4.67: Hidden Treasure

Saina’s two bodyguards tended to follow her everywhere. So far as they were concerned, school was a dangerous place, one attempt on her life had already been made in the Pit (no matter how much I tried to convince them that her injury had been a coincidence from a magical malfunction), and her schooling and social life meant nothing in comparison to the threat of Very Definitely Real Assassins who could be lurking around any corner. But Saina was an expert charmer, and was able to negotiate some date time away from Miss Muscles and her magically bespectacled partner, with conditions.

The location of our date, a beautiful meadow with perfect picnicking weather, was thoroughly pre-scouted, and we weren’t allowed to tell anyone where we were going. (I assumed I’d been thoroughly vetted, too, but I was kind of used to my history being public knowledge at this point.) We had a very strict time limit, and if we weren’t back on school grounds by the predesignated time, the bodyguards would come and get us (and probably not agree to this again, so I kept a strict eye on the time). The bodyguards themselves would guard the school exit leading to the meadow; they couldn’t see us, but they would prevent anyone else from coming out into the meadow. Saina had been given some kind of tracker bracelet, just in case she somehow managed to get kidnapped anyway.

And even without the guards present, they insisted on some supervision for security’s sake. Someone fairly strong and capable, familiar enough for Saina to agree to, and politically placed so that they were one hundred per cent trustworthy and motivated to keep Saina safe and alive. Which meant…

“You don’t actually have to follow us,” I told Hammond. “The bodyguards can’t see us out here.”

“I’m sorry, my good sir, but I have sworn upon my honour to protect my dear fiancee,” Hammond said, shooting Saina a little grin. She gave him a look of deep fondness, weighed down with a lifetime of shared history and understanding, and I absolutely didnot feel a bolt of keen jealousy stab right through my heart because I’m not a fucking caveman, I knew what their deal was, there was nothing to be jealous about. We all knew what the deal was here; Saina loved me, she was my girlfriend, Hammond wasn’t any kind of competition for her. He was just the close, beloved friend who she was going to leave me for after school, and marry. That was what we’d all agreed to, what we’d all been fine with. There was no conflict, no reason for me to be weird about it.

I busied myself spreading out a picnic blanket and checking our basket of food.

“Are those little egg sandwiches?” Saina asked.

“Of course. You can’t have a picnic without little egg and lettuce sandwiches.”

“I’ve never seen egg sandwches at a picnic.”

I put a hand over my heart in mock shock. “Then, my dear, you have never been to a picnic! Egg and lettuce sandwiches are a critical element.”

“Yeah, I’m… pretty sure they’re not.”

“Hammond, back me up here.”

“Oh, I’m not a part of this.” Hammond turned away from us and scanned the field. “You guys brought me in specifically so that no one else is a part of this. Unless someone tried to abduct or kill Saina, of course.”

“In which case I have my two brave knights to defend me,” Saina said with mock demureness, kissing my cheek.

“I’m pretty sure that if anyone tried to abduct or kill you, you’d claw their eyes out before we got a chance to defend you,” I said. “This all feels kind of like a reversal of last time, doesn’t it? Last time, we spent months trying to protect you from assassins that we were certain were coming for you, while nobody else knew. Now, everyone else seems to think you’re moments away from assassination while we think you’re fine, and it amounts to the same situation.”

“Everyone else doesn’t think anything, certain family members are just seriously overreacting,” Saina said, rolling her eyes.

“Wait,” Hammond broke in, despite not being a part of this. “Someone spent months trying to assassinate Saina? When was this?”

“No, no, we turned out to be wrong,” I said, waving his concerns away. “They had a different target. The assassin was taken care of. It’s all fine.”

Hammond looked like he wanted to ask more questions, but he wasn’t part of this, and stayed silent. I turned my attention to convincing Saina of the virtues of little triangle egg sandwiches and their importance in picnics, and indulged in utterly pointless gossip about soap opera characters. After about ten minutes of me mixing up the characters in various soaps because they were all so similar, and Saina insisting that they were in fact terrible in very different and distinct ways, I changed the subject to something less stupid.

“Hey,” I said, “have you ever worked with pearls?”

“Huh? I own some pearls, if that’s what you mean.”

“No; I mean like, in potioncrafting.”

Saina gave a low whistle. “Moving into some very upmarket wares, huh?”

“I’m just interested in the chemistry of it. I don’t work much in acid-base reactions; they could be interesting to make. The problem is, most of the pearlcontaining potions I can find are, um… kind of useless? For the price, I mean.”

“What kind of stuff do they make out of pearls?”

“Light potions, mostly. Endless, endless light potions. And some painkillers. But in an age of electric lights and anaesthetics, it’s just not worth the cost of the pearls. Oh, and some truth and insight potions, of course.”

“Well, if I come across anything cool or weird with pearls in it, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks.”

“Hammond, you too!”

“Um, what?” Hammond asked, looking up from the daisy chain he’d been making several metres away.

“If you find any really cool or weird potions that use pearls as an ingredient, tell Kayden!”

“Um. Okay?”

“Great,” I said. “With your help I will find a way to make weird shit out of expensive ingredients.”

“And that’s what life’s all about,” Saina said, nodding. “Hey, watch how many little sandwiches I can fit into my mouth at once!”

After the date, I headed back to my room, giddy and upbeat as I always was after seeing Saina. But once I got there, I felt the energy drain out of me, and slumped down onto my bed.

So much to do, so little to work with.

The “power locked in pearl” that I’d have to carry above the world, according to the prophecy, was probably an insight potion; a potion used to sharpen the mind and senses. That… didn’t make a huge amount of sense, really, but it was the best I could come up with. The idea of needing a specific light or painkilling potion just didn’t make sense, and pearls weren’t used in much else. They were believed to make great sense-boosting insight potions specifically because of the way they were constructed and the way they dissolved. Layer upon layer of calcium, carefully applied, melting away in acid to reveal the layers hidden underneath one by one. There was powerful symbolism there.

If Max were still here, he’d be able to help. He’d probably know exactly what we needed. “Oh, you need Lord Dragonbutt’s Potion of Fix-All-Problems, I know all about it; here’s a comprehensive history.” but he’d flown too close to the sun, or too deep in the earth I supposed, and now we were flying blind.

I glanced over at his bed. At the bed that used to be his. The curtains were drawn closed, just how he usually left them. Behind, the janitors had collected his things and given them to his family, but I hadn’t looked back there since he’d died. If I just looked at the closed curtains, I could pretend that he still had a space here. That he was just off in class, and would be back in a few minutes with a long nerdy diatribe about some minutae of magical theory that I’d just barely understand.

I glanced at the photo of my family next to my bed, in its thick yellow wooden frame, clumsily repaired with tape. The one I’d broken in my initiation semester and found Chelsea’s tracker. I stared at it, and realised, with some horror, that I didn’t have any photos of Max. Not a single fucking photo. Nothing but memories, and I knew how easily they could be taken around here.

No; I was being stupid. I had recordings of him, of course, on my tablet. And people had photos; it’s not like I couldn’t get them if I wanted them. I couldn’t sit here and wallow; I had stuff to do. Kylie and I had stuff to do. And Max was gone.

I stood up. I walked over to Max’s old bed and pressed my hand to the panel, claiming it. Part of me still expected that not to work; part of me expected the system to reject me because Max had already claimed the bed, it was Max’s, but it didn’t. It wasn’t. It allowed me to claim the bed without issue, and I swallowed around a lump that felt like needles in my throat and pushed the bedcurtains aside, ready to confront the pristine space beyond, devoid of identity.

And then I stood, gaping, at… a sight I did not expect.

Max’s notes adorned the walls, huge sheets of paper scrawled with maps and lists and foreign symbols I’d never seen before. His notebooks sat idle on his desk, one of them open as if he’d been taking notes when he left the room to do something else. On the edge of the desk sat something familiar, made from perspex; Melissa’s little three dimensional model of Refujeyo, with the different colours for the corridor level and the empowered water level and the spell labyrinth level.

This… couldn’t be right. This couldn’t be here. Max’s stuff had been packed up and given back to his family; I knew this. So why was it all still here?

I stepped over the bed and started to poke around. I knew that Max had various intruder-detecting systems on his drawers and stuff, but didn’t bother trying to find and bypass them; it wasn’t like he’d be coming back to check. A little searching revealed that most of Max’s stuff was indeed gone. The multiple library books he always had out at any given time were absent, presumably returned to the library. His clothing was absent. Even his stationary, his nice pens and fancy sealing wax and all the other expensive stuff that rich kids apparently need in order to write letters and take notes, were gone. The only thing that remained was his notes. Endless notebooks and piles of pages, covering all sorts of subjects, some of which I’d never heard him mention.

Several questions crowded my mind. “How?” was a big one. Also, “why?” both of those were too big to worry about immediately, so I settled for, “what now?” and grabbed the digital camera I’d bought last holidays. Then I started taking pictures, page by page.

Human minds, especially mine, are really bad at estimating the size of tasks. I figured, ‘oh, I’ll just start taking photos and keep going until I’m done.” Half an hour later, I saw the miniscule amount of progress I’d made, and realised that this would take an unfeasibly long time.

But what was I supposed to do about it? ‘Keep going’ or ‘give up’ were the only options. I couldn’t work faster than I was. I couldn’t sort out only the important notes to photograph, because I had no idea what was important. Sure, the school maps and the notes about the runes found at Duniyasar and on my chest were definitely important, but anything else could be important, too. A few days ago, if I’d found a list of random-looking potions containing pearls that Max had put together, I’d assume it wasn’t important; if I found that now, it’d be the most important thing.

I was photographing maps when I heard movement behind me. I spun to see Kylie, staring. “Wh… what…?”

“I know!” I said. “It’s all still here!”

“But… didn’t they clear all that out after – ?”

“Apparently not! I’m photographing everything so we have, y’know, non-interfering records. Just in case.”

“That’s going to take forever.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” I put the camera down and rubbed my eyes.

“But why is it here?” Kylie asked.

“No idea!”

“Maybe we… misunderstood what cleaning up this meant? Like, maybe the janitors only took important heirlooms back to the family, or…?”

I shook my head. “Clothes are gone, books are gone, stationary is gone. The only thing left are notes.”

“But… the janitors are… I mean, they wiped our memories, didn’t they? So why leave the notes, specifically?”

“They saved us,” I corrected, “and someone wiped our memories. Maybe them, maybe Malas. Maybe we were with a third party at some point. Maybe we misjudged something down in the labyrinth and drank the wrong thing, or maybe somebody slipped something to use while we were in Malas’ care. It’s not impossible; Clara drugged Alania under his nose in our initiation semester. And his spell isn’t great with potions.”

“So, the school staff are… what, on our side?”

“No idea,” I said. “In theory, they shouldn’t be involved at all. No one should know anything, but they left these notes here. Do they know what any of this was for? Or maybe it’s… protocol to… specifically leave school notes and nothing else… that makes no sense.” Melissa’s little model caught my eye. I frowned. Picked it up.

“What’s that?” Kylie asked.

“It’s a very rough, very vague model of the school that my friend made. My friend Melissa, I mean.” I turned it in my hand. Frowning. Frowning specifically at the splotch of blue in the middle of the middle layer, the vertical and horizontal centre of the model. The Lake of Inquisition.

“Hey, Kylie?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you remember on our very first day here, when you saved me from that lake monster?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“How did you find me? I was out of school bounds. I wasn’t on the map. And nobody except the most high ranking mages can find the Lake of Inquisition if they’re looking for it. One student stumbling into it by accident, sure, but two, separately, on the same day?”

“Oh, no. I followed you.”

“How?”

“I got the prophecy just in time to see you walk off the map. I headed to where you were, stumbled around blind for a couple of corridors, and heard someone up ahead. I figured it was you, so I followed the sound, and caught sight of you just as you were swimming in the lake.”

“Really,” I said. “Because, here’s the thing. I was in that cave for a fair while before I walked into the water. There’s no way you could’ve followed me; I would’ve been in the cave before you got to the edge of the map, easily.”

“Well, I followed someone,” she said, crossing her arms. “How did you find it? Coincidence?”

“I assumed so. But I’d spotted a janitor, and was trying to flag them down to ask directions. I followed them, and ended up at the Lake.” I put the little model back down on Max’s desk, among the notes that shouldn’t be there, and met Kylie’s eyes. She rubbed her chin.

“I think,” she said, “that we need to get out of the habit of ignoring the janitors.”