"I've seen it, let's just go."

"-proud of you, I know that wasn't easy."

Scyelen ducks her head and smiles, but there's a strain to it.

"I think the hard part is still to come," she murmurs. "The carriages are this way."

He's probably already seen where the carriages are. Scyelen finds a driver and signs a form and then they're off.

Raafi settles in and tries, not very successfully, to calm himself down. "Do you know what you're going to do?"

Scyelen shakes her head.

"I should be able to get an audience with the Count. Technically, Vallière outranks Mott. It'd be a breach of protocol to ignore us. After that... I don't know."

He nods, and spends a minute in thought, cursing softly when he's done. "I don't see a better way than buying her back - not to get it done quickly. We'll need to stop him from doing it again, too, but that'll take longer, unless we get very lucky."

"I don't think I can actually afford an entire maid contract... but even if I can, what he did is legal. Even if we get Siesta back, that won't change..."

"I know," he says, tersely. "But if everyone knows that working for the school means this could happen to them..."

"...then what? The school typically doesn't trade contracts, but it's not that they couldn't."

"The girl who told me Siesta'd been taken was surprised. You were surprised. If it's known that they do sell contracts nobody will come and work for them, and if they want workers they'll have to stop."

"I, um, I don't think that's true? Contract trading isn't rare enough for that to be true."

He curses quietly, something about godlessness. "Okay. That'll - I'll - this isn't a good angle on it. We'll worry about the bigger picture later. If you can't buy her - I can probably overpower him, but that should be a last resort. The other option is - be sneaky, get her alone and get her out, let him think she ran off. We'll have to find a way to hide her, afterward."

Scyelen blanches.

"That'd, they'd go after her next of kin for the contract price. Probably bankrupt them. She'd never forgive us."

Fidget.

"Overpowering him... might work but the Count would... He'd have to retaliate. We'd... start a feud between houses. A small war."

"How sure are you that we can't buy her? How much is the contract worth?"

"It varies by term of service and a bunch of other things. But I also don't know how much of my family's money I can get away with spending."

"I might be able to afford her. Depends on how much she costs. And how you value what I've got - gemstones, mostly."

"I'm not sure. He might take gemstones. If he's willing to sell in the first place. It sounded like he already overpaid for her, though. Like he wanted her more than her... equivalent monetary value."

"And we're in a bad position for haggling. Do you know anything else about him? Or how we could find out?"

"...probably should've asked the headmaster more questions," Scyelen points out shyly.

"-mm. We can go back for it once we get there if we don't think of anything. The other thing I've got is - make him think she's died, possibly because she has, and I can bring her back if need be. That's expensive too, and not good for her at all, but it gets her out cleanly."

"Except... they'd still take her contract price out of her family, if she died."

Scyelen looks down at her hands.

"Maybe we should just ask to talk to her, to say goodbye. I mean, we'll miss her if she doesn't come back, but, we don't know what Mott wants with her. Maybe he'll treat her okay."

"-no, sweetheart. That's not - we already know better."

Scyelen stares at him blankly.

"I'm pretty sure he bought her for sex. That's - he doesn't know her, he just saw her and wanted her, and he's done this before, that's what that means."

Scyelen fidgets with her hands in her lap.

"That... isn't necessarily incompatible with treating her okay."

"It is for most people. The fact that he bought her so quickly doesn't say anything good at all, but even if he was going to be nice, it hurts most people very badly all by itself to be made to have sex they don't want."