At first, all Max heard was indistinct voices talking, but it gradually resolved itself into one voice, which didn’t sound like anyone he had heard before.
“Ah, you’re awake, Young Master.” The voice of an old man addressed him as he blinked his eyes, his tone walking a tightrope between formality and personal concern. “I should scold you for your recklessness, but more than anything, I’m relieved to see you’re still alive after such a stunt. I don’t know how I would ever face your father if anything happened to you…”
“My father…” Max looked up into a face that was no more familiar to him than the voice. An older man, slightly jowly with a narrow, short-cropped moustache, as salt-and-pepper as his curly mid-length hair. Hazel eyes gazing down upon him in nigh-parental concern. “Who are you?”
“Who am I?” He blinked as Max sat up in a large, four-poster bed, seeing the man who addressed him was wearing a dark grey suit with a stiff collar, but, much to his relief, no apparent weapons. “I have only served your family since before you were born, you’ve known me since childhood. How could you forget your own butler, Sebastian?”
“Sebastian?…” Max tried to wrap his head around that name, even as he focused on his surroundings. Which appeared to be a bedroom of some sort, arranged with an assortment of expensive-looking furniture and decorations. The walls the same red-orange stone as the rest of the city of Alta, the window nearby offering a sweeping view of it outside. In sharp contrast to the grim, quake-damaged courtyard which was the last thing he remembered before… “My sword!”
Max started checking his person frantically as it all came back to him.
“Sword?” Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “I thought they already removed all the weapons from the Collection the first time…”
“My laser sword,” Max explained, finding it nowhere, much as he feared. “That man took it, didn’t he?”
“Laser sword?” Sebastian frowned. “What are you talking about? Oh dear, Young Master. Confusing your escape attempts for one of those adventure novels, they must have hit you really hard this time…”
“Do you know who those men were?” Max demanded, noticing that his laser sword wasn’t the only thing missing; clearly he had been searched. Much to his surprise, though, he still had his teal backup blade in its boot sheath. The only conclusion he could draw was that his captors never expected him to have a second energy blade, given how rare they were in most realms. “Why did they attack me?”
Deciding for now to keep his undiscovered weapon a secret, even from this Sebastian, until he knew who he was dealing with, and what was going on around here.
“Because they work for Mr Freedan, of course, of course…” the old butler paused again. “But you should know all of this already… What’s happened to you, Young Master? You are not acting like yourself.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
“Because I’m your butler, of course.”
“What’s a butler?”
“What did they do to you?” Sebastian stepped back, eying Max with visible alarm and dismay. “You don’t even talk like Maximilian…”
“Maxa-who?” Max cocked his head, beginning to wonder if perhaps that name held some clue to understanding his situation. “And why do people keep calling me that? My name is Max.”
“What manner of devilry is this?” Sebastian continued to stare at him all the while. “You look so much like him, it’s scary. But your personality, your manner of speech, and that headband… If you’re not Maximilian, then who are you?”
“I already told you: I’m Max.” Seeing the perplexed look on Sebastian’s face, it dawned on him that perhaps he was not explaining himself very well. “You see, I’m not from Alta. I came here with my friends yesterday. I was in the market, when I saw this weird flying thing—”
“The glider?” Sebastian pressed.
“Is that what it’s called?”
“That’s what Maximilian called it,” the butler explained, “part of the family collection. But I thought I talked him out of it. It was far too dangerous, even more than his childish suggestion of tying sheets together into ropes like in some fairytale… I don’t even know if that thing worked back when his great grandfather purchased it. I was a fool. I should have known you— he— would do it anyway, after his other escapes failed. But what were you saying?”
“Oh, um… glider…” Max was still a little off from the stun blast. “Oh yeah! It was flying over everybody, so I decided to see where it was going. I ran and ran, and then I got lost in one of those areas that’s still wrecked.”
“Did you see him?” Anxiety written all over his face. “Did you see Maximilian?”
“I don’t know,” Max admitted. “I didn’t really get a good look at him, and he was wearing a hood. I saw somebody inside one of the buildings, but then those guys showed up and attacked me.”
“I see,” Sebastian concluded, “so they thought you were him.”
“Do I really look that much like him?”
“The resemblance is most uncanny, Young Master,” Sebastian assured him.
“You don’t have to call me that,” Max reminded him.
“Oh, I suppose you do have a point… Max.” His sheepish expression nearly making Max laugh in spite of himself. Then his face took a turn for sober, as if remembering something important. “Then again, it might be a good idea, after all. If they find out you aren’t the real Maximilian, I don’t trust them to just let you go, not with that man in charge. It might be for the best to keep pretending.”
“What do they want from me?” Max thought for a moment, then rephrased the question: “From him?”
“Control, I would imagine,” Sebastian sighed, shaking his head, “of the family, of the company… But for now, though, they pretend to be ‘guarding’ you while your father is missing.”
“Father?” Max intoned, quietly wishing he hadn’t brought it up again.
“Yes, Young Master, he’s been missing for nearly a week now,” the butler explained. “That’s when this whole mess began. I suppose, though, that it really all began with that quake two years ago, but things became even worse when he disappeared. I fear Master Percival picked the wrong man for the job…”
“What do you mean?” Max asked.
“Well, you see…”
Sebastian trailed off at the sound of at least a dozen footsteps out in the hall. Slipping up quietly, Max opened the ornate wooden door a crack, peering outside. Though he recognized no one specific, he was still pretty sure they were the same crew that accosted him before.
All of them carrying boxes and crates and other assorted items from a stairway at one end of the hall, and around a corner at the other end.
“What are they doing?” Max whispered.
“Clearing out the tower, they said,” Sebastian told him, gesturing for him to come back away from the door. “After that glider stunt, I would suspect they don’t want you using anything else up there in another escape attempt. And I have to admit I am somewhat relieved, in a way. Watching that thing take off…”
“But what now?” was all Max really wanted to know. Though relieved to still be armed, he could see that he was considerably outnumbered out there. And increasingly certain there were more of them on the levels below. For now, he concluded, it might just be wise to go on impersonating this other Max.
“For now, you should probably lay low,” Sebastian recommended. “Even once those men are gone, they will still be patrolling the ways in and out of the manor. As the sole heir of the family, I don’t think they will go any further than capturing you, but I worry about how this may go if Master Percival doesn’t return soon. They wouldn’t dare do something like this while he was around, but it doesn’t look like they recognize his son’s authority. That bothers me deeply.”
“You’re really worried about him, aren’t you?” Max was fast beginning to regret his suspicions of what might well be his only ally in this place. Especially since his concern came across as genuine.
“Yes, both of them,” he replied. “As selfish as this sounds, the other reason I would like for you to continue being the Young Master is because as long as you’re here…”
“They won’t be looking for him out there.” Max nodded, walking over to the window and gazing out from his luxurious new prison. “I understand. But I still need a way to tell my friends what happened to me. They must be getting worried by now.”
“You have a point,” Sebastian conceded. “Unfortunately, our situation is practically house arrest, and I fear young Maximilian may have gone and done something rather rash.”
“My friends could be of help.” As uncomfortable as Max felt about dragging them into this, he was fast beginning to understand that his own resemblance to this Maximilian had already gotten them all in too deep to just walk away. “And they won’t give up until they find me. If they go around asking about me, they might give away your friend to those guys. And if my friends found him…”
“I don’t think they will,” Sebastian cautioned him, “not where he’s going.”
“What do you mean by that?” Max asked, already not liking the sound of it already.
Looking down from Maximilian’s room, he could see at least one hundred feet of sheer stone wall stretching down to the courtyard below. The stones too tightly fitted for reliable climbing, not a single window on any level close enough together in any direction to move between floors. It would take a ninja, as Shades would probably say, though he couldn’t help thinking of Justin’s crossbow grapple right about now.
“Well, it has a lot to do with where I think he’s going,” Sebastian explained. “Since I fear we shall be here a long while, I will brew up some tea, and tell you the whole story.”
Author's Chapter Notes:
out of character
