"What a ss..." Van Dijk couldn’t help but sigh as he read through the reports that were being handed to him by an imperial officer. The parchnt edges were still warm from the scribe’s blotting sand. Wax sigils glead like small captured suns along the margins. Alongside the officer, several dozen others were rummaging through Van Dijk’s belongings, books and materials along with every paper with a word in it. Shelves of bottled reagents clinked softly. A drawer muttered because soone had opened it the wrong way. The black tower’s top room breathed with a patient, arcane order. The intrusion made it sound out of tune.
"What’s going on?" the one to arrive and ask was none other than his sister, Celine. Who seed to have co from what looked like a bloody massacre. So of her silver hair was red and crusted, while her long knee length leather boots were covered in gri and blood. Dust had painted her collarbone a faint ochre where the shirt’s laces parted. The way she set her heel on the stone said she had not bothered to clean it because there were better things to do.
The white embroidered shirt she wore seed to display her athletic figure more, but the blood stains were more than enough to draw one’s eyes from her chest to the reality of how deadly she can be. A tear along the cuff showed a glimpse of pale wrist with the faint shimr of ward-work under the skin. She watched the officers with a look that promised trouble if any bottle fell without permission.
"Ludwig’s in trouble... again..." Van Dijk said. He did not lift his eyes from the report, but the way his thumb pressed the edge spoke of annoyance held in a neat line.
"What? Where is he?!"
"Sir, this is private information..." the officer tried to stop Van Dijk from exposing more of the imperial investigation but Celine imdiately pulled out her own token. She produced it without drama. A small tilt of the fingers. Bright tal under torchlight. The air in the room changed as if it rembered sothing about kneeling.
A badge that was an instant wakeup call for the officer of the empire. She had the rank of an imperial knight. one rank below the one she had when she served back during her ti at the forr empire. Seven hundred years ago. The enal was new, but the weight on the eye was old. A mory of standards moving in a winter wind and of commanders who did not accept slow answers.
"Ah, sir, I an, lady..." the officer stamred. His crisp posture wilted by a finger’s width. Quill ink on his knuckles made him look like he had been caught stealing bread.
"Just tell what’s going on? I left Ludwig not even a week ago and he was training here." Her voice was even. The tip of her boot tapped once.
"Seems like we got news that he defected to the kingdom of the sand." Van Dijk said. He set the report down and finally looked at her. His eyes were calm in the way deep lakes look calm when a storm thinks about it.
"That’s nonsense."
"That’s what I keep saying, he literally can’t." Van Dijk said.
"What do you an he can’t?" the officer said. He tried to gather sternness back around his shoulders and failed because curiosity pried under the edge.
"I’ve been trying to tell you, but you were more interested in finding things that aren’t there... so I let you have your fun." Van Dijk let the mild smile reach only one corner of his mouth. A small cruelty to remind them that he could have turned their boots inside out if he wanted to.
"Please, sir Van Dijk, we don’t have ti for this. This incident could cause a lot of strife in the empire." The officer’s gaze slid to a stack of letters sealed with familiar rings. No treason there either. Only a recipe for a rcury bath and a note about an overdue delivery of dragon sinew thread.
"He is slave bound, to . So he can’t betray the empire." Van Dijk said as he showed his palm. He did not dramatize the reveal. He simply opened his hand as if offering a coin.
The mark of a small chain and several symbols showed up in Van Dijk’s hands. The sigils rose like ink in ward milk, delicate and exact. The runes did not boast. They only sat and implied a certain finality.
"Marick, co over here please," the officer called.
An old man with long baggy robes showed up next to them, "Yes sir." He slled faintly of libraries and iron gall. His fingers trembled a little, not with fear, but with the weight of habits grown old.
"Please take a look at this slave mark."
The old man squinted his eyes as he glanced at the mark, "Quite exquisite work, I’ve never seen one such detailed and masterfully done... huh... this is sir Ludwig’s na is it not?" He traced the binding line without touching it. His lips moved as he counted strokes in the inner circle.
"Yeah, that’s what I keep telling you."
"Then your slave went against your orders and moved far from you, isn’t that neglect." The old man spoke the administrative word as if it were a diagnosis. The kind that ca with forms.
"Before a slave, he is my student, this mark here is just to make sure that he doesn’t spell so of my secrets. You don’t have to worry about him betraying the empire, no fool would ever do that with an axe to his neck." Van Dijk closed his hand. The sigils sank like stones under water. The room seed to breathe again.
"Seems like we’re wasting ti here... I should report this to his highness." The officer’s eyes had the look of soone who wanted to be done with a problem and found a ladder.
"Fools," Celine said, "His majesty already knows. He sent you here for another reason," she added. She crossed the room with a patient predator’s pace and flicked a spot of dried blood from her sleeve onto the floor. The spot sizzled, then went quiet. The tower disliked stray power.
"And what would that be?"
"Use your head," Celine said, "It isn’t Ludwig who you should be worried about if he were to betray the empire, it’s my brother here, his majesty only wanted to make sure that the one with the reins to his slave is still a servant of Lufondal, and I guess you have your answer from all the searching." Her gaze walked over the officers as if counting which ones would run first if sothing broke loose.
"Yes... I suppose we do. He looked at the rest of the officers who seed to shake their heads with items too freaky and too scary to even touch, they found nothing that could put Van Dijk in jail or even cause suspicion of treason. A jar with a preserved eye rolled itself to the back of a shelf by an inch, done with being stared at. A codex closed its own clasp with a click like a tongue.
"We shall take our leave, sir Van Dijk, we apologize for the inconvenience caused." The man said and turned to his coworkers, "put everything where it was and let’s leave." His voice was careful now. He did not look anyone in the eyes for longer than a polite beat.
"No need," Van Dijk said as he snapped his fingers, and every item that was displaced, paper that was repositioned, and even upturned chairs and crates began to shudder and return to their rightful places. The quills stood up, bowed toward the inkstones, and laid themselves down. A chair that had been set crooked rotated exactly a quarter turn and sighed into place. The room rembered its shape and took it back.
The officer looked surprised and confused. Pride and relief fought in his mouth and left it neutral.
"I’ve been searched for more than four hundred tis during my seven hundred years of service. And many of the searches were far more...thorough than this, so that’s why I ca up with a system that rearranges my things how they were, you may leave." Van Dijk’s tone stayed pleasantly instructional. It had the softness knives have when they are new.
"Y-yes sir," the officer said as he withdrew along with everyone else. Boots scuffed in hurried rhythm down the spiral stairs. A door far below closed with the respectful hush people use in temples.
After a while, the whole group left the black tower, leaving Van Dijk and Celine alone in the top room. The quiet returned. It carried the sll of old paper and a thin trace of thunder from wards that had been ready to wake and now went back to sleep.
"What’s going on with Ludwig?"
"I have no idea, I didn’t have ti to contact him yet," he said as he pulled a communication crystal. The crystal was the color of a winter sky just before snow. It drank the ambient light and gave back a steady pulse. His thumb pressed a sigil along its base and the pulse changed pitch.
After a few seconds, the crystal connected. The shimr thickened. Sound threaded itself through.
Ludwig seed to be in a dark place. It seed to be night where Ludwig was, while at Van Dijk it was about dusk. "What are you doing, Ludwig?" Van Dijk asked. He heard wind, sand scratching wood, and a far engine talking to itself in short grumbles.
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