Billicks and the messenger passed each other just outside the door to the office. The latter, clad in the traditional garish barding and emblems of a royal diplomat, gave Billicks a friendly smile. Billicks returned this with a menacing scowl that seemed to accuse the man of everything up to and including his missing socks. At least, Albanos mused while watching the exchange, Billicks did not discriminate in his stubborn dislike of anything he did not know much about, which amounted to nearly everything but assassinry. He was very fair in that respect.

The diplomat's smile grew even wider as he stepped into the office. Albanos hated him immediately. No visitor standing in the middle of a school of assassins and thieves should be that happy unless they were terminally ill or had nothing worth stealing. A hand was shoved toward him, which he shook reluctantly.

"How d'ya do sah, m'name's Jimison, but you can call me Jimmy, all my friends do."

"Hello, Jimison."

The smile didn't move.

"And it says heah that you are one..." he flipped through the ream of papers he'd been holding under one arm. "Mr. Portnoy Hagglit? Well, nice to meet you Portnoy, heard a lot of great things about you, a fair man, a just man they say, runs the school well, and cares about his students. Now let's get down to business. I'm here to--"

"I'm not Hagglit." Now the face was still smiling, but the eyes...not so much anymore.

"Aren't you the principal of this fine academy?"

"Yes. I am. And what I need you to do for me, right now, is stop trying to be disarming. Stop sucking up, stop trying to get on my good side, and most of all, stop smiling. You can also cut out the fast-talking routine. It just pisses me off. I know you've spent hours studying the profile on Portnoy; overworked and overwhelmed, more than a little ego couldn't keep up with a conversation under the best of conditions. You would have been right, too. Sorry to disappoint.

"Anyway, yes, while he'd have probably already been signing anything you shoved in front of him by this point, the fact remains that I am not him, and I used to play this little game of yours, in a past life. So come, how about you pull up that chair next to you, sit down for a second, and let us talk. As diplomats. You tell me exactly what it is his majesty wants with us, in a way that doesn't make me want to strangle you."

Jimison's mouth opened and closed soundlessly a few times. The only thing a diplomat hates more than being caught off balance is dealing with another diplomat. Leaders were easy, so often malleable, stupid, arrogant, quick to confuse, their minds verdant gardens in which to plant "good ideas" they had so serendipitously come up with themselves during a visit. Diplomats, on the other hand, stood on a level playing field, and suddenly you had to be better than the next guy. Jimison didn't even know this man's name, his pedigree, nothing to even begin establishing his footing. This was shaping up to be a long day.

He sat in the chair indicated to him and shuffled his papers a bit, pointedly ignoring the stare of the man across from him.

"Alright...look, I'm sorry about how I came in here, I was told that Mr. Hagglit was--"

"An easily manipulated idiot. Established."

"That's the gist of it, yes. But it's become very apparent to me that you, sir, are far more intelligent than--"

"You're doing it again.

"Sorry, sorry, force of habit. Look, can I get your name?"

"That depends on how cooperative you are with my inquiries."

"Right, of course, sir, whatever you..." Jimison trailed off, realization dawning that he'd been recast as the victim mere minutes into their little play. The strange new principal was now grinning ear to ear, eyes twinkling down at him from a chair Jimison now realized was a few inches higher than his own. "Look, this isn't how this is supposed to go."

"Oh? How is it supposed to go then? You come in here, make me swoon with your devilish charms, tell me what the king wants, I say 'Of course, anything for you?' We shake hands and everyone is all friends until I read my copy of what it is I've signed, with you well clear of our borders?"

"Maybe not so precise as that, but...generally?"

Albanos sighed and stared at the ceiling, allowing the pause to grow pregnant enough to have triplets.

"Look, I think I've had my fun with you now, you don't fight back very well, I'm getting bored, and I hate being bored. So, please, tell me what this is about. I promise I will at least try to pay attention."

"Right...um, well, King Peilmor has a business proposition for you and your entire academy."

"If he wants a contract put on someone he has to go through our field office in the city, just like everybody else. No one is above the bureaucracy. Honestly, I'd think there would be someone in that castle who could brief him on the procedures for such things. He certainly didn't seem to have any trouble locating this place, at least."

"You misunderstand, sir. He is looking to bring the Academies together, as an official branch of the royal power. It's a very good deal, you'll be treated much better than you are now, I can assure you, and no one can question what you do, because it's all sanctioned, you see. A consequence-free world, so long as you also carry out the king's wishes!"

The expression that began creeping across Albanos' face looked remarkably predatory to Jimison. The dark recesses of his lizard brain assured him that now was a good time to climb a tree or invent fire. The assassin stood and began walking slowly around the desk, until he was right next to the diplomat who, against all training, was visibly shaking. Even clueless as to the identity of the man he was sitting beside, the quiet menace still radiated with no ambiguity.

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"No one questions what we do now...Jim. Not if they know what's good for them. And we do nothing without it being sanctioned. That's what makes it work."

"I...I understand, but the king has some concerns about--"

"Attempts against him? Of course he does. That's why we exist, to make the ruling class think twice before doing anything stupid, traits that they are quite prone to when left on their own, might I add. We are the consequences. You cannot control fate. Does he want more protection against us? Tell him to spend more money training the castle guards. And if he feels that the Wolves and Spiders would ever work together--"

"But the Spiders have already agreed to this deal, you see." A moment of uncertainty, a microexpressive twitch to the corner of Albanos's eye. Jimison seized upon it and rode it through the rest of his sales pitch.

"They have seen the merits of our proposed arrangement. Their principal has even been given an influential position on the king's advisory staff, and a similar arrangement could be worked out for you, right alongside Mr. Zelkrin, I'm certain, working in tandem for the good of your orders. His majesty will be very disappointed if you cannot find it in you to share their vision."

The face was getting worse, and now the assassin's eyes were smoldering embers, portals into the carnage he had seen and inflicted. Fight or flight urges were straining at Jimison's legs. He wanted to fling the chair at the man to slow him down while he bolted from the room, from the Academy, and never looked back. Maybe he wouldn't even go back to the castle, maybe he'd find a nice cave in the mountains. He'd heard it was very hard to track people across rock.

When Albanos spoke again, the voice said that a cave in the mountains would not be far enough.

"The Spiders...are honorless savages...and we will never work with them...or for your puppet master king. You do not put the one method of removing someone from power in the hands of the person in power. Go tell your king and his pet Spiders that the Academy Council will be very displeased to hear about this turn of events, and that if he wants to get that extra training for his guards in, he'd better start soon.

"You are a diplomat, you had a job to do, you came here, and you did it. No hard feelings. And me, I'm an assassin, and if you stay here much longer, I might decide I have a job to do as well. But hey, no hard feelings. Right?"

Albanos seamlessly flicked a dagger out of a sheathe on his belt. Jimison was up, over his chair, and out the door before the unfortunate piece of furniture even hit the ground. Albanos twirled the dagger on one fingertip thoughtfully, listening to the footsteps fade rapidly away down the hall. Ms. Elwhite emerged around the door frame a few moments later, her hair a bit mussed, a stack of papers in her hand in a general state of disarray.

"I am going to assume that any time someone is barreling down the hall with enough reckless disregard to plow straight through me, you are somehow involved. Mind telling me what that was all about?"

"The Spiders have rolled over on us. The king knows where we are, who is supposed to be in charge, personality profiles, and the gods only know what else. Get me our three fastest messengers, if you would be so kind."

Elwhite scurried off quickly to fulfill his request. While she was perhaps the most open-minded of the senior faculty about the presence of Albanos, the sight of a dagger in his hands still made her a bit edgy.

Albanos sat back down and closed his eyes, letting the most fatalistic parts of his mind, honed to perfection by his time in the wilds where every second really could be your last, take over. He began to imagine all the things that could go horribly wrong now, given what he knew of the situation, each scenario worse than the last. Then he pulled a stack of blank paper out of his drawer and set about determining what to do about it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jimison was terrified, but he was still a diplomat at his core. When he was out on the common grounds, he leaned against a wall out of everyone's way to catch his breath. There was one more piece of information he needed or he'd never be able to live with himself...or without several of his vital organs, once the king's "debriefing men" learned of his failure.

Composing himself again, he began to walk nonchalantly toward a group of faculty members, too preoccupied with arguing over the alignment of a "Welcome Back Students" banner to notice or care about strange pedestrians. Slowing his pace, and feigning interest in a butterfly and a few passing clouds, he listened intently.

"I'm telling you, the left is fine!"

"It is not, it's all crooked, you can barely read it its so diagonal."

"You're only saying that because you can barely read, period!"

"Now see here, it'd be a bit difficult for me to teach intermediate trap diagrams if I couldn't read the bloody blueprints, now wouldn't it?! Do you even think about the things you say?"

"I for one don't even see why it matters, it's not like the students care anyway. What do you expect them to do, come into the gate and see a banner all painted in crooked letters--"

"And hung poorly!"

"--and stop and go 'Oooh' and 'Aaah?' No, they're going to get to reuniting and catching up with one another and then the stabbings will begin and no one will have time to appreciate the decorations anyway."

"The ingrates, they'll just tear it down and deface it the next night anyway."

"Well, the senior faculty want everything to appear as normal as possible. It's going to be enough of a shock as is to find Albanos in charge, they're liable to riot or go mental and flee into the countryside."

"They're liable to do that anyway when they see their faculty can't even hang a simple banner straight."

Jimison strolled away, swatting the butterfly as he went. Albanos, eh? Well...that certainly was an interesting, and valuable, development.