The seneschal opened the twin brass doors with a curtsy and bow of his head. Leresai gave him a playful wink as she crossed the divider. She sat her feet against the carpet with her toes in line against a pair of lion shaped sigils.

Long-standing protocol, it meant, 'you're in the presence of authority. Intrude not without invitation.' The door closed quietly behind her.

She studied the entire interior as it was laid out in a moment's instance. Lord Carros desk stood six strides ahead of her. He was nowhere on the ground floor of his expansive study. To her left, three comfortable chairs aligned around a coffee table.

A samovar sat ensconced in a cubby beside a fireplace with coiled copper tubes running the length of the tripod legs. Beside the desk, to her right, a flight of stairs led to the second floor.

Further to the right, books lined both sets of walls beneath the walkway holding a second floor also crammed with shelves of books.

This ran for a dozen yards until the carpeted floor met with the floor of a brown and white marble rotonda where an engraved pentagram encircled with gelded runes related to Settetoile, the Midday Star.

It called to the glitter of fire nebula opal inscribed in Rhoethella's pen upon her beating heart. Necessary to fire the magic that was her next planned move.

A dome of cobalt arches holding tinted glass curved above and then indented into the focus of a lens at the center aligned to the arcane device beneath.

At midday of the true meridian, an islet in the Mooring Sea, Sarszal, said to be the place of perfect alignment to the Celestial Order, possessed an astrological observatory that received a beam of light from Settetoile.

This light diffused to all of the receiver pentagrams called the Ana-Penumbras. Whomever stood in the pentagram in that minute of any given day shared thoughts with anyone else in an Ana-penumbra chamber if the mutual star lines were properly set.

This evening, Leresai would be making good use of it.

As was expected, Carro would be observing her before making his entrance. But where was he? She scanned for false mirrors and other possible façades that could be used to obscure his presence.

Leresai spotted a niche by a hidden door on the second floor. The doorway set to his own personal apartment was several yards over between the shelves of one wall.

She smiled to herself as she unfastened one of her unassuming appearing earrings. She licked her thumb and index finger and rubbed the surface of the supposéd pearl.

Rapidly it dissolved and became smoke of a hellish and lively orange glow. It moved of its own accord once it took on substance and floated towards the niche where Lord Carro hid.

Now for her second surprise. She tore open the royal courier package and removed from it a twin set of ebon bladed daggers. Two more fire nebulae opals protruded from the back of the handles of the dagger pommels.

She pressed the opals into her wrist guards where they locked into the blades' pommels.

The blades turn scarlet with a whining, ascendant pitch like a steaming kettle if it were to boil demon's blood. She swiveled on her toes and faced the doors.

She placed the thin blades in the crack between the dividers above the doors proper. The metals welded together behind the paths the blade laid.

She heard a whimper from above her, and boots kicking against a wall. This response elicited a snorted chuckle from Leresai. The hallucigen must have found its mark, and Lord Cairo was succumbing to it.

She bent low in a squat to weld the floor liner and brass doors together. Satisfied with her work she rose up, held the twin blades forward and Leresai twisted the pommels and once more the opals protruded decoratively curved on the pommel ends.

The daggers now crackled with a chill. Their ebon glint shone once more. She sheathed them inside her waistband.

Leresai sauntered to the desk. She unfastened her gauntlets and dropped them on the desktop. As she proceeded to remove her pauldrons something caught her eye.

From behind the desk two étagère stands laid out with jasper figurines of mythical beast from D'jestre legends stood flush beside a large map spread against the wall.

It well illustrated the Eastern lands. Mountains covered the North in a variety of ranges. The most southwestern in this quadrant of geography on the map, the Usuül Craigs divided Imperial kingdoms from D'jestre territories.

To the South, peninsulas, isles, archipelagos, bays and city-states filled the D'jestre half of the Mooring Sea. Low lying grazelands pushed to a far East where the beasts were so fearsome it was said man and mer were nearly wiped out.

Those were the years when the D'jestre submitted to Izdun for their protection as the menace spread.

What gave Leresai a moment of pause was a further detail from the map.

Seven inland cities that formed a vital trading crescent along the edge of the graze lands, from North to South - Kielshei, Gyorra, Ajitka, Badjabahé, Szegedda, Karekölk, and Noryn, the last straddling the border with the Nin - were all marked with a symbol of a red dragon curled into itself and bearing a skeletal head. Mass demonic possession.

It was no surprise the troubles of the East concerned the Treasurer of the House Lyoneid, but her stomach grew ill at ease as her eyes queried the map to tell her more.

It took a moment to discern the cause of her discomfort. On the map in a difficult to reach area of the Usuül Craigs known for its goatherds, monasteries, and isolation from the world the most infamous tower in all the many lands stood.

Istenveyaär.

Beside the carte-glyph was a question mark and another symbol meaning, 'opened portcullis.' that is where the Patriarch remained ensorcelled to this very day. Where the Sisters kept him bound throughout the entire millennium.

Her gut understood what her head refused to accept. The heat of reprehension flared beneath her skin and flowed into goosebumps throughout her body.

She quickly regained control of her biological function before vitaechemical bloodheat was released. If she were to use the silver while it coarsed her veins, the bloodheat would throw the magic in uncontrollable disarray.

After a calming deep breath, Laura dismissed her fears. She had no time for mere speculation no matter how dire the threat. She removed the grieves from her legs, and the hard riding boots. A haunch sack rolled out from beneath the chain shirt.

Everything that she removed she dropped on the desk. She now stood in nothing more than her riding breeches, two sheathed daggers, and a banded towel wrapped to support her breast.

She removed her cendal robe from the haunch sack along with a pair of soft leather slip shoes.

As she put them on she fixed her eyes in the silver and scanned the broader room. Once complete in this task, she spoke teasingly.

"I see into the darkness. You have been watching me this entire time, D'jestre, from your little niche over there. Come down and sit with me, Seiben Carro. We have so much to talk about."

"You mean to kill me, Sgöethe witch."

She laughed dismissively as she removed her faux elven ears.

"If I merely meant to kill you, I would have done so weeks ago when you still went about the streets of Nevespora as you pleased. There is something you have here that I need. And you are of value to me. I don't just dispose of necessary things."

She put her two thumbs into her mouth and removed the stents that gave an Elven slant to her cheeks. She removed a pair of skin colored pinch sutures above her brow line that along with the stents, gave more definition to her skull to better resemble elven morphology.

From her haunch sack, she removed a comb. She proceeded to brush her hair out long and straight. Patiently pulling out her tangles.

"If I have to come up there to retrieve you, Seiben, it will not be pleasant."

His tone changed in a manner meant to mollify when he answered.

"I am coming down, Handmaiden. I can't imagine how I may serve your interest."

She took a chair beside the samovar curious whether or not the mossy scented tea would be to her liking.

Carro entered the office. Crossing behind the desk facing her direction with a large crossbow butted tight against his shoulder. He stood off well out of her reach.

He was, as she had been told, a man of the mercantile D'jestre. Dressed in similar fashion - a shirt of silk embroidery, with similar design work knitted and pleated down the length of thick corduroy pants - to the man she had taunted on the pathways leading to Nevespora.

"Can your diabolist arcana stop a piercing silverbolt, witch?"

To this question, Leresai at first merely smirked. His hands shook with a jitter that alarmed her more than any threat Carro intended.

She shrugged and answered, "more expensive and less stout than steel, you are a strange coinsman to make such a waste of resource on silverbolts."

"I heard about your escapades in Gareen so I was ready for you. What better than silver to counter a silverwelder? And look at you, so ill-prepared.

"Did you really think I was going to come down here unarmed? So intrigued I would be with your fetching display, I would come down meekly to my death? Get up, bitch."

Her dominant brow arched in protest of his rude words. Leresai crossed her leg up on her left knee.

"You are in no position to make demands, Carro."

"You try me," he spat angrily. "The only thing keeping you alive is, unfortunately, I need an answer from you before I split your head into two halves."

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He squinted contemptuously at her. "You side with nihilist," He spat a quid formed from a mint leaf at her feet.

"Those romantic fools of the Lyre. I know it was them behind that attempt on my life. I would have thought better of the Sisters. After all, we have common purpose to preserve our mutual civilizations."

His hands gestured to the map.

"The sisters have never interfered in these matters before. They have always left us alone to tend to these matters as we see fit."

He started to say more but suddenly appeared distracted, and stared up at the temple glass of the dome.

"They're back. They are pecking their way in. Draäkenrooks. You brought damn draäkenrooks from your damn godless Sgoëthe isles? What kind of fiendmonger are you, witch?"

The hallucinogen was working its way inside his mind, and as it was cast with sympathetic magic bending his will to her favor.

"You are not helping your cause, Seiben."

He gripped the crossbow tight against his shoulder to counter the shaking in his hands. His gaze jerked back and forth from the dome and Leresai.

With his shoulders stooped, Carro started to pace between the desk and the smelted door. A quiver ran down his leg. The bloodheat took control of his body.

His hands jerked in a fit causing a bolt to fly up into the ceiling and fall to the floor in three shattered pieces.

"You are no warrior, Seiben. You are not even a rateable thug. Have that seat. The more calm you are the less startled they are. Have that seat. And they will bother you no more."

Carro let out a guttural, profane shout. A derisive grin lit up Leresai's face when the realization came.

"You only brought one bolt with you?"

He glared silently in return. His jaw clenched tight to keep his chin from quivering.

"One should have been all that I needed."

"Indeed. Against a better man, I would be dead. Would you like to run upstairs and grab another one? Give it another go?"

Carro slammed the crossbow to the floor. Kicked it into the fireplace where its oiled metals soon sizzled before the wooden stock was engulfed and burst into flame. He turned to her and stomped his right foot as he spoke for emphasis.

"You feign indifference. You sit there with your hands folded in your lap, pretending to be more interested in the tea in that kettle than anything else.

"Yet, you know there is a garrison of men circling these grounds. You'll never make it out alive; it is very likely even the Lyre wants you dead. You bore me, witch. I grow tired of your tedious Sgöethe manner."

He turned his back on her.

"You speak of troops," she began. "You don't have even a single ally in this House. Else, you could have stopped me before I entered those doors. You are isolated. You know what my queries informed me?

"The palace does not even know of that attempt on your life that forced my hand to act this evening. I only took that contract to prevent another assassin from doing so.

"Regardless of why I am here, why would you hide from the palace that you are a hunted man unless you had something that you feared would be exposed?"

Carro sat down, his hands smoothing out his pleats repeatedly.

"You are not here for the Sisters. You are here for your own purposes. I am a coinsman. Like every other coinsman, I have acquired my own set of Usuper's Ducats.

"I imagine there is one in my collection you have never seen before. That is why you are here, and why you are trying to leverage blackmail against me."

Leresai leaned forward in her seat. "Perhaps you should bring it to me."

Carro shrugged; stood back up and returned to his desk. He attempted to sound more at ease.

"Do you plan to keep your contract with the Lyre? I am furious with the damage you have done, with the histrionics with which you arrived.

"It is of the highest degree of rudeness, but I am not so obstinate that I can't satisfy your inquiry if it is a mere ruse to buy you some of my valuable time."

She turned to the somavor and once more turned her eyes silver as she opened the kit cabinet beneath to retrieve a porcelain cup.

As her back was turned to Carro, she probed his actions, and caught the sleight of hand when his palm slid along the desk slab. Once the silver cooled, she turned back around and smiled.

"The Sisters give not a damn for the silver tounged brutes of the Lyre," she answered.

Leresai caught the coin he tossed her way as he walked back to the chair. It was the one she sought. It commemorated the tenth anniversary of the Emperor's Mother's Death.

"Again with the Sisters," he sneered. "It is interesting that you are their intelligencer. Here you are, an harbinger of Fate, one of the three blasphemies that the Sisters will not abide. The three things that deny the Sisters true eternal life."

Leresai held the cup with both of her hands to her lips as she responded. "To quote the Sunwelder, 'Heaven is a mind free of all fallacy.'"

Carro grunted.

"You are not here to match words in argument. I want to know the source of this effrontery. I may tell you what you want to know, but I will still report your actions to the Supreme Mother of the Midvries, and let it be known what you claim is done in Rhoethella's name."

"You ignorant man. I don't answer to mere clergy," she said coldly.

Leresai pulled the front of her robe to the side and pulled the banded towel down enough to reveal what appeared to be a fresh scar along the inside of her left breast.

"That is the mark of geas inscribed upon my heart by Rhoethella. It will not heal in full until our business is complete. I can still possibly die from this wound if my path veers so far from the goal that it becomes impossible to complete.

Turn that around for a toss in your mulling skull, the trouble a goddess went to just to correct the trouble you have caused."

Leresai took out one of the ebon blades. Carro jerked his head at the sight of it. She casually shrugged and drew blood with a nick on her own thumb.

"What are you doing, witch?"

Leresai smeared the head side of the coin with her blood. She removed a necklace with a tiny glass vial from her neck. Inside the vial was a silvery blue liquid. She poured two drops on the coin head. A fragrant smoke rose up from its surface.

"It's a fraud," she declared.

"What?"

It was evidently the last thing he expected her to say.

"As are all the coins. Oh, the platinum this is made of is quite real.

"However, this one though is a fraud of a different sort. I had it printed so I should know. I had to be certain you have not had it counterfeited before I offer it to the Aethyrwarden for safe passage."

"Preposterous!"

Leresai held up the coin for him to see. The visage print of her own agéd face had been wiped clean, replaced by an engraving of Settetoile within a pentagram.

"All the coins regardless of their issuance and who had them printed serve as a misdirection. When your Majeur brought the jeweled box of Pestilence to Nevespora, he also brought with him a set of Usuper's Ducats did he not?"

She noted even in his body language he did not even try to deny being associated with the Ko Laga. With his palms facing her, and neck outstretched, he began.

"I was at his right hand when he made that visit. We did not release the plague. We were guarding that box. The Imperium Kommotte release it by accident."

"Not what I asked."

"Yes, we have our own set. They are very valuable coins."

She guffawed ruthlessly at his expense. After she cleared her throat, Leresai spoke.

"This coin was not in your original set. You are fascinated by it because it made you wonder who else may have purpose to perpetuate this fraud."

"Forget that coin. I purchased it from the owner of a theater house a month ago."

She held up the coin. The surface now gleamed more than before with an aura that appeared to pulsate.

"Do you know what makes this coin unique? This coin buys us passage. The purity of the metal and the rare earths that glaze the inlays make it two hundred times more valuable than any of the other ducats. Only a coin of this purity can do what we are about to do with it."

"This is a game for you," he snarled.

Leresai shook her head. "You did not merely come across the ducats, coinsman. Except for my own personal issuance here, you created these coins. For what purpose, to stoke the Sisters into some action? Well, I am here to tell you that in that foolish gambit you have succeeded."

Carro's hands gripped the sides of the chair he sat.

"You keep saying fraud. You were merely a lass learning to string a bow when these coins began to appear. How could we know what you would become if we are the ones who conspired against you?"

"I was still a Demoiselle, a Second Daughter, no matter my age. It was more important to your purpose the time frame I would come of age.

"Only a dozen or so Demoiselles are sent to the temple in any given year. You used me to bait the Sisters.

"It wasn't difficult for a visiting dignitary from D'jestre lands to notice I strongly resembled my great grandmother whose portrait as a young lass graces our castle walls.

"Unfortunately for your cause, the artist used an exact rendition of that portrait in one of the coins issued.

"Everything that followed in my life was steered in that direction. It was not a matter of the fallacy of Fate. It does not exist.

"Unfortunately for your cause more still, you also steered me here this evening, Seiben Carro, when you had my portrait etched into those coins."

"You know nothing, witch. Your story is ridiculous, and you're fishing for a desperate bite from me which I am not going to give you."

"That your final answer? Seiben, I did not come here out of haste. I know, Seiben. I know. You are from the city of Tarsz.

"I have had coins examined by metallurgists who find the patterns beneath the inscriptions to be a unique attribute of your printing presses from the time you were still a citizen."

He scowled. "Our presses are sold far and wide."

"The metals have sympathy only to mines from the hill lands outside of Tarsz. Do I need to go on? There are other factors I can draw upon."

Carro slouched in a posture out of odds with his arrogance, she realized. It was almost time to reveal what else she knew that would unravel him. She steered him further.

"Then, there is the matter of the Temple."

"The sisters know why the ziggurat was built. It contains the jewelled box of Pestilence, and thus contains the plague. It will never strike our dear Nevespora again so long as we keep it safe and secured.

"My hand in correcting this matter is the proudest achievement I have ever accomplished in my life. It earned me my position and title in the House Lyoneid."

"Do you truly think that the Sœurarchy gives not a care for the destruction of their Temple?"

"The plague rioters burned down the Temple! Your people felt abandoned. We had nothing to do with that!"

She shook her head, ruefully. His voice grew desperate.

"They never until now voiced any opposition to the ziggurat. What has changed?"

"Seiben, I am a master chameleon even without the gift of Glamour and in spite of being a six foot tall albino who doesn't blend well even in a crowd of her own people."

She grinned as she moved her neck, shoulders, arms, and upper torso in the zagging rhythm of a Natya dancer. "Where is it? I have been inside the ziggurat. I have been into the heart chamber. It is empty. The jeweled box is not there, and likely never was. Where is it, Seiben?"

Leresai snapped from her relaxed posture instantly and rolled across the floor. Three thumps hit the padded surface where small silver darts pierced through the leather upholstery where she had sat.

She raised up in front of Carro. She grabbed him by the back of his neck with her left hand, and pulling with her right hand clutching his front collar she tossed him across the table. A dirk fell out of his hands and clanged against the floor.

Before he could stand, she held his head back by his hair and with the serrated tip of her ebon blade she hooked his jugular vein and gently nicked it.

"No more insolence from you, fool," she whispered into his ear. "If you wish not to bleed to death, walk over to that pentagram."

Carro's eyes blinked slowly in disbelief. He peered down his shirt and saw that it now streamed with blood pouring down its length.

"Oh, gods," he pleaded.

"They abandoned your louse ridden soul for good reason. You have only myself to rely on now. I'm your savior, or I am your killer. Which is it going to be is of your choosing. I suggest you choose quickly."

Carro stumbled forward, turning more pale with every step. Leresai held him up with his arms bent behind his back. She had to push him further. He breathed forcefully as they reached the pentagram. Leresai leaned down and placed the Settetoile coin in at a centered groove to which it fit perfectly. The ground began to hum.

"We have an appointment with Lady Intrigue to keep, Seiben."

The dome lit up in a golden hue. The pentagram followed suit with its colors glowing vibrant. She felt the opal etched on her heart in an elaborate filigree warm in sympathy.

The encirclement began to fill with smoke. Both of them coughed, fitfully.

"Hold your breath," she suggested. "The smoke is poisonous. Don't panic your mumbling little head. It will only be another minute."

Beneath their feet the coin smoldered and flared red hot as it was consumed slowly over a long minute as she watched. When the coin finally melted away in a final puff of smoke, they disappeared to the Aethyr world.