Swick was rather pleased to have been given the job he had, all things considered. It was one well suited to him.

He had, after all, a long history with rebellions and freedom fighters. In fact there wasn’t a single uprising in the continent’s South that he hadn’t at least betrayed, it was simply among the best sources of revenue for an enterprising sky captain. Everyone wanted to know where their enemies were, everyone wanted their supplies yesterday instead of tomorrow, and the man with the flying vehicle able to cross continents within weeks could provide both.

And if that man was paid better to turn on the people hiring him, then that was hardly something he could be blamed for.

Well, Swick had found himself drifting from that way of thinking, in recent years. Some of the people he’d screwed over had deserved it, others hadn’t. And he’d be lying if he claimed that fact had ever even been an influence on whether he did it or not. If nothing else, the long history of doing so had left him with a fair bit of familiarity in how competent rebels tended to operate.

It was that same familiarity which told him something was rather off about the ones Shaiagrazni had tasked him and the Necromancer with hunting down.

“They’re too organised.” He breathed. “Too organised, too quickly. Something strange is going on with them.”

It hadn’t taken too long to find some of the dissenters, and not much longer to find ones actually in the know. From what they’d observed in stalking them, the group was disturbingly well connected and equipped.

“External funding, perhaps?” Sphera suggested. “Might be the King had them prepared as a last-ditch effort to keep us from holding his city, if my Master had killed him.”

Swick thought about that, but it didn’t seem likely to him. From what he’d heard the King had been fairly confident in his surrender, though that may have just been bluster. Shaiagrazni definitely had a reputation for brutality which might have encouraged such behaviour.

There were too many unknowns for his taste, unknowns got men killed more often than edged steel.

“I say we spook this one.” He decided. “With luck, a group as tightly ordered as this will be careful about giving orders to report and refer any problems to their higher ups.”

She caught on quickly.

“You think he’ll lead us to whoever he answers to?”

“Worth a try at least.” Swick grunted. “It’s either that or wait however long.”

The Necromancer thought it through quickly, then nodded.

“Worth a try.” She agreed. “So how do we-”

“OI, DICKHEAD!” Swick roared, hurling a rock with just enough held-back strength to be sure it wouldn’t seriously injure the man after clearing the two hundred paces separating them. It missed entirely, in the end, clattering from the floor and spinning him around to stare up in terror. Within an instant he was running, and Swick dropped down to follow.

“You hang back.” He advised, having carefully judged things to ensure only he was within line of sight during the display. “Follow me while I follow him, I’ll pretend to lose him after a while, then you stalk him from the shadows until he’s convinced he’s in the clear and heads to whoever his bosses are.”

She seemed rather irritated to have it all dropped on her so quickly, but did not protest. Swick began the hunt.

As he’d hoped, it wasn’t particularly difficult to harass a single, terrified rebel. Swick drove him on a merry chase around the city, pursuing maybe two miles before slowly letting him increase the distance, then falling back entirely. It occurred to him, then, that he had no real way of knowing whether the plan was actually working, and that he might be in for hours of waiting to finally receive confirmation if they’d failed.

Fortunately, Sphera was rather quick in reassuring him. Forty minutes passed before he caught the glimpse of inky black magic reaching high into the skies, visible for a single moment. Swick closed his eyes, concentrated, and translocated.

He did not reach her, but he got a decent fraction of the way there. Whenever someone was out of range of his translocation it would always take him as close to them as possible along a straight line, knowing where he’d been, and his distance limit, it was a simple factor to continue until he finally came to a rather large warehouse.

“Over here.” Came the Necromancer’s voice, and Swick followed it until he caught her in one of the shadows. Truly in the shadow, as well, because the stuff seemed half wrapped around her body, wreathed like a cloak and leaving her almost imperceptible against the dark backdrop. Necromancy, sometimes, just didn’t seem fair.

“See anything of note?” He asked, hurrying up beside her, trusting in his own well-practised sneakiness rather than any magical disguise. He couldn’t see her expression behind the darkness as she answered, but he could hear an uncertain tone in her voice.

“Not yet, but I’ve heard a few things. There’s lots of them in there, if they have a large number of fighters then we might actually be in danger trying to hurry in.”

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Swick realised only then that she didn’t have any of her undead with her, and why. Most of them were poorly suited for shadowing a target. It was all well and good to leave them for stealth purposes, but now it left them a pair entirely specialised outside of direct combat. Suddenly Swick didn’t feel quite so clever.

“Alright, stay here.” He sighed. If everything went tits-up, Swick had far better odds of escaping. Best to have her closer to their exit and farther from their enemy. “I’ll go and see what’s going on.”

She watched him head in, without so much as an attempt to dissuade him from his heroic risk-taking, and Swick was soon slipping into the warehouse and gliding along its floor. He heard voices within, which grew louder by the step, filling the building in their density. There were a lot. With luck, that meant they’d hit the motherload of whichever group they’d managed to follow. Swick didn’t want to imagine the implications of this just being a standard meeting.

Once he was through to stand just adjacent to the main body of them, Swick tucked himself away and peered out from behind a few crates. For the most part, nothing of actual organised import was happening just yet, it seemed mostly to be a restless discussion in anticipation for…Something. What that was, he really couldn’t say, but if it was responsible for the eager, expectant grins on all the rebel’s faces then he had no doubt it wouldn’t be good for him.

It didn’t take too long before he found out.

With more careful quietness than even he had entered with, the Vampire stalked into the main room and silenced it using nothing more than her presence. Swick’s breath caught in his throat as he instantly recognised her. The same one who had delivered the ultimatum to Shaiagrazni, no surprise there. Evidently her people were intent to try a few more styles of subversion than just regicide.

Red eyes practically aglow, she made her way to the centre of the room, took a moment to peer around it at all the expectant faces, and then finally spoke.

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

Shaiagrazni had been quick in sharing what he knew with Ado, discoveries and inferences both, and she had to say she found them rather convincing.

The first thing he’d noted was the ease with which King Alfonso’s killer had infiltrated the palace. Ado agreed that had been disturbing, and had chalked it up to the preternatural powers of a Vampire. Shaiagrazni had had a different explanation, however. He believed there was a collaborator responsible for aiding them, and a short round of research and consideration left all largely confident that it was his uncle.

Collin Baird had been rather smug about that, vocalising his opinion that royalty was simply immutably prone to murdering one another, and Ado had ignored him as best she could.

Truth be told, it wasn’t so hard to find reason to suspect the King’s uncle. Prince Dazarick had already started to consolidate his power, declaring himself the new King and promising to defend his claim by weight of steel. His residence was beyond the city’s walls, for the time being, and easily located by the lines of marching men shuffling towards it in search of employment among his military. Ado saw them all, looking down upon them from above as she rode Shaiagrazni’s curious airship. They looked like ants.

“Brilliant.” Baird sighed. “I was worried we’d only be faced with a few hundred spears, nice to see lady luck hasn’t lost her touch.”

“You thought a royal would have so few?” She asked, resisting the urge to laugh in his face.

“Of course not.” Baird replied. “When you lot say jump, the world asks how high. I’m just getting sick of fighting outnumbered.”

Ado turned away from him, suddenly exhausted with his prattling.

“We’re leaders.” She shrugged. “It’s just natural, when we give an order others rush to obey because that is the way of things. Your father might have mustered such armies had he not stolen his power from those with the right blood.”

Baird’s voice was jagged when he spoke next.

“My father did muster such armies, bigger than this one, actually, and full of men who’d eat these ones alive and spit the bones out. You’d be surprised what happens when you assign rulers based on ability rather than how violent their ancestors were.”

“And your father was assigned on ability?” She scoffed, whipping back around. “He took his own throne by killing thousands, that’s not assignment.”

Baird paused at that, then shrugged.

“Which still makes him more suited than if he’d just inherited it from someone who did the same thing five hundred years earlier.”

Ado turned back around and peered over the side without another word, finding no more patience left in her for Baird and his idiocy. Their journey drifted by, aid frigid and cutting. It was curious, she thought, how cold things got as altitude increased, and how powerful the winds became. Ado had wrapped up warmly in anticipation at a warning from Shaiagrazni, but her thick woollen clothes seemed barely able to deter the frosty breath of the skies.

Fortunately, she was not left to suffer it much longer. They approached quickly.

Prince- or, debatably, King- Dazarick had clearly built his city with defence in mind, just as his ancestors had. Thick walls, tall enough that scaling them via escalade would be a nightmarish tedium, and a surrounding area carefully flattened by magic and covered by rows of archers with unbroken sights.

“Not as bad as Ironbane.” Baird breathed. “To attack, I mean. Still, best not to try it. We’d take heavy losses.”

It was ludicrous to hear him refer to the sub-five percent casualties of their last assault as heavy, after weeks of receiving word from her father about the devastation Shaiagrazni unleashed upon their armies. Ado supposed that was the simple perspective shift of standing by him rather than before him.

“Should we make a show of force?” Baird asked. “Let him just see a few grotesqueries, at least, to skew negotiations in our favour.”

Ado was quick in shaking her head.

“Definitely not, that might set him off entirely. This is a man who almost certainly murdered his own brother for a throne taken by his nephew, and now he’s seeing a second chance to claim it. We have no idea how eager he might be or how violent he could become if he thinks his claim is being threatened again.”

Baird didn’t seem to like the reply, but he didn’t argue either. Nodding along reluctantly, pragmatically, and scowling at the city.

“You’re thinking he’d murder the Prince.” He murmured.

She had been. If anything Ado feared the boy was dead already. He was their real target, not Dazarick. Alfonso’s rightful heir, and nephew to the newly-emergent contender for the throne. It was not an unheard of tale, there were always ambitious men in any family, and sometimes they had more support than those rightfully placed before the throne they sought. All the more reason to be quick in extracting their target before anything could befall him.

“I’ll get the Prince.” Baird announced, as they drifted down to the city. “I’m sneakier than anyone else I know, all I need is entry into the city and a lack of outright suspicion. Can you feign diplomacy enough to make them think we’re only there to talk?”

Ado had started getting used to his way of addressing her, clipped and sharp as if he were barking orders at a row of soldiers. If anything it was rather more efficient than the rambling directions she typically received from others. “Of course.” She said, nodding.