It was nearly noon by the time the last embers of the fire were extinguished, and Jasper had been up all night. His clothes were charred, his skin was covered in enough soot to be mistaken for a chimney sweep, and his brow dripped with sweat despite the chill wind sweeping down from the north. Gūla did not look much better than him, and her usually porcelain skin had grown nearly as dark as her horns from all the grime and soot that covered her.

As they worked during the night, news had trickled in from around the camp. Ten more fires had erupted at the same time and while a few had been lucky enough to be stopped almost immediately, several more had spread wildly. The damage was only beginning to be estimated, but the death toll was likely in the hundreds and the loss of tents and supplies was even larger.

With the fire finally quenched, the two collapsed to the ground, surrounded by dozens more of the former partiers. Jasper even noticed Lord Nas̆ru not far away, but though their eyes met briefly, the Djinn was too tired to make a fuss. They’d only rested a few minutes when a messenger galloped down the path. “Captain Gūla? Is Captain Gūla here?”

With a groan, Gūla struggled to her feet, wiping ineffectually at the soot staining her voice. “What is it, soldier?”

Bringing his horse to a halt, the man saluted sharply. “It’s good to see you survived, Captain. Command sent me to find you. They’re meeting to discuss the extent of the damages. I assume you can give an update on what happened here?”

The firebird captain nodded slowly. “If that’s the general’s wish, I guess I can go.” She turned back at Jasper and flashed a crooked smile. “Sorry about how our date turned out. We’ll have to try again.”

“Do you want me to go with you,” Jasper said, rising to his feet with a pained groan.

She glanced at the messenger, who shook his head. “General Turzu only asked for you.”

“It’s all right,” Jasper shrugged. “Besides,” a frown overtook his face as a new fear suddenly occurred to him, “I need to check in on my friends. What if our section of the camp got hit last night?”

Gūla nodded in understanding and, after hopping on the messenger’s horse, the two galloped over toward the center of the camp. Jasper watched them depart and then turned ahead back to his own tent. As he passed by the Djinn lord, a hand closed around his ankle.

“Do you still think I’m guilty?” The man’s voice was too tired to carry any real vehemence, and Jasper was surprised to see that a large chunk of his torso had been badly burned flames.

“I was never particularly inclined to think you were guilty,” Jasper confessed. A blast of cold wind whistled across the still-smoldering tents, and he stuck his hands into his pocket, hiding them from sight. “When your ex is the one investigating you, you know you’re in for a rough time,” he added with a tired grin.

Nas̆ru chuckled. “It seems she hates me nearly as much as I despise her. I know you probably won’t listen, but I’ll warn you again about her, Lord Yas̆peh. She’s the daughter of minor nobility who would do anything to get ahead. I don’t believe for a minute that they didn’t know she was pregnant when they engaged me to her. I think they intended to hoodwink me into claiming it as my own, but due to me getting unexpectedly called away to deal with a S̆addu’â incursion, by the time I returned to consummate the betrothal, she was already showing, albeit barely. Do you think me too harsh now?”

“Like I said, I didn’t think you were guilty,” Jasper replied, avoiding the question. Nas̆ru’s claims didn’t exactly shock him; he didn’t know Gūla that well yet, but she certainly seemed manipulative. But he wasn’t too sure how much he trusted the Djinn lord either.

“I am curious, though,” he said casually, casting Scales of Justice with his hidden hand. “You know part of the reason Gūla is so fixated on you is that she has some ‘spider sense’ that tingles whenever people are plotting something. It doesn’t tell her what they’re plotting, just they’re doing something. We both know you aren’t responsible for the sabotage, so I’m curious what you’re doing? Smuggling? Or maybe a bit of gambling?” he asked, with a tinge of hope in his voice.

“Is that all?” Nas̆ru shrugged. “Me and my boys have been holding an unofficial piqru tournament on the weekends, that’s all. But I assure you, we have nothing to do with the sabotage.”

“I figured it was something like that,” Jasper replied with a forced chuckle. Bidding the Djinn adieu, he turned away, the grin slipping from his face as soon as he was out of sight. Nas̆ru had lied. Oh, he’d told the truth about the piqru tournament, but he had lied when he said he had nothing to do with the sabotage. Damn it. He sighed, not looking forward to having to admit to the fiery captain that he’d been wrong. But first, he needed to check in on his camp.

With his pace hastened by the worry gnawing at his heart, it did not take long for Jasper to make it back to his tent. He passed the aftermath of two more fires along the way. One must have been dealt with rather quickly, for the damage had been restrained to no more than a dozen tents. The other, however, had been a calamity.

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It was tough to distinguish individual campsites in the charred ruins, but from the sheer size of the clearing, he guessed they must have numbered in the hundreds. Worse was the pile of badly burnt bodies that had been piled beside the road, many of them with features so marred that they were wholly unrecognizable. They really crossed a line this time. The fires up till now had been small, an annoyance brought about by petty politicking, but ultimately not that serious. This, however…he stared at the charred corpses with growing anger. This was unforgivable.

As he crested the rise on which his men were camped, his heart beat wildly in his chest, afraid of what he might find. But to his relief, there were no signs of damage. That was not to say, however, that he did not have a delegation waiting to meet him. Ihra and Tsia sat outside his tent. Before them, kneeling in the muck and snow with his hands tied behind his back, was a Djinn. His clothes were torn and bloodied, with a giant hole ripped right through his shoulder where a patch of pink flesh hinted at a recent wound.

Ihra’s eyes widened as she took in his shabby condition, and she ran forward. “You were in one of these fires? That’s where you were all night?”

“I’m fine. Exhausted, but I’m fine,” he reassured her. His mind caught on the rest of what she’d said, and he frowned. “Where did you think I was all night?”

Her cheeks colored. “I thought you were with her. Frankly, I was a little annoyed you didn’t come around to check on us sooner, but you look like you walked through the void and back. Are you hurt?”

“Well, I was with her,” he admitted. She frowned, and he rushed to explain. “As it so happens, we’ve been doing a little investigation into the sabotage. We were at a party last night thrown by one of the suspects and then - kaboom! - the whole place is ablaze. Spent the whole night putting it.”

“Are you hurt,” she asked again, checking him anxiously. “If those stories we’ve heard were true, even those with fire immunity were hurt by the flames.”

“Oh, they’re definitely true. The fire ignores all immunity and is incredibly hard to quench, but I got through just fine. Can’t say the same for everyone there, though.” His voice softened. “You should see the bodies, Ihra. Hundreds, maybe thousands died - and a truly awful death at that.”

“I think I’m glad I didn’t,” she replied with a shudder. Brushing past her, Jasper approached the kneeling man. Standing above him, he could see that not just his hands, but even fingers were restrained, telling him the man must be a mage. He stared at the man in silence for a moment, struggling to repress the surge of rage he felt, and offered his two friends a crooked grin. “I take it you neutralized one of the saboteurs?”

“They had the misfortune of running into the two of us,” Ihra replied with a small smile. “But the princess and I cut ‘em down quick.”

“Did you get anything out of him?”

“Oh, he talked,” Ihra confirmed. “Told us all kinds of stuff but who knows how much of it is true?”

“Does he know who’s behind all this crap?”

With a flick of her fingers, Tsia sent a small blade of wind slicing through the man’s gag. “Maybe you should ask him yourself. You got that spell right?”

Jasper bent down beside the man and forced him to meet his gaze. The Djinn’s eyes were wide and bloodshot, and there was a faint tremor in his lip, but he had regained some sense of courage in the preceding hours. “Who are you, my lord?” He asked cautiously, his voice little more than a rasp.

“I’m the one asking questions,” Jasper flatly denied him. His hands twisted with the Scales of Justice. “Who's your leader?”

“I don’t know,” the man shook his head tiredly. “There’s a group of them. They call themselves the Lords of Wēdīnīnu, but I’ve never seen their faces. We’ve only met in the city a few times, and they always had every identifying feature covered in big blue cloaks and hoods.”

“Wēdīnīnu…” Jasper the word a moment. “That’s not a name, is it? It means something like, ‘ourselves alone.' So, they're some sort of isolationist group, I’m guessing?”

The man nodded his head. “As far as I can tell, they’re a group of nobles who are opposed to the king's plan to send men to the empire.”

“As far as you can tell?” The man's wording caught his attention. “Aren’t you part of this group?”

The mage shook his head as vigorously as his bindings would allow. “No, my lord, I’m just a mercenary. This was supposed to be a simple job - just set a few small fires for a bit of gold.”

Jasper’s gaze hardened. “A few small fires? Have you seen the devastation those fires wrought? How many died?”

“I didn’t know that was going to happen,” the man protested. “We’ve been setting fires for weeks and they've never been like this. They set us up!”

As much as Jasper wanted to scoff, the spell told him the mage was telling the truth. I suppose it’s easier to get people to commit large-scale treason if they don’t know what they’re doing. “What about the fires,” he asked abruptly. “How have you been setting them? Did anything change this time?”

Tsia was the one to answer, as she held up a red glass canister that glinted merrily in the sunlight like a Christmas tree bulb. “They were supposed to spread the contents of this on a tent, and then ignite it with the fire mage.”

“That’s right,” the man affirmed glumly. “But the canister looks identical to what we were given before. How were we to guess it was different?”

“And there was no one else with you, no firebirds?” He probed, thinking of what Gūla had said.

“If there were any firebirds following us, they kept themselves well hidden,” the mage replied honestly.

“Then they likely changed the accelerant,” Jasper concluded. “Good thing we got a sample.”

Releasing the spell, Jasper stood up with a sigh and stretched his limbs. “Let me get cleaned up, and then I guess we’ve got a firebird captain to track down.”

Ihra’s brow twitched, and he felt sorry for her. Poor girl must not have gotten any sleep last night either. “And maybe a short nap too,” he amended.