The Rogue Guardian

Chapter 3: The Captain and the Tutor

"Some guards who were off duty swear they saw her down in the city earlier today."

"And?"

Joshua shrugged, leaning against the heavy, ornately carved wooden desk. "I sincerely doubt they were sober."

Tobias scowled down at his paper. "I asked for information, Captain, not rumors."

"Rumors are all we have. Do you want to find her or not?"

The Sage's scowl traveled from the paper up to his face, but Joshua didn't flinch. He knew the answer. It was imperative-- it had always been imperative-- to keep the Thief nearby. And now it was imperative to find her.

"Anything else?"

"It's more likely that she left. The wall guards reported someone leaving through the gates less than half an hour after she ran through the ballroom, and I doubt she would have a place to stay in the city." He chose what looked like a glass paperweight from the desk and rolled it around his hand, noting a swirl of green in its center.

"But if you can't tell me where she went--"

"Begging your pardon, but I can only do as much as you allow me. If I could leave the castle--" He raised his voice before Tobias could interrupt. "Boat records should be checked, though if she did it properly there won't be any. In that case, the people who deal in that kind of thing will need to be questioned and bribed. We also need to check land routes, stables that rent horses--"

"Everything you've listed can and should be taken care of by the spymaster. There is no reason I can see for you leaving the castle."

"Oh, of course, boat captains and stable masters going missing in every direction won't be suspicious at all! We don't need your spymaster's brand of getting answers, we need discrete questioning." Tobias's eyes narrowed. "My lord."

"Kidnapping was not what I had in mind. Rest assured our spies can handle 'discrete questioning'. Not to mention you're not exactly unrecognizable. Surely you don't mean to tell me you think the kind of people we're dealing with would spill their secrets to a royal captain?"

Not to a royal captain, no. He bit the inside of his cheek and didn't answer.

"If that's all the information you have for me..."

He nodded. "Yes, my lord. Good afternoon." As he bowed he dropped the paperweight into his pocket. Tobias had already gone back to his paper and didn't look up as the captain left.

"Well?" Luca looked up hopefully as he shut the door behind him and turned into the hallway.

"Well what?"

"Don't play dumb. I know you were meeting about her." No need to say her name out loud-- in the past three days "her" could only refer to one person.

"I'm not playing dumb. There's no news."

"How is that possible?" He looked defeated, although Joshua had no idea how he could have thought he was at fault. He supposed it was no worse of a theory than any other they had come up with, and certainly preferable to many of them.

"I don't know. Maybe it was all planned." He started walking briskly back towards the main halls.

"Then why didn't she tell me?"

"What goes on between you is none of my business, and frankly I'm not interested."

"But why--"

"Don't you have a meeting to be at?" He interrupted his friend. "Something like an extremely important delegation of new military responsibilities?"