The man came out of nowhere. One moment Juri and Rena were screaming at each other, the next moment he was simply there, sitting beside the little fire and warming his hands. Juri jumped, cursing himself a fool, and prepared himself to take another hostage.
“I don’t recommend it,” the man said patiently. “I can sense you’re at the late third, maybe early fourth Reformation? I am too much for you to put down easily.”
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Juri demanded. “Are you from the Whisperers? The Orders?”
“My name is Gyre, I am seeking my young companion, no, and no,” the man answered patiently. “Have you seen her? She is a Kastazee girl of thirteen, just past the second reformation. If either of you have harmed her, I suggest you repent quickly. Repent, and make peace with the divine.”
“I never touched the bitch!” Rena shouted. “We were about to tussle when I ran into this madman, but I never intended her harm! She was chasing me, not the other way around!”
Juri, unwilling to take the man’s warnings at face value, used her shouts as a distraction to launch an assault upon the invader, only to have his ankle caught mid kick. Gyre just sighed, stood to get the proper leverage, and threw the younger man into the cave wall with a significant portion of his strength. Juri rebounded and tumbled to the ground, gasping back the breath that had been knocked out of him. The stranger was stronger than him, he forced himself to admit. By a significant margin. Not one that he could overcome without surprise, numbers, or other factors on his side.
“And why, exactly, was she chasing you to begin with?” Gyre demanded. “You assaulted one of our party, and I would know why.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt the slave, I just needed answers,” Rena said, flinching at the display of strength. She had seen him stand up against the boy with the terrible aura, but she didn’t have a way of properly quantifying his ability before. She knew approximately how strong Juri was, and now she knew that Gyre was so far beyond that he might as well be an adult playing with a child. “You’ve been following me for weeks, despite my attempts to lose you. Well, I’m captured now, so whatever you’ve got planned I can’t stop you.”
“What?” Gyre frowned, not expecting this. “We’ve been going in circles, following Baty’s sword. Do you mean that the sword actually was pointing at something specific this entire time?”
“The slave said the same thing,” Rena admitted, feeling foolish.
“And here I thought we were just humoring him,” Gyre chuckled. “So then, child, tell me. Why are the gods of Fate and Luck interested in you? Who are you?”
“She is Rena Anzabos,” Juri said, having recovered from his tumble somewhat. He had discarded the notion of escape during his recovery, the stranger was standing between him and the way out, and one of the problems with taking refuge in a cave with one entrance is that there is only one way out. “She is a spy, although her clan is in disgrace at the moment. You cannot believe a word she says, because she will say anything to further her own interest.”
“An Anzabos? Curious.” Gyre reflected to himself quietly for a moment, then he turned to Juri. “And you, young man? Why have you taken her captive? You do not seem like a bandit, nor does it seem like you have captured her for the typical reason a man might capture a woman like this.”
“I am not a rapist!” Juri shouted. “I wasn’t going to hurt her, I simply couldn’t let her escape to tell anyone where I was.”
“He’s a wanted criminal,” Rena said, grinning devilishly. “There’s a bounty upon his head, a thousand Ren! He’s a traitor to the Empire, a murderer, and worse!”
“None of that is true,” Juri protested.
“Then why are you so afraid of being discovered?” Gyre challenged. “If you were a simple hermit, you might shun the company, but you would not be afraid.”
“I-there has been a misunderstanding. One that might prove fatal to me. I am just trying to stay alive,” Juri said desperately. “I am a patriot! I am, dammit! I served in the orders and joined the whisperers, and they betrayed me!”
Gyre frowned. “The Anzabos, the Orders, and the Whisperers,” he said, musing to himself. “It is really none of my business. Except that, well, I suppose I am a patriot myself. Tell me, young man, what would you do if you had captured a man accused of … whatever it is that you are accused of?”
Juri paled, because the answer was unpleasant.
“Personally, I would turn him into the Law and wash my hands of it,” Gyre said, and Juri was not much relieved. “As for you, young lady, I’m afraid that the answer is the same. You have assaulted at least one member of my party, and until I find what has happened to Ita I am unwilling to let you out of my sight. I’m afraid that you should consider yourselves both to be my prisoners, for now. I advise you not to try to escape. Come now, we are returning to my camp.”
~~~~~~~~~
Unoro had been interrupted in a moment of grieving by the summons, but had managed to compose himself quickly enough. It had been weeks since Kasbel’s funeral, but burning the body entombing the ashes had done nothing for his grief. The young attendant was frequently overwhelmed by his emotions to the point where it was beginning to affect his duties, and so he feared the worst when he was summoned before the head of the family.
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He was uncertain, when he arrived at the patriarch’s mansion, whether Dueque being there made the outlook better or worse for him. He fluctuated between apathy and terror of loosing his position. His relationship to the Makavian’s was the greatest advantage he had in life, and to lose it would be devastating not only for him, but his entire family.
When Unoro arrived, the old patriarch barely looked up, but his bodyguard, a man retired from the Orders, quickly cleared the room of the rest of the servants. Unoro swallowed, as certain of the outcome as he was of the crime that he had committed to deserve it. Strangely enough, it was the fear of the disgrace that it would bring to Kasbel’s memory that had him most troubled.
“Read this,” the patriarch said, pulling a small book from his desk drawer and handing it over to Unoro. The young attendant blanched, recognizing the book immediately as Kasbel’s journal. He had only to look at the date on the page to know what the topic would be, and a quick skimming of the entry confirmed his fears.
So they had proof. He had been prepared to make denials, but any denial of the journal would be pointless, and beneath him. So he simply sagged in defeat.
“I don’t deny it,” he said at last. “I’ll go without a fuss. I don’t want to make a scandal. I won’t even ask for a recommendation unless--”
“That’s all very noble, but you aren’t here to fall on a sword, Unoro,” Dueque said. He sighed, looking away. “The truth is that we’ve known for some time. It’s not such an uncommon thing. Damaging to a young man’s reputation, but that is why we counseled Kasbel to find someone he could trust to keep things quiet, when that part of his nature became obvious. As long as he could produce heirs, it’s simply one more secret which must be kept.”
“You – you knew?” Unoro asked.
“Of course we knew,” the patriarch said impatiently. “It’s why you were put in your position to begin with. Kasbel needed someone he could trust to keep his secrets. This secret, and any others. The question you have been summoned to answer is whether or not your loyalty extended only to my grandson, or if you remain willing to serve the rest of our family as a trusted confidant.”
“Trusted confidant?” Unoro chuckled. “Yes, I suppose I was that.” And he began to weep.
Deuque looked awkwardly at his father, who simply produced a kerchief for the grieving man. He envied the boy his ability to grieve so openly. He still had yet to shed a single tear, although he continued to scream and yell at those who did not deserve it. His father assured him that this was normal, yet he felt that Kasbel deserved better. Which only made him angry yet again.
“So, I’m not to be sacked?” Unoro asked eventually.
“If you wish, you can leave our family’s service with a generous severance and a strong recommendation,” the patriarch said. “Or you can remain in our service in another capacity.”
“Tell me, was it an assassination?” the young attendant demanded. “Have you found proof?”
“If it was, there is no evidence of it,” Dueque said, his voice straining. “Or at least so my father’s contacts have claimed. Given that the best of assassins could have orchestrated Kasbel’s death with only a bit of preparation, we do not have much to go on.”
“We are of course proceeding as if it was,” the patriarch explained. “It is better to be paranoid than not, in this situation. But the obvious leads have gone nowhere, and the contacts that we would usually trust to provide proof either way are … disorganized, at present.”
Unoro sagged. He remained uncertain which outcome of the investigation would be worse. That his lover had died in a tragic accident, or that he had been murdered simply because of his name and status. “So then, what is to become of me if I remain loyal to your family?”
“If you remain loyal, then we will be formally discharging you with a generous severance and a strong recommendation,” the patriarch said.
Unoro simply nodded. “I accept, of course--”
“And a task that we would ask of you,” Deuque said, shooting his father an annoyed glance. “On the completion of which, we will of course be accepting you back into service. The severance is simply a method of disguising our actions at present. We have little doubt that Kasbel’s assassins, if assassination it was, would have known of your relationship. Your discharge would look perfectly natural under such circumstances. The task we would ask of you is one that requires someone we trust to stay quiet about our true motivations.”
“And what are your true motivations?” Unoro asked.
“We would have you find Shaji,” Deuque explained. “And his master. And we would have you convince them both to return home with you, as it seems that my father’s correspondence has failed to suffice.”
“I thought he was disinherited,” said Unoro.
“Kasbel’s death may have changed that,” the patriarch said. “Or it may not have. It shall depend on what lessons the boy has learned since his enslavement. But the truth is that the other boy is more important. Leaving Shajita in his care was my only way of maintaining contact with him.”
“A motive which I was most annoyed to have revealed,” Deuque said, glaring at his father with barely concealed fury.
“You would not have understood. Not until you were informed of certain facts of the empire,” the patriarch sighed. “Facts that we cannot go into now, so watch your tongue. I would not have told you until my deathbed if there had been any way around it. Knowing those secrets puts us all in danger, just as it gives us the advantages upon which our family has been built.”
“You want me to retrieve Baturya?” Unoro asked after a moment of searching for the boy’s name. “Last time you said something about his grandfather? I don’t understand, if his family is important, then how did he end up a slave to begin with?”
“War, of course,” the patriarch said, sighing. “Or rather, that’s how his mother wound up in her situation, which is how he wound up in his. It is the business of the immortals, however, and not something that you should question.”
~~~~~~~~~
The young guard captain frowned at the letter that had just been handed to him. He glanced at it, and quickly saw a name which explained why his secretary had interrupted his morning paperwork.
“When was this delivered?” he demanded.
“A moment ago, by a slave,” the secretary answered. “He says that the prisoners in question are being held by his masters, Adepts of the fifth and sixth Reformation, until they can be turned over to representatives of the Law for questioning.”
The captain cursed. He didn’t give a damn about an Anzabos assaulting a slave, but the other name was important. And the fact that a sixth Reformation Master was involved complicated things. Which meant that he had to go himself.
~~~~~~~~~~