When Adwyn high walked back down the corridor, he curled his wings besides him. Frills pressed against his neck, and his tongue was sifting for something out of place.

He could smell the perfume that wafted around the male adviser, some tempting hot smell that could do with a more handsome harbinger. The female adviser had some noisome old eyepaint whose purple smell clung. It didn’t seem to have gone anywhere.

He smelt wet ink, as well.

Adwyn relaxed, his wings uncurled. Standing before the doorway, he breathed and stepped in.

There were three desks arranged like a triangle in the room. The male and female adviser had desks beside each other, and closest to the door sat Adwyn’s.

Both gazes darted to him as he came in and lay on his mat. But Adwyn didn’t look at them; instead, he peered breathing into his sister’s fire clay vase. The motions of meditation came easy; he was comfortable upon his rest of feathered cotton and obsidian, and soon, with a fountain pen and parchment, he began drafting a report.

“Sorry about earlier, Sofrani.”

Adwyn glanced at the male assistant, the other Dyfnderi adviser⁠ ⁠—⁠ who didn’t advise. He had a long snout and horns like spirals. Lips that were surely soft, and dark orange scales that almost shined. That slender neck led to a pleasantly muscled breast; Adwyn wouldn’t’ve thought he worked enough to gain one. Glance back up. The assistant’s wateryblue eyes would smile when he did smile, but right now he didn’t.

The male assistant had a simper cringe inflecting his face; and unlike with some, it was not tempered by being an act or mask. Frills squirmed and forefeet groped each other. His mouth opened to pile on more words⁠ ⁠—

Adwyn snapped a wing out. “Don’t apologize. I had a meeting with the faer. You interrupted nothing.”

“But⁠ ⁠—”

“Finish your report.” Adwyn pressed his pen to the page, filled in the literal formalities.

Across the room, the female adviser scowled the distance. He didn’t need to see this, imagination and experience was enough.

His frills twisted as the male’s chair scuffed slowly around, and afterward ink softly splashed. It was breaths before Adwyn heard sleeves brushing pages from both desks, and the room was quietly working.

Silently, Adwyn sighed.

Dead weight. The scrawny pair of neophytes only succeeded in sloughing paperwork from his scales.

Assistants, or minders. Wholly unnecessary additions whom capitol had insisted attend Adwyn, the black ascendant. What horror might he inflict unsupervised! (As if his motive hadn’t already been grounded, as if there were anything to be gained this far from the throne.)

Did it ever gleam to the assistants that Mlaen apparently trusted he alone among them? Did their uselessness weigh on them as it weighed on him?

He heard a throat clear, and when she spoke, a tasteful lilt inflected her tone.

“So, Sofrani,” the female adviser started, “how went your inveiglement of Kinri?”

Adwyn stalled his clawing, and considered a trice the reflection on the vase, the wiver. She had simple gray eyes, and around them colorful eyepaint. Rough almost chitinous lipscales that suited her frown. Robes that hung on her wings instead of her back, like elytra. Orange scales darkened down her legs to near black, and she had a certain manner of hum high like a buzz.

The female stood taller, but he still saw her as some manner of eyeless scuttling bug. Beneath him.

The female assistant’s motivation always gleamed dim, dull. Advancement or status, mayhaps. But what source lit this question? Flattery, entertainment? Boredom, bright curiosity? A scheme? Yet she lacked the opportunity or desire to scheme anything relevant.

And irregardless, the assistants did have one other use, Adwyn emended: to act as a sort of sponge for his thoughts, to soak and retain.

“Strangely,” he answered. “The wiver is almost sympathetic, when she doesn’t want to kill you. And an admirable restraining influence on the alchemist’s daughter.” He licked a brille. “Most importantly she has, occluded somewhere, enough of a mind between her frills. It would be convenient if she didn’t turn out to be the traitor at the depth of all this.”

“How does she blend into your plans?” she asked.

Brilles cleared, and Adwyn’s head whirled around. His lips twitched; transparency was a virtue, yes, but among his minders it was an instinct. Dull of him to forget, but understandable: the responsibility so rarely flickered across their behavior.

“Minimally. The faer has some measure of interest in the wiver, as does the alchemist’s daughter. She may prove a valuable ally in the future.”

A pause, before some smile spread its buzzing wings. “You mentioned that she could kill.” It was so blandly dropped into the quiet, like some unimplicating observation.

Adwyn turned, the smooth balls of his rest gliding quietly on the floor. He look at the female, who’d already turned around, foreleg sliding her pen across the page.

When he had her gaze, he said, “No. She wanted to, but she’s simply too gentle and weak.”

That buzzing hum, that mantis-like smile. “One wonders what you have planned for her.”

The same thing I always have planned. The same thing you should have planned, but subtler than you can manage.

Wordlessly, the military adviser sighed, and whirled his rest back around.

Forever their suspicion clouded him, and forever his gutted reputation as the black ascendent grounded him. One would think, in their perspective, Adwyn couldn’t sip a glass of water but malignly, and could but menace as he whistled on his morning stroll. Every tryst a conspiracy, every joke a codeword.

The orange drake breathed, clouded the brilles of his soul. He would stand calm. There was no need for anger, nothing it could accomplish. He returned to his report.

Adwyn’s focus swiftly departed the report. He knew it would resolve nothing save Mlaen’s inveterate itch to have every last draught of air or tongueflick of her guards be documented and archived.

(The adviser had neat clawings, but some did not, and knowing the high secretary would check and transcribe every report, this was one of the few times some species of pity for the wiver gleamed in Adwyn.)

What the adviser wanted was another recognized accomplishment under his name, another unsightly criminal off the streets of Gwymr/Frina.

He wanted Wrang of Llosgi Hoddi.

Adwyn knew that blighter lay at the depth of it all. Leader of that Dychwelfa cult (sanctioned in three locations, while Gwymr had no church of Dyfns), liaison with the apes, and no doubt the one who’d sown chaos in Rhyfel-ann’s guard.

All he needed was the evidence, and they could make the arrest.

Wrang lived in the west end, in the new Llosgi Hoddi estate. In order to rise early with the first sun for his inscrutable strolls, the plain-dweller would be sleeping right now.

It would be half a ring or less; the black ascendant could fly west, enter the estate, and the problem could be⁠ ⁠—⁠ severed at the head.

Adwyn had taken a vow of pacifism.

Still, if he entered the estate without his engraved, elegantly curved aluminum blade (which still sharp in its dillerskin sheath at the depth of his travel chest) then Adwyn could talk to Wrang, and with words weaved, or rendered, or advanced with turn by turn deliberation, he could talk out a confession.

Without witness for it, when any slip up of Wrang would surely to be denied once brought in front of the faer.

No; for now, Adwyn would leave him to his slumber.

Unless...

Gyras ago, Mlaen had known that some scarred, tailless plain-dweller, one Brigg of Aludu Dymestl, had stood hidden atop the empire of drugs that had rooted in the cliffs. Fruitless dances had flown by, and the problem had festered.

In the end, she never pinned evidence on Brigg. No, the inquirers had, and they acquired his confession.

The inquirers. They were... an option.

But how did one summon an inquirer? On occasion one saw them drift through the town hall, on very bad days one saw them menacing through the streets and whenever one visited Wydrllos there was one in action.

Adwyn presumed they answered to Mlaen. He ought to trust her to deploy them. But if he were the prime mover, the one alone who saved Gwymr/Frina, it could look quite bright under his name.

He could repair his reputation, little by little.

But first, he had to summon an inquirer.

----------------------------------------

There was no sound of footsteps padding up, no swish of robes, no huff of cyclic breath. And not even that ghostly nerval hum which haunted living things.

No, first Adwyn felt something was wrong, like lady death breathing down his neck. But his time was not now; if it were, it would already have been too late.

The balls of Adwyn’s rest slid quietly across the smooth floor. Now, though, the tiny scuffing squeak came like the scream of some fated prey.

Behind him stood a dragon. Gray nets hanging just out of the sleeves. Black robes resting still, stabs of red stalking up in very straight lines. A dark, dark snout extending from the cowl. Fangs dry of even saliva.

A voice like transpicuous glass, high and carrying, “Adwyn of Dyfns.”

The adviser dipped into his reserve of good humor. “So severe,” he said with a hisslaugh. “I glimpse that inquiry is dark work, but Dyfns’s breath, have a drop of sweetness. Are you this dour in the bedroom?” It was easy, to joke, to stoke the giddy flames in his soul. An inquirer. Was this luck? Dyfn’s plan? Had he caused this?

Across the room, the male assistant’s brilles had gone pale and bloodless, and there was venom spicing the air. Cowards. They were not the ones who should fear inquirers.

Like instinct, Adwyn glanced back. The snout had smiled. One smelt the drops of sweetness he’d asked for; and only one fang was bedewed.

That clear voice said, “Rhyfel-sofran sends a message.”

A foreleg was held out and the sleeves slid to reveal fernpaper tied close with a string of moss.

“What business merits an inquirer, yet isn’t committed to parchment?”

“Rhyfel required that none but your eyes see this note.”

Adwyn glanced at the male adviser, the female and back. He opened his mouth. He closed it. The note changed feet, and was unrolled. He read it with a glance.

> meet me at the river. big bridge

“Is this a joke?” He looked up.

The inquirer had soundlessly left.

No answers there. He looked back to the note.

Adwyn could refuse. He could finish the report that’d been interrupted enough. It wasn’t official business; the inquirers only took orders, and Adwyn answered to Mlaen alone. It was at best the request of a⁠ ⁠—⁠ friend. Adwyn could refuse, and get work done.

He wouldn’t, but he could.

Adwyn sighed and stood up. He thought quickly; meanwhile the assistants were still reacting to the inquirer.

The female was taking a long withheld breath. The male was licking fangs and glanced around. Their brilles grew very dark, as blood finally returned to them.

“Wow,” the male started, still looking where the inquirer had been. “Why can’t the Black Fang be that good?”

The female guard snapped her tongue. “Because we employ dragons, not unfeeling husks.”

“That sweetness smelt real,” said Adwyn with a smirk.

“Bdelli dew.”

“I’ve never been fooled by a bdelli plant,” he said. “They call them wyvern traps.”

“It’s almost as though the term has come to mean something more.”

“What did the note say?”

Adwyn closed his mouth, and glanced at the male assistant and she did too. The sudden words had tripped them, and meaning came after the fall.

“Rhyfel wants to meet me.”

“Smells like we aren’t finishing this report tonight,” said the female.

Adwyn affixed her with a look that once could have plotted murder. Now, it whined like a defanged snake.

“I glimpse this will be important and confidential.”

“And the Dyfnderi put forth a united front,” the female said. She stood up and she rose taller than Adwyn on his rest.

“Many eyes see clearer,” added the male with a nod.

Adwyn stepped to the door alone. “Were this a matter for Dyfnderi, Rhyfel the younger could raise it through the official channels.” Adwyn paused at the threshold. “Why, it may not even be political, but personal.”

“What personal business would the high guard have with you?”

Adwyn left the room.

He moved like a draft down the hall, and reached the ramp hearing slight padding behind him. Voices were calling.

He pressed out the big doors in a run, and he leapt from the top of the town hall. Dark against a dark sky, he trusted the stealth. There were⁠ ⁠—⁠ permanent ways of dealing with nuisances like them, but he had sworn a vow.

The assistants stepped through doors, and leapt after his scent. They winged in his direction.

Once he banked and turned, though, they were starless.

* * *