A Rafael Interlude
Rafael had been working hard these last few months. Certainly harder than he'd ever seen Larna Smith work, but that was a pretty low bar.
When he'd first been admitted to the Magic Tool Laboratory, it wasn't because of his talent, his ability, or the fact that he had any affinity and familiarity with magic tools. No, it was because the Magic Tool Department was where the weirdos, the oddballs, the embarrassments, the difficult to deal with, the Big Hat Logan wannabes, the terrifyingly Aldia-like, and the potential vessels of the paledrake were relegated.
Rafael had ended up there not because he chose it but because no other department would touch the Dark Magic research subject who'd put Katarina Claes in a comma, had turned out to be possessed by a Dark Spirit, turned out to have been a test subject for Dark Magic that had failed, and had turned on the woman who had raised him as her son, never mind she'd killed his mother to do it.
No one but Larna Smith.
Despite all the dung pies he threw at his former boss for her laziness and constantly throwing all her paperwork at him before she'd been demoted, he WAS grateful she'd taken a chance on him and welcomed him to her department. And as soon as the annoyance for DUMPING ALL OF HER PAPERWORK ON HIM ran out, he'd show it. Why, he'd even tell her so! It would happen any day now. Probably as early as next year.
It had been a LOT of paperwork.
Even so, he acknowledged that Larna smith was a woman of talent and ability. That was just self-evident. Speaking at a former Head Clerk of the Academy however, he knew that talent and ability were useless if it could be made to sit down and do something useful.
So after he'd gotten back from his short break assisting Maria rescue his mother and getting that huge corpse that used to be a woman cleaned up, he'd taken Charge of Larna Smith.
It was time to stop wasting her abilities. So he'd given her what she'd always wanted.
He locked her in their lab (figuratively of course, she was allowed to leave for food, calls of nature and going home), gave her a list of things to make, and a budget. He'd also made VERY clear that if she deviated from that list and started making whatever she felt like, she was paying for the materials and time from her own pocket. And that he knew how much the Ministry paid her, so if she started expending suspicious amount of money for a Ministry employee's salary, he'd have her audited.
Fortunately, that hadn't been necessary, as one of the things on the list was 'something that could kill an ogre in one shot', a project she had very strong feelings about. And when she got frustrated and distracted, well… suffice to say there were other ways to keep her motivated.
With Larna Smith, the departments most troublesome child, erratic wildcard and pain in the backstab dealt with for now, Rafael felt it was time to help his department. He was the vice-director after all, and their director couldn't safely leave the room– or even be unshackled from his desk– without getting lost, so dealing with other departments fell to him.
Despite being the Magic Tool Laboratory, and having the knowledge, resources, and capability to develop modern magic tools, most of what most of the department did was carrying out the menial tasks the other departments could be bothered with. Things like checking reports from local Ministry branches, filing documents, distributing supplies, and even maintaining and cleaning the building. As someone who started his tenure at the department by basically doing the tasks Larna couldn't be bothered with (which was nearly all of them), Rafael felt a sudden, all-encompassing sympathy with his fellow department workers and a strong and overwhelming desire to get the rest of the Ministry demoted back into newbies.
It was another legacy of Larna's founding of the department, not even all that long ago.
Larna had displayed extreme talent at a very young age, and achieved a considerable rank as a result. This, however, made a lot of people from other departments dislike her, something that Rafael could understand all too well. Which was why they forced all boring, trivial jobs onto her.
Rafael had raged as he had realized where that particular bad habit of Larna's had come from. It had been taught to her by her seniors in other departments treating her like that.
Larna, unlike him, had been so talented that she would just come up with a magic tool to get the job done, and as a result got more work thrown her way. The Magical Tool Laboratory may have been full of weird people, but they were brilliant weird people.
Eventually people started asking her for assistance not to annoy her, but because they knew that she would be able to help. Now she couldn't really refuse helping anyone anymore. And since the department had gotten its new vice-director, Rafael, a few years ago, its efficiency had increased even further, resulting in even more people asking for assistance.
Then everything changed when Rafael had come back engaged.
At first, everything had been business as usual. Souls had changed hands when the reveal of the engagement had come out, and they organized an impromptu party for him. There was a cake and drinks and everything!
The next day, the Biomagic department had sent a note complaining about their feed not being delivered.
Rafael had promptly drafted a counternote informing them that they had mistakenly sent their note to the Magic Tool Laboratory, who had nothing to do with such things as they, in fact, the Magic Tool Laboratory and had nothing to do with animal feed.
Another note soon came that the Magic Tool Laboratory was supposed to deliver the feed to the Biomagic department.
Rafael had against countered that as the Magic Tool Laboratory, they had nothing to do with animal feed delivery, but were willing to provide the Biomagic department with a magic tool to help them in carrying around animal feed for their department.
A while later, an irate Lord Hector Delius, Director of the Biomagic Department, came down to complain that their animal feed still hadn't been delivered.
A calm Rafael Walt had listened to his complaints.
"My, that sounds serious," Rafael had said. "You should probably do something about that. Those animals could starve, after all."
"Which is why I'm telling you to deliver the animal feed!" Delius had said. "My poor Elizabeth is going to waste away!"
"Oh dear," Rafael had said. "Still, I don't understand why you're wasting time around here. This is the Magic Tool Laboratory. We study and develop magic tools. If you want, we can provide you with a magic tool to making moving the feed around easier. It's the least we can do."
Delius had boggled at him. "But delivering the feed is your job!" he said.
"What a silly thing to say," Rafael had said, doing a perfect– read, perfectly annoying– lighthearted Larna Smith impersonation. "We're the Magic Tool Laboratory. We research, develop, test, and maintain magic tools. I don't' know who told you such a thing, but they were obviously pulling a prank on you."
It was at this point Director Delius realized he was talking to a mere vice-director. "I want to speak to your director," he had said.
"He's busy," Rafael had said.
"He's right there!" Delius had said, pointing behind Rafael to the round, pen-like desk in the middle of the office space where Director Hart was chained up.
"He's busy being right there and doing the paperwork," Rafael had said. "Pay allocations, leave requests… you know how important those are." He pulled out a sealed letter. "He asked me to take care of all inter-departmental matters for the rest of the week so he could focus on the very important work he's doing. Was there anything else you needed?"
Delius had opened his mouth and paused, seeming to notice for the first time that the Magic Tool Laboratory's office space was empty. "Where is everyone?" he had asked in confusion.
"Magic Tool storage warehouse," Rafael had said. "Everyone is busy working with magic tools, as our department is supposed to. Right now they're recataloging and documenting everything. Apparently something has been keeping people from being able to do their jobs in recent years, and so things have been left undone."
Delius had given him an outraged look. "Things would never have come to this when Larna Smith was in charge!" he had declared.
Rafael had showed his teeth. It might have looked like a smile to Katarina Claes. "Do you need anything else, Director Delius?" he had said.
"Yes, we need out animal feed delivered!" Delius had said.
To his surprise, Rafael had nodded. "Yes, I see… As I recall, your department has just gotten a batch of new recruits from the Academy, right? Lots of bright, young minds too inexperienced to know what to do and still not trusted enough to do paperwork? With functional arms and legs for carrying?"
Rafael's show of teeth had gotten wider. "Send someone down here and we'll teach them how to use this convenient magic tool for carrying heavy things around that coincidentally is just right for moving animal feed. Not that we have anything to do with animal feed around here. This is the Magic Tool Laboratory, after all."
Director Delius had stormed out at that point, leaving Rafael to his paperwork.
"Are we going to get in trouble for this?" Director Hart had said behind him.
"How could the Magic Tool Laboratory get in trouble for doing what it's supposed to and focusing on magic tools?" Rafael had said innocently.
That had been months ago.
Now, as Rafael returned home after a long day of work– and it still gave him a warm thrill to think of it as home, never mind it had technically been his house for years– he mentally catalogued their progress the carriage rolled along, this time with an actually driver instead of whatever it was that drove it when Maria rode. They'd had to throttle back on such an extreme 'work strike'-like move against the whole Ministry, but overall he could say they were making progress on drawing the line that the Magic Tool Laboratory did magic tools, not the dung pies everyone all wanted to foist off on them. While many departments still came to them with problems, it was with the understanding this was a favor the other department had to pay back, the same as with any other department. Nowadays, the other department had finally understood and sent their new recruits to learn how to operate the magic tools that had been developed for heaving lifting and getting packages around.
A lot of people in the department were glad at the end of the decline that had seemingly slowly turned them into the Handyman Laboratory. Not to say they weren't doing work anymore. The magic tools that Larna had made of the years really had needed to be properly catalogued and recorded. People had been assigned to find potential uses for them, and some had been taught how to replicate those that they knew to be useful, as well as maintain the ones already in use.
People also had started talking about him behind his back, and he'd kept hearing the phrase 'the shadow director of the laboratory'. Unlike his fiancée, he'd understood who they were talking about.
Well, so be it. He'd spent years using Dark Magic to be some sort of hidden puppet master, he might as well put that experience to good use.
The carriage eventually reached home.
Maria stood there waiting for him with a smile. All around there were the sounds of organized chaos. Children playing, factory workers closing up for the night and leaving, the women she'd rescued and taken in doing chores or just enjoying their freedom by playing with the children. And she stood at the center of it all, making everything around her better, yet not seeing it.
He stepped forward to meet her, to hold her, and she accepted his embrace
"Welcome home, Rafael," she said.
He leaned down and smelled her hair. There was sweat, the smoky smell of the ignited black powder, cured leather, that soap she used to clean her clothes… and underneath that, the warm, rich scent that was her.
His resistance to the idea of ravishing and being ravished was chipped away just a little bit more. Surely he'd waited long enough, right? Right? Little Rafael certainly seemed to think so.
But not yet. Not until he'd done something to be worthy of her.
"I'm home," he said. He leaned back, feeling his own smile at he faced her. "So, anything happen today?"
"Lady Hunt and the princes finally realized Katarina was home," she said. "So I shall have to remind the children what they're doing is a bad example and not how you're supposed to court someone. Oh, and I have decided to take on a squire."
Rafael nodded, then paused. "What?"
"A squire," Maria repeated, smiling impishly. She would never admit to it, but she could be very mischievous, despite how proper she tried to be. "Someone who wishes to be a knight."
"Anyone I know?" Rafael said.
"Yes," she said frustratingly, and left it at that. "I must speak to their parents first however, and see if I have their approval."
"You'll get it," Rafael said. A knight taught by Maria? Now that would be something to see. "It's you."
"You're too kind," Maria said. "Ravish me before dinner?"
"No."
"After, then?"
"No."
"You are not taking advantage of our engagement as you should, my dear fiancée," she chided him.
"It's not about taking advantage," he said loftily. "It's about loving you."
Aha! Red! She was blushing.
Her hands met his and fingers entwined. Together, they stepped inside the manor he had lived in for years but had only become home when she had taken it.
He was home.