Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 1251: Who Told You

"So, how did you know?"

It was a fair question, and a familiar one. Elias had asked it across a different desk, in a different tone, and Lucavion found himself more amused the second time than the first, which couldn’t be a good sign.

’Twice now. I should have the answer printed on a card.’

"No one told me," he said. "I read about it."

Her vitality leaned toward him, careful and interested. There was no suspicion in it yet, only attention.

"Read where?"

It was the right question, and the honest answer had a bus in it.

He could see it without trying: a long, crowded box rolling through a city that did not exist here, thirty strangers swaying to the same lurch, a lit pane the size of his palm and his thumb scrolling it. A story, posted in installments, free to anyone with a signal and a commute. During his life on Earth he had read it standing up, one hand on the rail, grumbling at the male leads between stops. The title he kept behind his teeth.

None of the words would cross. Building replacements aloud as he went, from whatever parts the language had lying around, he started with the biggest one.

"A box," Lucavion said slowly. "A moving one. Long, with a lot of people inside it."

’Moving box. I’d have me committed.’

"And a slate. It lit from the inside. I was reading it off that."

’Glowing slate. Worse. Much worse.’

The corner of his mouth, which had already embarrassed him once this afternoon, tried again. He put it back.

Selenne could not have known that she was being handed the one true answer in the room, or that every honest form of it would reach her as nonsense. No one in Arcanis had ever stood in a moving box with a lit slate in hand, and that was likely to hold for a long time. The memory was his alone, and there was nowhere on this side of the sky to set it down. Lucavion felt that as a small loneliness, no bigger than a seat by a window, and it passed quickly.

Across the desk, Selenne’s eyebrow lowered a fraction. Nothing in her vitality moved to meet the words. They hadn’t landed anywhere.

"A box that moves," she said. "A slate that lights." She stopped there, and tried the next part more carefully. "You saw them in a dream?" She frowned. "Most people’s are less well furnished."

A short laugh got out of him before he could decide about it, low and surprised.

’Dream. A dream, isn’t it?’

’Indeed. It all came on like one, suddenly, and every piece of it ended up bringing me here.’

"A dream," he said.

He repeated the word and left it there, for her to read however she liked.

Selenne said nothing.

"If that’s how you read it, then that’s how it was," Lucavion said. "No?"

"No," Selenne said. Then, a moment later, "...Fine."

The careful interest in her vitality folded itself away. She had decided to stop pulling at the thread, and she was not happy about the decision.

"I’m not getting a better one out of you, am I."

"Doubt it. For what it’s worth, the pacing was dreadful."

Turning the pen a quarter turn out of its line, Selenne looked at it instead of him.

"It doesn’t bother me that he asked," she said. "Sponsor, student, a writ with a seal on it. I’d have started with me too." Her eyes came up. "It’s that I was the first name he..."

She stopped. When she started again, she began further along.

"It’s the same word again, that’s all. Favoritism. Different paper, yet the same word."

Again. She slid past the word as if it were a small one, which was how he knew it wasn’t. His amusement quieted around the edges, and no joke came that would have made it any smaller.

"I can see that," he said.

"Can you really see that, Lucavion? Or, are you pretending to do so?"

She had put his name on the end of the question, and nothing in her vitality sharpened to go with it. She wasn’t scolding him. She wanted to know.

Lucavion quieted himself down. He took his hand off the strap altogether and stopped arranging his face. Whatever it settled into, he let it. She hadn’t asked for a joke or a quick yes, and he was not going to do this halfway.

He had said it lightly, and she had heard how lightly. So he went around to her side of the desk in his head and looked back at the student standing there: bag on one shoulder, face arranged to look sorry, easy in the legs, as though the afternoon had happened to somebody else.

Then he went through his actions.

Lucien, first, in front of the whole banquet. Then the wager with Marisse. Then the Cross-Block Magicians’ classes, with her name on his place in them. Now this.

All of them together created a lot, and most of it ended up on her desk. And more was still to come. Some of it he could already name.

’That is what I need to do.’

"I can see it," Lucavion said.

"Really?"

"Yes." He didn’t look away. "All of it, and where it lands. And I don’t pretend."

Selenne held his eyes for a moment, long enough for the Flame to find nothing in her to push against.

"I’m sure I’ve said this before, but—"

"You don’t lie." Selenne cut him off.

"Indeed."

She sighed, and the level line of her vitality gave a little, the first time since the corridor.

"Well. It’s signed, so I can’t forbid you anything now." Her mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "You were clever about that, you know. You didn’t come to ask me at all."

He didn’t defend himself. He had nothing to defend with that she hadn’t already taken apart.

"And if you really saw all of it in a dream..." She trailed off, and her eyes went somewhere past his shoulder before they came back. "Then I suppose it’s a kind of fate. Isn’t it?"

"It is, sort of," he said. "Your guess is right."

Selenne turned the pen back into its line, slowly.

"Then give me something. A reason, even a small one. Why are you doing all of this?"

Lucavion didn’t answer at once. The mana went quiet and drew in, the small step back, and this time he let it. He stood in the stillness instead of racing to fill it, as she had made him do with the crystal.

When it passed, he had one sentence, short enough to say.

"There’s someone I’m worried about."

His eyes stayed on hers while he said it. They had to. He didn’t pretend.

Her vitality dipped, the way it had at again, and came back level.

"That’s a reason?" Selenne tilted her head a fraction, looking for the rest of the sentence.

"It’s the one I have." Lucavion said it plainly and let her look.

"Someone who?" She asked it quickly, as if the answer might still be in the room.

A little of his usual tease came back, though he kept it low. "If I wanted to answer that question, Magister... Would this conversation not be resolved already?"

She looked at him for a moment, then gave him the point. "It would indeed..."

He tilted his head, inviting her to agree. "Right?"

Selenne let that one go by and came at it from the side. "So, what do you plan to do with this "someone you are worried about"?"

The smile went out of him. This one was real, and he had nothing clever to hang on it. "I haven’t worked that out yet."

Selenne breathed out through her nose. "You do realize that’s the worst answer you could have given a Magister."

"Yes. I know."

"...It’s also one I can’t check." She looked at the crooked entry on the second sheet, the line he hadn’t tidied, then at him again. "Is it—"

She stopped herself, and he watched her do it. Whatever name had been at the front of her mouth went back down.

"No. Never mind."

She pushed her chair back and stood. Taking the crystal from the desk, she carried it to the cases along the east wall and put it back in its place without checking a single tag. She stayed there a moment longer than the job needed, her back to him.

"Go on," she said. "Bring me the next page."

Lucavion took the strap again. At the door he looked back once. Her hands were still on the glass front of the case, and her vitality had gone level again. Under the level line, her curiosity had not been spent. She was keeping it.

He let himself out.