Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 34: Investigations

Naereni

It was with mild irritation that I let Wade into my room after he knocked, watching him as he held a thick stack of papers. Normally, I might've prodded at his arm or ruffled his hair. Those provoked a reaction that I savored. Today, he had a couple of days of stubble on his chin and looked even more tired than usual, his day shift at the library keeping him awake for the rest of the hours.

I forcibly quashed the burgeoning sympathy I felt for him. He had lied to me along with Karsien, keeping me out of an important decision.

"What is it?" I asked briskly.

Wade seemed taken aback at my tone, but continued nonetheless. "I, uh, wanted to show you what I've been working on for the past few months," he said, referencing the stack of paper in his hands. He had one lock of hair out of place that I had a primal urge to fix.

I quashed that too.

I frowned at him. "So now that the secret is out, you're going to tell me about what you were working on? When it's already done?"

"Karsien didn't tell me I could show you this either," he replied in a clipped tone. "I came here because I wanted to."

We locked gazes for a moment before I relented. Regardless of my irritation, I did need to know the contents of those papers. "Fine. What did you figure out?"

Wade's shoulders slumped as I gave him the go-ahead, some tension leaking from them. He moved over to my desk, which didn't have anything on it, and set down the heavy papers. He spread them out in a specific manner, clearly having done this before. Then he beckoned me over to look. I stood shoulder to shoulder with him, allowing me to see exactly what he was indicating.

"A few months ago, Karsien asked me to keep an eye out for certain pieces of information," he said, pointing to a specific paper. On it was information about a minor Blood house scrawled in messy handwriting, with what looked like... departure and arrival times for carriages? "He told me to report it to him only, and that's how it started. He'd ask about a few Blood houses and their comings and goings." He shuffled through a few more papers, which allowed Naereni to see the random information. "After a while, though, I started to notice a pattern. On select days of the week, the heads of each of these smaller Bloods would leave their estates at similar times."

Wade wrinkled his nose. "I have trouble tracking their carriages, unfortunately. They tend to use swiftsure horses to pull it along, and those things hate my rats for some reason. It's hard to get close. But I figured out what was happening anyway," he finished, a twinkle in his eye. He held a few pieces of paper in front of me, allowing me to look them over.

I noticed the pattern almost immediately.

"They all leave at around the same times on Tuesdays," I said. And four houses matched that pattern to the letter. Blood Joan, Ilason, Farriver, and Jasper all had important members of their families leave their estates within twenty minutes of each other regularly. "They're meeting up," I said, coming to the logical conclusion.

"That was my guess too," Wade replied. "But it could've been for any old get-together of lords. You know how they are, needing an excuse to spend their wealth and twiddle their thumbs. But Karsien pushed me to keep looking, so I managed to get a rat onto one of the carriages before the swiftsures were hooked up to them."

I raised a brow at how smug he sounded about that. "Is that really such a big deal, getting a rat onto a carriage?" I asked, a bit amused.

Wade gave me a suffering look over the rims of his glasses. "Rats are smart, Naereni, but do you have any idea how difficult it can be to tell them to do something other than 'follow that person and tell me what they say as best your rodent ears can interpret?'" The young man shook his head. "I've spent less time reading an entire book than I have trying to decipher what my familiars tell me."