Firesign 1 - Wage Slave Rebellion (11 page)

The three of them looked at each other. Then, by mutually unspoken agreement, Gavi and Raedren clammed up and turned to Mazik.

“Ah, yes. Looking forward to this part,” Mazik said to himself. He took a deep breath. “Okay, well. We, uhm, need your help. With something.”

Kalenia cocked her head to the side. “Oh?”

“Well … right. So you know how I complain about my job a lot?”

“Oh, yes. All the time,” said Kalenia, though her voice made it sound like this was the most natural thing in the world. Gavi and Raedren nodded emphatically even as they marveled at her patience.

“I’d be more annoyed at that resounding agreement if it wasn’t so true,” muttered Mazik, loud enough for everyone to hear. “So yeah, me and Gavi and Rae came up with a plan that might let us quit our jobs and start doing something else. Uhm.”

Kalenia cocked her head to the other side, her face still politely curious. “Yes?”

“Wait, he hasn’t talked to her about this yet?” said Gavi.

“What a bad boyfriend. He should be ashamed,” said Raedren.

“I was scared so I kept putting it off, all right? Now
shhh!
” hissed Mazik. He turned back.

Mazik took a deep breath, and then let it all out in one go. “We want to become adventurers and catch those kidnappers who have been going around kidnapping people and use that to help us get into a guild and,” he took a breath, “and then we’ll be able to work when we want to and won’t have bosses that yell at us and we’ll actually be doing something important and well Rae is already doing that but ignore him he’s bored out of his mind anyway and we won’t hate our lives and then I’ll stop complaining so much and maybe drink less haha okay probably not that and it would be a lot better and sunshine and roses and something et cetera. What do you think?”

Kalenia blinked, absorbing all of this.

Idiot
, thought Raedren, shaking his head.

What an idiot
, thought Gavi, likewise.
Though that was kind of cute.

Gavi blinked.

Kalenia looked off to the side. She massaged her temples for a minute, thinking. Then she turned to Mazik. “This will be dangerous, won’t it?”

Mazik nodded. “Almost definitely certainly.”

Kalenia took this in. “And you’ll have to hurt people,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

Mazik grimaced, but nodded. “Yes, probably. We’ll certainly be trying.”

“But you’ll be able to quit your current jobs?”

“If we’re successful, yes,” said Mazik. “Hopefully.”

Kalenia pursed her lips. “And … you think you can do all of this without getting killed?”

Mazik pointed to Gavi and Raedren. “That’s what they’re for. Rae to keep us alive, and Gavi to keep us from doing anything too stupid to live through.”

“Somehow it feels like I got the hardest job,” said Gavi.

“Trade ya?” said Raedren.

“Eh, I’ll pass.”

Kalenia took this in too, filing it away like the diligent honors student she was. “And,” she started, quietly, “will this make you happy?”

Mazik hesitated for a second, then nodded. “Yes, I think so. Just having the freedom to work when we want to would be fantastic, and we might even be able to do some good.”

Kalenia examined her boyfriend’s face. “Okay,” she said finally. “If you think it will make you happy, I certainly won’t stop you. It’s fine with me.”

Mazik sagged forward, letting out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. Even Gavi and Raedren breathed a sigh of relief, and promptly felt embarrassed for doing so.

While everyone was distracted, Kalenia leaned forward and gave Mazik a kiss on the cheek. “You’re silly,” she said with a gentle smile.

“Can’t argue with you there,” said Mazik tiredly. His voice softened. “Sorry for not talking to you first. I didn’t want to … well, it’s just that the whole idea is so crazy, I didn’t really think I’d go for it for the longest time, and once I decided to I talked to Rae and Gavi almost immediately. So I, uhm…”

“It’s fine,” said Kalenia, squeezing his hand. “It’s your decision, not mine. I’m just glad you talked to me now.”

Mazik was almost overwhelmed. He straightened up. “By the way, do you want to join us? You’re welcome, if you’d like.”

Kalenia considered it for a long minute, and then shook her head. “I don’t think so. I like it here. Besides, I’m not good at flashy magick.”

Mazik had expected that answer, but was disappointed nonetheless. “That’s a shame. You’re the best caster among us.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Kalenia, with a faint blush. “Mas Moro has a bigger mana pool than me, and I can’t—”

“Hur hur hur.”

“—cast very fast,” finished Kalenia.

“If you’re going to go for the obvious euphemism,” said Raedren, smoothly slipping back into the conversation, “you should probably be glad mine is bigger than hers. The other way around would be … problematic. Especially for you.”

“Please, spare me,” said Mazik, clenching his eyes shut. Raedren chuckled while Gavi shook her head.

“Anyway,” said Mazik, recovering. “Thank you for understanding. I’ll try not to make you regret it,” he said. He squeezed Kalenia’s hand. “Now, we have a favor to ask.”

“Sure. What do you need?” asked Kalenia.

“We need information,” said Mazik. He turned to Gavi. “Gavs, you want to take care of this?”

“Sure,” said Gavi. She pulled a waiter’s pad out of her back pocket and flipped to the right page. “You’ve heard about these abductions that have been happening lately, right?”

Kalenia stared at her in quiet incomprehension.

“She, ah, spends a lot of time doing research,” said Mazik, slightly embarrassed for what seemed like the first time in days. He turned to Kalenia. “Okay, so…”

Once Kalenia was filled in, Gavi went over what they were missing.

“Here, maybe it’s easier if you can look at them,” said Gavi as she tore a few pages out of her notepad. She handed them to Kalenia. After the conversation last night Gavi took the liberty of writing down everything they knew or were missing, along with a few more questions of her own.

Kalenia looked through the pages. “But shouldn’t you start with something smaller? This seems awfully—”

Mazik held up a hand. “No. There are … well, there are reasons for that. I’ll tell you about it later. Rae has to get back to work soon.”

“Ah, okay,” said Kalenia. “Let’s see here….” She spread the pages out on the table in front of her. Had she been wearing glasses she would have adjusted them; as is she just brushed a lock of hair away from her eyes and continued reading. Gavi wasn’t sure she ever saw her blink.

After a minute of intense silence, Kalenia looked up.

“Give me some time to work on this. I still feel like I’m not fully up to speed on the situation, so I don’t feel comfortable making any guesses yet. Plus, there are a few people I’d like to talk to about this. Is that all right?”

“Great!” said Mazik, pulling her into a hug. “I mean yeah, sure, that’s fine. Have I ever told you you’re the best? Because you are.”

Kalenia smiled back. “I just thought I should help out my boyfriend once in a while. My dissertation will just have to wait a few days. It wasn’t going anywhere anyway.”

“Happy to be your excuse for procrastinating,” said Mazik. He leaned down and kissed her. “Thanks again for doing this. How long do you think it will take?”

“A few days?” said Kalenia. “I’ll call you when I’ve got something together.”

“Okay,” said Mazik. “Feel free to call me before then. I love you.”

“Of course you do,” said Kalenia with a smile. “But I love you more,” she said, softer, and then gently grabbed him by the ear and pulled him into a kiss.

“Mmmm, no, I love you more…” said Mazik, in between kisses. This went on for longer than was necessary.

“I need a drink,” said Raedren. He and Gavi were standing by the door, having decided to give the kissing couple a little privacy, and also because they needed to get going.

“Need a kiss that bad?” asked Gavi. She puckered up her lips and made exaggerated kissing sounds.

“I am not above taking a pity kiss from a beautiful lady,” said Raedren, doing his best to look both proud and pathetic.

“Awww, I didn’t mean it like that,” said Gavi. “I was just—”

“Now if I could only find one…”

Gavi punched him. “That was a very Mazik-like comment.”

Raedren smiled back, rubbing his arm. “I figured someone ought to fill in for him.”

“What’d I do now?” asked Mazik, appearing behind them.

“Nothing good,” said Gavi. “Come on, let’s go.”

*      *      *

It wasn’t long before they were back in Kalenia’s lab. One day, to be exact.

“Wow, that was fast,” said Gavi as they entered the room.

“I told you, she can do pretty much anything,” said Mazik. “Or figure it out quickly, which is just as good.”

“Anything? Where have I heard that before…?” said Raedren.

“I know and am good at absolutely everything,” said Mazik.

Raedren snapped his fingers. “There it is.”

“Hi, welcome back!” said Kalenia. “I hope this isn’t too fast. How are your days going so far?”

“Oh, no, this is great!” said Gavi. “I was just saying how impressed I was that you got all this together so quickly.”

Kalenia fidgeted, embarrassed at receiving praise from someone other than Mazik. “I just thought you would want to know as quickly as possible so you could start looking. Plus,” and here she blushed, “i-it was actually kind of fun. Once I got started I couldn’t stop myself.”

“And that’s why I love you!” said Mazik, wrapping Kalenia in a big hug. After a minute of cuddling, whispering, and shameless flirting, Gavi punched Mazik in the solar plexus.

“Enough of that,” said Gavi. “My boss was already nice enough to switch my schedule for today, so I don’t want to be late.”

“Sorry,” said Mazik, though he didn’t mean it. He turned back to Kalenia. “All right babe, what can you tell us?”

Kalenia motioned to the table. A large map of the city, filled to the brim with pins, pens, markers, marks, written figures, wooden figurines, notations, note cards, scraps of paper, salt shakers, tiny dolls, half a sandwich, a shark’s tooth—basically anything that could be used to mark a location—filled the table. Surrounding the map were research papers of a more recent vintage, along with two new faces.

“Have you met Taronn and Xer’Danqin?” asked Kalenia. She didn’t wait for a reply, and pointed to each in turn. “This is Taronn. He’s a graduate student in Experimental Evocation. He helped with information about the attacks, especially locations and possible targets.”

“Hey,” said Taronn, waving. His hand barely lifted off the table, though even if he had raised it as high as he could it would have barely reached Mazik or Raedren’s shoulders; he was a halvelin, a people known for their extreme height, or rather their lack thereof
²⁵
.

Taronn scratched his jet-black goatee and regarded each of them dispassionately, like research specimens only marginally more interesting than dust and ash. Given his area of study, that’s probably what most of his specimens turned into.

“And this is Xer’Danqin, a research assistant in Exotic Divine Magicks,” continued Kalenia, pointing at the woman sitting next to Taronn. “She’s actually doing a paper on the kidnappings right now, so she helped a lot with who and how.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Xer’Danqin, her pretty voice fluttering through the air like a butterfly’s wings alighting on a cloud’s kiss. She bowed, her long, wavy black hair falling off her shoulders and hanging to the table like black ivy. “You can call me Xer.”

After Kalenia introduced Mazik and the others, they all bowed.

“So, what’s all this?” asked Mazik, gesturing at the map.

“I’ll start,” said Taronn. He shuffled forward in his seat so he could see the map better. Kalenia excused herself to make them all some tea.

“As far as anyone can tell, the abductions started about a three months ago. Since then, there have been twenty-five known incidents, with a total of thirty-three people taken.” Taronn pointed to a tiny red flag stuck into the map, and then several red pins. There were more like them spread across the city. “These show the locations of each abduction.

“As you can see, there’s almost no correlation between them,” said Taronn. “Most took place in less affluent parts of the city, but there have been several in very rich areas as well,” he said, pointing to a pin only a few blocks from the capitol. “All the ones we know of happened at night, and they started off being separated by a week or longer, though for the last month the pace has picked up to a kidnapping every three to four nights. And let me reiterate, this only includes the ones we know of—chances are there are some that have gone unreported, especially people who don’t trust the city guard. That’s more common among poorer communities, which may be why they’re being targeted more heavily.

“Other than that, about all I can say is that the incidents are abnormally well spread out, which is probably why they haven’t been caught yet,” said Taronn.

“That’s not ideal,” said Mazik. “Though I guess if they were easy to find, they would have already been taken care of.”

“And the reward wouldn’t be so big,” said Raedren.

Mazik grinned with predatory excitement. “That too.”

“Is there any pattern?” asked Gavi. “Like, I see a few different areas where multiple kidnappings took place near one another. Did they happen around the same time, or a while after?”

“A while after,” said Taronn. “Probably the safest place in the city is an area where a kidnapping has happened recently. Guards and adventurers always swarm those areas, hoping the kidnappers will be stupid. They haven’t been so far.”

“Hmm…” said Gavi. She wrote this down. “Are there any connections between the abductees?”

Taronn shook his head again. “None. They’re from all over the city, have all sorts of different jobs, different wealth levels, et cetera. Slightly more women have been abducted, but not enough to think they’re being targeted specifically. The victims are all different races and nationalities too. Mostly Houkian, but then again they’re being abducted
in
Houk.” He shrugged. “About the only similarity between them is that they’re usually alone and they’re never casters.”