by Andrew Rowe
“You’re okay!”
The stronger sister tensed at Emery’s embrace, then sighed and pulled her close. “I’m not the vulnerable one.”
“I know…I was just…” Emery lowered her gaze.
“It’s okay. I’m here. You’re safe now.” Emma Verena pulled her sister close.
Archduke Verena turned toward his daughters, giving Mara a scrutinizing look. “That remains to be seen. Laurence, Tenor, see to locking down the building. Cordray, take the remainder of the guard and see that our guests are escorted into individual guest rooms. Use any necessary means.”
It was only at that point that Sera, Vanniv, and Patrick slipped through the remainder of the guards and into the room.
“And us?” Sera asked.
“You will remain here for the moment. We must speak privately.”
As the remainder of the guards finished filing out of the room, the archduke shut the door, then turned to us. “You have my gratitude for protecting Emery. There is nothing in the world more valuable than my family. You must understand, however, that this does not mean I trust you.”
Sera quickly nodded. “Of course. Appearing to defend someone could simply be a tactic to hide our true motives. With due respect, however, if we wished your daughters harm, there were multiple chances while they were alone with members of our group.”
“Agreed. Killing them is clearly not your goal.” He balled his hands into fists. “The same cannot be said for anyone else. To this end, I must charge you with assisting me in this investigation. If you truly are not tied with the assassins, this will give you a chance to be helpful. If you are…you should know that I am now prepared, and I will be protecting my daughters personally. There will be no further oversights.”
His statement was backed by another flash of his aura, and with it, a feeling of pressure in the air. I understood the effect, having faced something similar and much more potent from Katashi. We all staggered just a bit, but not enough to fall.
“We…understand.” Sera managed. The pressure eased after her reply, and I found myself breathing normally again.
After a few tense moments, I managed to ask another question. “Will you permit us to speak to the woman that accompanied us?”
“Your teacher? Yes, yes, go ahead.” He waved a hand. “Go. Find what you can and return to me. I will be employing others to assist in the search, but if you are the one who provides answers, you will be rewarded.”
“F…father.” Emery walked over to pull on her father’s sleeve. “I want her to stay.” She gestured toward Mara.
Her father raised an eyebrow. “Truly?” He shook his head dismissively, then sighed. “Young lady, if it would not trouble you excessively, my daughter has made a request.”
“Of course, m’lord. Pleased to stay. Assumin’ my own liege will allow it?” She gave Sera a questioning look.
That’s interesting. Did she swear a retainership to Sera, or is she just playing a role?
“Please feel free, I can’t possibly get in the way of such a request.” Sera and Mara seemed to exchange something meaningful in their looks, but I didn’t quite catch it.
I turned to the archduke. “Quick question. Can we use magic to try to get the truth from people? Including the invasive sort?”
The archduke raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by…never mind. Just do it. It’s better if you don’t tell me in advance.”
I nodded in understanding. “Okay. That leads to another question — how will anyone know we have the authority to do anything?”
The archduke snapped his fingers. “Anthony.”
There was a burst of smoke and the dapper gentleman who had greeted us at the door appeared at the archduke’s side.
I blinked. “Was that…is he…?”
“The head manservant.” Anthony gave a broad smile, bowing at the waist. “How may I serve you, Archduke?”
“This man is going to be interrogating some partygoers who attempted to kill my daughters. You will act with my authority and assume that this process goes smoothly. We will find who was responsible.”
“Understood.” Anthony bowed again to the archduke, then walked over to me. “Shall we?”
“Thank you, Archduke.” I turned to Mara. “And take care, Mara.”
“You got it.” She grinned at me. “Go get ‘em. And whenever you find the culprit, give them an extra punch or two for me.”
***
“Well, this is an unexpected event.” Anthony walked ahead of me, hands folded behind his back. “A Valian of House Cadence serving as chief interrogator for an Edrian Archduke. Perhaps tomorrow the world will cease to spin and the sun and moon will decide to take a vacation. Either would be a more likely event.”
“About as likely as an archduke holding a debut party for two daughters of the same age, wouldn’t you say?”
“Ah, just so. It seems you have the measure of events. Good. Your understanding will be required if we are to ascertain the true culprit. And then, perhaps, other skills.” He adjusted each of his pristine white gloves, one at a time.
I raised an eyebrow at the overly loquacious butler.
The way he’d appeared…is he a summoned monster? Or was the archduke’s finger snap just the activation of a magic item that sent Anthony a message?
I wasn’t sure which would be more dangerous. An archduke-level summon could be vicious, but if he’d simply appeared after a message, that implied both an impressive reaction time and some sort of teleportation. Invisibility wasn’t out of the question — maybe Anthony had been there the whole time, and I simply hadn’t detected him — but I hadn’t heard anything or detected anything when I’d looked at auras. Even if it was just invisibility, it was good invisibility.
This was not the sort of person I could underestimate. Certainly not when his method of appearance was remarkably similar to what Mara had described as the method of disappearance of one of the assassins.
What are the odds that I’ve just arranged to work with the assassin to find the assassin? I asked myself. High, I concluded. But there was more than one. And it’s not out of the question that he could still assist in the search for the other, or perhaps that he simply has a different skill set.
Wish I could let the others know what I suspect. I really need to get some better messaging items, get them to everyone, and then find some way to make them allow communication without speech. Maybe something telepathic, like Keras and Dawn? Hm.
Once we were downstairs, we quickly found Meltlake standing amidst a practical sea of guards. She had her arms folded and an impatient look on her face.
“Anthony, can you have them release her?” I asked.
“Of course.” The butler nodded. He stepped forward, whispered something to the apparent leader of the guards. They nodded, then quickly dispersed.
“Not bad,” Sera muttered. “I could get used to having this kind of authority. Speaking of which…”
She turned and whispered something to Vanniv.
Vanniv grinned brightly, then bowed to the group and walked off somewhere.
What are they up to?
I didn’t have much time to think about it. Meltlake approached us a moment later. “You’re working fast.”
“More of a coincidence of timing, really, and a particular bit of heroism on Mara’s part. Shall we find somewhere to chat?”
Meltlake nodded. “Back to the library.”
We headed back to our corner of the library. The room had been completely emptied out, so we had relative privacy. I still was a bit worried about scrying, but there was nothing easy to do about it.
“Anthony, give us a moment to talk privately?” I asked him.
The butler nodded. “Very well, Master Cadence. Simply say my name and I shall return.”
Then he vanished into the shadows.
…Creepy.
I wasn’t convinced that he was actually gone, but it was about as good as we were going to get.
�
��So,” Sera gave Meltlake a knowing grin, “how much have you been hiding from us?”
Meltlake shrugged a single shoulder. “Maybe a little.”
“You knew this was going to happen.”
“Of course. My studies were never focused on Edrian history, but I do recall some basics about this party. It’s not every day an archduchy is wiped off the map.”
Well, that confirms a few things. I groaned. I didn’t like where this was going.
“Can we get a quick history lesson now, professor?” Sera asked.
“To give you a brief summary: Both daughters were lost. The archduke survived the evening, but not much longer. We are witnessing the fall of the House of Verena.”
I folded my arms. “So, who’s the puppet master?”
“Ah.” Meltlake smiled. “That’s be beauty of it. The assassin’s true identity was never discovered.”
My expression sank. “Seriously?”
“The assassins vanished. The assassinations nearly caused the Six Years War to resume. Ultimately, since they were the clearest suspects, the entire Valian delegation that attended the party were executed by their own government to prevent a war.”
“A…ah. That’s…”
“Worrisome,” Sera finished for me. “So, that means we have a vested interest in actually solving this, rather than simply trying to survive the scenario or assist it in following history’s course.”
“Agreed.” Meltlake nodded. “You seem to already be making some progress in that regard. Are the daughters both intact?”
“Yep,” Patrick replied. “Mara is up there with them.”
“Excellent. We may want to allocate more defenses to that effort at some point. These assassins will have come prepared to handle the archduke himself. They will not be easy to find, nor to fight if they are discovered.”
“Do you think they’ll try to brute force their way in?” Patrick asked.
“No. Likely some kind of combination of invisibility, teleportation, that sort of thing.”
We quickly explained what Mara had seen and caught Meltlake up on the other details of what we’d learned.
Patrick frowned at Meltlake. “You went to talk to the ‘archduke’ earlier, but we saw you talking to someone else. Was that a different archduke?”
“Well-noted, Patrick. That was Archduke Wolff. I was attempting to feel him out as a suspect before the events occurred, since he is one of the highest-ranking figures here, as well as one of the few physical powerhouses that could cause me any difficulty.”
Maria’s father. Hm.
I nodded. “I suppose any archduke always has a motivation to remove any other archduke, in order to gain more personal power.”
“Yes, to some degree. In this case, however, our conversation left me thinking he was unlikely to be involved. He was eager to discuss financial dealings with my family — unless he’s a tremendous actor, he’s not interested in restarting the war. When I spoke about my promising nephew, he wanted to arrange a meeting with his daughter, with obvious implications.”
Sera snorted. “Maybe when we get out of here, we can help set Derek up with an eighty-year-old woman. He could use some discipline.”
Meltlake laughed. “I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, I think we can safely put Wolff toward the bottom of the list. I wouldn’t call him an ally, but I doubt he will be working against Verena directly here.”
“Other suspects, then?” Patrick asked.
“The other Valians, obviously.” Sera sighed. “It’s likely they were simply innocents that were executed to stop a war historically, but they still are suspects. Valia has always had warmongers that want to resume the conflict, and beyond that, removing an archduchy could destabilize power in the region.”
“True.” I nodded. “What about people on the Edrian side that want to provoke a war? Jerome and his ilk?”
“Jerome himself doesn’t have the resources, but yes, people of his ilk with greater sway exist.” Meltlake nodded in acknowledgement. “Duchess Sheng and Duke Jing are both present at the party. Both are traditionalists that may feel that Edria could benefit from stretching further east.”
“…and aren’t those both archduchies in the future?” Sera asked.
“They are.” Meltlake nodded. “Verena’s lands are split between them.”
I exhaled a sigh. Politics like these always gave me a headache. “Okay. Beyond them…I think we should look into Dalen.”
Patrick shot me a surprised look. “Dalen? Why? Mitsurugi is the wielder of Soulbrand! He wouldn’t…”
Meltlake had a strange expression that implied she knew something, but I didn’t press her. Instead, I simply shook my head at Patrick. “He’s from East Edria…or, rather, Kelridge. At this point in the timeline, opposing Edrian rule would absolutely make sense.”
I didn’t mention that I was thinking about Jin and his own efforts to protect his nation. If Mitsurugi was anything like his descendant, well, assassinating an archduke was absolutely not out of the question.
“Okay. We’re going to need to start questioning groups,” Meltlake noted. “Shall we begin?”
***
The partygoers had been separated into “guest” rooms based on what group they arrived with, if any. Some powerful guests were taken to be housed separately. Given the sheer number of guests, that meant a lot of rooms, but the archduke’s home was huge. We’d only seen a small fraction of it when we entered, and beyond the main house, there were also several other buildings on the manor grounds.
We quickly summoned Anthony back — he appeared at the sound of his name, just as he’d claimed he would — and then got to discussing our first interrogation target.
“Who are we starting with?” Patrick asked.
“Start with the top suspects?” I aimed the tone toward Sera and she got my meaning.
“I concur. We need to act before they have a chance to make another move. Given that we don’t want to be seen as playing favorites, as well as the general odds, I suggest we begin with our fellow Valians.”
Anthony looked momentarily startled. “You suspect your own countrymen?”
“Not really. Too obvious, honestly. Making an attack here draws so much attention that any Valian would know that they would be investigated immediately, with little chance to escape unscathed.” Sera shook her head. “But Valians have such an obvious political motive that they can’t be discounted. It’s important to maintain objectivity in these things — and in the aftermath of this, the appearance of objectivity will also be important. We cannot allow this to lead to another war. The cost would be too high.”
“You show great wisdom for your age.” Anthony lowered his head in acknowledgement. “I can see why the archduke chose you.”
Sera stood a little straighter after that remark. “Can you lead us to where the other Valians are located?”
“Yes, of course. I have a list of all the guest accommodations. Please, this way.” Anthony headed toward the main ballroom, then through it into a hallway beyond.
As we followed, I dropped toward the back of the group where Professor Meltlake was walking. She seemed to be scanning the area with a concerned expression, but I couldn’t see what she was looking for. “Insights, professor?”
“I do have some of those, yes.” She both looked and sounded distracted.
“Would you care to offer me some?”
“Perhaps later.” She tapped her cane on the ground a little harder than normal. I got the picture, shot her one last concerned look, then headed back toward the front of the group. We arrived outside the Valian guest room a moment later. Two guards had been posted at the door. Anthony leaned in and explained the situation, causing the guards to stand aside.
Sera knocked politely, then opened the door herself and led our group inside.
Six Valians sat around a table, looking mildly disgruntled. They all turned toward us as we entered.
“Figures they’d bring in the trash eventua
lly,” one of them, a brown-haired man in his early twenties, mumbled just loud enough for us to hear.
A man to his right kicked him lightly. “Manners,” he hissed. The second man put on a false smile, then turned back toward us. “We are, of course, pleased to see our countrymen. Even those of inferior rank.”
Meltlake snorted. “Right.”
“Is something funny to you?” The brown-haired man stood up, ignoring a look of protest from the man who had kicked him earlier and a distressed expression from a woman with similar hair to his side. “Please, by all means, share the joke with the rest of us.”
Professor Meltlake moved to the front of our group, her eyes narrowing. “The only thing inferior here is your behavior. You will behave yourself or you will be silent.”
“How dare you! I am Constant Beaufort, next in line to the earldom of—”
Meltlake sighed, her hand moving just slightly, and no further sound escaped from the man’s mouth. He looked briefly startled, then clutched at his throat uncertainly.
Two others at the table stood up immediately, reaching for weapons. I reached for my own.
“Oh, thank the goddess, I thought he’d never shut up.” A blonde-haired woman toward the back of the group let out a laugh with a strangely musical trill at the end. She was the one I’d noted earlier with the harp-shaped necklace. “At ease, everyone. Constant is fine, she’s simply manipulating the air so that his voice won’t escape. He’s not choking, although she could accomplish that easily, couldn’t she?”
Meltlake nodded. “Trivially.”
“Fascinating. I’ve rarely seen such sophisticated control of air magic. Perhaps you can teach me the trick sometime?”
“I’d be pleased to, Lady Nora Haven.”
A wide, menacing grin stretched across Haven’s face. “My, I knew I was advertising my family with the necklace, but you’ve already managed to find my personal name? It’s rare someone manages to have the advantage of my identity before I have their own. You are, of course, a Hartigan — but I cannot say I recall the archduchess having any children of your age. Given your Citrine aura, which is quite impressive for your age, I can only assume that you are a carefully-kept secret.”
