Chapter 21 #3
Alina shook her head. “They wouldn’t have influence with the guild.” She frowned. There was one person who seemed wary of her, and he wore a guard’s uniform. “Could it have been Captain Mitchell?” she asked.
Benji squinted in concentration. “Maybe,” he conceded. “His back was to me, and it was all the way across the courtyard. It could have been just about anyone.”
“What problem does Captain Mitchell have with you?” Lilah asked quickly.
“I don’t know.” Alina raised her arms helplessly. “He’s been watching me in a way that makes me uncomfortable for some time now. I assumed it was because he thinks Xavier uses me as a distraction from what he’s supposed to be doing. But it seems extreme for him to sabotage Benji for that reason.”
“Very unlikely,” Lilah agreed.
They talked the matter over in circles for a while longer, but none of them could make sense of it. When Alina eventually retreated to bed, she lay awake for a long time. Between Lilah’s challenge and Benji’s disclosure, her already full mind was ready to overflow.
She rose the next morning feeling unrested and unsettled.
Benji had already left for the farm, determined to try out his shearing innovation, and Lilah was about to go downstairs to the shop.
Alina had the brief idea of seeking out Xavier, to see if he knew anything that would make sense of Benji’s tale.
But then she remembered that he’d gone to the city the day before. He was unlikely to be back already.
The day passed in visits around town, trying to re-establish work wherever it was still available to her. It was almost dark when she finally returned home. The moment she stepped through the door, she could tell something was off.
“What’s wrong?” Alina asked, hurrying to where Lilah stood by the window.
“Benji isn’t back,” Lilah said. “He should have been home an hour ago.”
Dread clawed at Alina’s insides. She was across the room and back out the door within seconds, Lilah at her heels.
Darkness was gathering all around them, and not knowing where else to go, Alina made for the inn.
She burst into the private parlor she’d sat in many times, a serving boy protesting in her wake.
“Are they back?” she demanded, glancing around the group gathered there, her heart plummeting at Xavier’s absence. “The prince and his group?”
“Alina.” Captain Mitchell stood, his expression cool as he approached her. “What brings you here?”
Alina eyed him, mastering her suspicion. “Benji didn’t come home from his work at the farm today. As I think you know, he’s very skilled with magic. We’re afraid he may have been…taken.” She could hardly get the last word out, and she heard Lilah’s breath catch behind her.
She’d been afraid none of them would take her seriously without Xavier there, but to their credit, the team sprang into action.
Within half an hour, they’d searched the short distance to the farm, and spoken to both the farmer and the owner of the stand where Benji had been planning to buy eggs on the way home.
He’d left the farm at his usual time. He’d never gone past the egg seller.
All the while, Alina and Lilah waited in the private parlor, trying not to succumb to their panic.
It was exactly what Alina had feared, exactly why she’d been desperate for the kidnappings to be stopped.
If only they hadn’t needed Benji at the farm today.
If only he’d been accepted at the guild and never returned to town.
“It looks like he was taken, all right.” The quiet voice announced the return of one of the investigators to the rest of the group.
Alina felt Lilah tremble, but she had no comfort to offer her friend. The thought of Benji alone and afraid, in the power of whoever had tried to snatch her off the street in the city, was overpowering.
“Right under our noses.” The second investigator sounded disgruntled. “And the failed decoy even arrived this afternoon. If only we’d been able to predict this. We could have transferred the enchantment to this boy, and then we’d be following them right now. Instead we’re nowhere.”
Alina frowned, her mind taking too long to make sense of the words. When she did, her first reaction was anger that they wanted to use a teenage civilian as bait. But then the full implication of his words struck her.
“You can transfer it?” She found herself on her feet. “The tracking enchantment?”
“It’s not exactly a tracking enchantment,” piped up a man she didn’t know from the other side of the table. She was pretty sure he was from the Craftsman’s Guild.
“I don’t care about the details,” she said impatiently. “Are you saying you can transfer it from one target to another?”
“Yes,” said the man. “But it will weaken in the process. There’s no telling if it would still be strong enough to work.”
“Besides which,” said the investigator by the door, “our new target has already been targeted, hasn’t he? We can’t do the transfer unless he’s present.”
“Transfer it to me,” Alina said.
“What?” The question came from Captain Mitchell, whom she hadn’t even noticed in the far doorway. “What do you mean?”
She turned to him. “You know I’m a target,” she said. “We’ve suspected for a long time that there’s someone local working with the kidnappers, and everyone local knows I have skill with magic. They already tried to take me once. They’ll take me again if I make myself vulnerable.”
“Alina,” Lilah protested, her voice tearful.
“It’s the best way for us to find him, Lilah,” she said. “If I can get to Benji, I can protect him until the team catches up with us. I know I can.”
“Why are you volunteering yourself?” Captain Mitchell’s voice was wary.
“Benji is family to me,” Alina said fiercely. “I won’t let him disappear forever, like the others have. I can’t!”
The captain considered her carefully, his face hard to read. Was he her enemy? Was he Benji’s? Or had it been someone else entirely who spoke to the guild member back in the capital?
“What do you think, Captain?” The quiet voice came from the guard by the door.
“It’s possible?” Captain Mitchell asked the craftsman from the guild.
He nodded. “We need the existing target here,” he said.
“Call him in.” Captain Mitchell’s voice was curt.