Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

Rae keeps smiling when the door closes behind me.

The room is the same as before. A wide desk, two shelves, and a high window facing an inner part of the Academy. Nothing here looks staged for an ambush, which only makes Rahul Sharma’s presence more uncomfortable.

The assistant sets his chair beside the desk and steps back. Rahul leans the glass cane against the side of the chair, both hands resting on the handle.

Rae gestures at the chair across from him. "Sit down, Dryden."

I stay standing a few seconds. "You looked happier before I came in."

"I asked you to come."

"Rahul asked."

His smile loses some of its width. "I arranged the meeting."

I sit.

Rahul watches the exchange without stepping in. His assistant stays by the wall, motionless, as if she didn’t exist. She’ll remember every word of this later, a living notepad for the man who pays her.

Rae folds his hands on the desk. "You asked me for a favor."

"I must have."

"And you left one condition very clear. If I found something useful about your father, you’d consider helping me again against Dean."

"You said it well. ’Consider.’"

"That’s exactly what I said."

He seems pleased to repeat my own terms back to me, as if that were already a victory.

Rae found something. That much is clear. The problem is calculating how much work it actually took. At this point in the timeline, he must already have some contact with the Deepwarden, however small. A middleman, an informant, maybe someone who doesn’t even know who they’re working for.

For him, searching for Alden Sands inside records tied to the Deepwarden was probably less investigation and more a request for access.

"So talk," I say.

Rae leans forward. "I found information on Alden Sands."

I give him nothing. No question. No change in my face.

He waits a little before continuing. "It was harder than you imagine."

’Probably not.’

"But I didn’t want to bring you a rumor or an incomplete location. That’s why I relied on Mr. Sharma’s help."

I look at Rahul.

He answers with a small nod, polite, as if Rae had just introduced him at a dinner party.

"His involvement let us prepare a bigger surprise," Rae says.

"Surprises in Thirstfall tend to be expensive."

"Depends who’s receiving them."

Rae wants me to ask. He wants to see haste, curiosity, some crack he can turn into leverage.

I already know enough about Alden.

I know the name of the facility. I know the sector. I know who’s holding him. What I still don’t know is how to get in, how to get out, and how many human monsters will be waiting between the two.

None of that is written in Rae’s smile.

"You’ve wasted enough time on the entrance," I say. "Get to the point."

His eyes narrow a little. "You already know."

The silence changes the air in the room. Rahul doesn’t move. Rae keeps watching me, hunting for the first reaction that slips.

"Know what?"

"You already know where your father is."

That’s more useful. Not the sentence. Its reach.

If he knows that I know, then Garen’s search left tracks. Maybe not enough to reach the answer, but enough for Rahul’s informants to notice that a king was looking for a missing man.

And unlike Rae, Rahul already has firm roots in the Deepwarden at this point in the timeline.

Which means the question about Alden didn’t only travel to Veridian.

Someone there could have answered by looking back.

Rahul speaks for the first time since we came in. "A king can hardly ask discreet questions, Mr. Sands. Even when he picks men he trusts, there are payments, movements, archive requests, small favors. Isolated, they mean nothing. Together, they form an intention."

"Your informants saw the intention."

"Let’s say they saw part of it."

"And of course, they told you."

"They’re paid for it, after all."

The answer comes clean, with no open pride. Rahul doesn’t need to display the size of the net. We’re sitting inside it.

"Why do you care?" I ask.

Rahul runs his thumb over the cane’s handle. "About your father?"

"About me."

Rae shifts in his chair, maybe bothered by the conversation slipping out of his hands.

Rahul takes his time. "Young men look for power for many reasons. Ambition, fear, vanity. Family tends to produce more lasting decisions."

"That doesn’t answer it."

"Think again, Mr. Sands. It answers part of it."

"Then finish."

He studies me with a different kind of attention. Less political. Older.

"My father entered Thirstfall while I still believed men like him always came home."

The cadence of his voice doesn’t change, but his hand on the cane tightens a little, grows restless.

"He didn’t come back. For years, I treated that absence as the origin of everything I lost. Later I understood it was also the origin of everything I built."

Rahul looks at his own hand.

"I learned early that waiting for another man’s protection was a slow way to die. I built contacts. Structures. People who answered when I called. I became someone who didn’t have to wait."

There’s pride there, but there’s something else buried under it, something I can’t read yet.

"It worked," I say.

"It worked."

"And was it worth it?"

Rahul lifts his eyes to me.

The question finds something inside him. Not enough to break him, but enough to strip a little of the automatic elegance from the answer.

"Worth is an unstable measure."

"Convenient."

"You know I like convenience. But in its way, an honest one."

I lean forward. "If you’d known where your father was, would you have let someone else decide when you could go get him?"

Rae looks at me.

Rahul doesn’t answer right away.

The room goes quiet for a few seconds, and that’s when I understand. I’ve touched the real reason. Rahul isn’t only interested in information or a wager. Some part of him looks at me and sees a choice he never had.

It’s personal. A choice he pretends not to want anymore.

Rae cuts in before the silence produces something outside his control. "Alden Sands is in Veridian," he says. "In a Deepwarden base called Deep Asylum, Sector 4. I know the shifts and the movements."

I settle back in the chair.

That’s it.

Rae studies my face, waiting for the impact he imagined the whole way to this room.

"Then you also know you’re wasting your time," I say. "You’re not giving me anything new."

His smile vanishes. "There’s still one thing you don’t know."

"I know all of it."

"How?"

"Telling you isn’t part of the favor."

Rae opens his mouth to finish the information, but I’m already standing.

They know I have the location. They have no idea I pulled the shifts and the movements with Memory of Lightwaves while I was back on Earth.

I adjust my clothes and look only at Rahul. "Excuse me, Mr. Sharma. I have other things to do."

I don’t offer Rae the same courtesy.

I take a step toward the door.

The glass cane touches the floor.

The sound is small. What comes after it isn’t.

The air in the room turns heavy. My shoulders lock before I order them to. Rahul’s energy doesn’t explode; it spreads through the space with precision, filling every corner, reminding my body of the difference between our Ranks.

I stop.

Rahul is still seated, serene, the cane resting on the floor.

"Rae opened this conversation with information you already had," he says. "That was disappointing for all of us."

Rae doesn’t like the line.

Rahul continues. "But I didn’t come to the Academy to confirm an address, Mr. Sands. Nor did I bring my assistant to this room to watch an exchange of old resentments."

I turn only my face. "What do you want, Mr. Sharma?"

Rahul lifts the cane from the floor and leans it against the chair again.

The pressure eases, but it doesn’t fully disappear.

"I have a proposal for you."

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