Dei and Matthew walked silently across the marble tiles that marked the entrance to the primary manor of the House Jocell. A small manservant clad entirely in black with a face masked in white led them forward towards the large double doors that opened to the front of the manor. As he opened the doorway for them to leave, he offered them a quaint “Please come again.” Then shut the door on them as soon as they crossed the threshold. A handful of guards watched them from the house's outside patio, stern looks ushering the pair forward even with the rather sudden dismissal from the house, so the two of them walked quietly out to the main street.
A couple of stairs led down from the main patio to an open garden that surrounded the manor grounds for a good fifty meters in every direction. Dei noted that several guards appeared to be pattroling along the thin stone pathways set between the flower plantings that differentiated this house from the surroundings. Another group of guards watched them approach from the gated entrance set into the tall metal fence that lined the grounds. This time the gate clanged into place as they practically pushed the two of them forward through the entrance and onto the night time streets.
Dei took Matthew's hand and led him down the side of the massive fenceline, less with a proper destination in mind, and more to just to get out of sight of the staring guards behind them. Once they got out of the torchlight, she led him down a nearby alleyway and finally stopped.
“What was that?” She wrote.
“I think they might have just wanted to waste our time.”
“But why?” She asked.
“For fun?” Matthew said with a shrug.
Dei crossed her arms as she stared at the man in the faint light from a nearby window. The attempt to contact the head of house Jocell had gone well enough at first. The guards had let them pass easily enough after they claimed to have an audience with the man, then the butler led them into a small waiting room just inside the main entrance. The furniture had even been rather comfy, or so Matthew had told her as they waited there for the next several hours of the day. The butler had even come by a couple times to apologize for the wait, until another hour had passed after dark set in through the open windows. Eventually the Butler had come back one last time to escort them out of the house, lamenting the fact that his lord didn't take guests after dark and that they could come again tomorrow.
“We're not coming back.” Dei wrote.
Matthew nodded, seemingly unsurprised by the decision. While the cushions were nice, he had started to get rather hungry after waiting for the first couple hours. Still, Dei was going to at least get something out of the visit as she walked out from the alleyway and started pacing along the fence. Matthew joined her stroll under the pale moonlight. Every once in a while a passing guard might look out on them from the inside of the grounds, but promptly ignored them again as they went further across the outer line and around a corner.
Dei had almost decided this stakeout of the grounds was a waste of time when she heard the soft clacking of shifting roof tiles in the middle of the night. A shadow passed over their heads and a large object made it over the sharp tipped fence barbs to land heavily in a roll on the other side. The object grunted into the night then lay there panting as she, a human now that Dei could get a good look at her, rubbed her shins while sitting in the dirt.
“Halt. Who goes there!” Matthew called out into the night from the outside of the fence looking in.
The girl spun around, looking towards the inside of the manor grounds, before realizing the words had come from the other direction. She quickly got to her feet and raised a hand towards Matthew.
“Shhhhh.” she called out while stepping closer to the fence. “Stand down soldier, i'm lady Janette and this is none of your business. Just go about your duties and we'll both forget we saw one another.”
“And what if we tell the lord that you've been sneaking out after dark again?” Mathew asked.
‘Ohhh, quick thinking Matthew.’ Dei thought to herself, looking on in silence as it felt awkward to pull out her slate in the moment.
“Oh no, no, no, no! Dad might be mad at me for a day, but I'll make sure that you're relieved from your position before the week is up! What’s your name guardsman? And you too, you…” She trailed off as she took in Dei, clad in a thick brown cloak worn over some leather armor that she had started wearing recently.
“A servant girl?” Janette asked.
“Uh, well, uh…” Mathew stammered at the question.
“You're cavorting with a servant while on guard duty? Seriously?”
“Perhaps we'll agree that we never saw one another?” He said.
Janette's eyes went wide in the pale moonlight, dirty cloth rags dyed a faint gray color hanging from her body in a way that made her look like a passing shadow in the night. Face stained with the dirt from her heavy fall, she finally seemed to realize she was about to get her request from earlier.
“Sure, but if I don't know your name then you could always just betray me later on without me realizing.” She hissed.
“...Marcus, my name's Marcus.”
It didn't even sound believable to Dei, and Janette obviously agreed with her.
“Bullshit. Look, I know what your face looks like, so don't think I won't come find you if you sell me out alright?”
Matthew nodded slightly, and the girl gave him one last look before she started running off towards the manor. Dei and Matthew shared a glance before continuing their walk around the fence line. Perhaps this nighttime stroll wouldn't be such a waste after all.
A minute later another shadow appeared from a nearby alley. This time it was a man they actually recognized.
“My lady, I've traced the men following you to a safehouse back in the slums. It seems like he's waiting for someone there if you'd like to follow me.”
Dei nodded and they followed the sell-sword away from the tall barbed fence.
—
Janette looked both ways in the dark night, making sure none of the nearby guards were watching the house as she crouched beneath a windowsill. After making sure no one was nearby, she sent a quick push of force directly downward, raising her into the air as though she had jumped ten feet up to grab onto a window ledge on the second floor of the manor. Lithe as she could, she pulled herself up and into the window, and dropped into a hidden position on the other side where no one could see her.
The room was dark, only slightly lit by the moonlight in the window, and the faint ambient light under the crease in the doorway. She stood up slowly after checking the corners of the room with a quick scan that told her she was safely alone, and reached out with one arm towards a swinging iron window grate that she had left open earlier that night. She closed the apparatus over the open window and set a heavy lock into place with a small key she carried from a necklace before walking over towards the bed.
She almost collapsed into the bed that very moment before she remembered she was covered in garden dirt from the landing earlier. When was the last time she had landed that hard again, maybe the first year after she earned the right to pledge to the lord’s service? She shook her head as she pulled the confusing mess of cloth over her head and dropped it into a small hamper in the corner. And what were the chances that a damn guard would be patrolling the outside of the fence for once?
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She took off her underclothes, relishing the sweet feeling of release from the tight bindings she used while going out at night, then put on a thin shift to cover herself. She reached into a small box affixed to the wall and pulled down on the soft cloth inside that she knew was linked to a bell down in the servant’s quarters. it wasn’t so late at night that she couldn't have them draw her a bath before bed. Or perhaps more importantly, not so late that her father would think she had gone out on the town again.
She sighed, finally rolling into her bed to wait for the servants to come as she thought about the night’s events. She had just been out for some nighttime practice, running allong the roofs of the city when she knew no one would really have a chance to notice her. It was supposed to be her freedom. Her release from stuffy dresses, the constant balls, the pointless luncheons, and garden visits. Well, as long as Lord Jocell didn't realize she was putting herself at danger just to get a little thrill.
‘Just who was that couple though?’ she thought to herself.
The servant came and went to fetch her a bath as Janette thought about a strange servant girl wearing an unpainted carved mask instead of the customary white featureless one. Strange things were happening tonight. Perhaps she should go back out there to try and find the couple again? Maybe ask them more questions. But then the maid came back with a candle to usher her down the halls towards the bathing room on the bottom floor.
‘I'll follow them next time, for sure. Not like I won't be able to find one of my own guardsmen.’
—
Julius paced down the thin alleyways that comprised this area of town with a discrete sneer on his face. His group walked confidently through the night, allowing patrol groups to see them and promptly turn to walk the other way as soon as they met eyes with the lord in the middle of their formation. Four armored guards walked by his side, along with a single force mage at his back, making them perhaps one of the most dangerous groups traveling through the city that night.
Soon enough they reached a small hovel where a runner had been sent for him a couple hours before. He had wanted to come earlier, almost at once when he heard the subject of the message, but several important meetings had kept him locked up in the manor house without the time to get away. It had grated on him that he didn't have the resources to leave a messenger watching the gate, but he also hadn't expected the tail to actually find the killer in the first place. When he finally entered the room, an unassuming man in plain clothing stood up from his seat to stand as soon as he noticed the lord's arrival.
“Sir. Permission to report.”
“Speak.”
“The girl entered the city this afternoon sir. She stopped at a small tavern in market town then went to hightown and the Jocell estate. She was in there for at least an hour before I decided I should report. My partner is still tracking her to their dwellings for the night while we're here.”
“The Jocell estate, huh?” How convenient that a mysterious murderer goes straight to the estates of our rivals as soon as she visits the capital. “Anything else?”
“Uh, the man she was with, sir. He was tall like you said he might be, but he wasn't wearing a mask like she was. Didn't have any armor on neither.”
Julius stood there for a moment, contemplating the information. He looked about the room at the dusty table and chairs lining the small area alongside a handful of cots off to the side of the small hovel. He certainly wasn't going to stay here long, so he decided he had heard enough of the report when someone else burst into the building. One of the guards standing by the doorway didn't even hesitate as he threw a well placed punch into the square of the man's chest stopping him in his tracks as he clutched at his lungs.
“Stop! That's my partner!” The man making the report said, but the tail who had just barged into the room couldn't do much more than clutch at his chest gasping for air. He pointed back outside the doorway despite being out of breath, and Julius realized just what that meant when someone else walked into the doorframe.
A single boney hand reached out from the dark to rest on the tail's shoulder, casually guiding him to the side as the armed guards drew their weapons and stepped into the newcomer's way. The slim individual didn't even seem to hesitate as she stepped closer to one of the guards while the other one swung at her back. A horrible crunching sound emanated from her body, but she didn't fall to the ground as one might have expected, instead hanging on to the other guard with her hands draped around his neck. She suddenly brought her leg up in an explosive movement, and Julius saw a flash of white and blue light appear from her knee as she brought it up and into the man's stomach.
“Urk!” The man doubled over into the blow, setting her down from her dangling position to get her feet back on the ground. As soon as he had her feet back in place, she twisted her hips and pulled the man's head over her shoulder, sending him flying into the ground. Julius's eyes were drawn to a shining red thorn of blood emanating from her kneecap where a blade of bone seemed to be sticking out from her armor. A moment later she drew a dagger from her belt to plant it into the guard's helm even as she rolled over him and away from the downward swipe of the other guard.
“Enough!”
The words rippled away from Julius in a wave of force that pulled both the girl and the corpse under her up from the ground and flung them into the far wall. The amored man punched straight through the thin wooden siding, but the girl rebounded off the upper part of the hole he left in the wall and landed back in the hovel. Julius was at least satisfied to hear the telltale sound of breaking bones as he lowered his outstretched hand just a fraction.
“Damn it girl, I know you're not dead yet. Stop fighting for just a moment so we can talk. Guards, stand down!”
The words carried out into the night, and a pair of blue burning eyes slowly rose from the ground to meet Julius in the center of the room. ‘Princes be damned.’ he thought as he reached over and pulled around a chair to face the girl before sitting in the rickety old wooden thing. The men around him all had their weapons out at the ready. Even after he had told them to stop they were still obviously waiting for some action if the girl made a wrong move. Wheezing breaths came from the doorway as the tail continued to catch his breath and scrambled his way out of the building after realizing nithing else was keeping him there. His friend meanwhile looked between everyone with beady eyes that seemed to be calculating whether he would fit through the nearby window. Julius waved the man out of the building, and he gratefully sprinted past the open hole in the wall to join his partner.
The girl got up slowly, a pale blue light shining around her back before dulling down into the soft brown of leather armor painted across the majority of her body. A dagger was still clutched in her hand as she looked between the different guards in the room, sizing them up.
“I said enough! We obviously both gain nothing from fighting here tonight.” Julius didn't yell, but his words held the room hostage anyways as the sounds of running men echoed into the distance. The girl tilted her head, obviously trying to ask him a question.
“Yes, that's right. If I die here tonight you don't get any of those oh so important followers you want, now do you?”
The girl stilled finally, sheathing her dagger in a swift motion and pulling out a new device that made his guards twitch with anticipation. She paid them no heed as she pulled out a white piece of something and began writing.
“How do you know?” She turned the board around so he could read it in the pale moonlight drifting in through the hole behind her.
“Because everyone who's anyone knows that the Lord of Whispers has been hunting you for months now. A skeletal monster is found in the Marren Forrest and you think he'd be able to keep that one a secret?” He scoffed at the girl, though he wasn't sure that was such a good idea on second thought. He decided to cover up the jab by continuing.
“You marched into a nearby bandit lair a couple days ago and killed one of my nephews after all but proving you can't be taken down by ordinary means. Sound familiar? Hard to think you're gonna be anything other than a new shardbearer.”
“So?” The girl wrote.
“So, you gain nothing by trying to kill me. I'm pretty sure you'd win one way or another which is why I don't want to chance it. And if you do try to kill me, I can always send a message out to the entire city letting them know everything about you.”
The girl's eyes flared a bit when he said that.
“Cool it girl! If I really wanted to tattle-tell on you I could have done it already. The fact lanterns aren't bobbing down the alleyways towards us already means your secret's safe. For now.”
The burning eyes across from him flickered to the lightly armored man in the back of the room behind Julius. ‘Could she tell he's a mage somehow?’ he thought to himself.
“Him, you don't need to worry about. He works for me and won't make a peep until I tell him. Otherwise he deals with other repercussions, isn't that right Seth?”
The man nodded slightly even as he stared daggers at the girl with his arms outstretched, at the ready.
‘Good, at least he's not an idiot.’ Julius thought.
“So now girl, how about we come to an agreement here where we both might be able to come out on top huh?”