Jo turned to roll her eyes at him, but stopped when she saw Takako reach into her coat, and deftly pull a small handgun from a harness Jo hadn’t realized she’d been wearing.
“You think I go anywhere without a gun?”
Jo barely managed to bite back her laugh, an awkward cough taking its place.
“Fine, you can all be relaxed with this.” Wayne threw his hands in the air, stomping over to a sofa that he proceeded to throw himself onto. “I’ll be over here, being the voice of reason.”
Takako snorted at the notion, crossing over to the windows.
“Seriously, where does Eslar get off being all high and mighty?” Despite appearances, Wayne was clearly not done.
“Well, he is ahighelf.” Takako’s grin was apparent in her voice, and the burst of laughter Jo had originally attempted to smother broke free. Even if Takako was only resorting to bad jokes for the sake of lightening the mood, it was both unexpected and gratefully received.
“Puns? We’ve resorted topunsnow?” Wayne groaned, throwing an arm across his face in a way that reminded Jo of one of those heroines in her mother’s favorite old movies, taken by the vapors and in desperate need of a lie-down.
With a final snort of her own, Jo left them to their banter, and looked instead to Samson, who still hovered as though completely lost. “Sam, can you help me with something?” Jo asked, loud enough to call him from his stupor, but soft enough that it wouldn’t earn Wayne’s and Takako’s attention.
“Wh—oh, yes.” Samson hurried over, shaking his head. “What can I help you with?”
“What do you think of Eslar?” she whispered, now working to keep the conversation entirely between them, purely because she had no interest in garnering any further remarks from Wayne.
“Me?”
“You know him better than any of us.” Jo shot the man a small smile that had him looking promptly at his toes. She turned back to the shelves to give the illusion of scanning the books. The motion served a dual purpose: she could avoid both arousing Wayne and Takako’s attention, and putting unnecessary pressure on Samson.
“I think . . .” Samson faltered. Then, in a sudden burst of energy, he took a step toward her. It was a little too wide, a little too hasty. He was suddenly close enough to be awkward but, for possibly the first time ever, he didn’t seem to notice. “Idon’tthink, Jo, Iknow. I know that I can convince him to help us. Now that I’m here. Now that I can speak to him, in-in person . . . I know—”
“I believe you,” Jo soothed, covering his hand with her own as it clutched desperately at her sleeve. “I know you can, too.”
“But with other people . . .” Samson’s eyes drifted to Takako, Wayne, and ultimately landed on her. “He . . . I don’t think he’ll listen. He’ll feel like we’re ganging up on him. He always felt like the odd man out as the only non-human.”
After their interactions today, Jo was inclined to believe it. To Eslar, she was sure they looked like a gang, here to bully him into submission. Even if Jo was willing to do that, everything would go much more smoothly if the elf was on their side of his own accord.
“Grab a book, Samson, and read with me,” Jo said, reaching toward the shelf. She was forming a plan but didn’t want to spook him. “And don’t stop reading, not even when everyone else goes to bed.”
Samson looked at her for a long moment, his lips parting around a question. But ultimately, it remained unasked; he gave a small nod. “I think I’d like that.”
The two of them positioned themselves together on the couch, their noses in books. Jo had found a good primer on the elvish language and Samson had an unsurprisingly good command of it already.
Jo kept her head down as Wayne bemoaned how “she never used to be like this” and how bored he was and how she should, instead, go make trouble with him amidst the “easily connable” elves. Takako kept to herself, occasionally cleaning her firearms, but Jo could tell confinement made her antsy as well.
They broke for dinner when it was brought to them, returning to their couch as night filled the sky outside and a soft glow filled the lamps of their chamber. Takako and Wayne made an attempt at figuring out an elvish tile game they found on the bookshelf, but even that was eventually abandoned, and, by the looks of it, without much progress.
Instead of books or games, Jo found herself distracted by the small obsidian disk Wayne had bought her back on Myrth, as Samson was fidgeting with an intricate gauntlet.
“This is the strangest thing . . .” she muttered, glancing over to Wayne and Takako as the former gave a mighty yawn.
“What about it?” Samson looked up from his work.
“I can’t figure out how to break it, and it’s driving me insane.”
“It’s likely because you can’t see it.”
“What?”
“Your restriction. You have to see something to use your magic on it, right?” She nodded. “Well, you can’t actually see it like that.”
“I still don’t understand.” She tapped the disk, as if to point out that she (obviously) could see it.
