“The only thing less agreeable than the company of perfect strangers is enduring the attention of those to whom you are known.

Happily, having rid myself of the most ill-conceived martial vows in the history of the institution, the one thing I need never tolerate again is the presence of a husband.”

– Glenmorda Tinbellus Enika of the Reaper’s Mercy addressing a roaring tavern on the occasion of the formal dissolution of her matrimonial vows to a fellow Imperial Advisor whom she refused to name.

I was pretty sure Enika wanted to kill Doxle. It wasn’t a scent thing – Imperial Advisor’s seemed to lie through the scent as a matter of course – it was more of a vibe she radiated.

Of course sitting plopped casually on his lap didn’t exactly support that vibe but it was still there. If it had been focused against anyone else, I would have had problems believing the little cues I was picking up, but given that her completely unexpressed ire was directed against Doxle I was willing to give my disbelief a bit of suspension.

“Were you planning to swear fealty to House Riverbond too?” I asked her, fully aware of how ridiculous the idea was, but with how my life was going any answer seemed as reasonable as any other.

“I should think not,” Enika said lazily finding a path through each word as though she was making up her mind as she spoke. “I’ve just broken one set of fealty agreements, and former employers can become so cranky when they believe you’ve betrayed them.”

“To be clear though, you are betraying them are you not?” Doxle asked.

“Well, yes of course, but its unseemingly to make them overly aware of the fact,” Enika said. “One never knows what favors one may need in the future.”

“Wait, I don’t get it,” Ilyan said. “Why are you here?”

“For you of course,” Enika said. “The both of you.”

“You betrayed our House for us?” Idrina asked.

“Not at all,” Enika said. “This is your House is it not? I am quite good at noticing when bounds of fealty snap and I am sure yours broke almost together last night.”

“So we made you do this?” Ilyan asked.

“He’s adorable isn’t he?” Enika said, turning to face Doxle so closely that their noses touched.

“Indeed. I would have thought you picked them for the sister but you’re devilishly clever sometimes, did I ever mention that?” Doxle asked.

“Now, now,” Enika said. “Flattery will get you stabbed.”

“Few can be so lucky as to perish so well,” Doxle said.

“I didn’t say I’d be kind enough to make the wound fatal did I?”

“Now who’s flirting?” Doxle said.

“Do you two need us to give you the room?” I asked. “We can go plan our war somewhere else if you like?”

“Oh, it’s not going to be a war,” Enika said.

“Because they’re going to crush us before we can fight back?” I asked. It seemed to be the most likely outcome of all this I could see, but that didn’t diminish my desire to see it through. 

The Great Houses had murdered my sister, and every new thing I learned about them just made me hate them more. They were a terrible system of governance for the Empire, and they encouraging systems like the Imperial Academy which seemed to exist for no other purpose than to consume the best and brightest of the Empire and produce easily manipulatable shells for the Great Houses to use and dispose of as they saw fit.

“Because war between the Great Houses is simply not allowed,” Enika said.

“There’s precedence for it,” Yarrin said, holding up the book he’d been reading. “House Yellowleaf legally erased House Coldmourn through an officially declared war.”

“And House Lightstone declared war on House Greyfall two years ago,” Narla said, gesturing with her book.

“Yellowleaf’s squabble with Coldmourn was unusual since they were both subsidiaries of Greendell,” Enika said. “Also that war occurred prior to the Calamity. It’s not a scenario which will occur again.”

“Lightstone’s war on Greyfall is more representative of how wars are handled today,” Doxle said. “No organized fighting, just a few strategic assassinations and diplomacy over contract negotiations which could have been handled without the bloodshed.”

“The bloodshed was the entire point of the war though,” Enika said. “Remember Jobar Lightstone had been humiliated by Fredrar Greyfall at the previous years Winterfest.”

“Oh yes. That was a lovely time,” Doxle said.

“No it wasn’t,” Enika said. “It rained when it should have snowed and half the food spoiled in the unseasonably warm weather.”

“The wine however was excellent, as was the company,” Doxle said.

“You spent the night with the cleaning staff, helping them clean!” Enika said.

“Yes, and none of the nobility knew I was there. It was delightful! Such a shame they turned me down though, I really thought we could continue like that for quite a while.”

“Turn him down for what?” Narla asked.

“Marriage,” Enika said. “He tried to marry all four of them at once.”

“How much wine did you have?” Ilyan asked.

“Far too little, I assure you,” Doxle said. “If I’d gotten another bottle of two in me, I still think I could have made a compelling enough case to win over at least three of them.”

“Wouldn’t a war work just as well in this case?” I asked, trying to drag the conversation back somewhere in the vague vicinity of the problem Ironbriar posed.

“You’re think to assassinate the heads of Ironbriar and negotiate with the rest?” Idrina asked.

Saying yes to that would have gotten me stabbed as recently as the day before. From the expression Idrina wore and the focused commitment her scent bore though I almost thought an assassination job was exactly what she was hoping for.

“We talked about me fighting their Champion, but we don’t know who that will be,” I said. “With the protections Ironbriar has I think that’s going to be the mostly likely step they take.”

“No,” Narla said.

“No,” Idrina said.

“No,” Enika said.

And all three meant something different by it.

I held up my hand to stop the inevitable rush of chaos, and, shockingly, it worked. Since I could only hold for them so long, I nodded to Narla to allow her to explain.

“No, we didn’t talk about having you fight their Champion,” Narla said. “As the head of the House, you’re too important for that now. That’s my job and, you will let me do it.”

I wasn’t willing to concede that point just yep but it wasn’t an important fight to have yet either, so I nodded to Idrina next.

“I can tell you who they will send as a Champion if it comes to that,” she said. “They’ll send Holman.”

“That cannot be a good thing,” I said, asking for elaboration as much as confirmation.

“It’s not. It will be punishment for him siding with me,” Idrina said. “Either he will kill our Champion and then inflict whatever consequences Ironbriar desires on the rest of us, or, more likely, we will kill him.”

“Which would rid you of a friend,” Enika said. “That is indeed what they would do if they were going to send a Champion to fight you in some official capacity, but it will not come to that. Ironbriar is not the most powerful, or the most clever of Houses but they are savvy enough to prevent this from entering any arena where there exists a chance of failure for them.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t give them that much credit,” Doxle said. “Clearly they will try to ensure that all routes lead to their victory, but there are always some eventualities which are difficult to plan for.”

“Yes, that’s rather why I’m here,” Enika said.

“I thought it was the appetizers?”

“Those as well,” Enika said, licking a dab of whipped cream from her lips before continuing. “Before House Riverbond’s declaration of war is accepted, they will call for a hearing by the High Council to determine the legitimacy of Riverbond’s claim.”

“We can give testimony as to the insults done to House Riverbond,” Idrina said.

“Oh, it’s not the claims in the war declaration they will question. It’s hers,” Enika said. “As she has not been formally recognized in the Court of the Empress, they will advance the claim that she does not have the standing to speak for House Riverbond, and without that can enjoy none of the rights of a House citizen, much less the privileges of a Head of House.”

“I made several compelling arguments on that point already,” Doxle said.

“Yes, but those won’t matter since they will be killing her well before she shows up for her confirmation hearings,” Enika said.

“Then she probably shouldn’t go to that, right?” Ilyan asked.

“In which case the High Council will have no choice but to rule against her,” Enika said. “It’s not terribly brilliant but it does grant them victory in either case.”

“I’m not all that easy to kill,” I said, knowing I was tempting fate by making that particular claim. “And wouldn’t an attempt on my life more-or-less confirm the claim House Riverbond is making?”

“In the eventuality of the attempt being unsuccessful, the assassins, should any be locatable, will be discovered to be members of no house and in the employ of ‘unnamed foreign powers’. Should they succeed, the assassins will, in all likelihood be found dead with similar results for investigations into their backgrounds.”

Ilyan wasn’t terribly surprised by this but looked upset at the idea. Idrina looked entirely unmoved but her scent said she was stewing in a ball of rage and despair.

I really need to get her alone somewhere.

And say what I had no idea, but my instincts were screaming to get her somewhere that mask she was wearing could crack before everything inside her just exploded.

Not that I could blame her for wanting to explode.

If anything I couldn’t fathom how she hadn’t already done so. Even allowing me to “take her hostage” had been a monumental leap given the years of dedication and tireless work she’d given to her House. 

From her skill, I knew she’d endured as much training in a day as most children managed to do in a year. If I was able to match her in any manner, it was only because holding my human shape had effectively been training for me every moment of the day, and if I was being honest Idrina’s command of her magic was simply flat out better than my own.

All of that could have been explained by devotion though, something which the Great Houses were always eager to extract from their children. The mask she wore was something else though. That didn’t come from hard work. That came from pain. And it wasn’t the pain of training herself and pushing past so many of her limits that I’m sure she’d lost count.

The training itself was something she endured rather than endure the pain she was being offered. 

I looked for the scars but there were none there. It wasn’t her body her family had hurt. It was her soul. Ilyan had to have seen it too. That was why he’d finally left. How long could you endure a family who hated a sister that you loved?

And Idrina? Who had endured that even more directly? Who’d believed in her House even when that family never believed in her? Never acknowledged how amazing she was? In whose esteem she could never rise even while she fought endless to rise in her own? What kind of shards would it shatter one’s soul into to finally break free of all that? To finally admit, if only just enough to take action, that the vision of acceptance you’d been chasing your whole life was nothing more than a lie dangled before you by those who should have been so much better?

I couldn’t know if any of that was true, but I could make absolutely certain that, whether she chose to remove it or not, the mask Idrina wore would never be necessary in my House.

“It would seem that we have a relatively simple task ahead of us then,” Mellina said.

“You’re professed goal is to wage war on one of the Great Houses of the Empire and you believe it to be a simple task?” Enika said. “Do enlighten us as to how that will be accomplished.”

“Why one step at a time of course,” Mellina said, meeting Enika’s gaze with the sort of confidence that was only found in someone with a plan they knew would work.