"You okay, Mylaf?"

"Perfectly so, Mr Lowe. Occupational hazard of working for the High Priestess. This is not my first steer of the hostage rodeo."

Lowe's gaze shifted from the to the woman holding her captive. Intriguingly, her name, Level and Class were shrouded in darkly glittering smoke trails. In the Grid View, when he had been observing the assassin, this had not been the case, a detail that was not lost on him.

"This seems to be a tad excessive. If anything," he indicated his bare arm, "I should be the one hunting you down."

"I just want to talk."

"Obviously. That's why you've broken into my home, attacked my friend and disguised your name and various attributes. All of my favourite conversations start that way. I'm sure we'll be going shopping together and braiding each other's hair before long. I cannot tell you how often dead priests, desperate escape attempts and slicing off my limbs were simply awesome ice-breakers."

"I didn't kill the priest. Or the High Priestess."

"Sure."

"I'm telling you the truth!"

"Absolutely. And I have no available context to cause me to see you as someone with anything less than scrupulous, unblemished integrity. The knife to Mylaf's throat is simply a decorative piece."

"The truth is the truth."

"Funny thing is, that is not my experience. For example, in this situation, there's your truth, Mylaf's truth and then whatever truth I tell my boss after the eight security officers outside finish stomping you into dust."

The woman's eyes flicked to the door behind Lowe, not long enough for him to do anything, but he was pleased to see the momentary lack of attention. He might be able to work with that. "There's no one out there. You had no idea I was here."

Lowe shrugged. "Believe what you like. As I said, there's truth, and then there's truth."

The woman shifted her weight from foot to foot, uncertain. "You do realise I could kill you both in a second?"

"Go for it. Nothing is more convincing for someone seeking to prove their innocence of murder to - you know - kill an innocent bystander. Textbook persuasive technique. Hat-tip."

"I'm willing to bet every piece of gold I own that you get beaten up an awful lot, don't you?"

"More than average, I'd guess."

There was an awkward pause during which it became clear that Mylaf was the most chilled person in the room. Then the woman made a gesture, and the knife flew away to stick, point down, into the chopping board. The smoke hiding her details dissipated, revealing her name, Level and Class.

Lowe whistled. "So, you're quite the nasty customer then?"

Hel sat down at the table, running her hands through her hair. "You have no idea."

*

Mylaf had served up a cup of hot chocolate that eased the tension in the room. It apparently did something to their feelings of aggression, which was pretty interesting. It suggested the could produce consumables which did something to emotions, not just boost stats. He'd have to explore that at another time: perhaps when not in conversation with a fucking .

"You said you wanted to talk. So talk."

Hel took another sip of her steaming drink. "I was in that room tonight because I wanted to retrieve something."

"Which was?"

"My . . . an associate of mine left something behind on the Third Floor on the night the High Priestess was murdered."

"As you can imagine, I have any number of follow up questions."

"They didn't have anything to do with d'Avec's death. We," she winced and looked at the chocolate accusingly. "Look, I don't misspeak. Is there something in this?"

Lowe raised his eyebrows at Mylaf, who smiled as she answered. "It's not a truth serum if that's what you're worried about. It has simply - temporarily, I assure you - increased your affinity for each other. I call it Bosom Buddies. You both just feel comfortable speaking plainly around each other. I thought after, you know - " she jutted her chin at the blade in the chopping board - "it would be wise to smooth out relations a touch."

Hel paused for a moment, then obviously decided she had very little to lose. "I was there too. That night."

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"As you can imagine, my questions are breeding like rabbits."

"Look, just let me talk for a bit. On the night of the murder, I lost track of both of my sisters. There are some very specific and bloody reasons why that is a bad thing. Fortunately, I quickly tracked them to the Celestial Temple and caught up with them in the High Priestess's room."

"And I'm sure she was delighted to see you all. Was there dancing and moonlight and love and romance?"

"I'm not really sure she cared too much. Being dead and all."

"Oh, right. 'It was like that when I got here.' Glad we're sticking to the truth here."

"Fuck off." Little spinning tempest appeared in her pupils. "She'd been dead a while by the time we got there. We arrived, freaked out at the carnage, and left as soon as we could. But my sister had dropped her glove. I was there tonight trying to retrieve it before someone put two and two together and got the necessity for summary execution out of it."

"That's quite a risk you took. Breaking into the Celestial Temple."

"My sister is important to me. As is loyalty."

"And you ended up walking into another murder scene?"

"I said I was loyal, not lucky."

Lowe took another gulp of his hot chocolate and regarded Hel over its rim. She was definitely not telling him the whole truth, but he didn't think that was about either of the murders. Neither she nor her sister had been involved in those. But there was something else she said that was bothering him.

"A glove?"

"What?"

"You said your sister left a glove at the crime scene?"

"Yes." Hel hesitated for a second and then pressed on. "Look, my sister is a . Both of them are. You are familiar with that Class?"

Lowe nodded slowly. "I am. I had not realised there were any in Soar at the moment."

Although he kept his voice neutral, his mind was racing. were an unusual Class that could not level up: not that it mattered as they were already colossally powerful by their very nature. It had been suggested that gaining this Class was an involuntary response to trauma. There had been a few days following his Classtration when he had felt a significant pull in that direction. He resisted, mainly because there was a strict 'behead-first-ask-questions-later' policy in place when it came to a . If he had wanted to take the dying option as a way out, he'd have taken it when it was offered.

"They are flying under the radar at the moment."

Lowe felt his respect for the woman opposite him go up a few notches. Hiding from discovery was a deal. They were such a violent, unpredictable Class that it was usually only a few days before the Security Services zeroed in on their location. Although, as they pretty much decimated everything around them, it didn't really take spectacular investigatory powers. You just followed the screams.

Lowe thought back to the smoke hiding Hel's Class. That would help, he supposed, but were extraordinary looking beings . . .

"Hence the glove," he said aloud.

"What?"

"You have them all bundled up, don't you? Big, shapeless gear, hidden Class, never letting them out of your sight." Lowe nodded appreciatively. "Lots of effort. Lots of stress."

"It's nothing."

Lowe noted the worry lines at the corner of Hel's eyes and chose not to comment. "Until you lose track of them, they slaughter the High Priestess and then leave some evidence behind." Okay. He chose to comment a little.

Hel let out a low sigh, and the room shuddered under the force of the emerging gale. "I'm telling you, they had nothing to do with the murder."

"Okay. Okay. Let's not lose the sense of comradely accord we've built up. How about you explain to me why you are so certain?"

Hel tossed back her hair where it had fallen before her eyes and fixed him with a frank expression. "Because we've been planning to kill the bitch for years, and they wouldn't rob me of the satisfaction of being there when she finally fucked off and died."

*

Mylaf had produced some beef and mustard sandwiches, which, in addition to tasting delicious, doubled Lowe's Perception. "I thought, Mr Lowe, that it would help if you could both see things as clearly as possible," she said, leaving them alone in the kitchen.

"I'm going to level with you," Lowe said between bites of the food, "'I'm innocent because this wasn't the way we were going to smoke the victim' isn't exactly the cast-iron defence statement you seem to think it is."

Hel shrugged. "You wanted the truth. I wasn't saying it was pretty."

"What did she do to you?"

Hel looked as if she would refuse to answer, but a resigned look came over her face. "Fine. I guess I owe you that. For the arm and all. There's four of us - I'm not giving you any other names - who were involved in . . . overseas activities for Soar. The sort of thing that's not exactly off the books, but neither did we have a parade every time we returned with mission accomplished. You know what I'm getting at?"

Lowe did. There'd been a time he'd flirted with joining one of the 'Out of Bounds' squads, as they were called, but his talents had always been better used in unpicking puzzles rather than causing them in other cities. He looked at Hel with a new appreciation: she wasn't just a talented assassin. The woman was a Council-endorsed one.

"You're using the past tense. I'm assuming something went awry?"

"You could say that. We'd been tasked with hitting a bank in . . . no, you don't need to know that. All went fine - we were a good unit - until it came time to exfiltrate. There was some sort of fuck-up, nothing that hadn’t happened a million times, but we ended up having to fight our way out. We - " she paused, eyes unfocusing as if she were back on the job - "were pretty punchy and might have caused more casualties than was considered ideal."

Lowe nodded understandingly. This was a tune he knew rather intimately. "The Council disavowed you?"

"Of course. That was standard, and we knew that would be the deal the moment the bodies started falling. What we didn't anticipate was that they'd be cleaning house before we even got home. Apparently, a newly-appointed Council member argued furiously that the only way to make amends for the civilian casualties was a similar blood-letting in Soar. None of the rest cared either way - it was hardly the first time such a thing had happened - but this newbie seemed to have a bee in her bonnet about all the collateral damage. As she was an up-and-coming avatar, they let her have her head. We were just a day out from returning to the city when it happened. They killed everyone. All our friends. All our families. Anyone we'd so much as nodded at in the street. Everyone just went up in flames. We came back to our lives - quite literally - ablaze.

"Gianna d'Avec?"

"Gianna fucking d'Avec. She was so hung up on the deaths of a bunch of lower-classed nobodies in the arse end of nowhere that she personally incinerated everyone I loved."

"Sounds like you'd be pretty motivated to kill her."

"Damn straight. Now, think how pissed off I am that someone beat me to it?"