Royal Griffon Ch.13

It surprised Isabella just how little attention she was being paid. Her glamours were good, she’d programmed them herself, but that didn’t explain how literally everyone seemed to be ignoring her. She suspected it had something to do with the decision to swap out Harakin troops with the Judai. Easy to lose track of who was and wasn’t allowed when you had all new faces wandering around on both sides. Terrible for security but leaving plenty of room for her to stay close to the action.

The shape of said action was starting to come together in Isabella’s head as she observed the scene. This was clearly a coup attempt, a rather sophisticated one. Kidnapping his heir and wife from the heart of his stronghold? In front of every major power of his alliance? That would be a deathblow to even the greatest of politicians. And Zulathon was not presently in the mindset to play such a delicate game. Lines were being drawn in the sand by an invisible hand, and it wouldn’t be long before people started taking sides.

“You’d think they’d have cameras or something,” Arthur said, still hovering about her shoulder.

“Would you want them in your room?” Isabella asked, keeping her tone even.

Arthur shrugged. “Just saying, would be helpful.”

Isabella turned away to ensure Arthur didn’t see her roll her eyes. Yes, that would indeed be helpful. So would the culprits walking up to Zulathon and turning themselves in. Both were equally likely to happen and wasting attention on either fancy was just a waste of time.

She took a breath, calming herself. Anger was never helpful, certainly not here. It concerned her that she’d let Arthur get to her at all, not when she could usually brush off his nonsense like it was nothing. Nic being in danger must be affecting her more than she’d realized.

That idiot really was the wildcard in all this. The more she learned, the more it was becoming clear Nic’s presence was the only thing disrupting the plot. Had he not been in the nursery when the kidnappers made their move, there was every possibility the queen and egg would already be gone. Hauled away for parts unknown to be used as pawns in the upcoming war. Nic’s intervention had thrown everything into chaos, which meant they still had a chance of nipping this whole thing in the bud.

But to do that, she needed to get word to someone who would listen to her, which still meant Master Greytower. Just a two-minute conversation and she could get them all moving together, rather than this patchwork being driven by a headstrong king terrified of losing his family.

As she continued mulling everything over, Isabella’s gaze drifted towards the ceiling, mostly just to have something new to look at. The battle damage was lesser there, which made it easy to spot the damage that did exist. A vent cover in the corner, ripped from its frame and hanging by a single bolt. The opening was large, as was the vent beyond, enough that Isabella could imagine a person being able to fit inside.

A person trying to stay out of sight.

It was a complete hunch, one for which she had no proof, but Isabella let her mind run with it. She looked back at the room with fresh eyes, at the floor beneath the vent, then slowly at the surrounding area. There was nothing obvious at first, the battle damage swallowing everything, but Isabella forced her gaze to focus on the details, trying to pick out everything there was to see.

She found it next to the bed. A shape that did not belong, two straight lines in a swirl of chaos. She walked over, kneeling and reaching forward to delicately pluck it from beneath the discarded blankets. A tablet, one she recognized immediately. The horribly botched engraving couldn’t be anything else.

“Find something?” Arthur asked.

“Maybe,” Isabella said.

She pressed the power button but only got a low battery screen. Unfortunate, but that it was here at all meant that Nic had been too. And that had all sorts of interesting implications.

Namely, that Sir Saku was lying through his beak.

“Who are you?”

Isabella looked up, keeping her cool at the sight of a Judai armsman standing nearby. He was looking right at her, the glamor finally overcome by someone’s focus. She took a breath and stood, palming the phone out of sight and turned to address the man with her most diplomatic smile.

“We-”

“I would ask you to mind your business sir!” Arthur interrupted. “We’re in the middle of important work!”

Isbella closed her mouth with a click, letting the man’s attention drift to Arthur as he erupted into the fullness of his station. The Judai was happy to oblige, uncowed by Arthur’s tone, clearly having some experience working with indignant aristocrats.

“Sir I was not talking to you.”

“Well, you are now, and I would ask you mind your tone when speaking to me!”

A back and forth began between the two of them, going nowhere fast as Arthur refused to let the man get a word in edgewise. Isabella didn’t waste a second, making for the door with only as much haste as her renewed glamour could cover. She glanced back only once, just in time to catch a wink from Arthur, his lips mouthing the word mischief.

Once she was outside the room, Isabella considered her next move. The goal was still the same and with physical proof, she might just have enough to get a proper conversation. She was in the process of figuring out where Zulathon and company had gone when she noticed Saku out of the corner of her eye.

He was alone, which would have been suspicious enough even if Isabella didn’t know what she did. The fact that he seemed to be actively trying to stay out of sight, scanning the hallway before ducking into a side passage, was just icing on the cake. Following the same kind of hunch that had led her to Nic’s tablet, Isabella made a snap decision and turned to follow the Judai champion.

She kept her distance, pressing the control bead on her dress to up her wards to max power. Between them and her light footsteps, she managed to shadow Saku through the halls, the hulking griffon never once showing any sign he’d spotted her. She still held her breath several times, just to make sure.

Saku chose a winding path through the Aerie, random on the surface but Isabella quickly realized he was intentionally avoiding people. Twice he stopped to let guard patrols pass, keeping himself around the corner and out of sight. This raised even more questions as they were technically his own house troops, and he very easily outranked them all. It seemed Isabella wasn’t the only one trying to remain discrete.

Eventually he ducked into a side room and didn’t emerge, the clattering of his talons falling silent as he waited within. Rather than follow, Isabella continued down the hallway, passing close enough to the door to drop one of the false beads stuck to the side of her dress. Even if someone was watching her, she could easily claim that she’d gotten lost and that her dress had simply started coming apart. A disaster, of course.

They would be far less likely to notice the bead spring to life where it had fallen and begin moving, rolling under the door Saku had just entered. They certainly wouldn’t see the bot roll itself into a corner and begin broadcasting a narrow band camera feed to her eyepiece. Extremely short range but powerful enough that it should be able to cut through the comms blackout.

Hiding herself just around a corner, Isabella donned her eyepiece and pulled up the feed. It was slightly degraded with static but clear enough that she could see the hulking form of Saku standing in the center of the room. He was talking to someone, a second griffon, though Isabella couldn’t see who it was, Saku standing between them and the camera. At least the audio was coming through clear.

“-ready to be moved as soon as all the patrols are in place. It will have to be quick.” Saku paused, shaking his wings over the cuts on his side. “She is resilient.”

“And the egg?” the stranger asked. Isabella swore she knew the voice, but the bot’s mic was too far away to pick it up properly.

“That’s…” Saku began, letting the word hang before continuing. “There were, complications.”

“What do you mean complications?”

“The egg was gone when the operatives went to retrieve it.”

“Gone? How could it be gone!?”

Saku winced, the harsh voice peaking the microphone, Isabella still unable to place the voice. Pressing at her wrist, she used the controls to gently edge the bot forward to a better angle.

“Someone else was there and took it first. I have the operatives hunting them now, they’ll get it.”

“They better! Need I remind you this whole plan revolves around having both at once?”

“Mind your tone chick,” Saku said, voice testy.

The stranger moved, flaring their wings at Saku in dismissal just as the camera finally got a good look at them.

Kalthus.

The Judai heir looked stressed, his feather puffed up and his beak clacking as he continued to talk.

“Don’t test me old man,” the Judai heir snapped. “We’re both clipped if I can’t convince the flock to go along with this. I need absolute leverage or some of them might try to side with the old bird.”

“And we will,” Saku said. “Trust the plan.”

Kalthus made a strangled noise in his throat as he began to pace the room.

“You’re sure these goblins are trustworthy?” Kalthus asked. “Won’t get any funny ideas about taking the egg for themselves?”

“They are shadowpads,” Saku said. “They live and die on their reputation. Besides, it’s in their best interest to remain discrete for-”

The rest of his sentence was cut off by a dull boom. Isabella heard it from where she was too, whipping her head around to locate a source. She found none, though an alarm began to blare through the corridors, several of the lights switching to a strobing red.

“Hull breach detected.” A synthetic voice announced. “Please proceed to the nearest shelter. Repeat, hull breach detected please proceed to the nearest shelter.”

“By the tree what now!?” Kalthus demanded through the camera.

“Control, report,” Saku said, tilting his head to speak into an earpiece of his own. He listened intently for a moment before continuing.

“Where?” Another pause. “Understood, I’m on my way.”

“What’s happening!?” Kalthus demanded.

“Someone blew out a window on this level. The house troops are converging on the location.”

“Was it the goblins?”

“We can’t afford not to assume it was.”

Kalthus erupted into a string of bird noises that Isabella’s translator didn’t recognize but she could put together from context. He was still going at it as he turned to bound out the door, nearly forgetting to fold his wings so they fit through the frame.

Isabella closed the feed and hit the recall on her bot, waiting for the clacking of the griffon’s talons to fade before she sprinted after them. She had no idea what was happening either but could make one confident assumption of her own.

Nic either was, or was about to be, in very deep trouble.

*

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