Chapter 123: Deception Has Limits

"Keep the packets and the tannery books exactly as they’re set."

Marienne’s fingers stopped above the handling page. Her gaze moved from Packet A to Packet B. "They stay separate. The books stay in order."

Good.

Severin turned from the table. Alicia remained 1 step behind and to his right, where the east corridor stayed inside her view. Nyra stood across from him with her folded scrap in hand. The wounded clerk was still against the east wall, pale but conscious, his right palm pressed over the cloth at his left arm.

Severin formed the retrieval intent for the silent captive.

Black mist spread thickly across the clear floor south of the table. Lamplight dulled around it. Even the small sounds in the room seemed to sink under the black haze before a man stepped out of it, unarmed and off balance.

Severin caught his upper arm before his knee could dip. The captive stiffened under the grip.

"After you reach the loft, what happens?"

The man’s eyes moved to Severin’s face. His mouth stayed shut.

"Who receives you?"

Nothing.

Severin gave him enough time to choose otherwise. The captive swallowed. His jaw tightened, then he stared past Severin at the table.

There was no statement to test. Deception Trace stayed unused.

Nyra’s ears angled forward. "He knows how to keep his mouth closed."

"Maybe." Severin watched the man’s face. "Or he was taught when to."

That earned the smallest tightening around the captive’s eyes.

Useful, but not an answer.

"Back you go."

Black mist climbed over the man’s boots. He twisted late, shoulder bunching against Severin’s hand, but there was nowhere for the movement to go. The mist swallowed his legs, chest, face, then folded in on itself until Severin’s hand closed on empty air.

[Void Devour successful.]

[Stored in Void Vault.]

The floor was clear again.

Severin brought out the other captive.

A low bank of black mist swept across the boards and thickened into a dark column. The other captive emerged crouching. Severin gripped him at the back of the neck and straightened him with measured pressure.

A sharp breath escaped the captive.

"Tell me what you were taught," Severin said. "Not what you think it means."

The man stared at the floorboards. "Don’t go back through the front. Wait until dark. Use the stable out back."

"Then?"

"Loft. North shutter." His lips dragged over the next words. "Wait there."

"For who?"

"I wasn’t given a name."

"And after they collect you?"

The captive hesitated. "I don’t know."

Severin kept his hand on the man’s neck. "You’ve used that route before?"

"No." Too quick, but fear could do that. "They showed me where to wait. That’s all. Someone was supposed to come."

Severin narrowed Deception Trace to the answer he’d actually been given.

The Copy moved through the conversation without any visible sign.

No deliberate deception surfaced.

Nyra kept her attention on the captive. "So you learned a waiting place."

He glanced toward her.

"Don’t look happy," she added. "People can teach you something wrong without lying to you."

The hint of relief left his face.

Severin shifted his grip from the man’s neck to his upper arm. "How do you leave the loft?"

"I don’t know."

"Door? Roof? Rope?"

"I said I don’t know!" His voice broke higher, anger losing a fight with fear. "We wait by the shutter. That’s what they told us."

Nyra tapped the edge of her folded scrap against her palm. "Then make him wait there when it’s dark."

’After dark.’

Taking him there early would test nothing he had been told to expect. Waiting cost time. Testing the route under the wrong condition cost more.

Severin chose the wait.

Black mist surged upward around the captive. His shoulders jerked, but Severin held him until the mist took the rest of his body and left nothing standing beside the table.

[Void Devour successful.]

[Stored in Void Vault.]

Marienne closed the 2 tannery books without disturbing their order. "I’ll put these back and take Packet A and Packet B to the front office."

"Do it."

She gathered Packet A and Packet B separately, then glanced toward the clerk. "He shouldn’t stay against that wall all afternoon."

The clerk let out a thin breath. "Finally, something we agree on."

Marienne looked at him flatly. "If you’re healthy enough to complain about the furniture, Tressa has less work than I feared."

"Comforting."

"It wasn’t meant to be."

Nyra’s mouth almost moved.

Severin left Marienne with the papers and the wounded clerk.

The captives stayed Stored through the afternoon. No messenger came looking for the men who had failed to kill them, and Severin wasn’t going to use a Skill merely because the sun took its time setting.

By late afternoon, the 2 tannery books were back on their usual shelf. Marienne worked from the front trade office with Packet A and Packet B kept separate beside her. Tressa had reached the clerk there as well. The man was awake with his left arm wrapped. Severin saw no reason to interrupt Tressa’s work.

After full dark, Severin took Alicia and Nyra through the east corridor and out the rear service door.

Cool air met them in the packed-earth yard. The detached stable sat northeast of the door, its south entrance dark. The cart lane ran along the east side. A narrow loading cut opened west. Behind them lay the service door and the route back through the tannery.

Severin looked over each path before using Route Lattice.

The Skill settled the stable approach, cart lane, loading cut, and way back through the service door into relation. It added nothing beyond what he had actually seen.

Alicia’s silver ears turned toward the stable. "Nothing moving close, Master."

Nyra studied the roofline instead. "Doesn’t tell us whether anyone’s coming."

"No." Severin started across the yard. "Inside."

They entered through the south door.

Old leather and hay thickened the air. A central aisle crossed the stable from east to west. On the east side, a fixed ladder rose to a square hatch in the loft floor.

Severin stopped short of the ladder. Here, the walls would hide the retrieval from an easy yard sightline.

He called the captive back.

Black mist crawled across the boards against the weak draft from the open south entrance. The stable sounds dimmed beneath it. The man returned inside the haze, blinked at the change of place, and immediately looked toward the ladder.

Severin closed a hand around his upper arm.

"Show me."

The captive nodded at the ladder. "Up."

"Move."

He obeyed.

The captive gripped the rungs. Severin released his arm only when the man had nowhere to go except upward.

Creak.

The ladder complained under his weight.

The captive climbed ahead of him. Severin followed close behind. Alicia held the ladder foot until Severin was through the hatch; Nyra waited behind her with a hand near the utility knife at her belt. Then Alicia came up, and Nyra followed last.

The loft was low enough to make the captive duck beneath a beam. Rough hay piles sat under the rafters. Rope, tack, and ordinary stable clutter left the hatch clear.

The man walked directly to the north wall and stopped beside a shutter.

"Here."

Severin stopped 2 steps south of him, slightly west. Nyra settled 2 steps to Severin’s west. Alicia stayed near the hatch at his right-rear, leaving the way down clear.

"What now?" Severin asked.

"Wait."

"For who?"

A pause. "I don’t know."

"Show me how they take you from here."

The captive looked at the shutter. Then the rafters. Then past Severin toward the hatch.

"I can’t."

"Why?"

"Because nobody showed me!" The words burst out before he could flatten them again. "I get here, I wait, someone comes. That’s it."

Nyra rested her shoulder against a clear beam. "And if nobody comes?"

His face tightened. "They were supposed to."

Severin left Deception Trace alone.

So the man waited.

For 1 hour, nobody came.

The north shutter stayed shut. No signal answered from the yard. Alicia listened without fidgeting, her ears making small adjustments toward the dark below, but she gave no warning. Nyra checked the visible roofline and the slice of yard available from the loft. Nothing came for the captive.

His shoulders gradually lost their rehearsed stiffness. His thumb worried the edge of his forefinger. Toward the end, he watched Severin more often than the shutter.

"How long are we doing this?" he asked.

Severin let the question die.

Waiting longer would only keep the stable occupied and give anyone outside more time to notice them.

"We’re finished."

The captive stared at him. "That’s it?"

"You brought me where you were taught to go. You can’t show me anything past it."

"I told you that."

"Now I’ve seen where your instructions end."

Black mist burst around his boots.

The man recoiled. Severin caught his wrist before the movement carried him into the shutter. The mist climbed fast, swallowed his protest, and erased him from the loft.

[Void Devour successful.]

[Stored in Void Vault.]

Hay dust drifted through the empty space.

Severin turned toward the hatch. "Alicia. Ground floor. Hold the south entrance."

"Yes, Master."

She put a boot on the ladder.

Nyra stayed where she was. "I’m staying up here."

Alicia’s tail went still. Her bright-blue eyes crossed briefly from Nyra to Severin.

Then she went down.

Severin waited until her boots touched the stable floor below.

Nyra still held the folded scrap. She stood 2 steps west of him beneath the low rafters, making no move toward the hatch.

He looked at her.

"Stay."