Alma Greyn’s house had a lovely little basement. It took us a week to dig out an extension of that basement complete with a hidden wall behind the wine cellar that was her pride and joy. Dom had full command of the Underground. While I was in classes, he and his Underground were busy building up the contacts necessary to pull off our ultimate plans. Terra and Dom’s murder kept up the torment on our adversaries, even as his lower minions were punished with cellar-making activities. Alma Greyn was left mostly untouched except that she’d found and befriended a slightly neurotic collie who liked to bark at all hours of the night.
“The king,” Dom said in his shorthand, handing the official scroll to me.
“We expected this,” I answered, opening the missive and reading it carefully.
Dom was being summoned to meet with the king. “I hope you’re right.”
“There’s no reason it should be any different than last time,” I whispered the reassurance into Dom’s ear as I gave him a hug.
“Mmhm,” Dom grunted into my ear.
We stood in Alma Greyn’s new basement. Satanic markings straight out of Supernatural were laid out on the floor and while they were strictly stupid fingerpainting, they were made of real blood. When I say that they were stupid fingerpainting, I mean that the summoning circle contained no fewer than two tied tic-tac-toe games, a KISS tongue, four stick-figure cats on the four corners, and two Among Us imposters stabbing each other. Only a complete demonology neophyte would believe that the symbols were real. That was part of the point.
Mischief +3
Exp +30 (5,380/788,209)
I could hear Alma’s new dog barking at Terra, and Dom and I shared a devious smile as Alma screamed into the night for the “mutt” to shut up. Alma was getting a bit short-tempered, even in class where she was still trying to be our cool professor even as none of the other students even knew half the references she made. Sleep depravation dulled her charm by quite a bit.
“That’s my cue,” I told Dom, laying my head on his chest.
Dom was living in the Underground, but I had a curfew. Guards had seen me leave on this free day for students, so I needed to be seen going back into the dorms before they shut the gates. My visit to the library, where I loudly and insistently demanded access to the video game Among Us, had been enough for Burnt to have someone log my comings and goings from the college. I had to go walk through the gate and up to my room. Then I could climb out my window and rejoin Dom in time to meet with the king just after dusk.
“I could have you arrested,” the king was saying, but half my mind was still ruminating over a move three days beyond this one. I thought I knew how this conversation would go.
The king had had us escorted into a very private chamber very near the dungeons. It was as opulent as one could expect a king’s secret study to be. The blackwood desk was imposingly large. The painting of some previous king over a nearby fireplace was similarly intimidating. The padded chairs we sat in were sufficiently luxurious that I itched to slip them into my inventory.
“But you won’t,” I said my line, Dom quiet at my elbow, which was how we’d planned it.
“I won’t?” the king raised an eyebrow at me.
“Take a cookie,” I suggested, shoving a plate of snickerdoodles across his desk.
Charm +1
“You seem rather glib about the whole concept,” the king took a proffered cookie, a sign that he wasn’t a complete idiot. I liked the king. I’d learned to respect him the last time I’d met him, but I had been appropriately terrified the first time this had happened.
“The cookies are from my bakery,” I informed the king, who was indulging himself with a bite of heaven. I dipped into my inventory and pulled out a lovely pineapple upside-down cake. “The cake is our specialty.”
“While I appreciate your attempt at bribery, I’ll not be swayed to overlook criminal behavior for such trivialities,” he admonished me with an indulgent smile. The king was in his thirties and whomever Fizzbarren’s machine had based this man on, he was the only authority I respected in the entire game.
“Not bribery,” I laughed a little, cutting a piece of tart-sweet cake and sliding it onto a small plate. I handed the plate, fork and cake across to the king as I explained. “Though I respect the thought. My bakery is only one of my holdings. I also own a pub, a butcher, a few market stall spaces, and an adventurer’s shop.”
Charm +1
“I understand that,” the king waved a fork at me. “Though I need to reprimand my own spies for they didn’t know of the market stalls.”
“I only procured them yesterday so you’re only a day out of date, sire,” I sat back in my chair, now trying to focus on the king. It was hard though. I was impatient to get our relationship back to what I’d known before.
Charm +1
“I have no qualm with you or your placement with the Merchant’s Guild,” the king swung his intense gaze to Dom. “It’s you who must explain to me your intentions in my kingdom. You, Dom, have taken over a significant portion of the Underground both here in the Capital and in Siff. Either of those things would have garnered my attention eventually, but to have performed this coup in less than a fortnight is a little too powerful for my comfort.”
Dom gave a negligent shrug but continued to let me talk.
“We understand that, sire,” I brought the king’s attention back to me, even as the man’s gruff gaze showed a hint of impatience at my doing so. It just hurt that he didn’t remember me. “Dom and I are married and therefore share all our holdings. We were happy for the summons so that we could tell you in person that we have no designs on your throne.”
“That is oddly reassuring considering that I should not believe any of that, coming from thieves,” the king admonished, his bushy brows lowering.
“Entrepreneurs, sire,” I disagreed mildly, trying not to sound slick. Just because I’d done this before didn’t mean that the king might judge us differently this time than he had when it was me alone the first time. “And I assure you that we are loyal to you.”
Charm +1
“You haven’t even been in my kingdom more than a month.” The king might have wanted to keep our meeting secret, but he was no fool. The two guards behind him were an absurd level that ensured that Dom and I wouldn’t make a move against the king while here. Trust would have to be earned. “You appear from nowhere and have attained much in so little time. Loyalty to me? How is that possible?”
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The script was different this time and I was becoming stymied by the differences. The first time I’d been scared shitless. His spies had dragged me to this chamber from the depths of the sewers where I’d been hiding from him. Now I was treating him as if he should know me. I had blundered because my thoughts were too far ahead of the game. I schooled my expressions and redirected my thoughts to the here and now. The problem was that the king had been my only ally in the game I’d played the first time, and I’d come to rely on that. I needed to make him that friend again.
Perception +1
“I’m sorry, sire,” I lowered my head, opting for truth because of my respect for him, at least as much truth as I could share. “I have known you before. At least, I have known of you. I come from a place where fairness and honor have no place in politics. When I was escaping from that place, I studied the kingdoms around us and your kingdom most of all.”
“I am not the only one with spies,” the king’s suspicions were not even close to relieved, so I pressed on.
“I found your kingdom to be the most fair because you are a fair and honorable man,” I spread my hands. “I admit that I could not wait to meet you, but Dom and I knew that meeting you would be near to impossible without some reason to garner your attention first.”
Charm +1
“You have my attention,” the king admitted, but his eyes were keen. He would eat my cake, but it would not sway him from doing what he thought was necessary to protect his domain and I had to remember that he didn’t know me yet.
“Great!” I jumped into it, then pulled back a bit. “I mean it, sire. When we arrived, we were able to earn our monetary capital by raiding dungeons between Siff and Paragrol. I admit we were single-minded, but only because we knew that your kingdom would reward hard work. That is more rare than you might imagine.”
The king allowed us to talk. I knew that to be a great strategy for him. He’d taught me that.
“Dom and I only took over Siff’s underground because they had targeted our family,” I hedged on that one since there wasn’t anything in this timeline to support that. “When we arrived in the capital, we were going to use our dungeon profits to invest in the path to nobility through the Merchant’s Guild, our initial intent to make our way here in our new land. The Thieves’ and Assassins’ Guild was never going to allow us to get away with what we’d done in Siff though. I admit we struck them first to keep them from dogging us along the way.”
“And your tutelage at the Universal Neophyte Leveling Venue?” the king prodded, scooping another piece of cake into his mouth.
“When I was kidnapped by UNLV, and they separated us, we took them as our second target. I could not rise in their ranks without absurd dedication of time, even though I already know more magic than many of the staff there, but they have wronged us and we intend to right that wrong,” I admitted, bluntly.
“We do,” Dom asserted, entering the conversation only to lend weight to what I’d said.
“You admit to having taken over one established guild in my Capital and an intent to do battle with another one and expect me to believe that you have no ambition for my throne?” the king scoffed.
“We have told you our plans, plainly and without subterfuge,” I tried to regain command of things. Why was this so hard this time? “We’ve done that because we want you to be a part of this. I’m doing this to serve you.” I stumbled for how to explain something I couldn’t afford to explain. I had trusted this king, both as a king and as a man. “You say your spies are adequate, but the only reason they are only adequate is because you lost a few of them during our purge of the sewers. The Underground is loyal to us and that is reason for you to distrust us, but I assure you that while they are loyal to us, we are loyal to you.”
“You barely know me,” the king got that stern look that tended to upset me, but I swallowed it down, searching my memory for something that could make this right.
Will +1
“But if I know more than I should, you’ll be suspicious of that,” I thought out loud, wondering if we would have to do it all again in another loop. It wasn’t life or death but that was so much work to restart now. “If I show that I know you, you’ll be suspicious. What would assure you of our loyalty to you?”
Intelligence +1
“Not much, at this point,” the king admitted.
“Fine,” I blurted out. “I know that UNLV and the church both annoy the crap out of you, and you wish you could break them both. I know that you could break either one, but then the other would take over. I know that you throw them against each other hoping that they’ll take each other out, but that it’s not working nearly as fast as you might want.”
“How do you know such things?” he asked, rising from his seat behind the desk. The king’s eyes flitted back to where his guards stood. I even knew that if they had not been the right guards, he’d have executed one or both to keep these secrets that I shouldn’t know.
“I know you,” I asserted, leaning forward in my chair and letting the king loom over me. “And I know them. They have abused their powers and while you must remain above reproach on your throne, even you cannot resist the idea that the Underground could do the dirty work for you. That is why we are here and not in the dungeon already.”
The information hung in the air as Dom reached forward to calmly cut himself a piece of cake as if our whole future did not hang by a thread. The king stood, paralyzed between his desire to do exactly what I suggested and having us publicly hung as traitors. King Douglas Terrell was a fair and wise king whose popularity with the people kept him beloved. If he were to devoid the land of both magic and religion, he’d lose it all. We’d had long discussions by firelight in this very room about just that.
“And I will pledge to you, here and now, that we will serve you,” I swore, standing to hold out my hand to the man I respected.
“You don’t know me,” the king whispered, staring at my hand like it was a viper.
“That didn’t go quite as planned,” I lamented, the cell door banging shut behind us.
“Well,” Dom drawled out with a chuckle.
“How are you not mad at me?” I threw my shackled hands up and in a fit of ire, broke them. My strength alone could bend the bars at this point. I had enough locksmithing skill to pick the stupid locks. Instead, I cast several clean spells and flopped onto the cell’s stone floor.
Strength +1
“What good would that do?” Dom chose to pick the crude locks on his own shackles.
I cocked my head at him and glared. He knew I wasn’t mad at him. That’s what ten years of marriage and raising a teenager together will do for you. Well, those things and the fact that we spent a ton of time and effort working on our relationship. There had been a time when Dom would not have been as laid back at the sight of my anger, and there had been a time that I would have misunderstood his tension as anger right back at me. The fact that it had taken more than six months for Kat, smart as she is, to get the nerve to go above twelve miles per hour in a parking lot as she was learning to drive, was one of the things we’d fought over that had taught us that we weren’t mad at her or each other. That kind of work.
“It would make me feel better,” I groused, but there was no heat in it. I plopped my arm over my eyes and tried to think.
“And this,” Dom tapped my arm with a small rolled up piece of paper that looked like it had been torn off something bigger.
“What is it?” I asked, taking the paper and unrolling it.
“Trust me,” the note said in a quick scrawl that I knew to be the king’s handwriting.
“How?” I gasped out. This shouldn’t be possible.
Dom answered with a shrug, “Slipped it into my hand with a cookie.”
“What the hell?” I gaped at the note.
I trusted the king I’d known, but if he didn’t know me, how was this possible?
I did what I do. I used the night to cook and think. I hadn’t used a god card. I was saving my author mana for something else, something bigger. I had half a mind to hit that button to rewind it all to the dungeons, but my heart ached at the idea of it. My mind whipped through scenario possibilities even as I whipped batters and butters. I was stuck on the idea that this scenario was impossible or at the very least extremely improbable.
Intelligence +3
Cooking +5
Exp +50 (5,430/788,209)
If I hit that rewind button now, everything that Dom knew about all this would be gone. I’d learned to trust him in the dungeons. I’d learned how he fought. I felt I had a true partner at my back. I didn’t want to lose all that like I had lost my friendship with the king. It stung that the king hadn’t remembered making me his spymaster. At least a third of this plan was his. We’d laughed in that study of his over a very smooth brandy.
I’d replaced my cookie supply by the time someone came down the dungeon steps. It really helped to have a moving van worth of stuff in my inventory. Dom had helped, but neither of us wanted to talk about it. One, we didn’t want to jinx it, but two, we also didn’t want to alert Fizzbarren with errant thoughts.