˚₊‧✩ ˚₊‧꒰ა ʚིᵋº̣̥͙̣̥͙ᵌɞྀ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ✩‧₊˚
Paion Dmitri's workroom was not large.
It had, in a previous life, been a storage room for surplus medical supplies, which explained the shelves covering three of the four walls from floor to ceiling and the faint persistent smell of dried herbs underneath something sharper, the clean astringency of a space that took hygiene very seriously. Paion had made it her own over two years of quiet occupation. A wide worktable dominated the centre of the room, covered in the organised complexity of someone who knew exactly where everything was and would notice immediately if anything moved so much as a finger's width. Anatomical diagrams were pinned above the shelves alongside hand-copied excerpts from medical texts, every margin annotated in a small, precise hand. A single lamp hung from the ceiling, burning warm and steady.
In the corner sat a locked cabinet. Plain cloudwood, nothing to distinguish it. The kind of thing a medical assistant used to secure restricted substances and patient records and things that should not be touched by people who did not know what they were handling.
The most dangerous document in the history of Nephoria was currently inside it, between a supply requisitions log and a reference text on atmospheric pressure injuries, which Paion had decided was either very funny or a reasonable precaution and had settled on both.
Hayden sat on one side of the worktable. Rex sat on the other. Paion stood at the end because there was not a third chair and she had not thought to bring one, and also because standing felt appropriate for what they were about to discuss.
Rex had been visibly containing himself since he arrived, which for Rex meant he had been sitting on the edge of his stool with the barely suppressed energy of a person who had spent the entire walk over composing things he intended to say. He lasted approximately four seconds after Paion nodded to indicate they could begin.
"Right," he said, spreading both hands flat on the table. "The Queen of Nephoria wants to eradicate a people who have been living quietly in the mortal realm for four centuries. We have proof that the reason those people were exiled in the first place was entirely fabricated by the man who then took the throne. If that proof reached the right person, it could stop a war before it starts." He looked between them. "We need to figure out who the right person is and how to get it to them without getting arrested, imprisoned, exiled, or whatever else the palace does to people it finds inconvenient."
"That is a summary," Hayden said.
"I'm excellent at summaries."
"You left out the part," Paion said, "where we don't yet have definitive proof that the scroll is authentic."
Rex opened his mouth.
"We believe it is authentic," she continued, before he could speak. "The linguistic analysis is consistent, the cloudpaper composition matches founding era materials, and the account it contains aligns with Hayden's migration research. But we cannot prove it beyond question without a comparative analysis against other verified founding era documents. Which we have not done."
Rex closed his mouth. Then he opened it again. "That feels like a minor technical detail in the context of the larger situation."
"It is the detail that determines whether anyone with the authority to act on this will take it seriously or dismiss it as a forgery," Paion said. "Which makes it possibly the least minor detail we have."
Rex looked at Hayden.
"She's right," Hayden said.
"I know she's right," Rex said, with the expression of someone who found other people being right about things he had not considered personally inconvenient. "I just think we should also talk about the part where a war is being planned while we do our comparative analysis."
"We are aware of the war," Paion said.
"I'm just making sure it's on the table."
"It is on the table, Rex."
"Good," Rex said. "Good. It should be on the table."
A brief silence.
"Are you finished?" Paion asked.
"Probably not," Rex said honestly. "But you can continue."
Paion produced a clean sheet of paper and a pen from the organised complexity of her worktable and placed them in front of Hayden, who was, of the three of them, the most likely to write in a straight line when under pressure.
"What we need to verify," she said. "First."
Hayden wrote: Authenticity of scroll. Comparative analysis against verified founding era documents.
"What we need to find out," Paion continued.
"Whether there are other documents Zephyrine Callas hid," Hayden said, and wrote it. "She was careful and thorough. The scroll may not be the only thing she left behind."
"Who has been maintaining the neglected wing," Paion said. "The lamp, the clean shelves. Someone is still going there. We need to know who and why."
Hayden wrote it.
"Whether the scroll is known about by anyone in a position of authority," Paion continued. "We cannot assume we are the only people who have ever found that wing or that letter. If someone already knows and has chosen not to act on it, we need to understand why before we approach them."
Hayden wrote that too.
Rex was quiet for a moment, which was unusual enough that both Hayden and Paion glanced at him. He was looking at the growing list with an expression that had lost its usual forward momentum and settled into something more serious.
"There's something else," he said.
"Go on," Hayden said.
Rex leaned forward on his stool. "We are three Subjects sitting in a medical workroom. We found this. We translated it. We have been very careful and I think we have done well." He paused. "But we are not the people this is about. The Outcasts have been living with the consequences of that lie for four hundred years. Whatever we decide to do with this, at some point they have to be part of it."
The room was quiet.
It was, Hayden thought, the most serious thing Rex had said since they began. He had been thinking the same thing, circling it, not quite letting himself land on it, and Rex had just walked straight up to it and said it plainly because that was what Rex did.
"Not now," Hayden said carefully. "Not soon. But yes." He wrote at the very bottom of the list, below everything else, in slightly smaller letters: The Outcasts. When the time is right.
Rex nodded. He sat back. The usual energy returned to his posture. "Also," he said, "we should think about whether there is anyone inside the palace who might be sympathetic."
"That is an extremely broad category," Paion said.
"I know," Rex said. "I'm starting broad and narrowing down. It's a method."
"What does the method look like after the broad part?" Hayden asked.
"I'm still in the broad part," Rex admitted.
Hayden set the pen down. "Rex."
"It's a large palace, Hayden."
"We are not walking into the palace."
"I didn't say walk in," Rex said. "I said think about who might be sympathetic. Those are different things. One is thinking, one is walking." He held up both hands. "I am very much still in the thinking phase."
"You have the energy of someone in the walking phase," Paion observed.
"That's just how I think," Rex said. "Energetically."
Paion made a small note on a separate piece of paper. Rex looked at it.
"What are you writing?" he said.
"Notes," Paion said.
"About what?"
"The meeting."
Rex looked at her for a moment. Something in Paion's expression suggested that the notes were specifically about him and that she had no intention of confirming this. Rex decided, apparently, that he did not want to press the point.
"Anyway," he said, turning back to Hayden. "Someone in the palace. It goes on the list."
"As a possibility," Hayden said. "We do not pursue it until we have everything else."
Rex looked like he had further opinions on the timeline. He also looked like he had, through some considerable internal effort, decided to keep them to himself for now. He straightened up on his stool with the dignity of a man accepting a constraint he found unreasonable but was too mature to argue about.
Then the stool leg caught on an uneven flagstone and he lurched sideways and grabbed the edge of Paion's extremely organised worktable with both hands to stop himself falling, and a stack of carefully sorted reference papers shifted two inches to the left.
The silence that followed was very short and very loud.
Paion looked at the papers. She looked at Rex. She looked at the papers again.
"I didn't move anything important," Rex said immediately.
"You moved my papers."
"They moved two inches."
"They were organised."
"They're still organised, just two inches that way," Rex said, pointing.
"Rex."
"I'll put them back."
"Please don't touch them further," Paion said, in the tone of someone who was being very calm about something they did not feel calm about. She reached across and moved the papers back with the precise, economical movements of someone returning a dislocated shoulder to its socket.
"Sorry," Rex said.
"It's fine," Paion said, in the tone that meant it was fine and also that it should not happen again.
Rex looked at Hayden for support. Hayden was looking at the ceiling with the expression of a man pretending to be somewhere else.
"Right," Rex said, straightening up and folding his hands on the table with the careful deliberateness of someone demonstrating that they were not going to touch anything. "Where were we."
"The list," Hayden said, still looking at the ceiling.
"The list," Rex agreed. "Yes. We were making the list."
Hayden looked back down at the paper. Seven items, plus the note at the bottom about the Outcasts. He read through them once, quietly.
Then he looked up at the two people sitting across from him in the warm lamplight of the small workroom: Rex Marius, who had just nearly destroyed two years of filing and was currently holding himself very still as an apology, and Paion Dmitri, who was checking the alignment of her papers with the focused attention of someone who had learned that the world was more manageable when things were in their proper places.
These were the people who knew. These two, and him.
"Same time next week," Paion said, collecting the list and folding it with the same care she gave everything. "Unless something changes before then."
"What counts as something?" Rex asked.
"You'll know," Paion said.
"That's not a definition."
"No," Paion agreed. "It isn't."
Rex opened his mouth. Then he closed it. Then he looked at Hayden. Hayden shook his head very slightly. Rex closed his mouth again.
They filed out one by one into the quiet night street of the subject district, and went their separate ways home through the lamplit city. The workroom door locked behind them with a soft, solid click.
Inside the cabinet, between the requisitions log and the atmospheric pressure text, the scroll waited in the dark with the patience of something that had already waited four hundred years and could, if absolutely necessary, manage a little longer.
Though the list on Paion's worktable, folded neatly and tucked beneath a paperweight shaped like a cloudstone fragment, suggested it would not have to wait much longer.
Seven careful steps and a note at the bottom that said: When the time is right.
The time was not right yet.
But it was getting there.
˚₊‧✩ ˚₊‧꒰ა ʚིᵋº̣̥͙̣̥͙ᵌɞྀ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ✩‧₊˚