Jani Egrethore had, several times in her life, vowed to kill her father. Never, thankfully, was it a solemn vow, nor one full of genuine hatred. In the past few years she’d reflected on exactly why she’d said it at all, and decided she was mostly repeating what her mother and the maids had said.

That’s not to say she trusted her mother, or the maids, to tell her what to think or feel. Mostly, it was just how people were supposed to treat Lord Egrethore. He was, after all, the kind of man who collected homeless people and debtors, and disappeared them. More than once she’d taken fancy to some non-noble boy and never seen him again; it was only later, when she understood her father’s business, that she realized her attention had caused them a painful, tortured death. She might have even passed them in the work houses and not recognized them; for much of her youth, she’d had a certain pride in her ability to ignore the plight of the trash-humans, as she’d been taught to do.

Now, though, her father’s work was the only reason why she was independently wealthy and unmarried, and so she simply accepted what she could not change. She had little to speak of in terms of genuine skill, although her affinity for magic had made her reasonably dangerous, at least compared to other noblewomen. More importantly, she had a sort of sixth sense, with which she discerned some cue or tell in people who were lying, and had a way of tearing into them with words and mannerisms until they told the truth. That might, perhaps, be an equally useful skill in the outside world, but working for her father, it paid very well, with all her normal expenses covered.

Today, however, she needed little in the way of skill to convince the workshop crew to spill their secrets. It seemed that Roan had only paid or bound them to keep things a secret from her father, and hadn’t thought to mention her--an oversight that they delighted in abusing. So within half an hour of walking into the workshop, she and her retinue of guards left for her brother’s “other project”.

Unfortunately, by the time she’d arrived, there was nothing more than rubble and bloodstains where it had stood. It lay in a small valley two low ridges beyond the workshop, more than far enough that father would never have found it without spending days searching. From the nearer hill, she could see that the building had been quite large, by the standards of buildings in the sacred grounds. Roan must have paid quite a lot to ship in that much stone, especially if he’d kept news of it from reaching herself or their father.

Whatever had demolished the place had done so with brute force, and the place had not burned or been looted. From the look of it, a magician had smashed it with a thousand blasts of force, although that raised the question of how a magician could have found the place, and why exactly he would have destroyed it. Some of the stone blocks she could see had been deliberately crushed, almost into a powder, and the bodies looked to be every bit as abused. Even some of the trees had been torn down or uprooted, and the trees in the sacred grounds were neither short nor thin.

When she got around back of the building, however, she discovered a thin waif of a beast girl sitting quietly. She had arranged a small neat arc of intact wall stones into a pathetic roofless cubby-hole, and had a silk-covered pallet of a bed in the corner. A box next to her contained small wrapped things, which Jani recognized as the rations that passed for food among the workers. From the way she was sitting, someone had instructed her on how to wait on noblemen.

What bothered Jani most, perhaps, was that the girl scanned over the group with her eyes, and dismissed all of them, even her, without a second thought.

“You! What happened here?” Cein, the more competent of Jani’s bodyguards, was quick to start in on the questions.

“The workers left when the master did not return.” The girl’s voice was raspy, as if unused.

“They tore the place down?”

“Yes.”

“By the master, you mean Roan?” Jani scrutinized at the girl, knowing full well what her brother had been doing to her. He would not spare silk sheets for a worker, and he would not have put someone so well-kept into hard labor.

“The master is the master,” she replied. “I am not bid to know his name.”

At that, Jani did feel a deep pang of regret. Whether the girl was a whore from birth or just some unfortunate her brother had picked up and trained, for her to not know even know his name, even while being used by him, that spoke deeply of how mistreated she had been. Still, she held back. The girl would not be here if she were not deemed trash, and it did no good to become attached to someone meant to die.

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“Roan--your master--is my brother. I was sent to… take care of things he left behind. That includes this place.” Jani hoped the pause was not noticeable. She could read men well enough, or women if they were afraid of her, but this girl was too collected, or too naive, to give easy tells about her emotional state. “What can you tell me? We wish to do right by… the master.”

Chandra’s eyes lit up, and she plastered an absolutely fake smile on her face, one that she was magically bound to feel was real. Jani repressed a shiver at the feeling of it. “The master was not liked here. The guards left after the second day, and the workers hours after. But on that last day, a worker finally finished the work which the master set him to.” She produced, from beneath the bed, something wrapped in a bit of cloth. “The worker made more, but he took it and fled. He is, I believe, the one who disposed of the factory, but I was not able to see it, myself.”

“A worker…?” Jani stepped forward and took the object. From the moment it touched her hands, she recognized the odd feel of a magi-metal. The realization ran through her like a shock; Amon had been irate that a magi-metal had been discovered and not reported, and here was…

“Mistress…” Cein turned to her, keeping his voice low, though probably not low enough for the beast girl to not hear it. “From what she’s said, Master Roan must have been here almost every day. The other sample was discovered months ago.”

“Oh…” Another headache struck like a hammer blow. Roan is tainted, now. Father will be furious. He might have found the magimetal that they were looking for, but at the cost of his life?

Cein, far more collected than she was, turned to the beast girl. “The worker, you believe he is alive?”

“Yes! There are tracks, I believe.” She stood, then paused, her face blanking. “The master will not come, correct? If he is going to come, I must present myself to him. I have kept my spaces clean, as he requested.”

“He tasked us with this because he cannot come,” said Cein, smoothly. “He will be pleased, I assure you.”

“Ah! You are good workers, too. I am sure the master appreciates that.” That forced smile reappeared, and she stepped carefully out of her small, carefully arranged space, and started walking to the far side of the factory. “Come! The tracks will not fade soon, but the worker left more than a day ago. It will take time to catch him.”

Jani weighed the magi-metal in her hands. From the odd momentum and the force it put on her hands, it was a dual-type metal at least, presumably Orichalcum, or the same mixture in some different base. Some part of her wanted to put energy into it and find out if it was a triple-type metal, but if it wasn’t, the energy might rebound into her, and the last thing she needed was a burnt hand. And if it was, there was no telling exactly how the metal would react.

So she loosened her chestplate just enough to slip the length of metal into a secret pouch she had hidden beneath her back armor. If she had to run, she wanted to know for certain that the metal would not bounce its way out; a speed-type magimetal would disappear quickly if she simply stuck it in her belt. Given the size of the sacred lands, she doubted she would find the missing worker soon.

Four hours later, they came upon a man’s corpse. Chandra seemed devastated; she was certain this was the one, and sure enough, they found two lengths of metal on him, one by his hand and one buried halfway into his chest. Janinda noticed, grimly, that the grass around him had started to wither--a sign of advanced taint, or possibly worse.

The beast girl addressed Jani quickly, and politely, clearly wary of the idea that she would be punished for bringing bad news. “With this… I am afraid no-one else alive would have been witness to the work he did, lady. However, there should be one more piece. I am certain that he left with three.”

“We will have someone search for it.” Jani bent over the worker. His face was haggard; he looked like he had no strength at all left. If he had used the magimetal to destroy the factory’s stone walls, it must be a powerful compound indeed. His eyes had also burst, which was not something she usually saw from the tainted ones. Without rising, she turned to face the girl. “You are certain no-one else saw it? Did you see it?”

“Ah…” Chandra flinched. “Mistress--lady--I am not permitted to look up at the workers. I am not permitted to know the master’s business. I am only bid to dispose of the stones, and to keep the sleeping space clean for--as the master commanded.”

This time, along with the fear radiating out of the beast girl, Jani could clearly sense the lies. Or, rather, she hadn’t lied; the girl wasn’t permitted to look at the workers. But she had seen it, and she dared not admit it. Which meant her brother’s abused slave was now the only one who might hold the key to this metal.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Jani vowed to kill her brother. It was not a solemn vow, but somehow the thought and the heat lingered inside her far longer than it should have.