Mark of the fool 3 a pro.., p.37
Mark of the Fool 3: A Progression Fantasy Epic, page 37
“Mother, Father,” Theresa said, stepping forward.
“I said not now, Theresa.” Her mother glanced at her.
“Yes, now. Like Father said, I’m an adult and I’m not going to stand here while you two debate my life like I’m a little girl. I want to stay here.”
“And so do I,” Alex said, standing beside her. “Mrs. Lu, thank you. Seriously, thank you. I dunno what I was thinking earlier, but yeah, you’re right. I didn’t do anything wrong. And the way I see it, I shouldn’t have to run away because I did nothing wrong. I get it, you just want all of us to be safe and this stuff is scary. We all left Thameland with the goal of eventually going back when the Heroes defeat the Ravener.”
“And I’m saying we should leave here with the goal of you eventually coming back when this person is caught, Alex,” Mrs. Lu pushed.
“Right, and it worked for Thameland’s situation. But when we all leave there because of the Ravener, we all leave together. But if you, Theresa, Selina, Mr. Lu, and I left now, we’d be some of the few to leave. Classes are still being held. The games are still going to happen. Mrs. Lu, you should see how these people deal with stuff like this. Monsters and demon summoners, and all kinds of bad, bad stuff comes along, and they just deal with it, and then get on with their lives. It’s admirable. That’s the way I want to be. I’m not going to force that on Selina—”
“I want to stay too. How many times do I have to say that?” she growled.
“Thanks, Selina,” he said. “But yeah. When we run away from Thameland, it’s for a purpose, to come back when our Heroes win. But, the army and knights stay and fight.”
Mrs. Lu raised an eyebrow. “You’re not saying you’re going to try and track down this criminal, are you?”
“By the Traveller, no.” He shook his head. “I mean, if they were right in front of me and I got the opportunity to stop them, then yeah, I’d do it if I could. Especially with Claygon around. I’m not just going to go sticking my nose into something that’s about as explosive as dragon breath. I dunno… There’s times when you have to be clever and take a role, and times when you just have to dig your heels in. So that’s me.”
Mrs. Lu looked at him for a long time, then glanced at her daughter, Selina, and her husband. She sighed. “I guess I’m outnumbered here. Will you at least withdraw from these silly games?”
“No way,” Alex said firmly. “If anything, I think I’m going to work harder to place as high as I can. If people want to be suspicious of me, then they can be suspicious of someone that excelled at the Games of Roal.”
He stepped toward her. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Lu—Or, I guess I can’t tell you to not worry, but trust Theresa and me. We know how to handle ourselves, and we won’t let ourselves get swept up in some crap that the demon summoner’s doing. Okay?”
Mrs. Lu gave him thoughtful stare, then Theresa. “I take it you think the same way?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “We’ll show them what we can do, and that we’re not guilty of anything.”
Alex nodded. “We’re not.”
“I see I can’t change your minds or force you to leave… Because it’s true,” Mrs. Lu said, looking between them. “You are adults. I’ll always worry about you and want the best for you, no matter how old you are.” She looked at Selina. “Remember, you’re responsible for Selina. Just…”
She wrapped them both in a hug. “Please promise you will keep yourselves safe.”
As Alex and Theresa made their promises, he thought about the investigation.
At no time did any of the investigators talk to Baelin or ask him any questions that Alex saw. The ancient wizard had both the power and motivation to summon demons against priests or anyone else. It would be a way to drive all of them out of Generasi. Except that idea was ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as putting it on him.
Of course, who would accuse Baelin?
He certainly wouldn’t. Even if for some insane reason he believed the chancellor was behind the whole affair. After all, Baelin had a lot of power and influence in the city. One look at his lab told anyone he had a lot of coin. Then there was his personal power.
He remembered the time when Baelin had wondered out loud what it would take to stop him if he were to rampage through the city. Even if the chancellor was a criminal, then how many people would die trying to bring him in?
It’d likely be a situation where the authorities would just turn a blind eye and hope his mood would improve, even if Baelin was doing some real dark shit.
Alex considered the idea of being in that kind of position of power… He kinda liked it.
Gaining enough power socially, magically, and maybe with enough wealth, that even if Thameland found out he was the Fool, or people tried to move against his cabal, he and his friends could be like little Baelins: too strong to move against.
And setting himself a goal of placing high in the Games of Roal, would be an excellent next step. And the time for that was running short. Let Baelin and the Watchers focus on the demon summoner. If they came his way, Claygon’s fist would be waiting for them.
“Cretins! Wretches!” Isolde growled as she paced back and forth on the balcony. She, Khalik, Alex, and Theresa had met up on a balcony of the main castle. “I had no hand in this, and yet they brought me to one of their icy rooms like a slab of beef to be preserved! Then they peppered me with questions like I was a common thief. Me, of the Von Anmut family!”
“I feel the same way,” Alex said. “Baelin’s the only one who looks like he’s immune to their shenanigans.”
“Actually, Professor Jules might just share that immunity. After a few strong words with their leader, they left her alone,” Isolde added.
“Yeah, I can’t see her calmly letting anyone accuse her of crap. And that’s sort of what I was about to say. This questioning made me realize that the more our reputation grows in the city, the less people are going to be quick to throw around accusations against us or try to take us down.”
“Predators do always go for the weakest members of a herd,” Theresa echoed.
“And rebels often kill their neighbours long before their kings.” Khalik leaned against the balustrade, his arms crossed.
Isolde sniffed. “At times, being more successful makes one the target of ill-intentions and jealousy. Take the Hydra Companions for example—and speaking of them, in all this disaster, I had nearly forgotten. We should talk to them soon.”
“Agreed,” Alex said. “I’m thinking no, we don’t join them, but maybe something like a nonaggression pact?”
Khalik thought about that. “Are you saying we agree to not attack each other?”
“Not until the Ursa-Lupine Brotherhood’s taken down. If we beat them, that’ll look really good for us, plus we’ll get a little revenge. Especially Isolde. They’re a big team too, so eliminating them would be worth a lot of points, right?”
“True,” Khalik said. “We would definitely place higher, and it would look better if our team overcame our opponents on our own.”
“Right,” Isolde said, her fury giving way to a genuine smile. “I like this plan.”
Chapter 46
Nonaggression and Reading Lies
“Nonaggression?” Roderich cocked his head. “That goes a bit against the spirit of the tournament.”
“Is it against the rules?” Alex asked, glancing at Isolde who was sitting beside him.
They were meeting with certain members of the Hydra Companions in a remote gazebo on campus. The round table was attended by Alex’s entire team.
“It is not,” Isolde said. “Informal alliances between teams in order to face a larger threat are as much a tradition in the Grand Battle as the event itself.” She tapped on a history book in front of her. “It is not as though the alliance extends to individual events. As long as there is no point shaving, nor collaboration between teams to ‘fix’ games and create results that would provide higher earnings for those generally wagering on the Games, then it is allowed. In essence, no team can be involved with anyone engaged in speculating: whether legally or illegally.”
She flipped through the book. “There have even been a few cases where two teams—finding honour in each other’s efforts—have elected to share a victory. Sometimes such a show of sportsmanship has been popular with spectators, other times, such a thing has been met with outrage and seen as a cynical attempt of one team to curry favour with members of another they were likely to lose to. As a matter of fact, in one generation—”
“I hope that’s not what you’re looking for,” a crocodile man crossed his arms and bared his teeth.
Grimloch growled back, baring his teeth and standing.
For a breath, the crocodile man eyed Grimloch uncertainly, before abruptly ending his show of hostility.
“W-we’re not sharing victory, no matter where we place,” the crocodile man finished.
“How strange.” Khalik smiled viciously. “I was about to say the same thing to you.”
Several Hydra Companions stiffened. But one of them—clearly the highest ‘ranked’ member there—glared and crossed her arms.
“We’re not here to pick a fight, mind your manners.” She returned her attention to Alex’s group. “Our companion-hood isn’t interested in any victory sharing, if this is what the purpose of your pact is. Either you join our teams or we’re all out for ourselves.”
“Yeah, we don’t want the victory sharing thing either,” Alex said. “And we aren’t joining you, like we said. We also don’t want either of us to knock each other around before the Ursa-Lupine Brotherhood gets taken down. The weaker we both are, the better chance they have of winning. We’re proposing we do it like this: if we come across each other before we hear their team is eliminated, we just… act like we’re aaaaaall nice and invisible. We walk past each other and go stomp some other competition. Isolde, they announce when teams get eliminated, yes?”
“They do,” she said a little huffily. Alex knew her well enough to know she was still offended by the crocodile man’s interruption. “And once their defeat is announced, then we shall engage in righteous combat.”
“I see, I see,” Roderich said. “And would we team up on the Ursa-Lupine Brotherhood if we run into them together? That seems logical to me.”
“Logical, true,” Khalik said. “But not much thrill in that.”
“They are ours,” Isolde said with heat. “If by some devil’s wish they defeat us, then you may have our scraps.”
The leader of the Hydra Companions’ delegation sat back a little. “That’s some confidence.”
“We’ve got reason to be,” Thundar said.
For a few minutes, the Companions left the table to discuss the offer in private.
“Very well,” Roderich spoke for them. “Your terms are acceptable. We will not fight each other until the Ursa-Lupine Brotherhood falls. You will have first crack at them. But, if we see them first, and if they attack us, we will have to engage and crush them.”
“Makes sense to me,” Alex said.
“And if they don’t engage us, and if we see you, then we’ll point your team to them. Deal?” Roderich extended his hand, as did the other members of the Hydra Companions.
“Agreed.” Khalik, Alex, and their other team members shook the offered hands.
Alex glanced around their surroundings, and noticed figures watching from a distance.
He decided he really didn’t like being followed and would try to do something about it.
Especially when it seemed to be a bunch of different people always doing the following.
As the Games got closer—only a few days away now—he’d been noticing a mix of people, some who looked like students and some who didn’t, following him at all hours of the day when he left his apartment.
The supposed students were likely just scoping out the competition’s movements and practice sessions for the Games. He even recognized a few as members of the Ursa-Lupine Brotherhood. However, others were clearly not students.
Even though they looked young—close to his age group—they didn’t move like students. After his meeting with those investigators, he’d started a new project with the Mark. Learning how people moved and identifying certain facial expressions.
When he’d finally gotten into bed the night he’d been questioned, he’d laid awake for a while thinking about everything that happened, and had been bothered by a nagging feeling that the investigators weren’t done with him. They still suspected somebody on the expedition team, and hadn’t told him he was ruled out as a suspect.
What better way to gather more information than to watch and see who he associated with? Especially if they were looking for an accomplice. When he, Selina, and the Lus had spent the day at the rainbow tower, he remembered seeing people that were probably city guards dressed in plainclothes, mixing in among the crowds.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the investigators would probably use the same method to keep tabs on their suspects. Alex definitely wanted to know who was watching him, whether it was someone looking to find out what the competition for the Games were up to or if it was someone from the authorities.
So, he’d turned to the Mark to help do what it did best, help him learn a skill.
Since someone on the expedition team might be a potential criminal, he thought it would be useful if he could learn to tell if someone was lying to him. He also wanted to learn how to analyze body language, which he thought might be able to help him be better at figuring out who was following him: student or investigator.
The results of the Mark’s help had been rather mixed.
It turned out that the idea of being able to find out if someone was lying by body language alone wasn’t as easy as he thought it’d be.
The Mark had brought up different times that he’d been lied to, but only when he knew he was being lied to. It was a downside of the Mark only drawing from memories of successes. If he didn’t figure out a lie, then it wouldn’t count as a success, so the Mark had nothing to show him in that situation. It could only show him what it did have, which were memories of some of his classmates back in church school lying to him, or Derek lying to him, and Minervus lying about him being responsible for the golem’s rampage at work.
In those memories, it focused on pieces of the stories Alex knew weren’t true. Parts where the liar was vague, and parts of the stories that changed. All in all, it had showed him inconsistencies or perceived inconsistencies, which it put a focus on.
It also focused on physical tells, like very obvious facial tics. A prominent memory was when Selina had once eaten his share of buns and blamed Brutus. She’d kept her head down and hadn’t even looked at his face, but she’d kept chewing on her bottom lip.
The problem was—except for super obvious tells—the Mark didn’t focus much on body language as an indicator of lies, which confused him at first. After a while, he started to understand when he really thought about the Mark’s memories of analyzing body language.
And it became clear where the problem was.
People had different tics to their body language. Where they were originally from also heavily affected their general body language. One day, he’d seen Theresa and Shishi talking during one of their meditation sessions. His girlfriend had a habit of looking directly into peoples’ eyes, almost staring them down, while Shishi tended to mostly look away when she was in a conversation.
He came to slowly realize that eye contact varied between cultures. It also reminded him of an old adage from Thameland: ‘Never trust someone who negotiates on an empty belly.’ He’d said that to Khalik once, and the prince had looked at him in confusion.
Certain things just didn’t work across cultures.
Alex decided to try a different approach.
He thought about Minervus, and focused on the task of being able to tell when Minervus was lying. That situation yielded a lot more data.
The Mark had shown him all kinds of little body signals and twitches in speech that indicated when Minervus was making up stuff to get Alex in trouble, as opposed to when he was stating a known fact. This led Alex to a conclusion: it wasn’t only individual specific, but he had to have had contact with the individual before.
To be able to tell when someone was lying, he had to see through the lies of the individual first, and then he could use the Mark to learn their specific tells to be able to recognize a lie in the future.
That was a lot of work, and would take a lot of time, study, and interaction.
Still, it was useful information to have. What he could do for now though was focus on learning someone’s body language using the Mark, which would show him certain details. Now, this is where the Mark’s general analysis of body language proved to be quite useful.
Seeing through lies was difficult since it involved talking to someone, then using that interaction to generate useful data for the Mark so he could try and figure out if or when they were lying to him.
But identifying body language?
That was a lot more clear-cut. All he needed to do was sit back, watch people, pay attention, look for patterns, and come to recognize what their body language meant. It didn’t take him long to notice certain patterns in people’s body language. A few of those following him had similar, aggressive movements to Officer Gustavo or a Watcher of Roal. They hid them well enough, but the more Alex analyzed them using the Mark, the clearer it became that they were not students.
While students on campus were watchful—the demon summoner had everyone on edge—there were some on campus who watched their surroundings with the level of alertness of an experienced hunter, not an average, cautious student. Alex jotted down those observations into his notes.
By the time the eve of the Games of Roal arrived, he’d figured out that at least two, maybe three of those tailing him were most likely investigators.
After he was satisfied with his conclusions—and resisted the urge to tell them to stop following him because he knew what they were up to—he had a pre-games dinner for his friends at his apartment, which Kybas was invited to.
