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This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 101, the All-Seeing Eye
🕑 Added 2022-05-04 17:33:30 +0000 UTC~~~~
The whole thing was pointless, and Alfric knew it. Running their own investigation of the missing people parallel to the one that was being done by actual professionals back in Plenarch was never going to bear fruit, not even if they found a single thing that the investigators had missed. He would go back to Plenarch and report what he could, but he didn’t expect that it would help anyone, and he suspected that he wouldn’t even end up undoing the day. Penelope had already had a great many goes through it, and everything he’d tried to contribute would have been done a number of times already — except, apparently, this. So he would try, and had resolved himself to not be too disappointed when due diligence was not rewarded. In his experience, due diligence usually wasn’t rewarded, but it was important for the times when it paid off.
Though sometimes you went to a small town and collected whoever was available to run a dungeon, and it turned out to be the best decision of your life. Alfric wasn’t sure whether or not there was a life lesson there, but he suspected that it was just dumb luck on his part.
The large dormitory had a five-eyed dwodo on staff to greet them, a woman who spoke nearly perfect Inter with little accent. From the way she greeted them, Alfric suspected that she’d been warned that they would be coming in soon.
“You may not enter rooms unless invited,” she said. “If there are problems, you will be removed from the mountain. Are we clear?”
“Yes,” nodded Alfric. “We only wanted to speak to people who might know something. If you know anything —”
“No,” the woman replied, terse.
“So are you like … the shepherd for all the foreigners?” asked Mizuki.
“I don’t think it’s important,” said Alfric. He suspected that this woman held the position as a duty, or possibly a punishment, though she had five eyes, and that meant a position of some power and influence, at least if his dwodo tutor had been correct. The mounds were all different though, with their own rules, and he was painfully aware that he was out of his depth.
“I’m a landlord,” said the woman.
“What’s that?” asked Mizuki.
“I’ll explain later,” said Alfric.
“You always say that,” said Mizuki. “Besides, we have the time.”
“Do it elsewhere,” said the dwodo woman. She gestured to a doorway. “The common room is through there.”
Alfric had hoped that she would drop the subject, and he was rewarded when they moved into the spacious common room, where there were plenty of people around. One of them, a tall man with fluid movements, sprang to his feet as soon as he saw them, abandoning a conversation with a dowdy woman to come join them.
“More foreign two eyes!” said the man, opening his arms wide. His shirt was of a style that was particularly popular in Dondrian, slightly open at the front, with flowing fabric. He beamed at them with pearly white teeth, and Alfric felt a quickly brewing distaste for the man that wasn’t quite rational. “What brings you to our fair mountain? Are you visitors, or here to make a home?”
“Just visiting,” said Mizuki. “We’d heard about some missing dwodo and wanted to see whether anyone around here knew anything.” This wasn’t strictly untrue, depending on how it was parsed.
“You’re from Plenarch?” he asked. He held out a hand. “Mesi Onchard, at your service.”
“We’re from farther afield,” said Mizuki, taking his hand. “I’m Mizuki, this is Alfric, and this is Pek. We’re not here officially, but we are here unofficially, if you catch my meaning.” Alfric had no idea what that meant, except that she was perhaps trying to create an air of authority where no actual authority existed. “But the dwodo we’ve spoken with haven’t been keen to share with us, and there’s something else going on, we think. We were hoping that you people might have heard something. The botanist in particular, there’s something there.” So far as Alfric knew, that was a pure guess on Mizuki’s part.
Mesi leaned in. “It’s Wolin’s daughter,” he said in a stage whisper. “He’s the king of the mountain-skin, more or less. The dwodo don’t like to talk about these sorts of things, but there was a minor panic when they realized that she had gone, and they’ve been gossiping about it, which they do in their own way, without actually mentioning that she’s gone. It’s the same when someone dies, they don’t do funerals like we humans do, they have their priests dump the body into the sea, or off the side of the mountain, and then never speak of it again. It’s fascinating. But they do gossip, speaking around the subject.”
“Why do they do that?” asked Mizuki.
Mesi shrugged. “If you live with the dwodo for long enough, you’ll come to know that they have their own particular ways. You’d have to speak to Djanni,” he pointed a thumb in the direction of the woman he’d been speaking with, “if you want a theory as to why the dwodo are the way they are, but their whole perspective on history is quite unique in how different it is from the normal human outlook. This is actually the third mound I’ve been a part of, and these oddities are endemic to the dwodo, not anything to do with this particular group.”
He was talking a lot, and had the look of someone who might go on for hours if he’d been allowed to. In fact, it seemed as though they’d rescued Djanni from a conversation she hadn’t been all that thrilled about. She had resumed reading her book, but was looking up often enough that Alfric suspected she was listening in.
“And the others?” asked Mizuki.
“Less important,” Mesi shrugged. “Less gossip. And it wasn’t just that Wodi was the daughter of Wolin, who has reign over most of the surface of the mountain, it was that she was the botanist, the expert in keeping the fragile ecology of the moving mountain from getting upset too much. We don’t have the kinds of resources that a hex has, so it’s much more difficult trying to root out unwanted plants, and we pass through so many different climates and biomes and everything else that comes with it.” It was interesting that he said ‘we’, despite being a foreigner.
“What will the mountain do without her?” asked Alfric.
“Oh, there are two apprentices,” said Mesi. “But there’s been some discussion of whether they’ll be able to keep up with the demands of the position.”
“She wasn’t happy here,” said Mizuki. “What can you tell us about that?” She was, Alfric thought, putting on a bit of a voice, an authoritative tone that she wasn’t quite pulling off, at least to his reckoning.
“How much do you know about the dwodo?” asked Mesi, raising an eyebrow.
“Everything I know I’ve learned today,” said Mizuki with a bright smile. “But I learn fast.”
Mesi laughed and gave her a grin. “Oh I like you. Well, they care about the eyes, you see, it’s very important to them, not just for seeing, naturally, but for what they consider the natural order of things. Everyone is born with two, save for a few unfortunates, and there’s a process using a number of clerics that allows them to make more, but it’s somewhat tense given so much rests on it. It would probably suffice to say that Wodi was on one side and Wolin was on the other.”
“And that's why she wasn’t happy?” asked Alfric. “Ocular economy?”
“Oh, that’s just the gloss,” said Mesi. “In truth, it’s probably the same old thing it always is, an idealist getting frustrated by a system that they feel powerless to change. There was a whole back and forth between the two of them, some of it public, other bits riding the undercurrent of gossip, and I’m sure pieces that are hidden from everyone.”
“Lots of gossip then?” asked Mizuki.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Mesi smiled.
“The dwodo have a strong belief in privacy,” said Alfric.
“Well,” said Mesi, wiggling a hand. “They believe in keeping speculation to a minimum, and prying into someone’s private affairs isn’t really tolerated, but talking about things that are ‘public’ in one way or another, that’s quite allowed, even if it can be frowned on from time to time.”
“Ah,” said Mizuki. “So you’re not allowed to ask about where someone is, but you are allowed to offer up information?”
“A bit,” said Mesi. “Not quite how I would phrase it, but you learn early on that you’re not supposed to ask questions, you’re supposed to provide answers, and that’s how you get answers in return. But when you first come here, obviously you have loads of questions and no information that anyone really cares about.”
“I see,” said Alfric. “And that’s all you have to tell us about the missing dwodo?”
“Ah, well I was hoping that you’d have something to give back to me,” said Mesi with a smile. “It’s the dwodo way, after all, and when on the moving mountain … I’ve gotten used to their ways, that’s all.” He gave them a hopeful grin.
“My sister went missing last night,” said Pek. “She’s not human or dwodo.” He fiddled with his ring and the human form vanished. Alfric was paying closer attention to it this time, and at the moment of transition it was almost as though the human version of Pek was a sheet falling down from him, if only for a fraction of a second.
“Wow,” said Mesi. His eyes traveled up and down Pek. The woman, Djanni, got up from her seat and came over. “What are you then?”
“Bastlefolk,” said Pek.
“I don’t even know what that is,” said Mesi, letting out a breath. “You’re … a dungeon creature?”
“He’s a person,” said Mizuki with a pronounced frown.
“Well, yes, of course,” said Mesi. “I just … you were taken from the dungeons as a child? Before the madness?”
“Yes,” said Pek. He put his ring back into place and the human form returned.
“Fascinating,” said Mesi, still looking Pek over, perhaps trying to see whether there was a flaw in the disguise somewhere.
“My sister looked like me,” said Pek. “There’s a very slim chance that she came here, though she might have been in a disguise, like mine. She could look like any human, male or female, or like a dwodo. If you’ve heard anything, we’d like to know, and if you hear anything after we leave, send word to Penelope Overguard in Plenarch. You’ll be handsomely rewarded if it helps to get my sister back.”
“Will do,” replied Mesi with a nod. His eyes had not left Pek, in a way that Alfric felt was a bit unseemly. “But unfortunately, there’s not all that much I can tell you that I haven’t already. If I’d known that it was a serious matter, I wouldn’t have gone on with that gossip. The other two, Pila and Nolli, were less important within the community: a mason and a groundskeeper, respectively, skilled in their trades, I’m told, but neither was a lynchpin.”
“Disaffected?” asked Alfric.
Mesi shrugged. “I knew neither of them personally, but I’ve kept my ear to the ground, and I would say … oh, somewhat? Pila lusted for status but was stuck as an apprentice, two eyes to her name, while Nolli was a bit acerbic. That’s through the grapevine though, after the fact, and just like humans, the dwodo try to explain the things that have passed, sometimes without knowing the true cause.”
Mizuki rubbed her forehead. “No notes though?”
“Not that I’ve heard,” said Mesi. “This was all some time ago though, and the dwodo might not have volunteered the information into wide circulation.”
“It happens sometimes that the dwodo leave the mound for one reason or another,” said Djanni, who had been silent up until that point, and hadn’t yet been introduced. “Often it happens in waves. One person leaves, then others follow them. Twenty years ago there was an exodus of nearly a dozen young dwodo. There’s some worry that it will happen again.”
“A mysterious disappearance?” asked Alfric.
“No,” said Djanni, shaking her head. “They were all friends, adamant about leaving the mound, and founded a colony on the Shattered Peninsula.” That was in northwestern Inter, if Alfric’s memory served him right, a series of islands, in spite of the name. “So far as I know, they’re still there, but I would love to follow up with them at some point.” She cocked her head to the side and looked at Pek. She held out a hand. “Djanni Sensdaughter. I study the dwodo.”
Pek shook her hand. “Pek.” He left off the Overguard surname, which Alfric had noticed the bastlefolk sometimes used. Alfric wasn’t sure what he felt about the bastlefolk using it, though he supposed it wasn’t all that different from an adopted child using the surname. He was even less sure how he felt about Pek leaving off the surname.
“We haven’t had any newcomers,” said Djanni, “and they would be funneled here. We’re kept cloistered.”
“Even if she were disguised as a dwodo?” asked Pek.
“We would definitely know about a newcomer from another mound,” said Mesi. “We’ve heard about it every other time it happened.” He looked down at Pek’s ring. “You’re telling me you have an entad that lets you look like anyone?”
“No,” said Pek. “Mine is much more limited. It allows anyone to look like,” he looked down at himself. “This, I guess.”
“Fascinating,” said Mesi.
“Are there other people we could talk to?” asked Alfric. He looked around the room. “It’s a large place.”
“There are two dozen of us,” said Mesi. “A smaller group than it sounds, with better living than we’re owed, at least in my opinion. I doubt any would know more than I do, but I’ve been wrong before. There are the artists up on the fourth floor, but they’re generally out of the loop, and a few diplomats who don’t talk to the rest of us and might know something.”
It all took a very long time, so much so that Alfric thought that they might have to cut it short in order to report what they knew to the Plenarch city guard. Mesi joined them as an unofficial part of the unofficial investigation, tagging along to introduce various people and point out their areas of interest. Djanni hovered around as well, though mostly to speak with Pek. She was erudite and straightforward in a way that appealed to Alfric, but she didn’t seem to understand that Pek wasn’t interested in her questions, and it wasn’t until Mizuki stepped between them and started giving Djanni attention that she left.
The rooms were almost all richly appointed, which made Alfric think that perhaps he was wrong in his assumption that having this place be a wide tower was a statement of contempt. This little enclave of humans was set apart from dwodo culture, but it did seem like a good place for a person to live.
“We do have to earn our keep,” said Mesi in a low voice. “But the dormitory had stood with vacant rooms for a long time, and I suppose they’ve wanted to keep them filled, so it’s practically free to live here. I’ve been worried for some time that there will be a wave of people coming in and I’ll get displaced. There’s nothing like the protections you’d find in a human city.”
“It’s getting late,” Alfric finally said, once they had spoken to the last of the artists. The woman had given a quite long explanation about how she painted landscapes that could be seen from her balcony, and while Alfric was happy for her in an abstract way, it told him nothing interesting about the missing people.
“Are we really going to leave?” asked Mizuki. “We haven’t even, you know, gone to investigate where they disappeared from.”
“We’re not allowed to,” said Alfric. “And even if we were alright with breaking the law and insulting the hospitality we’ve been shown so far, I really don’t think we would find anything. If it’s the same thing as has been happening in Plenarch, it’ll look like either someone dropped everything and went away, or like they decided to take a trip or a new direction in life. We have names, occupations, timeframes … it’s nothing that helps right now, but it needs to be handed over, preferably before the day is over.”
“So you can … reset?” asked Pek.
Alfric nodded. “Assume that I won’t, but if there’s something actionable, something that we — or someone else — can use then I’ll reset, report to Penelope, report to the Plenarch authorities, and hope that it can do some good.”
“But you don’t think there’s anything we can use,” said Pek.
“No,” said Alfric. “I don’t. Whoever or whatever is doing this, it’s taken a lot of variables into account. And if the people are going willingly …”
“I don’t think she would,” said Pek. “Why wouldn’t she say something?”
“Maybe that was part of the deal,” said Mizuki. “Absolute silence about where you’re going, not allowed to tell anyone?”
“Who would agree to that?” asked Alfric.
“I might have,” said Mizuki. “I mean, not now, but if you had offered me a good enough deal a year ago … maybe, I guess?”
“You said that you didn’t care too much about money, that money was boring,” said Alfric.
“I didn’t say that I would be offered money, did I?” asked Mizuki. “Something else though, maybe I would have accepted.”
“I don’t think Kali would have,” said Pek with a frown. “But … I don’t know.”
“We’ll figure out a solution,” said Alfric. “Penelope will have already raised flags. It’s just not the sort of thing that can be solved in a single day, that’s all.” He wasn’t entirely confident in that, but it couldn’t be that there was no solution. He knew that there were unsolved mysteries, but there were precious few of those in the modern world, and they were either mammoth mysteries that couldn’t be solved by a dozen scholars working on them, or mysteries so tiny that the necessary evidence had been easily worn away.
They left the moving mountain behind, with Alfric again flying, in spite of Mizuki’s protest that it was her turn. If there was a failure with the helmet, or some kind of complication, she might end up in the water, and he had no confidence in her ability to warp under pressure, especially not while trying to tread water. She found the objection silly, but had eventually relented and gone into the stone with Pek.
The flight back to Plenarch gave Alfric some time to think, and his thoughts were all turned in on themselves. He’d gone there expecting to accomplish nothing but making himself feel useful, and he’d accomplished nothing, but there was still a hollowness, because this bad thing had happened and he could do nothing about it. One of the joys of being a chrononaut was that you had all kinds of power to prevent bad things from happening, so much so that the list of lives saved by a single chrononaut could run into the thousands in a given year. Here, he was helpless.
When he landed back at Penelope’s cubic house, he touched the stone to get the others out, then prepared himself to fly back into the sky.
“You don’t want us to come with you?” asked Mizuki. “I mean, I can talk to the authorities, right?”
“Better that you not,” said Alfric. “I don’t want to bring you to their attention.”
“Because of the Lola thing?” asked Mizuki.
“And because you were impolite to a guard yesterday,” said Alfric. “Besides, I want you to go help Penelope in any way you can. Have that smoke ring contest with her, if she’s up to it, something to take her mind off a hopeless situation.”
“Alright,” said Mizuki with a frown. “But you’ll tell me everything that there is to tell, right?”
“Penelope should also know it all,” said Alfric. “It’s just a matter of whether she’s sober.”
“Thank you, for doing more than your share,” said Pek. “I appreciate it, even if it’s fruitless.”
Alfric nodded. “Penelope’s a distant aunt, and I guess that makes you and Kali distant cousins.”
“Though Alfric would also have done the same for anyone,” said Mizuki. “I’m actually surprised we didn’t become freelance detectives the moment we heard that there were people missing.”
“We’re not freelance detectives,” said Alfric.
“Because we don’t get paid?” asked Mizuki. “I feel like if we found a bunch of missing people, the money would flow in. And if you squint, it’s sort of like doing a dungeon.”
“I want to go speak with the necessary people before they go home for dinner,” said Alfric. “We can have an extended argument about it later.” She was flirting with him, he was pretty sure, and while he normally enjoyed the back and forth, he simply wasn’t in the mood.
“Don’t work yourself too hard,” said Mizuki. Her face had lost some of its glee and she was giving him a sympathetic expression. “There’ll be more to do tomorrow.”
Alfric nodded, then shot up into the air, which was always Mizuki’s favorite way of leaving a conversation when she used the helmet.
Almost all of the civil services of Plenarch were clustered on a single island in the lagoon, and Alfric tried to move quickly, worried that he wouldn’t be able to see anyone. It wasn’t necessarily vital to get the information to them as quickly as possible, given that the ‘case’ was so incredibly cold and hadn’t been immediately solved with all of the days that Penelope had thrown at it, but it was better to do it now so that when Penelope threw more days at the problem, the information wouldn’t need to be reintroduced each time.
Alfric eventually came to the office of a harried detective who had papers all over her desk. Set in the middle of it was a device, likely an entad, which had small arms protruding from it, each of which was rotating around the center, like an orrery. She looked up from beneath a mass of curly hair and looked at him.
“Alfric Overguard?” she asked. “I was told to expect you.”
“When?” asked Alfric, frowning.
“This morning,” she replied. “By your aunt. She said that you might have something.”
“Oh,” said Alfric. “Well … yes. We went off to the dwodo mountain and spoke with them. Apparently they’ve had some disappearances of their own. I was hoping that wasn’t known to you, and that it might help.”
“We knew,” said the detective. She was still staring at the device.
“Oh,” said Alfric.
“I hadn’t had a chance to go out there,” said the detective. “Anything that you can tell me would be appreciated. I’d say that you saved me some trouble, but I’ll have to go out there myself to confirm.”
Alfric said what he knew, trying his best not to betray too much of the confidence that Wolin had placed in them. Most of the information had been repeated by Mesi and the others in one way or another, but he thought that there was still something suspect about getting information that way, and didn’t want to be perceived as someone who couldn’t be trusted with secrets — not even if that perception was from someone who he would likely never see again.
“I see,” said the detective. She had taken notes as she spoke, and when she was finished, that piece of paper joined the others. “It’s not much, but it’s something.”
“How did you know about the missing people on the mountain?” asked Alfric. “Penelope didn’t know.”
“We might not have told her,” the detective replied. Her attention had returned to the orrery, though whatever it was tracking, it wasn’t the motions of the stars. “Since the story was printed in the paper, we’ve had all kinds of reports, which have been stretching us thin. Your aunt wants to be a part of it, but she’s got to understand that there are limits on how much we can allow a civilian into an investigation. Especially one who’s a person of interest.”
“Person of interest?” asked Alfric. “A suspect?”
The detective sighed. She flicked one of the extended arms, and it rotated rapidly around the center of the device before slowing itself down.
“No,” said the detective. “Someone involved, that’s all, someone who we’re keeping an eye on. We don’t think that your aunt did something to Kali, but now that the story is out, the public is in heat, and we do need to consider that some of these cases might be people taking advantage of a crisis.”
“She wouldn’t do that,” said Alfric. “She loves those children like they were her own.”
“Yes, I’ve heard,” the detective replied with a wave of her hand. “And I don’t think that there’s anything that points to her. All I’m saying is that we can’t talk to her all that much about what we’re doing, especially not since she’s a chrono.”
“Meaning what?” asked Alfric.
The detective looked up from her entad and stared at Alfric. “You’re a chrono too?”
“I am,” replied Alfric. You had to say, if someone asked you point blank.
“It’s bad enough when rumors spread out from mouth to mouth in the normal way,” said the detective. “With a chrono, a rumor can spread before we even have the information in our hands. A criminal can get a second chance to cover their tracks. A special operation needs to be protected not just before it happens, but after too.”
“We cooperate with the city guards,” said Alfric. He thought about his aunt. “At least, as a general rule.”
“I tell you what, if we have a use for you, we’ll be in touch with your aunt, who was certainly in touch with us this morning,” said the detective. “Now if there’s nothing else, I need to figure this out.”
“Can I help?” asked Alfric.
The detective sighed. “No.”
After that, there was no possible reason left to stay, and Alfric made a trip to the other side of the small island, hoping for a meeting with the censusmaster, just to see whether any of the dwodo had disembarked at Plenarch and then stuck around. According to Wolin, their ‘natural’ names weren’t the same as the names everyone used for them, which wasn’t supposed to be how it worked. Alfric couldn’t remember offhand what criteria the census used, but he did know that you could change your name as it appeared on the census with time and recognition.
Unfortunately, he found himself waiting in a lobby with almost a dozen other people, and the queue was moving with all the speed of a leaf drifting on a lake.
<Alfric, will you be back for dinner?> asked Hannah.
<Start without me,> said Alfric.
<Anything fruitful?> asked Isra.
<No,> replied Alfric.
It was almost dark when he got in to see the censusmaster, a creaky old man with a shelf full of books in neat rows behind him. They went through introductions — what felt like the fiftieth time that Alfric had done that — and got to business.
“I’m hoping that you can help me,” said Alfric. “I have three names, all of dwodo, and I’d like to know whether they’re in the hex or not. I was warned that the names might not match, so if you could find any dwodo in the hex and give me a list, that would be appreciated.”
“The names won’t match,” said the censusmaster. “The dwodo have internal names. Easy enough to see the patterns though, give me a moment.” He looked off into the middle distance. After some time had passed, he began writing on a blank sheet of paper without looking at it, his fingers moving with precision. “There.” He slid the sheet of paper to Alfric.
There were four names, and nothing lined up with what he’d been told. Alfric frowned, trying to see whether something there was a few steps away from the information he had, if perhaps some of the information about the three missing dwodo was a few steps off, but none of it was close. The ages and occupations just weren’t close enough for any of this to be worth trying to track any of these people. And if the dwodo had left the mound to go live in Inter, they hadn’t necessarily settled in this hex.
Alfric sighed. “Thank you for your help.”
“Not what you were looking for?” asked the censusmaster. “I should warn you that I might not have gotten them all. It’s an internal name, so if one of the dwodo didn’t want to be found, they might have picked something innocuous. The census doesn’t gather information on species, they would blend right in.”
“No, I think this is a dead end,” said Alfric. He hesitated for a moment. “Would it be possible for someone to hide from the census?” He fully expected the answer to be no, but he wasn’t sure, and he’d waited in the queue for long enough that he wanted to get something from this meeting.
“There are entads that interact with the census,” said the censusmaster. “They’re rare, but they’re out there. The most common form draws information from the census in one way or another, but a few do alter the census information in various ways. I would have no way of knowing except by being able to draw conclusions from a conflict between reality and what the census tells me. If you have an example of that, let me know. It’s not illegal per se, but it makes my job more difficult.”
“So,” said Alfric. “Plausibly, someone could be in the hex and hiding from the census?”
“It’s unlikely, but yes,” said the censusmaster. “I would have no way of knowing. The census is imperfect in that regard, a valuable tool but not the all-seeing eye that some people say it is. Now, I need to get home to my wife and children, is there something else you need me to look up?”
“No,” said Alfric with a frown. “Just trying to puzzle things out, thank you.”
“It’s my role,” replied the censusmaster. “Think of me the next time you vote.”
Alfric left the building and took off into the air. The sunlight was fading but there was enough light from the city below to fly by, and he zipped over the islands to Penelope’s house, trying to work out what he was missing. It felt like he could put it all together, but that was probably just a fleeting feeling.
“You’re quite late,” said Mizuki when he came in. “Dinner is done. I learned to blow smoke rings though, do you want to see?”
“Sure,” said Alfric. She had a small pipe in her hand, but didn’t seem to be impaired, and he hoped that it was just an herbal mixture, something that would have a good taste but wouldn’t affect her too much.
Mizuki took a puff and then blew a perfect smoke ring, which curled through the air and eventually lost its shape. “All you have to do is,” and then she blew another smoke ring, which wasn’t terribly instructive. “So, nothing for all our troubles?”
“No,” said Alfric. “You know, I had said at the start of the day that I was mostly trying to make myself feel like I was doing something, but I had a feeling, as though I was going to be able to make something of it all. But now it’s all going up like smoke.”
Mizuki blew another smoke ring. “I am good at this.”
“I need to eat,” said Alfric. “We’ll stay the night here to be ready for tomorrow, but if there’s nothing we can help Penelope with once she’s undone a few days, we’ll head out in the morning.”
“Isra bought a lot of stuff,” said Mizuki. “She looks cute.” She puffed another smoke ring, this one in the direction of the ceiling. Alfric was thankful that the house was self-cleaning. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” said Alfric. “Failure just doesn’t sit well with me, and I feel like today was … not a waste, but not what I had wanted.”
“Life is like that sometimes,” said Mizuki with a shrug.
“I guess,” said Alfric.
And the next morning, there was still no sign of Kali, still no clue that had been uncovered which solved everything, only clues that raised more questions.
“I’ve been through the day six times,” said Penelope. “I’ve obtained entads that give a limited view into the past. They show her packing and leaving, but I’ve lost her after that. I’ll try again today, but she gave me the slip deliberately, with forethought.”
“At least it was of her own volition,” said Alfric. “And she’s alive. That’s something.”
“It’s something,” said Pek with a dark countenance.
They talked on the matter, but it again felt like it was going nowhere, and Penelope had already had this conversation a number of times before. In her brief summary, it seemed as though they’d spun their wheels talking about it, and hadn’t had success in tracking Kali.
“Let me know if you find out more,” said Alfric.
“Of course,” said Penelope. “And think about what I’ve said. Kali leaving … it was because she was unhappy, I think. It’s hard to reckon otherwise.” She pursed her lips. “We need people to help fight for the bastlefolk.”
Alfric made no firm commitments, but it had been on his mind. There, at least, there might be something that he could do.
