Chapter 55: 54. Stalker

You know we’ll have to leave, right?

 

I paused for only a moment before resuming my reading. Beyond my book, I could see Hosi browsing over in the fiction section. We’d been tailing her for a good couple hours now, though she hadn’t left the library since we started.

 

“Why is that?” 

 

This isn’t your fight, Ry-

 

“Are we going to have this conversation every single time?” I interrupted. “Because it’s beginning to get quite old.”

 

Are you going to keep delaying us?

 

The drake started pacing along the table. A cloud of irritation followed him as if his dog had just died. It was hard to blame him for it, but there really wasn’t anything I could do so I didn’t know why he was taking it out on me.

 

I sighed. 

 

“Listen, a letter’s not getting across the kingdom and to dwarven lands in the middle of winter, alright? If there wasn’t all the passes freezing up for the winter there’d be the civil disruptions. So unless you just want to wander the frozen wastes treasure hunting I’m not sure what exactly you want me to do here.”

 

The evidence was clear: we needed to transmute a lemon to get home, and since the easy way was impossible we needed [gold]. [Gold] came with Lmenlis. No Lmenlis, no [gold], and no getting home. 

 

Gideon sent me a glare.

 

You can at least act a little restless about that. Do you think I haven’t noticed you flying away to practise the same four spells every goddamn night? It almost looks like you enjoy being here!

 

“There’s no point in being constantly depressed, really.” I shrugged. “And I’ve come to like several people here.”

 

At least, there were at least four and a half people I liked, a truly wonderful thing given how much better friends made a dire situation. I probably would’ve given into despair half a month ago if it was just me and Gideon. Surely I would’ve died of boredom, at least, because there really wasn’t as much to do in a pre-internet world as you might think.

 

Perhaps so. The sapients here aren’t too bad for the most part.

 

For some reason, the thought came through somewhat abashedly, as if the admission was somehow slightly embarrassing. 

 

Oh? What was with that wording? Did Gideon find some lady-dragon at some point? He had been flying away all this week since his wing had healed…

 

I stared at him for a while, trying to find something in his face, but alas his draconic features were still not too readable. Or he was more stoic than I thought. It was hard to tell, really.

 

 I just worry what will happen if this all goes sideways. My… Gideon coughed pointedly. Silst’s memories of war are nothing to idolise. 

 

“Somehow I don’t think we’ll be on the front lines.” I said, frowning as a strange sense of foreboding washed over me.

 

Have I said that before?

 

I shook my head.

 

“I mean, yes, Andril’s pretty ride or die right now, I can’t dispute that. But us? Breale and Fredrick? We’re kind of insignificant politically. If the worst happens and Andril is executed then we’ll hop on over to Summark and continue along there.”

 

If Saphry’s father held to tradition, Summark wouldn’t take public sides in the conflict, just secret ones, so even if I got a little mixed up in it all I should still be fine. Even my letter wasn’t likely to change that too much. I just needed to get back to Andorlin without being captured, and Minua was right on the border.

 

What about Auro though? Gideon stopped pacing to stare at me. Her family will be executed if Minua misplays at this point. And given how our current list of allies can be represented by a box of IOU’s and slips of paper with ‘maybe’ written on it I’m not seeing where this optimism comes from.

 

Ah, he did have a point there.

 

I wasn’t in the pilot seat, but I’d heard much the same thing from rumours and friends. Thanks to Lord Belvan’s good relationship with their duke, Fangpeak would probably help. Thanks to Andril’s pious reputation Fanula might help. Andril's fiancé Amelia might pull Mistre into it on our side. Burgune could be too preoccupied to interfere. It was becoming clear that war was all just a messy web of politics and interpersonal relationships that was frankly impossible to fully wrap my head around. 

 

And somewhere in the middle of that sat Auro. 

 

It wasn’t quite the same situation as Andril’s, but she had the exact same consequences if they failed. But where Andril had definitely rejected a peaceful solution to this, even if it were a bad peace, Auro had simply been forced into danger on account of her birth and the choices of others. She didn’t even have any power to go along with it, either. 

 

That was a little depressing to think about. Of all the friends I’d made here, Auro was easily the most innocent. She definitely didn’t deserve execution. 

 

“We’ll just take her with us to Andorlin.” I said finally. “She can live in my room.”

 

And the rest of her family?

 

“I’m sure they’d be fine by themselves.”

 

This kinda just sounds like you want to kidnap Auro.

 

“I mean, who doesn’t?” I joked.

 

I’m really starting to wonder about these priorities of yours.

 

“It’s all part of… ah, she’s up.”

 

I paused as our mark suddenly finished up with her browsing and started walking towards the door. With a quick nod, Gideon bounded after her, leaving me all alone at my seat.

 

“Excuse me, who were you talking to?”

 

Beside me, a fellow student nudged my arm with a look or worry upon his face.

 

I suppose my conversations with Gideon might sound a little one sided. The general populace didn’t seem to know very much about dragons. I don’t think I’d said anything incriminating at least. I was pretty careful about that in public. His face didn’t look like I was some criminal anyway, so he was probably just confused.

 

“I suppose it was my inner demons.” I said seriously.

 

“Ah, okay.”

 

I turned back to my book, ignoring the mutters of ‘one of those people’ that came from beside me. The matter with Hosi was much more important than what some students thought of me anyway.

…

It wasn’t a complicated plan.

 

I needed access to spells and incantations, and Hosi had them. Now, the problem was that it would be tantamount to admitting to treason to ask her to help me. So how could I possibly get what I wanted from her without risking life in prison?

 

It was simple really. Blackmail. 

 

Ah, but that’s evil? Well, perhaps ‘blackmail’’s a little heavy of a word. I didn’t want to ruin my relationship with my roommate, and I was fairly sure that Hosi would be willing to help me anyway. She was helpful, nice, and most importantly wasn’t Veroline. Mistrean and Burgune traditions had their nobles learning magic, so she wouldn’t be as against it as others such as Roland or Luis would be. With that in mind I was mentally giving it a ninety percent chance of success, give or take ninety percent. I’d only want some leverage on the off chance that she reacted poorly.

 

Okay, maybe it was a little ‘evil’, but surely the ends justifies the means here, right?

 

She’s headed off towards the gardens. Gideon reported. Probably towards the dorms.

 

Not having any way to respond, I calmly gathered my stuff to go. Gideon continued to give periodic reports as she circled through the gardens, examined flowers, and talked to seemingly random students.

 

“Does this girl know everyone?”

 

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I muttered to myself as Gideon reported a seventh social stop. 

 

Maybe I should just let Gideon deal with this part. It was always the most irritating part of any investigation, and he wouldn’t know if I just kept reading, would he?

 

She’s in the town… Ah I think she’s… Hmm?

 

I looked up towards the town, but he matched the sky too well to see him.

 

What did ‘hmm’ mean? Explain!

 

…I’ve lost her. She disappeared in the town.

 

“What do you mean you lost her!” I cried.

 

A couple students stared at me strangely as they passed, and I couldn’t help but sigh as I composed myself. 

 

Perhaps this would take longer than I thought.

…

The next week was… irritating.

 

Every day Gideon and I would frolic out after classes to stalk Little Miss Trean until evening, and every day we gained nothing out of it. Some days she didn’t go anywhere important, just to her clubs and the library before returning to the dorms, but on others she would disappear from seemingly random places in the academy or attached town, baffling Gideon and myself to no end. In these cases she would often be gone until just before curfew.

 

This was made worse by the fact that I was pretty sure Gideon just started joking around with the actual reasons as the week went on.

 

I lost her behind the library.

 

“Eh, next time I guess.”

 

Damn, a cart got between us…

 

“Don’t you fly?”

 

She slipped into the alleyways.

 

“That one’s kind of reasonable…”

 

I was attacked by pigeons.

 

“...”

 

And so on.

 

It was by far the most trouble I’ve ever had with an investigation, as it was almost like she knew we were watching her from the air and specifically took routes to avoid Gideon. But I was sure that wasn’t the case, because I hadn’t changed my habits very much at all. Only Gideon had followed her, and he blended into the sky like a cloud in London. Could she just always be this careful? And where did she even go each night?

 

I mean, this wasn’t even about blackmailing her at this point. She was just stupidly shady now. What if she was part of some demon cult working to bring down the school or worse yet the city? This could even be higher than me now. 

 

It was almost at the point where I’d just go and report it to the police, but the barest shreds of ‘what ifs’ were stopping me. It would be horribly embarrassing if she were just doing some shopping or stopping to use the restroom. She’d probably think people were harassing her as a foreigner. 

 

She was a republican after all, she couldn’t be that bad. Certainly not a terrorist. 

 

But it was still distressing. She’d slipped by us again just a few hours ago, leading Gideon to just shrug and fly off towards Minua for a while to do his own thing while I wasted time here. It almost wasn’t fair just how much more freedom he had to move around the place with his wings and all, but that really wasn’t something I could fix either.

 

And so I sat in the almost completely empty common room of the girl’s dorm, reading a short book about knights and festivals and… ah, well a lot of other manly stuff. It was just a bad habit I’d picked up from Saphry, assuredly. It’d probably go away once I got back to Earth.

 

“Hey Saphry? Do you have a shortbell?”

 

Auro’s voice brought me out of my thoughtful trance.

 

I set down my book and found Auro standing over me with a strangely dark expression over her face. Beside her stood Breale with the same face, who In left hand held a book, and in her right she had a dagger sheath.

 

“Hey guys! What’cha need? And… eh, what’s the knife for?”

 

Nobody ever held a knife for any good reason.

 

“Hey Saps. You’ve been busy this week, right?” Breale asked sweetly. “Last week too?”

 

“Eh, yes?”

 

“Are you busy now?”

 

“That greatly depends on what you want.”

 

It was horribly important to never answer ‘no’ to that question, but for some reason I felt the sudden need to run away as well. The same forboding feeling as I’d felt in that haunted house stalked the back of my mind.

 

“Auro and I were talking…”

 

“Oh god.”

 

“...and we couldn’t help but notice that you’ve not been attending service.”

 

I blinked. Service? What the hell was… ah was she talking about church service? That wasn’t compulsory, was it?

 

They frowned as I asked just that.

 

“I suppose not… but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

 

I tilted my head. 

 

“Why?”

 

“Your reputation!” Auro cried aloud, only to quickly fall into a whisper as other students looked over. “Have you not heard the rumours that’ve been circulating? They’re horrible!”

 

“Reputation? Why would I care about something like that…?”

 

I’d never been raised to care about what other people thought about me, other than the important parts. 

 

“They think you're a pagan, Saphry! A stuck up, strange pagan!”

 

“And that’s a bad thin… eh actually I think I see the problem here.”

 

Verol actually did have a state religion, after all.

 

“Yep.” Breale grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. “Next service’s in a quarter bell. Let’s hurry.”

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