Serial Saturday: "Clan of Outcasts" Season 3, Part 13 "Out Of Range"

Part 13

"Out of Range"

Commander Edri sat at the table outside the interrogation room with her arms folded. Her eyes remained fixed on Queen Azelie, searching for any sign of vulnerability or danger. She could barely hear the conversation between Risyn and the prisoner--King Jaran had decided that the Mage was versed enough in the workings of someone else's psyche that he could keep the conversation flowing, perhaps pulling information out of Raedyn in a flow of words--while the King and his brother engaged in alternately threatening him with their Gifts to encourage the steady communication. While that was going on inside the room, Azelie sat outside to probe his distracted thoughts without him knowing.
At least, that was the hope.

The Queen grimaced and let out a frustrated hiss between her teeth.

Edri sat forward. "Something wrong, your Majesty?"

"No," Azelie grunted. "It's just... He's very resistant, that one. One moment, I've got a focus on his thoughts and he seems to want to reveal information very soon.... And then in the next, I find I've been following someone else entirely!" She shook her head. "Okay, I think I've got it now... Let me see, he's got something in his pocket... it's hidden away, I can picture him holding out his hand, while someone gives it to him... Now he's grabbing--" She stopped and pinched her lips together. "No, wait, that wasn't him."

Edri made a note to pass on to Risyn. "Well, the thing in his pocket is something, anyway. But who was that you saw grabbing something?"
The Queen kept her eyes down, focusing on a tiny ant crawling across the tabletop. Edri rolled her eyes and squashed it with a finger. "Your Majesty?"

Azelie shuddered, and she lifted her eyes, blinking several times. "What? Oh, I'm sorry, were you saying something? I wasn't listening."

Edri had several years of dealing with ignorant, difficult, and powerful people to give her experience with not letting her frustration show. She kept her face neutral and her voice level as she asked, "Did you find out anything else from Raedyn just now?"

It seemed almost unnatural, the way that impeccable face formed a frown. "Well, no..." Azelie even blushed a little as she admitted, "I wasn't listening to that, either." She stood up and began pacing, the worried frown still contorting her face.

Edri released the urge to slam the table in half and suppressed the raging lion inside herself by drumming her finger on the table. She watched Azelie pace a few times, and asked, "Your Majesty, if there's something--"
"Nothing!" Queen Azelie snapped in a frantic tone, coming to a stop. "I'm not--I mean I wasn't--" She ceased stammering and merely clapped her hands to her head. "It's too much, I've got too much to deal with right now!"
Edri sighed and stepped to the doorway. A page appeared only a moment later.
"Fetch the Archivist's assistant," she instructed him. "We need his help." The page bowed and scampered back toward the main halls of the castle.

Azelie flopped into the chair. "I'm sorry, Edri! I know how important it is to get into this man's head, and that there are only a few of us who could actually do that--"
Edri shrugged. "And one of those few is currently occupying some strange imperceptible plane of existence," she muttered, hoping as she did so that the Princess wasn't accidentally nearby to hear her speak so disrespectfully.

Just then, the door to the interrogation room opened, and Mage Risyn stepped out, followed by the two brothers. He bowed low to the queen, as Edri rose to attention in deference. He laid an object on the table in front of them.
"This is what I found in a secret pocket on his jerkin," the mage said.
Jaran rubbed his hands together, diffusing the sparks of excess energy as he did so. "It's got an electronic signal," he confirmed. "I, um, might have fried it a little at one point."

The two women stared at the device. A blinking screen reminded Edri of some of the scanners the Peacekeepers used at one point, back when the Clissanders were actively rooting out the Gifts from among the populace. The rounded shape was small enough to fit comfortably in Azelie's palm--but what exactly was it tracking?

"There were a few more colors and blinking lights before Jaran's lightning reached it," said Beren, coming his hands through his messy hair. "I can't tell if it's still functional, or even what it's supposed to be doing. Can you?" He lifted an eyebrow at Edri.
The commander shook her head. "I may have been part of the military at one time," she said, "but we didn't use a whole lot of the tech that the Regents wanted to introduce. Mostly, the Peacekeeper forces used things like this, after I'd been moved to the Palace Guard."

"Somebody sent for me?" Kaidan said as he stepped through the door. He looked around at them.
Edri caught Jaran's eye and nodded toward the Queen, who had fixated on something else, so that her shoulders sagged, as if she'd suddenly become drowsy. "Yes, Kaidan; the Queen isn't feeling up to probing the prisoner's mind from a distance, so we were hoping that you could get in there and pull out some memories that would help us figure out who hired him and why."
Kaidan's eyes slipped toward the doorway with a wary gleam.

Risyn slid forward. "Do not fear, sir--I have bound him with many spells. He will not hurt anyone who comes into the room with me."
Kaidan shrugged and nodded toward the door. "Then by all means, lead the way."

Behind him, Jaran supported Azelie's shoulders and said, "I'll take her back to the castle for some rest. Let me know if anything develops?" He eyed his brother and nodded toward the white box attached to the stone wall, which Denahlia had referred to as an intercom. It connected their voices with other intercoms distributed throughout the castle. With Azelie around, there wasn't much use for them, but at least they could communicate from a distance when she was otherwise engaged.
Beren nodded, wishing that this whole ordeal was over so that he could hold his own wife in his arms once again.

Edri sat stiffly at the table, not daring to touch the infernal device with its benign appearance.
In the heavy silence, Beren nodded his head toward it, stroking his unkempt beard. "You know who has a knowledge of tech like that beyond anyone else in The Realm?" he mused. "Denahlia. I bet she'd know what to do with it."
Edri shuddered, thinking of the days when they all feared The Hunter and her strange gaze would round them all up and give orders to kill them. She was certainly the "wild card" in their number--once hired as a spy by King Balwyn himself, she had somehow decided that working in league with the wily Clissanders, hunting down the Gifted "outcasts" was worth her while... until Troy arrived and suddenly she was doing his bidding... Then, at the very last, she was in league with the Seramis line once more--but how long would that last, after all? Edri had consented when the newly-appointed Harbor Watch had insisted on setting up a vast network of security--cameras, she called them, all wired to display on some sort of screen that only she could access... She seemed to have something she was hiding down at the Harbor, much the same as Queen Azelie was very obviously distracted by something she wasn't telling everybody, either. The lion inside Edri's psyche growled its frustration. When would she get answers?
A loud howl and the sounds of a scuffle from inside the room brought Edri back to their present situation. Kaidan staggered out of the door, and both Beren and Edri could see Risyn checking on the slumped-over form of Raedyn within.
Kaidan rubbed his temples, as he often did when the flood of memories he pulled from someone got too much to bear.
Beren leaned forward. "Well?" he prompted.

Kaidan dropped his chin and sighed. "I'm sorry, Prince," he murmured. "I was not able to get much out of him, his mind is very much disjointed--almost as if it was a rope being tugged in another direction I couldn't tell."
Beren snorted. "Well, what did you find?"
Kaidan pulled up a chair and clasped his hands to focus on the thoughts from Raedyn's head that he carried in his own. "I saw the mark of a raven, and a whole flock of crows--"
"Murder."
Kaidan cast a confused glance at Commander Edri. "Excuse me?"

Edri rolled her eyes. She still wasn't used to the fact that Kaidan had come to the White Castle as a hired companion for the Prince, and served as an accessory to the plot to lure him out to sea and murder him. "A flock of crows is called a murder."
The redheaded man blinked. "How quaint," he muttered. "Anyway, I did see that he definitely landed at the harbor with the intention on meeting someone that he didn't know--he kept confusing the features, I don't think even he had a clear idea of what his contact looked like. This contact was the one to give him the device, saying that it was designed to track the mark--"

"Mark?" Beren blurted, rising out of his chair a little. "What mark? The necklace, or Zayra herself?"
A mechanical squawk from the side of the room forestalled any further conversation.
"Hello? Is... sure how to--hear me?" King Jaran's voice, clipped and badly distorted, issued from the intercom on the wall.

Kaidan and Beren both looked over at Edri, who had by far the most experience with this tech Denahlia had installed. She sighed and walked over to press the button. "Your Majesty?" she said. "You'll need to hold down the button to talk, so we can understand what you're saying."
Jaran's reply sent chills through every person there. "Azelie says there's a problem at the Harbor. She can't detect Denahlia's thoughts anymore, and now Damaris has told me that the sound I keep hearing is the secondary alarm system Denahlia installed."

"Crawwk! Crawk!" The raspy croaks of the birds flying overhead drew their attention out the window.
"Crows..." Beren muttered. "Headed toward the Harbor--I bet it's connected somehow!" He crossed the room himself and fumbled with the intercom before he found the button to reply to Jaran. "There's a good chance this may all be connected--Kaidan found out that whoever hired Raedyn met him somewhere at the Harbor." He turned back and asked over his shoulder, "Would you be able to find the places you saw in his memories, if you saw them again?"
Kaidan hesitated. "I'm not altogether sure..."

Just then, Jaran's voice came through, "Sounds good enough to me! Meet me in the courtyard, brother."
Beren didn't hesitate. He pointed to the Mage and the Librarian, "Risyn, Kaidan! Come with me!" He grabbed the device off the table and headed out the door.

Edri felt the impulse to defend the castle conflict with the urge to aid the ones in trouble. "But what about--" she broke off and glanced toward the door. She couldn't leave the prisoner untended. By then the others were already out of the room, leaving her behind. She huffed and shook her head. "Never mind."
Out in the courtyard, Beren and Kaidan met up with Jaran, Azelie, Erlis and Javira.
Beren frowned at the young Groundskeeper. "What's she doing here?" he asked Jaran.
Javira smiled and answered for herself. "I had a feeling I'd find my brother caught up in this," she nodded toward Kaidan. "And I didn't want to miss it."
"Well, good," Jaran declared, "because if I recall, her Gift is going to be of more use to us than his would be."
Javira giggled, but Beren folded his arms and pointed out, "But it's Kaidan's memories that are going to help us find the person behind sending Raedyn to attack us--and maybe whoever it is would know more about the necklace that made Zayra invisible, too!"

Azelie's knees buckled and she went down with a cry, her hands clasped to the sides of her head. "Stop it!" she gasped. "Stop it! Just stop!"
Jaran caught his wife and held her close. "What is it, love? Are we fighting too much? Can you still hear Zayra?"
Azelie shook her head. "No, it's not that--Zayra is fine, I can hear her sometimes... but there's another... I can hear--" She pushed away from Jaran's arms and retreated back into the castle.

Erlis fidgeted. "Ahem!" She coughed. "Perhaps it would be best if I stayed and assisted the Queen, and looked after Princess Zayra."
Beren handed her the device. "Here, this might help. We can't tell if it's tracking Zayra or that thing she's supposed to be wearing, but either way, if you can get it to work, it could be helpful."
Erlis accepted it, her pointed ears flexing at the feel of the strange technology. "I'll instruct Lizeth to run experiments on it. She's tried reverse-engineering Denahlia's sensors before."
"Your Majesty," Risyn murmured with a low bow. "What is it you would have me do?" He had already begun shifting his way toward Erlis and closer to the castle doors, as if he expected to be instructed to stay and defend the ones who remained behind.

Jaran nodded in the other direction. "Come with us, Risyn--we could use your Magic Gift."

The Mage frowned, drawing up a shadowy purple orb hovering over his hand. "But Sire, do you think it is wise to put yourself and your brother in so much danger? Perhaps if I went in your stead--"

"Not at all!" Jaran chuckled. "Torturing that poor man was the most I've used my power in a fortnight, and I could use a good skirmish, hurting the people who deserve it, in the defense of The Realm, instead of trying to interrogate just one imprisoned man."

Risyn turned his keen purple gaze upon Beren. "If you would permit me to say so, your highness, it would be better for you to stay with your wife--"

The prince shook his head. "And do what, exactly? Until we know what we're dealing with, there's nothing I can do to help her." He looked back up at the castle windows, imagining her face watching anxiously behind every single one. "If we're able to assist Denahlia, and quell whatever disturbance is going on, she might have something that would help us fix the problem and bring Zayra back--I am quite sure she knows this, and if she could speak, she would urge me to go."

Risyn made some quick gestures with his fingers, as if reading some invisible message that only he could perceive. "Danger awaits all who cross the barrier that even now is in place around the Harbor; the portents speak of long hands reaching from the past to drag the present back to old ways--"

"The portents can kindly step off!" Beren retorted hotly. "Listen, if it means that much to you, Mage, you can stay here and protect the ladies. Jaran and I trust you will not dishonor your mentor, Mage Korsan, and they'll all be safe with you around."
Risyn bowed low. "I will safeguard everyone in this castle to my last breath."
J

aran quirked an eyebrow at his brother. "Good enough for me! Ready to go?"
Baran nodded, flexing his hand so that a spout of water curled above his palm. "Ready!" he said. Turning back to Erlis, he gave a nod. "If Azelie gets in touch with Zayra again, you'll make sure she knows that I love her and we're doing everything we can to help her, won't you?"
Erlis bowed with her hand resting lightly on her shoulder--more like the Elvish habit, than a human curtsey. "I will, Your Highness. Be safe."
The Seramis brothers joined the Clissander twins and Aurelle at the gate. Beren gestured to Javira. "On our way, why don't you send word to Velora, to meet us there. I have a feeling the four of us aren't going to be enough."

Javira nodded without meeting his gaze, and a flick of her wrist set the treetops waving one after the other, all the way down to the southern Forest region. She knew that one of Velora's Rangers was a wind-walker--he would understand the message she sent through the trees, and relay it to the Warden.
Up in the Science Tower, Erlis stood quietly by as Lizeth and Nyella both tinkered with the small device, prodding it with tools, passing magnets all around it, and affixing wires to it. At last, Lizeth's nimble fingers shifted something on the device's casing, and a beeping noise issued from it in a soft, regular rhythm.

The scientist's eyes lit up and she pumped her fist in victory. "Ah-ha!" She cried. "I got it to work."
She showed the screen, which was now blinking in time with the beeping, to Erlis. "It appears to be a tracker of some sort," she said. "See? It's already mapped out the dimensions of the castle. There's us in the Science Tower," Lizeth pointed to a dark dot on the map.

Erlis wagged her head. "We already knew it was tracking, but we don't know if it's dialed in to Zayra herself, or just the strange necklace she wears."

Nyella picked up the tracker and began twisting the dials on the side. "My money's on the necklace," she said. "I bet she wasn't supposed to receive it--the question is, who sent it, and who was its intended recipient?" She pressed another button, and the tracker gave a small, grating squawk over the soft beeping. "Huh," mused the apprentice. "That's strange."

"What is?" Lizeth asked, coming to peer over her shoulder. They watched the words TARGET OUT OF RANGE scroll across the screen.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Denahlia winced and ducked behind a corner. Two burly men were patrolling the streets, kicking over crates and menacing anybody they saw. She recognized them--members of one of the many organized crime families that did business in the Harbor. She'd spent all of that first year getting to know every single one, and letting them know that conducting business was fine, as long as they had all their permits, paid all their fees, and didn't harm anyone.

"I can only look the other way as long as nobody gets hurt or disenfranchised," she told them. "I'll be watching you, whether you like it or not, and I better not see anything untoward going on behind my back. Keep your hands dry and your books clean, and you've got nothing to worry about from me." She had smiled as she extended her hand to shake and seal the deal. "I don't much care for the finer points of the law myself, as long as people keep well enough to themselves."

That had suited most of them just fine, and some even more so--the Harbor had enjoyed a steady flow of traffic and very few hiccups for many months.

Then she disappeared, and with it, apparently, went the tentative peace she'd worked so hard to build. She came back and a few of the larger groups had taken over, either driving off or absorbing the smaller ones. These gangs and organizations were far less amenable than the others had been. Armed with new tech, Denahlia had taken a firmer hand, but that just made the belligerent black market even more resentful and intent on resisting all of her efforts to organize.

Take, for example, the two thugs she observed from several different cameras mounted on buildings, which she currently tracked from around the corner. She knew them--Darryl and Bruce, onetime bodyguards for the trader known as "Mister Midnight." Midnight had been one of the first to agree to Denahlia's terms, and of course, whatever Midnight decided, most people accepted. Bruce had even stepped in when one of the Kelley boys got his cronies to ambush Denahlia one evening, tossing her when she stepped out of her protected courtyard. She'd been having trouble with her eyes at the time, so the attack had blindsided her--they probably would have had their way with her if Bruce hadn't got wind of it and beat them all back.

Denahlia frowned as she trained one of the cameras on his face and zoomed in. Judging by his expression, she probably wouldn't expect him to let her pass this time, not with Darryl watching.

The implanted comm unit clicked, and Markus' voice rang through her head. "I can jettison a smokescreen to blind them."
Bruce's footsteps crunched just meters away. Denahlia dared not respond aloud, but she mentally clicked her implant three times in quick succession--the signal for yes.

A soft snapping sound, and a cloud billowed up from one of the alleyways, surrounding the thugs with smoke. Denahlia slipped out of her hiding place as they cried out and flailed their weapons, fighting to see through the haze. She reached the end of the block, and Markus dropped down from the rooftops beside her.
"Thanks for coming," he said. "I was so close to getting the situation handled--"
"Don't kid yourself!" Denahlia scowled at her cousin. "If you hadn't just handed over the King's brother--"
"Relax! How would he even know Harlock the sailor is actually the Prince of the Realm? From what I hear, he hung out for quite a while here at the Harbor, and joined up with a band of rebels intent on overthrowing the rulers, and nobody even knew he was supposed to be king until he walks right into the castle!"

Denahlia felt the resentment boiling in her. "Of course I know how much truth is in those rumors, because I was there! Stop and think for a moment, Markus." She grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back to look her in the face. "If you've heard these rumors, and you're not even a local, how many people who live here do you think know the truth--and how many would be willing to offer that information to happy, friendly Captain Haggard, if he comes around asking?"

Markus blinked as the significance dawned on him. "Oh, well... When you put it that way..."
Denahlia rolled her eyes and the two of them ducked into another building as a handful of thugs and pirates charged down a cross street with weapons and torches. From their hiding spot, Denahlia watched the small, redheaded she-Elf cackle as she pushed down a woman trying to shield her young children, and tossed a burning torch in a high arc. It caught the thatched roof, and the crowd moved on.

"They are setting fire to my ward??" Denahlia seethed, standing up. What wouldn't she give for a canister of fire suppressant right now! "Not on my watch!" She held up her hands to race through her options--but in the same moment, a torrent of water fell out of the empty sky and drenched the house, extinguishing the blaze at once.

Markus stuck his head over her shoulder, squinting in confusion. "Huh?"

A bolt of lightning slammed into the ground, sending even more people scattering and screaming, as five figures landed in the cleared area.

<><><><><><><><>

<<<< Previous                Next >>>>>>>