If I were a lord’s secret lair, where would I be? I repeated the question to myself several times as I padded softly through the rest of the lower floor.

Overall, the building was fairly standard. An armory and connected barracks provided a headquarters for the local guard. Several men and women relaxed within, having just gotten off their shifts, but their mundane chatter meant very little to me.

Next to the armory was a small library filled floor to ceiling with books. Examining a few of the titles, they covered a breadth of knowledge from the appropriate conditions for optimal crop growth to tactical plans for defending the town in case of an attack. There were even several books that, if their titles were any indication, were dedicated to several forms of mana and the nature of each one. I made a mental note of this one, and considered returning here once my investigation was complete to…borrow one or two.

There could have been any number of secret rooms behind false walls and bookshelves in the library, but I had no idea where they might be. They made no sound, smelled no different from the others, and were blended in too well with the rest of the structure to distinguish. Short of pulling every single book off the shelves in the hope of finding a secret button, I was not going to be finding it without help.

But, there were still other places in the keep where a nefarious lord might hide their secrets.

I began to climb the stairs in the main hall. Lifting my nose, I began to follow Mouse’s scent. With how long I’d left her to explore on her own, she probably didn’t have much, but on the off chance she did have something, I wanted to hear it.

The hall at the top of the stairs was clearly for the lord’s family only, as it was decorated with much more delicate blue drapes than the floor below. Blue and gold laced curtains waved in the breeze of several open windows. I tread carefully, keeping to the edge of the hall, always within a whisker’s length of the wall.

“Malzy!” I jumped as Mouse suddenly appeared behind me.

“What did I say about sneaking up on me!” I hissed, licking my side to mask my shock. Mouse crouched down and lowered her eyes in submission.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

I took a deep breath and flipped my tail around three times before I approached the kitten. My nose touched her nose, and she looked up.

“It’s alright,” I said. “Stealth is a fine skill to have, just warn me first.”

I couldn’t be too mad at the kitten. If she was able to sneak up on another cat so well, then she would make an excellent spy once she grew out of her silliness…if she ever grew out of the silliness.

“I did what you asked,” she said. “The lord’s scent is thickest in two rooms, but the doors are shut, so I couldn’t explore them.”

“Lead me to them,” I instructed. Mouse bobbed her head and took off down the hallway. I followed at a slower, calmer pace.

Her first stop was outside a fine wooden door at the end of the hall. I twisted the handle with Telekinesis and we slipped inside. It was a bedroom. I breathed in the scents of soap and melting candle wax along with the perfume of the lord himself. Yet, no matter how much I explored the room, I never caught any hint of anyone else sharing his room. His wife was not here.

I hopped onto the bed, and Mouse followed. From here, I could see the top of the dresser and nightstand. Lord Erik kept many portraits and paintings in small frames along the top. I padded to them, examining each one carefully.

One was a picture of his wife, the Lady Aila. She was young, much younger than Lord Erik himself. Under the frame was a small note. I carefully opened it and read through it.

“Humans put those scribbles all over the place,” Mouse muttered, peering over my shoulder. “What do they mean?”

“They’re words,” I answered. “You should learn to read them. It’ll make you a very useful cat.”

“Okay, what does this one say?”

I finished scanning the letter. “It’s a letter from his wife from years ago. It seemed she got sick while visiting her family and the healers couldn’t identify it.” That would explain why there was no other scent in the Lord’s bedroom, but that just raised more questions.

Erik’s request for Kiren to deal with Qelona made even less sense now. If his wife was gone, then why was he so willing to sacrifice his only heir? Surely, he would be more protective of his legacy instead of sending them out to face a dangerous monster. Unless Erik really did care more about his people than his house’s power…

The rest of the pictures seemed to be of various relatives save for one. This one was a painted portrait about as tall as I was, depicting four adventurers, all dressed in armor. They had tankards of ale in hand and seemed to be having a good time.

One was Erik, though clearly much younger. He was dressed in armor and had his arm wrapped around the shoulder of a woman with pitch black hair with a raven sitting on her shoulder. Next to them, I spied the bright hair of a much younger Lizzie. She held a lute in hand and seemed to be cheering on the last member of the party, a burly, yet jovial looking knight who was painted downing his tankard of ale with gusto.

There was a note tucked into the frame of this portrait as well. It read “I thought you might want this. I found it while sorting through Ray’s things. I know you’ll miss him as much as I do. -Forever yours, Qiliri”

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If Ray was the man drinking, and Lizzie was, well, Lizzie, then this Qiliri woman must have been the witch with the raven familiar. I studied her closely. Something about her was familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

“Someone’s coming!” Mouse said. We dove under the bed just in time to avoid detection as angry bootsteps thudded into the room. The boots were immaculate as they stomped around to the bedside table. They stopped and I heard their owner pick up one of the pictures.

“Damned adventurers,” muttered the voice of Kiren. “If he thinks that I’m going to follow in his footsteps, he’s mistaken. Why bother sending me to school if I’m just going to sit here in Aldar and listen to every single petition from every single lost soul in the entire region.” He paused. I could feel the tension in the air as the sound of leather tightening reached my ears. He was gripping the painting, but why? “I’ll show them all…there’s more than one way to skin a cat. You just need to have all the proper implements and remove the distractions.”

Mouse began to growl at the turn of phrase, but I draped my tail over her back to calm her. She settled down and we waited in silence for the young lord to stomp out. As his footsteps echoed down the hall, I slowly crept out.

“He took the painting,” I noted.

“And the note,” Mouse finished. I nodded. What was his angle? Was he trying to steal it? But, for what purpose?

Kiren was a rat. That much was clear. But, what was his goal?

“Come, Mouse,” I instructed, darting for the door. She followed and we returned to the hall just in time to see Kiren disappear into another room down the hall. “That must be his nest,” I whispered.

“That’s the Not Nice Fancy Man,” Mouse explained. “He once caught my brother near his favorite horse. He screamed and crushed my brother’s tail. My brother thinks it was an accident, but I’ve seen how he scowls at the less fancy humans. I don’t think he’s nice.”

“He’s not.”

Kiren was up to something. Maybe it involved me, maybe it didn’t, but I wanted to know what it was.

Things just weren’t adding up. Lord Erik’s look at Raina back at the temple, the Lord’s request to Kiren, Kiren’s attitude and stealing the painting of adventurers from twenty years ago, at least? How did all these things tie together?

“Take me to the other room where Lord Erik’s scent is strong,” I told Mouse. “We’ll check there while waiting for Kiren to leave.”

The next room that Mouse brought me to was clearly the Lord’s study. I sifted through the papers and maps, careful to leave everything exactly how I found it. There wasn’t much to find. Several letters from the King explaining the state of affairs in Teralys and Ketiran sat on the table, but that was the only thing noteworthy within. The rest were all guard reports and crop counts.

The moon was high in the sky when Mouse and I finally gave up trying to find anything in the study. Yet, Kiren had not yet left the room he’d retreated to earlier. I twitched the tip of my tail back and forth in irritation. Raina would get worried if I was away much longer. While we were safe from the effects of the Soulbond for a few days yet, she’d still lose sleep over my whereabouts, and a sleepless hench-human was a useless hench-human.

“Mouse, you stay here,” I insisted.

She flipped her tail back and cocked her head in confusion. “But why? I’m sneakier than you!”

“And you’ve done a wonderful job sneaking today. Go back to your larder. I’ll be back later with your payment.” A low growl accompanied the words, just to reinforce the point with the kitten. Eventually, she nodded and stalked silently away.

In truth, I didn’t want my level 1 hench-cat to get caught in the crossfire of any fight should Kiren detect me. The odds were good that I would barely make it out of that confrontation with my life, but I stood better chances than Mouse did.

Carefully, I twisted the handle. The door creaked open, and I listened carefully for any movement within. Hearing nothing, I darted into the shadows and quietly latched the door behind me.

My whiskers brushed the wall. There was very little light, but I could make out a bed with rumpled covers. Kiren’s chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. I breathed a sigh of relief. It would be fine, after all. Any cat would be stealthy enough to sneak around a sleeping human. Maybe I’d sent Mouse away too early, after all. She might have learned something.

Oh well.

I hopped onto a nearby desk. A stack of books were carefully arranged at the end. One was called Defensive Mana Manipulation: Becoming One with the Earth. Another was called The Healer’s Guide to Basic Anatomy. I flipped my tail in happiness. The young lord didn’t want these books, he’d said so below. He might not even notice if one of them went mysteriously missing.

Carefully, I pulled the Healer’s Guide from the middle of the stack and set it by the door. I’d pick it up on the way out.

An object on the floor caught my attention. In the otherwise immaculate room, something had fallen near the wall next to Kiren’s wardrobe. I crept over to it, sniffing it. It was…paper…and old…and had my scent on it. This was the note Mouse and I had read in the lord’s bedroom.

But, where had it fallen from? And where was the painting? The only things around were the wardrobe and a wall sconce that didn’t quite line up with the mortar lines of the nearby stones.

And there was a perfect example of what I’d been looking for in the library below: an honest to goodness lever to reveal a hidden wall. Excited, I reared up and put my paws on the wall before reaching up to turn the sconce with my magic.

Inside the wardrobe itself, there was a quiet CLICK! I darted to the shadows beside the wardrobe, in case the sound had woken Kiren. He continued to sleep soundly, and I quietly opened the wardrobe door to slip inside.

Clever man, clever man. The click had been the sound of the latch keeping the wardrobe’s false back in place. Without it, I slipped into the next room without issue. It was another study, this one with papers scattered all over and pinned to the walls in a haphazard array that likely only made sense to Kiren himself.

I chanced lighting a small fire with my mana, letting the tiny ball hover by my head to light the papers so I could read them. Several of them were written in a language I couldn’t read, but some of them were still in Senelari for my perusal.

I picked up one. It was a manifest of goods that Kiren had sold to a shopkeeper, though likely through a servant rather than doing it himself. It included three enchanted bracelets, a small chest full of potions, and some magic candles. Another paper told of a recipe for a potion meant to halt minor corruption in an absorption caster, but the words “Snake Oil – not worth experimenting” were written across the front.

Finally, I found a letter written in a scratchy hand. It read “Job was done, handler was paid, but target made it out alive.”

Job done? What job? Why did they have to be so cryptic in their secret, probably illegal dealings? It just made it unfair for investi-cats to make sense of it all.

I kept searching, soon finding another letter written in the same scratchy hand. “Target has been unavailable. Left town on a mission. Will complete objective upon her return.”

My blood ran cold. I reread it again, just to make sure. It said, “her return.” Lord Erik had recognized Raina when we were in the temple! If she was the target, then he knew that she was back in town!?

What if the other job, the one with the handlers, was the one to put flying snakes outside her home? Or the one to ransack her home? What if Lord Erik and his son were behind it all?!

I’d left her alone. She couldn’t use her magic without risking corruption so long as I wasn’t there! She was defenseless!

I raced from the room, only pausing long enough to snatch my book on the way by before tearing out the room and down the hall. I needed to reach her.

I only prayed I was not too late.