Toviro had already turned away, his expression carrying something between anger and the particular tightness that comes from arriving at a wall you didn't see until you were standing against it.
Haqi looked at his face, then turned back to the receptionist and said pleasantly, "Thank you very much, sir. We will do what we can for the princess."
The man smiled. "We appreciate that."
Haqi caught up to Toviro at the entrance and they stepped outside together into the open air of the street.
Aryan and Ozair were standing just beyond the door. They had apparently been in the middle of an argument, but the argument stopped the moment they saw Toviro's face.
Aryan stepped toward him. "What did he say?"
Toviro looked at the ground for a moment. Then he looked at Aryan and said, "The man is not permitted to share anything about Mayo. Rules of the investigation."
Ozair stared. "What? But why?"
"Privacy laws. Active case. He said it twice and meant it both times."
Ozair pressed his teeth together. "That bastard." He paused, then said with the energy of someone arriving at a solution,
"If he won't tell us then we make him tell us." He reached up and began rolling back the sleeve of his right arm, stepping forward with the expression of a man who has decided that the conversation portion of the morning is finished.
Aryan grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back.
Ozair looked at him.
"I have a better idea," Aryan said.
Ozair straightened slowly. "What?"
Aryan looked at Toviro. "The paper the man was reading from. We steal it, and take what we need to build the case ourselves."
Ozair's expression shifted into something more interested. "That's actually a good idea."
"That is a solution," Haqi said quietly, nodding.
They all looked at Toviro.
"No," Toviro said.
A brief silence followed.
"Think about it. That man knew very little. The paper had almost nothing we don't already know. We know more about Mayo's situation than that entire station does." He paused, letting that settle.
"Now that I think about it, coming here for information was the wrong move. What we actually need is to understand how the legal system works here, specifically how to make a case strong enough to matter. And I think what we have is enough to file one."
He said it with the tone of someone finishing a thought they had been working through for several minutes, and before anyone could respond, a voice came from the steps behind them.
"I'll tell you something. A fact."
They turned.
A man was coming down the steps of the guard station with a bundle of documents under one arm, moving with the unhurried pace of someone who had somewhere to be but had chosen to make a detour.
He was ordinary looking, the kind of person who occupied a room without announcing himself, and his expression was the relaxed one of someone who had decided to involve himself in something that wasn't his business and felt fine about that decision.
He came to a stop a few paces from them and brought one hand up near his mouth, slightly cupped, the way people do when they want to lower their voice without whispering.
"If you submit a case at the public records office," he said, "it won't even reach justification."
They looked at him.
After a moment Ozair said, "Excuse me. Who are you?"
The man straightened. "Oh. Me. Well I am a m... I mean, I work here. At this station." He gestured vaguely back at the building behind him.
"I heard you talking just now and thought I could be of use." He paused. "My name is Peblo."
Toviro studied him for a moment. Then he said, "So you are saying the public records office is pointless."
"Not completely pointless," Peblo said, with the precision of someone who doesn't like being misquoted.
"I am saying that a submitted case goes under review, and that review takes two months minimum. Then, if it doesn't meet the criteria they are looking for, they simply reject it. If it is accepted, you are looking at weeks of court appearances. Possibly months."
Aryan looked at him. "Then where do we go to get real fairness? Where should we submit?"
Peblo looked between them. "That would depend on what you want to submit. Can you tell me what this is about?"
Toviro considered him. He looked at the documents under the man's arm, the easy way he held himself, the small genuine curiosity in his face.
He doesn't look harmful, Toviro thought. But I shouldn't hand him everything.
From the corner of his eye, he caught Ozair drawing breath. Knowing him, the next words out of his mouth would be far too much.
Toviro spoke first. "A friend of ours has been taken by the government. He is innocent. So we want to free him."
Peblo nodded slowly. "I see. Can you tell me what crime he is being held for? That would help me tell you whether it is even possible, and how."
Toviro went still for a moment. If I tell him and he reports it, we become suspects ourselves.
He measured this carefully and then said, "I'm afraid I can't tell you that. I'm sorry."
A short silence followed.
"That is alright," Peblo said. "Though it would be considerably easier if you could."
Toviro hesitated.
"Please help us anyway, sir. The person who was taken is innocent. We just want to find a way to free him. He is important to us."
Peblo was quiet for a moment.
"Then can you at least tell me the scale of it?" he asked. "Is this the kind of matter that stays at the district level, or is it serious enough to have reached the garrison?"
Toviro thought about this. That much should be safe. The information was already public if someone knew where to look. It is big enough. Yeah, that should be alright.
"The garrison," he said.
Peblo's expression shifted, not with surprise, but with the look of someone recalibrating. "That helps." He was quiet for a moment, thinking. "At garrison level, freeing someone without the proper support is extremely difficult. There is really only one route that works reliably." He paused.
"You need a sponsor. Someone with standing. The higher the better."
Aryan repeated the word. "A sponsor."
"Correct. Someone whose position carries enough weight that their involvement changes how the case is handled. Without that, the process moves on its own timeline and its own terms, and those terms rarely favour the person in the cell."
A sponsor, Toviro thought. That makes sense. But who? We barely know a single person here.
Aryan turned to Peblo. "Who would you suggest? Someone with that kind of standing."
Peblo answered without hesitation. "Minister Abed. He oversees city security directly. He is known to be fair, genuinely so, which is not something you can say about everyone at that level. If anyone would hear a case like this and take it seriously, it is him."
The group went quiet.
A minister. The word sat in the air between them with all the weight it deserved. Even though they were new here, it was obvious to all of them that a minister was not someone an ordinary person could simply approach.
Ozair said, "Directly a minister? Is there no one else?"
"There are others," Peblo said. "But I would still recommend him above them. His reputation is real, not political. He actually listens."
Haqi looked at the others, then back at Peblo. "Come on, think a bit more. There must be someone else who might be more accessible."
Peblo considered this with genuine effort, his gaze drifting sideways as he worked through it.
After a long moment he said, "There is one other person worth mentioning. The head of scholars in the Ralinder Kingdom. The royal palace librarian. He is known as Master Elias." He paused.
"But I would strongly advise forgetting that option. He doesn't meet people. Not casually, not officially. Even the minister himself requires permission to be received by Master Elias. So for practical purposes, he doesn't exist as an option."
From inside the station, a voice called out from the doorway. "Peblo. How long are you going to be? Come on."
Peblo glanced back, then returned his eyes to the group. "I hope I was some help to you." He looked at Toviro specifically. "Good luck with your friend."
Toviro said, "Thank you, sir. Truly. You were a real help."
Peblo nodded once, turned, and climbed back up the steps. The man at the door looked at him as he reached the top. "What were you doing out there?"
Peblo smiled. "Nothing."
They walked back inside together.
But as Peblo moved through the corridor back toward his desk, something sat with him that he couldn't quite name.
A feeling that had arrived while he was standing on those steps talking to those four people, quiet and insistent, like a hand on the shoulder.
The feeling that he hadn't chosen to go down and speak to them, not exactly, but that something had made the choice before he noticed it being made.
He frowned at nothing in particular and kept walking.
Why did I feel like I had to help them?
He reached his desk, set his documents down, and sat.
What was that feeling?