Episode 86: Stones (Konrad)

He sneaked into Spence’s apartment, a wary eye out for Acheron. Acheron had a penchant for organizing things, for placing things just so, which placed him at or near the top of Konrad’s list of suspects. Ella was another possibility.

On the one hand, it was unfair to expect Spence to investigate his own family; on the other, it was imperative that he learn that anyone could be a suspect, regardless of personal feelings on the matter.

He crept into Spence’s bedroom and shook him gently awake. “There’s an emergency,” he whispered.

Acheron slept, as always, like the dead. Unless it was a ruse. It could be; he also seemed to be incapable of lying, which was just the sort of cover a spy would use. No one would ever suspect Acheron of deviousness or dishonesty.

Konrad jabbed his side.

Acheron rolled away, toward Spence, hand on his chest.

The combination of Acheron’s movements and Konrad’s shaking was sufficient to stir Spence from his slumber. He looked up at Konrad, bleary-eyed. “What?” He shook Acheron’s arm off his chest, slid one of his children off his legs, and dressed himself.

The child on his legs turned out to be his daughter, Emma, who leapt up from the bed. “Hi!” she greeted Konrad. “Catch me! It’s a hug attack!”

Konrad had no time for children in an emergency such as this. He frowned at her. “Go to sleep, child,” he encouraged her. “Let your silken hair fall across the pillow.”

She jumped off the bed toward him, slammed into his chest, and slid to the floor. There on the ground, she set herself to screaming.

He knelt by her side while Spence pulled on a pair of pants. “No rain in the bedroom,” he reminded her. He wiped away the tears from her face. “I’m sorry you fell.”

She stood, hands on her hips and eyes higher than Konrad’s, and announced, “I want to help with the emergency. I’m the come with helper.”

He smiled at her bright, eager eyes. Such a delight, in the darkness of night, to have a volunteer so confident and willing. “Alright,” he agreed. “You’ll need your sword.”

“Are you sure it’s appropriate?” Spence argued. He lifted Emma onto his bed and spread a part of the blanket over her. “Why don’t you play here?” he suggested.

“Everyone is asleep!” she complained. “I can do this!”

Perhaps Konrad should fire Spence and hire Emma. She seemed to have her head on her shoulders. He suspected she might even have an easier time finding Camilla than he did. Girls thought alike at times, spanning across generations and cultures and species.

“We need her,” Konrad told Spence.

“Okay, come on Emma,” Spence acquiesced.

Konrad smiled to himself in the darkness of the room. He had only to discover a means of getting Spence to leave, and he could hire Emma and solve the mystery of the stone conspiracy with her. Spence, with his attitude about Konrad’s suspicions, would be little to no help.

They left the apartment and wound their way through the palace, towards the dungeon. As they walked, Emma sang a television tune about heading off to work. If Konrad hired her, he would need to teach her how to be quiet. 

He led them down into the dungeon, where the stones were darker and more substantial, and into the cell where he’d first noticed the problem.

Silence.

He looked at them, waiting for one of them to see what he saw. Surely Emma, at least…He sighed into the ongoing silence and explained, “Someone is rearranging the stones.”

“What?” Spence asked. He looked at the wall and returned his gaze to Konrad, expectant.

“Look at them,” Konrad told him. “Glitter, glitter, glitter, grey. Who changed the stone out? Our stones are all granite, every last one of them glitters. But not that one. It isn’t the only one, either.”

He was about to expound on the changes to the entire foundation, when Spence interrupted his thoughts: “Maybe Laina scratched her back too hard.”

It was Konrad’s opportunity to feel lost and alone. “What?” he asked.

Emma crawled along the base of the wall on her hands and knees.

“This isn’t an emergency,” Spence stated. His tone was tired and annoyed. “The glitter rubbed off or something. It looks the same.”

Konrad hadn’t known Spence had it in him, to be that annoyed with him. With a husband who clearly misled others on his sleeping and lying skills, Spence seemed to be an unexpected suspect. Why else would he argue?

“It’s not the same!” Emma insisted. She, at least, was innocent and pure enough to see the true problem. “This is a mystery we have to solve right now, Daddy.”

“Something’s the matter,” Konrad pressed, while Emma’s words were fresh in Spence’s mind. “The dungeons aren’t secure.” He had no clue how to get Spence to see what he saw, save by counting the pattern aloud for him. He knelt beside Emma. “Look, it goes in a pattern.” He touched the first stone, recalling the song he’d found which perfectly fit the pattern. “One one one two one one two two.” No, that wasn’t it. It couldn’t be; the song and the order of stones didn’t match. He tried another melody, desperate: “One one one two one one two one, one one one two one one two one.” Yes! He’d found it, and now Spence would have to see.

Spence stared at the wall for a moment, deep in thought.

At last, he offered his great observations: “Are you okay, Konrad?”

“I’m alright,” he said. “Concerned about this. Do you see the shape they make? Step back, it’s undeniable.”

Rather than listen, Spence declined to step back. He retrieved Emma from her position on the ground and walked toward the cell door. “Lay off the alcohol,” he muttered.

Shock coursed through Konrad. He drank only when he wasn’t on duty. It stung, that Spence would assume otherwise. That Spence would discount Konrad’s instincts in such a base way…

“And where have all the centipedes gone?” he called after Spence. “I used to clean them from the dungeon daily!”

Spence pivoted and faced him.

“I ate them!” Emma shouted.

What a clever little thing. “Good girl,” Konrad told her. “They’re a good source of protein.”

“Konrad,” Spence suggested after another moment of silence. “You need to see my dad. He knows about these patterns.”

Konrad studied the wall. Yes, the stones did seem to happen in clusters of five, now that Spence mentioned it. Of course he would need to discuss this with the local wiccan expert. “I’ll wake him,” he offered. The last thing anyone needed was for Spence to sneak home and warn Acheron. “Wait here. I need you to be certain the stones don’t move.”

“How about you watch them and I get him?” Spence countered.

He hadn’t thought of that; if he left Spence alone here, Spence could change out the stones for Acheron and Konrad would never know. He trusted too much, too deeply.

“Alright,” he agreed. Better that Acheron was warned, than that more stones were replaced.

He sat against the hard interior stone wall and stared at the opposite wall. Times like this, he missed the old days, when Weston could glance at Konrad and tell him precisely what was the matter, and together they would map a means of fixing it, with as few fatalities as possible.

Weston had set him to this task, alone, decades ago. He’d assured him before his departure for the Lower Dell that he would decide not to leave the Dells for a long time. They’d argued, in a friendly way, about the likelihood of that. And now here he was, decades later, still in the Dells, homesick for a life he’d given up in favor of a family.

He missed his old life…the wandering, the campaigning, answering only to himself and Maelchor and fading memories of his first love. Working towards a cause, in an effort to better the lives of others. That was a life.

This, here, bogged down by all these people, this was hell.

He needed to get out and move on.

Zero and Spence walked in together. Though Spence was Sam’s son, he moved with the same flow and single mindedness which Zero possessed.

“Good evening, Konrad,” Zero said. He, at least, was pleased to be there. Spence still looked as though he wished he were asleep. “I’ve brought some drinks for the evening.”

Konrad stood and drew Zero into a hug. They’d known each other for so long, and now that Konrad knew he would be leaving soon to begin another season of campaigning, he needed Zero to know he was valued.

“Zero, my good friend,” he said during the hug. He stepped away. “I’ve mapped the trolleys. I think one should run through the dining hall.”

He couldn’t leave just yet; he’d need to see the trolley project through to completion and hire someone competent to manage it. Perhaps Emma would enjoy that job more than security. Konrad suspected that patrons of the trolley system might appreciate her music more than he would in the dungeon.

Zero passed him a metal thermos. “Good idea.”

A drink. Hard work, appreciated. Konrad raised the thermos in a silent toast to Zero. “Thank you.” He sipped it; it tasted of childhood and the Angmaan marketplace. He drank more quickly, eager to feel the fullness of that memory.

He set the thermos down on the table and blinked at Spence and Zero.

Certain memories of the past few moments returned to him, in a different light. Something was the matter with him, with his priorities and his ability to understand the world. His drive to leave, when he had no interest in anything save his work here, his suspicions about the stones, his thoughts on hiring Emma, the trolley system…

“So, about that trolley,” Spence teased. “Under the table or over it?”

“Under,” Konrad said, an automatic reply from deeper within his mind. He was broken, failing. Some illness was eating away at his mind. “What is the matter with me?” he asked Zero.

“Wiccan magic. Someone is attacking your mind.” Zero replaced the lid on the thermos he’d given Konrad.

An attack, Konrad supposed, was better than learning that his mind was wasting away. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, in search of the source of his struggles. They evaded him for the time being, possibly a result of whatever tisane Zero had supplied him.

“It’s in my mind?” he asked again, sorting through his thoughts for which were his own and which were some magic working against him.

“Yes,” Zero confirmed.

“Alright,” Konrad forced himself not to glance at the stones, despite his instinctual desire to do so. That wasn’t him, that was the mind-warping magic. “Thank you for your help,” he said, with a glance at Zero and then another at Spence. At least he could trust them to be discreet. “I should get home.”

Zero handed him the thermos. “I made a large batch of the clarity potion. You should drink it with every meal even if you feel fine. When you run out, you should come by my office.”

“Alright,” Konrad said.

He wouldn’t drink it with every meal. That was a waste of a perfectly good potion to elicit lost memories. He would savor it.

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