“I’m sorry, sir.”
Luke simply mumbled some sort of distracted acknowledgment.
As Slay gathered the spilled papers, a particular document caught his eye. He picked it up to study it more closely.
“What is it?” Luke suddenly asked. Slay gave a start at his superior’s sudden attention.
“Well… Sir, I noticed this seal of the external affairs agency of the Mauser church. Aren’t we at odds with them since the events in Taurus?”
Luke brushed off the question. “Look at the date— that document is from twelve years ago. The head of the agency who signed that is dead.”
“I see, sir. But we conducted joint operations with them in the past?”
“I haven’t looked into those documents yet, but there was a period when Mauserist Inquisitors and their external affairs agencies helped substantially with the kingdom’s security. I heard that they planned joint operations with the royal military as well.”
Slay frowned at the sketch of a face on the document. “I see, sir. It’s just… This man is sort of disturbing.”
“If you want to review those,” Luke said evenly, “you need prior permission.”
Slay quickly returned the paper to its pile. “I’m sorry, sir,” he mumbled. He returned to gathering his mess.
Slay didn’t plan to request permission to read the old document, and his discomfort with the content of it was short-lived. It was just the picture of a nervous-looking middle-aged man, his face drawn from the front and right-side perspectives, and a description written below the picture that had caught Slay’s attention.
Reynard Ganvas, the description read. Class 1 sorcerer.
Criminal charges: mass murder and destruction of corpses.
The room was surprisingly spacious.
The lack of claustrophobia was nice, but that was the only real benefit Shannon could see in the situation. For one, the room was devoid of any furnishings and windows—there was only a door and two air-holes the size of fists.
Secondly, he and his siblings were locked inside the empty chamber, and had been for almost a day. And, worst of all, Pacifica was getting ansty—and an antsy Pacifica meant whining and possibly screaming.
“Shannon,” Pacifica nagged, tugging on his ponytail. Shannon was feigning sleep and pretended to not hear her.
He was pretty sure their cell hadn’t originally been used for prisoners—it seemed to just be an empty room in a one-story warehouse. The two middle-aged “guards” who could be seen through the small window in the door had a homemade chessboard between them. The men had mentioned to the Casulls that they would escort any of them to the bathroom when necessary, but Pacifica had vowed to hold it for as long as possible. She had mentioned something about “a maiden’s modesty.” Shannon wished Pacifica would just use the bathroom.
“Shannon!” Pacifica tried again, but Shannon kept his eyes closed. Clearly bored with watching the guards’ chess game and in need of Shannon’s attention, Pacifica tried to shake Shannon from his quiet sitting position against the wall. When he still wouldn’t move, she sighed.
“Fine.” Almost as if in protest to him ignoring her, Pacifica started playing with Shannon’s hair. She bunched it, braided it, and tied it into bizarre and unflattering shapes.
“Look, Raquel.” Pacifica held two triangular braids atop Shannon’s scruffy head. “A cat.”
Raquel, who had been half-dozing in a corner, perked up at Pacifica’s game. The older girl smiled and crawled over to watch.
“And here… a butterfly!” Pacifica fanned out two opposite thumbfuls of Shannon’s hair.
“Oooh,” Raquel cooed. “That’s nice, Pacifica.”
Inspired by her audience, Pacifica started adding complexity to her hair styling. Shannon gritted his teeth, but Pacifica didn’t seem to notice or care.
“Here’s my new character, Raquel: Soupy!”
“My dear Soupy!” Raquel cried in delight.
“And now, a special trick—Mister Crab and Mister Octopus.”
“Those holes for eyes are very clever, Pacifica. But maybe if you straightened this part here…”
“You think so? Fine, then lemme do my ultimate technique: the scourge of all poultry, Desert Eag—”
“Cut it out, both of you!” Shannon finally broke down and jumped to his feet. Pacifica was sent rolling a bit back from the sudden movement, and she looked up at her brother begrudgingly.
“Shannon,” she mumbled sadly, “that was my ultimate technique.”
“Her ultimate technique,” Raquel repeated with a strange streak of seriousness.
Shannon angrily pulled the braids from his hair. “How many times do we have to go over this?” he snapped. “Make animals out of your own hair.”
“But… that would put knots in our gorgeous hair,” Pacifica argued.
“Knots,” Raquel agreed.
“Do I look like I care?!”
Pacifica moaned and rolled on the floor. “But Shannon,” she groaned. “It’s so boring here. I’m bored to tears. Look at my tears!” She pointed to her eyes, now filled with fake tears.
Shannon sat back down irritably. “Shut up,” he replied flatly. “This is a perfect opportunity for you to sit down quietly and reflect on your life.”
“Aw… you’re such an old man.” Pacifica sighed. She crawled over to her brother, then dropped her rear end to the floor beside him. After a moment, she looked down at her palms. “Do you think Berkens is okay?” she asked quietly.
Shannon glanced over at her down-turned head. After the scene at the dock, their captors had separated Berkens from the Casulls. Judging from the manner of their leader, Shannon doubted the mob would have killed Berkens right away, but that wasn’t much reassurance. Shannon didn’t have much faith in an angry crowd that shot arrows at distant stranger.
He rested a hand on Pacifica’s head. “Don’t worry,” he assured her evenly. “I doubt they could kill him, even if they tried.”
Pacifica frowned. “I guess.”
Shannon turned to Raquel. “Any luck?” he asked.
Raquel shook her head. Upon a closer inspection, Shannon could see an unusual exhaustion on her face, and he knew it wasn’t just because she’d cast Midgard the day before. He and his sisters had decided to not fight their captors until they had a better idea of what was going on.
Shannon was willing to sit in captivity for a while if it meant Raquel could use magic to determine whether or not their captors were enemies, where their “cell” was located, and the shape of the island and its facilities, but Raquel’s magic didn’t seem to be working.
“I can’t activate the explorer,” she explained. “And I can’t activate any communication spells, either. It seems that other spells are useable, though.”
“Do you have any idea why?”
“No… I mean, I can think of several reasons why this might be happening, but there’s no way to know for sure. Since I don’t know the real reason, I don’t know how to work around it.”
Shannon let out a breath. Before he could reply, the sound of the door unlocking interrupted him.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”
Shannon looked up. Reynard, his black mask still fitted snugly to his face, stepped into the room.
“I guess you’ve finished torturing Berkens,” Shannon ventured with as much confidence as he could fake. The probing for information was met with Reynard’s gentle head shake.
“I try to avoid meaningless violence,” Reynard explained. “But I don’t hesitate to use it when it’s clearly necessary.” He swept his jade gaze across the siblings, finally landing on the curled and frowning Pacifica. “I take it you don’t like this room.”
“I’m bored enough to die,” Pacifica answered flatly.
Reynard gestured to the door. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Would you like to take a walk? We can talk along the way.”
“Are you sure about that?” Shannon glanced past Reynard, where his sword rested against the desk that held the guards’ chessboard. He could rush and grab the sword before the captors could react. “How do you know we won’t turn violent and take you hostage?”