It was dark where Raulin was, but there was some light and it pierced his eyes. He shut them again quickly, didn’t move a muscle, kept his breathing deep just like he’d been taught. Since he was alive, pretending he was still unconscious would buy him some time as he gathered information.

From his top. Head was throbbing and wet. Arms were tied behind him. A quick tug. They were tied to something. He stuck his tongue out. Mask was still on. He moved a little. Clothes were still on. He wiggled his toes. Shoes were still on.

He was inside. He heard the footsteps of people moving around and of them quietly talking. He smelled comforting scents, food like bread and cookies and meat. He picked up his heel and landed it. Carpet. Everything else sounded muffled, too.

His eyes felt heavy, hard to open. He wanted to go back to sleep, but he had to remember something. What had he done before this? Where was he? The Man in Black. He’d had a run-in with the person he’d wanted to find more than anything. A few more minutes and he could move through the haze enough to make a plan.

Saesara.

He began to thrash. What had he done to her? Where was she? He looked around, hoping to see where she was tied up. This was his fault. She shouldn’t have gotten caught up in this.

Things were clearing in his mind. With his mask he could see better. The room was small and filled with furniture. A davenport with two end tables, a love seat, a coffee table. He leaned against the wall and felt warm metal, something cylindrical. Piping? The carpet was nice and plush. The furniture was new.

“I think he’s awake,” a deep, male voice said.

“Good,” a female said. He heard steps on a hardwood floor, almost silence when they stepped on the carpet. The light wasn’t enough for him distinguish who was in front of him other than one was a large man and the other a smaller figure.

“Ruly grue?” he asked.

“No, no. He figured it out. We’re using the tinte.”

“We’re running low on that. I could just…” Raulin heard skin connect to skin hard.

“Gerad, Mother always said, ‘Treat dignity with dignity. Animals butcher, men give mercy.’ There’s no need to torture a good man, unless we have to.”

Raulin clicked his tongue softly in thought, trying to make sense of the situation. A woman and the Man in Black were in front of him. The woman was…

“Geor, get the tinte,” the man yelled.

Two men? The last thing he remembered was trying to stop the Man in Black from hurting Saesara. One person, two…then someone beaned him. Three.

“Take of his mask,” the woman said.

“You don’t need to do that, Saesara,” Raulin said. “I’ll tell you what you want.”

“Oh, so you can be clever, too. I wondered.” She lit a match and then the lamp on the table. “I mean, you did figure out the ruse with the ruly grue, but you also made some mistakes. And what were you going to do when your viscount didn’t show tomorrow.? I think I’m doing you a favor by saving you from that embarrassment.”

Another man entered the room and handed a small vial to Saesara. Raulin looked between the two men and said, “Ah. Twins. That’s convenient.”

“Very. Now, the mask.”

The man that had been standing next to her, Gerad, bent down and pulled out a knife. “No, don’t do…” He sliced through one of the leather braids holding his mask in place. “…that.” His mask was pried off and tossed onto the davenport.

“Now, to slake my curiosity,” Saesara said, moving the lamp closer to his face. He looked up at her with squinted eyes. Her face dropped all mirth and she took a step back. “You’re Noh Amairian.” She handed the vial to Gerad and said, “Quick. Make sure he drinks all of it.”

Big, callused hands pinched his nose and squeezed his mouth open before pouring the liquid into his mouth. His teeth clacked when his jaw was closed. He pursed his lips and let the liquid spill down his chin, onto his shirt, and onto that pretty, plush rug.

For his efforts, he was punched in the temple. He saw stars and tried to blink them away. “Gerad,” Saesara said. “It’s fine. It just needs to coat his tongue in order to work.”

His tongue did feel strange, not quite numb, not quite cold. The taste was overpowering, like hot metal, ruly grue, and the drink the elves favored.

“Now, let’s start with the basics. Your name?”

“Zuk Rigru of The Mighty Few.”

Another punch to the face. “Gerad,” Saesara admonished. “It’s going to take a few minutes to work.” She sighed. “Go, sit. Geor, can you take over?”

The couch creaked as someone sat on it. “You’re being awfully nice. You sweet on him?”

“No. I just have some respect for men who treat ladies right. Did you know he bought my sob story about being poor? He didn’t give me money and he didn’t offer money for something else. He took me to the theater and bought me ice cream. He rejected my advances, very gentlemanly. Why was that?”

“Because I’m nice,” Raulin said.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I wouldn’t doubt it, but if you were nice you’d have let me down easier. Why did you reject my advances?”

“Because I’m in love with someone else.”

There was a pause. “That’s…kind of sweet,” Geor said.

Saesara crossed her arms. “That’s kind of sad. If even a small part of what those half-wits compiled is true, then he loves someone he can’t be with.” She tsked. “At least I haven’t lost my charm. And, I think this means the tinte is working. What is your name?”

“Raulin Kemor.” It was like someone had punched his stomach and stole his air. He couldn’t stop himself from saying the damned words.

“You’re Noh Amairian?”

“Arvonnese.”

“How does an Arvonnese boy become a trirec?”

He ground his teeth together. “Family killed. Sent to Walpi. Arvarikor thought I was worth the risk. I can sneak into places other trirecs can’t.” He bit his tongue to stop himself from saying more.

“Devastating. I’m truly frightened by that. Imagine, someone who looks like one of us, walking around in broad daylight, attending our parties and dances only to put on a mask and become some haunting creature.”

He grinned. “Sarcasm looks very fetching on you, miss.”

She nodded her head at the mock compliment. “Now, tell us what you know about…this.” She swept her arm at the three of them.

“You’re the Mantyger. I was tasked with finding out who you are and reporting back.”

“Too smart to be oblivious, too stupid to figure it out before we caught you. Out of curiosity, who hired you?”

“I don’t know. No name assigned on the contract, I flagged I was here, an errand boy delivered the assignment.”

“What were you to do when you figured it out?”

He licked his lips. “Put my report in a dead drop in a tree hollow in Crimden Park. It’s near the statue.”

“Remember to have a fake report drawn up and to watch it,” she said to Gerad. “Now…”

“Mistake. What mistake did I make?”

“Mistake? Singular? You made quite a few. Your lack of enthusiasm at getting those sods to work for you was piquing, but not definitive. Your lack of preparation all but sealed it for me. The final nail was insisting he was arriving tomorrow. I know the schedules; if he was arriving by ship, he’d be coming in to port no earlier than next week. Now, my turn. How were you planning on escaping our house?”

He clenched his jaw, drawing in deep breaths to stop himself from speaking. Think of something else, he thought. Think of Anla. What color were her eyes? Her eyes never changed color, but the color was hard to guess. It existed in some conjunction between a tea brown-gray, deep blue, woodland green, maybe a flash of golden sun… “I’ve managed to rub the rope halfway frayed. I can likely snap it at anytime. I’ll wait for a diversion or make one.” He hung his head.

“Well. Hope you have your weapons drawn, boys. Last question: what is double jeopardy?”

Stall, he thought. continuing to rub at the rope. Tell a long answer. “I had a contract in Courmet. Pretty easy, so I thought. Enter a hedge maze, steal a sword in the middle, leave, bring the sword to the mansion. I made it, saw a dead trirec on the other side of the slab with the sword. I saw another trirec enter the middle. That’s when I realized the owner had hired many trirecs to steal the sword. Two others joined us, we escaped. One of the trirecs said the contract was null because other trirecs had died. Ghenians would call it ‘double jeopardy’: once a trirec is killed in the line of duty, no one can ever make another request for the same thing.” He met her eyes. “You don’t need to kill me to stop other trirecs from coming. We can work something out.”

All three laughed at this. “How?” Saesara asked. “You have to finish your contract. We can’t allow you to do that. Mother worked far too hard for us to ruin it. She was the original, the genesis of what we are now. She trained us and led us, before she became sick a year and a half ago. She made sure we got the city locked down. The police,” she gestured to Gerad, “the politicians,” she gestured to Geor, “and the news. Our only potential problem was if someone grew tired of our ambitions and decided to hire a trirec. That’s why I joined that insipid club of children in the first place. They were very helpful at keeping track of who was working cases and where they were and who might take a contract against the Mantyger. You were my top guess. You love taking high risk, high payoff contracts. Of course, now that I know that you’re Noh Amairian, it makes sense…”

“We need to finish this,” Gerad said, standing.

She took a refreshing breath. “You’re right, brother. As a trained killer, how would you like to die?”

“Of old age,” he spat.

Saesara laughed. “Adorable. I was just wondering if you knew what the most humane way to kill a man was. Knife in the heart? Back of the neck, under the skull? Or perhaps you’d like some poison that…”

Raulin saw her lips move for a few moments in silence before all three siblings fell to their knees, their hands pressed to their ears. He pulled and snapped the rope just as a figure entered the room. “Eeveryonee in the room whose isn’t Raulin, stop moving. Sit on the couch and wait for me to speak to yyouu.”

“Anla?”

Anladet moved into the light as the siblings moved. “Are you okay?” she asked him.

“Yes. Wonderfully surprised. Your control is much better. How did you get here? Are Tel and Al with you?”

“No,” she said. “I was alone. I tracked you down and saw them attack you in the alley. It took me a while to get in.”

“Why were you tracking me?”

She pressed her lips together. “We should get going.”

The smile on his face dropped. “Anla, they saw my face, they know I’m Arvonnese. I have to kill them.”

She looked at them, then back to him. “Do you trust that my magic will cloud their minds enough that they won’t remember if I ask them not to?”

He thought of his own mind, how he couldn’t remember stacking rocks. “Yes. Are you okay with doing that?”

“I have no problem if I’m saving lives.”

He nodded. “I need to know where my knives are and they can’t remember anything past Saesara trying to open the door to the house. If you wouldn’t mind helping with my rope, too.”

“Oh! Yes,” she said. They found a butcher knife in the kitchen and she sawed his ropes free. “This is three saves, by the way. Four, if you count the ship.”

“You have my eternal gratitude. Seriously, I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

He kept watch while she leaned in front of each of the three, whispering to each words that would dissolve their memories of the evening. When she was finished, he grabbed his mask and knives and walked outside with her. “Glad you didn’t burst their eardrums,” he said in the alley. “Else they wouldn’t be able to hear you.”

She stopped, but said nothing, looking at him with an intense expression of what he thought was anger. Was she upset over his comment? He was opening his mouth to ask when she grabbed the back of his neck and kissed him. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him down while she pulled herself up. A thought flickered in his mind about what this meant, but he kicked it away quickly and pressed her to him.

Anla pulled her head back, looking up at him. “I followed you.”

“Why?”

“I thought, you and her…”

“Nothing happened, absolutely nothing. She kissed me a few days ago and I told her I wasn’t interested. I made a promise to you and I kept it.”

She smiled, then kissed him again, her fingers snaking into his hair. He winced and she pulled back, a look of concern scrawled across her face. “What’s wrong?”

“They knocked me out. It’s still sore where they hit me.”

“We should go see Al.”

“I don’t want to see Al right now. I want to see you. I…missed you.” Tell her, he thought. Tell her everything. The compulsion wasn’t as strong, perhaps because the elixir must have worn off. Still, he wanted to grab her, to make her understand how he felt about her.

“I missed you, too. You’ll have to fill me in on what you’ve done in the last week.”

“I…yes,” he said, walking with her arm in arm. Soon.