Page 95 of A Wayward Movement

“Benji isn’t back,” Lilah said. “He should have been home an hour ago.”

Dread clawed at Alina’s insides. She was across the room and back out the door within seconds, Lilah at her heels. Darkness was gathering all around them, and not knowing where else to go, Alina made for the inn. She burst into the private parlor she’d sat in many times, a serving boy protesting in her wake.

“Are they back?” she demanded, glancing around the group gathered there, her heart plummeting at Xavier’s absence. “The prince and his group?”

“Alina.” Captain Mitchell stood, his expression cool as he approached her. “What brings you here?”

Alina eyed him, mastering her suspicion. “Benji didn’t come home from his work at the farm today. As I think you know, he’s very skilled with magic. We’re afraid he may have been…taken.” She could hardly get the last word out, and she heard Lilah’s breath catch behind her.

She’d been afraid none of them would take her seriously without Xavier there, but to their credit, the team sprang into action. Within half an hour, they’d searched the short distance to the farm, and spoken to both the farmer and the owner of the stand where Benji had been planning to buy eggs on the way home. He’d left the farm at his usual time. He’d never gone past the egg seller.

All the while, Alina and Lilah waited in the private parlor, trying not to succumb to their panic. It was exactly what Alina had feared, exactly why she’d been desperate for the kidnappings to be stopped. If only they hadn’t needed Benji at the farm today. If only he’d been accepted at the guild and never returned to town.

“It looks like he was taken, all right.” The quiet voice announced the return of one of the investigators to the rest of the group.

Alina felt Lilah tremble, but she had no comfort to offer her friend. The thought of Benji alone and afraid, in the power of whoever had tried to snatch her off the street in the city, was overpowering.

“Right under our noses.” The second investigator sounded disgruntled. “And the failed decoy even arrived this afternoon. If only we’d been able to predict this. We could have transferred the enchantment to this boy, and then we’d be following them right now. Instead we’re nowhere.”

Alina frowned, her mind taking too long to make sense of the words. When she did, her first reaction was anger that they wanted to use a teenage civilian as bait. But then the full implication of his words struck her.

“You can transfer it?” She found herself on her feet. “The tracking enchantment?”

“It’s not exactly a tracking enchantment,” piped up a man she didn’t know from the other side of the table. She was pretty sure he was from the Craftsman’s Guild.

“I don’t care about the details,” she said impatiently. “Are you saying you can transfer it from one target to another?”

“Yes,” said the man. “But it will weaken in the process. There’s no telling if it would still be strong enough to work.”

“Besides which,” said the investigator by the door, “our new target has already been targeted, hasn’t he? We can’t do the transfer unless he’s present.”

“Transfer it to me,” Alina said.

“What?” The question came from Captain Mitchell, whom she hadn’t even noticed in the far doorway. “What do you mean?”

She turned to him. “You know I’m a target,” she said. “We’ve suspected for a long time that there’s someone local working with the kidnappers, and everyone local knows I have skill with magic. They already tried to take me once. They’ll take me again if I make myself vulnerable.”

“Alina,” Lilah protested, her voice tearful.

“It’s the best way for us to find him, Lilah,” she said. “If I can get to Benji, I can protect him until the team catches up with us. I know I can.”

“Why are you volunteering yourself?” Captain Mitchell’s voice was wary.

“Benji is family to me,” Alina said fiercely. “I won’t let him disappear forever, like the others have. I can’t!”

The captain considered her carefully, his face hard to read. Was he her enemy? Was he Benji’s? Or had it been someone else entirely who spoke to the guild member back in the capital?

“What do you think, Captain?” The quiet voice came from the guard by the door.

“It’s possible?” Captain Mitchell asked the craftsman from the guild.

He nodded. “We need the existing target here,” he said.

“Call him in.” Captain Mitchell’s voice was curt.

In minutes, Alina was standing side by side with a man she’d never met, their arms linked under the meticulous direction of the guild member. He pulled a strange contraption from his satchel, placing it on the table. It was a square wooden frame sitting on a stand, and strung from the top of the frame was a row of smooth metal balls, hung so close they were touching. As Alina watched, the man lifted the ball on one end and then let go, so that it swung back into its closest fellow. To her surprise, the ball it hit stayed still, but the ball on the far end of the row sprang out in the opposite direction. When it inevitably returned to its starting position, the initial ball once again flew out. All the while, a stream of Dust puffed out from the contraption, its consistency as steady as that from falling rain.

“Continuous movement,” the man said, seeing her scrutiny. “I just have to start it, and it goes by itself for quite a while. Transferring the enchantment will require finesse, not volume of Dust.”