4.103: Question and Answer

I hesitated. What was the plan here, exactly? Get into a fistfight with my surveyanto? This wasn’t the time to panic. I had no idea what he actually wanted.

“What did you just try to drug me with?”

“A truth potion. It wouldn’t have hurt you. I just wanted the chance to ask you a few questions before the sekuranti got here.”

Shit. Fuck. Balls. Maybe this was the time to panic.

I forced a laugh. “You called the cops on me? Why? You think me and Alania Miratova’s conspiracy of random mage students are committing crimes?”

“Are you?”

“No, you nutcase! There’s no big conspi – ” I stopped talking, because Fiore had reached into his pocket and pulled something out. A small object, dangling from his fingers on a short thread of handspun bark.

A stone key.

“Where did you get that?”

“Did you know, Kayden, that certain spells tend to leave distinct signatures in their use? Signatures that certain, very specific seers can pick up on, if they’re familiar enough with the target spell? If I were to turn some water to wine, for example, and such a seer took the time to learn my spell, he would be able to detect that I specifically had altered the wine.” He pocketed the key. “I’m sure you can imagine that when a suspected traitor is brought in with, say, a stone manipulation spell that she’s accused of using to try to kill the High Crone’s daughter, such seers are brought in to become very familiar with the signature of such a spell. What’s the key for, Kayden?”

“How did you get it?”

“You’re not the only one with allies. You’ve been collaborating with terrorists to break into something in this school. What’s the key for? What does Alania want?”

It was kind of frustrating, how he was wrong enough to be annoying but still right enough to screw me over. I considered my options. Was there a way around this? Alania could presumably prove her innocence, on account of being politically powerful and also actually innocent, but that wouldn’t solve the main issue, which was the ironclad proof of my collaboration with Cheryl sitting in Fiore’s pocket. Worst case scenario, the sekuranti (who have truth potions and seers and contract spells on their side) get the whole story from me, and we’re all screwed. Best case scenario, I get arrested and interrogated and they find nothing important or conclusive; they decide I’m not dangerous enough to worry about and send me off to Fionnrath with Kylie in 2 days… and we can’t save the world, so we’re still all screwed. There’s no scenario where I’m still here when the sekuranti arrive, and we’re not all screwed.

Max's wand sits in my pocket, long and heavy and loaded with ichor. I don’t understand all of its functions. But I do know how to turn it into a taser.

There might still be a chance I don’t need to resort to that, though. “If you’re so sure I’m guilty, why do all this? Why call me here? Why not just tip off the sekuranti and let them find me in my room?”

“Because, you idiot boy, I am trying to help you! None of this is your fault, I believe that. I think we can still get the right people behind bars and do what’s best for you, if you would just trust me for once! You’ve seen what Alania’s scheming does to children. You’ve seen what her plot to destroy my family’s heirloom did to Clara Simms; now she can use that poor girl as a pawn forever. You’ve seen what they’re doing to you friend, Cheryl. It doesn’t have to be like that for you.”

“I’m sorry, do… do you think that Clara almost killing Alania was some big double bluff by Alania the whole time to destroy the Guardian Ring?”

“She puts on a good act of cluelessness, but these things keep working out too much in her favour not to be her plan! She ended up with Clara in her claws, and as suveyanto to Fionnrath’s Destiny, and as surveyanto to the mage responsible for human familiarity as well as both mages involved in that familiarity bond, until you came to me instead. She knew that she had Fionnrath’s destiny, and then called a representative of Fionnrath here and had her students kill her, sowing this political discord that can only be intentional.”

“Why would that be intentional? How does any of this Fionnrath stuff benefit Alania?”

“There’s no reason for her to do it if it doesn’t!”

“No reason other than to find hr student the best possible teacher, you mean? I mean, Lydia turned out to be evil, but with what Alania knew at the time – ”

“Oh, grow up, Kayden! Nobody takes big risks for other people like that without ulterior motives! I bet she even organised the death of young Mr Acanthos, perhaps because him killing Lydia made him politically detrimental.”

Hmm, yeah, this conversation wasn’t going anywhere practical. The only logical and reasonable thing for me to do was to tase the shit out of this bastard and make a run for it to save the world.

In one single, swift movement, I drew the want from my pocket, switched it to taser mode, and swung it for Fiore’s stomach.

He caught my wrist. And that shouldn’t have mattered. Fiore wasn’t young, I was fairly strong, and I had force behind the swing. I should’ve been able to push right through and get him, no problem.

Except that the moment his hand closed over my wrist, my entire life was pain.

There was no single part of me that hurt. The pain was universal, an even spread that made it impossible to tell my arms from my legs, to tell sight from sound. I wanted to throw up all of my organs at once, but I wasn’t sure how to find the right muscles to even breathe. Gravity inverted; up was down, down was up, and I fell upwards to the floor.

And then it was gone. And I was on the floor of Fiore’s office, face down, with Max’s wand well over the other side of the room and very much out of reach. Fiore was straddling me, one hand on the back of my neck, the other securing both of my wrists behind my back. His grip on my wrist was like iron.

“For future reference,” he said, “pulling a weapon on a teacher is generally regarded to be an extremely stupid idea.”

I wriggled. “Let go of my wrists,” I growled into the blessedly sparkling clean (thank you, janitors of Skolala Refujeyo) floor.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “See, if I let you up, I’m sure you’ll make a run for it again, and I don’t want to risk hurting you by apprehending – ”

“Let go of my fucking wrists.”

“No. You’re staying down here. Calm down, Kayden. I have no intention of hurting you. We’re going to sit quietly until the authorities arrive.”

His grip on my wrists was like iron.

Okay. I couldn’t fight my way out of this. Even if I got him off me, he’d just do… whatever the hell he’d done to me, again, and pin me back down. Talking my way out was going to have to be practical, after all. I had to find a way. Failure wasn’t an option.

Why had he called me here to talk, and brought the authorities here? Why did he still have Cheryl’s key, instead of giving it to the authorities? It would’ve been more responsible, more sensible, to give everything over to the authorities, rather than get so heavily involved himself. So why?

His grip on my wrists was like iron. He’d tried to give me a truth potion. That couldn’t be a legal thing to sneak someone against their knowledge, but I guess he probably figured that the sekuranti were unlikely to care too much about my rights. Why do that instead of letting the sekuranti do it? He wanted answers himself. Why? Curiosity? To ask specifically about Alania Miratova’s involvement and get all the incriminating information so she couldn’t cover her involvement up? A genuine interest to protect me?

Not the first or third option. Fiore (his grip on my wrists was like iron) was too cautious for that. He might dislike Alania enough for it to be the second option, but I didn’t think so. This was… something else.

His grip on my wrists was like iron, and something small and hard in his pocket was digging into my hip Cheryl’s key. How had he got that key?

Not in a legal and above-board way, surely. His evidence came from sketchy places. He wanted to incriminate me without it, so he wouldn’t have to hand it over and admit whatever shady methods he’d used to get it.

I might be able to work with that.

He wanted information to incriminate me without incriminating himself. I wanted information to incriminate him, and convince him that it was best to let me go and redirect to another target. He was already trying to get me to turn on Alania, promising to ‘help’ me; if I could convince him that that would go a lot better if he didn’t hand me over to the sekuranti today…

It might work. It had to work.

His grip on my wrists was like iron. “Hey,” I said, “if we’re going to be waiting awhile, why don’t we have a chat? We’ll trade questions. You ask a question, I ask a question.”

“Fair enough. Why don’t you go first?”

“Ha. No, There are some things I literally can’t talk about, remember? I don’t want to end up owing you a question. You go first.”

“Why do you keep on going to the Lake of Inquisition?”

“… What?”

“The Lake of Inquisition. You travel there repeatedly. Why?”

“How do you know about that?”

“So you do want to go first?”

“No. We go to the Lake of inquisition because it’s a good place to talk.”

“It… huh?” His grip on my wrists was like iron.

“As you so eloquently proved by apparently stealing my key and then trying to drug me with a fucking truth potion, I can’t assume I’m not under surveillance. What with the whole Cheryl thing. I have to assume that my mail is being read and maybe even the school crystal network is being used to spy on me somehow, and sometimes I just want to have a private conversation, or a few minutes alone to fucking think, okay? If I go outside through one of the portals, I leave my familiarity link range, and put Kylie in danger. The Lake of Inquisition is somewhere I can go where I know no one will find me. If Kylie and I want to just have a fucking chat without worrying about sekkies possibly breathing down our necks, we can go there. Sometimes, people just want privacy.”

“… That’s the reason? Really?”

“Yes! My turn. How the hell did you even know I kept going to the Lake of Inquisition? How did you track me?”

“By your apprentice robes. As I’m sure you’re aware, those robes work to identify you to allow you into certain restricted medical areas. That means they’re magically identified as yours and tracked by a security system. I had my nephew’s help to… well, I don’t really understand what he did, he’s somewhat of a genius with this sort of thing, but he analysed one of your sashes and somehow got the school map system to be able to track your robes. Much how it tracks everyone’s tablets, if they choose to leave their location on.”

“You’ve been tracking me?”

“Oh, Kayden. I’ve been watching everywhere you go for some time now. And boy, does it seem like you've been busy.”