The car door slammed behind Lola, and she stepped out and onto the pavement, raising a hand to brush her hair out of her face as she gazed up at the green and gold sign hanging above the shop’s entrance, which read: Perfect Fit Tailors. Danae walked up to her side, her crows following her.
As they entered the shop, the peaceful calm of the unfolding storm outside gave way to a scene of pure chaos. The shop was crowded to the brim, people rushing everywhere. Several people were comforting a crying woman in another corner- one of the older aunts, Lola was pretty sure. A small map had been hastily hung in another corner, and a group of people was crowded around it, gesturing in different places and bickering. It was a bit… overwhelming, to say the least.
At least, in all the chaos, nobody seemed to be too bothered by Danae’s crows, which were perched on both of her shoulders. Lola scanned the crowd, looking for Cato.
“Lola!” She turned to see two teenage girls rushing up to her. The taller girl had on a blue, sigil-embroidered hijab, and was twisting a small piece of fabric in her hands. Lola had to do a double take when she saw the other girl, who looked exactly like a miniature version of Cato, albeit with pink glasses. Both of them had the distinctive curving Silkspinner tattoo on their cheek, shining faintly silver in the light. Each clan had its own design, given to a mage when they came of age at 16. The tattoos were magical, of course, and were invisible to people unfamiliar with the Vers Ibrae.
The two girls waved hello at them. It was Basira and Camilla- two of Cato’s cousins.
Camilla pointed at Danae. “Who’s that?” she asked bluntly. Camilla didn’t believe in small talk.
Lola shared a glance with Danae. The Crow Queen stepped forward slightly and said, with a tilt of her head, “My name is Danae. I am Lola’s… friend. We heard the news and thought perhaps we could help.”
Basira nodded in approval. “It’s good that you’re here, then. We need all the help we can get.”
“Where would be the best place for us to go and help?” Lola asked.
Both girls shared a glance, and Basira hummed thoughtfully before pointing at one of the people standing by the map. “You should go talk to Uncle Ahmed, he’s been in charge of most of the organizing. He’d probably know which group needs the most help.”
Camilla added, “I’ll go find Cato and let him know you’re here!”
Lola smiled at both of them. “Thank you so much.”
“Of course,” said Basira. “You’ve been a good friend to our clan, I’m glad you’re here.”
Together, Danae and Lola made their way over to the corner of the room with the map in it. Uncle Ahmed was a tall, aging man with a salt-and-pepper beard and piercing eyes. He was one of their clan’s top talisman designers, and Lola had seen him in passing before at the shop.
He was in the middle of a heated conversation with another older man as they approached, gesturing with his hands at different parts of the map. The other man nodded and left, calling to a few others as he went. Uncle Ahmed let out a sigh and turned to them.
Lola gave a small wave. “Hey, uh, sorry to bother you, but Basira said we should check in with you?”
“Are you here to help with the search?”
Lola and Danae both nodded. “Where would it be best for us to go?” Lola asked.
Uncle Ahmed stroked his beard thoughtfully. “You’re Cato’s friend, right?” Lola nodded. “Why don’t you go join his group? They could use a few extra hands. You’ll find ‘em in the back room, with the big map.”
Lola resisted the urge to salute. “Sounds good.” She turned to Danae. “Come on, let’s go.”
Danae nodded, and Lola led them through the crowd of people to the back room. As she was entering, she was looking back over her shoulder at Danae, and so she didn’t notice the other person coming through the doorway until she bumped into them at the last second. She whipped her head around. “Sorry!” Then her brain caught up to what her eyes were seeing. “Cato?”
It was Cato, and apparently he recognized her too because he grinned, although his expression was tight. “Lola! You made it.” He was wearing a black t-shirt, dark jeans, and a gold hoop earring in each ear. Cato’s eyes swept back to Danae. “And… is that Danae?” Lola nodded, and Danae raised a hand in greeting. “Camilla said you were here, and I was just about to go find you.”
“Your Uncle Ahmed sent us back to help out with your group,” Lola said.
“Oh, perfect, then. Here, come with me.” Cato gestured for them to follow, and together the three of them went through the door into the back room.
The back room was ordinarily used for storage. The walls were lined with shelves filled with large bolts of fabric and stacks of various trimmings and decorations. Dozens of spools of thread on pegs hung in a rainbow on one wall, and normally the floor space was taken up by dressforms, mannequins, and old sewing machines in need of repair. All that had been pushed aside, however, and instead… Lola gasped as she took it in.
A massive, holographic map of Shrikeport covered the center of the floor, the tallest skyscrapers rising up to Lola’s waist. It was like someone had taken a bird’s eye view of the city and transplanted it into the Salhi’s back room. “Wow,” she breathed, glancing at Cato in awe. “This is incredible. Did you make this?”
Cato scratched at his neck, looking embarrassed at her praise. “Me and a few others,” he said modestly. Two other mages were standing around the map, both of them holding walkie-talkies or talking on the phone.
All of a sudden, one of the walkie-talkies beeped. Lola didn’t catch what the person on the other end said, but the mage who was holding it picked up one of the marble-sized tokens laying on the back table, made a complicated hand gesture with it, and tossed the token towards the map’s representation of Shrikeport’s center square in the downtown area. The whole area flashed, and began to glow red.
Now that Lola was looking closer, she saw that the whole map was color-coded. About a fourth of it was red, and the rest was a pale blue. Little arrows hovered above different parts of the city, each colored differently as well. As Lola watched, another mage reached down through the semi-transparent buildings, the map flickering around their hand, and adjusted one of the marble tokens laying on the ground. As they drew their hand back, the arrow hovering over that section of the map split into three new arrows, which each moved to a different, new part of the map several blocks away. The area where the arrow had been hovering originally turned red.
Cato saw the two of them watching in fascination, and explained, “Each arrow represents one of our groups searching the city, and the red areas represent places we’ve searched and found nothing. Each group is supposed to call us whenever they move on from a block, and in turn we adjust the map and direct their movements for maximum efficiency.”
“That’s incredible.” Lola said, slightly in awe. All these years, and she was still impressed by every new use of magic she saw.
Danae frowned. “Why not just send out a city-wide searching talisman? Why do it all on foot?”
Cato shook his head. “We tried that initially. The talisman came back deactivated, meaning whoever kidnapped-” his voice broke slightly, “-whoever kidnapped my sister, they’ve protected themselves against any kind of overarching, wide-scale searching talisman like that. But spells like that take a lot of power, so they probably only have the one. And that kind of ward doesn't protect against small-scale talismans that can only search, say, one block or so.”
“I see. That’s quite clever.” Danae said approvingly.
“So what do you need our help for?” Lola asked.
Cato gestured to the back table, where dozens of walkie-talkies and phones were laid out. As they watched, two phones started ringing at once, and one walkie-talkie beeped. “We need help managing all the messages coming in. Right now, there’s so few of us that we all have to take the calls, but it would be a lot more efficient if we could have just a few people relaying the messages so that the rest of us could focus on adjusting the map and planning where to send everyone.”
He sighed, looking a little frustrated. “It would be a lot easier if we could just use communication spells, but what with us running the map and them running the searching spells, none of us have enough power for that.”
“Well, Danae and I can certainly help with taking the calls. Right, Danae?”
She nodded. “I can also send my crows out to keep an eye on the different groups of searchers.”
Cato looked at the crows again, a new appreciation in his eyes. “That would be great.”
Together, the three of them walked to the back of the room. Cato quickly introduced them to the other mages, and Lola demonstrated to Danae how to use the walkie-talkies and accept calls on the cell phones. She pulled up a chair and settled in.
It was going to be a long evening.
