CHAPTER XVI

Kizu awoke on a metal cot. He felt horrible. Every centimeter of him ached. Reaching out through his bond, he felt Mort. Safe and away from him.

Kizu’s head pounded as he pushed himself into a horizontal position. His room was small and cut short by metal bars. There was a bucket in the corner and a small window, also barred, overhead that let in beams of sunlight.

“Welcome to the land of the living.”

Kizu whirled his head around and immediately regretted the action. Once his vision stopped swimming all about him, he saw a bald man jeering at him from behind the bars. Gray scales crested the crown of his scalp and the pupil of his eyes were shaped like a predator. Tainted like Harvey. But similarities to him ended there. His gut strained against a gray and black uniform that Kizu found vaguely familiar from the party the previous week. He twirled an ivory wand in his sausage fingers. Kizu suspected he must be some sort of constable.

“How long was I asleep for?” Kizu asked.

The man stopped twirling the wand and pointed it at Kizu’s head.

“This is your warning,” the man said. He glowered at Kizu.

“My warning?” But before Kizu could ask further, the man’s wrist twitched and a beam of green light smacked into Kizu’s face. He opened his mouth to ask what just happened. Or, at least, he tried to open his mouth. Uninterrupted flesh stretched across where his lips usually would be. All moving his jaw accomplished was stretching out that skin.

He tried to scream but all he managed was a terrified hum.

“Oh, stop harassing the poor kid.” Another constable walked in from around the corner. He was leaner than his partner, and harbored a more bored look in his eyes. Unlike his partner, he looked human. He flicked his wand at Kizu’s face and, blessedly, returned it to normal.

Kizu gasped and clutched at his lips.

“Okay kid, listen to us,” the human constable said, walking forward. “What you did yesterday was absolutely unacceptable. Do you understand?”

Kizu blinked. He tried to figure out what he had done. “You mean breaking curfew?”

The other constable exploded. “Don’t be stupid! You think playing dumb will get you out of this free of charge? We found you writhing in a pile of your own piss after a security ward booted you. There are fines to pay for breaking and entering. And if you can’t pay ‘em, prison hours.”

“It is my family’s villa though.”

The leaner man sighed. “Lying about it won’t get you anywhere either. The security ward wouldn’t have booted you if you were blood. And besides, the boy whose family owns the villa came out and told us he’d never seen you before in his life. He wanted you prosecuted to the highest extent of the law.”

Kizu stared at them. “Well, since you’ve decided I’m in the wrong, what do I need to do now?”

“You need to pay the fine.” The bigger constable seemed irritated about repeating himself.

“I have no money.”

“And your parents?”

“You’re welcome to contact them. My father’s name is Kaga Kubou.”

The big constable laughed with no humor. “How long do you plan to yank us around by the bit? What, are you an orphan down on his luck? At least tell us your sob story. Come on, now, everyone’s got one. And kids like you love to spill them out. You feel sorry for yourself, right?”

Kizu gave no answer. Both lies and the truth seemed equally useless. Instead, he figured he might as well try to shift the conversation to something useful. He considered what to ask about.

“It’s daylight,” he said, stating the obvious fact. “Will I have a trial?”

“We just need to process the paperwork,” the lean man said. “The boy at the villa stated that he wanted to press charges, but we just need to verify his position in the household.”

“After that, the case is open and shut.” The big constable leered. “As in, open up the prison, shove you inside, and shut it forever.”

Kizu wondered if Finn actually could get this around his parents. They were very busy people and would probably leave something like a break in for him to handle. What sort of lie would Finn need to make to explain Kizu’s disappearance? Probably not much of one.

“And the Academy? Will they be notified?”

“If you give us your actual name,” the human constable said. “Then I’d be happy to report your situation to them.”

He was missing classes. Brewing S, which wasn’t a very useful class anyway; History F, which he probably would be kicked from; and Combat, where they probably would just be running laps. In all, he doubted he was missing much.

They continued to ask him questions but wrote off each of his answers as tall tales.

“Can I at least practice my magic while I wait?” he asked once they finally finished questioning him. “I’m missing all of my classes and I don’t want to fall further behind than I already am.”

They scowled at him.

“Even if I did escape- and I don’t intend to,” he hurriedly added. “Where would I go? There’s no way off the island. I’m stuck here.”

“Do as you will.” They exited the room, leaving him alone.

Kizu sat down cross-legged on the floor and focused. He created his barrier, then expanded it and shrunk it down again. He practiced moving it around. If someone shot a spell at him, it might be more efficient to deflect it with a fist sized shield, then let it break through a more spread out one. But he needed to get better at movement. As it was, the shield moved lethargically. And dropping and reconstructing it was even slower.

Then he tried layering his shields. It was difficult to concentrate on two at once. If anything else distracted him even the slightest bit, one would slip away. And moving both was even slower.

He needed a sparring partner, he decided. He had no way of telling how effective his shields were without someone casting spells at them. On the bright side, finding a sparring partner once he was tossed in prison probably wouldn’t be too difficult, he thought grimly.

Kizu was lightheaded when the constables returned with dinner. A cold dish of rice and chicken alongside a cup of lukewarm water. He still munched on the food graciously.

“Make yourself comfortable,” the human constable said. “Looks like there was a hiccup in your paperwork. Turns out, according to newly updated records, Kaga Finn isn’t the heir of the Kaga household. And we need either the head of the house, or the heir to press charges.”

Kizu felt his body relax, releasing tension that he hadn’t known existed.

“So I’m free to go?”

“Hardly. Just means more waiting around. We are sending out a message to the head of the Kaga household. Hopefully we’ll have your prosecution by the morning.”

Kizu tried to think of what this meant for him. He tried to hold back hope. If his father came in person, it would no doubt mean release for him. But if his father just trusted Finn’s judgment blindly, then he was in no better a position than before. He needed to create a likely third option.

“You haven’t sent the message out yet? You know, if you want this taken care of quickly, then I’d suggest you offer to the head of the house that the Kaga heir take care of the issue. He’s a student here as well. You’ll get through your paperwork a lot faster.”

“What’s in it for you?” the Tainted constable asked. He narrowed his predictor eyes at Kizu.

“I get processed faster. If the head of the house has to come out here in person, I could be stuck here for weeks. And I doubt those weeks are ones that count towards my actual sentence.” He wasn’t sure if that was actually the law at all. He just assumed so based on the fact that in the stories the crone had told him, officials tended to like keeping troublemakers in prison for longer times, more than shorter periods..

“I’ll dot it down in the margins,” the human constable said. At a look from his compatriot, he scowled. “What? I want this paperwork done sooner than later. And I don’t want to have to keep ordering extra rations too. He’s a nuisance to our work where he’s at right now.”

They continued bickering as they left him alone. Kizu hoped he had gotten the stone rolling enough for a bit of investigation into where he was.

Until they figured out who he was, he decided the best thing to do would be to take a nap.

He woke up as the sun was setting. He had nothing else to do so he studied the cup of water the constables had given him with his dinner. Part of him wanted to see what he could do with it and attempt to escape. But the rational part held him back and told him to just wait. He listened to the second train of thought.

Freezing the cup was difficult. He felt like he’d been knocked back several rungs of mastery as he only managed to create a cup of slush. He wondered how Mort had managed to assist him with his spell the previous night. It must have to do with him being his familiar. But if that were the case, what else could Mort accomplish? And why hadn’t the crone hadn’t told him about it?

He thought back to his combat test. Arclight had asked him why he hadn’t used his familiar in their combat. That implied that she knew some use for Mort in a fight that he hadn’t been aware of. He resolved to ask her. If he ever escaped the prison.

As Kizu sat there, freezing and unfreezing the cup, he stood up and paced around the cell. It was cramped, barely more than three paces wide.

Finally, he decided that he was done waiting around. He had put things into motion earlier, and had gotten lucky. But he couldn’t count on that luck or those plans. Too much could go wrong. He needed to act.

It was time for a prison break.