After giving up on cleaning her room we took a break and sat on her bed. It may have been torn to shreds, but the mattress was still soft enough, even if it probably wouldn’t hold up for very long.
I took a deep breath in and clapped my hands, trying to grab her attention before she got any more depressed. “Ok. Know your enemy right, the bronze blades, tell me about them.
“Like… The members… Or…”
“Who is the leader? Let’s start there.”
“I think it was a 16-year-old girl named Yamaria Allshadora. But-”
“I see… The Allshadora family huh… And what do we know about them?”
“Yamaria is the oldest daughter. The family rules over a small town in the mountains and has long had a history of producing rogues. They are the closest any rogue has ever gotten to being respectable… But… From what they say that’s just because the family is very idealistic and too strong to be taken down. Because of that, they are like the king's secret weapon… As a result, they are granted certain privileges. For them sending a child here is more like giving the kingdom a hostage. They don’t have to learn our way of fighting… Or even attend classes. They still use their time here to gather influence though, which only furthers the problem.”
‘Well… That sounds like a mess…’ I sighed. ‘That’s going to be a real pain when I take over… Well, I guess that depends on the current family head… But none of that’s important right now. “So she has siblings?”
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“Yes. My family met them once at a gathering. She has an older brother who wants to be a knight, he was a year older I think. She also had two little sisters. One of them is still very young, the other should be our age.”
“She lives in this building then?”
“Yes, all of the noble girls that are our age stay here right now… After the last war, there aren’t enough for us to need more than one building anymore, on account of all the people that died and never had children.”
“Find out what her sister's room number is. I’ll call in a favor from a couple of friends and meet this brother of hers.”
“What are you planning to do? We can't take on the entire guild.”
“Cut off the head and the body will go limp…” I paused, thinking back to my fight with the ghoul. “Well, sometimes you have to rip out the heart too…” I paused again… This time thinking about my fight with the undead Kraken. “Then again… Sometimes you need to just set it on fire and hit it till it dies… But the point is you kill it eventually.” ‘This feels like a really bad metaphor…’
She suddenly became speechless for a moment. “I'll… uh… try to find out what I can…”
“Make sure you do it discreetly, we don't want her to know someone is looking for her.”
“Uhm… Ok, I think I can manage that. But you uh… Your uh… Hm…”
“Isy. I want you to listen to me very carefully. I will never get mad at you for anything you say. So… As ironic as this might sound coming from someone like me… I don’t want you to feel scared when you speak… At least not with me. Ok?”
She pushed her eyebrows together. “You’re not actually going to kill anyone right?”
This time I was the one who paused. ‘How did she get to that conclusion? Oh… No, yeah. I could see how she might think that…’ I sighed. “No, I’m not going to kill anyone… Honestly, I’m not even sure I could if I had to… Sure I’ve killed zombies and demons but… Well anyway, that’s not a part of the plan so don’t worry about that.’
She let out another sigh of relief and her shoulders relaxed again, turning her head back towards her room. “It’s weird you know… I always hated being at home… I never thought I’d miss it so soon…”