The Storm King

Chapter 479: Disturbed Plans

[Maia, did you ever tell Emilie or Elise about that darkness mage you killed in Emilie’s estate?] Leon asked her, speaking into her mind.

Maia glanced at him, understanding blossoming on her face, followed quickly by embarrassment and slight shame.  [No… I didn’t…] she replied.

“Where is my uncle now?” Elise asked the secretary.

“I believe he’s still down with the blood mages supervising the audit of their offices,” the secretary replied.  “He has to make sure that the intruder didn’t steal anything or leave anything behind.”

“Thank you,” Elise replied as she turned back toward the lift.  She and the other three got back in it while the secretary returned to his duties.

Barely a few seconds later, they were stepping out into the head office of the local Heaven’s Eye blood mages.  The place was a flurry of activity, though there weren’t that many people there.  Ajax’s imposing form was sitting behind the desk with two blood mages pouring over a stack of forms next to him while a handful of blood mages and Tower guards could be heard working in the storage room just beyond.

“… nothing seems to be missing,” the older of the two blood mages said.  “I can’t say for certain whether or not she took anything, but I didn’t see her do anything of the sort, and just about everything of note has been accounted for, My Lord.”

As Ajax looked up and saw his niece and the other three, his stoic, vaguely angry expression instantly softened, and he rose to his feet and stepped out from behind the main desk.

“Little Butterfly!” he exclaimed as he pulled Elise into a fatherly hug.  “Ahh, I’m sorry, I lost track of time, otherwise I would’ve met you downstairs!”

“Uncle Ajax!” she replied, wrapping her arms around his waist—he was much too tall for her to comfortably reach any higher.  “Are you all right?  One of your assistants told us what happened last night!”

“Oh?  Yes, I’m fine, none of us were injured, though not for her lack of trying,” Ajax responded.  “If I weren’t so quick on the draw, one of my guard-captains might’ve bitten the dust in our brief tussle.”

“It’s good to see you’re all right, then,” Leon said as he stepped forward.  “I fought a seventh-tier darkness mage myself during the war with Talfar last year.  Such magics are difficult to counter.”

“You can say that again,” Ajax replied, extending a hand out to Leon, which the younger man unhesitatingly grasped in greeting.  “It’s good to see you doing so well, Leon.  I must admit that I was a little bit worried about you after you left last time.”

“Thanks for the concern, I appreciate it.  It hasn’t always been easy, and I’ve made some bad decisions, but everything’s worked out so far.”  Leon smiled surprisingly good-naturedly, taking Ajax a bit by surprise since the image he had in his mind of Leon from their last meeting was that of an aloof and reserved young man, not someone who so readily and so genuinely smiled.

“Uncle, what else can you tell us about what happened last night?” Elise interrupted, her melodic voice tainted with worry and concern.

Ajax glanced back at the working blood mages, then back at Leon and Elise’s small group.  His eyes lingered on Maia for an almost worryingly long time, but he showed no other reaction to her obvious power.  He then turned back to Elise and said, “Let’s… talk somewhere else.”

Only a couple of minutes later, the five of them were seated facing each other in the sofas in Ajax’s office.  Ajax was amused to see Elise and Maia sitting next to Leon on the largest sofa, with Leon in the center.  Valeria and Ajax, meanwhile, took single-person armchairs.  He couldn’t help but wonder as to the exact nature of everyone’s relationship, even if the way Maia and Elise were leaning on Leon made how physically intimate they were clear enough.

Elise wasn’t about to let him ask any questions on that front, however.

“Uncle, what have you learned?”

Ajax’s gentle smile began to dim.  “I’ve learned a bit, but it’s not something that I think others ought to hear…  Leon, it concerns you…”  His eyes drifted toward Valeria and Maia as he said this.  It was a subtle signal, but one that he neither attempted to hide nor thought for a moment that Elise would miss.

Leon mimicked Ajax, glancing at Maia and then at Valeria, his eyes lingering on the latter far more than the former.  Maia already knew that he trusted her with his life, she could sense that through their connection.  Valeria, on the other hand, might’ve needed a little bit more assurance from him, and he tried to convey his sincerity with his eyes.

“I trust Naiad and Valeria as much as anyone can be trusted,” he declared.  “They know my secrets, there’s little point in keeping anything more from them.”

Ajax looked a little startled when Leon said ‘Naiad’, clearly recognizing the term, but he kept silent about it.  The rest of Leon’s declaration, however, elicited a sigh of resignation from him before he began to speak.

“… So be it,” he said, settled back into his chair for what he thought was going to be a long conversation.  “The woman who infiltrated the Tower last night was testing a blood sample she had against several other samples of Raime blood we have in the Tower.”

Leon leaned back in his seat, unconsciously pulling Maia and Elise a little tighter against him.

“Was she…” he murmured in thought.  “Naiad killed a darkness mage not too long ago, too…” he said, quickly explaining what Maia had relayed to him of their confrontation, with Maia adding in a few more details that she thought might be relevant.

“And… you just pulled him out of his shadow?  Just like that?” Ajax asked, astonished.  He knew from personal experience just how difficult such a thing was, and he’d even failed to replicate it the previous night.

[I did,] Maia replied, looking a little smug as his eyes narrowed when her voice resounded through his mind.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Elise quietly asked, her tone dangerous and angry despite how calm and even it was.

[I… was distracted after…] Maia answered, her smug attitude vanishing like someone had flipped a switch and turned it off.

“We can talk about that later,” Leon whispered.  “For now, let’s focus on the immediate threat.”

Elise scowled, but she agreed with Leon about what the priority was right now.

“What was this blood sample?” Valeria asked, interrupting any tensions that might’ve started forming.

“A tattered bandage covered in old dried blood,” Ajax replied.  “It was just a small scrap, and it looked like it had survived being burned.  Despite that, however, the blood on it was almost useless to her.  My blood mages managed to confirm that the blood belonged to someone of House Raime, though they couldn’t glean any further information.  This woman probably already knew that, though, given that she had demanded that the bandage be tested against these other samples.”

“Do you have that bandage fragment with you?” Valeria further inquired.

“No, I destroyed it as soon as we were done with it,” Ajax replied, smiling as Valeria gave him a disapproving look.  “There’s little need to keep the evidence, Dame… Valeria, was it?”

She nodded.

“The sample was confirmed by my blood mages to be of no further use, and I didn’t want to risk it falling back into the hands of someone who could infiltrate my Tower,” Ajax continued.  “Besides, my blood mage whom she’d taken captive told me that she seemed desperate and on edge.  I believe that it was probably the only blood sample she had.  We’re not bringing this matter to the Kingdom—they’ve got too much on their plate as it is—so there wasn’t any need to keep the sample around for long.”

Leon nodded, finding himself intrigued by what Ajax said.  “What made him think she was desperate?” he asked.

“Her general demeanor, her demands for him to hurry, a few small things she said.  Apparently, she was sent from somewhere else and her friends or allies seem to be waiting for her in a dangerous place.  Whatever that means.  Theokleos wasn’t able to get any specifics beyond the fact that she was supposedly sent here alone, though her allies are probably waiting on word from her.”

“So we know that she isn’t working alone, they’re after my family, and they’ve already made an attempt to act against me once while I was in a heavily-warded Heaven’s Eye building,” Leon summarized.  His eyes drifted over in Valeria’s direction again and saw her lost in thought.

He hesitated to ask her what her opinion of all this was with Ajax in the room, but he had a suspicion that these pieces were fitting together in her head just as they were in his.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Leon asked Ajax, hoping for all that he was worth that there wasn’t.

“I don’t think so,” Ajax replied, to Leon’s immediate relief.  “My people are handling the investigation here in the Tower, and we have no other leads to go on about who this woman might be.  I’m sorry, Leon, I know this is a personal matter for you, but I can’t offer anything more unless we have another encounter with this woman or her allies.”

Leon nodded, doing his best to look appropriately crestfallen, but secretly feeling relieved that he had a little more time to deal with all of this himself without involving anyone else who might complicate matters.

“I suppose it is what it is,” he said.  “We’ll be careful from here on out, but we still have some business to get to while we’re here in the city.”

“You mean you didn’t come up here to visit little old me?” Ajax playfully asked.  “Whatever you need, I’ll do my best to assist you.”

Leon nodded gratefully.  “For me, I was hoping to empty out my vault.  I’ll probably not be staying in the Kingdom for much longer, so I don’t want to leave a vault full of stuff here when I could just take everything with me.”

“Makes sense,” Ajax replied.  He might’ve been a little upset if Leon was closing all of his accounts, but his accounts were remaining open, it was only his vault that he was emptying.  No matter where he went after leaving the Kingdom, he’d always have access to his money with Heaven’s Eye.

Elise then spoke up, her cadence a little slower and her tone a little lower than usual, indicating that she was still thinking about the attack.

“We’re… also intending to look around Argent Palace, but in light of what happened last night, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea…” she said, looking at Leon.  “If word got around of our visit and this woman heard, then she might come after us…”

[You said that woman was a seventh-tier mage?] Maia inquired, cutting off Elise’s thought.

“Yes,” Ajax affirmed.

Maia responded with an almost derisive smile, her eyes narrowing into a predatory glare.  [If she thinks she can take my mates away from me, then I’ll kill her.]

There was no hesitation in her ‘voice’, she was all confidence and certainty.  As far as she was concerned, so long as she was around, Leon and Elise were safe from everything under the sun.

Leon smiled in gratitude, though there were still a few things that Ajax revealed that had him thinking.  Where the woman had gotten the burned bandage and whose blood was on it were at the foremost of his questions.  Unfortunately, he knew he probably wouldn’t be getting answers to those questions anytime soon, if ever.

“I’m very happy that someone so powerful is willing to defend Leon and my niece,” Ajax said, responding to Maia, “but I think being cautious is the best bet right now.  It would probably be to everyone’s benefit to hold off on visiting Argent Palace for the time being, at least until we can be assured of your safety.”

“We can both be cautious and still check the place out, though,” Leon objected.  “We don’t have to use the front gate and attract a lot of attention, we only have to send word that we’ll be visiting and then enter the palace estate from another way.”

“I assume you have another way in if you’re suggesting this?” Ajax asked.

“I do,” Leon replied.  “Several, in fact.”

“Several, huh?” Ajax whispered as he started losing himself in thought.  “Well you can count me impressed,” he sarcastically muttered.

“I still think it’s risky,” Elise firmly stated.

“It was always going to be risky,” Leon replied.  “Even before this woman appeared here, there was always going to be the possibility that, in entering the place with the King’s permission, my family’s enemies would hear of it.”

Leon’s eyes strayed in Valeria’s direction, and she didn’t meet his eye.  She was instead staring at the floor trying and failing to hide her growing look of horror.

“You know what?” he suddenly said, abruptly changing gears.  “Why don’t we just take care of the vault right now, then we can sleep on the problem.  Even if we decide to go with my idea, we can always wait a little while, it’s not like we’ve a time limit or anything.”

“That would certainly go a long way to assuaging my worries, Leon,” Ajax replied, his handsome face breaking out into a wide smile.  “I’ll have the vault brought up here, and once you’re done emptying it, I’ll accompany all of you back to my palace and get you settled in.  I’m sure it’s been a long journey and you need your rest.”

“That we do, Uncle,” Elise replied, her tone exhausted and exasperated from what had been discussed and proposed.

Leon, however, was silent.  He had no intention of resting—at least, not immediately.  He was more than willing to wait a little bit longer to access his family’s archives again, but at the first opportunity, he wanted to get Valeria alone and talk about whatever was obviously on her mind.