X-Marshall stood and moved toward the cell door.
Mayo said, "Wait."
X-Marshall stopped.
"Aren't you going to release me? You still don't trust me?"
X-Marshall looked back at him. He was quiet for a moment, not thinking about the answer but choosing how to give it. Then he said,
"I don't need to trust your words, Mayo. I trust the look in your eyes when you said please." A small pause. "I just met you, and I already trust you more than people I've known for years."
He stepped out of the cell.
Mayo sat with that, watching the door swing back into position.
The general came forward and locked the door of the cell with a key that made a sound like something final, then looked at Mayo once through the bars without expression and stepped back.
X-Marshall looked at Mayo one more time from the corridor.
"I'll come see you again," he said.
Then he turned and walked away. The general silently fell into step behind him, and their footsteps slowly faded down the corridor before disappearing around the corner.
Mayo sat in the silence they left behind.
Before him, where the bucket had been placed, the water had gone still.
He leaned forward slightly and looked into it. His reflection stared back at him, a face he was still getting used to. It had come to him only days ago. Similar to the one he once had, yet more mature, carrying something his old face never did.
He studied it without knowing exactly what he was looking for.
"You're lucky," said the voice from the opposite cell.
Mayo looked up. The other prisoner was sitting in the same position as always, back against the wall, watching him with the patient attention of someone who had spent a long time observing people.
"How is any of this lucky?" Mayo asked.
"Because you're still alive, and so are your friends." The man's voice was calm and unhurried, like he was explaining something obvious. "Those were the Heirs of King Edris. The highest officials in Ralinder below the ministers themselves. They could've ended that interrogation very differently."
He let the words settle before continuing.
"The fact that X-Marshall sat beside you on a prison floor and asked you to explain yourself politely..." A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth. "That's not how this room usually works."
Mayo looked back down at the water.
"So I'm lucky, huh," he murmured, almost to himself.
A moment passed.
Then Mayo looked at the other prisoner again, something finally connecting in his mind. "You said you were one of the kidnappers," he said slowly. "You already told me that."
"I did."
"Then you know who actually took the princess. You know all of them." Mayo's voice became more careful now. "And you know I'm not one of them. So why don't you tell them I had nothing to do with this?"
The prisoner laughed.
Not politely. Not awkwardly. A real laugh, sudden and genuine, and somehow that made it far worse.
"How naive you are," he said, and there was something in his voice that sat uncomfortably close to cruelty. "I'm the reason you're in this cell."
He watched Mayo's expression carefully.
"I gave them the proof they needed. Without me, they had nothing on you. You were just some random boy found near the forest."
A strange silence followed.
Mayo slowly stared at him.
"You put me here?"
He stood abruptly and crossed the cell in two quick steps, grabbing the bars so hard his knuckles turned white.
"You did this on purpose?" His voice had lost almost everything except the anger underneath it. "I don't even know you. I had never seen you before last night."
"I know," the man replied calmly. "My name is Rael, by the way."
The casualness of it made Mayo angrier.
"I don't care about your fucking name. Tell me why you did this."
Mayo shook the bars once, not trying to break them, his hands simply needing somewhere to throw the force building inside him.
"How could you throw someone into this just to protect whatever you people are doing? I could die here. Do you understand that? I could be executed for something I didn't do."
"I understand that perfectly," Rael answered. He uncrossed his legs, then crossed them the other way, like this conversation required no urgency at all.
"We spent months on this operation. Months planning it, placing people, moving the right pieces into the right positions. But when that bastard Eylor captured me, I needed a distraction. Something that would pull the interrogation away from the real trail."
His eyes returned to Mayo.
"You arrived at the perfect moment. Or the worst one, depending on your perspective."
A short silence followed.
"My people will come for me. They don't leave their own behind." His gaze drifted briefly toward the ceiling. "Though I'm starting to wonder what's taking them so long."
Mayo stared at him through the bars.
"You bastard," he said slowly. "You are the worst person I've ever met."
"Possibly," Rael replied without the slightest sign of offense. "Thanks for that."
Mayo let go of the bars at once and turned away, his teeth grinding together. He walked straight to the wall and slammed his fist into it.
"Ahh!"
He hit it again, harder this time.
"Why me?" he shouted. "Out of all the people, why me?"
After the second punch, he stopped suddenly and looked down at his hand. His knuckles had already turned red. He grabbed the injured hand with the other one, his face tightening from the pain.
For a moment, he just stood there helplessly.
Then he leaned back against the wall, stared up at the ceiling, and tried to steady his breathing.
The corridor above was longer than the prison level and far better lit, torches mounted along the walls at even intervals. The stone floor was clean and recently swept.
X-Marshall walked at his usual steady pace while the general followed beside him, both silent, each carrying different thoughts from the room below.
Then the general spoke, not loudly, not even fully meaning to. The thought had simply slipped out before he stopped it.
"How could he laugh while his own ally was being punished?"
X-Marshall stopped walking.
He turned and looked at the general, who was looking at the floor with the expression of someone who had just heard themselves say something they intended to keep internal.
"Did you say something, General?" X-Marshall said.
General Iroh looked up. "No, sir. My apologies. Nothing."
X-Marshall glanced at him for a moment. "You don't have to keep calling me sir. You can use my name. I've told you that many times already." A faint pause. "You are older than me, after all."
"It still comes out as sir," the general admitted. "I can't seem to stop it."
X-Marshall considered that with the calm acceptance of someone who understood some habits were too deeply rooted to argue with.
"Mm. I suppose there's nothing I can do about that, can I."
Then he turned and continued walking down the corridor.
The general followed behind him.
He's too kind for someone in his position, he thought.
But the image from the interrogation still lingered in his mind, refusing to leave. The prisoner's face. That slight movement at the corner of his mouth while Mayo's head was being held underwater.
It had not looked like the expression of a man watching his ally suffer.
It had looked like something else.
Like a move being made.
The general kept turning the thought over in his head as they walked.
Was the boy truly guilty? Or had he simply walked into a story that needed a body to fill a role?
And before he realized it, his thoughts had already carried him back to the previous night, to the moment this entire mess had started.
—
The street outside the 73rd District Guard Station was quiet when a horse came tearing through it at full speed.
The rider leaned low over the animal, urging it forward with the urgency of someone carrying news that could not wait.
Hoofbeats crashed against the capital's stone streets and echoed between the narrow buildings lining both sides of the road.
The rider reached the boundary wall, and the guards at the gate stepped forward at once. Before they could fully question him, he pulled a badge from inside his jacket.
"73rd District," he said quickly. "Here to see General Iroh."
They let him through.
The inner streets were wider and cleaner than the outer districts, the buildings taller, the torches more numerous and mounted higher along the walls.
The rider passed through two more checkpoints using the same badge along with the same short explanation, until the First District Guard Station finally came into view, larger and far more imposing than the others.
Inside, a staff member directed him to the general's office. By the time he reached the door and knocked, someone inside had already announced his arrival, and a voice told him to enter.
The general sat behind a desk covered in documents, carrying the posture of a man who had been dealing with paperwork for hours and disliked it no less now than when he started. He looked up as the rider entered.
"General, sir," the man said quickly. "I'm Ban, from Chief Mohib's station. He sent me directly."
He straightened properly, like someone delivering information he understood was important.
"One of the twenty patrol groups Minister Abed sent beyond the city walls made an arrest tonight. A man claimed to be involved in the princess's kidnapping."
A brief pause followed.
"He's being held in the 73rd District cells right now."
Iroh was on his feet before Ban finished the sentence.
"My horse," he said to the wall, and someone on the other side of it heard him and moved.
He looked at Ban. "If this is accurate, it helps us find her."
They rode together through the capital to the 73rd District, arriving at a station smaller than Iroh's own but well-organized, Chief Mohib coming out of his chair the moment he recognized who was at his door.
"General Iroh. Sir."
"Is it true?"
"Yes sir. He's in the holding cell."
Mohib led him through the station to the back, where the holding cells sat along a short corridor.
The one at the end held a boy curled against the far wall, his knees pulled up, his head resting on them. Cold had gotten into the cell from somewhere, and he had made himself as small as possible because of it. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow.
Iroh stood at the cell door and looked at him.
He was young, younger than the profiles they had been working from. His clothes didn't match the style of this region, or any region the general recognized. And even in sleep, there was something about him that clearly didn't belong in a prison cell.
"Should I wake him?" Mohib asked quietly.
"No," Iroh said. He looked at the boy a moment longer, and the same question was already forming that would stay with him all the way through the following day.
"Tomorrow morning, send the wagon to bring him to the Garrison."
"Yes sir."
General Iroh turned and walked back out into the night.
Behind him, inside the cell, Mayo continued sleeping, completely unaware that his morning had already been decided.