Sometimes, the Best Answer Is to Stop Asking the Question

Yan was frozen for a moment as Halen took in the scene, easily holding everyone with his own power, which Yan had never seen anyone do before. Not even the masters at the Academy, breaking up fights between students, would have been able to do that, and Halen didn’t even look strained. He bent down to pick up the gun she had dropped, though he didn’t take the knife out of Guildmaster Vaneik’s hand. Vaneik could still move his eyes, at least, and he watched Halen with a mistrust and hatred that Yan could practically feel.

Halen kept the whole assembly held until he seemed satisfied that the scene was secure, in some kind of way that Yan couldn’t quite understand. She could feel his power moving all over, but it wasn’t clear what he was doing. Perhaps he was just checking for more hidden weapons. She wondered just what the actual extent of his power was, as he gently, slowly, released her. Yan stayed frozen for a second, not quite sure that she could move her body, until she felt the unintentional trembling in her hand, and raised it to her face, touching her forehead as though that would offer some kind of reassurance. The Guildmaster and the assassin were still frozen, and Yan hated how this symbolic gesture of trust, or at least cooperation, between Halen and herself, made her feel. Yan looked away, conflicted about the fact that she had called out to him for help.

“What happened here, Yan?” Halen asked. His voice was low and on the edge of gentle, like how one would talk to a frightened animal. She wished that it didn’t work on her.

“I--” Yan began, then took a deep breath. “Apprentice Olms told me to come talk to the Guildmaster,” she said, her voice quivering a little. “We were just talking. That man--” Yan pointed-- “came from over there.” Her hand shook as she illustrated the scene. “And I saw the gun…”

“Good,” Halen said. He turned, noticing someone else approaching before Yan had registered it.

Yuuni Olms appeared, sticking her head out from behind the greenery and fearlessly taking in the scene: the knife in her master’s hand, the gun in Halen’s, the bleeding assassin still laying frozen on the ground, and Yan, stiff as a board.

Yan felt Halen release the Guildmaster from his hold, and Vaneik shook himself. “I’d prefer you didn’t lay your hands on me, Halen,” Vaneik said, distaste clear in his voice. But he brushed himself off and tucked his knife back in his jacket without further protest.

“What happened?” Olms asked, standing next to Vaneik and assessing the rest of the scene with a wary eye. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and offered it to the Guildmaster so that he could wipe the blood off his face.

“I’ll tell you later,” Vaneik said. “I think it’s time that our party made a graceful exit.”

“I apologize for allowing this to happen,” Halen said. “You may rest assured that I will personally take every effort--”

“I would have preferred to simply kill him and have it over with,” Vaneik said, waving his hand. “I assure you, even if you tell me who sent him--” and Vaneik scowled at the man on the ground-- “it will give me no satisfaction.”

Halen nodded once.

Vaneik glanced at Yan. “Apprentice BarCarran, I do thank you for your assistance.” His eyes flicked between her and Halen. “If there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know.”

“No need, sir,” Yan said. It would have been antithetical to her honor as a spacer to accept a tangible reward, or even offer of future cooperation, for saving his life. The rules of civility between ships in the Guild dictated that there should be no token given for mutual defense against pirates.

His lips quirked up in a wry smile. “Indeed, Apprentice BarCarran. I’m sure I’ll see you some other time.”

“I’ll have my staff--” Halen began.

“I don’t need an escort,” Vaneik said. “I’m certain my own apprentices are capable of getting me back to the Oathkeeper unhindered.”

“As you say,” Halen said.

“Where is Nomar?” Vaneik asked Olms.

“Drinking, I believe,” she said.

“He’s been making better use of his night than I have,” Vaneik replied. He looked around him very carefully, with one last lingering glance at the assassin still on the floor, then turned the corner with Olms and vanished from sight, leaving just Yan and Halen.

She kept looking at the assassin on the floor, wondering what was to become of him. His breathing was shallow, but his face was still. Her mind felt oddly blank, looking at him.

“Are you alright, Yan?” Halen asked.

She twitched, then jammed her hands into her pockets. “Yes,” she said. Even if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t admit that to him, of all people.

He studied her silently before he said anything else. She hated the way his eyes on her made her feel. “If you would like to go home, I can get you a driver,” Halen said.

“I’d rather not,” Yan said. She didn’t know why she automatically objected. The objection just fell out of her mouth. Halen could have said anything, and she would have said the opposite. Even as she said it, she realized that what she really wanted was to talk to Sylva, but Sylva felt like a world away. Still, she wasn’t going to back down. “I think I’ll go inside,” Yan said.

“Of course,” Halen said. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but it was suddenly urgent for her to no longer be next to him, so she brushed past him. As soon as she was out of his sight, she broke into a run, heading near-blindly through the garden, away from everywhere she felt other people when she cast out her sense in the power.

She ended up near the rear of the hall, strains of music and conversation coming faintly through an open set of double doors, ones that led into one of the hallways of Stonecourt, rather than directly back to the party itself. Yan hurried inside, down the hallway, until she found a bathroom that was blessedly empty.

Yan leaned over the sink, catching her breath and trying to steady her shaking hands on the cold porcelain. As she leaned forward, her golden circlet, which she had almost forgotten about, slipped off her head and fell into the sink, making such a horrible loud noise that she almost cried. She stared at the circlet in the sink, then looked at her reflection in the mirror. Although this bathroom had the most pleasing lights possible, Yan still felt almost unrecognizable, with her eyes wide and a faint sheen of sweat all over her forehead. She opened the tap without thinking, belatedly realizing that she was getting her circlet all wet, decided it didn’t matter, and splashed the cold water on her face, rubbing her eyes almost pathetically, though she wasn’t quite crying.

She couldn’t have explained even a fraction of what she was feeling in that moment, not to anyone.

The door opened. Yan jumped, grabbing her wet circlet out of the sink and clutching it as she whirled to look at the intruder. If she had been thinking straight, she would have kept the door shut with the power, but she hadn’t been, and now--

It was just Kino, stepping in and closing the door behind her. She stared at Yan with her own dark eyes. “I was looking for you,” Kino said.

“Why?” Yan asked, trying to relax a little. Kino was safe, Yan thought, even if she could be a little disconcerting. She at least was in the same ship as Yan. They were on a team.

“I heard you yell. But I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.”

“Oh,” Yan said. “Sorry about that.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Yan said. “I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

So, haltingly, Yan described the whole incident to Kino, who listened without reacting, aside from completely ripping the button off the sleeve of her cassock. Yan wondered if she would be in trouble for that. Kino stuffed the offending button into her pocket as Yan finished her story. “So Guildmaster Vaneik left, and I came here just to… You know.”

“Where did Halen go?” Kino asked.

“I don’t know,” Yan said. “Did you look for him with the power?”

“My range is bad right now,” Kino said. “That’s why I couldn’t find you.”

“Because of the party?” Yan asked. Too many people in a small space could make finding an individual difficult sometimes, though Yan rarely found it to be a bother.

Kino looked at her out of the corner of her eye. “No,” she said. She fished around in her pocket for a second and pulled out a small tin of mints. She opened it, then did something else to it, and a few of the mints dropped on the floor, which Kino ignored as she poked at it with two fingers, and then held up half a pill, its green color looking sickly under the warm bathroom lights. She offered it to Yan.

“What is that?” Yan asked.

“Vena,” Kino said, the flatness of her voice coming across as nonchalance. “You can have it.”

Yan was horrified, and she took a half step back, knocking her hip on the sink. “What the fuck are you carrying around vena for?” she hissed, turning her head as though someone else could be listening. Her voice felt echoey and terrible in the bathroom, now that the subject had turned.

“It takes the edges off,” Kino said. “You can have it.” She offered the half pill to Yan again.

“No,” Yan said. “I don’t-- you’re going to get in so much trouble with Sandreas for that.”

“He knows,” Kino said. She put the pill away, and the mints tin went back into her pocket.

“What do you mean, ‘he knows?’”

“I let one of Halen’s people follow me, over the summer, last time I bought some,” Kino said. “He knows exactly what I was doing. I’m sure he’s searched my room.”

“Fuck,” Yan said. She rubbed her temple. “Kino-- that’s going to get you killed.”

“I don’t take enough to make me not able to use the power,” Kino said. She demonstrated, tugging the circlet out of Yan’s hand with the power and hovering it back onto her head. Yan shook her head, and it landed crooked.

“But it’s dangerous,” Yan said.

“I’m used to it,” Kino replied.

“And illegal.”

“So?”

“Fuck, Kino…” Yan shook her head.

“Are you going to cause me a problem?” Kino asked, tilting her head curiously.

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“You say Halen knows and doesn’t care,” Yan said, scowling.

“Yes.”

“Because he’s a pirate.”

“He’s not a pirate,” Kino said.

“He’s not a pirate like you’re not from Hanathue,” Yan said.

Kino just stared at her. “Are you going to cause me a problem?”

Yan scrunched her eyes closed. If they had still been students at the Academy, she would have been more tempted. But Kino, despite the fact that this was the worst way to go about it, had been trying to do her a favor, and who would Yan report it to anyway? She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I won’t.”

“Thank you,” Kino said.

Yan sighed. “Why do you… You know what, nevermind,” Yan said. “I don’t want to know.”

Kino nodded. She looked at Yan, seemingly on the verge of saying something else, opening her mouth and then closing it again.

Yan wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear Kino try to defend herself, but she asked, “What?”

“Where did Halen go, with the assassin?”

It was an unexpected question. “I don’t know,” Yan said. “I assume he turned him over to, you know, like…” Even as she said this, the words felt false in her mouth. The way Halen had told Vaneik that he would find out who was behind the attack, and the way that he hadn’t even batted an eye when Vaneik had said that he would have preferred to kill him… Yan’s stomach turned for a second. “What do you think he’s doing with him?”

“He’s out of my range,” Kino said. “I’m just curious.”

“Why?”

Kino tilted her head. “Don’t you want to know?

“Know what?”

“We have to learn what this job entails eventually.”

Yan frowned. “I’m sure Sandreas will tell us everything that we need to know.”

“You’re going to go ask him what’s happening to that man? And you’re going to trust what he says?”

“Why would he lie?”

“He already lied.”

“About Falmar? That was for…” Yan’s voice trailed off. Kino was just staring at her, with that odd, blank expression of hers. It was so unreactive that Yan was compelled to project her own meaning onto it. Kino might not have been silently judging her for not wanting to investigate, but Yan had to imagine that she was, and feel guilty about it. Yan looked away, disconcerted.

“You should go home,” Kino said, after a second of silence.

Yan scowled. “Halen told me that, too.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Yan said.

“I’m going to look for him. If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to.” She turned towards the door, then went out.

Yan hesitated for half a second, then said, “Wait, Kino! I’m coming.”

The smile that Kino gave her when Yan stepped up to her shoulder was small and stiff, but Yan had to think that it was genuine.

“Can you feel him?” Kino asked.

“Should we bring Sid?” Yan asked, not answering the question.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He’s with First Sandreas.”

“Oh,” Yan said. “Alright.” She had a momentary thought that she should verify this, since Kino might just not want to bring Sid along for her own reasons, but then decided that Kino’s unprompted confession of drug use meant that Kino was unlikely to be lying. She didn’t seem the type. Instead, Yan swept her power out, seeking out the now-familiar feeling of Halen. She could feel him, further into the building, and far below their feet, in one of Stonecourt’s sub-basements. She reported his location to Kino, and Kino started confidently walking down the hallways.

Yan kept sending out little pings of power, just to make sure Halen wasn’t moving. He wasn’t. There were plenty of other signals of people near him, which would mean that they unfortunately wouldn’t be able to sneak towards him without being observed. But that was alright. Yan, at least, wasn’t really trying to be sneaky.

On the edge of her power-sense, Yan caught a sensation that made her stop as she and Kino entered an echoey stairwell. Kino kept walking down the steps, but Yan sent out her power again to check.

“We’re being followed,” she announced to Kino.

“Okay,” Kino said, but she kept walking. Yan followed, hesitantly, and kept glancing over her shoulder, even though the familiar presence following was still fairly far back.

They made it to the bottom of the stairs, exiting into one of the cold and functional basement levels. Yan had never been here before, and all the hallways looked more utilitarian than the upper levels, even the ones where things like the training facilities they had used before were housed. These walls were cold, flat stone, with unlabeled doors, and, after a minute or so of walking, they came to a double door in the hallway that neither of their access cards would open.

“What now?” Yan asked, as she tried swiping her card against the sensor again, in the vain hope that it would do something.

“We can open it with the power,” Kino said. She closed her eyes and put her hand on the door.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” someone said from down the hallway. Yan had been focused on the problem in front of them, and had not realized that her watcher had come this close.

Yan turned, and Kino dropped her hand. The woman approaching was wearing a green dress, like one of the plainer party guests upstairs. Yan was sure, in fact, that she had seen this woman standing around in the hall, and had assumed that she was part of the entourages of one of the governors. She was tall, though shorter than Yan by a good few inches. Her eyes were as green as her dress was, and she had her brown hair in a loose updo, with a single flower tucked into it.

Yan crossed her arms. “I assume you’re the watcher Halen sent after me.”

“Of course,” the woman said. Her voice was rich and cheerful, and she gave a small bow. “Iri Maedes, at your service.”

“Can you open this door?” Kino asked.

“I can,” Iri said.

Kino moved aside to allow Iri to walk towards the door. “Open it,” Kino said.

“I don’t think so.” Iri smiled, but Kino frowned deeply. “There’s no reason for you to go back there.”

“What’s Halen doing with that man?” Yan asked.

Iri looked at Yan steadily. “It’s important to learn who hired that man to kill Guildmaster Vaneik, why, and if there are any more people who might be about to try the same.”

Yan felt ill, but she nodded.

“Halen is finding that out?” Kino asked.

“Yes,” Iri said. “Most likely.”

“Shouldn’t he be given to… the Yora police, or…?” Yan trailed off.

Iri looked at her. “He may be, later.” Iri’s voice was calm, just like Halen’s had been, earlier. “But Halen is uniquely well qualified to find answers.”

“What do you mean?” Yan asked.

“Didn’t he tell you?” Iri asked.

“Tell me what?”

“Walk with me,” Iri said. “I’ll tell you.”

Yan looked at Kino, then at the door. Kino started walking, following Iri, and Yan followed after Kino. They went all the way up the stairs and were heading back to the party area, though on a different route, and then Iri led them into a small meeting room, one that she used her own security card to open. She leaned against the wall, regarding Yan and Kino, before she said anything.

“Halen has a unique talent,” Iri said. “I’ve been told that lots of sensitives have some special quirk about them, but I wouldn’t know-- do you?”

“Yes,” Yan said. “It’s pretty common.” She shrugged. “I can feel when other people are using the power nearby. Not everybody can do that naturally.”

“Mejia?”

Kino looked at Iri and shrugged.

“What’s Halen’s ability?” Yan asked.

“He can tell what people are feeling,” Iri said. “He tried to describe it to me, once. He says it’s not exactly like feeling things himself. If he was in here, and I punched you-- he described it as being an echo of the pain. And if it scared you, or made you angry, or any feeling, he’d feel an echo of that, too.”

“Oh,” Yan said. Several things clicked into place: most vividly, the moment that she had first been told that Halen was a pirate, and become afraid-- she made the connection that the instant she had felt that fear run down her back, that was when Halen had turned away from the rest of Sandreas’ entourage to go investigate Yan’s party crashing family. She wondered what Halen could mean by an echo, what that actually felt like.

“So.” Iri shrugged. “He can know very easily when someone is telling the truth or not, among other things.”

“He tortures people,” Kino said, voice flat.

“He does many things,” Iri said. “Some of which, I don’t think you need to see or interrupt him in, at least not right now.”

“Did he send you to stop me?” Yan asked.

“No,” Iri said. “In fact, he told me not to follow you too closely, after our little misadventure a little while ago.” Iri’s mouth was a tight line. “Which meant that I was not watching you when you went to speak with the Guildmaster.”

“I assumed I was on camera.”

“A camera does not stop a bullet,” Iri said. “I apologize for being derelict in my duties.”

“It’s fine,” Yan said, though she wasn’t sure it was. “I don’t know if there was anything you could have done.”

“Maybe,” Iri said. “Maybe not. But I, personally, have resolved to keep a better eye to stop that from happening again. This night has already been enough for you. Let Halen take care of his duties without worrying about it.”

Yan looked at Kino, who had put the blank expression so firmly back on her face that Yan had no idea what she could possibly be thinking. There was no hint from Kino about what Yan should do, so she allowed herself to listen to Iri. “Okay,” she said.

Iri relaxed a little. “Good. Now--”

“I think I want to go home, now,” Kino said abruptly.

“An excellent idea, Apprentice Mejia,” Iri said. “There’s a car waiting for you.”

“What about Sid?” Yan asked, but Iri was already holding the door to walk both of them out.

----------------------------------------

It was late, but not inhumanly late, when Yan finally made it back to her room. After the limo ride back to her apartment, which had been dead silent, she had wondered if Kino would speak to her some more, but Kino had nodded curtly at her and had retreated to her own room. Now that Yan knew about Kino’s more unfortunate habits, she had a nagging worry that maybe Kino shouldn’t be left alone, but she also didn’t really want to intrude, or get herself involved. So, she just went back to her apartment and paced back and forth in the living room.

Her project that had earned her this apprenticeship, the fish in its bowl, sat on the coffee table, the fake goldfish matching her movements as she walked back and forth.

She felt like there were fifteen thousand different thoughts swimming through her mind, but she couldn’t do anything about them. She saw all the facets of problems, but was told in no uncertain terms to put them out of her mind. The assassin was Halen’s responsibility to deal with. Kino’s drug addiction wasn’t a problem for her to solve. Whatever Halen considered to be his duty, Yan wasn’t supposed to interfere. Yan’s follower, Iri, would be doing her job regardless of if Yan wanted to be followed or not. There were political machinations happening between the Guild and the Empire that she ordinarily would have been interested in thinking about, but she didn’t even entirely understand them, and didn’t know if she was supposed to. Everything felt so urgent and yet impossible to think about directly.

Yan sat down on her couch, folding in on herself. Here was something that she could do. She could take a deep breath, close her eyes, and bring the power up to the surface of her mind, feeling its presence just underneath her skin. Focused on that, and on nothing else, Yan felt some of her anxiety slip away. In the trance state, so easy to drop into, she could look at her thoughts, one by one, and put them away, to be dealt with later. Iri was right: there were things that were not her responsibility to think about, so she could put them away. Kino, Halen, Guildmaster Vaneik.

She didn’t know how long she was in that trance state, because it always made time feel so strange and fluid. It could have been ten minutes or it could have been three hours; when Yan was deep inside the power like that, she rarely bothered keeping an active sense of the minutes passing. She was jolted out of her meditation trance by the sound of her phone jangling away on the coffee table in front of her.

Yan blinked, suddenly aware once again that she had a body. The dim lights of her living room stabbed into her eyes, and her phone’s ringtone throbbed in her ears. She nearly knocked over her fishbowl as she reached for the offending object, intending initially just to silence it. But she saw that the caller ID said Sylva, so she answered instead.

“Hey,” Yan said. Her mouth was dry and sticky. “Sylva.”

“Did I wake you up?” Sylva asked, voice tinny over the phone.

Yan flopped to lay sideways on her couch, pressing the phone to her ear and staring up at the dark ceiling above her. “No, I was meditating.”

“I saw you on the news,” Sylva said.

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, I mean, I was watching the Governors’ Dinner speeches. You looked good out there.”

“Thanks,” Yan said. “It’s been kinda a crazy night.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Yan said. “I met Guildmaster Vaneik and his apprentices.”

“Would I know them from the Academy?” Sylva asked.

“You’d probably recognize them if you saw them.”

“Let me see if I can pick them out from these crowd photos,” Sylva said, and her voice became blurrier as she switched Yan to speakerphone. “I’m looking at news pictures from the dinner.”

“Mmm,” Yan said. Sylva had gotten distracted with this, and so Yan just closed her eyes and waited for her to be finished.

“Who are you dancing with?” There was a strange tone in Sylva’s voice, but Yan was too tired to process it.

“You don’t recognize her,” Yan said. “That’s Yuuni Olms. Vaneik’s apprentice.”

“Oh,” Sylva said. “Okay.”

“She asked me to dance.”

“Why?”

“Wanted to talk, I think.”

“Don’t need to dance for that.”

“She probably just wanted to get me away from Sid and Kino. You know, spacer politics.”

“Did you do any politics?”

“I mean, what do you mean by politics?” Yan asked. “I don’t even know. I think it’s all…” She sighed. “Olms told me to talk to the Guildmaster, so I did… God, Sylva…”

“What?”

Yan quickly explained the assassination attempt, and how she had averted it, but she didn’t mention anything that happened with Kino afterwards.

“Wow,” Sylva said. “I wish I could have been there.”

“Why?” Yan asked. “I wouldn’t want you to be in danger.”

“I don’t want you to be in danger, either, you know!” Sylva protested. “I would have…”

“What?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have let you go meet with the Guildmaster alone. What if something had happened?”

“I mean, something did happen,” Yan said. She was tired, and so her voice came out less kindly than she ordinarily would have spoken to Sylva. “I don’t think you would have been able to change anything about it.”

Sylva made a breathy huff through the phone. “Just because I’m not important, I can’t come. Can’t be around.”

“You are important,” Yan said.

Sylva snorted. “Sure. It would be one thing if you said that as Yan of the Iron Dreams . But you’re saying that as Yan, apprentice to First Sandreas. That just makes it a lie.”

“Sylva,” Yan said. “Come on. You know I’m not--”

“You didn’t want me to come,” she said. “You could have asked.”

“Next time,” Yan said. “I’ll invite you next time.”

“But I don’t photograph as well as you dancing with Vaneik’s apprentice.”

“I’m sorry,” Yan said. “I didn’t-- I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“I promise, next time there’s a party, I’ll invite you.”

“Okay,” Sylva said. “Fine.” But she was clearly still mad.

“We should meet up this tenday,” Yan said. “I think I’m probably free from training, for a while, at least.”

“Sure.” The monotone, one word responses were killing Yan, but she didn’t know how to solve them.

“Let me know when you’re free.”

“Okay.”

“I think I should go to bed-- it really has been a crazy day.”

“Yeah.”

“Goodnight, Sylva.”

“Night.”

And Sylva hung up. Yan threw her phone down onto the floor, and it landed on the carpet with a dull thud. She pressed her hands over her face and let out a truly undignified groan.