Episode 214: Missing (Indigo)

Amidst all the everything going on at the palace, the last thing Indigo expected was Meldrick’s arrival, his urgent expression as he tried to appear calm. He failed.

“Indy?” he asked her.

His voice was too tight. She set down her knife, which she’d been using to chop dried lilac flowers for a spell. “Yes?”

“Giana vanished. I. Can I see Zero’s books, for a tracking spell?”

Vanished? Had the attack started?

“Sure.” She decided the best thing she could do, regardless of what was going on, was channel Zero’s calmest, most helpful demeanor. “Do you need help? I’ve been using wicca more.”

“If you want,” he shrugged, almost like it didn’t matter. “It may not be pleasant.”

She looked a him – his perfect clothes and hair, his wild eyes he was trying to suppress. Giana wasn’t missing, she was dead, and he’d experienced that death through the elixir.

“Aadya warned everyone about Sylem,” she said. It was only a guess, but she suspected it was an accurate guess. “What happened?”

“I was breaking up with Gi when she vanished.” Not Sylem, then. That complicated things, in that it expanded the search area from a relatively small city in a relatively small country of one realm, to anywhere in any realm. “Tracking spell?” Meldrick prodded.

Right.

Giana was dead.

“Is everyone okay?” Meldrick asked.

“I think so. No one else has vanished.” Yet. She met his eyes. “Are you?”

They’d spent most of their lives on opposite sides of a war over this country. Sometimes she thought things might have been easier on everyone involved (except her, of course) if her arranged marriage had been to Meldrick instead of Gramm. The Dells would have united under the rulership of one couple, she probably would have passed the trial because – unlike Gramm – Meldrick had a way of helping her to see when she was being an idiot about her emotions.

It was difficult, because of that, not to see him as that guy I should have married.

She loved her life. She was ecstatic to be Zero’s wife.

But part of her knew, with no small amount of guilt, that scores of people would be alive if she had just suggested the union to her father. She’d considered it enough times, before he brought up the atrocity that was Gramm, but she’d been afraid to suggest it.

Healing torn countries was not in her skill set.

It amused her now that he’d come to her, of all people. She wondered if he’d ever thought about what might have been, if it weren’t for the pride and animosity between their kingdoms.

“I’m fine,” he insisted. “The dinner went well enough.”

“Did she get on anyone’s bad side? Say something to the wrong person?”

“No,” he said. He raised his hands into the air, probably imagining something or showing a rare reaction to emotions. “She did fine. She was quiet.”

“Did she have a Cinderella clause?” Indigo joked. She added clary sage oil to the mixture. The recipe didn’t call for it, but her instinct said it would help her.

“No,” Meldrick answered with a coiled laugh.

Indigo stoppered the bottle and shook together the ingredients. “There’s a map in Zero’s office…”

While they walked from the apartment into Zero’s immaculate office, Meldrick asked, “You’re having Elliot removed soon?’

She nodded her head and let out a huff of air. Anxiety, in this situation, would not help. “Once Aadya and Talise are done.”

“Why?” he asked. “They’re going to be hours.”

Oh, he noticed, did he? They didn’t seem to. It was a petty thing to be annoyed over, but it existed. “Highest risk, lowest priority.” Then, realizing that sounded like a criticism of Zero when she meant more that her children were not heirs and therefore mattered less to people having heirs, she clarified, “I think Zero wants to be focused. It’s a delicate procedure, with such a small embryo.”

“So he’s nervous,” Meldrick realized. “I’m sure he’ll do a good job.”

Indigo was too. She smiled gratefully at Meldrick, relieved that someone understood. “I hope so. What happened with Gi? Or is that off-limits?”

The last she’d heard, they’d been locked in her room all morning. Tragically.

She needed to hire Ach to pile books outside her bedroom door sometime.

“I realized something about myself that differs too much from her,” he explained.

She poured the contents of the vial on a fancy multi-realm map Zero had in his office. He had several, but this one would narrow down the realm. They could re-use the spell on more detailed maps once they knew where to look.

“Compromise didn’t make sense at the time,” he added, watching the slick black liquid bead and spill off the edges of the map “Or my evening doesn’t.”

No, it didn’t. Even dead, Giana should have been traceable. She still had a body. Or…or she’d been burned.

“You elixired, right?” she asked him. “Did you notice anything since she disappeared?”

“Yes,” he said, flat. It brokered no opportunity to follow up with questions about his well-being after dying vicariously through Giana.

She tapped her fingers on the map, just as the last beads of oil slid onto the floor. “Spaden can sit with Aadya,” she decided. Meldrick was right; it would be hours before Zero would be needed. “Let me get Zero.”

“You don’t need to,” Meldrick said in a clipped voice. “Thank you, Indigo.”

Why wasn’t he interested? Didn’t he want to find his wife?

She kept her eyes on the map. Something was very wrong here. She didn’t know what it was, but it was wrong.

“What are you going to do?” she asked him.

He looked at the map too. “I don’t know,” he said, emotionless. Either this was his way of hiding deep unbearable emotions, or he genuinely didn’t care.

“If we find her, we can bring her back,” she pointed out.

He shrugged his shoulders just slightly. “Let me know?”

“Yes,” she promised.

He walked away, shoulders straight, head held high, straight out Zero’s office door.

Indigo rested her hands on the counter until they stopped trembling. She sent for Zero by dragon and waited in the office, beside the map.

Zero came in smiling, because she hadn’t warned him. He never complained about going from being a trauma doctor to being an obstetrician for nearly-indestructible people, but she knew it bothered him. She also knew he loved these times of action, of necessary focus.

The smile slid off his face when he saw her expression, the map. “What’s wrong?”

“Meldrick came in and said Giana had vanished.”

His eyes settled on the map and the pool of oil on the floor around it. “She died? How did she die? At the campaign dinner?”

“I don’t know,” she apologized. “He said he was breaking up with her and she vanished. But…” she looked up at him through lidded eyes. “Then he just left, he didn’t want to see if we could find her.”

Saying that felt wrong, like a betrayal of Meldrick, but it was also true. She didn’t like implying things about him, but she reminded herself that it was his actions. She was only sharing her interpretation of them.

Konrad ambled in without knocking, everything about him far too casual for the tension in Indigo’s back to tolerate. She suspected Spence would have been the same; the less stressful something was, the more tense Konrad and Spence became. When there was something truly serious, however, they relaxed and became effective machines capable of feats most could never hope to achieve.

“What is the matter?” Konrad asked, though he’d likely plucked it from their minds before entering. He would have gotten her uncertainty too, which was a relief. She couldn’t accuse Meldrick, not the man she knew.

The reputation she’d known before the war would have earned him this accusation, but he’d turned out not to be that man.

Which meant someone wanted his reputation to hurt him, which meant he needed help. She met Konrad’s eyes, and he nodded once.

It was in his hands now.

Her hands were empty. They longed for the comfort of a paintbrush, the smell of the oils and the thinner.

“Giana is dead,” Zero offered, “and Meldrick is uninterested in recovering her. We don’t know where or how she died.”

“Are you certain?” Konrad peered at the map, at the line of oil drops on the floor.

“The spell was done correctly,” Zero said. Pride emanated from him, that she had done the spell without help, under pressure. She smiled back at him, tightly. “Indy knows Meldrick,” he added.

“I just don’t think he did it,” Indigo reminded Konrad, in case he’d somehow missed her hundred-decibel thoughts. “But it’s weird.” She looked at Zero. “How is Aadya.” Aadya should be involved in this, much more than Indigo should.

“She’s well. Progressing slowly. Greg is with her, so I’m free for a few hours.”

Corban was with her too, all elbows and forehead and nerves.

“Is she up for a fun chat about Meldrick?” she asked.

He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t see why not.”

“I’ll review the security footage and listen from the dungeon, if that’s alright.”

Indigo almost laughed at Konrad’s offer. Of course he would listen, and she doubted he cared about their opinion about that invasion. It was efficient and this was an investigation that could be the difference between recovering Giana and not.

“Are we still going out later?” Zero asked him.

“Not likely, with this.” Konrad rand his palm over the hilt of the sword at the right of his belt. Tonight, he wore a second sword on the left. She suspected he bore arms elsewhere on his person, concealed. “Perhaps you could help once you’ve spoken to Aadya.”

This might not be the attack, but things had begun.

“Spaden can handle things, and if he can’t he can call me,” Zero offered.

“Aadya, then, please,” Konrad said in a clipped tone that mirrored Meldrick’s efficiency from earlier. His face fell slightly. “And then I’ll need to speak to Niels.”

Lucky Konrad.

“After we sort details,” Zero suggested. “He’ll yell questions we can’t answer otherwise.”

Niels had a lot to learn about subtlety and control still, but Indigo couldn’t forget her own panic when Spence was missing, his body trapped in the wall with an ax protruding from his diaphragm.

Sometimes, people had a little bit of a right to yell questions no one had the answer to. It wasn’t Indigo’s style, but she could understand the terror that triggered it.

When Konrad left, she deflated against Zero. She was too tense to imagine having surgery later that night. “I thought the tracking spell was able to tell where the body is,” she breathed out.

She wanted to know, now, was Giana coming back. It was selfish, but her sense of security at the palace was badly shaken.

“It depends on the spell,” Zero said. Arms draped over her shoulders and down her front, he squeezed her against im and kissed the top of her head. “I want Elliot safe. You – safe.”

“We’re safe,” she promised. Meldrick wouldn’t hurt her. Unless she was a terrible judge of his character, in which case she half deserved it if he did.

They walked hand-in-hand toward Aadya’s delivery room, leaned against each other as they went. She hadn’t felt this lost since the last war, when everything depended on how a handful of the most critical men fared in battle.

This was at least as precarious as that, possibly more, and they didn’t know their enemies fully.

Zero walked into the delivery room with Indigo by his side. Aadya looked up at them and her face fell. “Nell is still busy?” she asked.

Aadya might be delivering Nell’s children, but she didn’t understand his needs. Everything Aadya felt tonight, every worry and hope and pain and remorse, and whatever else she endured, Nell would feel. It would be amplified by his investment in her and those babies.

“He is, yes,” Indigo invented. She wondered where he’d hidden himself, and how miserable he was right now without Konrad to support him. She wanted the attention off her brother. “Has Mel ever threatened you?”

Zero had never anythinged Indigo. Even when they argued, it usually ended in fabulous intimacy afterword, and in compromise and understanding. They understood each other so well.

But.

Indigo had been married to Gramm long ago. His frustration with her had showed in his body language. He’d never laid a finger on her, but she could see how a relationship could turn that way.

“Mel?” Aadya asked, shocked. She fell back against the bed, unhappy. “No. Not since before the war. Why. What happened?”

“Giana is a little shaken up about something,” Zero provided. He trailed his fingers down Indigo’s back, a mindless representation of his anxiety. She leaned against him more, comforting him subtly.

“Shaken up?” Aadya demanded, suddenly angry.

She had luck. Damn. Well, it had been worth a try. “You shouldn’t be upset right now,” Indigo reprimanded her. “He was the last person to see her, he claims they were in the middle of breaking up. Now she’s…gone.”

“Yes,” Aadya rolled her eyes. Beside her, Greg squeezed her hand. “Let me put my upset on hold.” Her expression locked in place on her face. “He did threaten me in a joking way. It was a joke.” She turned her face toward Greg. “Right? We were talking, and he said I’d murder Greg, and Greg said I had to write his eulogy, and Mel said it would be my confession…”

It took Indigo a minute to catch up with the implication of the joke, which was really more of a threat to Greg than anything else. If it was even that.

“I think it was a joke,” Greg decided. He had this way of talking like, because he’d decided something it was true. Confidence without evidence is little more than pretense, her dad used to say.

“I do too,” Aadya said. “But Gi…”

“And where were you when she disappeared?” Indigo asked Greg. He was the stranger here, not Mel. He was the one they hardly knew, the one who’d started his time here with a dragon attack. Didn’t that worry anyone?

If anyone had to be a killer, she’d rather it was Greg than Meldrick.

“He hasn’t even gone to the bathroom,” Aadya defended. “He’s been here. Why would Greg kill Giana?”

“Why would Mel?” she countered.

Except for the whole, most murders were domestic disputes, thing.

“Maybe he didn’t,” Aadya mused.

“Did he?”

Aadya let out a huff of annoyed laughter. “I don’t know. I…she died. I don’t have anything else. She was upset. With him. Right when it happened. Shocked.”

So they had argued.

“Was he upset with her?” Indigo asked.

“He was…confused?” Aadya tilted her head back for a minute, her back arched in the pain of a strong contraction. When she resurfaced she pushed back: “You have luck, Indigo.”

Tucked away neatly into a corner where she would never ever look at it again.

“Yes,” she hedged, “but I thought I was just terrible at using it. It’s just not working for this, is it?”

Greg shifted forward in his chair. “Next time someone’s murdered, I vote every bedroom has security cameras. Whatever happened this time, Konrad won’t see it on his tapes.”

“You want recordings of us?” Aadya asked, pointedly.

Indigo would be shocked if there wasn’t at least one security camera in Aadya’s room. Konrad didn’t have to watch it constantly, and he definitely wouldn’t have mentioned it to Aadya, but his job was to protect her. He wouldn’t take a risk with her, in such an isolated part of the palace.

“You don’t?” Greg teased. Indigo hoped he was teasing, anyway.

“I don’t know,” Aadya answered. Maybe not teasing, after all. Indigo felt a tiny blush creep into her cheeks at the idea of being recorded. “Is there a replay spell?” Aadya asked Zero. “Where we can see what happened?”

That would have to be done where it happened, which meant someone would have to distract Meldrick.

“There is,” Zero said. “Konrad can trace her last location, make sure it’s their room, and we can do the spell. I’ll prepare it.”

She made her thoughts extra loud so that Konrad’s eavesdropping, which was probably backgroundy as he watched security footage, would be sure to catch that detail. Find out where they ended up.

She looked at Aadya. “How are you? Do you need anything?” Besides Nell, who she couldn’t have.

“No,” she arched her back again. “Don’t tell Niels until after the babies are born.” She settled back against the bed. “And. I don’t know about Mel. Konrad can take the lead on him. I agree with whatever he decides, except execution and banishment. At this moment.”

Zero nodded his head, amused. “We’ll handle this. Just take care of yourself.”

“My what? I don’t know if I have one of those.”

Greg laughed and squeezed Aadya’s hand again.

“Spaden will stay with you for the time being while we sort Giana out. Call if you need anything.”

“Greg suggested the labor rooms come with bidets in the future,” Aadya joked, “but that’s not a problem for tonight.”

“Bidets?” Indigo could not imagine anything less appealing in a labor room, except possibly leeches.

Aadya laughed. “Do you remember using the bathroom after Silas was born? Imagine a built in water thing.”

No. Thank. You. “I have water,” Indigo said, with a laugh of her own. Water magic more than made up for lack of a disgusting toilety thing that sprayed water onto her body.

Aadya pressed her fingertips against her abdomen – pushing at baby feet, perhaps?

Indigo felt her stomach fall. Even if Zero managed to save Elliot, she would never feel him moving inside her. Never guess at his personality based on his movements.

“Find Gi, please,” Aadya asked.

Indigo folded up her grief and wrapped it in tissue paper before she placed it on a shelf beside luck magic. She would pick at it later, when this was over, when it was just her and Zero.

“We will,” Indigo promised.

They would try, anyway.

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