The first thing I did was head to the Clucking Hen. Yvlan was there, tending to the bar. I told her what I needed and by the time I was done eating dinner, I had Gerry Teralt’s address. The speed and efficacy at which she got that scared me a bit, but that was yet another problem for later.

Gerry Teralt was staying at a nice hotel in Uptown, only about a ten-minute walk from the Trieste-Vellan branch. By the time I was standing outside, the sun had set for a couple hours, but the streets were still packed.

Yvlan had insisted that she come with me, so she was standing next to me, smoking a cigarette. I peered up to the fourth floor, where, according to Yvlan, Gerry’s suite was. I figured she had to have a mole in the hotel because she told me that he’d paid in advance for a full month, which wasn’t even halfway over.

“Well, I could definitely climb up there, but everyone would see,” I said, eying the dozens of people that crowded the streets. I turned back to the facade of the building. It had plenty of decorations and other artistic embellishments that would make it an easy climb both up and down.

Yvlan took another puff from her cigarette and then threw it on the street, crushing it with the heel of her boot. She was dressed in finery and looked a bit like a junker on vacation in her furs and floral patterns. I just looked like her bodyguard. Or perhaps her porter. I was wearing my normal clothes, plus a scarf to cover my Hunter’s Mark.

“I told you it wouldn’t work,” she said, slyly.

I rolled my eyes and said, “Plan B?”

Yvlan looked at me, a bit surprised, a bit impressed, and said, “You have a plan B?”

“I always do,” I said. “We’ll just break in the old-fashioned way.”

“Oh no,” Yvlan said, shaking her head. She gently traced a line down my arm with her finger. “You, my friend, are a sledgehammer.”

“A sledgehammer?”

“Yes,” Yvlan said, slipping her arm around mine as she began to walk toward the hotel. “Big, hard, and not very quiet. I am a scalpel. Now, we need discretion. We need my way.”

Yvlan led us into the hotel and straight past the front desk. She didn’t even glance at them as we went by, she just headed straight for the stairs. She walked with the confidence of someone who belonged there, a confidence I tried to match. We went up the stairs to the fourth floor, where we found Gerry’s room.

Glancing around to make sure no one was there, Yvlan took out a black leather tool case from her coat and pulled out a set of lockpicks. She knelt in front of the door and began to pick the lock.

“This is remarkably similar to my plan, by the way,” I muttered, shielding her from view by leaning on the wall next to the door.

“No,” Yvlan said, quietly, “you were going to just break the door open with your freakish Hunter strength. That is not the same as this. This is quiet.”

I scoffed and didn’t say anything, but she was right. To be fair, it wasn’t like I was going to kick the door down, I was just going to break the lock. It would’ve been loud for just a second and then we would’ve been in.

The lock clicked and I helped Yvlan to her feet. I swung the door open and stepped in.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but Gerry’s room was rather plain and disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, it was fancy, but it was just a normal, high-end hotel room. Paintings adorned the walls, which were patterned with expensive-looking wallpaper. There were couches, chairs, and tables, all for relaxation, as well as a fireplace. We were in the living room, there were doors on the left and right wall presumably to the bedroom and study. The blinds were drawn, but I knew that the window overlooked the street below.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Can you turn on a light?” Yvlan said. “I can’t see anything in here.”

“What, you can’t see in the dark?” I asked, walking over to a lamp and turning it on.

Yvlan hissed something under her breath at me in Urelian and then turned around and started rifling through drawers.

“Do you know what we’re looking for?” I asked.

“Anything that looks important or valuable,” she said.

I thought about correcting her, but one of two was good enough.

I walked over to the right door and tried the handle. It didn’t turn and I noticed someone had put a padlock on the door. That certainly wasn’t hotel standard. I grabbed it with both hands and pulled. It snapped in two and I tossed the parts to Yvlan.

She caught them and sighed, muttering more under her breath.

Stepping inside the room, I certainly wasn’t disappointed by what I found. In the middle of the room, there was a large desk, which was absolutely littered with diagrams, papers, and pictures. The wall behind the desk was also covered with blueprints, photographs, and drawings.

“Alright,” I said, rubbing my hands, “now this is what I was looking for.”

Yvlan stepped inside and flicked on the lights.

“What is all this?” she asked.

I walked over to the wall and looked at the photographs. Many of the photographs were either cutouts from newspapers, creep shots, or official looking photographs. Each one had a name written on it and was grouped with other photographs of the same person.

Yvlan reached up and tapped one of the groups of photographs. It was of an elderly man with white hair. He looked a bit like a mouse, with a more pronounced nose and a smaller face. In all of the photographs, no matter if they were a portrait, a shot from the bushes outside his house, or a picture of him walking on the street, he was wearing expensive, but not overly flashy clothes. My old money detectors were going off.

“That’s Harlan Morrison,” Yvlan muttered. “And that’s Andar Jules,” she added, tapping another group of photographs.

“Of course,” I said, feigning that I knew what she was talking about. I had no idea who those people were, but the way she had said it, they sounded important. It seemed like I’d fooled her, because she didn’t call me out on it.

Yvlan leaned in closer to one of the blueprints pinned to the wall.

“This is the House of Parliament,” she said. She moved over to the desk and picked up some diagrams and drawings. “I think he was going to assassinate the Speaker.”

I tried to look like I knew what Yvlan was talking about as I joined her at the desk. This time, I failed.

Yvlan sighed.

“You don’t read the news much, do you?” she asked.

“On occasion,” I muttered. “I’m busy, alright?”

Yvlan sighed and plucked two photos from the wall.

“This man,” she said, holding up a photo of the old man, “is Harlan Morrison. He’s the man who controls what bills go to vote. The most powerful man in government besides the Prime Minister.”

“Right, and the Prime Minister is…” I said, trailing off and glancing at the board.

“Andar Jules,” Yvlan said flatly. “I am not from here. How do I know this more than you?”

“I’m too busy following monsters to follow politics,” I said.

I spread out the papers on the desk and glanced over them. There were some schematics for assassin harnesses, as well as different diagrams for where one might be able to hide a gun. There were drawings and maps of the parliamentary building, as well as potential dropoff and pickup points for a weapon stash. Digging through the piles of papers, I also found a staff manifest, including notes on possible points of blackmail.

“Gerry was well-researched,” I muttered. It was kind of funny that, for all this preparation, he got taken out by the military, rendering it all useless.

I saw Yvlan slip a paper into her pocket. I glared at her and sighed. Frowning, she put the paper back on the table. I picked it up and read it. It was a list of potentially blackmailable members of Parliament, with brief descriptions of what they could be pressed on.

“Just a souvenir,” she said, sheepishly, as if she was a child caught reaching for the cookie jar, not a crime boss caught reaching for sensitive information on state officials.

“‘Lavin Teralt,’” I read aloud. “‘Secret Marchkind mistress.’” Well, it made sense why Lavin had gone to such lengths to hide her mistress. A mistress normally wouldn’t turn any heads, but if a noblewoman of Lavin’s stature were to be discovered sleeping with a Marchkind, then it could spell the end of her career or even worse.

“Marchkind…” Yvlan said, shaking her head sadly. “A people betray you in one war, you brand them and their descendants as untouchables… You Valerians never forgive, nor forget. It scares me.”

“I don’t need a history lesson from you,” I said. “Keep looking for anything important.”

“I am just saying,” Yvlan said, crossing her arms, “we Urelians would never do such a thing. To force a traitor to live in shame, it is itself shameful. Either we kill the traitor or we forgive them. None of this…indecision.”

I shooed her away with a wave of my hand. She sighed and walked off, shaking her head and muttering to herself in Urelian.

“You can keep whatever money you find!” I said, calling after her. That put a bit more pep into her step and she scurried off to a different room, leaving me alone to decipher what Gerry had been planning.