With the cooling steam from her fiery flight falling from her shoulders like a cloak, Dae looked over the assembled nobles, the ones not hidden in shadows at least, judging each one in turn with a glance, until her gaze rested upon the Consort-King.

“Where. Is. She.” Dae repeated. She didn’t enhance her voice with Kirios’ power. In the silence that gripped the room, she didn’t need to.

Halrek rose slowly from his throne, the only one willing to address the mad warrior who had disrupted the gathering.

“If you seek the Queen, she is dead,” he said. “Slain by Inchesso assassins last eve.”

“No,” Dae faltered, her weight pressing hard on the sword she used as a cane.

“The blood found in the royal chambers bears horrid testimony to our loss,” Halrek said. “We arrived too late to save her, and even too late to fully avenge her. With my own eyes I saw the assassins flee her room through the wards which their only foreign sorcery allowed them to breach.”

“No,” Dae said, pushing herself back up to her full height. “She wasn’t slain by assassins. You, Halrek of Paxmer, you faithless, honorless, traitor. She died at your hand. And now, you’re going to die at mine.”

Dae took a step forward and buckled halfway to the ground before catching herself. Even splinted and with a makeshift cane, walking on her leg wasn’t easy to manage.

“These are serious charges,” Duke Genli, the Queen’s Chief Justice, said. “And they are delivered in a harsh tongue unbecoming speech to your King. What evidence do you have to support such a claim?”

“He is not my King,” Dae said, and advanced another pace towards the throne. She was still too far away to be any threat but several of the nobles were settling back in their chairs warily. “And my evidence are witnesses who carry documents written by the traitor’s own hand, detailing his every machination against our Queen.”

“Why would the King write such an incriminating missive?” Genli asked.

“He needed to coordinate his plans with his accomplice, the Duke of Tel” Dae said. “They exchanged the messages in code. Probably didn’t consider that someone else might break it. Wasn’t too smart of the Duke to hang on to the messages either but if he’d kept them hidden I suppose they would have made a powerful lever to use on the waste of human flesh sitting on the throne there.”

“I have endured the dislike and mistrust of the people of this, my adopted realm, for many years now,” Halrek said. “But I will not be spoken to in such a slanderous tongue. Produce your witnesses immediately, if you have them. I will not have my name tarnished by the implication of wrongdoing. Not with grief so freshly upon me.”

“I’m not imply anything,” Dae said. “And I’m not going to tell you anything while your assassins are still on the loose.”

“First you say it was his hands that killed the Queen and now you speak of his assassins,” Genli said. “Which is it to be?”

“Both,” Dae said. “The traitor’s plans run deep, and broad, and the murder of the Queen was only the first step. He holds the reins of the assassins you saw. They’re a death sworn guild who will spend their lives carelessly for enough coin, which makes them the perfect tools for a conspiracy like this.”

“This is an insanity of lies,” Halrek said. “Against every question she posits greater and more convoluted schemes.”

“You had six years to prepare for this,” Dae said. “Perhaps we should send you home in six separate boxes.”

“I sit upon the throne of Gallagrin,” Halrek said. “You cannot threaten me.”

“I’m not threatening,” Dae said.

“No, you’re not,” Halrek said. “Who are you to stand before this assemblage? By what right do you accuse me? If you will provide no support for your claims, you must at least provide your name and rank so that we may know who it is we are to try.”

Dae paused her slow and painful progress towards the throne.

“I am Daelynne Kor of the Dawn March,” she said. “By the right and mandate of my position as watchguard for this realm, I accuse you, Halrek of Paxmer, and name you murderer.”

Halrek smiled broadly at that declaration.

“So I see,” his voice held a malicious satisfaction. “You are the one who sent the Inchesso Vampire to the Queen. The same Inchesso Vampire that was seen sprinting from her chambers and flying from the castle, shortly before she collapsed.”

“He should have stayed with her,” Dae said, bristling that there’d been a chance to save Alari and it had gone awry.

“Yes, I suppose you would want a foreign vampire at the Queen’s side when she took ill,” Halrek said. “That’s exactly the sort of thing someone in league with the assassins would be looking for.”

“Don’t try to place your sin on me,” Dae said.

“Except of course it is your sin exactly, is it not?” Halrek said. “The assassins were supposed to make a clean getaway from the murder. That’s what assassins do. But they were caught and identified. We know they hail from Inchesso and we know Prince Lorenzo’s family is furious at his loss. They had agents within the country to lookout for their son, clearly, and who better than a member of our own Dawn March to corrupt to their needs. I hear the March was once a noble organization, but the years have not been kind and many in it succumb to the temptation of gold. This one surely has a fortune stashed away for her role in the assassination but once it looked like the scheme might unravel and all her ill gotten wealthy flow away from her, she flew here with a wild tale to cast the blame off herself.”

Dae felt a sick drop in her stomach. It would be no effort at all for Halrek to make a sack of gold appear in her apartment before she could get back there. Kael might even volunteer one of his if it meant he wouldn’t have to work with her anymore.

“We don’t even need to look far for motivation,” Halrek said. “I loved my wife. I gave up my country for her. Everyone saw that. This one though? The Queen spoke of her, the woman who was her childhood friend. The woman who shut her out, who refused to see or speak with her after the Queen took the throne.”

Dae felt her knees sag for reasons that had nothing to do with the pain of her broken leg.

“There was anger, even hatred, which drove them apart after so long and close an acquaintance,” Halrek said. “For that distance to finally be closed at this hour, one too late for any proper reconciliation? It is clear that it was not charity or duty which moved Officer Kor to appear before us tonight. It was fear. Fear of discovery and fear of just retribution.”

Dae sagged even further where she stood, Halrek’s every word a thorn pumping venom into her heart. Through long dry veins the venom flowed, burning as it crossed over happy memories that lay buried in the reaches of her heart that Dae didn’t dare to look at anymore.

It was too late for those memories, but they rose to the surface anyways. Alari, mischief in her eyes leading Dae on an adventure. Alari, trembling with anger at her father’s cruelty. Alari laughing in the sun as it kissed her hair and framed her in a glowing halo.

They had spoken so many times, shared so many secrets and planned so long for their future together, but there were still words Dae hadn’t spoken. Not in the right way and not at the right time. With that time passed, Dae knew it didn’t matter what she said, but still, the words were there.

“I don’t fear you,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I fear no discovery and no retribution.”

Exhaling, she pushed herself up once more.

“There is nothing for me in this world anymore,” she said. “I have lost my dearest friend. I have lost the one person in this whole sad plane who ever saw me for who I am. I have lost the woman I love, and will love until breath leaves my body, until my bones rot away, until my spirit turns to dust.”

“I did not speak with her, I did not seek her out, or stand beside her,” Dae said, and took another slow step. “I did not do these things and that was because I failed her.”

The glass from the shattered stained glass window crunched under her feet as she took another careful step towards the throne.

“She gave me one duty, to save this country from the ravenous hunger of Paxmer while she delivered it from the evil of her father,” Dae said. “And I failed. I failed Gallagrin, I failed Star’s Watch and I failed her. Instead of me defending her, she saved me and she saved us all by feeding herself to Paxmer.”

“You do the Queen a disservice even as you praise her,” Halrek said. “She gave nothing to Paxmer and gained the throne and the kingdom whole and undamaged in the process.”

“Not undamaged,” Dae said. “To win the throne, she had to let a rat into the palace to gnaw on Gallagrin’s heart. There was no chance that Paxmer could conquer Gallagrin, yet they launched an attack anyways.”

“That was a disaster averted,” Halrek said. “Paxmer could not allow the Butcher King’s power to grow unchecked and the civil war offered us the best opportunity to excise him from his throne.”

“And it was the only chance Paxmer had of gaining control of Gallagrin,” Dae said.

“Paxmer gained nothing,” Halrek said. “No land was usurped. No trade routes were ceded. All that Paxmer saw out of Gallagrin’s war was the loss of one of its sons.”

“Being rid of you is no loss,” Dae said. “Not when you planned for this day from the beginning. You knew you had to get this close to the throne to have a chance to steal it. You watched Alari battled for the rule of Gallagrin and you learned from her. It takes a strike from inside, from someone who can make a claim of authority over the spirit of Gallagrin and who holds one of the rune stones of its name. Without that, no assassin’s could overcome the power the Queen held.”

“The Inchesso have mysterious poisons,” Halrek said. “Who is to say that their magical brews wouldn’t be enough to overwhelm even the protections of the Gallagrin pact spirit?”

“The Inchesso would never waste a poison strong enough to kill a Queen on anyone but each other,” Dae said. “And they would never make it obvious that they’d used a tool like that if they had one. If they did, every kingdom in the Blessed Realms would descend on them. Otherwise there’d be a spate of regicides that would follow the discovery of any elixir that was that powerful.”

“And how come you to claim such knowledge of what the Inchesso are and are not capable of?” Halrek asked.

“Because if there was a poison capable of killing a sovereign of the Blessed Realms, then the Butcher Sathe would have used it on Paxmer long ago,” Dae said.

“That is supposition and nothing more,” Halrek said.

“It’s a truth that everyone here who ever met the Butcher King should recognize,” Dae said. “But none of that matters. Words aren’t going to conclude this debate. This isn’t going to end until one of us lies lifeless on the floor of this chamber.”

“There are ample guards and my noble brethren here who are quite capable of seeing this resolved then,” Halrek said.

“I don’t want to go through them to get to you,” Dae said. “So I offer you a Judicial Challenge. Your life vs. mine.”

“You are a Pact Warrior,” Halrek said. “Even injured as you are, I am not permitted to take up your challenge as I have no Pact spirit to call upon. Unless a Champion will step forward to take my place?”

Halrek turned to the assembled nobles, none of whom seemed overly eager to venture into a mortal duel on their soon-to-be ruler’s behalf.

“Since this slanderous one has named my house in her suit as well, I shall stand as your champion,” the Duke of Tel said, stepping out of the shadows, unharmed and in his full Pact Regalia.

Everything was wrong. That was all Dae knew as she fell back onto her bed after Ren finished speaking.

“My father’s notes were in code, but he’s not as brilliant as he thinks he is and the King apparently had trouble with even the simple cipher my father worked out,” Ren said.

“Nine bleeding hells,” Kael said. “Why did you have to bring this here boy?”

“You were the closest agent of the Queen’s that we knew we could trust,” Teo said.

Dae was barely listening to them. Alari was in trouble. The plan that Ren had described could work. It was a modification of the one Dae and Alari had dreamed up as children. The one that had overthrown a tyrant king.

“Lorenzo was a smokescreen,” she said, numb and unthinking.

“Not quite,” Ren said. “My father’s plan covers more than capturing the throne.”

“What else matters?” Dae asked, her heart freezing with the certainty that she had learned the truth too late. As hard as she’d fought, as careful as she’d been, it hadn’t been enough. Once again, she’d fallen short.

“They’re going to set us on a course for war, my father and the worthless bastard King who’s going to be sitting on the throne,” Ren said. “In the time it takes for sky carriages to carry the official word to Inchesso and Paxmer, Gallagrin will be embroiled in a war with the first and an alliance with the second.”

“This is above my pay grade,” Kael said. “You should take this to the commander.”

“His loyalties seem to lie with the Duke, do they not?” Teo asked.

“You’re not going to the commander,” Dae said, staring ahead. Her voice was a dull monotone but there was an edge to it that suggested argument on that point was not a wise move.

“I still don’t understand how you discovered this plot in the first place?” Kael asked.

“My father foolishly left me alone at our estate in Elinspire,” Ren said. “I was looking for material to blackmail him with.”

“You were going to do what now?” Kael asked.

“Blackmail him,” Ren said. “I make no bones about it. My father only respects those who can help or hurt him. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to do the former, to be the good son who can win his respect and acceptance honorably. Then he beat Teo and cast him out. That’s what ended my desire to help my father. From that point on, I knew the only language he would understand was the promise of a blade at his throat.”

“How sure are you?” Dae asked.

“Of my father’s unwillingness to listen or compromise? Completely,” Ren said.

“No,” Dae said. “Of the translation. Could it have been anything else they were talking about?”

“They refer to Queen Alari by name,” Ren said. “This monstrosity is within  the reach of my father’s greed and his malic, and I’m not mistaken in my decryption of the text.”

“Everything that has happened has been to paint a picture where the Queen and Inchesso were set against each other,” Teo said. “All in preparation to explain both the Queen’s death and the need for war on Inchesso, the weakest of the Blessed Realms.”

“You can’t know that though,” Kael said. “Even if there are some nobles who would go along with that plan, not all of them are bad. It’s not the kind of thing that would really become an issue. Anyone smart enough to pull it off would be smart enough to see they’d never get away with it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dae said.

“See, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Kael gestured towards Dae in agreement.

“No, the nobles who won’t go along with it don’t matter,” Dae said. “The people will be calling for Inchesso blood. Even the nobles who wish to avoid war will be pressured from within and without, or ignored altogether.”

“Doesn’t sounds like there’s much we can do about it then,” Kael said.

“How did you get here?” Dae asked, turning to face Ren and Teo at last.

“We ran,” Ren said. “After I found Teo, he was able to feed and regain his strength.”

“How did that not kill you?” Dae asked. “I saw Teo in Nath, he didn’t look good even then.”

“My Pact Spirit sustains me,” Teo said. “And my blood carries more than just my own lifeforce now.”

“Where did you get a Pact Spirit that was strong enough to withstand that?” Dae asked.

“From my sister,” Ren said. “She came to visit while I was imprisoned at Elinspire.”

“Pact Spirits aren’t children’s toys, where did she get one?” Dae asked.

“My sister isn’t a child, but she is…special,” Ren said.

“Maybe she could do something about your dad then,” Kael said.

“She has her own issues to deal with I am afraid,” Ren said.

“This is happening,” Dae said, addressing no one in the room. “My leg is broken, I’m miles away, and she needs me.”

“Nothing to be done for it then,” Kael said. “It’s almost like Duke planned for this.”

“He did,” Ren said. “He kept his own notes for plan in the same secure vault as the correspondence with the King. It was all buried under a ton of locks and hidden rooms within the archives. If I hadn’t been driven to leap at a wild chance, and only because I also had the time I needed to search for them properly, those papers would have never been found.”

“Why even keep them?” Kael asked.

“Blackmail,” Teo said. “And insurance against the king. If Duke Telli goes down, he plans to take everyone else with him.”

“Then there’s only one thing for it,” Dae said and moved the covers off the bed.

“Given it a rest Kor. You’re in no condition to walk, must less fight,” Kael said.

“Not planning to do my own walking,” Dae said and with a small and careful effort of will, she conjured her Pact armor.

Moving was easier after that. With her natural body help outside the bounds of the world, Dae was able to walk on solid and unbroken Pact armor legs.

Pushing herself past her visitors and the dumbstruck Kael, Dae strode out into the hall, down the stairs and out the door of the Inne before Teo caught up with her.

“You can’t challenge the Duke here,” he said.

“Don’t care about the Duke for now,” Dae said and cast her gaze skyward.

“You can’t carry a message to the Queen in the state you’re in either,” Teo said. “Let me do it. I ran most of the way here with only a few drops of blood in my body. I’m in vastly better shape now.”

“You’re not going to be able to keep up,” Dae said and then added with the whisper of actual warmth and gratitude in her voice, “But thanks. You had a rough time of it, I’m glad you didn’t give up.”

“What are you going to do?” Teo asked.

“Ask a question and hope I get the right answer,” Dae said. “While I’m doing that though, you have a job that you need to do.”

“What’s that?” Teo asked.

“Protect Ren,” Dae said. “If I come back here, there will be a vacancy on the Ducal Throne of Tel shortly thereafter. Make sure your man’s around to claim it.”

“He has an elder brother and sister,” Teo said.

“Yes, and that might even still be true when I’m done,” Dae said.

Teo covered his shock with a frown and then a nod. The Duke was a traitor to the kingdom. His life was already forfeit, the only thing that remained was the task of taking it from him. His treason was such that it threatened to bring down far more than just himself though. Anyone in his family who was privy to the conspiracy could be considered a part of it and would face summary justice as well.

“How are you going to reach the castle before your power runs out?” Teo asked.

“Like this,” Dae said and called on Kirios for another transformation.

This was a deeper and more profound change that her usual Pact Armor. Kirios’ power was still bound by her will and her station, but Dae gave the magics much freer reign in assembling her new form than they ever normally enjoyed.

The layer of plate armoring that covered her shrank away, revealing a long, featureless body covered in a down of quicksilver grey feathers. From Dae’s back, three pairs of wings unfurled. Where her helmet had been, there were only two long feathers of fire streaming on either side of an almost featureless quicksilver face. In place of eyes, molten coals burned and rivers of a hot, red, lava-like substance coursed down from loops below the fire feathers to streams that flowed to the end of Dae’s fingers and toes.

One moment, she stood beside Teo and the next a fiery trail blazed up into the air and across the sky.

Out racing the wind was something Dae had only dreamed of doing before, but she had dreamed of it for a long time. Ever since the day she was first called to be away from Alari, she’d planned for how she could return to her princess.

When Alari became Queen, those plans had been tucked away. Alari didn’t need her anymore, Dae believed. Between the new Consort-King and the mantle of Gallagrin’s power, Alari should never have needed anyone else, ever again, and most especially not a foolish failure who dared to dream that she was brave enough to always stand as Alari’s shield.

Dae thought back to the death of that dream. To the last day she was ever called by the name Alari gave her. To the day that she failed Star’s Watch, and her kingdom.

Dragon Fear was a supernatural power. No one contested that. It overwhelms mortal reason and forces the Mindful Races to flee from the dragon’s presence.

Except for Dae it hadn’t.

She’d been so focused on her battle against the enemy general, that she  hadn’t felt the first wave of the dragon’s power wash over the area. She hadn’t ordered the retreat when there was time to save the people of Star’s Watch.

Only when the dragon was upon them, had its influence broken through the battle haze she’d descended into. A strange calm had descended over the battlefield in that moment, when the dragon and Dae locked eyes.

For three breaths, neither side had moved. It was a memory that Dae had picked over thousands of times and in her heart she knew; if her spirit had been true, she could have held the dragon there. All it took was one person to stand against it.

For all their vast might and perilous mystical potential, dragons were creatures of caution. Being among the Undying, they bore the curse that a deep enough wound would be one they would need to suffer from for all eternity. Mortals fled from them because of the power dragons possessed. A mortal who refused to flee was either deeply broken or possessed of a power which was best studied from a distance before engaging with. In either case, unless circumstances compelled them otherwise, a dragon would generally yield the field to a mortal who refused to be swayed by fear.

Dae knew she could have saved Star’s Watch that way. All she’d needed to do was stand her ground.

For three breaths she had, and then the dragon had taken a step forward and its massive bulk had rumbled the landed. Dae took one step back, just one step, but that was all it took. Whatever strength she’d summoned to meet the dragon’s power evaporated and she knew nothing more until she woke up in the medical tent of the fallback camp.

The civil war was won by then and the Paxmer forces withdrawn. There were no more battles for her to fight. No possibility of making up for her failure and the lives it cost.

Alari visited her once, but Dae could barely look at her. She’d heard the stories of what Alari had been through, of the sacrifices she’d made. She’d asked Dae for one thing, to hold off Paxmer so that her kingdom wouldn’t face devastation from without. With Dae’s failure, Alari had been forced to turn to a union with a lesser prince of Paxmer who was looking to rise above his allotted station in life.

Bound by the mantle of Gallagrin to the country, and bound by politics to a wedding of convenience, Alari had no need for Dae anymore.

At their last meeting, Dae was curt and short with the woman she was no longer worthy of supporting, because however much Dae knew that to be true, she couldn’t bear to hear Alari say those words aloud.

She exiled herself before Alari could reclaim the honors Dae had received from her. It was cleaner like that, and easier for them both, Dae had told herself.

With no correspondence and no contact, Alari would never need to say the difficult words which Dae already knew were true, and Dae would never need to hear them, except as echoes of recrimination that played over and over in her mind, endlessly.

Flying toward High Crest and the royal castle, felt eerily similar to facing the dragon. Every sensible part of her told her to flee, but the built up self-hatred of six years of failure prodded her onwards. She knew her courage might break at any moment, as it did against the dragon, but still she flew towards her Queen, a song of joy stirring in her heart to finally be running in the right direction.

In the castle, Halrek was just sitting down to address the assembled nobles and give them the terrible news when a creature of fire and gleaming steel burst through the great stained glass window which stood opposite the thrones at the far end of the Royal Advisory Chamber.

Dae rose from ground, multi-hued fragments of glass running off her as she stood.

With the power for her flying form more than exhausted, the flames around her died away and she stood before the king and the nobles, balancing on a her sword as a crutch and asked the one question she cared about.

“Where is she.”

Alari woke up on her deathbed. Her mind was still clouded, she still struggled to keep the room in focus, to listen to her husband’s words, but she was clear on a few details nonetheless. She could feel the poison in her veins at last. She didn’t know how long it had been accumulating there, building up its strength until it finally overwhelmed her, but she was certain it wasn’t newly inflicted on her. Not all of it. That lead to the other detail.

She’d been betrayed.

It had to be someone she would never suspect. Someone who had no reason to act against her. Someone she wouldn’t guard against.

“This is a wonderful room your father designed,” Halrek said. “I do miss spending time here, it’s so quiet. So very…isolated.”

Alari tried to raise her head. To fight out of the bed and its cruel grip on her fading body.

“Is there anything that you need?” Halrek asked. “An antidote perhaps?”

He wiggled the little bottle he’d taken from her table, a broad smile on his face. Alari closed her eyes and tried to remember the last time she’d seen him so animated.

“Don’t fade on me just yet,” Halrek said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this day to come. Six years of putting up with the worst this country has to offer. Six years of playing the role of the exotic foreign prince. Six years of you.”

He walked around the bed and kneeled down beside her, swinging the bottle back and forth in front of her lips.

“I had no idea this would feel so good,” he whispered, mad joy flickering behind his eyes. “Tomorrow, I’ll have to go back into hiding. I’ll have to play the grieving King. But for today, for this one precious moment, I can be free. So let’s cherish it shall we? No more secrets. No more pretending. What would you like to know o’ my dying princess?”

Alari tried to glare at him. She tried to do significantly more violent things to him as well, but Gallagrin’s power was contested. She knew the feeling of the spirit’s power being held in abeyance by competing claims on its ownership. It was the same feeling she’d fought through when she usurped her father’s throne.

“Why?” she managed to gasp out between labored breaths.

“Why not.” Halrek answered. “That should be the whole of my answer don’t you think? It’s all that you deserve certainly, but it’s so very unsatisfying. It would be a form of revenge to leave you to die in ignorance and confusion, but we’ve been together long enough that I think I know you. I think it will hurt you much worse if you understand everything before the end. You won’t be here for what follows tomorrow, but maybe sending you to the afterlife with the knowledge of what awaits your kingdom with make your stay in hell even less pleasant.”

“Why?” Alari asked again, fresh stabs of pain radiating up her rib cage.

“When we met during the war, didn’t you think it odd that I just happened to appear at your darkest hour? And that as the third prince in line for the Paxmer throne I would have the influence to stop the war that had begun?”

“But you did stop the war,” Alari said. “You helped us.”

“No, I saved you,” Halrek said. “If not for me, your forces would have crumbled under Paxmer’s assault.”

“How can you do this then?” Alari asked.

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Halrek said. “Think back to the war. What would have happened if I didn’t swoop in to save you?”

“My father could have won,” Alari said.

“Exactly,” Halrek said. “Maybe you could have beaten him, maybe not, but Paxmer couldn’t take that chance.”

“Why attack us at all?” Alari felt her breath growing weak.

“Because you were weak,” Halrek said. “But not weak enough to conquer. Whichever side won your war, was going to take control of High Crest. We couldn’t stop that and we couldn’t unseat a ruling monarch with that sort of power at their disposal. Not directly at any rate.”

“Then you should have left us…alone.” The poison surging through her veins left Alari feeling like she was melting from the inside out.

“But there was such a ripe fruit to be plucked,” Halrek said. “How could we turn that down?”

“What fruit?” Alari asked, her vision of the rooming swimming and lurching about as though she was on a ship at sea.

“Why you of course my princess,” Halrek said. “A poor, valiant hearted girl, fighting to undo the sins of her father. You were a storybook come to life and just about as easy to read.”

“I thought you didn’t want to see your people die?” Alari asked.

“I don’t,” Halrek said. “This is a far better method of conquest.”

“But you’re already have the throne,” Alari asked. “What more do you want?”

“I have nothing,” Halrek said. “Consort-King? It’s an insult. My place is not to sit below anyone from this wretched mound of goat crap, but to rule above them.”

“Years…” Alari said. “You’ve spent years working…with me…to put our kingdom back together.”

“I spent years working to prepare my kingdom for my rule,” Halrek said. “This was never about you. It was never about your war, or your people. I have always been a loyal and faithful son of Paxmer.”

“I never asked you to abandon them,” Alari said.

“You didn’t ask for your crown either,” Halrek said. “You took it.”

He stood up and began to pace around the room.

“You seized the throne with your own bloody hands,” Halrek said. ”I was there. I saw everything. And that was your mistake.”

“Wasn’t a mistake,” Alari said, fading back into her mattress to gather her strength.

“I’m glad you think so,” Halrek said. “Because that’s what showed me how a throne could be taken.”

He placed the small bottle he was carrying back on Alari’s desk and turned to face her.

“When my sister sent me on this little errand, it was only ever meant to be a ruse,” Halrek said. “She was Queen and I was the young and, for a time useless, Third Prince. I knew I was nothing more than a pawn, but she gave me such a unique role to play. I would secure the goodwill of Gallagrin and rise nearer to the throne than I ever could at home.”

“You were never true to me?” Alari asked, pain in her voice that went far deeper than even the poison could reach.

“All the times I told you that I loved you and you never wondered at how little I showed that with anything more than words?” Halrek asked.

“Our child…” Alari began to say but cut herself short. She didn’t want the answer to the question she was going to ask. Even knowing Halrek hated her. Even as her fondness for him turned to sickness and hate. She didn’t want to know what on some level she’d always suspected.

“That was an engaging evening,” Halrek said. “Passably fun for its novelty. Ravishing a princess isn’t something one gets to do everyday. I did have to be careful though, didn’t I?”

Halrek paced over to one of the bookshelves in the room and inspected the manuscripts stored there. Alari stayed silent, hoping no more would be said on the subject.

“I know you’ve felt under-appreciated since then,” Halrek said. “You’re a healthy young woman with no one to share your appetites with. Well, you were a healthy young woman. Think about it from my perspective though.”

Alari remained silent, struggling not to hear the words Halrek skewered her heart with.

“As I said, it was a very delicate situation. I couldn’t seem reluctant to get an heir to the kingdom on you. It was one thing to ask your nobles to accept me as a foreign prince. It would have been quite another to ask them to accept a Consort who refused to perform the most basic duty a Consort is expected to perform.”

Halrek selected a book from the shelf and walked over to the bed, depositing it beside Alari as though she’d been reading it before falling asleep.

“Of course the problem was, if you bore the kingdom a child then my problems simply doubled.”

“What problems?” Alari asked, conserving her strength as her stomach clenched and spasmed.

“The number of people between me and the throne,” Halrek said. “Please, just because you’re dying is no excuse for failing to keep up.”

He picked up a dagger from her table and eyed its blade and then Alari’s prone body. She more than half expected him to end his teasing and kill her right there, but instead he used it to cut open an envelope, which he placed within the book.

“Did you know, poisoning someone with a Royal Pact Spirit is a difficult endeavor?” Halrek asked. “Of course you do. It’s why you never worried about poisons as like an Inchesso noblewoman Inchesso would.”

He sat on the bed beside her again.

“Some think that the bearers of a Royal Pact Spirit are immune to poison. I know it didn’t occur to you to use one on your father, or perhaps you tried and failed and never spoke of it,” Halrek said. “The truth is you are still vulnerable to poisons of many types. I just needed to find the right one, and the right dosage. Too much, or too strong, and the spirit will recognize the toxin and expel it or neutralize it. Too little and the regenerative capabilities provided by the spirit will overwhelm the poison’s effects. If you have time though, and the proper subject, you can get the dosage just right.”

“Why didn’t you…kill me…years ago?” Alari asked, losing precious breath to the more precious need to understand the insanity that confronted her.

“Oh but I did,” Halrek said. “Or at least I practiced killing you.”

He looked down at her and pushed an errant lock of hair back from her forehead.

“Like I said, I couldn’t have two people in between me and my claim to the throne now could I?”

Alari scream and reached out a hand to choke the life out of man in front of her. She was weak and slow, but still faster than his eyes could follow and stronger than he expected.

With all of the strength she possessed, she crushed at his throat, seeking to shatter his spine and rip his head off. If she was going to die as the Bloody Handed Queen then she wanted to be painted in the right blood at least.

Gallagrin’s strength was not hers alone to command though. From his pocket, Halrek drew forth one of the Royal Summoning Stones which bore of a piece of Gallagrin’s name. With strength to match her own, he pulled her hand away and threw her back down onto the bed before hopping up and away from her.

“Oh that was perfect,” he said. “I’ve wanted to tell you that for so long now. The rage in your eyes is just what I hoped it would be. Though I must confess, seeing you moping about in misery, thinking that everything was your fault was delightful too. It made things so easy when you no longer sought any comfort in my bed.”

“You’re going to die,” Alari said.

“No, I’m going to be King!” Halrek said. “The real King. What do you think I’ve been doing for these last six years? While you’ve been preening about wasting resources on ‘improving the lives of your subjects’ in a futile effort to get them to love you, I’ve been building alliances.”

He massaged his throat and looked in a mirror to see what damage had been done.

“My sister wanted me to turn you against Inchesso, but when we saw that wasn’t going to happen, her orders were simply to keep you complacent,” Halrek said. “After watching how you destroyed your father though, I saw how much more I could strive for. All I had to do was build enough support that when you fell the nobles would rally behind me as the lesser evil to a return to civil war. Which brings us to today I suppose. We’re still close enough to your war that the wounds are fresh in people’s memory, as our annual gala has ensured they would be. Unlike six years ago though, your nobles see me as a moderating influence on you. I’m the one they can turn to when you wish to strip away too much of their power and prestige. After six years, they know they can work with me, and I know how to manipulate them.”

Halrek walked over to the broad and tightly shuttered windows and unlatched one of them without opening it.

“I should thank you for that I suppose,” he said. “You played your part adequately and with only minor coaching, so bravo for you.”

“You can’t take Gallagrin,” Alari said, feeling a deathly chill beginning to spread inwards from the tips of her fingers and toes.

“I already have,” Halrek said. “It’s just that few people are aware of that yet.”

“Who supports you?” Alari asked, fighting for even a few more moments of consciousness.

“Oh, shall I betray my allies?” Halrek asked. “It’s of no consequence I suppose. Their names will never be pried from your dead lips.”

He pushed the inner shutters securely shut.

“You suspected the Duke of Tel as the one behind the plot against you, did you not?” Halrek asked. “So his disloyalty can come as no surprise. It’s my hand that has slain you, but he delivered the means of your execution to me thanks to his contacts in Inchesso.”

“What does he gain?” Alari asked with the last of her breath.

“I’ll need a Consort-Queen once the official period of mourning is past,” Halrek said. “Telli knows he cannot be King himself. The other nobles would murder him on the spot. He has a daughter though, and giving his family a position in the court? That idea pleases him.”

Halrek listened at the shutters for a second and then turned back to Alari.

“Any other questions?” he asked.

She was silent as the poison crept up into her torso, stealing away life and heat.

“Perhaps you would like to know what will happen when you are gone?” Halrek asked. “We have staged a grand play to dramatize your passing after all.”

Halrek swept to the foot of the bed, out of reach in case Alari was feigning weakness again, and turned to her.

“As you know there has been an incident with an young Inchesso Prince whom you employed. Rumors abound that you have been conducting an illicit affair behind my back, rumors which I will denounce vehemently when you are gone of course.”

“But there is the matter of the Inchesso vampire you were seen holding a secret meeting with. He was not part of our plan, but we work with what we are given and honestly you could not have given us a better scapegoat if you’d tried.”

“In response to your presumed murder of the Inchesso prince, a guild of assassins has been employed to exact revenge on you by the prince’s family. No assassins have felled a sitting monarch of Gallagrin before, but Inchesso assassin’s know terrible secrets, so people will be all too willing to believe that your death is on their hands.”

Alari tried to will herself to her feet, to summon Gallagrin’s power to replace her failing body with one of indestructible Pact Armor, at least long enough to reclaim the summoning stone but she couldn’t manage to move at all.

“Oh don’t struggle, this is the good part,” Halrek said. “After you die, Gallagrin will feel besieged. There will be more attacks on the eastern borders, and in the end, war will be declared. But not a limited war. Not one to adjust the borders by a few miles or more. This will be a war of true conquest. Gallagrin will need to exact vengeance on Inchesso and Paxmer will stand behind it.”

Halrek resumed his pacing, checking first the door that lead to the solitary staircase which lead up to royal bedchamber and then the shutters once more.

“With two nations against it, Inchesso will fall, Gallagrin will have its revenge, but at a ruinously heavy price. With the Gallagrin throne safely secured in my hands, Paxmer will then march in and claim both kingdom’s as its protectorates.”

“With three kingdom’s under Paxmer’s banner, my sister, my eldest brother and I will form a ruling triumvirate and from our house will grow a dynasty which will rule all of the Blessed Realms.”

Halrek opened both the inner and outer shutters and then returned to the side of Alari’s bed and whispered to her.

“What’s supposed to happen next is that I leave and receive word in a few hours that an attack on you has been planned. I’m supposed to gather the royal guards as I race up to this room, bursting through the door just in time to confront the assassins who have already slain you. There will be a fierce battle, I’ll be injured, but despite that injury, the guards and I will kill every one of the assassins who murdered you.”

Leaning in closer, Halrek lowered his voice still further.

“I don’t like that plan though. A few hours gives you too much time.” he said, and hoisted Alari out her bed as though he were going to carry her over a bridal threshold. “Plus I’ve wanted to do this for so very long.”

And with that he took Alari to the window and threw her out.

The Royal Bed Chamber overlooked one of the most lovely scenes in the capital. Below the window the river Mundia ran, falling a thousand feet down into a chasm that served as an unpassable line of defense from attack on the city’s western flank.

Alari fell and in falling felt light at last. Adrenaline surged in her veins and brought her a few sparkling moments of clarity.

She saw the jutting rocks of the wide chasm walls flying by and knew that she was traveling much too fast to survive the impact that awaited her at the bottom. That didn’t stop her from calling out for Gallagrin’s power though.

Even split seconds from death, even destroyed by toxic wounds and poisonous words, Alari still wanted to live.

She entered the mist that roiled at the bottom of the chasm and felt fingers of wind and river spray try to catch her. Her fall slowed, but not enough. When she hit the bottom it was cold and uncaring stone which greeted her and she shattered against it.

Following her meeting Teo, Alari planned to conduct a strategic series of interviews with the castle staff. It wasn’t a queenly sort of business to engage in, but someone had to turn up information on the conspiracy that moved against her, and by doing the investigation herself, Alari know that she could trust both the results and the reaction to what was learned.

In theory she should have had minions to assign to the task, but in this instance it was those very minions who were impossible to rely on. As much as she wanted to push the burden of ferreting out the guilty onto someone else, whoever was moving against her had to have turned some number of her closest assistants against her. It was the only move that had even the faintest glimmer of success on the conspiracies part and it had to be someone she’d never expect would strike at her.

That also limited who Alari could trust to act on her behalf. Halrek, her King-Consort held few connections to Gallagrin, but as an outsider his reaction to learning someone was planning to assassinate his Queen was likely to be quite lethal. Alari didn’t object to killing the conspirators, but she knew they needed to keep at least a few of them alive to make sure the whole conspiracy was rooted out properly. That left the burden squarely on her shoulders and while discovering who had been turned against her was a task Alari longed to get started on, it was also one that she dreaded undertaking. She’d picked her staff carefully, and treated them well. A betrayal by one of them wasn’t just a blow against the kingdom, it was a blow against Alari’s ability to trust her own judgment, which was potentially more fatal than any other wound the conspirators might cause.

Unfortunately for Alari, she never got to carry out the grim duty she had in mind.

For all the precautions she’d taken, she was still one step behind the conspiracy.

The reality of that struck her as she organized the duty rosters for her staff after Teo departed the storeroom Alari had conscripted as her private interview chamber. One moment she was reviewing a sheet of times and locations where the palace staff was assigned and the next she was slumped over the desk. She managed to raise her head and bring her vision into focus just in time to see her chamberlain enter the room.

“Your Majesty?” the chamberlain asked, confused to find his monarch in such an unusual location and in such apparent disarray.

“We require your assistance Lord Chamberlain,” Alari said. “Fetch the royal chirurgeon.”

She wanted to say more, to explain that some foul magic had overwhelmed her, but darkness pulled her under before she could force the words out.

In a grey and soundless haze, her thoughts scattered in a thousand directions. There was one that she held onto though. She was Gallagrin. Pact bonded to the great spirit the Sleeping Gods had forged to watch over the realm and provide stability for the Mindful Races they built from flesh and sinew and breath and inspiration.

Gallagrin couldn’t be poisoned. Gallagrin couldn’t be slain. No assassin, and no army, could overcome Gallagrin. Even the Sleeping Gods couldn’t undo what they had made. Whatever was happening to her was wrong. It couldn’t happen to the Queen of Gallagrin.

But that didn’t change that it was happening.

Alari fought against the force that was pulling her consciousness down but it was like battling a tempest in her own blood. No matter how she struggled, the whirlpool of her dreams would not release her, and before she knew it, she’d been pulled under the waves of her subconscious.

Lost in her own mind, Alari dreamed about dreaming.

She was thirteen again and with her only real friend.

“So what are you going to do when you’re the ruler of the kingdom?” Dae asked her as they sat together on one of Alari’s many canopied beds, studying the history of Gallagrin.

In the dream, Alari couldn’t read the scrolls that were strewn about the bed but somehow the words she’d spoken and the promises Dae made echoed with crystal clarity in her ears even after the passage of more than a decade.

“I’m going to get everyone to love me,” the youthful, idiotic Alari had said. Hearing her own words sent a stab of embarrassment and pain spiking through Alari’s adult heart.

Her dream then had been to lead people about of the miasma of fear that her father spread over the country. She believed that all she needed to do was to offer the downtrodden and terror-striken people of Gallagrin her hand in friendship and love and she would be able to lift them all up to a brighter future.

When the time had come to ascend her throne though, her hands had been covered in blood and she’d learned that her people were far more broken than she’d ever known as a child.

“Everyone already loves you!” the youthful Dae had insisted.

It was true that everyone who came to court gave her the highest of compliments. There was a real shine of appreciation in their eyes and they paid attention to every word she said. She’d known even by age thirteen though that those compliments were as much for King Sathe’s benefit as they were for hers and that people attended to her because no one dared offend the princess given the retribution her father would exact.

“Everyone fears me,” Alari said. “The less time they have to spend with me, the more comfortable they are.”

“Well I love you,” Dae said. “And I’ll never leave you. Unless you tell me to go.”

“I can’t tell you to go,” Alari said. “Who would be my most trusted Knight?”

“You’ve got your pick of Knights,” Dae said, glancing away from her princess.

“I don’t want any of them though,” Alari said. “I want you!”

“Then you’ve got me,” Dae said. “I’ll protect you from anybody who wants to hurt you. If anyone tries to mess with you, I’ll chop their heads off! If anyone tries to take your kingdom, I’ll rally the troops for you! No matter what it takes, I’ll be there!”

“What if you have to fight a Pact Warrior for me?” Alari asked.

“Then I’ll get a Pact Spirit!” Dae said. “The biggest Pact spirit I can, and we’ll both protect you!”

Dae had gotten a Pact Spirit. It had taken years of work. It had meant that Alari had to be separated from the person who meant the most to her in the whole world, but it had been worth it.

When Dae returned bearing her Pact Spirit, both of the young women knew it was something special. Alari was unspeakable proud of Dae. No one knew that they’d substituted the Pact stones for Dae’s spirit bonding. Dae was Alari’s secret weapon, and Alari wasn’t willing to share her with anyone.

At the same time though, secret weapons are all the more powerful if their secrets are kept hidden.

Alari dreamed of seeing Dae off for her first command. As a Pact Knight, Dae was expected to serve the kingdom in a great capacity than a simple handmaiden to a princess whose life had never been in even the hint of danger since her father’s reign turned bloody and cruel.

“If you call, for any reason, I’ll come,” Dae said, holding Alari’s hands in her own.

“You’ll have responsibilities,” Alari said.

“I have one responsibility above all others, one that I swore myself to before all others,” Dae said.

“Go with my blessing, and my love,” Alari said and kissed Dae on the forehead. “I don’t know where our paths will take us, but you will ever be my most trusted Knight and my most beloved companion.”

“I am yours to command,” Dae said. “Always.”

“Then I give you this one command,” Alari said. “Return to me. Whatever perils you face, whatever trials you must pass through, you are not allowed to die without me, and you are not allowed to be taken beyond when I may follow. Come back to me my Adae.”

“Whatever it takes,” Dae said.

Alari had never called for her though.

The dream moved on to the civil war which Alari provoked and the height of the fighting between the forces loyal to her cause and those who clung to her father’s dying reign.

Alari wanted so many times during the fight for Gallagrin to call Dae to her side. There were so many battles that would have ended in decisive wins, if Alari had called for her Knight and the forces which Dae commanded.

But then Paxmer would have invaded.

Alari knew that would be a problem with inciting a civil war. Gallagrin’s neighbors were universally hungry to consume its resources. The rich mountains of metals and gems which were the foundation of Gallagrin’s wealth and prosperity lay temptingly close to its borders.

The Kingdom of Senkin to the north and the Green Council lands to the northeast had enough internal problems that Alari knew they couldn’t muster the forces to mount a serious invasion attempt. Before she even began her revolt, she’d secured those borders through careful diplomacy and the promise of future trade relations.

Inchesso was old and stagnant enough that they lacked the capacity to invade even if they could find a common will to attempt it.

Paxmer however was another matter. Vigorous and primed for expansion, Alari had heard rumors for a long time of Paxmer plans to become the first of the Blessed Realms to conquer one of the other realms.

Relations between the two neighboring states had never been especially cordial and during the time of King Sathe’s rule there had been insults and indignities hurled across both sides of the border. Sathe had been the first to truly overstep the bounds of international decorum though when he had the chief ambassador from Paxmer drawn and quartered and then sent back to Paxmer in a series of separate boxes.

The beginning of hostilities in Gallagrin had sent a clear and unambiguous signal to Paxmer that their northern neighbor was entering the weakest state it had been in for decades and so the armies of Paxmer had formed up and marched on the border.

Alari had barely enough resources to contest for the future of the country against her father’s troops. Fighting her father and Paxmer would have been impossible and so she’d made the only call she could make. She’d left Dae in place, on the border, against the full might of the Paxmer army.

Her dream shifted to imagination and she saw the border keep of Star’s Watch burning under the heat of dragon fire.

At the end of the civil war, Alari’s hands had been bathed in the blood of her father. They’d fought at the top of the tallest spire in Gallagrin, wrestled for control of the spirit of Gallagrin itself and when Alari had won, she’d torn her father’s head from his shoulders with her bare hands.

It was that image, the princess-become-Queen, striding to the parapets, her hands covered to the elbows in bright crimson blood as she held aloft the bodiless head of the former King which had marked the end of the civil war. It had also earned her the sobriquet of “The Bloody Handed Queen” but it wasn’t her father’s blood which she sought to wash away with every good deed she did and every kindness she could show.

In Alari’s dream, every drop of blood that ran down from her elbows to her fingertips came from one of the border people that she sacrificed to make her dream of ruling the kingdom better than her father come true.

In her dream, the spectre of Paxmer rose above the nation that she’d built. If Halrek hadn’t appeared late in the war and pledged his aid, Gallagrin would have entered the bloodiest war in its history as Paxmer devoured it while Alari tried to rebuild her forces in time to stem the tide of invaders.

In the end, Alari felt like she won her throne due to the gallantry of her Knight and the vision of her husband. Her own achievements somehow paled before the price that others had paid for her, and though she knew on an intellectual level that wasn’t entirely accurate, she couldn’t help but feel like it was an appropriate way to remember the events given all she’d attained in the process.

She was Queen in more than name. Gallagrin’s strength was her strength, but when she reached for that strength she found it was fading from her quickly.

The shock of that feeling allowed Alari to open her eyes once more.

She was back in her bed. Back in the royal chambers. Halrek was with her. He was the only one with her.

“You’re awake?” he said sounding neither surprised nor pleased. “There’s unusual strength in your blood.”

He walked to one of the tables and picked up a bottle she knew wasn’t one of hers.

“I’m sure you must feel terrible,” Halrek said. “No worries though, the chirurgeon has instructed that you be allowed to rest for the evening, so no one will be checking on you. No one except for the assassins who’ll be visiting shortly that is.”

Teo’s flight from the royal castle of Gallagrin was by turns, literal, then figurative, then labored. Even the brightest surge of excitement could only sustain the vampire for so long and there were many leagues that separated Teo from Ren. He didn’t consciously think of the distance though. If he considered the terrain he had to cross, or the impossibility of finding one lost son of nobility in the vastness of Gallagrin’s eastern border, fear and doubt would have crushed Teo’s soul.

With the weariness that ran down into the marrow of his bones, Teo might have welcomed the embrace of true death that despair offered him, but where he’d exhausted all hope for himself, there was still a ferocious beast of will that bit back any thought of surrendering Ren’s future to those who would do the Duke’s second son harm. Most especially including the Duke himself.

A score of miles outside of Highcrest, Teo alighted on the road at a spot where it ran close to a swift clear stream. Vampire or no, he still retained certain human requirements and hydration was one of them. Under the star filled sky and the light of a sickle moon, Teo drank his fill and paused at last to let one relevant thought penetrate his awareness.

He’d sped from the castle and covered more ground than any human, or Pact Soldier, could have with only silence and surety as to his course.

“How do I know where I’m going?” he asked himself.

Neither the night nor the stream offered any answer to the question, but in his breast, Teo felt the pull that he’d been following since he left his audience with the Queen.

“Our bond,” he whispered and imagined that he felt the warmth of Ren’s smile echo in response.

He’d never been parted from Ren by as much physical distance as currently lay between them. For the years that they’d been together, Teo had always had a sense of Ren’s presence but it had felt all encompassing. It was as though Ren wasn’t contained within the limits of his skin, but existed everywhere that his voice could be heard or his influence perceived.

It was only at such a great distance where Teo had no hope of hearing Ren’s words, and could see no sign of ground they walked together over, that he could feel Ren as a distinct and singular entity.

“I guess I really will always know where you are,” Teo said, drinking another handful of water from the stream.

“Or at least what direction you are in.” he amended. Like a compass, Teo’s heart told him the precise direction to face to be looking towards Ren, but how far away his beloved was remained a mystery.

“If you are fleeing your father, then the Inchesso border will be your greatest hope for security,” Teo said, trying to place himself in the mind of a man who should have been an open book to him. “You will have no allies there though so perhaps you will keep to yourself.”

Without consciously deciding to, Teo began walking in the direction of the where Ren lay.

“No allies in Inchesso but possibly some enemies.” Talking to himself was not a habit Teo was accustomed to, but loneliness exacted a harsh price and if a little one-sided conversation would allow him to retain his wits for a while longer, he would gladly embrace the air of madness that came with it.

“Yes, if the enemies of my family were to discover you, they might still see you as a target for their wrath, or at best a tool to wield against your father.”

The prospect of Ren falling into the unmerciful hands of an Inchesso noble family sickened Teo and he quickened his pace. Every country in the Blessed Realms was renowned for different skills and specialities. Numbered among the list of Inchesso’s traits was a unique capacity at “interrogation”. Unlike the less creative sorts of torture which other nations employed, the nobility of Inchesso harbored secret methods that were capable of preserving the life and sanity of their “subjects” far beyond the limits which other countries could take a prisoner too.

“There’s still time,” Teo told himself. “They wouldn’t drag him straight to the confession chamber. Not until they were certain of his connections. And he is smart enough to obfuscate those for a little while at least.”

He thought about Ren matching wits with one of the old serpents who ruled the Inchesso noble families.

“By the Sleeping Gods, let him be clever enough,” Teo whispered and quickened his steps again into a jog.

It was also possible that Ren would pass among the commoners of Inchesso for a time.

“Yes, because he looks just like an Inchesso workman,” Teo said, chiding himself. Even if Ren could darken his tan skin to one of the native hues of the Inchesso people, the bone structure of his cheeks and chin and nose marked the Duke’s son as Gallagrin nobility.

“I am his only hope.”

Teo couldn’t believe that entirely though. Ren was more than a kind and giving man. He hadn’t inherited his father’s heartless malice, but his mind was no stranger to subtlety and of all the members of his family, none had Ren’s depth of intellect.

“He would be outside of his familiar domain if he was called to stand against one of the Inchesso elites, but I must have faith in my Ren,” Teo said. “Those vipers might well discover their fangs turned against their own flesh if they underestimate him.”

A bottomless well of pride offered Teo an additional cup of energy as he continued to put the miles between them behind him.

For a time he ran onwards, wordless, almost thoughtless, his whole being focused on the bright star that called to him. His limits were gossamer suggestions left behind on the floor of the Queen’s chamber, cut away from him by the command to follow his heart to its uttermost desire.

In some corner of his soul, Teo knew that he was burning the last vital reserves of his life. Each inhumanly fast step stole another thread from the skein of his life. Those were easy to sacrifice though. Just put one foot before the other and let hope and fear cooperate to set the pace for him. If he left his blood scattered in his wake then so be it. Blood was not so precious to his heart as preserving the one that it beat for.

He would have run to the far corners of the world in that state if the world hadn’t intervened to deny his progress.

The bar set to block his progress was a literal one. Across a mountain chasm which Teo lacked the strength to soar over some kind people had constructed a bridge. They were likely then pitched into the chasm by the greedier sorts who places a toll on the bridge and staffed it with a half dozen burly thugs who were capable of extorting the allowed fee as well as additional “donations” from passing travelers.

Teo had neither the time nor the funds to spare for such licensed brigands.

“You want to step out of my path,” he said, addressing the wall of meat who stepped casually forward to collect the bribe required for passage.

“You want to hand over your gold and hope you’ve got enough to convince me not to stab you with your own fangs vampire,” the thug said.

In his exhausted state, Teo had no capacity left to disguise his true nature.

“You want to step out of my path, now,” Teo said, fighting to keep his hands by his side.

“No, you don’t get it,” the thug said and jabbed a finger that resembled a fat sausage into Teo’s chest. “I’m not afraid of you. And neither are my boys here. We put monsters like you in the ground all the time.”

“You’ve never met anything like me,” Teo said. “Now step out of my path.”

He had no energy to fight with, and unlike some other bloodlines, slaughtering every one of the extortionists who stood before him wasn’t going to provide Teo with any useful blood to recharge his terminally depleted reserves.

“I’ve met plenty like you,” the lead brigand said and spit on the ground. “And I’ve broken them all.”

Teo looked up at him and saw that the leader must have been a half-breed giant. Though few of the towering folk were citizens of Gallagrin proper, they were still part of the country and held their own estates in the high mountain strongholds which the rest of the people of the nation ceded to them out of a neighborly desire to not aggravate creatures who had no interest living on hospitable terrain and a great interest in reducing encroachers into their domains to a jam-like pulp. Despite that level of surly isolationism, and the questionable physical issues involved, there were still the occasional dalliances between the Giant folk and the other Mindful Races, some of which even produced viable offspring.

None of that concerned Teo though. For him, the half-giant was nothing more than a ball of anger and violence waiting for an excuse to explode. Teo had run into that sort of barrier too often of late and had suffered under similar, if smaller, hands in the alley in Nath. He had no more suffering due on that account, he decided. He’d already paid for his failures and shortcomings and his registers were empty.

“You’re too late then,” Teo said. “I’ve already been broken.”

“Got a lot of lip left in you for somebody who’s broken,” the leader said and shoved Teo, attempting to send him sprawling backwards.

Backwards would have moved Teo father away from Ren though, and that was not going to happen. With a slight shift of his weight, Teo let the force of the half-giant’s push serve to pivot him a quarter turn as the half-giant stepped foward.

“This is your last chance,” Teo said, forcing the words out past waves of agonizing weariness. “Get out of my way.”

The half-giant huffed and grabbed Teo’s tunic with both hands.

“Shouldn’t have tried to play it tough vampire,” the half-giant said and hauled Teo off his feet. “Now we’re going to play guess how many bounces it takes you to reach the bottom.”

Teo looked at the half-giant and tried to see a man in front of him. He tried to see another sapient creature. One who might have a bright future if only he survived this day. One that might be a hero or a friend or a confidant to some person not here, some person who could see a side of the half-giant that Teo would never glimpse.

Teo tried to see the good in the half-giant but he was too spent. The road he’d walked had taken too much from him and all that was left in that moment of incipient violence was the creature that lived down at the base of Teo’s being. It understand violence and it understood need.

Teo needed to reach Ren.

Violence was being offered.

Violence would be given.

Though he wasn’t able to form clear memories of it afterwards, it was still Teo who reached up and shattered the half-giants arms at the elbows. It was Teo who dragged the tall brigand in close and forced the man’s head backwards at a sharp angle.

Teo could derive no sustenance from the blood of one he wasn’t close to, but throats were still an open target for his fangs and there was a primal satisfaction that came with tearing loose the life blood of a deadly enemy.

As the half-giant fell, Teo reeled back as well and the other brigands jumped to their feet.

Teo’s reserves had been non-existent and he’d drawn on them anyways. He’d pushed himself impossibly far, but even doing the impossible wasn’t enough sometimes.

In Teo’s addled and fading mind, the five brigands who assaulted him wore the same faces as the Nath watchmen who beat him in a lonely alley more nights ago than he could recall. Unlike that beating, he struggled against this one, but the results were largely the same.

A pair of the brigands fell before his teeth and claws but the blows of the rest sent him to the ground all too soon.

Looking up at the sickle moon calling him to the east, Teo tried to rise, tried to close the distance to Ren. Even if he had to crawl over the miles, he would do it without complaint he told himself. Another voice, a more sober one, told him that he wasn’t going to crawl anywhere.

Instead of dying in a lonely alley, he was going to die on a lonely road before an uncrossable chasm.

He reached out, knowing it was for the last time, to feel where Ren was, hoping beyond hope that he could feel even an echo of the gentle warmth Ren’s heart always radiated.

For a moment, a cold chill ran through Teo when he wasn’t able to tell which direction Ren lay in. Then he felt the familiar cocoon of comfort settle all around and the first of the remaining brigands fell silently to the ground.

Ren dispatched the two remaining brigands with an ease Teo had never seen the young noble possess.

Of course, Teo had never seen Ren in possession of a suit of Pact armor either.

When Teo was summoned to the Queen’s chambers for his second visit, he was reasonably sure that he wasn’t going to leave the room alive.

He was a vampire. He was a foreigner. He was on the wrong side of a dispute with one of the Queen’s trusted backers. Each of those placed him in a poor position. Taken together, he couldn’t imagine how they spelled anything other than a death sentence.

The thought should have bothered him. On a hazy, intellectual level he knew that. It had been a long time since he’d last fed though and far from fearing for his life, Teo found that even the will required to place one foot in front of the other was almost beyond him. If his visit to the Queen was going to mark the end of his days, he felt like he could accept that. In one sense, his life had ended years before on an ill-fated hunting trip. In another sense it had ended when he was cast out of the Duke’s service and cut off from Ren. One last blow, the one that ended his shambling existence would be a mercy he might not even feel at all.

So he trudged onwards, stopping at the door to the Queen’s private audience chamber to allow the page at the door to announce his arrival. His attention wasn’t what it should have been, but as he was escorted in to see the Queen, Teo was reasonably sure his name hadn’t been called. He couldn’t see how that was possible though. It wasn’t like the Queen was going to be waiting for him to appear before her.

The page led him to a narrow desk. Many things were out of place about the room. It was much smaller than the audience chamber the Queen had used the last time they met, there were stacks of documents covering every available horizontal surface in the room, and the Queen was waiting in a simple chair behind the desk.

Teo paused as the page closed the door, leaving him alone in the room with the kingdom’s sovereign ruler. A sovereign ruler who was without her crown, her seal of office or any of her official regalia. The woman who sat before him wore only plain clothes and none of the jewelry or makeup which regularly adorned the monarch of Gallagin. Her hair was still set in a royal fashion, and her bearing bore testament to the power and responsibility she carried but someone passing her in the castle’s corridors could have been forgiven for not recognizing their Queen. At least not until she spoke.

“You look as though your health is failing,” the Queen said. There was neither sympathy, nor reprimand in her voice. Instead Teo heard a quiet calculation ticking forward inside her.

“I suspect that my looks are not deceptive in that matter,” Teo said. He remained standing because he had no guess as to what the proper protocols were for meeting royalty in such a situation.

“Sit,” the Queen said. “I would send for a physician but if my tutoring is correct, there is little any of them could do for you.”

“I fear you are correct Your Majesty,” Teo said and gratefully sank into the chair on the opposite side of the desk from where the Queen sat.

“I don’t believe they can help you, but perhaps I can,” she said.

“Forgive me, but my condition, my bloodline, is not easily aided by others,” Teo said. “I fear any help you could offer would do little to restore me.”

“I do not offer to feed you,” the Queen said. “I know the bond of intimacy which you require to regain your strength, but there is still something I can offer which might restore you for a time.”

“I would be your eternal servant, if you could ease this burden,” Teo said. He hadn’t the strength left to fight for his own life, but he hadn’t yet lost all desire to retain it. The world was still appealing if for no other reason than  Ren was still a part of it.

“I have enough servants,” the Queen said. “What I find myself critically short on are trustworthy agents.”

Teo took a moment to absorb that, struggling to imagine how he could possibly serve the Queen in his current condition.

“Once pledged, you may rely on my service and my discretion,” Teo said. “But I fear the services I am capable of performing for you are limited to such tasks as the youngest Page in your employ could handle with ease.”

“I know I am not engaging you at your best,” the Queen said. “But for the service I have in mind, I believe you will be able to rise to the challenge. I require you to save Rendolan Greis Telli, second reserve heir to the Duchy of Tel.”

Teo didn’t hear her words. Not clearly. His fatigue addled mind had played too many tricks on him already.

He tried to speak, to ask the Queen to repeat what she had said, but he couldn’t. For a long moment, Teo couldn’t form any words at all.

“Rendolan has vanished from his father’s estate and is the subject of a determined hunt by the Duke’s best soldiers,” the Queen said, continuing on as though no silence had fallen. “Where he flies, whether it is away from Gallagrin or towards his father is something no one seems to be able to determine. No one except, I believe, you.”

“I’m…I’m sorry, your Majesty,” Teo said. “You wish me to do what?”

Hope and fear and anger and love each grabbed a corner of Teo’s mind and tore his thoughts into an unruly hail of disconnected pieces.

“Find Rendolan,” the Queen said, making the matter clear and simple and impossible for Teo to do anything but agree to. “Save him from whatever peril he is in.”

“And then what?” Teo asked. He had no memory of standing up, but he was on his feet and they were anxious to turn towards the door and fly back to Nath, to Elinspire or to the gates of hell themselves.

“That will depend greatly on the circumstances you find him in and why he fled his father’s estate,” the Queen said. “It’s possible that he escaped the captivity his father placed him under for your sake. In that case I invite you to return to my protection.”

“That…” Teo stopped at a loss for words again. He felt as though he’d been parted from Ren for centuries and had lost track of any real count of the days. The beating Teo received from the Duke had been unnoticeable in the face of the pain that separation entailed. It wasn’t merely the empty days which passed that tore at Teo’s soul though. The vision of an endless future spent alone, growing ever more hungry and ever colder was the worst torment Teo had ever endured. Against the horror of that future, hope had carried him forward, diminishing with each day like a candle running down to the end of its wick.

That was why the Queen’s words didn’t fall on deaf ears, but rather disbelieving ones. There was so little hope left in Teo, that the offer she placed before him was beyond his ability to imagine as real. He couldn’t allow himself to believe in a future that included a real chance to even see Ren, much less save him from his father’s machinations. To allow himself to hope for such a thing opened up the door to losing the last irrational dream which sustained him, and Teo couldn’t risk that. It was all that he had left and literally the last thing that kept his heart beating.

He couldn’t risk losing that, but he did anyways.

It was barely a choice. On one side was an existence he couldn’t imagine continuing and on the other was the man he couldn’t imagine losing.

“That is very kind of you,” Teo said, forcing himself to breath. “But what if he did not escape for my sake?”

Teo’s love for Ren was an odd thing. It had begun when they were young and was as selfish and foolish and wildly giving as any young love is. Since rising as a vampire though, Teo’s bond with Ren had changed. He needed Ren on a more fundamental level than he ever had. He could have become possessive and controlling. The fear of losing Ren could have made Teo a miserable, greedy monster. Instead of fear though, the bond between them had become one of profound gratitude.

Teo knew what Ren gave up to be with him. For Teo their relationship was the cornerstone of his existence, but for Ren it was a choice. In all the years they’d been together, it had been a choice which Ren made freely and willingly and with joy in his heart. It was how their relationship had to be. If Ren resented his role, the emotional closeness which empowered Teo’s soul would be absent and any feeding the vampire tried to do would yield little more than empty blood.

Because of that, Teo had always insisted that Ren follow his heart. When they fought, which happened as it does in any relationship, it was within boundaries of respect and love (which didn’t always happen in relationships). Thanks to the communion they shared, their reconciliations were never that difficult though. Teo derived his happiness from Ren, and Ren from Teo. If Ren’s happiness had required it, Teo would gladly have starved to the point of extinction or burned on a pyre.

It was that level of devotion that allowed Teo to contemplate that Ren’s flight from the estate in Elinspire might have been motivated by a reason other than himself. Indeed, Teo’s heart prayed that Ren wasn’t suffering in attempt for them to be reunited. The thought of Ren injured, hunted, and frightened was abominable, but being the cause of that pain was an even a worse prospect.

“If my suspicions are true,” the Queen said, “then I believe you will find that Rendolan has acquired some rather damning information about the Duke of Tel. I can just about make out the shape of what he might tell you from the pieces which are laid before me but I need the precise details on what Telli has planned before I can act.”

“Forgive me Your Majesty,” Teo said. “But if you believe the Duke to be guilty of a crime, can you not recall him and force him to answer the charges which you can lay at his door already?”

The Queen smiled at that.

“I wish it were so easy,” she said. “Perhaps when I am an old creature and as firmly entrenched upon my throne as my father was I shall hold such power.”

“I believe you are already a greater sovereign than the late King was, Your Majesty,” Teo said. “Your people adore you.”

“Some of them, perhaps,” the Queen said. “But though I wear the Mantle of Gallagrin and can claim sole dominion of this land, I cannot and will not try to claim the hearts of its people. That was the mistake my father made.”

“The people were terrified of King Sathe from everything I was told as a boy,” Teo said.

“Yes, and thus he held their hearts in sway, driving them with fear as I would shepherd them with love,” the Queen said. “But my love is not as strong as my father’s fear was.”

“I believe it may be stronger than you know,” Teo said. “If you replaced the Duke with another, I believe the love of you people would ratify the choice more strongly than their fear of him would disapprove of it.”

“That may be true, but there are other nobles who would find the fear of similar treatment a most motivating factor,” the Queen said.

“You are Gallagrin though,” Teo said.

“Yes, and that is the central problem I am sending you to address,” the Queen said.

“Your Majesty?” Teo asked, confused.

“I am Gallagrin. I hold the Pact Spirit that is our kingdom’s heart,” the Queen said. “Whatever stratagem Telli has conceived, I should be secure in my throne against it. And yet, if I am right, the Duke of Tel has set himself upon a path where I have no choice but to destroy him utterly. So one of those two statements is in error, and, as yet, I lack the vision to see which it is. That is why I am sending you to do the one thing I know you must accomplish.”

The Queen locked gazes with Teo and the inflection of her voice changed. She spoke not as a woman, or a Queen, but as Gallagrin itself.

“Save your beloved and bring the information he carries to myself or my nearest agent. You do not have leave to fail in this duty.”

Teo was outside the castle before he was aware of moving. The strength that surged through his body came from his last reserves but he spent them without care. Even without the royal command, this was a mission he would not fail.

Even with the support of a Pact Spirit, there are beatings that a body can only partially endure. In the wake of trauma, recovery requires rest. A Pact Spirit won’t knock their partner out during a battle, or while danger is imminent, but afterwards, when it’s safe, they won’t do anything to keep the Pact Warrior on their feet either.

Dae knew that. She was familiar with the sort of post-battle coma that accompanied serious injuries from direct and repeated personal experience. The one bright side to the period of extended helplessness was that Kirios was able to share some of his magic with her while she slept. He was able to allow slightly more of his power to flow through her while she slept than he could while she was awake, though it was still only a trickle compared to the raging current they drew on in their transformed state.

Among other benefits, the small drops of power that Kirios fed her allowed her to heal quicker and more thoroughly than an unbonded human, elf or dwarf could manage. “Quicker” however was very relative.

“You don’t look half as bad as you should feel,” Kael said from a fat, comfortable chair beside Dae’s recovery bed.

“Comes from all that clean leaving I do,” Dae said and blinked her eyes open. As a Pact Warrior she had a private room, but certainly not a lavish one. The bed she lay on looked like it had been in use for the better part of half a century. On the bright side, the sheets had been washed at least once in that time period, which was better than her usual flops could manage.

The Duke’s generosity was limited to the projecting the appearance of gratitude more than the pricier substance of it. Dae was neither surprised nor disappointed. She’d slept on finer sheets in her life and she’s slept in places she didn’t care to (or in some cases have the capacity to) remember. A private room was better than the shallow grave she’d anticipated resting in.

Glancing at herself under the covers, Dae noticed she was still in her traveling clothes. Despite the violence of the encounter with the Berserker, her mundane clothing showed little sign of the blows she’d taken. Lifting the top of her shirt up from her chest, Dae saw that the same couldn’t be said of her torso. Her body wasn’t literally one giant bruise but the black and blues were winning the war for real estate on her torso over her normally lightish brown tone.

Testing her lungs with an experimental breath yielded the sort of pain that said she’d either badly bruised or mildly fractured a few ribs. Flexing a few muscles, she could still feel pain everywhere down to her toes which was reassuring after the beating she took. Pact Spirits could compensate for a lot of things but full paralysis was more than even an experienced Pact Warrior wanted to contend with.

Dae tried to sit up and felt a stabbing pain scream up her leg.

“The Chirgeon said you broke your leg,” Kael said without looking away from the stack of reports he was reading. The slight smile on his face betrayed the joy he felt at getting to mention that after she discovered it for herself.

Dae indulged in some choice cursing before adding “did she leave any other gems of wisdom?”

“Yeah,” Kael said. “She splinted you up. Said to stay off it for a few weeks. It was Gunnelle though so she knows you. Said when you don’t stay off it, you can hop off to hell on stick because, and I quote here, ‘she’s not going to fix your hide up again if you’re going to keep breaking it like that’, unquote.”

“Wonderful,” Dae said. “I’m gonna have to hobble over to Hentel’s place when we get back to Nath and pick up a keg for her.”

“Hentel’s?” Kael said. “You never get the good stuff for me!”

“You should try being useful sometime,” Dae said.

“This is the thanks I get for guarding you in your hours of weakness?” Kael asked.

“You got my coin pouch,” Dae said, not bothering to check if it was still on her. “That should have covered the first hour. How long have I been out and why are you still here?”

“You’ve been out for the better part of a day and I’m here because of the Commander’s orders,” Kael said. “Seems the Duke was impressed with how you jumped in on that Berserker. Wanted you properly taken care of.”

“And I’m still alive?” Dae asked.

“Through no fault of your own, yes,” Kael said.

“What kind of line did they sell the Duke?” Dae asked.

“What do you mean?” Kael asked.

“About the Berserker,” Dae said. “You were in position to see it. You know I didn’t have a choice there.”

“There’s always a choice Kor,” Kael said. “From where I was sitting there was plenty of fodder you could have thrown at that monster to slow him down.”

“Aside from the Duke, there wasn’t anyone else on that mountain that had a better shot at surviving that Berserker than I did,” Dae said.

“Didn’t look like your shot was all that great really,” Kael said. “Might have been a bit better if you’d tripped him up with a soldier or two.”

“Might have been a bit better if another Pact Warrior had helped out,” Dae said, frowning.

“You’re too beat up to be that naive Kor,” Kael said.

“Didn’t say I was planning that they would,” Dae said. “Just pointing out that March’s fine tradition of courageous service is looking a little yellow these days.”

“Can’t say I mind yellow,” Kael said. “Best gold we get paid’s got a nice yellow tint to it, and with the combat bonus on this little outing, we stand to gain a hefty pile of it.”

“Huh,” Dae said, a half formed thought bubbling up into her mind.

“Aww, we were having a nice little conversation here and then you had to go and start thinking, didn’t you?” Kael asked.

“Just wondering about something,” Dae said.

“Stop,” Kael said. “Don’t wonder about anything. The Commander keeps ordering me to keep you out of people’s hair. You’ve got a busted leg now. Take that as a clue and stop stirring up a nest of trouble.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Dae said. “Just trying to figure out which got hurt more in the attack; the Duke or his purse.”

“From how he looked after the fight?” Kael said. “I’d say his purse had to hurt at least a dozen times worse than he did.”

“Interesting, don’t you think?” Dae said. “How many did we lose?”

“A couple dozen,” Kael said. “Nobody special though.”

“They’re all special Kael,” Dae said. “Doesn’t matter if you don’t believe that either. You know the commander will sell it like that to the Duke.”

“That true I suppose,” Kael said. “Death benefits for the ‘best and brightest among us’. March’s coffers should be filled to overflowing after this.”

“Doesn’t seem like the kind of expedition the Duke should feel happy about financing,” Dae said, the pieces of her idea falling into place as she spoke. “What’s he been up to since the battle? And where are we?”

“We made it to Pell’s Gate while you were snoozing away,” Kael said. “Turns out Lorenzo’s family got in just after us. The Duke’s been with them ever since.”

“That must have been a fun meeting,” Dae said.

“They’re swearing at him through a translator,” Kael said.

“How long have they been talking?” Dae asked.

“A few hours now,” Kael said. “Probably get blind drunk and wake up best friends tomorrow.”

“Their son’s dead,” Dae said.

“You or I might care about that, well, ok, you might, but these are Inchesso nobles,” Kael said. “They’re not just foreign, they’re alien.”

Dae snorted. The Inchesso were no more alien than anyone else. Plenty of them worshipped the same golden coins that owned Kael’s soul and plenty of them had the same naive noble ideals that Dae had held dear in her youth. Different features, different colors, different races and different languages, but otherwise so very similar to their Gallagrin neighbors than you could barely squeeze a sheet of paper edgewise through the gap that separated them. Dae knew exactly how deaf Kael’s ears were to any explanation of that so she didn’t bother fighting him on it. Instead decided to use Kael’s views against him.

“So the Duke is fraternizing with aliens who hate him and paying out a wagon load of gold, and managed to stumble into the one fight that might make it look like he was legitimately in trouble.” Dae said.

“Hasn’t been his week I guess,” Kael said.

“Yeah, guys like him are known for bungling things so badly that they cause an international incident and wind up paying in blood and gold to fix it,” Dae said.

“I don’t like what you’re insinuating there,” Kael said. “You make it sounds like the Duke doing the right thing was wrong somehow.”

“Nah, I’m sure this was all about doing the right thing,” Dae said. “The Duke is such a generous and giving sort of fellow.”

“Always has been when it comes to keeping us flush,” Kael said. “And anyways, he’s not even the one who caused the international incident.”

“Is there a better candidate?” Dae asked.

“Your friend their Biago? Yeah well, his story got out, so now everybody knows the Queen’s involved with this,” Kael said.

Dae closed her eyes and sighed. She wanted to leave Biago outside the March’s control but her own option had been to put him Kael’s charge and as soon as the lucrative recall order had arrived, Kael had dragged Biago back to the barracks and made him repeat his story before locking the Inchesso assassin in chains in the March’s prison.

“The Queen’s not…” Dae started to say but Kael cut her off.

“..not behind this,” he finished for her. “Yeah, you made a great argument in favor of that. Problem is, no one’s heard it and even if they did, they’re happier thinking about the Queen two timing the King.”

“That’s idiotic,” Dae said, her words hotter than she meant them to be, especially since she knew Kael’s words were true. She’d said something similar to him herself before they left Nath. Part of her spirit still rebelled at the notion though. “She sold herself for Gallagrin. We just celebrated the anniversary of her killing her own father.”

“That was six years ago,” Kael said. “No royal heir in six years has plenty of people thinking the Consort from Paxmer maybe isn’t “consorting” like he should. Or maybe he is and the Queen’s the problem. Whichever it is, if there’s a scandal to be had, people will just eat it up.”

“Do the Inchesso know about that rumor?” Dae asked.

“Who knows?” Kael asked. “And honestly, who cares? Let’s say the Queen did kill off one of her pages. What are they going to do about it? Inchesso’s got a Senate, so they don’t have anywhere near the power she does.”

“They’ll have enemies too, people who are all too happy to use any loss on their part to cut them down,” Dae said.

“Right, so what are they going to do? Send assassins after her?” Kael asked.

“She’s Pact Bound to Gallagrin,” Dae said. “Even Telli couldn’t stand against her in combat. No one in Gallagrin could. That’s what doesn’t make sense about any of this. With this kind of setup, someone would have to be planning a lethal strike against her, because she will certainly respond with lethal force of her own when she uproots the problem. But Telli’s not in a position to lay claim to Gallagrin’s Pact Seal and without that, any attack on her person will fail.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Kael put his papers down. “Even if all your crazy ideas are right, the Duke can’t be part of this.”

“I’m afraid that’s not correct,” Teo said as he glided into the room like he was skating on air. There was a renewed vigor to the vampire’s features, a vitality which Dae had never seen in him. A moment later she discovered its source as the Duke’s youngest son, slid into the room and closed and locked the door.

“The Queen is in terrible danger,” Ren said. “And my father is going to bring ruin to us all.”

The tactical doctrine around Berserkers was something every Pact Warrior and Soldier studied. It was rare for a Berserker to emerge in the heat of battle, and for soldiers the need to be familiar with Berserker protocols was mostly non-existent. The doctrine was brief enough that it didn’t represent a major departure from their training schedule though so everyone was trained for it.

After explaining what a Berserker was (a pact warrior who was completely consumed by their pact spirit) and how to recognize one (they were the ones radiating power and killing everyone around them, friend or foe) the lesson on dealing with Berserkers commenced.

Run.

That was the beginning and end of the lesson. A combined force of arms could take down one of the rampaging monsters but if a retreat was available, that option was always preferable. In any engagement with a Berserker, normal Pact fighters were going to die. Left to their own devices though a Berserker’s rage would consume them from within.

As weapons of war, Berserkers were problematic tools in the best case scenarios. As assassins they were even less useful, but if you wanted to assault a marching army and you didn’t care about losing an underling or two, a Berserker would give you the edge and power you needed to at least make the attempt.

Dae wasn’t thinking about any of that though.

She was looking for places to run to.

A single leap carried her a hundred feet up the mountain but every instinct she had told her that wasn’t enough. Berserker’s routinely exerted force beyond what they’re bodies were capable of tolerating. They repaired the damage with rough magical bracing and pressed on to continue their fight. If the monster the Consortium unleashed saw her, Dae knew her chance for escape would drop to zero.

The other members of the Dawn March were struck by similar ideas as well, from what Dae could see. The swarm of pact soldiers who were bounding in on the ambush point rapidly changed direction. They all would have fled except for one small problem. The Duke’s carriage was still stuck in the ravine.

The soldiers who were manning the ropes to pull it back up onto the mountain path froze at the sight of the monster that the failing concealment spell revealed.

That’s when the dying started.

The first soldier that the Berserker reached was someone Dae had met but never learned his name. His death wasn’t pleasant but it was quick. With one swipe the Berserker shattered the minor pact armor the soldier manifested. Without his armor, the soldier’s body was exposed and vulnerable in precisely the same manner as a wad of wet tissue paper would be. The results of the Berserkers next attack demonstrated that fact with clear red highlights.

Dae hung from a narrow ledge, silent and still as the battlefield below her was splashed with blood as though a mad artist was redecorating the mountain in scarlet.

The two Consortium assassins fled up the mountain, away from the abomination they unleashed. It was a smart move but ultimately not a sufficient one.

After slaying eight of the Dawn March soldiers, the Berserker caught sight of the assassins. Each of the Inchesso killers was pact bonded. Each was moving as fast as they could. Neither got over the summit of the hill.

A full Pact Warrior’s spirit bond is more powerful than a Pact Soldier’s is. That was enough to allow the first assassin to survive the Berserker’s initial blow. Cornered and cut off from escape, the assassin turned to fight. To his credit, he did manage to put up some resistance, but it was brief and only served to showcase how hopeless the battle against the Berserker was.

Piece by piece, the Berserker took the assassin’s spirit armor apart. The assassin gave as good as he got though, shearing off the Berserker’s left arm with a series of blindingly fast strikes. The difference between the two was that the Berserker didn’t care about the loss of a limb and wasn’t slowed down by it in the slightest. The assassin on the other hand wasn’t quite that resilient.

The second assassin made no effort to help his guildmate. The few precious seconds that it took the Berserker to dismantle the first assassin into a piece of abstract art were enough to allow the second to escape to the top of the ridge. He might have made a clean escape if he hadn’t made the mistake of pausing to look back at the carnage below him.

From hundreds of feet below, the Berserker launched a trio of lashes, slick with red and pulsing with life, from its forearm gauntlets. The remaining assassin turned to flee but even the split second pause was too long. With a scream, he was reeled back down the mountain into the Berserker’s clutches.

Dae felt a silent, cold, calm reach out and still her nerves. There is the fear that makes people scream and then there’s the fear the comes when screaming is impossible.

Instead of a scream, a chuckle escape Dae’s lips. It wasn’t a happy chuckle, or a strong one. She knew this fear. She didn’t want to move against it, every bit of sanity told her not to move, but she knew she could. She’d been through worse.

Except she hadn’t moved then either. She’d been frozen by it. She’d watched a city burn. She’d heard its buildings fall and smelled its people being reduced to ash.

In the aftermath, she’d fallen too, her heart reduced to ash and her honor burned away. What price would surviving this encounter exact she wondered?

It wasn’t a question she had much time to contemplate.

Her chuckle gave away her position.

The Berserker screamed at her and Dae felt her paralysis shatter. The cold fear that gripped her turn white hot. Not rage. Not will. Some deeper, proto-human part of her mind where raw survival ruled all other instincts spoke in a burning tongue. She wasn’t capable of language at that level but it was easy enough to translate the primal speech.

Fight.

She leapt from her perch before she was aware she was doing it. Down into the striking range of the Berserker. Down towards a foe she couldn’t defeat in her present state.

There was a snarl on the wind, not hers directly, but Kirios speaking for her. To the Dawn March personnel who heard it, the battlecry signaled her arrival and against the Berserker they took it for a declaration of suicide.

Dae’s thoughts weren’t ones of self-destruction though. The baggage she carried and the loathing that lived inside her were silent as she flew down the cliffside. Determination, strategy, and duty, those were silent too. She was moving and she had a target. Everything else was emptiness.

The Berserker slashed at her, faster than she could parry. It did damage and tore away part of her armor but the Berserker’s attack cost him speed.

Dae pinioned his arm, skewering it on her blade.

His helmet opened its mouth, revealing a maw of metal spikes.

She grabbed his throat to hold him away and then crushed it.

The Berserker wrenched its arm through Dae’s blade, tearing muscle and tendon, and shattering bone to escape. He hit her with the half attached arm before she could parry and the force of the impact sent her tumbling twenty feet away. It also tore the Berserkers arm completely off but tendrils of magic caught the limb and affixed it back in place.

Dae shook off the impact and rolled back to her feet in time to hear a great crash of wood from the ravine below them. It didn’t have a bearing on the next two seconds of her survival though so her thoughts didn’t linger on it.

Two seconds gave her time to form a shield to go with her pact blade. It also gave the Berserker time to reclaim his other arm.

When his attack came, Dae was ready for it. The Berserker’s offense was predictable in its savage simplicity. Being able to predict an attack and being able to avoid or mitigate one are entirely different things though.

Dae met the Berserker’s attack with both sword and shield and both of her implements shattered. Blows that she could barely see slammed into her torso and only pure reflexes allowed her to roll with the barrage of attacks and soften their force to a survivable level.

The bits of her armor which the Berserker smashed off, she called back into existence, tapping on the magic Kirios manifested when she transformed. She felt as that pool dwindled rapidly. Drawing on more was dangerous, but standing against a Berserker without Kirios’ power was substantially worse.

The Berserker caught her by the throat before she could make that decision and slammed her into ground. Rock fractured beneath them and the Berserker slammed her down again. Over and over.

The clear emptiness of Dae’s mind began to cloud with pain. She wasn’t replacing her armor as fast as the Berserker was tearing it away so the damage was starting to leak over to her actual body.

Dae fought through the pain and managed to resummon both her sword and shield. The shield lasted only a fraction of a second but that was enough for Dae to spear the Berserker in the shoulder and drive the monster off her.

She pushed him up and off her, battering the creature’s head with the remnants of her shield until he recovered and backhanded her away again.

She wasn’t able to roll with that and it shattered the breastplate of her armor. The impact with the mountain path broke something and when she tried to rise an enormous wave of pain swept through her.

She reached out for Kirios to call on him for another transformation, but was interrupted by a Knight in luminous green armor landing behind the Berserker and running the monster through the heart with an emerald lance.

Dae blinked and fought her mind back to clarity for a second before she recognized the regalia of Gallagrin nobility that adorned the Knight.

Duke Telli had taken the field.

The battle that followed was one that Dae caught only fractions of.

The Berserker somehow tossed the Duke aside, but in the process a second lance appeared plunged through the Berserker’s chest.

The Berserker ignored the lances and shattered the Duke’s helmet. It gained two more lances for that and lost one of its arms again.

A moment later Dae thought the Berserker had ripped the Duke’s left hand off but it turned out only to be an empty gauntlet.

Over and over the two struck, the Duke an unyielding fortress of might and the Berserker an unrelenting storm of destruction. Some of the Duke’s guard tried to aid him but while they were able to buy him additional openings to wound the Berserker, they did so at the cost of their own bodies.

Ages later, but also all too soon, Dae saw the Duke begin to slow. Telli struck at the Berserker’s heart again and again. He shattered the monster’s armor and destroyed the flesh of the man that lay underneath.

But the Berserker would not stop coming. For all the Duke’s raw power, it didn’t look like he could put the Berserker down. The creature’s resources seemed limitless, but Dae knew that wasn’t the case. Even the most powerful spirit still had limits. The problem was that the Berserker was willing to exceed those limit to its utmost capacity where the Duke and the rest of the Dawn March didn’t have that option if they wished to survive.

The Duke took a solid hit and was thrown to the ground to suffer a series of additional bone crushing blows. The Berserker roared and spun about so quickly though that none of the Dawn March fighters had a clear opening on him.

In a moment, Dae thought, the Duke was going to die and then the Berserker would move on to a far weaker foe, such as the rest of the Dawn March combined.

The Duke had other ideas on that matter though. He rose to face the Berserker and laughed.

“You were slow that time,” Telli said. “And weak.”

The Berserker roared and shot a handful of tendrils at the Duke to pull bind him and pull him in.

The Duke sliced the restraints out of the air before they could reach him.

“Your power is fading at last,” the Duke said.

And Dae saw it. The Berserker still radiated malice. It was still standing tall and strong, but when it moved there were tiny hitches. Little pops where the pain that had been inflicted on it were starting to show.

“Good,” the Duke said. “I was waiting for that.”

A moment later, after a slash that was too fast for Dae’s eyes to follow, the Berserker lay on the ground. His body had fallen to the left of the Duke and his head to the right.

The battle was over.

The sight of the Dawn March leaving Nath brought on a festival atmosphere that was wholly at odds with the purpose of the company’s departure.

“The confetti almost makes me think they’re glad to see us go,” Kael said, brushing some of the colored paper off his horse’s head.

“I’m sure your bookies will cry themselves to sleep tonight,” Dae said, barely paying attention to the larger officer or his horse.

The throngs of people who turned out to watch the Dawn March leave made a perfect cover for another assassination attempt, but Dae was reasonably sure the Denarius Consortium wasn’t going to make an attempt on her life while she was surrounded by a literal army of backup. If they did they would doubtless injure or kill hundreds but the chance of taking out their target was vanishingly remote.

So she was safe. Except a nagging itch left her with the feeling that each step her horse took was a step closer to disaster.

The Duke’s carriage was behind the lead riders of the parade, and so out of sight from where Dae sat near the rear of the force. He’d insisted on accompanying the Dawn March since the murders had happened in his stronghold.

“I will not rest until the Prince’s family is safely within the Castle’s walls,” Telli said, ignoring the fact that their son had been killed within those same walls, and that the assassin’s had evaded all of the guards the Duke’s forces sent to search for them.

“I thought you said I’d get to sit this one out?” Kael said.

Despite the need for haste, the Dawn March was plodding out of the city at half the speed of a casual walk. There were simply too many of them and too much attention for a swifter march.

“If the commander hadn’t called up the whole damn March, you would have,” Dae said. Step, by plodding step, she turned the events of the last several days over in her mind. Moving the March out of Nath didn’t serve any logical ends as far as she could see.

The loss of the March didn’t leave the city undefended and there weren’t any forces within striking range who could threaten Nath even if its defenses were left for the civilian population to take charge of. With the Watch and the Duke’s own forces still in residence, it would take months of siege before the city even noticed there were attackers at the gate, much less was in any danger of falling.

On the other hand, taking the Dawn March to intercept Lorenzo’s family offered neither safety nor security. If the assassins were intent on killing more members of the Prince’s house they could easily outride the cumbersome Dawn March and finish the deed before the army was within miles of protecting  the Inchesso nobles.

Dae flirted with the idea that the Dawn March was being removed from Nath to get her far enough away to keep her from interfering in whatever scheme was going on, but her ego was’t quite large enough to accept that as a likely answer. The same result could have been accomplished by sending her on a mission to a distant province. She wouldn’t have actually gone of course, but her disobedience would have provided the Duke or Commander Ketel with other options for shuffling her to the side.

The hardest part to understand was the Duke’s choice to lead the expedition personally. If the assassin’s made an attempt against the Inchesso nobles, the Duke would have to fight. The pact spirits held by the Gallagrin’s reigning nobility were second only to those held by the Royal Sovereign. Against that kind of power, even a full guild of assassins would be hard pressed to survive the encounter much less terminate their target.

Telli’s presence was a powerful statement that he intended to prevent any further misfortunes from occurring in regards to Lorenzo’s family. It was also a condemnation of the Dawn March’s ability to protect the visiting nobility, but few within the March had any illusions as to the company’s overall competence. Their collective egos survived the rebuke largely because it was difficult to make people ashamed of a shortcoming they don’t care about in the slightest.

“Bet we trek out to the border and our guests are already dead or run off,” Kael said.

“Tempted to take that bet,” Dae said. The scenario of the Duke making a big show of force only to arrive too late by design didn’t float for Dae. The only purpose a show of force would serve would be to turn aside blame for the murders that had occurred. Failure to prevent more murders, especially when far more rapid help could have been dispatched wasn’t going to win the Duke any points at all. If anything it would make him look more guilty than he already did.

“How much should I put you down for?” Kael asked.

“I don’t know,” Dae said. “Someone hires you to put me down, I suggest you bleed them for all the money you can.”

Kael looked at her and shook his head.

“This is gonna be a long trip,” he said.

“But the company is so pleasant,” Dae said, tipping her broad brimmed hat low.

Standard operating discipline said that a Dawn March officer was supposed to stay alert and aware at all times. Covering her own field of vision was actually a punishable offense on the books, though barely anyone knew that. With the crowd as thick as it was though there was no sense looking for Consortium assassins, or killers of any stripe. In theory that still left Dae with the burden of riding out of the city but the parade was so slow that the horse was able to handle it all on her own.

***

The attack didn’t come until hours later, outside of Nath and on one of the long winding roads that generations of Gallagrin workers had carved through the mountains.

Without the crowds of civilians around, Dae was paying marginally more attention to the environment than she had been in Nath. It was difficult to feel endangered though when she was in a non-description position in a line of armored soldiers that stretched around the corners both in front and behind her.

The first sign of the Consortium’s ambush came from the sudden shuffling of the soldiers that were almost around the next bend. That was followed by a tremendous crashing, and a rumble that felt like the entire mountainside was tearing itself apart.

“Armor up!” Kael called out, which seemed like an insufficient response to a mountain falling but Dae called on Kirios nonetheless.

“The Duke!” one of the forward Lieutenants called out.

“The carriage, get lines for the carriage!” another yelled back to the nearest packmaster.

There was another crash and the unmistakable sound of a falling scream. Dae heard wood shatter and crack as something large and heavy dropped into the chasm around the bend that lay a hundred feet or more ahead.

“That’s not a good sign,” Kael said, looking around for any sign of their attackers.

“Hold my horse,” Dae said, and dismounted.

“Where are you going?” Kael asked.

“Up,” Dae said. “Someone just asked me dance.”

“The forward riders are on that,” Kael said. “Stay here or you’ll bring more of the mountain down on us.”

“The forward riders were in the Duke’s carriage,” Dae said. “Saw it on the downslope about two miles back. That puts them at the bottom of this ravine at the moment.”

“Ravine’s only about a hundred feet here,” Kael said. “They can survive that. Probably. Maybe.”

“Hold my horse,” Dae said and passed Kael the reins.

Then she leapt fifty feet up the side of the mountain and touched down on a rock ledge that offered a better view. In Pact Warrior mode, she had significantly more mobility than being on horseback offered her, but she held back on charging right into where the ambush was triggered from.

“An avalanche is a nice tactic, but you’ve got something better held in reserve or you’re suicidal,” Dae whispered under her breath.

She looked around for whatever that follow up blow might be but came up empty. Whatever other flaws the Denarius Consortium might have, they weren’t bad at hiding. That couldn’t be “Step 2” of their plan though since Dae wasn’t alone in scaling the mountain. Dozens of Pact Soldiers were climbing towards the ambush position and together they’d sweep the mountain with enough precision to find anyone corporeal that was lingering there.

Unless of course the hidden ambushers weren’t on the same side of the ravine as the Dawn March was.

Dae leapt higher for a better vantage point and calculated the firing arc a party on the opposite side of the trail would have had to work with.

The angles checked out perfectly.

Dae couldn’t disguise her approach, so she did the next best thing.

“On the far side!” Kirios amplified her words loud of enough that they would have caused physical pain to anyone standing next to her.

Then she jumped again.

As a Pact Warrior, there were still limits to how much force she could exert on her body. In terms of superhuman leaps both leaving the ground and landing presented issues.

“How in the seven hells did she do that?” Kael asked to no one in particular as he watched Dae’s armored form fly from one side of the ravine to the other.

The landing was more problematic than the jump. The mountain on the  other side of the ravine was steeper and more buffeted by the weather. Dae more “impacted” than “landed” on the slope and was then sent sliding down in a rough river of fractured stone.

A fall into the depths wouldn’t have proved fatal, but Dae avoided the inconvenience of climbing back up by ramming her Pact Blade into the mountain’s face and swinging up to stand on the narrow ledge the flat of the blade offered.

Above her position, she caught a glimpse of movement as a cloaking spell failed to completely cover the activities taking place beneath it.

From the other side of the ravine, other Pact Warriors and Pact Soldiers were copying her strategy with various techniques. Some used a charge down the mountainside to build momentum and others relied on their comrades to hurl them across the gap. Dae glanced back to where Kael was standing with the reins to both of their horses still in his hand. He offered her a small wave and made no further move to help.

“Can’t fault him for being inconsistent,” Dae grumbled.

There was no imperative driving her to be the first to engage the Denarius ambush party. Sound tactical doctrine was to send in the more expendable troops as the vanguard to spring any defensive traps the ambushers had setup around their position.

Concern for her Dawn March companions might have moved her, but she knew what motivated them and didn’t feel inclined to shelter their greed with her own suffering. The prospect of a fat hazardous duty bonus from the Duke which drove the other Dawn March wasn’t entirely unappealing to her of course, but when Dae sprang from her blade-perch, she was moved by an entirely unrelated force.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Lorenzo’s silent face gazed upon her. She couldn’t save everyone, and she couldn’t avenge all of the wronged dead either. The ambushers though weren’t part of the broad and nebulous suffering of the world. They were a threat who stood clear and present before her. The long, horrible crease they’d added to Lorenzo’s throat wasn’t the first they inflicted but the anger that powered Dae’s leap was driven more by an image she suppressed as quickly as it emerged. There was one throat, she would never allow to come to harm, no matter how far away from it she’d fallen.

Dae punched through the concealing spell that shrouded the ambushers camp, dispelling with the violence of her arrival. For the briefest moment, her heart soared in hunger. The Denarius assassins were doomed. Apart from her own wrath, they faced an incoming horde of pacted forces as well as the massed archery fire of the soldiers who remained on the other side of the ravine.

The villains had no prayer of surviving the forces massed against them.

Or at least it didn’t seem that they did until Dae took in their camp.

There were only two of them.

And a third figure in a coffin.

A coffin that was warded with seals that writhed with unnatural light.

Light that was fading.

From inside the depowered coffin, a man stepped forward.

Or something that had once been a man.

For one precious second, Dae tried to deny what she saw before her, but her survival instincts wouldn’t allow that to happen.

The Consortium had brought a Berserker into play and from everything Dae knew, none one on the mountain was going to escape alive.

Dae arrived back at the Dawn March barracks with Kael and Biago in tow only to find the place had been transformed into a maelstrom of activity.

The main gate that led into the barrack’s training yard was down and a full squad of a dozen young Dawn March soldiers were standing guard in front of it.

“What’s going on here?” Dae asked Squire Telfin.

“I don’t know, maybe I took too long to find you?” Telfin said. Dae could see he was mentally calculating his trip time to and from the safe house to see if he could be held responsible for whatever was occurring.

“Not likely,” Kael said. “They’re expecting trouble, and, from the looks of it, the commander’s intending to go out and find it before trouble comes knocking on our door.”

“Your guildmates are stepping up their game,” Dae said to Biago. The Inchesso assassin didn’t reply but the grim set of his jaw and the tightness around his eyes spoke volumes to Dae.

She offered him an apologetic shrug. Both she and the assassin had expected his guild to make an attempt on his life, and both were disappointed to learn the Denarius Consortium had opted for a different plan.

“Not everything revolves aren’t your pet projects,” Kael said. “The commander wouldn’t put the barracks on lockdown for a group of assassins who killed one kid.”

Dae paused as they walked down the avenue that led to the barracks and weighed Kael’s words. The wind shifted and carried with it the cool chill from the mountains to the north. Kael was right. That, more than the wind, sent ice skittering down to her fingertips.

Trying to shake off the horrible prospect of Kael being faster on the uptake than herself, Dae inspected the barracks. If the building was on lockdown, the metal shutters would be drawn over the windows.

Just like they were.

Each pair of metal screens were locked in place with only the thin arrow slits in their center allowing any light from the outside into the barrack’s battle rooms. As much as it could, the Dawn March barracks had transformed into a fortress. That only happened when people were about to attack it, or when the Dawn March needed to be elsewhere and didn’t want to return home to discover that their gear had been completely looted.

A crowd was gathering in front of the barracks, drawn by the spectacle of seeing a dozen soldiers in the Dawn March’s heraldry bearing both arms and armor. Apart from the brief civil war at the start of the Queen’s reign, Nath had been at peace for so long that the only military actions the citizens ever witnessed were parades and the irregular public dress reviews. They therefor lacked the natural sense to scatter and flee when an army began gearing up.

Not that the Dawn March was a proper army. Taken as a whole, the Dawn March was one of the largest and most powerful armies in Gallagrin, but it was sectionalized so thoroughly by being assigned to a barracks in each duchy that there was no practical method for the Dawn March to bring its full forces to bear at any one time. Despite the staff assigned to each barrack being considerably smaller than the forces controlled by the Duke whose territory they were nominally meant to oversee though, the Dawn March held roughly equal footing with the local armies thanks to the higher than usual percentage of Pact Warriors the Dawn March was able to boast among its troops.

Dae reflected on that and tried to see what sort of crisis could be severe enough to warrant the activation of so many in the Dawn March’s employ. It had to be something serious or Commander Ketel never would have authorized the expenditure.

“We can’t take Biago in there,” Dae said.

“The hell we can’t,” Kael said. “Those are orders straight from the commander. Simple, plain and nothing we can do about them.”

“There’s always something you can do about orders,” Dae said.

“Give me one reason to disobey them,” Kael said. “Just one. I want to hear this.”

“Simple,” Dae said. “You bring Biago back to the safe house and stay there with him and you don’t need to have anything to do with whatever mess is going on up there. If anything goes wrong, it’ll be my fault, not yours. If I’m right and Biago shouldn’t be here though? Then you get to take all the credit.”

Kael opened his mouth, a sharp comeback catching on the edge of his teeth for a moment before he deflated.

“Ok,” Kael said. “That’s a good reason.”

“Telfin, go with Officer Kael,” Dae said. “This prisoner is in significant danger. If anyone assaults him, your orders are to run and bring back the story of what happened so we can react to it properly. No heroics, no going out in a blaze of glory. Just stay alive and keep an eye on these two as long as you safely can.”

“Begging your pardon,” Telfin said, “But I can’t do that. My orders came straight from the commander.”

“I’m issuing you new orders based on a change in the tactical environment,” Dae said. “In accord with section 14, page 24, paragraph 5.1A. Have you read that?”

Telfin looked perplexed but nodded hesitantly nonetheless. Whether his squire training had included memorization of the official Dawn March regulations or not, he was bright enough to at least pretend he was familiar with them in face of a superior who was clearly willing to take the blame for the matter is she was making things up.

“Ok, then get out here before someone sees you,” Dae said.

Kael was all too eager to leave and dragged a struggling Biago away with Telfin following close behind them. That left Dae free to investigate whatever calamity had befallen the barracks. She was tempted to renew her transformation and walk in with her Pact Warrior regalia on display, but thought the better of it.

Assuming there was a problem that legitimately accounted for the massed troops and the heightened security, Dae knew she might need Kirios again and she’d already drawn more power from him in the last 24 hours than a Dawn March officer was supposed to be capable of. Not as much as she could draw perhaps, but more than was necessarily safe even with their close bond.

One of the soldiers assigned to guard the gates recognized Dae as she pushed through the crowd that was gathering.

“Officer Kor!” the guard called out. “The Commander wants you inside immediately.”

“What’s all this?” Dae asked.

“We’re mobilizing,” the guard said.

Dae wanted to press him further. It was obvious that the Dawn March was mobilizing, what she needed to know was why. She nodded to the guard and passed in through the small iron door in the great gate. Even if the guard knew the reason they were moving out, which was unlikely, discussing it in front of the growing populace would probably not have been the wisest of choices.

Inside the barracks, she found the kind of chaos that only rapid readiness maneuvers could bring. She’d seen similar mad scrambles in each of the companies that she’d served in, though judging by those experiences, the Dawn March ranked at the bottom of the training barrel, somewhere between woefully inept and miserably under-prepared.

Squires streaked by carrying forgotten pieces of armor, while soldiers struggled to strap on armor which they hadn’t maintained in months. Various personnel were yelling orders but only a few people seemed to be listening or responding with any meaningful actions. With her unhurried and almost external perspective on the proceedings, Dae noticed that most of the Dawn March personnel were trying very hard to appear too busy to interrupt while at the same time doing nothing for which they might later be chastised.

The one path that was clear in the building was the one that led to Commander Ketel’s office.

“Kor? Where the hell is your prisoner? For the love of the gods tell me you didn’t let him get killed,” Ketel said. Dae noticed that his armor had a few missing straps, sacrifices to the necessity of containing his somewhat expanded physique.

In a real battle, the Commander’s extra girth and reduced stamina wouldn’t play as large a role as it would for the regular soldiers. His pact spirit would handle the physical labor of fighting and so in that sense it did no harm for Ketel to indulge himself in whatever food or drink he chose. As Dae had suspected when she commanded troops though, the dedication of the commander to personal discipline had an effect on those who served below them, and in her mind at least, the poor state of the Dawn March barracks had an obvious point of origin.

“Biago is still at the safe house,” Dae said. “I came ahead to see if it was safe to move him.”

“Where’s Kael?” Ketel asked.

“Watching the prisoner with the squire you sent,” Dae said.

“Typical.” Ketel managed to put enough irritation into the word to make it sound like a curse.

“”What happened here?” Dae asked. “Did we receive word from Highcrest?”

Dae couldn’t bring herself to directly ask if the Queen had sent for them. It was too unlikely and equal parts of her both did and didn’t want it to occur.

“Highcrest?” Ketel asked. “No, no word from the Royals yet.”

Dae felt relieved and terrified to hear that. The currents of relief that flowed through her came from thoughts as divergent as the joy that nothing was explicitly wrong with Alari yet to the relief that she wouldn’t need to confront Alari again. The shocks of terror threatened to drown those thoughts out though.

If the Dawn March wasn’t moving for a Royal summons, then Dae had no guess what might have occurred that could necessitate the expense of bringing so many people onto full active duty at once.

“Did the Duke call up his troops?” Dae asked. If there was to be a battle against the Telli forces, she had no idea which side Ketel would chose to side with. He had a close connection to the Duke, but the only force that Dae could think of that assault Nath would be the Royal armies and even Ketel’s well-bought loyalty might not extend to treason against the crown.

“No,” the commander said. “The Inchesso ambassador is dead.”

“The…what?” Dae asked, her mind struggling to catch up with how that fit in with the problems she was already aware of.

“The Ambassador from Inchesso,” Ketel said. “The fine gentleman with whom we maintain diplomatic ties with one of our nearest neighbors? The same man who was going to question your prisoner? Yes, well, he sent word that he wanted to question that Briago fellow you caught and then, as he was coming here, his carriage rode off a bridge and he, according to our official report, drowned when it sank into the river.”

“That sounds like a terrible accident but what does it have to do with…” Dae stopped as the pieces fell into place. “Oh seven hells, the Denarius Consortium killed him? Didn’t they?”

“I don’t know,” Ketel said. “The word I got back from the scene was that the Ambassador looks like he was dead before the carriage hit the water.”

“How did he die?” Dae asked.

“Throat cut.” Ketel said. “Don’t usually find that in drowning victims, but I don’t need the stress of explaining that to the public just yet.”

Dae sighed.

“They’re sending a message. The Denarius Consortium,” she said. “It’s supposed to look close enough to Lorenzo’s murder that even an idiot can put the pieces together.”

“With the assault on you and Kael, everyone who’s looked into that case has come under attack,” Ketel said. “And do you know who we have looking into it now?”

Dae thought for a second.

“Lorenzo’s family!” she said. “They’re already traveling here!”

“Right into the hands of a group that seems to be very successful at eliminating Inchesso targets,” Ketel said.

“You’re mobilizing the Dawn March to protect them?” Dae asked.

“At the Duke’s request and expense,” Ketel said. “He’s coming with us to make sure the Inchesso Prince’s family is duly protected from harm.”

Something about that idea left Dae feeling like she’d been completely outflanked.