Book 4 Chapter 31: Omissions and Suspicions
Book 4 Chapter 31: Omissions and Suspicions
++Isabel Vornholt had one major flaw, the way I see it. She was cunning and quick and always smart about seizing an opportunity or advantage, but she was very relaxed and seemed to think she was invincible. That girl was so easy to sneak around, you’d think she was blind.++
- Dave Blakely. This account is considered to be of…questionable reliability.
I did not like trusting Johns, and had no intention of doing so blindly. I recognised that he was essentially my only means of communicating with the locals at the moment, and that I had little way of verifying what he was saying. That was unfortunate, but unavoidable. I had not known which ethnic groups or cultures I might be interacting with when I set out for this trip, and Garamon contained precious little knowledge on the people of this region even if I had.
But this did not mean I was helpless, far from it. I had certain advantages that a mortal simply could not account for.
For one thing, even if I did not know the language already, I knew that I could learn it in short order. I knew this, because it was the very same way I had learned the common tongue of Garamon. There are a finite number of words in any language, and a finite number of grammatical functions that can change their meaning. A finite number of ways in which they can be combined, and a finite number of contexts in which they will be used.
All I had to do was simply memorise every single word I held in exact order, and compare them all to the circumstances I heard them in, then use a process of elimination to deduce which words meant which things based on the contexts in which they were consistently used. To begin with this would be essentially mathematically impossible, but each new conversation would narrow down the meaning of everything I had already heard by a significant degree.
I prodded Johns to ask our local guide more questions as we went, partly to keep him distracted and partly to ensure that I had a steady influx of new words to compare. By the time we had walked for an hour I estimated that my vocabulary now exceeded a thousand. It would have been nice if I had known what any of those words meant, but I knew to be patient. With my method of learning, understanding would come in vast, sweeping waves. The moment I was certain about a few words, that certainty would let me deduce the meaning of others, then others still. In all likelihood there would come a point, perhaps days from now and perhaps weeks, wherein I would go from knowing the meaning of zero of this language’s words to knowing the meaning of several thousand, all within a few minutes.
So I just had to hope that, if Johns was planning something, it did not come to fruition before that time.
Of course, if Johns was planning anything at all, I imagined my bodyguard would be aware of the fact sooner than I was. Blakely had become, if it were possible, more agitated than usual while we walked. He seemed to have started the day in a relatively calm state of mind, being perhaps no more unpredictably violent than a rabies-infested honey badger. That had soon deteriorated once his suspicions of the professor reared up.
Only my younger siblings seemed at ease with things. Victoria was nervous, though no more so than she seemed to be at any other given time. She did not appear to have taken any concern from the professor’s vague answers or monopoly on communications with our guide. That was odd. The girl was usually very perceptive, especially for one so young. I chalked this up to her being too inexperienced to maintain her usual level of wit while as nervous as she was.
Qaigor was not nearly as concerned as his sister, but was, on the other hand, Qaigor. The boy was not exactly stupid, in fact he could be quite bright when the situation called for it, but guile was less his forte than rapid action and decisiveness. In that regard he took more after our father than our mother.
He seemed perfectly at ease walking around, and simultaneously on guard. I considered that having lost his eye at Poloira may have done the boy some good regarding his diligence for danger and risks.
But I also noted that I had better not rely on him taking note of any subtler forms of danger borne on conversation rather than big, scary men hiding in nearby bushes. Not that I ever made a habit of assuming those around me would be anything but laughably inept of course, it was just generally best to sharpen my focus as if I could not rely on others, even when I knew that I probably could. There was no point in making it easier to slip one by us.
“I don’t like this,” Blakely murmured as we walked. He had done that thing where he seemed to just appear behind me without a sound, though it did not make me jump anymore.
“Nor do I,” I said softly, keeping Johns in the periphery of my vision.
“He holds all the cards here,” Blakely added. “For all we know he’s cut a deal to have us sacrificed to that pack of gnomes we’re following.”
I had been, in my foolishness, preparing to engage Blakely in a logical and genuine conversation. Now I realised that he seemed to be under the impression that our local guide was, in fact, a number of gnomes wearing one set of human-sized clothing to masquerade as one of us.
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I considered attempting to convince him that this assumption was false, but decided that it would not be worth the trouble. Blakely tended to get rather unpredictable when his deductions were challenged in the heat of danger. Easier to wait until later.
“In any case, we are stuck relying on him,” I noted.
My bodyguard spat at his feet, a big chunk of phlegm. “Yeah, we are. I still don’t like it. Stupid fuck.” Blakely’s face was spasming. This did not mean he was dangerous, as so many wrongly assumed. Not inherently. It meant he was experiencing an intense rush of emotion. What that emotion was, I could unfortunately not tell. Because his face was spasming. Reading expressions was really more of a distant hope when the muscles that made them were all undergoing a micro-seizure.
“Just do not make a move without my say-so first,” I told him.
Blakely’s facial convulsions got worse, but he nodded. If nothing else he knew that his odds of succeeding in any attack were best when I was prepared to help him with it.
Subtlety was the best move here. That I could not communicate with the native was a handicap, but one I could still work around. All I needed, after all, was to find out professor Johns’ real motive in leading us along with her. Ideally without tipping him off that I was in any way suspicious, or even curious. It would take a deft hand, but I thought—
“Are you lying about what that tribal bitch said?” Qaigor asked loudly, staring right at the professor as he did. “You were really reluctant to give us any specifics about what she said to you.”
I wanted to strangle my younger brother sometimes, but right now I kept my emotions to myself as the professor stiffened and looked back at him.
“I’m not lying,” Johns said after a moment.
Ah well, he was suspicious now no matter what. If I did not press this then he would simply deduce that I was keeping my cards close to my chest anyway. If nothing else Qaigor had removed any reason I had previously had to play this gentle and delicate.
“You are leaving something unsaid though,” I noted. “What is it?”
I let the magic build up around me, little parlour tricks of coloured sparks and miniaturised snaps of electricity forking one way and the other. The mana involved was something that most magicians could muster before puberty, and would be of little threat to any grown man, but the psychological effect was what mattered.
People tended to become more pliant when reminded that they were speaking to a magician.
Professor Johns was not a total exception to this rule, but I got the impression that he had been threatened by magicians before. He took a reflexive step back from me, though still held my gaze.
“I…wasn’t sure how you’d react to some of the things the local said,” he told me evenly. “But none of it is a danger to you.”
“Then tell me, and I will react…appropriately,” I said.
Johns’ eyes darted around with the furtive haste of a man who was currently calculating every possible angle of flight he could. Blakely moved silently to circle around behind him, and I knew that the professor had no chance at all of escaping. However quick he may have been in working out the best way to do so, Blakely was far quicker.
The professor seemed to work that out on his own eventually, too.
“Alright,” he said at last. “Okay.” He glanced at our guide, who had stopped walking as we did and was now looking rather confused at the whole affair. I wondered what she thought was going on, with how the whole conversation was being held in a language she did not speak. By her lack of nervousness, I actually found it rather less likely that she was leading us into a trap now, if nothing else.
“She didn’t just say she was taking us to somewhere that fit the description of what you were looking for,” Johns said at last, almost reluctantly. “She said she was…taking us to meet her God.”
Silence befell the group, heavy and thick as a coat of lead. To my surprise, it was Qaigor who broke it first.
“Heathens!” the boy roared. Well, that was not too surprising. He was our father’s son. “Bloody Godless heathens want us to meet their unholy monstrosity?!” he yelled. “What, is it going to sacrifice us to some goat?”
I considered pointing out to Qaigor that the Demigods of Garamon did plenty of human sacrifice already, but decided that it would not be terribly productive.
Instead I used a more basic appeal for my brother. “You told me you would behave yourself and not get in the way of this expedition, Qaigor,” I reminded him. “You will do as I say and not cause problems with anything we encounter unless I give you explicit instructions to the contrary.”
The boy seemed confused by this. Clearly, he was not mentally prepared for such a bold and shocking concept as not indiscriminately killing things on the assumption that the Gods wanted him to.
Qaigor glared at me. “You’ve never backed out of killing when it’s necessary before,” he growled.
“It is not necessary now,” I told him. “Now do as you are told.”
He met my eye and I thought for a moment that he might defy me. Then he backed down, reluctantly, barely, but all the same, he backed down.
I turned to Johns next. “Obscure information from me again and I will cut one of your legs off.”
“Okay,” he nodded hastily. “But only if I do it again right?”
“Yes,” I told him. “Now tell the guide to continue moving.”
He did so, or at least said something that continued our journey onwards through the jungle. This time we were all more alert.