Chapter 2: Part 5 - Maille's Game

Roan’s fury was a tangible thing. As Vasha slogged after him through the snow, she half expected it to set off avalanches and landslides, to make the ground shake with his every footstep. In his view, they hadn’t just been tricked by Scholar Maille – they’d been betrayed.

Vasha wasn’t sure what to think. None of them had any reason to trust Maille, except Roan, but they didn’t have any reason to think she’d lied to them, either. Why would she have spoken to the Nth Degree, though, let alone given them completely different information about this ‘white rabbit’ they sought?

“Maille might have been throwing the asura off the scent,” Gull said as they reached the road again.

Trying to reason with Roan was futile. He growled, low in his throat, and stamped snow off his feet. “If she had a way to reach the Godspurs ahead of us, she should have shared it.”

“Yinn might have paid her to keep it secret,” Gull replied. “To level the playing field between the teams.”

“What about Belldron’s Guardholme, though?” Haki asked. His fingers were tangled in Frostpaw’s thick fur, as though they both needed reassurance. “Why was it empty?”

Gull didn’t immediately reply. “All right,” she conceded. “Something’s not right here. Let’s try not to decapitate the sylvari before we hear what she has to say, though.”

Given the way Roan thundered off down the road, Vasha had a feeling Gull’s advice had gone unheeded.

The road back to the Priory was still eerily empty, and they saw no-one until they were on its very doorstep. The main hall was quiet, populated only by the usual traders and a handful of scholars, who treated the Marauders as though they weren’t there. Roan ignored them in return, heading down the long ramp with the rest of the team trailing after him.

Vasha found Haki walking beside her. “Will you help us trap him, if this gets out of hand?” he asked, in a low voice.

Vasha looked up, startled. It sounded like Haki and Gull had agreed on something for once; if Roan attacked Maille, they’d have to restrain him. She nodded. She didn’t relish the prospect of going up against Roan, but the siblings were right: he wasn’t thinking clearly, and that meant the rest of the Marauders needed to do the thinking for him.

It was equally quiet at the bottom of the ramp, but one of the doors to the inner sanctum of the Priory was open. Roan made for it, charging down the stairs as though he expected someone to stop him at any moment. Vasha heard voices from below, but by the time she reached the bottom of the steps, Roan was moving again, leaving only a startled looking scholar scrambling out of his path.

They didn’t head for the kitchen this time but instead the cramped central library – and there was Maille, head down over a book held in both hands. She glanced up, half puzzled and half pleased to see them. “I didn’t expect you back so soon–”

Maille’s words were cut short as Roan ripped the book from her hands, snapping it closed and throwing it to the floor. Maille gaped at him, words failing her.

“You lied to us,” Roan snarled. He stepped closer to the sylvari, blocking her escape from the narrow aisle between the shelves – and blocking Vasha’s view of her. “There were no grawl, and let me guess – there’s no steam creature weapon, either.”

Vasha still couldn’t see Maille, but she could hear her. “Well, Roan. You’ve found me out. Took you long enough. That big furry head of yours doesn’t think too fast, does it?”

The malicious amusement in Maille’s voice took Vasha aback. The sylvari had teased Roan before, but this was something else. She sounded like a complete stranger.

“Where’s Maille?” Roan said, surprising Vasha once again. What was going on here?

The sylvari gave a low chuckle. “Oh, not so stupid after all. Didn’t work it out at our first meeting, though, did you?”

Vasha felt a shiver climb up her spine. This wasn’t Maille, the scholar Roan knew from his time in the Priory. It hadn’t even been her earlier in the day, except Roan hadn’t worked out she’d been replaced until now. Were they facing some kind of illusion – and what had happened to the real Maille?

“Where is she?” Roan pressed, sounding just about ready to bite the imposter’s head off.

“She’s safe,” the sylvari snapped, sounding irritated for the first time, “though your concern is insufferable. You seem determined to make my job difficult.”

“What job is that?” Gull asked, over the grinding of Roan’s teeth.

The sylvari tutted. “To keep this ludicrous game interesting, of course. Why do you think I had to hide the hunters at the Guardholme? They would have disproved my story about the grawl in a heartbeat, and I needed you to follow that lead as long as possible.”

Long enough for them to meet the Nth Degree, in other words, and set off this chain of events – events the sylvari clearly found much more appealing than them all running around in the snow.

The butterflies were Vasha’s first hint at what was coming. There was one perched on the shelf above her head; she didn’t even realise it was there until two more flitted past to join it. Even as she tried to focus on the conversation taking place in front of her, she couldn’t help seeing the gentle flutter of their wings from the corner of her eye – and the way their bright colours glimmered purple when they caught the light.

A mesmer’s illusion. It had to come from the fake Maille, but what was she up to? Was the illusion that concealed her true identity starting to slip?

Vasha realised, with a sudden sense of horror, that the butterflies signalled nothing of the sort. She tracked their movement as they took flight again, over the nearest shelf and down into the aisle on the other side – and saw a pair of eyes staring back at her through the books.

She gave a yelp of surprise, quickly stifled as she realised she was looking at none other than her own face, peering through the stacks at her. This was Maille’s game, then, even if Vasha couldn’t see the point in it. Whilst it was distinctly unsettling to see herself mirrored that way, there was no doubting it was anything but an illusion.

Except both Gull and Haki were now looking off in different directions, matching expressions of consternation on their faces. Vasha couldn’t see what they saw – more of fake-Maille’s illusions, no doubt. The sylvari was still arguing with Roan, but even the charr sounded distracted.

“She’s playing with us,” Vasha said, but her voice sounded thin. She wasn’t sure anyone heard her; in fact, by the time she’d finished the thought, she wasn’t even sure she’d spoken aloud.

She looked sideways again, but the illusory Vasha was gone, the aisle on the other side of the shelves empty. Vasha could hear footsteps, though, and when she looked up, the other version of herself stepped round the end of the stack and stopped right in front of her.

Vasha took an involuntary step backwards. She knew she was facing an illusion, and yet this new Vasha looked so real; would an outside observer be able to tell them apart? She had no way of knowing, when the rest of the Marauders were all staring elsewhere, lost in their own mental traps. Even Maille had fallen silent.

The illusion of herself was also looking off into the distance. With a jolt, Vasha realised the illusion looked different than she did now – younger, and dressed in scruffy town clothes rather than an adventurer’s leathers. This was the version of herself from the day she’d left Divinity’s Reach, carrying all her worldly possessions.

With another jolt, Vasha realised the illusion was crying. Clutched in her hands was a rumpled piece of paper, scavenged from the workshop of a bookbinder who’d left his back door open on a warm day, and written on in scratchy charcoal.

Jean. By the time you read this–

Vasha felt her chest constrict, tears pricking at her own eyes. She’d spent hours poring over that letter, and in the end, she hadn’t delivered it. She hadn’t been able to put into words how being around Jean and his family made her feel, how he was trying – without even realising it – to make her something she could never be. She’d realised just in time that the letter read like nothing more than a series of excuses for why she was running away, even if every one of them was justified.

But the pain, years later, was still so real. Vasha watched the illusion of herself, and remembered all too clearly how she’d cried all the way to the Lion’s Arch asura gate, how it had taken her three days to find a captain who’d hire her because she looked feverish and sick, though with nothing more than grief. She’d loved Jean so much, and without knowing what he was doing, he’d broken her heart.

Abruptly, anger surged in. How could Jean not understand what he’d asked of her? That awful dinner party with his family, the way he’d wanted her to dress and speak like them, even if he didn’t say it aloud. The whole thing had been a farce – and yet even now, with the benefit of hindsight, he hadn’t the faintest idea what he’d done.

Vasha swiped at the illusion and it vanished in a cloud of butterflies. Dispelling it seemed to bring her back to the room. There was a crash from one side, and raised voices from the other – Gull and Haki, reacting to their illusions far more violently than she had done. Roan and Maille were gone.

Another crash, then a creak as one of the huge shelves began to tilt sideways. Gull ducked out just before it fell, looking wide-eyed and frantic. “What happened?” she asked.

“We were mesmerised,” Vasha said, as Haki’s shouts in the other direction rose to a ragged scream. Gull cursed and took off after him, leaving the leaning shelf dropping books like snow sliding from a roof.

Vasha shook her head. A handful of petty illusions, and Maille, whoever she was, had played them all for fools. Had Roan managed to chase her, or was he locked in his own dream, as the rest of them had been? She hoped she never had to explain what illusion she’d seen. The norn sounded like they were fighting monsters; she’d been frozen simply by a glimpse of her own heartbroken past. There were tears still drying on her cheeks, she realised. How did Jean have the power to do that to her, even now?

There was a more important question to answer, though. They’d be able to find Roan; maybe they’d even find Maille, too. She wouldn’t cooperate, though, which left them in a dangerous situation. The clue she’d given them was a false trail, and she’d been their only lead. They had nothing left. How were they going to win the game now?