The Rogue Guardian

Chapter 9: Allegiance

As the Laycreeks met and planned and theorized on the other side of the castle, Magali was having her own meeting in her sitting room. As usual, it was just her and Caer with the ever-present guards outside her door, but it still felt rather clandestine and almost like a war meeting. Even more so with someone missing.

"Would you stop? You're making me seasick."

Biting her thumbnail, she continued pacing the sitting room and ignored him. They'd run through every possibility they could think of, but had come up with nothing. How could you come up with theories when there was evidence for absolutely nothing?

"So she was bored of the castle and ran away. I'm sorry, but I really think that's all we can say at this point," Caer sighed.

"You didn't think that when we started talking this over," she accused him.

"Nothing we've talked over can be supported."

"Neither can her arbitrarily picking up and leaving! We had plans. She had plans. Leaving in the middle of them didn't make sense. Doesn't," she corrected herself. It wasn't over. When Morane came back they would pick up where they left off.

"We don't know what she was thinking. The mishap with the assassin--"

Just thinking about it made her stomach bubble with nerves. That disgusting, bloodthirsty man--

"I don't want to... I don't want to upset you, but we have to consider everything. She as good as admitted she was with the rebels."

"She said she would make me the last queen."

"And I know you're fixated on the queen part, but the key is last. Whether she was all that bad or not, she still lied, and she was still to some degree involved with their plans to end the monarchy. Li..."

She flinched. Since Morane had chosen that nickname for her Caer had picked it up as well, but she couldn't forget the way the assassin had said it. The coolness of his accent. Slime-like.

"Li, I have it from good sources that their ultimate plan is to kill your father. She was hanging around those people."

"You've known her longer than I have. Did she ever seem like she would do that?"

He looked down at the table he was seated at, and she assumed he was imagining the girl they'd spent far too few lessons with in this very room. Wicked grins and careless sarcasm-- the capacity to harm, perhaps, but not the aptitude for cruelty. Magali had been warned her whole life of the evil that lurked in Dark Guardians, but she had never seen darkness in Morane. To her the Thief had been a kind of bright, shining light-- because what else could pure mischief and confidence represent in a life that was otherwise flooded by self-doubt and limits?

"I don't know," he said quietly. "I suppose to say she always lied would be untrue. I'd know if she was lying. But there's deceit without lies, and who can say how well versed she was in that?"

"She's not a monster. Caer, we know that. You taught me that."

"But there are people in between monsters and angels, Li. I would know."

Yes, he would, and she knew that was what gave him so much trouble. He did not come from a background that made it easy to trust. He had been trained to look for the truth, and never to assume that it was good and just and happy.

But she trusted Morane. She had glimpsed, in that brief time between the horror of the assassin and the terror of her disappearance, a hopeful slash of what might be their future, and for the first time in her life it hadn't been more people talking over and looking down at her. It had looked like confidence, and knowledge, and opportunity, and authority. It had looked like everything she'd never had the strength to ask for on her own.

Morane had promised her allegiance by birth and service and hope and blood. So Magali owed Morane her own allegiance, faith and trust and her own blood in return, and at least-- the very least-- to look for her, to bring her home.

"The bloody footprints-- you can't explain that away. She didn't leave just because she wanted to."

"Maybe not." He sounded worn down, defeated. "I've got to put away these books before my next appointment. I'll see you after dinner." He nodded to the guards on the way out. Vain even said goodbye. With him and the princess spending so much time together lately they had all gotten used to the eccentric tutor.

He couldn't seem to get her out of his head. He should have had plenty to think about, with so many more lessons to plan for Magali each day, but somehow he still found time to worry in each spare waking moment. Even, he suspected, in some sleeping moments, as he had woke this morning with a vague memory of a dream in which he was chasing her across the city's roofs, shouting that he hadn't finished teaching her the history of the Guardians.

"Have there ever been Guardians that ran away?" He could hear her question in her exact voice, offhand, merely curious, echoing back at him from a moment weeks past. He could picture her sitting on the dusty armchair in the dark, musty sitting room of his father's place. He hadn't thought she was serious about it.

He still didn't.

He might suggest so to Magali for the lack of evidence otherwise, but he was investigating his own leads and nothing seemed farther from the truth. Morane wouldn't slap-dash decide to leave and run out that very night. She took calculated risks, and the little evidence she'd left behind wasn't calculated. They were the marks of someone in a hurry-- though of course he wouldn't make any assumptions yet. He wanted to hear what the captain and his knight had picked up last night. If it was good, he might deign to share some of his own discovery and collaborate.

Well, not with Luca. But Joshua was smart. Better, he was street-smart. Taken from a crop of newly captured criminals and made an enormously successful but uptight captain, he was an ideal target for many of Caer's jibes. Including the debate they'd had for Magali and Morane's lessons a weeks or so ago, which, he had to admit now, had gone a bit overboard. Despite humble beginnings, no one ever suspected that Joshua had ever been anyone besides who he was now. He could use someone like the auxiliary captain.

It made him wonder just how much he would need to collaborate with unsavory people to find her. As a Dark Guardian and a Thief, she would prefer to keep to the darker, dingier side of the law. Much less easier to navigate, and much less easier to track. It would make things easier if he could get the captain to act as a kind of guide. Caer had read his file in the archives many times over, and he didn't doubt Joshua must have made colorful contacts left over from such a career.

And he could, of course, attempt some ways of... persuading him to help. A long shot, as that criminal career was far behind him and it was a strict honor code he was known for now. Honorable, strict, respectful and dutiful-- these were puzzle pieces that anyone in the castle could have fitted together to come up with Joshua Blaisze.

But there was always a possibility. He would see what information the captain had for him first, then decide what resources to expend on him; whether to risk insulting his honor with bribes or fall back on flattery.

Caer Solentude was a natural at this. More than that, he was a master.

Though recently, ever since he'd first walked into Morane's room really, he took much less pride in that knowledge. There were some things more important than being a master.

Dropping his books in the sitting room, he headed out again immediately to find Blaisze. Something propelled him to do everything relating to Morane as quickly as he could manage, to find her not a moment later than was possible. His friend-- perhaps the only real friend he'd ever had-- was missing, and if he could have sacrificed all the natural skill he had to find her, he would have.

Maybe there was some taint in his mind left over from the dream making him so anxious. Something relating to that residue feeling that she'd left without some crucial bit of information, without being told everything he could tell her.

He didn't think it was entirely to do with the fact that he'd lied to her, but he wouldn't count out a guilty conscience.

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This chapter is probably all over the place but I hope it sheds some light on a few characters! ...or possibly just makes some of them more confusing. I'm so tired I'd settle for either. Bedtime for me...