Chapter 13 #3
The other man frowned. “I don’t know what you mean by further afield, Your Highness. To my knowledge, we have no workers from anywhere but the three kingdoms you mentioned. The only place further than my own kingdom is the continent, and we certainly don’t employ anyone from there.”
“You’re absolutely confident of that?” Xavier asked.
He could see he’d offended the manager, and Blair was quick to jump in.
“If I may, Your Highness, you can rely on his word in this matter. Carrackians are even more wary of those from the continent than we are in Siqual.”
“We have reason,” the project manager said defensively.
“I have no doubt you’ve heard some talk of an incident not too long ago where our crown prince was targeted.
Not much was proved, but a man from the continent posing as Carrackian was certainly mixed up in it.
” He looked over at Blair. “But I think you mentioned you were there during that time?”
“I was.” Blair inclined his head. “For some of it. It was a…difficult time for your kingdom, I know.”
The liaison’s placating tone reminded Xavier that he had himself failed in his diplomacy. Subsiding, he left Blair to smooth over the ruffled feathers of the project manager. But privately, Xavier still wasn’t satisfied.
Captain Mitchell had sat quietly throughout the interview, allowing Xavier to take the lead.
But he looked to the prince now in a silent request, and Xavier made a gesture of permission.
The captain took over the meeting, asking more specific questions regarding the site’s security which the Carrackian manager seemed to take less personally.
Knowing Mitchell would recount any useful information later, Xavier excused himself, deeming his presence to be a hindrance rather than a help. He jerked his head to Alina, indicating for her to follow. He was half surprised that she obeyed the somewhat discourteous demand.
“Are you all right?” she asked him, once they emerged from the building. “You seemed upset back there.”
“I’m fine,” said Xavier shortly.
He wasn’t about to admit that the suggestion of one of the workmen having Alina in his sights as a possible victim for abduction appeared to have turned him into a hotheaded fool.
The two of them walked around the edge of the site, examining the progress of the fence, which Xavier still considered unsanctioned.
Only a couple of his guards accompanied them, their posture particularly watchful in this new environment.
“The magic from those fabric tubes is so consistent,” Alina commented.
“If I didn’t think it would be missed by the team, I’d be tempted to harness some and see what I can do with it.
Do you think they work in shifts through the night?
I suppose not, since there’s no point harnessing magic into the glass panes when there’s no sunshine to make use of it.
Do you think the Dust stirred up overnight is just wasted? ”
Xavier frowned at her, the question sparking a thought in his mind.
“I’m not going to steal any of the Dust,” Alina assured him quickly, seeing his expression.
His face relaxed into a smile. “I know. What would be the point? You have nothing interesting to do with it, given my tunic today regrettably has no laces for you to choke me with.”
“Very amusing,” she said dryly. “I hardly think wearing your clothes respectably constitutes being choked.”
“I’ve always found respectability suffocating,” Xavier said conversationally.
“We’re all very aware of that,” Alina assured him.
He grinned, returning to the point. “Well, I wasn’t suspecting you of anything. I was just thinking that it’s a good question regarding the magic generated overnight. We should ask someone.”
Alina must have read on his face that there was more to his thoughts. “What are you thinking?” she prompted.
He gave his head a little shake. “I’m trying to figure out if it can all be connected,” he said, his voice low, not designed to carry to his nearby guards. “You remember you asked me why I looked at Charles strangely when he talked about storing magic?”
Alina nodded.
“Your comment about the wasted magic overnight made me think of it. This isn’t something to spread around, but when my brother was in Torrens for his betrothal celebrations, some strange things happened. Things that appear to have been…experiments.”
“What do you mean?” Alina asked, frowning.
“They were all incidents involving the release of huge amounts of magic,” Xavier said. “And we have good reason to think it was being captured somehow in objects. With the intention of releasing it later for some specific use.”
“What?” Alina’s mouth fell open. “Surely that’s not possible. I mean, it’s a basic tenet of the craft that you can’t store Dust.”
“So we all thought,” Xavier agreed grimly.
“And you think players from the continent were behind those experiments?”
“We couldn’t prove it, but yes,” Xavier told her.
Alina looked very troubled. She no doubt had plenty more questions, but she didn’t get to ask them immediately.
They’d left the unfinished fence behind them and passed into a rockier section of ground, and another guard came jogging up.
Xavier paused to allow the man to catch him, waiting while the guard executed a quick bow.
“Apologies, Your Highness. Blair requested that I tell you to avoid the old quarry out this way.” He pointed.
“It’s been abandoned now because it’s unstable.
Apparently they have a bigger and better one some distance away, where the stone for the fence is being quarried.
He offered to take you on a tour of that site once he’s finished with the meeting. ”
“Yes, all right,” said Xavier, not much interested in seeing the quarry.
When the guard had trotted away, Xavier didn’t return to the previous topic of conversation. His two remaining guards had come up alongside them, and the time for private speech was past. Instead, he flashed a grin at Alina.
“Should we defy orders? I wasn’t planning to explore the abandoned quarry, but now I know it’s forbidden, it’s all I want to do.”
One of his guards made a small noise of protest, but Alina just laughed.
“He didn’t say forbidden. Just unsafe. And since you won’t let me walk five yards alone in case I get snatched up by ruffians, it seems very hypocritical of you to want to run into danger simply because you don’t like being told what to do.”
Xavier laughed as well, and he could feel his guards relax. His compliance was well rewarded because as they continued walking, the guards fell back to a more discreet distance.
“I’ve never been very good at being told what to do,” he told Alina meekly. “Maybe you’d like to teach me.”
“No thank you,” she said tartly. “You’d do better to practice the skill of not constantly telling me what to do. You’re becoming quite domineering, not letting me walk across my own town without your escort, ordering me from the room when you feel like storming out of a meeting.”
Xavier let a lazy grin grow over his face. “Not storming out,” he protested. “That makes me sound childish.” When she didn’t respond, he prodded further. “When in fact, I’m commanding and regal. The heir to the throne, master of my own destiny.”
“But not master of mine,” Alina shot back.
“Of course of yours,” Xavier said outrageously, his voice raised a little over the wind that had been steadily picking up as they walked. “Everyone in Siqual is within my reach, remember?”
As he said the words, a large gust of wind suddenly blew up a flurry of sand which stung their legs with surprising force.
Before he knew what she was doing, Alina had harnessed the Dust from the movement.
Xavier felt an invisible cushion blossom into being behind him, the pressure pushing him forward like a buffeting wind.
He didn’t resist it, taking wicked delight in the attack as Alina mimed tugging on an invisible rope purely for dramatic effect.
She didn’t stop until he was an inch away, her eyes triumphant as they looked up into his.
“You don’t have all the control in this situation, Your Highness,” she said defiantly.
It took Xavier a moment to find words around the purr of approval filling his chest. If she’d thought he wouldn’t like her taking charge, she’d been hugely mistaken.
He liked it a great deal, especially when it involved her pulling him closer.
Her proximity had his blood thundering in his ears.
It would be so easy to use a casual touch or a well-chosen compliment to turn the situation into the type of flirtation he was so good at.
But he didn’t want to recreate those light moments of entertainment.
“What have I told you about Your Highness-ing me?” he said instead, the words low and intimate. “If you insist on saying such provocative things, there’s no telling what I might do with the invitation.”
“I said nothing provocative,” Alina protested, her eyes narrowed as if in annoyance. But her voice didn’t match it, and she wasn’t stepping away. “It’s a perfectly respectable title.”
“Move back, miss.” Xavier’s guards were suddenly flanking him, one of them daring to take hold of Alina’s arm in his mission to create some distance between them.