Riddle of Fate Read Free

she said, waving him away.
    He held up both hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean any offence.” He was still grinning as he walked away.
    She wanted nothing more than to forget she ever suggested she might have two abilities. Two abilities? Ridiculous. She immersed herself in the document in front of her, reading it carefully.
    She was surprised to find the light outside fading when she looked up. Peater appeared from behind the nearest bookcase. “Khaya, in my office, please.”
    She traipsed after him, wondering if this was going to be yet another lecture on how they needed her to have a foretelling more frequently. Didn’t they understand that it didn’t work that way?
    He held the heavy oak door open for her and she walked into the stuffy room to find two blank faced men sitting at the long desk. “Sit, Khaya,” Peater said, motioning to a chair at the head of the table as he took a seat at the opposite end.
    “Have I done something wrong?” she asked. Determined to keep an outward appearance of calm, she clenched her hands into fists below the table. 
    “Not at all, dear,” the man to the right of her said. His bald head shone in the lantern light that filled the room. His sharp nose gave him a predatory look. He folded his hands on the table, his fingers interlocking. “We have determined that you repaired Leena’s typewriter earlier today.”
    “I don’t think I fixed it. Except if perhaps when I picked it up and set it back down, it somehow corrected whatever was wrong.”
    “Oh, I think you know it was more than that,” the bald man said. “I apologise, how rude of me, I haven’t introduced my colleague or myself. This is Roald and I am Phalio. We work in acquisitions. So, when I said that we have determined that you repaired that machine, you can trust me on that.
    “This is a first, though. We have never before been called to carry out a classification and identification within the Company. You are a first. At least in our lifetime you are.” He put his hands together as if in prayer, resting his chin on the tip of his fingers.”
    “What do you mean ‘I am a first’?”
    “You're a clever girl,” Roald said. “I'm sure you are now being coy with us. It would seem, Miss Pherela, that you have two abilities.” His head cocked to the left.
    “What do you mean by classification and identification?” Khaya asked.
    “When someone uses magic, it leaves an identifier –”
    “I’ve worked in this building for the last four years and never seen any marks left by any of my colleagues, or myself for that matter.”
    A cold smile spread Phalio’s lips. “It cannot be seen by the naked eye, but it is there. We use specialised equipment to detect it. It tells us who performed the magic and how long ago.”
    “Like a fingerprint?” she asked.
    “Nothing as crude as that. And of course, it's of natural origin,” Roald sniffed, “but yes. It is a unique identifier. No two people leave the same mark.”
    “As people with two abilities are such a rarity,” Peater said, “you must understand that this is a delicate situation. We want to investigate before anyone outside this room is told. You haven’t spoken to anyone about this, have you?”
    “Well, Leena arrived as it happened, I suppose, but we did not talk about it.” She had told Merrit, of course, but something warned her that was best kept to herself. He hadn’t even believed her anyway. What difference could it make?
    “No one else?” Phalio asked, his eyes probing and his mouth a thin white line.
    “No one.”
    He continued to study her face a moment before nodding. “Good. We’ll need to run some tests on you tomorrow.”
    Peater ushered her out of the room and escorted her back to her desk. “You didn’t know about this before, did you?” he whispered, leaning closer to her. “Because, that would make me look pretty incompetent, having you under my nose for so long and not finding out.”
    “I didn’t know.”