Chapter 37: FACADE

Sio and Angle were out of the inn before the innkeeper reached the end of the street. The man didn’t hurry, didn’t keep checking over his shoulder and didn’t bother hiding the files tucked beneath one arm. He walked with the same relaxed pace he’d used all day, even stopping near the next corner when an older man called out to him. They exchanged a few quiet words, the innkeeper laughed at something, and both continued on as though carrying signed documents through town after midnight was completely ordinary.

That somehow bothered Sio more than if the man had been sneaking. Either he’s very good at pretending nothing is strange, or we’re the only two idiots treating this like some secret operation. Angle moved as soon as the innkeeper disappeared around the corner, keeping close to the darker side of the street. Sio followed and quickly discovered that sneaking beside Arch’s son was mildly humiliating.

Angle never rushed just because their target had turned away; he watched windows, waited for people to pass and seemed to know which corner would hide them before they even reached it. When he suddenly stretched an arm across Sio’s chest, Sio almost complained until two residents appeared from the next alley a second later. Angle waited until they passed, then lowered his arm and continued.

Sio leaned slightly closer and whispered, "You know, you’re disturbingly good at following people." Angle gave him a brief sideways look and reminded him they were investigating because the innkeeper had Arch’s document. "That’s still stalking with a reason," Sio whispered back. Angle’s mouth tightened at one corner before he told him to try being quiet for five minutes, which made Sio internally protest, Five? Definitely Arch’s son. Completely unreasonable expectations.

Keeping quiet would’ve been much easier if the town hadn’t given him so much to look at. During the day, everything had felt almost aggressively welcoming. Shopkeepers knew customers by name, children ran between houses without anyone worrying where they’d gone, and neighbours seemed capable of turning a two-second greeting into a conversation about someone’s dinner.

Night didn’t remove that familiarity. People were still outside despite the hour, but nobody behaved as though they were doing anything secret. A woman carrying several folded documents stopped to speak with someone watering plants outside his house, while a man pushed a handcart down another street humming quietly to himself. Two others passed the innkeeper, greeted him by name and continued in the same direction.

Sio watched them from behind the corner of a building and murmured that the town had more paperwork after midnight than he’d dealt with in his entire life. Angle suggested that maybe people simply worked late, which earned him a sideways look. "That’s your explanation?" Sio asked. Angle corrected him that it was an observation, not an explanation, and Sio quietly decided that was exactly the sort of distinction Arch would make while being irritating.

When Angle asked whether Sio was always like this while trying to stay hidden, Sio considered the question seriously before assuring him that he was actually showing remarkable restraint. The look Angle gave him suggested otherwise.

They continued through several more streets before the mood between them changed. The innkeeper remained far enough ahead that neither needed to worry about being heard, and Angle’s attention had begun drifting from him toward the residents moving around them. "Arch has been different since he spoke with that man alone," he finally said, and the humor left Sio almost immediately.

Sio didn’t need to ask who he meant. Arch had seemed to sign the paper without properly reading it, which had bothered both of them, and then he’d slept deeply enough that Sio could deliberately knock himself unconscious in the same room without apparently waking him. Sio admitted that he’d noticed too, though part of him had assumed Arch was simply exhausted after everything they’d been through. Angle didn’t dismiss that explanation, but his expression suggested he’d already tried convincing himself of the same thing.

"He is exhausted. That’s not the part that feels wrong." Angle waited until two residents passed farther ahead before continuing. "You haven’t travelled with him long enough to notice every habit. Arch can sleep almost anywhere, but not like that. Not somewhere unfamiliar."

There was something in the way Angle said it that made Sio look at him more closely. It didn’t sound like something he’d figured out tonight. It sounded like a fact he’d learned years ago. Angle continued before Sio could ask about it, explaining that Arch normally kept his things close enough to reach, woke when somebody entered a room and became nearly impossible to convince once a place felt wrong to him.

"Today he barely looked at that paper before signing it, suddenly decided staying here was safer than moving on, and now he’s sleeping deeply enough that both of us managed to leave without him noticing." Angle’s jaw tightened slightly as he finished, and Sio scratched behind one ear while picturing Arch loose in the chair, his bag farther away than usual. Arch becoming relaxed overnight is a little like Mum deciding I’ve probably eaten enough and she doesn’t need to ask. Technically possible. Also a very good reason to start checking for head injuries.

Angle’s attention shifted toward another group farther down the street as he added that Arch should’ve noticed the town before either of them. When Sio asked if he meant the people, Angle shook his head and brought up the fight with the bounty hunters instead. That made Sio think back past the gunfire, portals and the unpleasant discovery that someone had already studied his habits well enough to predict them.

The townspeople hadn’t simply rushed in to defend themselves. One person moved and another reacted before anything was said. Openings appeared and were filled almost immediately. Someone pulled an injured resident away while another stepped into the gap without even looking toward them. Sio admitted they’d been coordinated, and Angle immediately corrected him: too coordinated.

"I’ve trained beside Wayfarers who spent months learning how to fight together and still needed signals. Those people barely looked at one another." Angle’s gaze moved across the street as another group passed in the distance. "Sometimes it felt like someone was directing them. Other times it felt like they somehow already knew what everyone else intended to do."

Sio tried fitting that into something he understood, suggesting a Scar built around shared senses or communication, then adding that a Claim could probably accomplish something similar depending on what had been Claimed. Angle agreed that either was possible, which made Sio give him a solemn nod. "Excellent. We’ve narrowed it down to almost everything. At this rate we’ll solve it before we’re eighty."

Angle breathed quietly through his nose, and Sio was beginning to recognize that as what happened when he wanted to react but refused to encourage him. The joke didn’t remove the uncomfortable thought underneath, though. Something about this town was connecting people in ways Sio couldn’t explain, and somehow Arch—the man who usually distrusted a quiet room for being too quiet—seemed less concerned than either of them.

The buildings gradually changed as they followed the innkeeper farther from the part of town where they’d been staying. Small homes and narrow shops gave way to wider properties, taller walls and patches of open ground between structures. When the innkeeper turned one final corner, Sio and Angle slowed together as the alley opened onto a broad road.

Across from them stood a high wall, and behind it rose a mansion large enough to resemble a small castle. Several floors of pale stone looked over the surrounding rooftops, while solar lamps illuminated broad windows and a long path leading toward the entrance. Carefully maintained vegetation climbed sections of the outer walls, softening the building enough that it looked more like the home of someone important than a fortress.

Sio studied it before quietly remarking that it was considerably more house than he’d expected their paperwork to need. The innkeeper walked directly toward the gate, where two guards greeted him without any urgency. One checked the files while the other said something that made the innkeeper laugh, then they opened the gate and let him through as though he’d done the same thing hundreds of times before.

Sio’s attention shifted to their clothing and weapons. The wide-brimmed hats, long coats and heavy boots reminded him of old wasteland adventure illustrations, but the rifles resting against their shoulders were far more advanced. Narrow luminous channels ran along the weapons, small solar plates sat near the barrels, and compact power cells were fitted close to the stocks.

More guards moved across the grounds, some patrolling on foot and others riding horses along the inner paths with similar rifles secured across their backs. Sio counted enough of them to quietly abandon every idea involving walking through the front gate and pretending he belonged there. He and Angle shifted behind a nearby building when one mounted guard turned toward the road, then watched as another resident approached carrying a folder openly beneath one arm.

The guards checked it and let him through. A woman came shortly afterward with several sheets of paper, stopping to chat casually with one of the guards before continuing inside, followed by an older man carrying documents tied together with string. Nobody looked nervous, nobody hid what they carried and nobody treated the mansion like a place they weren’t supposed to be.

Sio’s expression slowly changed as he whispered that those couldn’t all be repair forms. Angle agreed, and when Sio suggested contracts, he said some of them probably were. "I preferred it when this looked like one innkeeper doing something weird," Sio admitted. Angle quietly told him he did too.

The constant hospitality, the cheap room, residents protecting strangers during the bounty attack and the strange coordination between everyone all felt different now. Not necessarily sinister, and that was what bothered Sio. Maybe none of the friendliness is fake. Maybe they genuinely like living this way. Maybe whatever’s happening here isn’t something they’re afraid of at all.

Angle seemed to reach a similar conclusion, observing that most of the residents clearly knew at least part of what was happening. Sio pointed out that this made them the confused outsiders, which prompted Angle to remark that confusion wasn’t exactly new for him. Sio turned slowly toward him and narrowed his eyes. "Was that a joke?" Angle denied it, but the tiny shift at the corner of his mouth betrayed him.

The amusement faded when Sio brought Arch back into it. Whatever everyone here knew, Arch had signed a document that neither Sio nor Angle understood. Angle’s expression hardened immediately at his father’s name, and Sio noticed without pushing further. For Angle, it must have felt like something had slipped past the person he’d spent his entire life trusting to notice danger first.

They watched the grounds for several more minutes until two guards near one side of the wall moved toward the front together. Angle touched Sio’s arm, pointed once toward the temporarily unguarded section and waited until the mounted patrol turned away before crossing the road. He stepped onto a wooden crate beside the wall, jumped high enough to catch the top and pulled himself over in one smooth movement.

Sio stared at the empty wall after Angle disappeared. He tells me to communicate before I make stupid decisions and then climbs into an armed compound without saying a word. Interesting family values. He started toward the same crate, but one of the guards returned before he reached it, forcing Sio back into the shadow of the building.

The guard looked along the road without any particular suspicion and resumed his position near the wall. Sio waited, expecting him to move again, but he stayed there. No problem. Angle is inside an armed mansion and I’m outside losing an argument with architecture. Everything is going perfectly.

His fingers brushed against the small sphere in his pocket while irritation slowly turned into an idea. His Integration had increased. So had his Host Capacity, and more importantly, he’d just learned that the exit of a portal didn’t necessarily have to remain wherever he first created it. Sio looked toward the wall and thought, I don’t actually need to go over it.

Finding somewhere safe on the other side without seeing it properly was the difficult part, but Sio had gotten several glimpses through the gate and knew roughly where Angle had landed. Normally he approached a portal as two separate openings that needed to be connected. This time he tried thinking about the distance itself instead. I’m here. Angle is there. Why should the wall get an opinion?

Darkness gathered near his fingertips, and a tiny opening formed. Sio’s eyes widened before he quickly forced himself to concentrate. The opening was unstable and initially showed nothing useful except a patch of stone, but he kept the entrance where it was and tried shifting the exit instead of closing everything and beginning again.

Stone became grass, grass became part of a walkway, and after another careful adjustment Angle appeared beside one of the mansion’s windows. Sio had to bite back a grin. Oh, this is going to become a terrible influence on me. He widened the portal enough to pass through and stepped forward, only for the excitement to disappear almost immediately.

Pressure squeezed him from every direction as his body crossed the opening. His stomach lurched, his vision blurred and for half a heartbeat he felt as though he’d been stretched into a shape his body had never agreed to before being pushed back together. Then his foot struck solid ground beside Angle, the portal snapped shut behind him and Sio bent forward with one hand braced against his knee while trying not to empty his stomach onto the grass.

Angle caught his shoulder and pulled him deeper into the shadow beneath the window before anyone could notice. He asked what had happened while checking the courtyard first and then Sio, and the concern on his face made Sio even more determined not to collapse. Sio lifted one finger while dragging in enough air to speak and asked that, before Angle said anything else, it be officially acknowledged that he’d just teleported.

Angle stared at him and pointed out that he’d walked through his own portal. Sio, still swallowing against the nausea, insisted that was simply teleportation with a doorway and Angle was focusing on the least impressive interpretation. When Angle noted that Sio looked like he was about to throw up, Sio slowly straightened. "The stomach part isn’t relevant to the achievement."

That earned him a small reaction. Angle’s mouth twitched, although his hand remained on Sio’s shoulder until Sio was clearly standing properly. Sio noticed and deliberately pretended not to. His breathing was already settling, and compared with how violently the Claim had punished him before, this was almost manageable. No blackout, no collapsing, stomach still technically inside me. That’s progress.

Sio rolled his shoulders carefully and couldn’t stop a little satisfaction from showing as he admitted that Integration really had made a difference. Angle reminded him they were trespassing inside a compound full of armed guards and suggested celebrating later. Sio complained that Angle could occasionally be impressed before ruining the moment, and Angle admitted he’d been impressed when Sio appeared—right up until Sio nearly emptied his stomach on his boots.

Sio gave the boots an offended glance. "They would’ve survived."

"They shouldn’t have to."

That nearly made Sio laugh, but Angle was already turning toward the window beside them. It had been left slightly open, so he checked the grounds once more, eased the frame farther without letting it scrape and climbed through first. Sio followed, lowering himself carefully into the dark room and leaving the window exactly as they’d found it.

Voices carried faintly through the corridor outside, and Angle’s whole posture changed again. The irritation and concern he’d shown Sio disappeared beneath the same quiet focus he’d carried while following the innkeeper. Sio followed him into the hallway, deliberately copying where Angle placed his feet rather than improvising. This was significantly funnier when the rifles were outside.

The voices became clearer near the end of the corridor, where light spilled through a partially open doorway. Angle stopped before they reached it and pointed toward the floorboards nearest the wall, then toward the opening. Sio understood and followed, quietly deciding that Angle somehow communicated more while trespassing than he did during ordinary conversations.

When they reached the doorway, both looked through. A long table occupied most of the room beyond, nearly every part of it covered in documents. Several residents stood around it sorting folders into separate stacks while others entered through another doorway and added more papers. Nobody looked frightened or forced to be there. Some talked casually with one another, one man laughed while passing over a document, and a woman waited beside the table while chatting with someone she clearly knew.

The normality made Sio more uncomfortable than frightened faces would’ve. His eyes travelled across the papers until something familiar caught them near the bottom of one document: Arch’s signature. Sio leaned slightly closer without thinking, and Angle immediately caught his sleeve before he exposed too much of himself through the doorway.

Sio pointed instead. Angle followed the gesture, and the tension in his face hardened the instant he recognized the document. The innkeeper’s folder rested among dozens of others. So we were right. Sio had expected that realization to feel satisfying, but seeing Arch’s agreement surrounded by so many similar papers only made the situation worse.

Whatever these contracts were, nobody here considered them unusual enough to hide. They were being sorted beside ordinary conversation and familiar smiles as though this were simply another part of running the town. A man near the front raised one hand while the others were still talking, and Sio nearly missed the gesture because there was nothing dramatic about it.

The reaction was what caught him. Conversations across the room stopped within moments of one another. Nobody called for silence, nobody repeated the signal and nobody looked around to see what everyone else was doing. The change simply passed through the room with the same effortless precision Sio had seen during the bounty-hunter fight.

There. That’s it. Sio looked toward Angle and found the same recognition already sitting in his expression. Angle’s eyes moved slowly across the residents, his earlier suspicion settling into something heavier now that they’d seen the pattern repeat when no fight or panic could explain it.

The residents around the table lowered their heads together, not fearfully but with the familiarity of something they’d clearly done many times before. Their voices joined so naturally that Sio could barely distinguish one person from another as they spoke.

"All hail the Baron who keeps us under his shelter."