The Clocks

Like the others, the children had been chatting about this and that, mostly to calm their nerves when suddenly Jason shouted, "He's here! I think he's going to come in through the main gate."

On hearing this, Eugenia tugged gently on a thread that was attached to one of Hiroshi's socks. One of the reasons for his being seated by the potted plant was because the servants used it as a dividing line for their responsibilities and didn't pass it in either direction. This allowed the thread to remain both undetected and unbroken, as might have happened if a server caught it with their feet.

Hiroshi responded by picking up his wine goblet, taking a sip, then placing it three centimeters further away from him than it had been previously.

After just over a minute, Hibiki sent, "I see him. Well, probably. Someone who's all blurry just came in through the door and is walking toward your side of the table Genie!"

Eugenia again tugged on the thread, once -- pause -- twice -- pause -- once. This indicated that Avi was in the hall, on the same side she was, and on the outside of the banquet table.

In response Hiroshi again took a sip of wine then placed the goblet a bit to the left and closer to him that it had been when he picked it up. Interesting. He wasn't after Baron Svensson after all.

From that point Hibiki kept up a steady commentary, "He is still moving. He is not being sneaky. He is just walking like any one else. Ugh! I do not like the smile on his face. It's really mean looking. Still moving. He's only about three meters away from you Genie."

Eugenia gave one single additional tug on the thread, indicating that Avi was getting close, then jerked it and broke it. Hiroshi responded by picking up his goblet and fidgeting with it. He wouldn't put it down unless Genie stepped forward and touched him on the shoulder to let him know that Avi had passed them.

In the meantime, she reacheed down and pulled a long, single-edged knife out of her boot. Nobody had told her to bring one, but nobody had forbidden it either. Her only instructions, other than signaling Avi's progress had been to be absolutely sure that she wasn't seen. Nobody knew whether or not a person using the "no see, no hear" skill could see someone else doing the same. As it was, someone would have to be literally standing next to her to see her, even if she weren't hiding, as each of the six potted plants along the walls of the hall were carefully selected, very bushy shrubs that ordinarly graced the Ducal garden.

"GENIE! He's right behind my father and he's pulling out a knife!"

She didn't even think or rise from her crouch. She swung her knife as hard as she could at the height that ought to hamstring him even if he were a half meter to either side of where she thought he was.

As she did so, she noticed absently that she couldn't see him, at least not until the blood spurted out and he fell backwards toward her. As soon as the pain registered in his brain, Avi's "no see, no hear" spell had snapped out of existence. Two seconds later there were two guards on top of him.

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Professor Ptica interrupted the video and spoke, this time with asperity, "Will you all BE QUIET! It has long been established that a fit, healthy human male can turn around and sprint as much as six meters in 1.57 seconds. So, no, the guards were not preternaturally fast. In fact, they were a bit slow.

"I've been rather lenient with you thus far. No more! I will NOT tolerate any further interruptions. Have I made myself clear?"

She paused and noticed that most of the students were cringing in their seats. Good. Now maybe she could proceed in peace and on time. She was getting hungry and didn't want to be late for lunch.

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As one would expect. there was immediate turmoil among those seated nearby, while those further away were craning their necks to see what had just happened. A guard corporal who had rushed forward did as he had been instructed. He crouched and pretended to examine the now bound and gagged, would-be assassin. Then he stood, turned toward the duchess, and announced, "Your Grace. One of the servants dropped a glass and badly cut his foot when he stepped on it. My men will assist him to the infirmary. Please accept my apologies for the interruption."

On the face of it, it was a very flimsy story, but since only a few people nearby could see anything, it was generally accepted. On impulse Eugenia leaned forward and touched Avi's arm, willing that his image be blurred but not totally obscured. It worked! Those nearby could see the guards helping someone to their feet, but for some reason they couldn't tell what that person looked like or what he was wearing.

No matter. It was only a servant anyway. They turned back to their conversations and within minutes had forgotten the incident. The blood was washed away, but as that also involved servants, they paid it no mind.

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"Well, now that we have him, what do we do with him? It's fairly certain that he isn't going to tell us everything he knows if we promise to let him go. He wouldn't believe us. Heck neither would I in his place. Even if he talked he'd lie."

Hiroshi was standing with his fingers laced behind his back and staring at the floor. Blair and Miranda were sitting, uncharacteristically not speaking at all. Akane was obviously thinking, hard, about something. It's rather difficult for a strategist to strategize if she doesn't know what's going on. That was why she'd been summoned after Avi had been captured. It wasn't so much because they thought that they needed her, but because they wanted to get in the habit of including her in their deliberations.

Akane exclaimed, "It couldn't be that easy! Could it?"

Suddenly there were three sets of curious eyes on her. Rather than answering their unvoiced question she said, "I, no, we need Jason. Please summon him and also...hmmm...it would best to have all four of them here. It will be faster that way."

When it became obvious that she intended to say no more, Hiroshi shrugged, went to the door and spoke to the guard outside.

Akane turned to Miranda. "When they're all here, I want you to tell them to line up. Then say that we have some questions for them, and that's why you sent for them."

Manda raised a questioning eyebrow.

Akane snorted. "You're overusing the eyebrow. Eventually people are going to ignore you if you do it so often. You need to mix it up with at least one other gesture. As for your question, you'll have your answer right after you say what I just told you.

"Now, I want you to sit over there, close to the wall opposite the door. I'll sit in the corner and Hiroshi and Blair will stand against one of the walls. It doesn't matter which."

She peered at them. "Didn't you hear me?"

As they moved, Blair and Manda looked at each other briefly. What had they unleashed?

It wasn't a long wait. Jason and the twins had holed up in his room above the entrance to the residence. Eugenia had been in the guard quarters. She'd cleaned her knife and then had turned her attention to the blood on her pants. She arrived a bit after the others with several damp spots on her trousers but otherwise looking normal.

When Miranda spoke they did as instructed and lined up, but as soon as she'd finished speaking Jason said, "No you didn't." As the same time the twins expressions turned dubious. Eugenia merely looked curious.

Akane raised her hand. "Jason, please don't say anything at all for a moment if you please."

Turning to the twins she said, "Yoko and Hibiki please hold hands."

Once they had done so she said, "Jason was correct. Miranda didn't send for you, your mother did."

In perfect unison they blurted out, "No she didn't!"

Akane rubbed her hands together like a crooked merchant about to put one over on a naive customer. Eugenia was definitely confused, though she still said nothing.

"Very good girls, you, and Jason, were correct. I'm the one who asked for you to be brought here." None of them said anything.

Akane smiled. "Eugenia go over to Jason and take his hand." She turned to the twins. "Quit scowling. You know better now." They had the grace to look ashamed of themselves and settled down.

Next Akane said, "Eugenia, you're the perfect match for Jason."

Genie flushed with embarrassment, then surprise colored her expression, "You're lying. I can feel it!"

"Very good. Now go hold hands with the twins, both of them to begin with."

Once they had complied Akane said, "You'd look better if you bleached your hair blonde so it matches mine."

All three of them said, "You're lying again."

Eventually they had it all sorted out. Jason could always detect lies and feel emotions if he were attentive to the speaker, even if he couldn't see them. The twins could tell whether or not the speaker was lying, and their emotional state, if they held hands. Separately they were about 70% accurate on the lies but couldn't tell how the person was feeling. Eugenia was no better than random chance by herself, but if she were touching either of the twins they were right 90% of the time, and she was never wrong if she was touching both of them even if she was looking away from the person lying.

When they were done testing the children, Hiroshi said, "I understand. Now we need Avi in a room with another room off to either side. We put Jason in one, the twins in the other, sit Avi at the back of the center room and feed him leading questions. Even if he doesn't answer, their ability to feel emotions should help us narrow things down."

He turned to Eugenia. "I'll have two guards in the room. One will stand on either side of him with a hand on his shoulder, ostensibly to keep him from trying to stand, only one of the hands will be yours. Body language can tell you a lot, even if you can't sense what he's feeling. If we get close to something sensitive, his shoulders are likely to tense up somewhat. If you feel that, tell the others and they can let us know by waving from one of the other rooms. Use your 'no see, no hear' skill. Agh, that's too long. From now on I'm going to call it 'stealth', assuming you don't object?"

She shook her head "no," and he added, "Right that's settled. Let's get to this. He's likely to be less cautious due to pain from his injury and from the stress of being caught in the first place."

He tipped his head back in thought. "Actually it may be worse than that. That it took us less than 10 seconds probably has him nearly in shock."

It took longer to find rooms that fit their requirements than anything else, but, once they had, things moved along like clockwork.

Avi twitched in surprise when he saw who was in charge of the interrogation. At the last minute Hiroshi had decided that the ladies shouldn't be in the room. Avi didn't know them and Hiroshi didn't want to take any chances that their presence might push him into thinking more clearly.

They had agreed, albeit reluctantly. Consequently Akane was with Jason in one room, and the others were with the twins. Any questions they had could be passed to Hiroshi by a note carried by one of the Guard, along with reports from the children as to his emotional state and veracity -- should he speak at all.

Akane came up with the idea that Hiroshi should act almost indifferent toward Avi. He'd receive the notes then pretend to write responses and send them back out. That would make it look like he considered Avi nothing more than a minor inconvenience, which was sure to infuriate someone with his need for attention.

It went much better than they had even hoped. By the time they were through, Hiroshi was finding it very hard to contain his glee and relief. The glee was because their plan for the interrogation had worked so well. Relief because he was absolutely certain that he had been targeted, not because his cover had been blown and he'd been identified as the King's spymaster, but rather because of his position in the bank.

Someone in the German intelligence service, apparently Avi didn't know his or her name as he never responded when possible candidates were mentioned, had noticed how The Bank of The Griffon was expanding throughout Italy and even into other countries. This person had decided that having inside knowledge of international banking activities would be extremely useful. They had plans to infiltrate spies into as many of the new branches as possible, but they'd wanted someone in a central position to coordinate things. Who better than someone like Hiroshi who was an actual partner. He was prominent enough to be useful but not so important that the bank would falter if he were to suddenly die and need to be replaced.

Of course his replacement would be a senior German agent. They, whoever "they" were, had apparently been confident of being able to manage it. Eugenia had by then been taught every single telltale of body language and Hiroshi's relief was absolutely clear in spite of his efforts to conceal it. Avi definitely noticed it too because his whole body suddenly tensed.

"Jason, what's he thinking?!"

"I'm not entirely sure Genie, but he's furious. It's like he's so angry that he doesn't care about himself any more. He wants to kill someone so much it's making me sick. Oh my God, the twins have just fainted! Your mother and Mrs. Macklin are taking care of them."

"Thank you Jason. Now I need you to do one more thing, right away. Have your mother write Mr. Macklin a note asking if he's finished asking questions. I don't mean just for now, I mean ever. I need to know if he can even conceive of anything else he might need to ask Avi. I need him to nod if he does need more information and shake his head if he doesn't. It's very important. And you'd better make it fast."

"Why do you need... Sorry Genie, I'll get right on it."

Hiroshi could see Akane suddenly start writing furiously, so he killed time by pretending to write something himself.

The note was delivered and, though he looked puzzled, he shook his head.

Genie used her free hand to pull out a long poignard and shoved it into Avi's heart through his back, unknowingly mimicing Raven's stabbing of the bandit leader Luciano hundreds of years earlier. Avi fell forward, soundlessly, onto the floor. Hiroshi sprang to his feet. "What did you do? No, cancel that, WHY did you do it?"

Eugenia looked down at Avi dispassionately then began to tick things off on her fingers. Funny how one could pick up habits from other people.

"1) There was nothing else you were going to get from him. You said so yourself.

"2) You couldn't let him go. You couldn't put him on trial; you'd be laughed out of court and they'd have to set him free. He never did ANYTHING that you could prove without putting a 'kill me now' target on all four of us if we show everyone what we can do, and that would be a serious tactical blunder. All you could do was quietly lock him up somewhere or kill him.

"3) If you did lock him up, eventually he'd escape. Then you, and we, would be in a world of hurt when he reported back to the Germans because he now knew that you're much more than an ordinary banker.

"4) He'd been working at his shackles with some sort of makeshift lockpick the entire time he was sitting here.

"5) He was so enraged that as soon as he had the shackles unlocked he planned to kill you anyway, even if the guards killed him immediately afterwards.

"6) The ONLY way to protect everyone, now and later was to execute him immediately.

"7) There is no seven. That's all. I'm finished."

Hiroshi wanted to yell at her, but he choked it down. He was thoroughly capable of analysis, even in the most stressful situations, and he had to grant her every single point she'd made. The problem was, he didn't know what to say to her. She was a 16 year old girl and she'd just killed someone without showing even the slightest hesitation or emotion.

Fortunately Akane was certain that she did know what to do. She was wrong, but a bit of slack is appropriate as she was new to the world of espionage. She walked into the room and looked down at Avi's body with exaggerated distaste. "What a thoroughly unpleasant ending to a most interesting day."

Next she looked at Eugenia coldly. "Tell me child. Are you planning to murder everyone you decide needs killing from now on?"

Surprise, shock and, finally, terror crossed Eugenia's face. She collapsed onto the floor and began bawling like a newborn baby. Miranda swept past Akane. She knelt beside her daughter and enfolded her in her arms. Unlike Eugenia, she was able to keep her own terror from showing. She wasn't afraid because of what her daughter had done. Far from it. Agents had to make decisions like that now and then, and Eugenia's decision had been entirely correct.

No, what terrified Miranda was the realization that her daughter was eventually going to be one of those field agents with absolute discretion to complete their missions as they saw fit. Only about half of them ever lived long enough to retire, because they were the ones who were given the most dangerous jobs.

For now though, she had other things to do. She gathered Genie in her arms, then carried her weeping child home, ignoring the inquisitive glances of the few people who were still out at that time of night. Even patrolling militia who didn't know her were disinclined to accost this tall, dark-skinned, silver-haired woman with a face like flint.

On the way she reviewed the most paramount needs. She'd have to tell Robert that she'd be sleeping with Genie that night, and probably for quite a few more in the future. Later, Robert would have to be informed of everything they'd learned about the banks and what it was his friends really did. With the bank in danger, there was no way that they could conceal their true roles any longer. The security of the entire nation might depend on it.

She stalked through the streets like an avenging valkyrie, determined that nobody and nothing would threaten her family again if she had any say in the matter. It wouldn't be apparent for a number of years, but that determination would play a significant role in changes that would affect not only The City of The Bells, but all of Italy and, later, the rest of the worlds as well.