I tried to put the odd encounter with Bleddyn’s cousin out of my mind during my shift at Jason’s. Thanks to the nature of Ringed Mind, it was pathetically easy for me to nearly auto-pilot the process of making low-grade potions for the shop while my middle and core rings dwelled on it.

Rhiannon had called herself a ‘lady of the court’. In context with Herztalian high society I had…absolutely no idea what that meant. I hadn’t had much of any kind of social contact with the upper echelons of the Kingdoms, outside of strictly military affairs. The most interaction I’d had with them had been serving some tea during meetings I attended with Grey.

Outside of my little disagreement/confrontation with the Prince.

The point being, I didn’t have much experience in navigating noble waters, so to speak. What was a woman who was the next best thing to being Mynydd Clans nobility even doing here? My understanding was that the Clans mostly kept to themselves, disdaining larger contact with the Kingdom as a whole. They may nominally bow their heads to the crown, but both polities seemed to exist in a ‘live and let live’ state of being.

I’d have to ask around, I suppose.

But for now, I was done. I’d churned out the potions Jason needed to stock the shelves with, so it was time to clock out. I hung my apron up on the hook of my little brewing space next to the door, and stepped out. On the other side, Jason was just finishing up with another customer, lit by the afternoon light streaming in through the front windows.

As I shuffled around him, Jason looked up at me. “Ah. Hans, w-wait a moment!” He stuttered.

I stopped in the middle of shrugging on my jacket, previously hung on a coat rack near the counter. “What’s up, Jason?”

The shopkeep bent down and dug around underneath his counter for a moment, eventually producing a fairly long scroll of parchment. “Your friend from e-earlier had a courier drop something o-off for you, Hans,” He told me, holding the scroll out to me with a mildly envious look on his face. “I had no i-idea you had friends in the nobility, Hans. I’m j-jealous.”

I stared at the outstretched scroll for a moment as if it was about to reach out and bite me. Gingerly, I reached out and accepted the roll from him. “I didn’t know that either,” I muttered to myself, before forcing a smile on my face at Jason’s curious look. “Ah, thanks for holding onto it, Jason. I forgot she was going to drop that off for me.” I paused, for a moment, a healthy sense of paranoia rolling over me. “Do you mind if I use the backroom to look it over?”

Jason waved me off as another customer entered the shop, absentmindedly sliding me the key. With muttered thanks, I used it to walk over to the backroom and let myself in, setting the scroll on the same table I’d spoken to Rhiannon over earlier.

I eyed the scroll as if it were an active bomb when I did so.

Because for all I knew, it could be.

Something I’d learned during my lessons as an Agent, was that it was very risky to just trust random messages like this. Runecraft was such a broad field that you could inscribe damn near anything you could think of onto parchment, and set it to activate at all kinds of triggers. Inside this scroll could be anything from a tracking script, to a sequence set to explode at opening, or even stored poison gas. If I had just brought this into our Elderwyckian safehouse like my first instinct had been to do, Hook would have probably chewed me out in front of everyone and put me on message duty like he had poor Jangle.

I mean, how was the guy supposed to know that the ‘super important documents’ he stole were really just a collection of bad love poetry?

Anyway, the point was, I needed to check this out before it left the shop. I didn’t dare bring it to either the flat Sylvia and I were sharing, or to the safehouse first.

I took a deep breath, nodded to no one in particular, and approached the table. I drew my concealed dagger and used it to cut the ribbon holding the scroll closed, cringing away and closing my eyes as I did so.

Nothing happened.

Cracking open my eyes, I let out a sigh of relief. Leaning over, I took a look at what the strange woman from earlier had left me.

At first, I didn’t understand what was on the parchment. But…once I did?

I nearly choked on my own spit.

There sure as hell weren’t any traps on this.

Pounding my chest and coughing, I rapidly rolled it back up and scooped it into my arms. Dashing out the door and tossing the key back on the desk as I passed a puzzled Jason, my thoughts raced along with me as I made my way to the safehouse.

Hook needed to see this.

………………………………….

“Who, exactly, did you say gave you this?” Hook said, a note of astonishment coloring his voice. He and I, along with all of the other Agents down here in the safehouse, were gathered around the central planning table down here. All of us were staring down at the unrolled parchment I’d spread out on it in astonishment.

Because, on the scroll, meticulously detailed and intricately sketched….

Were the full blueprints to Duke Olsen’s palatial estate.

Not only did the large scroll detail the entirety of the palace itself, but the apparent sublevels of it as well. Hell, it also had a complete sketch of every inch of the enormous grounds that the complex rested on.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

My God, there was even a full runic breakdown of the ward scheme, complete with the local Ward Stone’s location!

This was…

“How the hell does anyone have access to this?” Wisp asked in amazement, craning her head over the table to stare at one of the rooms. “Aren’t there rumors about these plans?”

“Yes,” Hook said absentmindedly, not tearing his eyes off of the scroll. “That they’re not supposed to exist anymore. The current palace is new, as the old one was donated to the city guard to use as a headquarters on his Ducal ascension. Olsen wanted to almost completely eliminate any trace of the old ruling house when he duped Marjory Olsen into marrying him. Thus, he hired some of the best architects and Ward crafters in the realm to design and build his new palace. And then, once they had finished?”

“He had them, and their entire crews, all executed.”

That was shocking enough to drag my eyes away from the plans, to stare at Hook in horror. The dwarf nodded grimly. “Oh, he concocted some story about them trying to rob him afterward, but everyone knew what was really going on. He was trying to make sure nobody who had anything to do with the construction could ever speak about what they did. Either that, or he didn’t want to pay for the work. And he got away with it, too. Sure there was unrest about the baseless executions, and he even received royal censure because of it. But he weathered the storm, and came out with a firmer position afterward.”

The room was silent for a moment. I don’t know about everyone else, but I was thinking about just how many people Olsen must have needed to kill, in order to silence the entire palatial work crew. It had to be hundreds and hundreds, considering the sheer size of the estate.

One of the other Agents, a woman who went by the codename Crook, broke the silence. “I had family on that crew,” She said quietly, staring down at the plans. “We didn’t receive any compensation for the work my cousin Taylor did. The officials said that his wages were being withheld as damages claimed by the Duke, to pay for the ‘crime’ that he committed,” She was silent for a moment before her black, star-dotted mask tilted up to stare at Hook. “This is it, isn’t it Hook? You promised me when I joined up that we’d take out Olsen one day. This is how we’re going to do it…right?”

Hook met her eyes through both of their masks. “Yes…but not now,” He said grimly. “Olsen is the last head that will roll before we’re through. We’ve barely even begun, and so he gets to live a bit longer. But…it’s going to happen before we’re done with this city. One way, or the other.”

Crook was silent for a moment, standing perfectly still. But eventually, the woman nodded ever so slightly, and then left the basement without another word on silent, padded feet.

We stood around for a moment before I cleared my throat awkwardly. Everyone around the table looked at me. “Do we know anything about this Rhiannon woman? Perhaps how she could have possibly gotten her hands on plans that don’t even exist anymore?”

Hook tilted his head in thought for a moment before crossing his arms. “Not off the top of my head,” He finally admitted, before abruptly spinning on his heel. “But maybe we have a profile on her back at HQ. The rest of you, clear out. This is a facet of the operation that’s going to be overseen by Hangman and I,” Before he sat down in front of the messaging station he had set up with his prototype two-way communication coin, our commander looked over his shoulder and glared at the gathered Agents. “Get going. I know you all have better things to be doing than standing around and snooping.”

They got the hint. Soon, it was only Hook and I down in the basement.

I could only stand around awkwardly as the leader of the Nocturne Division started rapidly tapping his coin on alternating faces. When he was done, the coin held suspended in midair by wire began to spin back and forth, being directed from hundreds of miles away by a messenger back at our Helstein base of operations. Hook observed it intensely, translating the rough language by scribbling frantically on a piece of parchment set up in front of the station. When the coin was finished spinning, he sat back with a sigh and reached up under his mask to rub his eyes tiredly.

I had to wonder, if I was worn out from the all-nighters I’d been pulling….

How tired was Hook?

He stood up from the desk and turned to face me, before pausing. “What the hells are you doing just standing around?” He said, baffled. He waved an irritated hand at his cluttered desk, and the lone chair sitting in front of it. “Sit down, you moron.”

I flushed slightly at the mild rebuke, but did as he asked while the dwarf himself plopped into his own chair. “Now, this is what we have on one ‘Rhiannon of Clan Calonawr,” He started, picking up the parchment and reading from it. “Born in the year twenty-three forty-two, she should be around twenty-nine by now. Birth parents are Archmage Daffyd of Clan Calonawr, and a minor Elderwyckian noble daughter by the name of Vivian of House Steinham. The House objected to the union between Vivian and Daffyd on the basis that the Mynydd Clans are all godless savages, and thus cut her off. Unfortunately, in a fairly rare occurrence, the mother would die in childbirth, leaving Daffyd to raise the child with only support from the rest of his family. Hmm,” He made an interested noise at what he read next.

“What is it?” I asked him curiously.

“According to our profile, she was the original heir of Clan Thunderheart, before the birth of your friend Bleddyn,” Hook said. “However, when the boy was born about five years after her, the title was stripped from the then toddler. We don’t know why. Moving on, once the girl came of age and was Awakened, House Steinham was suddenly interested again. They approached Archmage Daffyd, and told him they could give the girl a better life here in Elderwyck. For some reason, Daffyd agreed and surrendered custody of the girl to her maternal grandparents. Now, if you say Daffyd and the girl still have contact, that’s news to us. Because the only other thing we have on her after that is that she’s supposed to have died.”

I blinked at that. “Hook, I can promise you,” I said flatly. “She’s very much alive.”

“Yes, I know,” Hook said, irritated. “Let me finish. It says she died only briefly, in an accident up at the palace when she was in her early twenties. What it was, we don’t know. All we do know is that it caused a bit of a minor scandal when it happened. But she was successfully revived by the palace Healer, and ever since then, she’s enjoyed a position of minor influence as an advisor in Olsen’s court. No spouse, no children, and the rest of House Steinham is dead by now. She seems to be entirely isolated, with only her position to occupy her time. Hangman…” Hook trailed off, raising his head to look at me. “I don’t have to tell you that this is all damn suspicious. But…”

“It’s too good of a source of potential information to just let slide,” I finished for him, crossing my arms. “And it seems like she’s latched on to me for…some reason. I don’t buy that she’s interested in me only because I rescued the cousin who stole the Clan from her.”

“Yes, it’s likely a cover,” Hook agreed. “The woman might even be SED, for all we know. But for now, we, and more importantly you, need to play along. Hangman, if she contacts you again, do your best to cultivate this woman as an informant. Maybe we can get more out of her. In the meantime, I’ll suspend most of your usual missions while we look into this. Feel free to pick your training back up during this downtime. For now, you’re dismissed. But…be sure to watch your back.”

I nodded at my boss and stood up from my chair. It was about time for me to go and pick up Sylvia, anyway.

I’m sure she would be interested in all of this.