Lucky Rabbit

Augustus waved to Professor Beeswick, who hauled Mr. Benjamin back up and threw him over his shoulder, beginning the walk back around to the other side of the building. Pandy wondered briefly why the dragon didn’t just use those beautiful wings to fly back, but then decided the teacher must weigh too much and dismissed it from her mind.

They walked in silence past the kitchen, the Stillroom – whose door was marked, though Pandy had never entered – and into the dark dining hall. The tables were out, the chairs tucked neatly away, but fresh white tablecloths transformed the furniture into looming ghosts, which Augustus neatly threaded his way through.

In the foyer, Pandy expected him to continue on to the door leading to the students’ rooms, but instead he paused at the foot of the stairs leading up to his office. He hesitated, clearly undecided, but eventually looked down at her and said, “I’d like another moment of your time, if you have it to spare.”

That brass band started up again, this time in her chest, but Pandy attempted a nonchalant nod. She had nothing to do for the next six hours except grind her skills, and frankly, after the events of the past hour, she really didn’t have much interest in doing that, either. Her plan was to curl up next to Thaniel and stare into darkness for an hour or so, then perhaps shift to his other side and repeat the process as necessary until the morning bell went off.

Augustus smiled, then carried her up the stairs and to his office. There, he placed her on the desk before sitting in his own chair, releasing a tired sigh. He still looked tired, and Pandy had a sudden urge to ask him if he was eating enough, and sleeping enough, and taking whatever medicine Mistress Rose had given him, so it was probably a good thing she couldn’t actually talk at the moment.

He seemed to realize this at the same time, and chuckled slightly under his breath before saying rather ruefully, “It seems like I’m always speaking to you when you’re a rabbit, rather than a woman. Someday, I hope you’ll let me know what you’re really thinking. Whenever we do get to talk properly, there’s always someone else around, or we’re dealing with matters of life or death.”

He reached out as if to pet her, then pulled his hand back, looking at it accusatorily. He lifted a brow as he told her, “Your fur is entirely too soft. I wonder, is that what your hair feels like?”

Pandy thought her ears would burn right off of her head with the force of her bunny-blush, and Augustus gave her one of his teasing grins before leaning back in his chair so he could open the drawer directly in front of him. It was the flattish one where people used to keep really useful things, like pens and paperclips, but in Pandy’s experience it mostly held cell phones, cell phone accessories, and sometimes candy.

Withdrawing one of the ubiquitous manila folders, he laid it on the desk in front of Pandy, but rather than opening it, he placed his hand flat on top of it, almost protectively. “From your point of view, I must be behaving very oddly,” he told her, shaking his head. “I assure you that you’re not alone in that. In fact, if you were to speak to almost anyone who’s known me more than a few months, they would say I’ve probably gone mad. Fortunately, Beeswick finds madness amusing, so he won’t tell anyone.”

Gently, he stroked the folder with one finger, meeting Pandy’s eyes as he continued. “I’m going to tell you things no one except a very small, select group is meant to know. Which, actually, I’ve already done to some extent, but you’re probably wondering why. Why does someone who doesn’t even know you trust you so much? Yes, your situation is certainly odd enough to invite some suspension of disbelief, but so much? When you have very carefully avoided even telling us who the actual villain of your ‘game’ was?”

Pandy flinched. Of course he’d noticed that. How could he not? But he hadn’t really pressed her on it, certainly hadn’t demanded an answer. But he’d told her a lot – literally trusted her with his life, and the lives of his students, and she genuinely believed that he cared more for those students than himself. With a soft sigh, Augustus opened the folder, then began laying out the contents, one sheet after another, in tidy rows. 

They were pictures. Specifically, they were pictures of the original Pandora S. Boxx herself, done in a variety of styles. Some were almost cartoonish, showing her flopped out in bed, hair sticking up wildly, grinning as she played Gacha Love. She knew it had to be Gacha Love because nothing else made her smile like that, though it was obvious that the artists – and she used the term loosely – had no idea what a cell phone was, so they just drew a rather awkward box with scribbles on it.

Other images showed Pandy at work. There was the red and white striped hotdog-hat she wore for her two shifts at Frank’s Frankly Delicious Franks. Another picture showed her wearing the mermaid tail she’d donned as a background character in an ad for sunscreen, before realizing they actually expected her to swim in the thing. In several, she wore the fixed smile she put on when she was being dressed-down for doing something wrong. She’d had a great deal of practice at that one, and it was probably the look that came most naturally to her face.

Augustus’s hand lingered as he laid down the last page. It was a close-up of Pandy’s face – her eyes closed, a little smile on her lips as she turned her face up, probably just enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face. “I don’t know what it was about this woman,” Augustus said softly, tracing the curve of 2D-Pandy’s mouth. A bit of wear on the paper showed that this probably wasn’t the first time he’d done this.

“We located most of the people pictured within a few months. As young as they were, they could only be students or recent graduates, so we had Beeswick look at them, since he remembers every child who has passed through these halls,” Augustus said, looking back at Pandy. “But there were a few that eluded us. I spent hours staring at this face, trying to figure out where I might have seen it before, since something about it felt so… familiar. Comforting, even.”

He offered her a crooked smile. “And then I just started looking at her because I wanted to. Because I liked the way she smiled, the way she seemed so real, even though she was only ink or paint on paper. Eventually, even though she appeared more often than anyone else, she was one of only a few people we still hadn’t identified, and nothing had come of it, so everyone else put the pictures away and forgot about them.”

Pandy stared up at him, transfixed. He looked so sincere, so vulnerable, that she wanted to… to… do absolutely nothing, because he wasn’t done yet. With a sigh, he began gathering the papers back up, though he left the last one on top. “And then you appeared, and you behaved very, very oddly, even for an elemental. Then, after you gained the ability to take on Ms. Wellington’s shape, you behaved even more oddly, and of course we watched you very closely.”

He touched the paper, then pulled out a few others – Pandy’s nervous smile, and the resolute look she got when things started to go wrong and she was determined to make the best of it. “But you still seemed so familiar, and I finally figured out why. The face was entirely wrong, but the expressions… those were right. When we confronted you, and you told us your story, I knew who you were, even before you picked your own picture out of the pile.”

Again, he gathered the pages, this time closing the folder over them. “So, while I have no real proof that you’re trustworthy, other than the fact that you’ve saved my life at least twice now,” he chuckled slightly, “I trust you.”

He met her eyes, repeating, “I trust you. Absolutely. Implicitly. And so I’m going to tell you things no one else would. First, our government is fractured. Some members of the nobility would like to see the monarchy destroyed, and a ruling council put in place. I’m not going to say they’re entirely in the wrong, since one poor ruler, given free reign, can destroy a country.

“When Fergus died, they claimed that Louisa wasn’t competent to serve as regent, and attempted to form a council to perform that function. I’m fairly confident Prince Kaden would never have taken the throne if that happened, one way or the other. They failed, thanks in part to me, and since then have been a bit more subtle about their efforts, though they never give up.”

He leaned back, rubbing his face tiredly. “Then we found out about Eleanor’s… problem. Louisa swears she has no idea how she gave birth to a child with the Nature affinity, when both her family and the royal family have only Air mages for two generations. We believe the opposition at least suspects, and since questioning the parentage of one royal heir could easily lead to questioning the parentage of the other, we originally planned to send Eleanor to the countryside, where she would be educated by tutors, at least until she was old enough to conceal the truth, and Kaden had taken the throne.”

Shaking his head, Augustus gave a small, affectionate laugh. “But however hard Louisa tries to hide it, she has a soft heart, especially when it comes to her children. She saw how miserable Eleanor was at the idea of living several more years isolated and without friends, and asked for my help. As I mentioned, I’m a distant cousin of Fergus, but that’s actually true of most of the nobility of West Altheric. We keep careful track of our family trees so we can be certain we don’t end up grafting onto our own branches.”

Now his eyes slid away from Pandy, and his expression grew shuttered. “I told you Fergus and I became close because we had common interests from a young age, and that’s true. Specifically, neither of us was satisfied with what we’d been taught about Dark magic. There was only so much Fergus could do to learn more, given how closely he was watched. I, on the other hand, had both time and a natural inclination to be sneaky.”

Augustus drew in a deep breath. “Eventually, this natural inclination, combined with my interest in Dark mages, led to me being offered a job which is… unique in many ways. One of those ways is that it doesn’t actually report to the king or queen. In fact, it doesn’t really report to anyone, though it also receives little support from others. Once the person is selected, they have nearly unlimited power within their limited scope, though they must renounce any other power, at least so long as they hold their position.”

Pandy stared up at him. Was he telling her he really was an assassin of some kind? Or was he – what did they call it – a ‘fixer’?

As if reading her question from the tilt of her head, Augustus said, “I was responsible for tracking down and capturing or killing any Dark mage who violated the laws regarding how and when they could use their magic and elementals. At first, I took the job because I believed I would be more sympathetic to them than anyone else who might be given the same opportunity. I approached it with the mindset that our laws were unnecessarily restrictive, and most people would have broken them either unintentionally or even out of a desire to do good.”

He looked down. “I was wrong. There were some of those, certainly, but the majority of the ones that came to my attention were… not well-intentioned. And all too often, they became caught up in the machinations of the Shadow Exchange. Not that I could prove that – not enough to do more than force them to disavow an agent now and then – but I knew it, and so did Fergus. We were working on finding a way to disband the entire organization when the plague struck, and he died.”

And now here’s the Exchange, hip-deep in a manufactured illness. He has to be wondering if they created the plague that killed the king, too, Pandy thought, and Augustus brought his eyes back to her, his brows drawing together.

“Pandora,” he said, “I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Far from it. And I’m certain that sometimes those things were unnecessary. There’s a reason no one is allowed to do what I did for more than a decade. It changes you. Makes you… less. And I understand if you want nothing to do with me after learning this. But I want you to know what you’re getting into. This is a mess, and it’s our mess. We’ve divided our own country both politically and morally, and you’re very close to being pulled in. These pictures alone would be enough to do it, if you found a way to wear your own face.”

Augustus lifted the folder, then tucked it away into its drawer before focusing on Pandy again. “If you want out, you can tell me. I’ll help you hide. I know people and places where no one will ever find you. You can leave death and war behind. You didn’t ask to be in this position, to be involved in any of it. I’ll even help you take Thaniel with you, if you ask.”

A chill went down Pandy’s back. He was telling her he would break the prophecy, or whatever all of those dreams had been about, for her.

Seeing her look, Augustus gave her that lopsided smile again. “I’m not saying I’d abandon my country. The information you’ve given us, the secrets you’ve helped us uncover, are invaluable. We may well be able to stop that future from happening, without you ever having to lift a single… paw.” The smile widened to a wry grin before he sobered again.

“But you don’t have to do anything else. Even as strong as you are, you’re no warrior – no leader,” he said, and Pandy barely flinched. It was true, after all. Augustus placed his hands on his desk and levered himself up, then held out his hands. “I just wanted you to know. So you can think about it – make a decision based on facts, aware that you have options. I never want you to feel that you were trapped, or forced into whatever you decide to do. I’ve taken away too many people’s choices, and I won’t do it to you as well.”

He drew in a long breath, closing his eyes briefly before his face settled again into his usual genial smile, and he said, “Now, may I return you to your room?” Pandy nodded, and he picked her up, cradling her as if she was something precious. And perhaps she was, to him. Did she dare to think that? Not that it mattered, because once he got to know her, it wouldn’t last, but she could enjoy it, just for a little while. And in the meantime, she wasn’t going to do anything hasty. After all, she had a festival to prepare for.