Corum stands up to her full height. She rolls her shoulders back and takes a deep breath. ”We have to confront my uncle.”

  ”Wait, wait!”

  Her gaze snaps to me. There’s no surprise, only a momentary change of focus. I think how to word what I’m going to say, but her attention is already slipping, her focus returning to planning.

  I hurry before I lose her again. ”I need to know what to do in case something happens.”

  ”What do you mean?”

  Without waiting for my answer, she bends to rummage her drawers. She pulls out medallions, rings, rolled-up parchments, and places them on the table. She picks up a wooden stick, like the one the guard used to shoot me in the back. She rolls it around and considers it, but then places it to the side.

  I lean in to take a closer look. It must be a magic wand. I’ve never seen one properly before this. The wand is a thick baton of wood with a single button on the other end and ”Fireball” written on the side.

  I wrench my eyes off the wand and focus on Corum. ”I haven’t been told anything about the mission yet. What if he freezes you?”

  Corum gazes up at me, still bent over a drawer. She takes a moment to think about it, but eventually shakes her head. ”That won’t happen. But fine, the details of the device are in the mission folder. You can look at them while I prepare. I hope you can read.” She taps the folder on the table with a finger and pushes it to my side of the table.

  I roll my eyes at her, but she has already turned back to her trinkets. I turn the folder around and open it. It’s surprisingly hard with the extra thumbs. She hasn’t said anything about them, even though she must have seen them already. She keeps pulling out more stuff and organizing it in front of her. She’s acting confident, but the heap of gear on the table tells me that she’s not taking this lightly.

  I flip through the pages in the folder and raise my eyebrows as I read that the plan really is to “temporally displace all sapient humanoid entities within the Kerthar region by a duration of thirty years”.???????????????? I want to read more, but force myself to flip forward, searching for mentions of the device. Some pages later, there’s a large folded paper that opens up to show a drawing of a spherical object.

  The thing depicted is dizzyingly complex. There are layers upon layers of runes, threads and lines connecting them to each other and multiple small levers and buttons. Just operating this thing is going to be complicated. I hope I won’t be the one to do it. The thought is pushed aside by rising desperation about any changes Lictor might have done. I groan out loud, panic settling in.

  Corum looks up. She has put on two pairs of earrings and there are three necklaces resting on her chest. She reaches out a hand and taps a finger in the middle of the drawing. ”This is the most important aspect of the device. Everything else is there to align and focus the effect.”

  I look at the thing she’s tapping. It’s a small gem with eight sides, like two pyramids stuck together from their bases. The shape of the gem is simple enough, but the inside has been drawn with way too many facets and reflections, like mirrors facing each other, stretching into infinity.

  Even as a drawing it looks confusing. I read what has been written next to it. ”Time Gem?”

  ”That’s what we call it. It’s in the same league as the Mountain Ride. Completely beyond what we can create ourselves.”

  “Beyond what you can create? So where did these things come from?”

  She doesn’t hear or chooses to ignore the question. Instead, she keeps tapping the drawing, brow furrowed. “If you would want to change what the device does, you could do it through the central element. In principle, one could replace the Gem with something else and change what the device does. It would be impossible to know what the effect would be, though, and testing it would be too dange…” Her voice trails off, and she presses her lips together tightly.

  I raise an eyebrow at her.

  She grabs an iron tiara from the desk and places it on her head. “Right. Let’s go talk to my uncle.”

  My heart pounds in my chest as she knocks on the door. There are few things that are scary on a Ride, but the old man was one of them. He didn’t even hesitate before blasting a hole through the chair right next to my shoulder. I would have been next. The way his eyes changed was weird. Does he keep his personality in the hat or what was that about?

  “Come, come,” a raspy voice calls from inside.

  I take a breath and hold it, as Corum pushes the door open and marches in. In addition to all the trinkets and jewelry she piled on herself before leaving, she’s also wearing a conical hat, covering the iron tiara. A sharp smell of ozone follows her, mixing with the scent of her perfume.

  “Oh, niece, how nice. And the young courier?” the Old Wizard asks. He’s leaning on a cane, his other hand reaching out to touch the spines of books on a shelf. The office smells of paper but not of dust. Everything except him looks new and polished.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Marek. I’m here to talk to you about the mission to Kerthar.”

  “Oh, that business, oh my.” He totters toward the desk. “I guess you want to talk properly?”

  “Yes, uncle.”

  He reaches toward his hat and my palms grow sweaty. They’ve never done that before. Maybe it’s a side-effect of the thumbs, or maybe I’m just scared enough. I almost managed to forget them, but as I adjust my belt to make sure my knife is still there, I nudge the extra thumb on the belt and wince.

  The Old Wizard lowers the hat slowly on his head, and I take care to watch the change happen this time. The hat sizzles. His face tightens from the slack and confused expression it had. The stars and the symbols on his hat glow softly brighter.

  His eyes flicker over the entire room, Corum, and the trinkets she’s wearing. “Ah, the not-courier. What has he told you?” His voice has changed again. It’s a strong, vibrant bass. He could be a singer.

  “Marek, what are you planning with that weasel?”

  “You place us in danger with your softness. They deserve their fate. It’s a mercy-killing.”

  “This is treason, Marek. Worse, genocide.”

  “I’m taking this on myself. The rest of the council can stay children for a bit longer.”

  “This option will be open later if we truly can’t find a solution.”

  There’s a pause, and Marek raises an eyebrow and cocks his head to the side appreciatively. The ridiculously tall hat makes the gesture look larger than it is.

  I use the break to try to understand what the heck is going on. It feels like they are skipping whole stretches of conversation, assuming or guessing what the other already knows, and answering questions that would be asked later. The weasel has to be Kattam. Marek is talking about killing all the Kertharians, against the decision and behind the backs of the council, it seems.

  I clench my jaw. I’ll just have to try to keep up, and preferably not draw any attention to myself. I don’t want to get frozen and grilled again.

  Marek returns his head upright, the tip of the hat swishing through the air. “You’re growing up.”

  “You’re growing old. We can handle it, uncle.”

  He sighs, more like the old man I met for the first time than the person who he is at the moment. “You can’t do anything about it anymore.”

  “We can…” For the first time during the discussion, she hesitates. “There has to be a way to best him.”

  Marek shakes his head.

  Corum tugs at her ear, making the earrings tinkle against each other. “There have to be more checks and balances. They are too powerful.”

  I try to piece the discussion together furiously. “You’re talking about Lictor,” I blurt.

  They both swing their gazes at me. Their eyes are more alike than what I’d like.

  “Lictor has already put the new plan in motion. And you two think there’s nothing that can be done about that.”

  Marek rolls his eyes. It looks weird when he does it. A human gesture, but too fast to be normal.

  Corum keeps her eyes on the Old Wizard, but talks to me. “There’s nothing anyone can do against a Janitor. If he’s decided this is the way it will go, this is the way it will go. He’s already heard your arguments and decided against them. You can’t talk him over and you can’t outmaneuver him.”

  “But what if I can?”

  Corum pulls her mouth into a thin line. Marek huffs and waves a hand in my general direction. “Ignore the dunce. He should be getting briefed right now, anyway. He’s the hunter, obviously?”

  Corum gestures for Marek to wait and focuses her eyes on me. “What do you mean?”

  “Lictor has been taking me on the same Rides. New Rides. He—“

  Marek slaps his thigh. “He doesn’t know what the boy is going to do now that he’s out!” There’s glee in his eyes, even though it’s his plan I’m trying to mess with. “The boy is a random actor.”

  Corum wipes a hand over her eyes. “We have to assume he has seen some similar scenario play out. The War Janitor doesn’t leave much to chance.”

  Marek’s eyes narrow as they snap back to Corum. “We’ll see. It’ll be interesting.”

  “This isn’t over, uncle.”

  “It never is.”

  They’re back in their own little world. I’ve been left behind. Marek sits down, and to my surprise, lifts the hat from his head. His cheeks and brows droop, as if the weight being removed from his head was added on his face instead.

  The Old Wizard places the hat on the table and sighs a deep and exhausted sigh. His eyes blink and nearly close. A smile plays on his lips. “I hope we had a nice talk,” he says and blinks once more.

  “We had, uncle. Please rest now.”

  Her voice is soft and gentle. It almost chokes me up.

  The Old Wizard is asleep before we get out of the room. Corum leans her back against the wall of the corridor and breathes out. She grasps her hat and tiara both with one hand and takes them off, wiping her forehead with the sleeve of her other arm. “We have it so easy nowadays,” she mutters. “When I was young, it was always like this.”

  My palms are still sweaty and I wipe them on my trousers, careful not to snag the thumbs on anything. I don’t want to seem dumb, but I want even less to piece it all together myself. “What was all that? What will be interesting? What isn’t over?”

  She chuckles and straightens up. Her cheeks are rosy, her eyes glinting. “Walk with me. I want to get this stuff off from myself.”

  “Why did you put them on? What did you think he could do?”

  “Do?” She chuckles again, taking off a handful of earrings. “Nothing, he’s my uncle and a kind old man. But he’s also the Marek Nihilm.”

  She says it in a way that must mean something. I don’t know what. “Does… the Nihilm live in the hat?”

  She stops and takes off the earrings from her other ear. “What? No! It’s a surname. He’s old. The hat reverses some of the effects of aging.”

  “Some of the aging? Wait, he’s not sped up?”

  She gives me a flat look. “He’s the Archwizard. He doesn’t need to be sped up.”

  We walk in silence. She keeps stuffing more things into her pockets that are already jingling. I have to ask. “What were all those for, then?”

  She pulls the final necklace over her head and puts it into her pocket. “Well, it’s common courtesy to come prepared. It’s a wizard thing. And some of these do give bit of a boost. Might have even helped, if he would have tried something.”

  So she wasn’t completely certain after all. “How about the rest of what you talked about? Something being interesting or this not being over?”

  “He gave us his permission to try to thwart his plans. He won’t interfere, but won’t help us either. Maybe he even feels bad about condemning a whole nation to death. That’s a huge win. More than I’ve got out of him in years.” She beams, her eyes sparkling.

  It’s a huge lot of nothing. I’m happy she’s happy, but once I’m out of this Ride, the promise hasn’t happened. Although, if everything goes well, he won’t hear anything about the whole thing anyway, so I guess it doesn’t really matter? Rides are the worst.

  She slaps her hands together, waking me up from my thoughts. “It’s good to talk with the old goat every once in a while! Keeps you sharp.”

  I really hope I never have to talk to him ever again. But I’m more worried about how many more times I’ll have to talk to her, and if she will eventually turn out to be as scary.

  HYPE CONTINUES!

  not going to be happy about what has been going on ??