Work Text:
In the small hours after the meeting and just before midnight, actor Devon Sproat is sitting up in bed, reading a history of Neovia to calm his nerves. It is not working particularly well. His rental house on the outskirts of Happy Valley is tall and drafty, an isolating place. The bed alone is three times wider than it should be, a huge four-poster affair with ornately carved designs on the headboard.
Just when he’s finally beginning to settle down, thinking he might get a few hours of sleep, he hears a knock at the window. Instantly, he’s alert. He tosses down his book, grabs an empty brass candlestick off the nightstand, and brandishes it towards the window. “Who’s there?” Devon yells, pushing his small Xweetok voice into a thunderous bass.
“Your old friend from the gravesite,” a high voice says, and then the whole pane of glass stretches inward like it’s made of rubber. Devon backs away; there are seven different locking spells on that window; no one should be able to so much as touch it, much less bend it like jelly. He focuses the small light he was using to read on the glass, and sees it’s still bending, and he’s left to think, in a rush, whether the security wards have failed or he’s facing a very magically-skilled intruder. A minute later, something juts through the surface of the distorted window. Then, it turns out to be an arm, and the figure it belongs to follows it into the room. The window ripples and flows behind them.
Devon takes a step back, stumbling against the bed, and stares at the visitor. After a moment of scrutiny, he realizes it’s Pointy-Hat, the fellow Devon met at the graveyard. The Ixi who called himself an amateur mage. He’s dressed in an androgynous fashion, in a long, dark green robe over a neat vest. His hat is tall, like it was the last time they met, though tonight it’s got a flat top. Only a few inches of his face show under the shadow of its brim. Quite a handsome fellow, though, Devon remembers correctly. “Good evening,” the Ixi says, making a wide sweeping gesture with one arm. The window snaps back, and once again looks like solid glass. “I trust you remember me?”
“Yes. You’re the undertaker’s friend – the gent in the witch’s hat. We met in the Woods.”
The visitor nods. “Indeed.”
“Your skills at breaking and entering are formidable,” Devon says, keeping his voice even. At least he knows the intruder, though he doesn’t know the wizard’s business. No good getting worked up over this. He sets the candlestick and the light down.
The Ixi nods. “Very lavish place here for a thespian,” he says, running a hand down one of the bedposts. “I like it though.”
“Thank you. And it’s not exactly mine – it’s rented out most of the time,” Devon says.
“Then what brings you here tonight?”
“Business,” Devon says. “Come now, I’m an actor, I go where the work is. And you… It’s a long trek from the Haunted Woods; you just happened to be in the neighborhood?”
The Ixi nods quickly, the hat bobbing up and down and hiding his face in shadow. Devon takes another step closer to his visitor.
“The neighborhood of Tyrannia?”
“It is rather close, isn’t it?” The Ixi leans closer too, and puts a hand on the Xweetok’s shoulder. “Fancy that.”
“Forty-five kilometers from a certain excavation site.”
A sharp inhale from the wizard. “If you say so.”
“Either you’re using magic to keep your pulse down, or you’re a better liar than I thought.”
“So you think you’re good at reading people?” the Ixi replied. His face was now very close to Devon’s.
“You’re a member of the Order, aren’t you?”
The Ixi’s breathing is quick and warm, and it takes a moment before he speaks again: “And what are you, then?”
Devon takes a step back, and then paces the room, making a broad circle away from the window and ending by the headboard of the bed. He had realized faintly, in the back of his mind, that he was making both an accusation and a confession. Merely to know of the Obelisk at this hour suggests an allegiance to one of a very few elite groups. He isn’t a thief; despite his skills in deception, he hasn’t the stomach for stealing. He certainly isn’t any good as a mage. The Brute Squad is right out. And just to admit the possibility of being in the Sway is anathema to the Sway…
“It’s all right,” the wizard says quietly. “I’ve been told I’m skilled at keeping secrets. Spoken or unspoken.”
Devon barely hears him; he’s still turning over the repercussions of outing himself. He’d just met this Ixi wizard a fortnight ago. They’d worked together for three days in the aftermath of the murder, then parted ways. He can’t understand why he’s so drawn to the wizard now that he would confess one of his greatest secrets. “Look – you seem to be a good fellow. I like you. But you were never here, understood?” Devon hefts up the candlestick again.
The wizard just smiles, and says, “If I can scramble a half-dozen locking wards, I think I can put a silencing spell here to negate my presence. No one will know. And I don’t even know who there would be to find out, just that…” He makes a gesture with his hands: Tall trees swooshing back and forth. “Just that they exist.”
“Very well then,” Devon says. Then, pressing his luck, making his voice as smooth as he could, he says, “Now you’ve got a secret from me. Allow me to uncover one?”
The Ixi stretches his arms wide out in front of him.
“What’s your name?”
A small chuckle. “Wondering when you’d ask. I would have told you after the end of the case, possibly before that. I’m Vyta, Heir to the House of the Seven Staves. Junior physicist in the Neovian science guild, and friend to the odd mortician.”
“Friend to the finest of undertakers,” Devon says, nodding. “And a fellow with fine taste in hats.”
“Thank you.”
“If you hadn’t worn one in, I’d have been disappointed – not just frightened for my own safety. It would’ve been a small betrayal.”
“The only one you’ll get from me.”
“And you can get out as easily as you got in?” Devon asks. “You’re welcome to go out through the front door, but there’s a fair number of stairs ahead of you that way.” Vyta nods. “I still can’t understand why you chose to visit, but I am glad you did.” He smiles. “You’re welcome back – not that I think I could keep you out anyway.”
“I’ll be leaving then,” Vyta says quietly. He secures his hat, then pulls out a small, thin wand. “If you’d like the shield wards put back up at full strength, stand back…” The air around the window ripples for a few seconds. “There we are. And I’ll be off…”
“No,” Devon says quickly, rushing over himself. “Stay. Please.”
Vyta stares at him, apprehensive. “One last answer, Devon. Was it chance that we met – you and the gravedigger and I?”
“It was not,” Devon says, with a sigh. The Sway believes, at some deep level, that everything is fate. Some things are more fated than others. But now Vyta is going to leave him. Everything will fall back into place, but he’ll miss it. It will be orderly and yet…somehow wrong. “But I swear, you were only listed as an amateur magician and acquaintance who’d be at the funeral. I didn’t know anything else about you then. Certainly not that you were so, well, charming.”
There’s a long exhale. Elsewhere in the house, distantly, a half-dozen ornate clocks sound the hour twelve times.
“Well then, thespian, I can stay for a while,” Vyta says. “You realize that’s all it can be though, yes? You have your allegiances, I have mine, and forty-five kilometers away we can’t afford to be friends. Or anything.”
Devon looks into his narrowed eyes. He’d lost almost every friend he’d ever had after he joined the Sway. Here, at least, was a man who was good at secrets, and handy with a wand in case the secrets failed. “Understood. Time is short, I know, but tonight seems endless. Come, and I might even fully forgive your intrusion.” He glances back around the room. “I’d venture the bed is warmer than climbing back through a window, by the way.” The wizard smiles.
Vyta stays the night.
It is considerably warmer.