Arc 9 | Chapter 398: My Very Badly Behaved Self

“You’re gonna be good for Nivel?”

“Yes?”

Candence replied with the sort of lying energy Emilia could appreciate—she had said the same questioning

yes

to countless adults herself, each of them asking if she would behave herself this time. She had given them an affirmative sound, filled with good intentions and all the energy of someone who knew themself well enough to know that good intentions only got you so far. Inevitably, she’d find herself wrapped up in some sort of trouble—some of it her fault, some of it decidedly not. Back at her first home, she had known what would follow: punishment, and over the six years she’d spent in that place, she’d just gotten used to the cruelty the adults dealt out to her.

No more food until morning.

No sleeping tucked in beside her siblings.

No access to the library, to her books, nor even a pencil to draw with.

By the time she and her siblings became part of the Starrberg family, Emilia had come to be a child who was blamed for everything that went wrong in her first home. It didn’t matter if she was nowhere nearby; she was a bad influence, the stink of her independent obstinance lingering in her wake. So, she’d be punished for everything and anything. So, she had stopped trying to behave at all. Even though it had taken time for her to accept that her new parents wouldn’t be returning her, no matter what horrible things she did, she had never not been someone who caused problems, even if she now tended to be a little more sensible in what problems she allowed herself to be wrapped up in… sometimes, anyways.

Okay, so, it didn’t help that she knew her parents would always love her, no matter what. It definitely didn’t help that her father in particular had instilled a desire to do good within her, either. These things inadvertently encouraged her to be the troublemaker she was meant to be. Fortunately, that was working for her at the moment—someone else might have left Olivier to just vanish, after all!

Emilia didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if she hadn’t been on the trip. Olivier probably would have still been targeted by this Fräthk and his allies. Probably, Norrayn and Raalian would have had the sense to contact the embassy? Maybe. Possibly. The other option was they would have panicked when their dumbass classmates vanished, their minds focusing in on finding them, as opposed to finding help with the clones. Unfortunately, even if they had contacted the embassy, there was little the clones could do other than attempt to get the Drinarna to let them help investigate. With the corruption going on, that probably wouldn’t have happened. So then, the Baalphorian government would have had to decide whether to intervene or not—would have needed to decide how hard to push. Most likely, her father would have been called in to negotiate. Maybe she even would have come with him, and considering her stalking function would have notified her that Olivier was showing up as deceased…

It wasn’t a reality come to life, but Emilia wasn’t sure what she would have done in that sort of situation. Who knew at what point it would have become clear that some amount of the Drinarna was cooperating with Fräthk, so maybe their government would have thought one missing non-dev enough to get involved in what was otherwise a Lüshanian crime problem. Maybe a bigger conflict between the factions would have already broken out by the time her father was asked to step in. Maybe Emilia would have confessed the stalking function to him, her words edging his decision of whether to try and force Lüshan to allow the clones to aid in searching for a potentially dead Olivier or not.

It was all rather dark, and Emilia didn’t doubt that, at some point, she would end up dreaming about an alternative reality where one of those hypotheticals came true—it wouldn’t be the first time she’d dreamed of a different timeline, one where she’d made a different decision and everything had shifted. Emilia didn’t think herself so important that her decisions could shift the entire future, yet, as she told Candence a few stories about her very badly behaved self, insisting that all the clones—including Nivel—still loved her regardless, neither could she deny that in this case, her not being there might have shifted everything.

Even just looking at this child, if she hadn’t been here, Candence might have been taken by that woman. Emilia being here may have saved her from a terrible fate… assuming they could get her back to the embassy.

“I’ll go through back roads,”

Nivel told her, speaking in Lüshanian because while Jerrial had agreed to let him take Candence, the man was still antsy about it. While Emilia was sure the guy realized they could communicate with their Censors, she also didn’t doubt that hearing their plan was helping him relax a little.

The whole

being able to breathe again

thing probably helped as well, the meds Nivel had procured Jerrial doing a speedy job of helping him feel better. The meds would apparently last about half a day, by which time hopefully they would have completely all the items on their increasingly long to-do list. Said list current read as follows: find Olivier; retrieve whatever Jerrial wants from the holding cells; collect Olivier’s students and any of her stupid friends, should they actually have made it into the city; figure out a way to get at least Candence out of the city, preferably Jerrial and Vern as well; and, get everyone back to the ship, which would hopefully still be there and have no engine problems.

Oh, Emilia probably needed a plan for how to get out of a lecture from her father and Malcolm and anyone else over how stupid it was that no one had stopped her friends from heading illegally to Lüshan.

In a perverse way, Emilia was quite looking forward to when they found out. It was just that it would be easy for them to assume it was a bunch of her stupid classmates coming her way, and for the most part, it was! There were, however, a few adults with them. Her father and Malcolm and any other adult could attempt to lay the blame on Emilia and a few of her friends for their stupidity in allowing this to go ahead—they expected a few of her friends to perpetually be going along with her nonsense, while no one would ever expect Mikhail or Levi in particular to be the voice of reason—but with adults in the mix, Emilia and her friends could just shift the blame onto them. A little part of Emilia even expected at least one of those adults knew they were going to be taking the majority of the blame for not reporting the situation. As educated as they were, however, Emilia had no doubt that the reality of the situation and the

why we aren’t telling The Black Knot we’re heading to Lüshan

had been convincing enough. It was also convincing enough that she knew they’d collectively be able to talk her father and Malcolm into accepting their reasoning, even if they didn’t like it.

That said, Emilia still thought they were stupid for coming. That was more of a general dislike of her friends being in danger, however, and in reality, she did appreciate the sentiment. Hopefully, despite how long her list of things to do was, enough of it would be complete by the time her friends made it into Lüshan that they wouldn’t have to try and sneak into the city itself. With any luck, they’d just be able to turn right back around and head back to Baalphoria!

Given Jerrial’s answer to her query about how far Fräthk’s holding cells were, after Nivel and Candence had disappeared, however, Emilia didn’t think such a speedy return trip was likely.

“They are on the other side of the city.”

Pulling up the haphazard, and highly illegal map Nivel had given her of the city—Emilia had never bothered looking into the laws that made foreigners having maps illegal, but when she found Olivier, she was totally going to ask about it—Emilia started questioning Jerrial about where exactly they were going. After a significant amount of back and forth, she did eventually manage to figure out the general location where they were going. It was far. Very far—like, so far that, assuming they didn’t run into any more trouble, by the time they actually managed to get there her friends would probably be inside Lüshan. It would likely still take them a bit to get into Falmíer—who knew if they would even be able to use the information she’d gotten from Nivel to find the entrance to the upper cave system, let alone how long it would take for them to get through the cave system if doing so were even possible—but it was highly unlikely that she’d have Olivier by then.

More likely, they be in the middle of breaking into the holding cells and the most she’d be able to tell any of them was whether she thought Olivier was in them or not, and whether she was currently in a life or death situation or not.

Fuck.

“It will likely be dangerous,”

Jerrial confirmed as they moved through the tunnels, which they had returned to in an attempt to avoid running into too much trouble.

Every so often, the Lowdouran would stop and breathe, his energy spiralling out of him and fluttering through the tunnels to check if anyone was nearby. A few times, they detoured down a slightly longer route in order to avoid someone, but that was rare. Mostly, Jerrial just led them towards anyone else in the tunnels—homeless people and others making use of the more private tunnels, mostly—and let Emilia call out to them with a skill to alert them of their presence.

“Fräthk has many little bugs he keeps close, and if he has your Olivier in his cells, he will likely have left a few to keep watch. That may work for us, however,”

Jerrial continued, his steps fast and sure now that he was feeling better.

Emilia wondered if she would get to find out what it was he wanted from Fräthk's holding cells so badly that he was willing to risk his life to get it. Not only was he now expounding on the powerful

little bugs

the guy had beholden to him, but the meds would likely kill him if he couldn’t get back to the embassy by the time they wore off—that was what Nivel has said, anyways. Jerrial, on the other hand, seemed to think even that wouldn’t be enough to save him, the two of them having spoken of his illness in the brief moment when it had just been the two of them, Vern saying farewell to Candence with the severity of someone who hoped to never see her again. While she didn’t think Vern was a huge fan of the child, she also didn’t think he hated her; instead, Emilia thought Vern just hoped their paths would be different, which was… concerning, considering she had been assuming he would have liked to get out of Lüshan.

Perhaps not—or, perhaps he just wanted to move to a different city, rather than leave Lüshan itself? Who knew. Something to ask him about later, she supposed. Much later, because if she asked and he said he just wanted to be with Jerrial, she was going to feel pretty terrible about keeping the truth of just how sick Jerrial was from the man.

“I know the olthagri is already severe,”

Jerrial had said, sipping on the water Nivel had gotten him.

“With the meds and what we need to do, the blowback will likely kill me.”

“There are doctors—”

“They are expensive.”

“Don’t worry about that. Nivel is gonna get a local doctor back to the embassy—someone who knows how to deal with olthagri because it isn’t really a thing in Baalphoria. As long as we get you there before the meds wear off—”

The smile Jerrial had given her was sad, accepting.

“That’s assuming we can even get back there in time. I think you are underestimating how long this might take. We will likely be running from Fräthk and his little bugs while searching for your Olivier. Do you really want to lead them back to your friends? To Candence? And for someone who will likely die anyways?”

The man had looked away then—back to his friend as he finally managed to wiggle free of Candence.

“I accepted a while ago that the olthagri is too far along, and I will not survive. I will be happy enough to see them safe—to see what I want removed from Fräthk's care.”

Emilia didn’t want to think Jerrial a lost cause, but she didn’t know enough about olthagri in adults to guess if he was wrong—to know if there was some treatment he hadn’t heard of that might help.

Unfortunately, so many people she knew were already busy doing other things, and while they walked, falling into silence as Emilia’s Censor catalogued the descriptions of Fräthk's

little bug

s for her, so she’d recognize them as needed, she also racked her brain for someone who might be able to search their own libraries or ask their own doctors for advice—preferably someone relatively nearby, so they could get any treatment to Jerrial in time.

There was one person who came to mind, but…

Shooting a glance at Jerrial, Vern happily chatting with him and looking so much lighter now that his friend was feeling better, fake as that

better

was, Emilia thought that for this man, who had taken care of Candence even when he was so sick, who was helping her now and so totally not leading her into a trap, asking

that person

for help might be worth it.

Maybe.

Possibly.

She could wait to hear from Nivel again, as he would be contacting some doctors to get their ideas on treatment and prognosis, but…

But if she waited and still needed to find an alternative treatment, it might be too late for that person to do anything about it.

Better safe than sorry, even if asking that person was complicated… not that they would get in trouble for helping her. They weren’t the sort of person who

could

get in trouble.