Jani felt no pity for the man.

Before her, Dennet was trying to scream through the rags that served to gag him. After he had dared lay hands on the girl, and she had removed one arm with a quick and brutal flash of red fire, he had dared reach out at her with his other hand. She had felt the deep and brutal magic he had dumped into her head with a touch, and if he had any expectation to survive the day, she hoped fervently to disappoint him.

To that end she had severed all his limbs with fire magic, and felt no small amount of grim satisfaction to see her work done. His screams were pain, yes, but she was certain--just as she was certain when men lied--that his pain came from refusing to believe that he was capable of injury. A person like him was was supposed to be above danger, focused instead on how to get rich off the misfortune of others. She enjoyed his screams, because they tasted like sweet comeuppance.

Unfortunately, servants arrived quickly, and she had to move on to next thoughts, like what had just been done to Chandra. The girl was still, now, screaming, but her body had gone limp, and her voice silent. Nevertheless, Jani could feel the scream. It ran through the same mental sense she used on her marks, the same sense that let her enjoy Dennet’s screams. Jani felt unnervingly like she was seeing a woman in the process of being eaten alive, like a monster had her arm casually stuck between its teeth and was taking a short break before diving back in after her guts. In contrast, Dennet’s actual severed limbs lay scattered on the ground, still alive and leaking blood, but they meant little.

If anything, she needed to keep the girl away from her father, for now. He was too… suffused with dark magic, which would only cause more damage given the new enchantments. Indeed, she had some dark magic left in her, and it had only accelerated the effect. There was no way dark magic could make it easier for magic to be removed; she should know, having cleaned up after her father’s messes far too many times. It seemed to only make magic soak more deeply into things… and people.

Looking at Chandra was, for her, what it must be for the servants to see the maimed body of her brother’s wizard. What had been done to her was horrific. She had seen the girl with her mind ensnared before, but she had been recovering. Now, seeing the difference, she recognized that what she was seeing was gruesome injury. Where once had been normal patterns, where once had been motion and life, now there was a twitching, paralyzed, amputated thing.

A woman’s mind in name only.

Jani found her hand drawn to the girl’s face, but she felt like any contact would be like touching someone else’s wound--a taboo, to be done only by a doctor or a torturer. She wished to heal the girl, but knew that she knew nothing, and could only do harm.

“Lady…” a servant whose name she would have to struggle to recall approached. “What shall we do, with…?”

“The girl goes back to her quarters. My father is not to be allowed near her, and I will inform him of that myself. In fact, nobody except myself may access her, except on my order. Any caster who approaches her quarters, by any means, without my permission is to be killed.” She paused, and looked at the bleeding, twitching, armless torso. “That thing should be taken to the inquisitor. We will need his services, immediately.”

The servant, clearly one of her father’s best, looked straight at Dennet’s body, steeled herself for only a moment, then bowed and, with another’s help, picked up the struggling, protesting thing and carted it off through the house, ignoring the drips of blood and burned flesh.

Others would be here soon to clean up what remained. It was the kind of thing that did happen here on occasion.

Her own guards saw to it that Chandra was taken care of, refusing the help of the others. That was best, and she felt some pride. Her father’s guards and servants were excellent at carrying out orders, but she had made certain to surround herself with those few people she’d found who thought ahead. It was a trait her father did not value, and she sometimes had to hide it from him, but it was for the best. It did require that she treat them better than her father treated his servants, but that was not a difficult price to pay.

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Which left her with the unpleasant task of speaking to her father, while he was still wounded and strained. Word would already be reaching him that something urgent was afoot, and therefore, he was already going to be riled up. Getting to him sooner was probably for the best. So she exited the hall, and trusting that he would be in his study, went straight there.

Amon was just about to force his way out into the hall, against the protestation of his guard, when she arrived. Something, perhaps her grim face, calmed him down. Still, he refused to sit. “Tell me what happened,” he insisted, in a tone she knew better than to argue with.

“Brother’s wizard--Dennet, you called him--had invaded our mansion. He attacked the slave girl, and he was ready to attack me. He has been stopped, and he will not be leaving under his own power. I have sent for the inquisitor, to see that we can discover what he did to the girl.”

“Wait, wait, wait. What did he do to the girl?” Amon waggled the wrong hand--now only a cloth-wrapped stump, and seemed to rock gently on his feet, as though exhausted.

“Sit! Father. I came to give an account, and I’ll give it, but you will pass out if you don’t rest.” Jani nodded to her father’s guard, who grasped him firmly on the shoulder; he knew better than to force Amon to move, but the assurance that he wouldn’t let go should be enough.

It was. Amon bristed at the idea of taking orders, but then, he was already under the effect of his own dark magic, and she had appealed to his reason. So, when his reason agreed with hers, he simply seemed to switch off his own nature, and tottered back to the chair.

If only such a thing would last.

“There was a panel in Roan’s room, which enters one of the wall-ways. How he got in there, I do not know. But Chandra sensed the wizard, and led us straight to him, although I could not sense anything of him, not until she opened the door. Then, as soon as he saw her, he put her under a powerful spell, one he must have prepared earlier, for it was over in moments. You know, father, I have some form of mind’s sight, which I use to read out lies. Whatever he did to her, it changed her powerfully. And then he moved towards me.”

Amon’s fingers tightened on his chair until their knuckles were white, and she saw fresh blood on the stump of his arm. If he had been standing, she was sure he would be about to fall over. She raised her hands, shaking her head gently.

“It’s fine, father. He was able to harm the girl because I didn’t know he was there. But he was far too slow, and he has paid a dear price already for his insolence. The inquisitor will exact a worse price.” She paused. “But I am concerned that our prize might be lost.”

“Yes.” The cool tone to his voice was at odds with his appearance, probably because he had conjured it into being. “Even if her memories are intact, most likely, he restored her loyalties to Roan, or perhaps turned them to himself--or the Order, if he is at their beck and call, now. He was, you understand, a mercenary. It is almost certain she will not follow you or I.” Amon, almost idly, looked down at his hands, still gripping the arm of his chair too tightly. With a deliberate action, he seemed to will away the rage and hatred. “You were right, daughter. My body is in no condition to get so upset.” He looked at the other arm, with the blood now clearly soaked through.

He took a long moment to just stare at it. Janinda didn’t need to see into his mind, and didn’t need to be his own daughter, to see what was running through his mind. Everyone in the room saw it with equal clarity.

Finally, he looked up at her, casually, as though he had just been struck with a thought. “For now, daughter, you will need to lead the house through this crisis. With Roan gone… you are my heir. And if it should come to pass that I die… unnecessarily soon, this will be your mess anyway. For now, you may act with my full authority. I trust you will not make me regret it.”

Janinda didn’t quite realize it at the time, but would look back on the next few hours as though she was living in a fog or a dream. Somehow, issuing a dozen orders, looking into various matters, and generally speaking, getting things in order came almost automatically. But none of it seemed real.

Jani had many times in her life sworn to kill her father. But now she realized that if she did, she would stand to inherit the house and all his business. He was wounded and ailing, and had given her full control over his entire empire--including thieves and assassins. But she found, for reasons she could not quite understand, that she didn’t want to kill him.

It had taken her many years to ask herself why she had sworn to kill him. In the space of a few hours, upon realizing that she didn’t want to do so anymore, the first question was why. And she still didn’t quite know the answer to either question.

Except that there was something strange, something almost novel about the idea that her father had treated her with respect. Or perhaps… like a family member.