King Peilmor stared intently over his steepled fingers at the messenger, knelt and shivering at the foot of the dais on which his throne sat. To Peilmor's right, in a chair markedly less comfortable looking and placed much lower than his own, Chancellor of Covert Operations Zelkrin sat, leaning forward and wearing the same sadistic grin that seemed to occupy his face nearly every moment of every day.

At first, Peilmor thought this sadism might be a common link between them, a basis for genuinely building on this makeshift partnership they had formed when Zelkrin took his promotion from the principal of the Spider Academy to the king's high council. He had learned quickly that the man was too dense to know when any other expression might be appropriate. Still, having an entire academy of royally sanctioned killers and thieves at his, and only his disposal, did have its uses, and his ability to command the peasants through the fear of things that go stab in the night was worth having to put up with a man several arrows short of a full quiver. Especially in the days ahead, with all his plans coming together nicely and approaching fruition well ahead of schedule.

"Now, do you understand your mission?" he asked, returning his attention to the matter at hand.

"Yes, sir," the messenger replied quickly. In the couple of weeks he'd spent at the castle, he'd seen more than enough examples of what happened to people when they did not promptly and correctly answer a question from the king.

"Repeat your orders to me," the king persisted. "This is very important, and I must be certain that you will carry them out as instructed. Failure carries a high price indeed. So high that you alone would not be able to pay it, and your family would, shall we say, inherit the remainder of your debt."

The messenger, an orphan from his earliest memory, had no family to speak of, but the part of the so-called debt that involved him burning alive or getting flayed to death was all the incentive he needed. He gulped and pressed forward with his charge, concentrating on making his frantic mind remember every word verbatim since he wasn't sure how picky of a mood Peilmor might be in.

"I am to return to the academy, to the one who sent me, and deliver to him your orders and the cargo which you will entrust to me, along with one of your wagons on which to carry it. The wagon will bear no royal markings, and I will not tell anyone but my employer who sent it. Anyone else who asks will be told that I bear supplies and food rations from the market for the coming winter. If they ask too insistently, they are to be disposed of. Upon completing my mission, I will never speak of it again. It will, in effect, have never happened."

"And what must you not do under any circumstances?"

"I must not look inside the crates. Their contents are very fragile and protected by magical seals. Any attempt to peek will trigger their defenses and lead to a death most painful, forcing you to find someone more competent than I to finish the mission, who will not belong to my family because they will also be suffering the consequences of my ineptitude."

Peilmor grinned. No one ever knew if this was a good or a bad sign until they were either being dismissed or disemboweled.

"Word for word, I am indeed impressed. Normally, a king might offer you money at this point, but the satisfaction of serving the will of your liege and the good of your kingdom is more than enough reward. Don't you agree?"

"Of course, sire."

Peilmor waved his hand dismissively. "The wagon shall meet you in front of the castle. You depart immediately. Since you have been so well-behaved, I will let you find your own way out, without any...assistance, from Winston."

This, at least, genuinely relieved the poor messenger, as thoughts of interacting with the head servant again had been weighing heavily on his mind. With a quick thank you, he stood and hurried out of the throne room, leaving Peilmor staring at his retreating form and Zelkrin, inevitably, grinning.

"The time of vengeance is at hand, Your Majesty. I must thank you again. We could never have even thought of doing this without your assistance."

"Think nothing of it, Lord Zelkrin," the king replied, knowing that the title reinforced his sway over the man and his assassins every time he used it. "It was the least I could do once I discovered we had a common problem. Now, if you will excuse me for a moment. Winston, would you come in, please?”

Peilmor no longer bothered shouting for Winston, only requesting him in a normal tone of voice, no matter how far away he was sure the head servant must be. Learning his lesson had taken three scalding hot soup spills and several outfits. Despite his impulses to have the man beheaded for what even the easily deluded Zelkrin had a hard time believing were accidents, the sheer unease and dread that Winston brought to all his visitors was simply too valuable to throw away.

Besides, once he'd started using what the servant embarrassingly insisted on calling his "inside voice" to summon him, his response time had decreased to a few seconds. This was a drastic improvement on what seemed like whole afternoons spent waiting for him before. And precisely on cue, he appeared in the doorway to the servants' quarters before the echoes had finished bouncing around the cavernous throne room.

"Yes, m'lord?"

"Would you go fetch Mr. Jimison from the lobby?"

"Has he done something wrong, m'lord?"

"No, no, it's simply time for his appointment."

"Pity...I do so enjoy my conversations with him."

The head servant shuffled off at what he felt to be his official servantly gait, a carefully practiced walk that gave him the appearance of looking old and hunched and shambling while moving him along at quite a respectable pace—another specialized talent passed down through the generations of his family. It helped kings and lords feel younger and more agile while avoiding floggings for going about things too slowly. In any profession, the little things always draw the line between the simply competent and the truly great.

A few moments later, Jimison arrived, alone and looking relieved.

"Ahh, Mr. Jimison! We have much business to discuss, so we shall get right to it. I trust none of the members of your diplomatic corps dispatched to the other kingdoms have returned yet?"

"No, my lord...er...should they have?" While the letter of Peilmor's plans stayed largely the same, the spirit was rather fluid, and sometimes even those within the loop would find that while they weren't actually out of their particular loop, but it had become a different loop entirely nevertheless.

"No, no, not at all. The terms of the deals we sent them off with should have been impossible for my fellow kings to agree to. But the time of distraction by diplomacy has ended, and things are now in motion. Immediately send your best riders out to retrieve your comrades from Linareal and Solai. Have them tell the royals that the talks have gone on for too long and bid them a good day. All will be in order by the time they are back across our borders."

"Yes, sire. And the other problem? The matter of Albanos?"

"Already taken care of. I can take care of such things on my own, you know. You just worry about your tasks, and let me worry about mine."

Jimison quickly bowed, hoping to shuffle back across the line he'd stepped over in time. "Of course, your majesty. I shall...um...go and take care of this then?"

"Indeed, you are dismissed." Peilmor watched him go and thought again about how satisfying it was to watch guests practically fall over themselves to leave his presence. It was a good sign that the right level of fear was flowing through the palace and its people. He became aware of Zelkrin leaning conspiratorially toward him from his pseudo-throne.

"Have I told you before how absolutely marvelous at this sort of thing you are?" the man asked, his face parted into a bigger grin than usual. "A natural talent at deceit and manipulation, a regular puppet master. I mean, it's a wonder you need me at all!"

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Indeed," Peilmor mused to himself. "The wonder of it all."

And now he, too, began grinning, watching as the torch crews came in to start their rounds, lighting every corner and illuminating every shadow anywhere in Castle Cestia. As the sun slowly dipped below the western horizon, its dying rays briefly illuminated a wagon rattling off to the south at unsafe speeds and two riders traveling even faster down the Kingdom Roads towards the borders.

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

The days rolled by in a featureless blur, as they tend to do for teachers and students with too much on their plates. The increased course loads under Principal Albanos had drawn many grumbles the first few days until students had begun to look more closely at their syllabi and saw how many exciting and potentially life-saving topics they'd been missing out on by over-specializing in their professions. Thieves were getting to learn about poisons and the most vulnerable vital organs, while assassins were having no end of fun with their basic pick-pocketing and sleight-of-hand courses – much to the dismay of anyone with pockets.

As for the elite class, things had fallen into a steady rhythm of progressive learning. Every weeknight, they would meet in the courtyard and practice advanced fighting techniques or go off to the village to play "Rooftop Manhunt" to work on their stealth, concealment, and pursuit skills. Some nights, they would wander through the lands around the academy, learning about herbalism, poisons readily available in the field, and how to dress wounds in the wilderness. At the end of each week, they would split up into teams determined by Albanos, and have assassin war games in the forests to the west to apply all they had learned.

The duel got the bee out of Lillith's bonnet -- about Albanos, at least. Her overall attitude was still firmly in place. Willam and Elayna continued on in secrecy as they had for years, while she and Lillith battled for top marks every night. Michael seemed to have a blueprint for a new invention and a new burn or patch of hair missing each class session. Albanos often wondered what his dorm room could look like or if anything was left of his roommate.

Three weeks after the night at the old academy ruins, a thought that had been gnawing at Albanos for a while finally got the better of him, and he found himself standing patiently in line at the academy's mail and messenger dispatch office. Usually, he'd have just delegated this sort of thing because the gods only knew he had enough to do around here, but certain matters were more sensitive than others and not worth getting anyone else worked up over.

Most of the mail and messenger office employees, along with the messengers themselves, had no actual ties to the academy as far as education went. It was a service sector job, one that the people who happened to live in Kelsai village could fill and feel like they were part of the system. At least until the low pay and horrible, nocturnal hours made them too disgruntled to care. They were headquartered in a rather expansive building on the side of Kelsai closest to the academy walls, not coincidentally about as far from the Staggering Shadow tavern as they could get. It would surprise most people to know just how much time and money could be wasted on the phenomenon of "drunk messaging" alone – not to mention the embarrassment the following day could bring – if the office were close enough for your average inebriated student to remember where he was going long enough to find it.

As Albanos finally reached the counter, the young girl behind it gave him an empty smile familiar to people in the customer service industry who have spent much of their day dealing with stark raving idiots and expect you to be no different.

"May I help you?" Fake smile, empty stare.

"Er...yes, I'm Albanos K'hras." More smiling, more staring. It was beginning to unnerve him and somehow made him feel responsible for all the suffering in her world. "I came to check on the status of some messengers?"

She sighed. "And do you know what division the messengers were dispatched from, or what their personal reference codes are, or what the dispatch tracking numbers on your messages were?"

Albanos could tell he'd been lumped with the idiots now, and he couldn't blame her. He had no idea what she was talking about.

"No, you see, this is my first time here, and I'm new on the job. I had Ms. Elwhite get the messengers, and they left by themselves; I just handed them my notes, and...um...they were supposed to be quite fast?"

Another sigh, and an almost imperceptible rolling of the eyes. "Of course they were. Well, if Elwhite got them at your request, and they were supposed to be fast, that's probably from the first class division. Only you and the two deans have access to those. Hold, please."

She stalked off back into the rows upon rows of shelves that stretched into darkness beyond the counter, each shelf divided into little diamond-shaped cubby holes marked with cryptic numbers, most of which contained one or two rolled scrolls each. The whole thing looked utterly incomprehensible to him, and he'd mastered every cipher and encryption course the school offered. Albanos made a mental note to ensure these people were getting paid enough.

When she returned, she had several scrolls bundled under one arm. "Alright, which of your four messengers would you like the status of?"

"Well, we can start with the one I sent to...wait, four messengers?"

"Yes, sir, I have four messengers dispatched under your authority."

"But I only sent out three...may I see the, er, forms there?"

"I'm sorry, only authorized personnel of the mail and messenger office are allowed to–"

"I'm seriously considering giving all of you a raise, but I'm on the fence about that at the moment, if that helps any.

"They're yours. Just stay at the counter with them. And no smudging. I have to fix any smudges before I go off duty, or the record keeper goes mental the next day, and I don’t need that kind of hassle."

He gingerly unrolled each scroll so as not to bring the wrath of the clerk down on himself. Sure enough, they were each signed in his name. Three he recognized: one to the forests of Linareal, one to a foothill settlement among the base of the mountains of Solai, and one to the head of academy contracts and recruiting in the capital city of Cestia. The fourth had also gone to the capital but to the castle itself. It had left nearly a month ago, shortly after his messengers, for "confidential business." It was also the only one of the four that had returned thus far, having checked in several days ago.

"Is there any way I could talk to the messenger who made this run?" Albanos asked the girl, assuming there was probably some regulation against that, too.

"Not my job to stop you. They don't pay me enough to try and do that. Yet, at least. His address down in the village is on the form there. And if you do see him, tell him he's fired. He hasn't reported for work once since his arrival check-in."

"Er...thanks. And I'm curious, is there any way I can find out where the other three are?"

A nervous tic developed under the clerk's right eye, which took on a manic gleam of its own. "Where the others are? Sure, let me go get my magic map that shows where all the messengers in all the world are! Or maybe, since you hired them, if you concentrate real hard on where they were supposed to be going, a passing family of highly migratory fairies will hear your cry and zip right over and tell you where they last saw them!"

"I was just wondering if they reported in regularly or if anything was all," Albanos said, his scowl deepening. And need I remind you once more that I am in charge of your budget now?" The clerk was already on a roll,, though.

"Well, they don't. And excuse me, Mr. Blackmail, but do you know how often I hear that question on any given day? Do I look like a telepath?! I swear, the next idiot who asks–"

Something in the older man's expression did make her stop then. Parts of her frazzled, overworked brain that had been clamoring for attention attached the name he'd given her to all those old bedtime stories her parents used to tell her to keep her from trying to sneak out at night.

Albanos simply sighed, licked his index finger, and slowly, meticulously ran it down the center of all four forms, smudging part of every line on the outrageously detailed reports. Taking another note of the messenger's address, he nodded at the girl, wished her a good evening, and left. He was only about ten paces out the door when the scream began. He could still hear it when he turned the corner at the end of the block.

So far, it had been a pretty good day.