ravindra + godric // investigation
Who: Ravindra & Godric.
When: Around a week ago!
Where: The Golden Hour.
Rating & Warnings: G, none!
Ravindra did not really want to talk to the Hour's Magus. He had, actually, been putting it off, considering whether he could make one of the others go for him, but in the end it was something he had to do as the Sergeant in charge of the investigation. And then there was that whole affair with his best friend coming back from the dead as a vampire, you know, that whole thing, and that was the part that spurred him to finally go to the Hour and request a meeting.
Actually going somewhere was always the hardest part. He got that done by telling himself he was only going to visit his goddaughter. (Which he did. He told her he'd misplaced his ledger and wondered if she could get him a new one; might as well have one to hand to Alex tonight, he figured.) After that, he was where he needed to be, so he might as well do what he needed to do.
The next hurdle to overcome was requesting to see the Magus, and then waiting. And waiting. Waiting was the second hardest part. Too much time to think about all the things that could go wrong. By the time he was finally escorted into the Magus's office, his imagination had built up several very wonderful "everything going wrong in the worst possible way" scenarios. He shoved them out of mind as he introduced himself as Sergeant Ravindra Naran, head of the investigation into Lord Myron's death.
"Good afternoon, Sergeant." Godric greeted the man with a thin, tired smile, seated rather loosely in the high-backed chair behind his desk. His suit was somewhat rumpled and his auburn curls in disarray, and a cup of tea steamed in front of him that he stirred whenever he wasn't speaking.
"Please, sit," he said with a sigh and motioned to the chair opposite him. The Magus' office was meant to be an intimidating thing, but to most simply looked like a very large toyroom. Every available surface was cluttered with astrolabes, maps, models, organs floating in jars, bones, and in one corner a very large, ornate, but empty birdcage. A clock on the wall ticked quietly behind him. The chair Godric pointed to was mercifully empty, but there were claw marks on one of the armrests. "How fares your investigation? A tragedy, what happened to Myron." His eyebrows knit. "Though I wonder if he wasn't, ah, well, no, that's not..." Awkwardly, the Magus smiled. "Tea?"
The clutter spoke of a man who was absent-minded and eccentric. Ravi tried not to notice it. Maybe a glance out of the corners of his eyes as he walked over to sit, but certainly no gawking. (It all seemed so interesting, though...!)
For once it wasn't rude to turn down an offer like that! He was here to do a job and social niceties could get bent. "Thank you, no," he replied to the offer, glancing down at the chair's arm as his fingers outlined the gouges in it. Claw-marks? Interesting.
Looking back up to make eye-contact with the Magus, he said, "The investigation is not going as well as I would like. Nobody saw anything, and we have no suspects. That is what I am here to talk to you about."
Godric's eyebrows rose. "You hope to find one here?" It was uncomfortably true that the Hour was the prime spot to locate such a subject, but he resented it all the same. The Others he kept were not the sort who would murder a man. Some did prey on humans, certainly, but they all had other ways to sate their appetites. And at the very least, Godric thought, they'd have the sense not to murder someone so publicly.
"I can assure you, Sergeant, we study the Others in our care quite extensively when they come to us. The few among them who could be suspect in this case are not the sort to murder a man so brutally. It was a blood-drinker, yes?" Godric smiled. "I heard whispers."
"I hope not to find one here," he corrected. It might make his job simpler, but it would make the political situation in the city much more complicated. "I trust your Others are wise enough not to do something so public. I only want to know what I should be looking for."
Of course it was impossible to keep rumours from spreading. In this instance, perhaps a good thing. It meant the Magus was likely to have already done his own preliminary investigation among the Others in his care, which made Ravindra's job easier. "The victim was found drained of blood, yes, with puncture wounds at each wrist. Do you know of any variety of Other which strikes in this way?"
"The wrist? Unusual." Godric frowned and stirred his tea, spoon clinking against the rim of the cup. "There are several Others who survive on blood, human or otherwise, but I've not heard of any so particular about where from. It implies a method. And perhaps more importantly, complicity on Myron's side, unless he was unconscious when his blood was drained. The neck is far more common a hold if Myron's attacker intended to incapacitate. Draining from the wrist would be... inefficient."
He realized a moment after he'd finished that he'd left the track of the conversation, and looked up to smile pleasantly at the Sergeant. "Ah, but you were saying. Blood-drinkers. Vampires are the most common, of course. Lilitu, red cap, the lamia, mandurugo, jumbie, all of them blood-drinkers. But most, as I said, are not methodical." His spoon clinked again against the cup. "Did you find his blood? Myron's. Stains, puddles?"
While the Magus began talking, Ravi pulled a journal out of his pocket (double-checking to make sure it wasn't his ledger), along with one of the ink-filled pens Amelia supplied him with. He was suddenly struck by the fact that this man was his goddaughter's highest authority. Did he have one of these pens too? (Maybe he could improve it to a type that didn't leak at inopportune times.)
He listened silently, copying down the names of creatures the Magus listed off. His expression remained neutral, except for the slight twitch of his left eye when the Magus mentioned vampires. Ah, how was he even going to bring Alex up after all this? Best not to think about it just yet.
When the Magus had finished speaking, Ravi looked up to answer. "Not complicit," he said. "There are signs that Myron tried to fight." He started tapping the pen against the page absently, but quickly caught himself and forced himself to stop; Amelia's invention was useful, but couldn't exactly be treated like a normal inkwell pen. "Only one bloodstain, not very large." He held his hands up to frame the approximate size of the stain they'd found, and dropped them back to the journal after a second or two.
Godric hummed thoughtfully, a nasal noise, and leaned onto one elbow. "Only one." That left little doubt. Men had quite a lot of blood in them; either this man had been drained by an Other, or drained by a madman. A headache for him either way. The public would be reluctant to accept that Myron's death was by mortal hands even if they obtained proof. It was certainly possible. There were hundreds in the city eager to prove that Others were dangerous. Why not stage a murder to look like it'd been at the hands of one?
The Magus took a deep breath and sat up in his chair to lean his elbows against the desk, mouth twitching briefly into an apologetic smile. "Forgive me, Sergeant, I know little of your methods. Are you able to determine what sort of edge pierced Myron's wrists?"
Ravindra was slowly edging toward a similar theory. There were so many details about the case that didn't quite add up, and whoever had done it was obviously trying to incite something. What Other would do this when the only purpose it served was putting more suspicion on all of them? But all that got into very murky theorizing; he'd think about it later.
"Ah, no. --Well." He stopped, forcing himself to consider his answer. Of course they couldn't say with any certainty, but that didn't mean the answer was no, exactly. "The best I can tell you is that the wounds looked...fang-shaped." Which sounded positively idiotic, when you said it aloud, but what other answer could he give? "But only one, in each wrist."
To have only one puncture wound was another oddity. Godric sighed, then smiled wryly. "Then you are either dealing with a vampire, Sergeant, or a madman trying very hard to make you think so." A relief, at least, that it was this man sent to him. The Magus had feared direct involvement from either the Duchess or the Citadel in the matter, and he would've preferred to join Myron before he submitted to an investigation by either.
"However," he continued with another twitched, tired smile, "the Hour houses no vampires at present. If that is truly what murdered Lord Myron, we have neither detected nor contacted the creature. You would have better luck searching the Grounds. Corpses there often go undetected for quite some time, and are rarely investigated in detail."
Yes, he was definitely beginning to lean more toward the latter. He'd bring it up with his squad tomorrow, to start brainstorming human suspects with the right motive. It'd be nice if they could somehow confirm either way, though.
But Godric's mention of vampires again made it dawn on him he had an asset he hadn't even considered. The realization crossed his face as a rising of the eyebrows, eyes widening and moving away from the Magus's face. He tried to hide it by turning back to the journal, but it was still pretty obvious that something Godric said had caused some kind of ephiphany.
He was writing what the Magus had said--investigate the Grounds more thoroughly, no vampires at the Hour, might've been committed by a human--but what he was thinking was that he could bring Alex to see the body and ask whether it even looked like the work of a vampire in the first place.
When he looked back up, his expression was neutral again. "Thank you for your input, Magus." And then a pause while his eyes drifted away, brow furrowing. What else was there to ask in terms of the investigation? Not much, really. He had all the answers he was going to get, part of a lead, and another expert whose opinion he could use. This was the part where he needed to make good on his promise to Alex, but how could he bring up his vampire best friend after the conclusion he'd just been given?
Maybe he'd just ask over the ledgers later. This sort of thing was easier without a face in front of you. But, ah, he wanted to have an answer for Alex by tonight, and he couldn't be sure he'd be answered over the ledgers by then. It was better to ask while he had the Magus's attention. Damn, why couldn't Alex have come back as some other kind of undead thing? Being a vampire made this so awkward and complicated!
Finally, finally, he took a deep breath and said, "I do...have a slightly more personal question for you." He stopped there, still wondering how to phrase it, and waited for some tacit sign of approval to continue.
"Ah?" A personal question? He was rarely asked those. Most took one glance at Godric's personal life and decided they were better off asking elsewhere. The Magus leaned onto his elbows and smiled curiously. "Ask away, Sergeant."
This was going to sound strange no matter how he said it. But this was the Magus of the Golden Hour, surely he'd heard stranger things. "Recently, a..." A friend of mine sounded too personal. Bad way to go, considering the case at hand. "A former guardsman, has become an Other. He was dead for almost twenty years before coming back, which he imagines will cause some problems if he wants to live here again. I told him I would ask for your thoughts on the matter."
Such an explanation would startle most men, but Godric's smile only widened. "Truly?" Dead for twenty years? Had there been decomposition? Was he mentally sound? Did he remember his afterlife? Questions surged through his thoughts, but the Magus forced himself to weave his hands together and keep his excitement limited to a bright-eyed smile. "What as? That's quite an unusual circumstance. Twenty years, you said? My," Godric laughed, leaning back in his chair.
"He's welcome at the Hour, of course. I mean no disrespect, but I doubt the Guard would warmly welcome a dead man back to their ranks." He scratched at his temple. "If he's willing, we can see him at his earliest convenience. There's- Well, we do a routine examination, should he consent to it. We must keep track of what is beneath our roof. Otherwise..." The Magus spread his hands. "He is free to stay or go as his situation demands."
What as. Nope, couldn't answer that. Didn't want to explain it. But Godric kept talking after the question arose, which Ravi used as an excuse to ignore it. (Maybe that would turn out to have been a bad idea, but he'd handle it when it came up.)
That was about the answer he'd expected, at least. Now he had something solid to tell Alex, and hopefully Alex wouldn't be an idiot about it.
"Alright. I will let him know," Ravi answered, tucking the pen and the journal back into their respective pockets. He pushed himself up from the chair. "Thank you for your time, Magus."
Godric rose and smiled pleasantly, hands folded beneath his belly. "And yours, Sergeant. Do let me know if there's anything else I can be of assistance with. The ledgers are a wonderful way to contact me, should you not be at leisure to visit. And, ah--" His eyebrows rose. "Your friend's name?"
Twenty years! That had to be a record, he was fairly sure.
He froze at the question. (Had he said it was his friend? No. Godric was just assuming then? Or being polite?) How should he answer? First name only? Full name? Varista wasn't a common name. He'd recognize a connection to Amelia right away, surely. Ah he was taking too long to answer, his reaction made him look suspicious, what should he say what should he say--
"Alexander Varista." No, dammit, he should have gone with just the first name! He tried to hide the automatic wince, but it was noticeable enough.
Godric's pleasant smile faltered, rumpling into a curious frown. "Varista? Any relation to Amelia?" That was her last name, wasn't it? He was terrible with names, but hers came up so frequently that he couldn't ignore it even if he wanted to. He knew no Alexander, had never heard him mentioned. Some cousin, perhaps? Strange.
The Sergeant's nervousness was even stranger, and the Magus' eyes narrowed. "Is there something you're not telling me, Sergeant?"
Ah, bad move, shouldn't have said it. Definitely should have just said the first name. His eyes moved away, focused on the wall behind the Magus. He reminded himself not to fidget. Don't look nervous.
"Her father," he admitted, voice quiet. "He does not want her to know yet."
His city was a well of oddities, Godric mused. Amelia's father, an Other back from the dead. The Magus rocked on his heels, blinking a few times before he laughed. "My. My, my. Well," he chuckled, eyebrows raised. "You needn't worry about his secret. My lips are sealed." Would this revelation make Amelia more talkative, he wondered, or less? Oh, he could only hope for the latter.
Ravi still felt like he'd just made a huge mistake in telling him. He wouldn't mention this part to Alex. (He probably should.)
He nodded and mumbled a, "Thank you," followed by a slightly stronger, "I will send him to you." He didn't wait for the Magus's response before turning to leave; he just wanted to get out before he said anything else stupid.
When: Around a week ago!
Where: The Golden Hour.
Rating & Warnings: G, none!
Ravindra did not really want to talk to the Hour's Magus. He had, actually, been putting it off, considering whether he could make one of the others go for him, but in the end it was something he had to do as the Sergeant in charge of the investigation. And then there was that whole affair with his best friend coming back from the dead as a vampire, you know, that whole thing, and that was the part that spurred him to finally go to the Hour and request a meeting.
Actually going somewhere was always the hardest part. He got that done by telling himself he was only going to visit his goddaughter. (Which he did. He told her he'd misplaced his ledger and wondered if she could get him a new one; might as well have one to hand to Alex tonight, he figured.) After that, he was where he needed to be, so he might as well do what he needed to do.
The next hurdle to overcome was requesting to see the Magus, and then waiting. And waiting. Waiting was the second hardest part. Too much time to think about all the things that could go wrong. By the time he was finally escorted into the Magus's office, his imagination had built up several very wonderful "everything going wrong in the worst possible way" scenarios. He shoved them out of mind as he introduced himself as Sergeant Ravindra Naran, head of the investigation into Lord Myron's death.
"Good afternoon, Sergeant." Godric greeted the man with a thin, tired smile, seated rather loosely in the high-backed chair behind his desk. His suit was somewhat rumpled and his auburn curls in disarray, and a cup of tea steamed in front of him that he stirred whenever he wasn't speaking.
"Please, sit," he said with a sigh and motioned to the chair opposite him. The Magus' office was meant to be an intimidating thing, but to most simply looked like a very large toyroom. Every available surface was cluttered with astrolabes, maps, models, organs floating in jars, bones, and in one corner a very large, ornate, but empty birdcage. A clock on the wall ticked quietly behind him. The chair Godric pointed to was mercifully empty, but there were claw marks on one of the armrests. "How fares your investigation? A tragedy, what happened to Myron." His eyebrows knit. "Though I wonder if he wasn't, ah, well, no, that's not..." Awkwardly, the Magus smiled. "Tea?"
The clutter spoke of a man who was absent-minded and eccentric. Ravi tried not to notice it. Maybe a glance out of the corners of his eyes as he walked over to sit, but certainly no gawking. (It all seemed so interesting, though...!)
For once it wasn't rude to turn down an offer like that! He was here to do a job and social niceties could get bent. "Thank you, no," he replied to the offer, glancing down at the chair's arm as his fingers outlined the gouges in it. Claw-marks? Interesting.
Looking back up to make eye-contact with the Magus, he said, "The investigation is not going as well as I would like. Nobody saw anything, and we have no suspects. That is what I am here to talk to you about."
Godric's eyebrows rose. "You hope to find one here?" It was uncomfortably true that the Hour was the prime spot to locate such a subject, but he resented it all the same. The Others he kept were not the sort who would murder a man. Some did prey on humans, certainly, but they all had other ways to sate their appetites. And at the very least, Godric thought, they'd have the sense not to murder someone so publicly.
"I can assure you, Sergeant, we study the Others in our care quite extensively when they come to us. The few among them who could be suspect in this case are not the sort to murder a man so brutally. It was a blood-drinker, yes?" Godric smiled. "I heard whispers."
"I hope not to find one here," he corrected. It might make his job simpler, but it would make the political situation in the city much more complicated. "I trust your Others are wise enough not to do something so public. I only want to know what I should be looking for."
Of course it was impossible to keep rumours from spreading. In this instance, perhaps a good thing. It meant the Magus was likely to have already done his own preliminary investigation among the Others in his care, which made Ravindra's job easier. "The victim was found drained of blood, yes, with puncture wounds at each wrist. Do you know of any variety of Other which strikes in this way?"
"The wrist? Unusual." Godric frowned and stirred his tea, spoon clinking against the rim of the cup. "There are several Others who survive on blood, human or otherwise, but I've not heard of any so particular about where from. It implies a method. And perhaps more importantly, complicity on Myron's side, unless he was unconscious when his blood was drained. The neck is far more common a hold if Myron's attacker intended to incapacitate. Draining from the wrist would be... inefficient."
He realized a moment after he'd finished that he'd left the track of the conversation, and looked up to smile pleasantly at the Sergeant. "Ah, but you were saying. Blood-drinkers. Vampires are the most common, of course. Lilitu, red cap, the lamia, mandurugo, jumbie, all of them blood-drinkers. But most, as I said, are not methodical." His spoon clinked again against the cup. "Did you find his blood? Myron's. Stains, puddles?"
While the Magus began talking, Ravi pulled a journal out of his pocket (double-checking to make sure it wasn't his ledger), along with one of the ink-filled pens Amelia supplied him with. He was suddenly struck by the fact that this man was his goddaughter's highest authority. Did he have one of these pens too? (Maybe he could improve it to a type that didn't leak at inopportune times.)
He listened silently, copying down the names of creatures the Magus listed off. His expression remained neutral, except for the slight twitch of his left eye when the Magus mentioned vampires. Ah, how was he even going to bring Alex up after all this? Best not to think about it just yet.
When the Magus had finished speaking, Ravi looked up to answer. "Not complicit," he said. "There are signs that Myron tried to fight." He started tapping the pen against the page absently, but quickly caught himself and forced himself to stop; Amelia's invention was useful, but couldn't exactly be treated like a normal inkwell pen. "Only one bloodstain, not very large." He held his hands up to frame the approximate size of the stain they'd found, and dropped them back to the journal after a second or two.
Godric hummed thoughtfully, a nasal noise, and leaned onto one elbow. "Only one." That left little doubt. Men had quite a lot of blood in them; either this man had been drained by an Other, or drained by a madman. A headache for him either way. The public would be reluctant to accept that Myron's death was by mortal hands even if they obtained proof. It was certainly possible. There were hundreds in the city eager to prove that Others were dangerous. Why not stage a murder to look like it'd been at the hands of one?
The Magus took a deep breath and sat up in his chair to lean his elbows against the desk, mouth twitching briefly into an apologetic smile. "Forgive me, Sergeant, I know little of your methods. Are you able to determine what sort of edge pierced Myron's wrists?"
Ravindra was slowly edging toward a similar theory. There were so many details about the case that didn't quite add up, and whoever had done it was obviously trying to incite something. What Other would do this when the only purpose it served was putting more suspicion on all of them? But all that got into very murky theorizing; he'd think about it later.
"Ah, no. --Well." He stopped, forcing himself to consider his answer. Of course they couldn't say with any certainty, but that didn't mean the answer was no, exactly. "The best I can tell you is that the wounds looked...fang-shaped." Which sounded positively idiotic, when you said it aloud, but what other answer could he give? "But only one, in each wrist."
To have only one puncture wound was another oddity. Godric sighed, then smiled wryly. "Then you are either dealing with a vampire, Sergeant, or a madman trying very hard to make you think so." A relief, at least, that it was this man sent to him. The Magus had feared direct involvement from either the Duchess or the Citadel in the matter, and he would've preferred to join Myron before he submitted to an investigation by either.
"However," he continued with another twitched, tired smile, "the Hour houses no vampires at present. If that is truly what murdered Lord Myron, we have neither detected nor contacted the creature. You would have better luck searching the Grounds. Corpses there often go undetected for quite some time, and are rarely investigated in detail."
Yes, he was definitely beginning to lean more toward the latter. He'd bring it up with his squad tomorrow, to start brainstorming human suspects with the right motive. It'd be nice if they could somehow confirm either way, though.
But Godric's mention of vampires again made it dawn on him he had an asset he hadn't even considered. The realization crossed his face as a rising of the eyebrows, eyes widening and moving away from the Magus's face. He tried to hide it by turning back to the journal, but it was still pretty obvious that something Godric said had caused some kind of ephiphany.
He was writing what the Magus had said--investigate the Grounds more thoroughly, no vampires at the Hour, might've been committed by a human--but what he was thinking was that he could bring Alex to see the body and ask whether it even looked like the work of a vampire in the first place.
When he looked back up, his expression was neutral again. "Thank you for your input, Magus." And then a pause while his eyes drifted away, brow furrowing. What else was there to ask in terms of the investigation? Not much, really. He had all the answers he was going to get, part of a lead, and another expert whose opinion he could use. This was the part where he needed to make good on his promise to Alex, but how could he bring up his vampire best friend after the conclusion he'd just been given?
Maybe he'd just ask over the ledgers later. This sort of thing was easier without a face in front of you. But, ah, he wanted to have an answer for Alex by tonight, and he couldn't be sure he'd be answered over the ledgers by then. It was better to ask while he had the Magus's attention. Damn, why couldn't Alex have come back as some other kind of undead thing? Being a vampire made this so awkward and complicated!
Finally, finally, he took a deep breath and said, "I do...have a slightly more personal question for you." He stopped there, still wondering how to phrase it, and waited for some tacit sign of approval to continue.
"Ah?" A personal question? He was rarely asked those. Most took one glance at Godric's personal life and decided they were better off asking elsewhere. The Magus leaned onto his elbows and smiled curiously. "Ask away, Sergeant."
This was going to sound strange no matter how he said it. But this was the Magus of the Golden Hour, surely he'd heard stranger things. "Recently, a..." A friend of mine sounded too personal. Bad way to go, considering the case at hand. "A former guardsman, has become an Other. He was dead for almost twenty years before coming back, which he imagines will cause some problems if he wants to live here again. I told him I would ask for your thoughts on the matter."
Such an explanation would startle most men, but Godric's smile only widened. "Truly?" Dead for twenty years? Had there been decomposition? Was he mentally sound? Did he remember his afterlife? Questions surged through his thoughts, but the Magus forced himself to weave his hands together and keep his excitement limited to a bright-eyed smile. "What as? That's quite an unusual circumstance. Twenty years, you said? My," Godric laughed, leaning back in his chair.
"He's welcome at the Hour, of course. I mean no disrespect, but I doubt the Guard would warmly welcome a dead man back to their ranks." He scratched at his temple. "If he's willing, we can see him at his earliest convenience. There's- Well, we do a routine examination, should he consent to it. We must keep track of what is beneath our roof. Otherwise..." The Magus spread his hands. "He is free to stay or go as his situation demands."
What as. Nope, couldn't answer that. Didn't want to explain it. But Godric kept talking after the question arose, which Ravi used as an excuse to ignore it. (Maybe that would turn out to have been a bad idea, but he'd handle it when it came up.)
That was about the answer he'd expected, at least. Now he had something solid to tell Alex, and hopefully Alex wouldn't be an idiot about it.
"Alright. I will let him know," Ravi answered, tucking the pen and the journal back into their respective pockets. He pushed himself up from the chair. "Thank you for your time, Magus."
Godric rose and smiled pleasantly, hands folded beneath his belly. "And yours, Sergeant. Do let me know if there's anything else I can be of assistance with. The ledgers are a wonderful way to contact me, should you not be at leisure to visit. And, ah--" His eyebrows rose. "Your friend's name?"
Twenty years! That had to be a record, he was fairly sure.
He froze at the question. (Had he said it was his friend? No. Godric was just assuming then? Or being polite?) How should he answer? First name only? Full name? Varista wasn't a common name. He'd recognize a connection to Amelia right away, surely. Ah he was taking too long to answer, his reaction made him look suspicious, what should he say what should he say--
"Alexander Varista." No, dammit, he should have gone with just the first name! He tried to hide the automatic wince, but it was noticeable enough.
Godric's pleasant smile faltered, rumpling into a curious frown. "Varista? Any relation to Amelia?" That was her last name, wasn't it? He was terrible with names, but hers came up so frequently that he couldn't ignore it even if he wanted to. He knew no Alexander, had never heard him mentioned. Some cousin, perhaps? Strange.
The Sergeant's nervousness was even stranger, and the Magus' eyes narrowed. "Is there something you're not telling me, Sergeant?"
Ah, bad move, shouldn't have said it. Definitely should have just said the first name. His eyes moved away, focused on the wall behind the Magus. He reminded himself not to fidget. Don't look nervous.
"Her father," he admitted, voice quiet. "He does not want her to know yet."
His city was a well of oddities, Godric mused. Amelia's father, an Other back from the dead. The Magus rocked on his heels, blinking a few times before he laughed. "My. My, my. Well," he chuckled, eyebrows raised. "You needn't worry about his secret. My lips are sealed." Would this revelation make Amelia more talkative, he wondered, or less? Oh, he could only hope for the latter.
Ravi still felt like he'd just made a huge mistake in telling him. He wouldn't mention this part to Alex. (He probably should.)
He nodded and mumbled a, "Thank you," followed by a slightly stronger, "I will send him to you." He didn't wait for the Magus's response before turning to leave; he just wanted to get out before he said anything else stupid.