Five of us had signed up for the job, none of us in a full party. We were a motley crew, the styles of our armor clashing with each other, and we did not look like a group in any sense of the word, except for a brown-skinned man and woman who wore matching coats. One of the other adventurers wasn’t even wearing armor, electing instead for a jester’s uniform complete with a hat with bells and a fat red clown nose.

The noble that was apparently in charge of briefing us had yet to arrive, and so we were standing awkwardly in a half-circle inside House Alzaq’s foyer. It was a fairly nice one, I had to admit, full with amenities and refreshments for late night guests, but something about the seriousness in the air around these adventurers made me not want to break off the group for snacks.

In front of us, a set of wide double doors swung open, held by a servant that couldn’t have been older than sixteen. Through them came a single noble. A tall, thin man with thick glasses who seemed more suited to a laboratory than a castle. The only thing indicating he was a noble and not a researcher was the golden family crest pinned to his uniform, a formal set of clothing marked by reds and whites. Despite his appearance, he carried himself with the air of one who knew that they were better than the trash they were speaking to.

I hated him already.

“So the hired help finally arrived,” he said, his words heavily accented. “I was wondering how long they were going to keep me waiting.”

“You’re the boss?” the jester asked.

“My name is William of House Alzaq,” the noble said, pushing his glasses up. “You may refer to me as ‘my lord’, ‘Lord Alzaq,’ or ‘Lord William’.”

“Good to know, my lord,” the jester said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

The Alzaq seemed not to notice the jab. “I do not need to know your names. Actually, I prefer not to know. For the purposes of this mission, your names are red, yellow, green, blue, and grey.”

He pointed to each of us in turn, reaching me at the word ‘grey’. It sounded rehearsed. Had he practiced ordering around his servants?

Fine. The noble didn’t want to treat us as actual human beings, but that was par for the course, and in this case it was actually a little helpful. No new names to learn.

“I wish to not associate with mercenaries more than I must,” the man said, scrunching up his nose like he’d caught a whiff of something foul. “Much as I abhor it, my son Orchid will have the displeasure of handling you lot.”

With that, he turned and left.

“Did he really just show up to insult us and leave?” the woman who had been referred to as ‘yellow’ asked. She was dark-skinned and wearing a thick beige coat, which I supposed if you squinted really hard could be yellow.

“The Alzaqs are just as pleasant as their neighbors,” the jester—he’d been ‘red’—said.

A minute passed, the five of us standing in awkward silence, and then the door opened again.

“Hello, everyone,” a man said, the telltale accent of a noble ringing through the foyer. A lot younger than the irritating one had been, but the face and body type was similar. “I’m Orchid Alzaq. Are you the adventurers?”

“We are,” Yellow said. “Your father didn’t tell you?”

“So he got to you first,” the noble sighed. “I’m sorry. He told me he was going to ‘make an impression’ earlier. I’d hoped to get here first. He has some awfully traditional values. Chris, you can go. Get some rest.”

At the door, the servant started, hearing his name. He saluted and made a noise of assent before running off. I watched him go, the word scampering coming to mind.

“You can call me Or, O, Orc, anything that suits your fancy,” the noble said. “Orchid is fine too. No formalities, please.”

That was a change. I blinked in surprise.

Orchid must’ve noticed, because he turned his head in my direction. “Sorry again about my father. I love him, but he’s… he’s got a lot of old preconceptions. Same with a lot of them. The other investigators included. Sorry.”

“Ah, stop apologizing,” Red said. “We know how nobles are. Nice of you, but that’s just how it is.”

“I agree with, uh, Red,” the man who had been given ‘blue’ said.

“Gods above,” Orchid said, looking at the ceiling with another sigh. “Did he assign you the thrice-damned colors again?”

“Again?” Yellow asked.

“Yeah, he does this a lot,” Orchid said. “Could I get your names?”

“I’m fine,” I said, speaking up for the first time this conversation. “Grey is fine with me. I don’t need you to know my name.”

“I prefer staying unidentified,” Green said, also speaking up for the first time. His voice was irritating, scratchy and deep. He, at least, fit the color assigned to him, cloaked from head to toe in dark green. “Any name I provide would be fake, anyway.”

“I’m fine with Red,” the jester said. “I’m a solo adventurer, class eight. I know the names start blur together, and colors are easy.”

“Manasi Muni, class four,” Yellow said. “But any name works. I really don’t care.”

“Samar Muni, also class four,” Blue said immediately afterward. “Manasi’s husband. Blue is fine for me, if you wish. I’ve been called odder names.”

“It feels weird calling you colors,” Orchid said. “Are you sure you’d rather not share… ugh, fine, Red, Grey, Green?”

“It’s Kyle,” the jester said. “I don’t mind, though.”

“I’m fine,” Green said, face hidden in the shadow of his hood. “I prefer it this way. And class seven.”

“Lily,” I said reluctantly. Almost everyone else had done it, and I had to admit I felt a little odd keeping it up. “Lily Syashan, class five.”

“I can refer to you by those names, then,” Orchid said. “Kyle, Samar, Manasi, Green, Lily. Great.”

A noble that actually cared about the people working under them? I’d met a shockingly large number of them recently. Jasmine, Alex, and now this guy.

“So did you call us here to actually escort a mission?” Re—Kyle asked. “Or just so that you could say hi?”

“The investigators are late,” Orchid grimaced. “I suppose I can give you the information in the meantime, if that’s alright with you?”

“Of course,” Samar said. “Please.”

“Alright,” Orchid said. “Feel free to take a seat. The couches are plentiful and I don’t know when the others will arrive.”

Only Samar and Manasi followed his suggestion, the other three of us remaining standing. It must have been a little awkward facing us, but the noble dealt with it decently. If he hadn’t, what with all the public speaking classes nobles tended to take, I would have been rather disappointed.

“As you all know, Kiri Tayan was the last Crown Prince of Tayan. The news has already been leaked everywhere, but if you have not learned of it yet, he was assassinated in his sleep last night.”

Samar and Manasi gasped at that, taken aback, but Green, the jester, and I remained silent. To be fair, the quest statement hadn’t outright stated that the Crown Prince was dead—it had just heavily implied it.

“Kiri?” Manasi exclaimed. “He was the best we’ve had in years!”

“You only say that because you read all the body magazines that he’s featured in, you degenerate,” Samar said, his shaky voice making an attempt at a joke fall flat.

“Yes, Kiri Tayan.” Orchid started pacing, hand on his chin. “The wards on the royal castle were found to have been rendered nonfunctional afterwards. Not broken, mind you, but off.”

“So it was someone from the inside,” Kyle interjected.

“Should be an easy investigation from the Crown,” Green said, his voice uncomfortably scratchy. “Why the hassle?”

“There’s too many suspects,” Orchid said. “So many that the Crown had to ask trusted nobles to help them investigate.”

“Why?” Manasi asked, apparently recovered from her earlier shock. “There are fewer than a hundred people in the seat of the Crown, right?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“If you had happened to read the quest,” said the jester, visibly rolling his eyes, “You would know that there were a huge number of nobles there the night before Kiri died. They were celebrating the current Queen’s thirtieth year with the Crown, I believe.”

“Precisely,” Orchid said. “Every noble except for a select few is a suspect. My father is one of those select few, and he was tasked with vetting and selecting a small group of investigators.”

“And who are you investigating?” Green asked.

“That’s the heart of the issue,” Orchid said, a hard smile stretching across his face. “We’re investigating everyone.”

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

“The Tempet gambling den,” a noble said, her voice irritatingly high pitched. “That’s our first destination.”

The other investigators had arrived shortly after Orchid had finished explaining what was going on. They would be moving from place to place and event to event over the course of the next week, and we were to stay close to them and capture or kill anyone that tried to stop them in their tracks. According to the noble, there’d been attacks on investigator groups already, leaving a trio from House Kyis in the hospital.

I had been confused but intrigued, for a while, when we’d met Orchid. Jasmine, Alex, and now Orchid… were they the sign of a change in the noble mindset? A way for them to reconcile their differences with the common man?

Meeting the other investigators had disabused me of that notion. Two women and a man, each of them dressed in stiff fabric uniforms, dark blue with the House Alzaq crest emblazoned inside.

They hadn’t even told us their names. I’d picked them up through conversation—Camellia, Sarah, and Chris, which was short for Chrysanthemum—but they’d not given us so much as a second glance after Orchid had explained what we were here for.

The five of us adventurers hung back, occasionally making small talk, while the investigators led the way.

The part of Dakheng that wasn’t filled with noble castles was basically the same as every other small town in existence. The gambling den was unremarkable, heavy smoke forming a thick haze in the air, and there were twenty or thirty commoners inside. The noble investigators went about their business quickly. Having oathholders that could magically assist with the process probably helped their speed a lot, I thought, watching them move.

They had gone up to the people running the place, asked a few questions, rummaged around the back, and came outside. For their efforts, they’d found a clear bag filled with a powder of some sort. Potentially illicit, I was pretty sure, but nothing to do with the case they were on.

“It has to be the Tempets,” the same high-pitched girl said. Camellia, if I remembered right. “They’re far too suspicious, and that den was a place of nothing but sin and excess.”

I snorted at that, and the jester joined in with a small chuckle. Apart from Orchid, who gave us an apologetic smile, the nobles showed no sign of hearing us.

“Well, you’re in luck,” Chrysanthemum said. “Our next destination shall also be one of the Tempets.”

“Any of us know who they are?” Green asked, the raspiness of his voice painful to listen to. “I don’t know nobles.”

I did. The Tempets were a family that didn’t rely as much on having a wide base of oathholders to secure their position. They were an old family, one that had held some level of noble influence in Tayan for centuries, even surviving the continental war mostly intact.

House Rayes had been in open conflict with House Tempet for a couple of years when I was younger, a bloody affair that I wasn’t likely to forget soon. I had been a child, then, and so the specific details of the entire chain of events that had transpired escaped me, but I remembered a few key aspects of their House.

There was a reason that they’d survived through thick and thin, through war and famine, and it was the same reason they were still a dangerous force to be reckoned with.

House Tempet was filthy rich. They had fingers in every pie across the kingdom, and even if one market failed they had a hundred more that would continue churning out profit. It had been the case for as long as history had been recorded, providing them the necessary funds to purchase the allegiance of powerful oathholders. If I remembered correctly, they actually paid enough to a significant number of oathholders to have them marry into the family, providing the bloodline with a powerful force, albeit one that was limited in size.

With all that in mind, I kept my mouth shut. If I volunteered the information, it might draw suspicion. What business did a village girl have, knowing about the intricacies of a noble family?

Thankfully, someone else had a passing familiarity.

“Yes, I do,” Manasi said. “Most of what I know is from magazines and newspapers, though. They’re supposed to be the richest non-royal family in the kingdom.”

“These nobles here think House Tempet wants to be at the top, ‘stead of playing second fiddle?” Green’s voice sounded a little more normal, now. Was the grating rasp an affectation?

“Suppose so,” Kyle said. “Oh, they’re stopping.”

The nobles had ceased our progression down the streets of outer Dakheng, stopping us in a plaza that hadn’t seen much foot traffic in a while. An empty paper bag fluttered across the street, the wind picking up and worsening the chill of the early morning. I had to strain to hear what the nobles were saying.

“—warehouse?” Chrysanthemum was asking, voice raised. He sounded irritated. “A whore-house—“

“Not a brothel, Chris,” Orchard sighed. “That was a casino.”

“I care not!” the former yelled. “I can handle being in a den of sin like that, but a warehouse? A place for common laborers?”

“Chris, I understand,” Sarah said, the annoyance in her tone contradicting her words, “But we must. Lord Alzaq himself tasked us with this. Even if it disgusts us, we must serve our purpose.”

“Fine, fine,” Chris grumbled.

A warehouse? Interesting. That was probably supplies for their endeavors in the region, then. A tactically strong target to attack, if that was what we were after, but we were still allegedly on an investigation.

“We’re searching a Tempet warehouse?” Manasi asked. “I read a story in the papers about that a few months ago. Heard the last set of investigators got beaten up and thrown out, and then the investigators apologized.”

“Were the investigators nobles?” I asked.

“I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”

“Exactly,” I said shortly. “These four’ll be fine. Besides, if there’s an issue that’s our job.”

Almost as if it had heard my words, the wind increased in speed, the breeze intensifying into a full-blown gale. It was audible, now, whistling around us like we were free falling.

“What the hell is that?” Green shouted. His voice was even more normal when he was surprised, I noted dimly. “This isn’t natural wind!”

No shit. The wind had come from behind us, strongest where we’d entered the plaza. I scanned the area, assessing the situation.

The nobles were panicking, which meant that this wasn’t something that just happened in Dakheng—or at least, if it was, it wasn’t something that they knew about. If it wasn’t natural, and it wasn’t an inherent magical effect of the city, there was only one remaining explanation.

Attack.

Four exits to this plaza in the cardinal directions, the rest of it fenced off by dilapidated buildings. None of them looked particularly structurally sound, their desolate frames worn down by time and the elements. A potential escape route, if need be. A fountain in the center, long since dry, which the nobles were standing by.

No visible enemies.

“Spread out!” I commanded. “Assume that we are under attack!”

The others were slow to react, with the exception of the jester. This wasn’t his first time getting ambushed, and the surety with which he moved made me confident that it wouldn’t be his last, either.

I moved towards a separate exit, trying to see if there was any respite from the gusts, but as I began to run I realized that the wind was changing direction, always pointing towards the fountain at the center of the plaza.

Still, it was just wind. I sprinted towards an exit, and that thought vanquished itself. It grew far stronger after a certain point, the effect increasing exponentially until it was like trying to run through a brick wall.

At least the intensity wasn’t increasing any further inside the plaza itself. It was already at the point where I had to actively fight against the winds to secure my steps. My hair whipped wildly against my face, partially obscuring my vision. It was a biting wind, one that chilled me to the bone while also doing its level best to force me off my feet.

I saw Green almost take a nasty fall as a gust pushed him off balance. Kyle was fine, the jester appearing more stable in the wind than the other adventurers had while not under attack. Samar and Manasi were supporting each other, arms around the other’s shoulders.

“The effect is keeping us trapped!” I shouted. Nobody reacted to my words, the wind too loud in everyone’s ears for even screams to propagate properly.

“We’re stuck in here,” a voice said, calm and collected. Kyle. The jester. He sounded like he was having a regular conversation, and despite being on the opposite end of the plaza from me, his words reached me perfectly, enhanced by his oath. “I can sense enemies in the area. Multiple of them. Investigators, please retreat to the fountain. Adventurers, take an entrance.”

I acquiesced. If he could still communicate properly, he would be the de facto leader.

“An entrance, huh,” I muttered to myself, turning towards the exit I was already at. "Convenient.”

We didn’t know who our enemies were, just that they were there. That meant we were going into this largely blind.

I had to cover my bases. Offense was never an issue for me, so that meant…

Frame. I drew a simple circle with my hands, picturing a massive circle-shaped outline of Inome’s void coalescing in front of me. I wanted a lot of power for this spell, so I pictured the outline as having a certain depth to it, a well that could be filled.

Fuel. The world’s invisible threads allowed me to pluck at them, pouring magic into the frame. I winced even as I did. My fuel was fine, but it wanted to expand, to do something other than be constrained by the admittedly somewhat sloppy frame I’d made.

Spark. I enunciated the command phrase to the Ceretian shield spell, slowing down to ensure I spoke it perfectly.

In front of me, a circle of force that was simultaneously impossibly dark and transparent to my eyes spiraled into existence, wide enough across that it blocked the entirety of one alleyway. At the other entrances, the other adventurers had covered their own alleyways. To my right, Samar and Manasi had formed a duet, their purple-tinted spells interlocking with each other to make a wall blocking the entrance we’d come from. On my left, Green had lived up to his name, forming a vibrant emerald half-dome that shone with power, angled towards the alleyway. Something more forceful than a shield, it looked like. And finally, directly opposing me was Kyle the jester. He’d formed the shape of what looked like a circus tent, a hazy mirage shimmering with energy, and it too blocked off his alleyway.

Despite it all, the wind was still coming, not a single iota less in intensity despite the fact that it should not have had anywhere to seep in from.

“The wind has not stopped,” Kyle noted, speaking to all of us at once. “Our attackers are nearby, so do not drop your guard until—“

I sensed the collision before I saw it, a blazingly fast projectile smashing into my shield. The impact made it ripple, and I almost lost control over the spell before ensuring it didn’t fail.

That hadn’t been a bullet. A bullet would’ve come nowhere close to even denting my shield. Instead, it had almost taken it down with a single hit.

“Something just hit my shield,” the jester said, a hint of urgency in his voice now. “Hard and fast. Reinforce your shields, now!”

He was still partway through his last sentence when I saw it.

At the entrance that we’d come into this plaza from, our attacker’s projectile screamed through the air, and a purple shield shattered into shards of raw magic.

It happened so suddenly that I almost missed it. One of the two adventurers that had been protecting that entrance exploded in a shower of gore, the projectile passing through their body like a hot knife through butter.

The dark shape of the projectile stopped and fell to the ground shortly after. The energy of its movement had apparently been wholly spent on destroying the shield and the adventurer who’d maintained it, because it’d ceased moving less than halfway to the terrified nobles at the center.

No, I’d been mistaken. It started moving again, but it wasn’t in the way a bullet would be fired. Even as I started gathering magic, I saw it rise from the ground, a dull glow forming around its body.

No wonder they had done more damage than bullets.

They’d been firing oathholders.