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((Triple Wednesday -- Page 1 of 3))
‘That is exactly what I am thinking, yes,’ said Garovel. ‘If Hector can find a good opening, he might not even have to get very close to Leo in the first place. Assuming that Roman is just a frozen head or brain at the moment, then Hector could use materialization to punt Roman over to himself like a kickball.’

‘And then we all escape without ever being noticed?’ said Voreese.

‘Ideally.’

‘Yeah, sure, sounds great. In theory.’

‘Yes. In theory.’

Hector might have said the same thing, if not for the howl of the wind rushing past.

The reapers continued to strategize for the length of the journey, and Hector mostly just listened while occasionally sharing his thoughts with Garovel. The consensus seemed to be that it would be best if Leo never even noticed they were there in the first place, but that was also where the main concern lay. If, for whatever reason, Leo did notice Hector, what the hell was he going to do?

They came up with a few different plans for that, though neither of the reapers sounded terrifically confident in them. Part of the reason for that was probably because of how little they actually knew about Leo. None of them had ever even met the guy, so it was hard to guess how he would react to any hypothetical situation.

They did know that he hadn’t permanently harmed any of the Rainlords, however. And that was important, Hector felt. Leo had gone through a fair amount of trouble to make sure that the non-servants were taken care of during their captivity. Even some who were servants, like Marcos Elroy, had not been harmed. Though, perhaps Leo simply couldn’t tell that Marcos was a servant just by looking at him. The boy was extremely young and probably hadn’t participated in the fighting, after all.

All in all, that spoke quite a bit about Leo’s character, Hector thought, when it probably would’ve been so much easier to just kill them.

Unless, of course, Leo knew that Sai-hee would want them all alive for some reason.

Bah.

Best not to assume too much, Hector supposed. If nothing else, though, at least he could take mild comfort in the fact that he wasn’t dealing with another one of those maniacs from Abolish.

When they finally made it back to Capaporo again, Hector eased to a stop near the narrow staircase that led down into the city and looked over the enormous pit again. “Can either of you sense Roman’s location yet?”

‘If he’s really just a brain right now, then it’ll be tougher to sense his soul,’ said Voreese. ‘But he should be closer to the bottom of the pit, at least.’

Hector took the staircase, trying to keep a brisk pace as he looked for the same path downward that they’d used earlier. “Why would his soul be more difficult to sense? Is there, like, less of it or something?”