lacer discovered this first (She Who Brings the Night), but it will be in the copper’s reports.
The Red Guard’s interest may be that she has channeled through her flesh and, therefore, has the nasty addiction to casting that leads to madness and the creation of abberants. Especially after her escape didn’t show any obvious conduit. The Grandmaster’s question about whether she can channel without a conduit is probably that concern.
Since channeling through familiars is still a very real method of working without a conduit, I don’t know that the shadow familiar will be discounted. Its incorporeal nature may just imply that it is something different, not that it is not a familiar.
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