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This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 78, Law and Order
🕑 Added 2022-02-14 16:47:17 +0000 UTCWorth the Candle: Book 1 is now available for pre-order on Amazon, and also available to pre-order as an audiobook. If you're interested, check it out, but there will be more on that when it launches March 1st.
~~~~
Mizuki went from being sound asleep to wide awake in a handful of seconds. Alfric’s hand was on her shoulder, nudging her out of her dreams, and she blinked a few times to clear her head.
“How much trouble am I in?” she asked. It was what she’d fallen asleep thinking about.
“I think it’s going to be fine,” said Alfric. He was in his pajamas, soft, shapeless clothes that made him look less serious. “You’re going to have to give a statement on what happened and what you were thinking, but that’s for the regular police. The chrononauts have already interviewed all of us a few times, including Lola.”
Mizuki felt true wakefulness come over her, a battle awareness as her body reacted to the danger her mind had sensed.
“She’s still in the living room, still a statue,” said Alfric. “The interviews were in undone days.”
“You people have your own police force,” said Mizuki, relaxing only fractionally.
“Not really,” said Alfric. “We’re a close-knit community and there are people responsible for dealing with chrononaut crimes, some of them on behalf of the community, others on behalf of the country, though I’d probably need a few dozen qualifiers there. But we can talk about it tomorrow. It doesn’t need to be dealt with now.”
Mizuki sighed and sank into her bed. “Well I’m not going to be able to get back to sleep.”
“You’ve already spoken to people a few times,” said Alfric. “You’ll do fine. This day has already seen a lot of chrononaut scrutiny, maybe as much as three full year’s worth. My mother is looking out for you.”
“Three years?” asked Mizuki.
“That’s less than you’d think,” said Alfric. “Only a thousand undone days. Three hundred people taking three days each would be enough.”
“That’s insane,” said Mizuki. “How many chrononauts are there?”
“Around seven hundred, I think,” said Alfric.
“So a third of all chrononauts were working on this,” said Mizuki. “Or half.” Math wasn’t a strong suit, especially not in the dead of night. “Or have already worked on this, shared information or questioned us or … something.”
“Just a guess on my part,” said Alfric. “A lot of it was, uh, internal auditing, and — we both need to get back to sleep. I don’t want to have to repeat this for the party tomorrow.”
“Okay,” said Mizuki. She laid back down. “Can you …”
“Yes?” he asked.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she said. “It took me forever to fall asleep, and I kept thinking that she was going to come through the door somehow, and someone would steal her body from the living room, or I would be arrested.”
Alfric looked around the room, which was lit only by moonlight. There was a large chair in one corner, with a reading light, shuttered, beside it.
“The bed is big,” said Mizuki. “Room for two?”
Alfric was very still for a moment. “Alright.”
Mizuki couldn’t help the wide smile that came onto her face, and she was worried that this would give him the wrong impression of why she’d asked him to stay, so she turned away and pulled the covers over her, and kept herself facing away as he climbed into bed. It really did help her frame of mind to have him there, and she knew that if anything came through the door, he would spring into action.
~~~~
“There are a few reasons that it got so much attention,” Alfric said over breakfast. “The biggest one is that there was some worry that this was a move of some kind by forces unknown, and the investigations weren’t just investigations into this particular incident, but into the apparent failures of the systems that we have in place, which all spiraled out until it was touching almost every part of the chrononaut structures.”
“And this all happened in undone days,” said Hannah.
“It’s still happening,” said Alfric. “Not everything can be resolved in a single day, and not everything can be confined to an undone day. There needs to be a consensus timeline, and you don’t get that until after the day is — the term we sometimes use is finalized.”
“So if she was kidnapping people to torture information out of them,” said Mizuki. “That’s … a problem for all chrononauts?”
“No,” said Alfric. “It’s worse than that, because it’s a problem for society. Society needs to trust chrononauts in order to be able to make use of them, and chrononauts need to be able to trust each other.”
“And this threatens that,” said Isra.
“Yes,” nodded Alfric. “I hadn’t realized how much, but it does. If Lola was telling the truth about everything she’d done, there’s at least an implication that someone was helping her to cover it all up, just given the way that chrononautics work.”
“And … we’re not in trouble?” asked Mizuki. “I just want to be clear on that.”
“You’re not in trouble from the chrononauts, no,” said Alfric. “And very unlikely to be in trouble from the governmental authorities, though they move slowly and don’t wrap things up within a day. They’ll be treating this like no chrononauts were involved.”
“Huh,” said Mizuki. “In which case it was just a confession and some violence and was met with more violence in self-defense.”
“Not self-defense,” said Alfric. “Defense of others. You can’t argue that you were defending yourself if you were a ways away and not in any immediate danger.”
“Sure, sure,” said Mizuki.
There was a knock on the door, and Mizuki slowly got to her feet. “Should I be the one to answer it?” she asked.
“It’s your house,” said Hannah. She took a bite of the eggy bread. It was easy for her to be nonchalant, given that she hadn’t done anything except heal people.
“It’s probably not the police,” said Alfric. “They’ll be coming from Plenarch, and I wouldn’t expect them too much before lunch.”
“Okay,” said Mizuki. She walked on bare feet to the door, wondering whether she should change into different clothes. She was still in her night time robe, which she cinched tighter, just to look a little more presentable. Different clothes would take too much time though and was something she should have thought of beforehand.
When she opened the door, she was nearly bowled over by the dog.
“Emperor!” she shouted.
“Mizuki,” said Alfric’s father with a nod. Alfric’s mother was right beside her. “Can we come in?”
“Of course,” said Mizuki, taking a moment to stop petting the dog. “We’re having breakfast in the kitchen.” She faltered. “Sorry about —”
“Can you save it for just a few minutes?” asked Harmon. “There’s some disclosure we need to do.”
“Oh,” said Mizuki. “Right. Well, right this way.” She walked through the house, very conscious that she was wearing far too casual of clothes.
“Mom, dad,” said Alfric with a nod. His mother had a pronounced frown on her face, but it didn’t seem to be directed at anyone in particular.
“Hello everyone, we weren’t expecting to see you again so soon, and certainly not under these circumstances, but here we are.” He spread his hands wide, gave a ‘well what can you do’ gesture, then clasped them together. “Ria and I are just here for support today, but as a matter of disclosure I need to be forthright and tell you that this is the second time through this iteration of the day for both of us, and our fourth and sixth times through in total,” he pointed first at himself, then at his wife. “So I’ve already been here, as has Ria, and we’ve already spoken with you, and we more or less know how this is going to go.”
“And that’s why you brought Emperor?” asked Mizuki. She smiled. “Because I asked you to?”
“Yes,” smiled Harmon. “And today might be hard on you, but you’ll have him by your side.”
Mizuki frowned. “Hard on me because … ?”
“They’ll be asking you questions,” said Harmon. “Questions that need to be asked, but some of them will feel adversarial. The police, in this instance, are not your friends. They’re trying to get to the truth of the matter.”
“They wouldn’t even have shown up if it were someone else,” said Ria. There was darkness in her voice.
“We’re trying to do everything by the book,” said Harmon.
“‘By the book’ often means that someone is going through the book and picking out every little thing that might possibly go against the rules of said book,” Ria replied. “Sorry, I don’t want to have this conversation again, the point is, there’s a difference between doing things the normal way, doing them properly, and doing them by the book.”
“And this is ‘by the book’?” asked Mizuki. “Which is the bad one?”
“Yes,” said Ria. “There’s been some back and forth on the matter.”
“So I am in trouble?” asked Mizuki.
“No,” said Ria. “They’ll go hard on questioning you, they'll try their best to make you shout in frustration or cry from exhaustion, but you did nothing wrong, and they have nothing to pin on you.”
“That this is being allowed is something of a concession,” said Harmon. “Lola’s parents and the Underhill clan … they don’t want you to be treated gently, on the belief that gentle treatment would be tantamount to, ah, lenience or condoning or some such.”
“Do I need a solicitor?” asked Mizuki.
“Yes, absolutely,” said Harmon. “One has been hired for you at our expense, she’ll be here before the police are.”
“Hello,” said Verity, who had come down late, as she often did.
“Verity,” nodded Ria.
“Is this trouble?” asked Verity. “I heard a little bit.”
“It’s fine,” said Harmon.
“I mean no offense,” said Hannah. “But it doesn’t feel fine.”
“What about the pact?” asked Mizuki. “Is that … off?”
“Yes,” said Harmon. “Firmly. And Lola will be dealt with, which is why there’s this remaining matter of … retribution, let’s call it.”
“That really doesn’t feel fine,” said Hannah.
“Retribution to within the extent of a fair application of the law,” said Harmon.
“Still not feelin’ fine,” said Hannah.
“It’s power and influence being used with ill intent,” said Ria. “It is everything that people criticize us for, and should make anyone feel awful. We have a saying, ‘they will come for you in the witching hour’. It’s meant to be a warning that we’re not immune, that we could realistically be hit with a violent revolt. It’s what happened to us in North Tarbin. But some people seem to look at that expression and think more about what they can do to protect themselves during the witching hour than they do about being a good member of society.”
“Ria’s passions are inflamed,” said Harmon, shooting them all an apologetic smile.
“I personally feel that Lola should be put to death,” said Ria. “It has been made clear to me that this will not happen, and that if I take matters into my own hands, all-out war between the chrononaut clans would be the result.”
Mizuki felt a chill run down her spine, and she had trouble deciding whether it was a good chill or a bad chill.
“Wow,” said Alfric. “That’s …” He pursed his lips. “I did tell you about Lola.”
Ria turned on him. “No,” she said, voice sharp, but she relented almost immediately. “No, you did what we had taught you to do and coached your words carefully, doing your best not to spread hearsay or to give voice to rumors. You didn’t know what was actually true, and you didn’t want to do reputational damage. What we heard from you was the weakest possible version of the story, and that’s because of how we raised you and what we taught you about what’s appropriate information to pass on.”
Harmon nodded. “Your mother and I are in agreement that in this instance, the lessons we taught you did not serve you well.”
Alfric frowned. “Okay.” It was a short reply, the kind that brought to mind the phrase ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’.
~~~~
“I don’t really understand why, if I haven’t done anything wrong, I need to be coached,” said Mizuki.
The solicitor was a Chexlic woman named Mille, even shorter than Mizuki but with high-heeled shoes that almost made up for it. She was very reassuring and even-keeled, calm in a way that suggested she’d done this a thousand times before. Mizuki imagined that she must be expensive, and she had come in from Dondrian, though when introduced, had said that she’d also done a few years of work in Greater Plenarch. She wore a skirt and blouse that were fabulously tailored, and just the right amount of makeup, applied in just the right way.
“There are two reasons,” said Mille. “The first is that we don’t want you to have any lies on record, which will be less likely to happen if you talk to me first and I can correct you or confer with you if I spot an error. The second is so you don’t say anything monumentally stupid that will get you in trouble.”
“Okay,” said Mizuki. “Because if I am in trouble, just let me know, and then let me know how we’re going to get out of it.”
Mille tightened her grip on her pen for just a moment. She had been making notes. “One of the first things I tell clients is not to volunteer information. Answer the question as directly as you can and don’t offer anything else. If they have more questions or need context, that’s for them to ask, not for you to offer. But the second thing I say, which I think you might need to keep in mind, is that you’re not here to be funny. At best, they’ll find it amusing and then continue to do their jobs. At worst, you’ll say something that can be misconstrued or get you in hot water.”
“Short, simple answers, no laughing,” said Mizuki. “Got it.”
“I’ll be with you the entire time,” said Mille. “If they ask an inappropriate question, I’ll stop them, if you say something that I think you shouldn’t, I’ll try my best to cushion it or give clarification.”
“This is all making me very nervous,” said Mizuki.
“I’m sorry,” said Mille. “I’m just trying to get you ready. Now, let’s go over it again.”
~~~~
“Lola Underhill claims that you attempted to kill her in a number of undone days, and were successful in several of them,” said the taller detective. They were Jines and Laver, the tall one being Jines, both women, very alike except for the color of their hair, with Jines being brunette and Laver being blonde. They had uniforms and a uniform hairstyle. Jines did most of the talking. “Is this true?”
“Mizuki would have no way of knowing that,” said Mille.
“Let me rephrase,” said Jines. “Do you believe that you may have killed her on an undone day?”
“It’s irrelevant to the issue at hand,” said Mille.
“No,” said Laver, speaking up. “The inquiry is about state of mind and predilection toward violence.”
“Then those questions should be asked directly,” said Mille.
“They don’t need to be,” said Laver with an impassive expression. Laver’s role was somewhat different from Jines, and she seemed to be the authority on which questions were okay and which weren’t, which Mizuki found a bit confusing. Laver wasn’t a judge, but she was a detective who worked for the fact-finding arm of the judge’s court.
“Do you need me to repeat the question?” asked Jines.
“Um,” said Mizuki. “I’ve never killed anyone. I don’t know what it’s like to kill someone. She said that I killed her on undone days, but I don’t know the context. Knowing what I know about her, it might have been self-defense, but also, knowing what I know about her, she could easily have been lying.”
It felt like the answer had been too long, and that Mizuki should have just said ‘no’, but Mille didn’t seem upset, and they moved on.
There were so many questions. Some of them were simple and inane, questions about the layout of the land which they were going to check anyhow, or questions about her family and ‘position in the community’. They had simple, easy, relaxing answers, even if they didn’t seem all that relevant. Mille stopped some of them, which Mizuki didn’t really understand, but sometimes Laver would say that it was a matter of character, and apparently that counted for something.
“What were the exact words exchanged between you and Alfric before you came in?” asked Jines.
“Uh,” said Mizuki. “I don’t remember.”
“He quotes himself as saying ‘Now’ and you as saying ‘Incoming’,” said Jines. “Does that sound correct?”
“Prompting,” said Mille.
“Rephrase,” said Laver.
Jines sat for a moment and chewed her lip. “Did Alfric, to your recollection, describe the nature of the threat?”
“No,” said Mizuki. She wanted to add ‘But I knew it was Lola’, but Mille had told her to just directly answer the questions.
“So you used magic to fly through the air, back to the house?” asked Jines.
“Yes,” said Mizuki.
“And what did you see when you arrived?” asked Jines.
“Uh,” said Mizuki. “People were standing around in the backyard. Lola had three tendrils out. Isra was lying on the ground, bleeding — or, with a bunch of blood all over her, I guess I don’t know that she was actually bleeding. Hannah was by Marsh, who was also bloody. Alfric had Lola’s attention.”
“How did you know that the injuries were Lola’s doing?” asked Jines.
“There were two blades on the ground, and two of Lola’s tendrils were empty,” said Mizuki. She had gone back and forth over that with Mille, that Lola should logically have still been holding the blade that stabbed Marsh, but Mille had ultimately said that it didn’t really matter, so long as Mizuki was being truthful about what she remembered. “And her third tendril had another knife in it. Plus I know my own party well enough to know that they wouldn’t stab each other, even by accident, and I know Lola’s party a little bit. I can’t say they wouldn’t stab each other, but Grig seems like a good guy, and Mardin’s not very … intense. But if I’m being honest, it didn’t even really occur to me that it might have been someone else.”
Mizuki glanced at Mille, who had a slight frown. It was a bit too much information to give out, Mizuki realized.
“When you decided that you would attack Lola, did you fear for your own life?” asked Jines.
“Yes,” said Mizuki.
“You did?” asked Jines, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Mizuki repeated.
“Why?” asked Jines.
“Uh,” said Mizuki. “Well, first off, I was dropping from a hundred feet in the air, and I was worried that if I screwed up my speed, I was going to just slam straight into the ground, which might not have killed me with Mardin and Hannah there, but — you know, it might have. And the second thing I was thinking was that Lola might kill me if she saw me, or if I missed, or she might activate her other bindings and — I’d have had to blow them, right? Which I think I could have done, but it would have needed to be fast, before she could kill me.”
“When you were above her, taking in this scene and making plans,” said Jines. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“Leave?” asked Mizuki.
“You were about to attempt something dangerous,” said Jines. “You feared for your life. Lola didn’t know you were up there. You could, at that point, have simply flown off into town to get help.”
“Oh,” said Mizuki. “But … they’re my friends, they needed me. Even if they hadn’t been my friends I think it would have done it. I think without me, Josen was the only one that could have maybe stopped Lola, or maybe Marsh if he hadn’t been stabbed in the chest.”
“When you struck her, what were you trying to accomplish?” asked Jines.
“Uh,” said Mizuki. She looked at Mille, whose face was impassive. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to kill her, I just … we had talked about stopping her before, if she did something heinous or illegal.”
“Something that would allow her to be removed from your lives,” said Jines. “That was a question,” she added, when Mizuki had no response.
“Uh,” said Mizuki. “Mostly it was a worry that, I don’t know, she was going to do something to us. Alfric was worried that he was going to be poisoned. I was a little worried that we were getting bad dungeons because of her, or that she was going to try to tear the party apart, or that yeah, stuff like the dungeon escape would happen and maybe then not be contained.”
“When you struck her, what was on your mind?” asked Jines.
“Not breaking my legs with the fall,” said Mizuki. “And then what I would do if she put up her spectral shield, how I would break all her bindings without killing or hurting anyone around us, um, probably some other stuff.”
The questions continued. Sometimes it was the same question, and other times it was the same topic approached from a different perspective. Mille stopped the worst of it, but it seemed clear that Jines was looking for something, some kind of statement that would either catch Mizuki in a lie or incriminate her. MIzuki did her best to just tell the truth.
She did end up crying, and then they took a break. The question hadn’t been anything that was, on its surface, all that emotional, it was just another question about the house and who owned it, but the constant stream of questions had been wearing on her, and she was getting worried that she really was going to end up in prison, despite the assurances of Harmon and Ria.
“I’m fine,” said Mizuki. “Just rattled.”
“That’s what they want,” said Mille. “The questioning will go on for as long as it’s allowed to. Eventually Laver will bring it to a close, but this is just how these things work.”
“How have I been doing?” asked Mizuki.
“Fine,” said Mille. “You offer a little bit too much, but you didn’t actually do anything wrong, which means they’ll have nothing to pin on you. At best they can argue that you were just looking for an excuse to hurt Lola and remove her from the picture so that you could take her place, but there’s not nearly enough to make that kind of argument work in even a cursory fashion.”
“Okay,” said Mizuki. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” said Mille. “I am being paid, but it’s the sort of thing that I enjoy doing, helping someone for whom the system seems to be unjustly set on grinding down and locking away.”
“Is that what this is?” asked Mizuki. “They said it was by the book.”
“Some of this is untoward,” said Mille. “But not in a way that would be legally actionable or that would besmirch anyone’s honor. Jines has been skirting the line.”
“And Laver?” asked Mizuki.
“She’s a professional,” said Mille. “And I get the sense that she’s being lenient with Jines.” She shrugged. “The Overguards believe this to be the hand of the Underhills, and they’re probably right, but there are limits that this little game is being played within, which us mere mortals should take some solace in.”
“Not sure that I like being part of a game,” said Mizuki.
“You’re on the winning side,” said Mille with a shrug.
“And I am doing okay?” asked Mizuki. She really would have taken all the reassurance anyone was willing to give her.
“You are, more or less,” said Mille. “If circumstances were better, I would have had more time to prepare you, but the difference would have been rather minor, I think.”
“I don’t really understand what they’re doing,” said Mizuki. “All these questions, and … what’s the point?”
“Aside from trying to make you comfortable, or to put you off balance, they’re trying to establish a firm timeline, catch you in a lie — which isn’t going to happen, because you’re not lying — and beyond that, much of what Jines has apparently been pushing for has been establishing your state of mind.”
“Okay,” said Mizuki. “To be honest, I don’t know my own state of mind most of the time. It’s weird to me that people understand why they do things.”
“State of mind won’t really matter anyway,” said Mille. “Even if you absolutely hated Lola, even if you were deliberately attempting to kill her, it would be very difficult for them to do anything about it given the facts of the case, the clear danger posed by Lola in the moment, and the lack of actual harm to her.”
“Good,” said Mizuki. “And … thank you.”
“Of course,” said Mille.
When they got back together, almost all of the questions were about Alfric, which Mizuki didn’t like at all. Questions about how they’d met, questions about how he’d conducted himself, questions about when he’d revealed key facts about his life to the party. Mizuki couldn’t help but feel defensive.
“Alfric is kind and gentle,” said Mizuki. “He’s always looking out for us, almost to a fault. He’s got a strict moral code that he follows to the letter, even if some of it doesn’t make sense.”
“Doesn’t make sense? How?” asked Jines, raising an eyebrow.
“Chrononauts have — well, no, let me start over. Alfric was raised to think that a chrononaut shouldn’t take too much advantage of their power over others, and should disclose everything,” said Mizuki. “And yeah, it’s nice to know he thinks that. But if it were me …” She shrugged. “I guess I don’t know what I would do, but to me it’s a weird way of thinking. My parents always said ‘think of how it will affect others’, and for the chrononaut stuff it feels like the ‘how it affects others’ stuff is, um, at a remove? Also I guess I never really talked about the law with Alfric.”
“Why would the law matter?” asked Jines.
“Because I don’t want to do something illegal?” asked Mizuki. “And if he said ‘oh, I do the disclosure because that’s the law’ I don’t think I’d have blinked twice. But … from what I understand, it’s not the law, right?”
Jines and Laver gave each other a significant look, which Mizuki interpreted as ‘this girl really doesn’t know, does she’.
“Wait, is it the law?” asked Mizuki.
“There are virtually no laws within Inter regarding chrononauts,” said Jines.
“What, none?” asked Mizuki. “Aren’t they like, paid just to exist?”
“That would be one exception,” nodded Jines. “But it’s rather beside the point of why we’re here today.”
There were more questions, and Mizuki had a feeling that they were trying to get back on track, but her mind was elsewhere, on the idea that maybe there just weren’t any laws for chrononauts, or not ones that mattered, that there was a cabal of them enforcing their own internal laws with absolutely no accountability to anyone else. It was odd, and a bit frightening, and the result was that Mizuki wasn’t feeling the feelings that they might have been expecting her to be.
“Did you want Lola out of the way?” asked Jines.
“What?” asked Mizuki, somewhat shocked.
“The question is too vague,” said Mille.
“Clarify it, please,” said Laver.
“Did you want Lola out of the way so that you could have a relationship with Alfric?” asked Jines.
“No,” said Mizuki. “I mean, he didn’t want anything to do with her, she wasn’t in the way at all, and now their pact is broken, he’s probably going to re-pact with someone else, someone that he does like, or at least wants to make a family with.” She gave a little laugh. It felt unbelievable that this was what Jines seemed to be going with.
“This isn’t a laughing matter,” said Jines.
“Your opinion on what my client should or should not find funny is irrelevant,” said Mille with a mild voice.
There were even more questions about Alfric, but it was clear that they were trying to create some kind of jealous lover angle that just wasn’t there. Alfric was great, and he was attractive, and if he wanted to start something, Mizuki would be there for it, but she wasn’t in a state of utter desperation or frustration or whatever it was Jines wanted to coax out of her.
And then, mercifully, it was over. Jines and Laver thanked her for her time and said they would be back if they had any more questions for her, which Mizuki couldn’t even imagine, and once they were gone, Mille gave her a rundown on what she should expect and what she should do and say.
“Try not to talk to anyone about it, excepting your party, who was there for it,” said Mille. “Don’t have any contact with Lola unless it absolutely can’t be avoided, and I doubt that would happen given she’s been moved and the chronos are dealing with her. Mostly you just don’t want to contradict anything you said, or raise any questions about state of mind. I don’t think there’s anything there, but it’s the direction Jines was pointing, and if there’s someone pulling her strings, then that’s what they would probably go with. It’s extremely unlikely that this will ever see court in any fashion, and if it does, I’m already on retainer to help you.”
And then Mizuki was free to go about her day, like nothing had even happened.
She immediately went to seek out Emperor, and was pleased to find that he was still around.
There was a bit of a debrief rundown between Mille and Alfric’s parents, which Mizuki only half listened to. They seemed a bit bored, but that was because they must have listened to this all before. Jines and Laver had conversations with a few of the others as well, but these were much less in-depth, and Mille wasn’t sitting in on them, because no one else was in trouble.
“Are there really no laws about chrononauts?” Mizuki asked Ria.
“There are very few,” said Ria. “We’re a small community. We police ourselves, and our reputation … it’s not sterling, but it has so far been good enough that we haven’t had laws foisted upon us.”
“You know we came over here, to Inter, five hundred years ago?” asked Harmon.
“Yes,” said Mizuki.
“Has Alfric talked about why?” asked Harmon.
“No,” said Mizuki. Which was strange, now that she thought about it. “Or, if he did, I didn’t listen well enough.”
“Our ancestors took over,” said Harmon. “They were the rulers of North Tarbin — the proto-nation that would become North Tarbin. Not tyrants, per se, but not good rulers. Just because a person has the ability to grab power for themselves doesn’t mean that they should take it. And there were designs to expand further, efforts to consolidate that power. It was an ugly time.”
“They came for us at the witching hour,” said Ria.
“We fled,” said Harmon. “Or ‘they’ fled, depending on how you want to frame it.” He glanced at his wife. “Five hundred years ago, to me that’s enough I have to consider those different people.”
“Inter — or what would become Inter — wanted us,” said Ria. “They wanted the power we could provide. It’s worked out well for them, frankly. But the lesson of our early history was one that we’ve done our best to keep alive. Some of what Alfric believes … our own approach, on the Overguard side, is to stand up straight, be polite, disclose when you need to, and follow a set of strict rules in order to command respect.”
“If you don’t, they’ll come for you at the witching hour,” said Harmon.
Mizuki shuddered. “And you believe that?” she asked. “I don’t think we would.” She wasn’t sure that ‘we’ was the right word. She didn’t consider herself to be in a big group of all people who weren’t chrononauts, but that was certainly the way Alfric’s parents were talking.
“It’s something any right-thinking person would have done to Lola,” said Ria. She had a grim face. “And if they see Lola, if they know about her, if they know that she’s off locked away by us rather than facing mortal punishment, they’ll start to see us differently.”
Mizuki thought about that. “I guess so. More than they do.”
“I’m giving you a ring,” said Ria, pulling a matter black entad from her pocket. “It will blend in with your skin. It will allow you instant contact with me.”
“Oh,” said Mizuki. “Well … thank you.” She took the ring.
“Our son believes in self-sufficiency,” said Ria. She glanced at Harmon. “To a fault. It would be better if he didn’t know you had this ring, but it’s probably unavoidable, and you’ll have to follow your own conscience. I might come back to collect it in a month or so, depending on how things shake out. If there’s trouble, contact me, immediately, don’t worry about waking me up, don’t worry about it feeling like it’s too small. If Lola shows her face anywhere near you or Alfric, I’m going to kill her.”
Mizuki swallowed. “Well. Okay.” She slipped on the ring, and it felt cold as it wrapped itself around her knuckle and sank into her skin. “Did you offer this same thing to Alfric?”
“I did,” said Ria. “He rejected it.”
“Ah,” said Mizuki. “... why?”
“He’s very principled,” said Harmon. “More than we are, frankly. But I also think he hates the idea of being able to call his mother at a moment’s notice if things aren’t going his way, even if that’s sensible.”
“Whatever else, he’s a young boy,” said Ria. “It clouds the mind.”
“Do you think it likely that Lola stays locked up?” asked Mizuki.
“A month ago I would have thought it unlikely that someone like Lola would be allowed to exist,” said Ria. “Now, I’m less sure of our position.”
“Thank you,” said Mizuki, “For all the help.”
Ria nodded. “Let’s hope that you don’t need any more.”
Comments
fbt
Chrono society is looking pretty sketch. If they don't execute or permanently imprision Lola, I'd say it's time to leave Inter. Or, if one were vindictive, plan to stay and waste a ton of time and money setting up a scheme to have Lola meet a series of untimely (and, ideally, untraceable) accidents. But if the de facto system is such that she's let loose, time for either a revolution, a murder, or an exit visa.
