Above him, in the main building, Portnoy Hagglit stared out the window, into the middle distance and the village of Kelsai beyond the walls, wondering for the thousandth time if he was doing the right thing. His only pangs of conscience stemmed from the fact that he had grown fond of the students over the years.

He hoped he had been disarming enough during their encounter to keep Albanos off balance, keep him from analyzing things too much, but you never could tell with that man. Mentioning the girl had been low, and it had pained him to use her like that, but the more crowded the assassin's mind was, the better.

Oh well, it wouldn't matter soon anyway. He turned and opened his desk drawer, pulling out a crumpled missive, reading over it to make sure he hadn't missed anything, or that maybe the message he'd thought it bore had been a bad dream of some kind. He had no such luck.

It bore the seal, and the smeared, browned blood, of one of his most trusted informants. Formerly most trusted informants, he reminded himself. He wouldn't be of much use now unless Hagglit hired a medium and needed information on the current political climate of the afterlife. Some of the thief students had found his remains in the woods a mile or so outside of town two weeks prior while on a "nature walk," the common local euphemism for poison reagent foraging expeditions.

His back had been full of crossbow bolts and the body ransacked a bit, but the note was still tucked safely away past the falsely stitched bottom of a cloak pocket which was, itself, concealed behind a false lining. When Portnoy had questioned how the students knew where to look for such a well-concealed note, they had simply credited it to the acumen of their instructors. The point was conceded, but Hagglit had still insisted that the ringleader of the group at least hand over the late man's boots, as that simply wasn't proper. They didn't make thieves like they used to.

It troubled him, this agent's passing. He was a talented spy, top of his thief class, excellent stealth marks, crack shot with a crossbow, and impressive with a short sword (also relinquished by the students). For him to be overcome, and this close to town, had kept Hagglit awake nights. There was a chance it was a group of highwaymen who had gotten lucky, but he strongly doubted it. Not with the contents of the note being what they were. It was a simple enough message, written in the hasty scrawl and vague manner of spies everywhere who, for some reason or another, suddenly do not have time for the finer points.

"Coup in capitol, king and family assassinated. Unsanctioned. No registered contract on royal family. Council aristocrat in power over Cestia. 'Bigger, brighter future' type. Keeps having rallies, making speeches. Withdrawing from palace soon, new arrivals making me nervous."

And that had been the end of it. The last official observations he ever got to make. Then a compelling need to fly back to the nest, and a very determined group of deadly projectiles bent on preventing that from happening.

The political situation in these parts was not an overly complicated one, or hadn't been, at least. Kelsai and the Wolf Academy were a forgotten little footnote in the southern portion of Cestia, the largest of the three kingdoms divvying up the largest continent known to the cartographer society. Cestia took up the eastern half of the land mass, with the other two kingdoms -- Solai and Linareal -- dividing the western half pretty much evenly; Solai's wind-swept steppes, pine forests, and pastoral farmlands taking up the north, and Linareal's bustling trade hubs and ports to the south.

Relations had been peaceful for so long, and the borders so open, that the only reason you'd ever suspect that you'd entered another kingdom was that the writing would have gone all funny, and people were ignoring your own, sensible currency and instead using other, sillier forms of money, containing pictures of things like fruit bats.

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All the other academies were on this main continent as well. The Academy Under Spider (whose founder's motto of "Silent, but deadly" had drawn snickers from students and peers alike, back into the mists of time, and caused no small amount of bitterness) was also in Cestia, as distant and forgotten north of the capitol as the Wolves were south. The Panthers and Adders resided in the deep woods of Solai, and the Raptors in the more mountainous terrain of Linareal, far above the thrumming trade pulse of the roads and passes below.

Other than the yearly council meeting at the end of each academic year -- where the top faculty from each school met in a location so secret it often took days for everyone to arrive because no one could agree on exactly which rock referenced on the map was the most dog-shaped -- they had little to do with one another. Putting any number of differently-minded assassins in the same area was akin to putting scorpions in a box and giving it a good shake. But each in their own way, they kept the peace through their tenuous balancing act.

Everything about the system had worked, for centuries now. Any possible reason for a kingdom to do a silly thing like invade its neighbor had been systematically removed by years of being told to play nice at proverbial and, when necessary, literal knife point. Resources were shared, travel was unrestricted, and the noble families even made a point of having an annual picnic with one another, to keep the monarchy-loving masses happy. Military forces worked together, pooled emergency supplies were made available to any city in need.

War was bad for business, which was bad for businessmen, and businessmen could afford assassins.

The aristocrats of each capitol had used these tools at their disposal to subtly curate the royal lines of each kingdom with the utmost care, as one might prune a rose bush. The rate for royalty was quite high and, accordingly, only contracted out to the most skilled. The Academies had a policy of refunding monies paid for an unsuccessful job, minus funeral costs, and handing back over that much of a fee always stung and put a bruise on a school's reputation. They tried to avoid this whenever possible by being very, very efficient.

It had been years since the issue had even come up. After several generations of gory horticulture, the survivors and their descendants were more or less on the same page. The king and queen killing business had...well, died off, in favor of more organic forms of succession, like good old-fashioned patricide.

But now...now there'd been an unsolicited killing of a whole FAMILY of royals in Cestia, and some new man had stepped in with a "vision." Visionaries were always a problem. They tended to have very creative and altogether terrifying ways of sharing that vision. He was a speech maker too, another sure sign of trouble. He undoubtedly had a "plan," with lots of "phases," and everyone would need to make "sacrifices" and "tighten their belts," but it was for the "greater good," he could assure them of that. Hagglit was getting itchy just thinking about it.

He hadn't shared the news though. No sense in getting everyone worked up about what could, in theory, be nothing. Not until he was well clear of the building, at least. The seal on the report had been unbroken as well, the students knew better than to be quite that impudent. The only thing that remained faster than gossip was his spy network, may they rest in peace.

Kelsai went on as it always had; a small town well off the main roads, made up of retired assassins, faculty, staff, their families, and the occasional random and oblivious settler who thinks it's nice to have a prestigious boarding school nearby, although everyone always looks so gloomy.

Albanos had been right about one thing, though. Surviving for decades as headmaster did say a lot about Portnoy Hagglit's survival instincts, and right now they were telling him he needed to get out while the getting was good. They told him to head for The Calm, as far from civilization as he could imagine. He heard they made wonderful beer in the archipelagoes down there. They told him to write the letter to his oldest foe, told him to leave the whole sodden mess in the hands of someone he despised. If things did go ass over tea kettle, it'd be all the more fun to hear about when the surviving bards made it to the coast.

And if he'd played the man right, he had done just that.

With a satisfied chuckle, Portnoy Hagglit began to clean out his office.