Published at 3rd of August 2024 7:49 am

Book 2 Chapter 31: Please, Just Let Me Go

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Jacopo followed the woman into one of the administrative buildings, using his key to push through the anti-vermin enchantment and slip through the front door behind her. This building was different from the others. There were fewer regular Magisters and secretaries, but there were a number of guards patrolling, as well as men and women wearing the cloaks and pins that showed them to be members of the Academy. Jacopo felt odd shifts in the air as he moved through the building, almost as if he was stepping through more enchantments, ones that weren’t meant to push him out specifically, but which still applied pressure on those within them.

The Magister continued to move a set of stairs at the far end of the building. She descended down them carefully, and eventually arrived at an underground hall with doors lining the walls. She moved to the third door on the right and opened it. She closed it quickly behind herself, but Jacopo was able to slide underneath the gap between the door and the floor.

Inside the room was a guard, who was wearing both the breastplate of his office and an academy cloak over that, held in place by an iron triangle within a circle symbol that represented that institution. He was human, and had long white hair held back by a ponytail, perfectly rectangular sideburns, and pale blue eyes. He noticed Jacopo, but made no move toward him.

Also in the room, was a chair in which a man was chained with iron and wearing both a blindfold and some kind of cloth covering over his ears with silver runes on it that gave off a faint light.

The man nodded at the Magister as she entered.

“Hello Mariska.”

She nodded back at him, looking at the bound man. “Hello Johann. Sniffed out another changeling I see?”

He nodded. “Yes, this one was pretending to be a member of the hidden folk while working as a Feybinder.”

Mariska chuckled. “That’s almost clever. Hiding in plain sight like that.”

“Not so clever that he didn’t make someone nameless for reneging on a bargain.”

Mariska let out a tsk. “He must not have figured out yet that that’s illegal. That’s good, means he wasn’t here long enough to cause much damage.”

Johann nodded. “Yes, but we’re going through all of the acquaintances and deals he’s made since he arrived. Just to be sure that there weren’t others with him, and limit the damage he may have caused.”

Mariska dragged a chair in front of the one the man was bound in and pulled a book from somewhere in the folds of her robes, and a pen. She gestured with the pen to the bound man and Johann removed the blindfold and enchanted cloth from the man’s face.

The man looked to Johann, then his eyes quickly settled on Mariska. “Thank the gods, someone different. Ma’am, please I don’t know why this man brought me here. I’m just a Feybinder, got a bit of hidden folk in me on my father’s side. I didn’t know that making a man nameless wasn’t allowed. I only just moved here from Tymond. I gave him his name back. Please, just let me go.”

Mariska made a few notes in her book, and looked up at the man.

“Why did you come here?”

“What- well for work. I just told you, didn't I?”

“Were you working with any other changelings here?”

“Changelings? No, no, I’ve never even seen a changeling before.”

“How you cooperate will affect whether or not you’re sent to the Underprison, or the Convent. You can either choose to be able to see the sun as you live out your exceptionally long life, or have your face pressed into a mattress made of stone by the worst criminals the city has to offer as you take whatever shapes please them.”

The man’s eyes shifted from brown to gray, then to blue as Mariska spoke. His head swung low for a moment, as if he’d given up.

“This isn’t fair,” he muttered.

Mariska ignored him, writing another note in her small book.

“We helped to build this city, and you make it illegal for us to even exist here.”

Mariska continued writing.

“Why don’t you just exile us? Why must you keep us confined?”

She made another note, paused, then started writing again.

The man shifted into a hulking orc and threw his body toward Mariska, the chains stopping him less than a foot away from her.

“Why!? Answer me you bitch!”

She snapped, and the iron chains dragged him back.

“Because your existence is too disruptive. It only took a dozen of you to help the founding nobles to bring this city into being, to make the deals and manipulate things behind the scenes. Whether you're here or in some other country, you are too dangerous to be free.” She gestured with her pen, and Johann approached the changeling, putting the blindfold and ear bindings back on him.

“I’d say he’s not ready yet,” said Johann with just a hint of mirth.

“No. He’ll likely need to stew for a few months before we can get what we need out of him, and have him agree to my binding.”

“You really think he’ll only take a few months? I bet he holds out a year.”

Mariska chuckled. “When you started here working with me, you still had red hair, and I’ve been doing this much longer than just since you’ve started.”

Johann shrugged, “Doesn’t mean you can’t be wrong.”

She fixed him with an amused, but withering look and stood up from her chair. “We may as well check to see if any of the others have broken.

Johann nodded, and moved to open the door for her.

“What’s the longest one of them has held out?” He asked.

Mariska paused at the door. “Fifty years.”

“Oh yeah, I think I’ve asked that before. How many of the Inquisitor Squad worked with you on that one?”

“Just one, he was an Elf so didn’t have the same weaknesses as you.”

Johann chuckled. “Aging is a good thing. I look much better with the white hair than I did the red.”

“Debatable.”

Jacopo followed them as they made their way to two more cells, each also containing a changeling prisoner. One of them pretended to be a child and asked to see her mother, and the other was in the form of a plain and bald woman and said nothing, just staring in silence at the wall until Johann and Mariska left the room.

Once they were through with all of their prisoners, Mariska left the building and was met out on the street by a tall elven man wearing a long coat. It had started to rain, and he held out an umbrella as Mariska approached to shield her from it.

“I thought you would be in meetings all day today,” she said as he took his free arm and pulled her in close for a kiss.

“I was supposed to be, but a number of people in the committee for defense were pulled away for meetings regarding the sicknesses that have been hitting towns nearby. Another one was completely wiped out apparently.”

She sighed, “It’s always something new and horrible, isn’t it?”

He shrugged, causing a few drops of water to bounce off his umbrella and onto Jacopo.

“It’s not all bad. Their loss is my gain. Now I get to take my beloved out to dinner.”

“You have the cruelest sense of humor.”

“You think that was bad, wait until I start saying awful things about the other people in the restaurant.”

They walked arm in arm off to eat, and Jacopo sent a different rat to trail them from there. All he needed to do now was figure out where they lived, and frankly, he had more important things to do himself, like eat, and sleep. Better to send his duller cousins to deal with the less complicated and more tedious parts of the job.

Dantes was wrapping up at the Cruel Lady and moved to meet Jacopo so they could travel back to the garden together. With his attention now freed up, Jacopo sent him all of the things he had observed and he started to mentally process all of it. He hadn’t known that changelings were arrested simply for what they were. He assumed they’d just been arrested for commiting crimes like everyone else. Then again, even those he’d seen before he was in the Pit he’d only encountered once and then never again. They must’ve been being rounded up. All of that was inconsequential though. He had made a promise and he intended to honor it. Mariska seemed savvy, and smart. She also worked closely with the guard, which made her an even more dangerous target.

He took over from Jacopo, looking through the rat’s eyes that Jacopo had put on the happy couple. Mariska may be tough, but they’d already located a weakness of hers to exploit. Dantes bent down with an arm outstretched and Jacopo leapt up his arm and crawled into his pocket. Time to add a kidnapping to his list of to-dos. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do anything too immediate. It was going to be a full moon that night.

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