[a brave young priestess' journal]
He won't stop talking to me, Miss Journal. I don't know if it's seemly for a young lady to spend two days talking to the Prince, but he seems fascinated with everything. He even had me call my friends in! He's patting Bark on her head right now!
[large ink blot]
Sorry for yelling and sorry too for the mess. We will arrive in Hearthhome soon. I felt the train start coasting a moment ago; it caught me off-guard. I don't know what he plans to do there.
Every time I try to ask for guidance, all I hear is purring. It's nice, Miss Journal, but not in a this is what you should do, Elanor way. Perhaps that's the point?
He looked at me again. He keeps doing that when he thinks I'm not looking. I'm not a lady anymore, not officially, so I am not sure how I should act. Elanor Fitzgerald would have dipped her head demurely and tried to make it seem like she was beneath him (and I definitely were and am), but I don't know what a normal woman should do.
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The train pulled to a stop and Stewart Gallant stood up, the bloodied wolf beside him rising to stand nearly as tall as his chest. He checked his gun, sword, and did his absolute best to get the wolf fur off his riding trousers but there was nothing else for it. "Shall we depart? You will be able to leave your wagon in the care of the Earl's stables. This shouldn't take long, but I'd like to be ready for anything."
Turning his attention to Elanor, Stewart gave her a nod. "You shouldn't need your friends, though if you want to bring Snipsnap, I will vouch for her." He pulled on his gloves and nodded toward the carriage's door.
The walk through the city streets, once they'd fetched their wagon, relaxed Brevity. While it was hard to feel safe in Far Reach, and the capital had felt less stable than usual, this was the heart of the whole northern wing of the kingdom. It was growing, surging, and from what she'd heard a stable seat of power that wasn't playing underhanded games.
Stewart was well-used to being pushed to the head of queues; outside the capital at least. Hearthhome was no different in that regard. With the wagon stowed in the stables, they'd marched past the few waiting supplicants and were ushered into the private study of the Earl.
Earl Judith Sanderson stood immediately as the crown prince of the realm stepped into her office. She stepped around her desk and lowered herself to her knee. "Your Royal Highness. It's always an honor to see you, sir." She waved at her guards to send them out into the waiting area.
Brevity felt like she didn't fit in this place. Stewart was a prince, Judith was an earl, and Elanor at least had experience in polite company. All Brevity had to fall back on was her time as a lawyer in the kingdom's courts—and in those you kept your mouth shut unless directly addressed. So, she did that.
"I hear you have a rat problem up here." Done with civility, Stewart wanted to cut to the chase. "I have some all-too-believable reports of the leaders of cities mysteriously dying and a western noble nearby being prepared to pick up the reins and help return the region to stability. So, if you will indulge me, what is going on in the kingdom's north?"
Waiting for the Prince to take a seat, Judith sat down behind her desk once more. "From what my own information gatherers have told me, it seems that the Marquess of West Reaches has been utilizing deception and assassins to…" She recognized the look of the young woman standing behind the Prince. "She's—"
"… just a commoner named Elanor now. Her testimony forms a good part of the information I wish substantiated. It turns out house Fitzgerald isn't … well, wasn’t entirely populated by power-grabbing rats." With the matter firmly put to rest, in his own mind at least, Stewart gestured for Judith to continue.
"Sorry, but it was a shock to see."
Wanting to back up the Prince, Elanor cleared her throat and said, "You can say it if you want. My uncle is a horrible man who stands at the head of a family of horrible people. I am glad to be rid of them."
It assuaged a lot of doubt to hear the fiery words from Elanor. Judith's heart slowed from the racing pace it had gained at first recognizing her lineage. "Far Reach was beheaded by an assassin, a visiting noble claimed its seat, and the city moved on with the change before I was made aware of anything untoward. Then I hear Northridge also had some problems with a spy and assassin, but managed to deal with the threat. What I need, Sir, is your support in weeding out the noble who holds an illegitimate grip on Far Reach and whatever network of power they have established."
"That's a tall ask." One Stewart knew was beyond his powers as the crown prince. Only the King could wield such power over nobles. "With the number of complaints leveled, I am able to personally investigate, but if something isn't immediately apparent I can't take action." He looked significantly at Elanor.
"I-I would be able to recognize my cousins—former cousins—and other members of that family. I might even be able to goad them into speaking too openly." Elanor didn't like the idea of playing political games, but she had promised Travis she would fight for him—and this seemed like a fight.
With a nod of encouragement, Stewart looked back at Judith. "We will try to make a problem of ourselves that cannot be ignored until they make a mistak—" The sound of the door opening cut him off.
There was a short moment where anyone seated would struggle to react and even those standing—without combat experience—would be at a disadvantage. Elanor felt a shove from her god and her reflexes heightened. The door opening in her peripheral vision made her turn as fast as a cat to confront the man walking in.
While the man stared at Stewart, a woman's voice shouted, "What are you hesitating for, shoot her!"
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Elanor watched, eyes wide and arms already moving in reaction, as he raised a pistol and took aim at someone behind her. She didn't have time to draw her own gun to shoot him before he'd fire, so she flung her left arm up to spoil his shot.
The fizzling crack of a flintlock discharging was deafening in the office. Smoke filled the air and made it hard to see clearly, but Elanor was aware of something that boded well in the chaos—her left arm hurt.
Sighting through the smoke on the man who stared at her in shock, Elanor squeezed the trigger down on her pistol. The answering shriek from her revolver had none of the smoke the old pistol design had discharged, and a more rounded bang rather than the sharper pow sound of the flintlock.
"Two shots? What's going on in there?" the female voice called again from outside.
"Stay in here," Elanor said, getting Stewart, Brevity, and Judith's attention. It relieved her to find them huddled behind Judith's desk, which Stewart was in the process of turning over to act as a barrier. She focused on the door as she approached it. "I'll draw their fire, Snipsnap, can you use me as cover to get on the ceiling?" A chittering noise as Snipsnap crawled out from under her armor and dropped to the floor was her only answer.
The doorway was on Elanor's left, and she didn't want to dodge around it to come around the edge with her gun arm, so opted to peek first. A glance around the door frame revealed bloodshed in the hall. The Prince's guard was on the ground in a puddle of blood, and there were four people standing over the house guards.
The one that Elanor recognized made her curse and pull her head back. "Didn't you kill yourself in Northridge?"
"Cousin? Come out here before the shooting gets worse. We don't have to fight. All we want is the Earl." Eliza drew her pistol and sighted on the doorway, wondering who would be the first to leave the office.
Glancing again behind her, Elanor could see the Prince with his own gun out and sword drawn, while the Earl had drawn what looked like a dueling blade. She cursed under her breath, deciding that since she was a commoner now, she could act as she pleased. Lifting her left arm up so that the heavy sleeve of her duster, lined as it was with armor, covered her face—and stepped into the doorway.
Two shots rang from the hallway. Elanor felt one collide with her arm and the other her chest. Smoke from the pistols' discharge choked those standing, so Elanor crouched to her knee and looked over her arm. Ignoring pain had become her daily life. This was just like her dungeon delves, there were enemies trying to kill her and targets she needed to avoid hitting. Besides, she thought, the impacts of pistol balls against her special armor was nothing compared to being poisoned to death by a scorpion.
The smoke was rising, white and black and blinding, but then Elanor saw the first silhouette in the haze. The echo of her shot made her ears ring a little, but that too was something she'd gotten used to. In a smooth motion and without the hindrance of smoke, she cocked the hammer back and saw a second torso.
When a double concussion sounded, Elanor knew that she'd gone past the two red bullets (hollow points) and had fired a yellow, explosive round. It also caused the smoke to scatter to the corners of the room.
Eliza was halfway through reloading when she realized she was the only one of her group standing and her cousin was crouching at the end of the hall with a weird pistol. Not seeing Elanor reloading, she drew her rapier and charged forward.
Drawing the hammer back again with her thumb, Elanor's only thought ran to the fervent hope that whatever talismans Eliza might be carrying would get destroyed by the explosion of what she knew was another yellow bullet.
There wasn't anything left of Eliza above the sternum. Her head, neck, and right shoulder were missing, and Elanor assumed it was why there was a mess for someone she hoped wasn't going to be her to clean up. Looking around for more targets, she noticed Eliza's body fade away as what must have been a hidden talisman rescued her from the end of her life. "Dammit."
"Elanor?" Stewart asked, and looked around the edge of the door much as he'd seen her do. The only things moving in the room were Elanor and Snipsnap. Groans from the floor indicated someone was alive. He rushed over to find his own guard still breathing. "You're a priestess. Can you heal him?"
Snapped out of her stupor by the question, and what felt like a prod in the center of her back, Elanor nodded and walked over to where the man lay in his own blood. She crouched down and used the biggest heal spell she could cast and murmured a prayer to Sandwalker under her breath.
With shock causing his system to shut down from extreme loss of blood, the guard felt a breeze flow over him. In the air above him, a relentless sun drove back the darkness that was gathering at the edges of his vision. Then he coughed up a pile of his own blood that had been pooling in his lungs. The healing spell, something he was familiar with feeling, was a welcome sensation.
Seeing the spell reknit his guard's chest wound, Stewart let out a relieved sigh. Together, he and Elanor saw to those who were alive. While they did so, the single attacker who'd initially survived the bullet Elanor had fired succumbed to his wound. The other two of her targets scarcely had a full person worth of body parts between them. "Who were you talking to?" he asked at last.
"That was my cousin, or so I've since found out. She was the spy sent to Northridge and, it seems, an assassin sent to kill the Earl." Elanor looked at where Judith stood. "You're okay?"
"You got shot. Your arm—" Judith said, walking over to Elanor and grabbing her sleeve to reveal the wound. What she saw, after fighting with stiff plate-on-wire embedded into the leather, was a welt where there should have been a shattered forearm.
"I have good armor." Elanor shrugged her shoulders. Feeling movement at her feet, she reached a hand out to Snipsnap. "Sorry, girl, I didn't want to leave Eliza to you. She'd probably give you indigestion anyway."
Judith tried to ignore the young juggernaut of a woman who had foiled an assassination attempt by putting herself in the way. There was a lot for her to plan for, not the least of which being why the attackers had expected a bullet to kill her when she had her usual set of talismans. That, though, begged more questions.
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Jerking upright on a cold stone altar, Eliza had her usual resurrection malady replaced by a ringing in her ears. She'd heard only the shot of Elanor's pistol and not the concussion of the bullet impacting her own head triggering its charge—but now she dealt with the aftereffects. The priest was trying to say something to her, but when she gestured at her ears, they shrugged and pointed to her things waiting nearby.
It wasn't the estate in West Reaches, but she hardly expected that. Slipping some clothes on, Eliza grumbled all the while and cursed her cousin. Stepping out into the light, she buckled her weapon belt to her waist and took a relieved breath of air—and coughed because all she could smell was singed hair and flesh. Despite the ongoing effects of her death, the Capital looked just as it had when she'd left.
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