Castle Cestia was on fire.

At least, that was the impression it gave. The entire place had been lined with an inordinate amount of torches, nearly four times the usual compliment. Extra braziers had been mounted on the walls. When they ran out of those, they put the blacksmith and his apprentices on double shifts. When they became too tired to work anymore, guards had been pulled off patrol to stand in place as the unironically named "Light Brigade."

It seemed that the first executive order of King Peilmor had been an immediate and absolute ban on darkness. This was not entirely accurate. The ban was more directed at shadows, of which Peilmor was not a fan.

He had no issue in particular with the dark. It was the kind of people who hid in it that he had problems with. He had a deep, seething hatred for assassins, even though it was by an assassin's hand that he had seized power. But the way he saw it, that had been different. Trained properly and whipped into obedience, an assassin became a weapon, a tool, and personal, professional killers were very useful implements to have lying around. It was the feral assassins, the ones that were left in reach for anyone who could afford them, that were a problem.

King Peilmor was seated in his throne room at the moment, although he sorely wished he could be elsewhere. In his bed, for starters. Or at the very least out of this damnable throne. He squirmed around quite demonstratively, something he had been doing almost constantly since he first took control of the castle, to the mild embarrassment and confusion of his visitors.

He was a thin man, gaunt and borderline malnourished-looking, with the heavy, exhausted air of someone who had seen things that impaired one's ability to sleep. Ever. He had beady little gimlet eyes and a pointed nose, and the entire combined effect often put people in mind of a rat that has seen traps sprung on one too many of its comrades.

Gossip had begun to spread its tendrils outward, radiating from the night watch. Guards said that when they walked past on patrol, they could hear him talking in his chambers, or tossing violently and screaming.

He had been a merchant leader before he had become king, the latter a move that had very much caught everyone by surprise. For decades beforehand, he had been an absolute recluse. His agents handled all of his affairs, his drivers delivered all of his goods, his business manager ran his warehouses, and he never left his home. Only the highest-ranking members of his cadre were even allowed in to see him. Suddenly, he was in charge of the entire kingdom. "Just when you thought you knew a person," several former associates remarked, behind numerous locked doors, after checking the corners thoroughly.

It had been a trying two weeks since he had taken power over Cestia. Royal audience after royal audience with merchants and aristocrats to assure them that they would be able to go about their spoiled ways as they always had. Speech after speech to establish to the peasantry that he was the ruler without question now, at least if they wanted to be able to keep asking questions, a difficult task to accomplish without a tongue. Countless hours were spent dispatching messengers and meeting with his advisors about the best way to go about achieving his vision for the kingdom. Finding new advisors very shortly thereafter...

The old royal family's closest confidants had been remarkably obstinate when it came to the bold, new ideas he was proposing, and so he had dispatched them to be with their former king, in case he needed assistance managing his resources in the afterlife. In their place, he had brought in some malleable, ambitious young upper-crust types, who were much more receptive to what he had in mind, so long as they got important tiles and bags full of gold.

Now, after nearly a fortnight, the initial growing pains were almost complete. There were a few messages to which he had not received responses yet, or at least not satisfactory ones, and he had them sent again, this time carried by much burlier messengers, carrying very heavy scroll cases indeed. The envoys he had dispatched to carry his ultimatums to the other two kingdoms had not yet returned, but that was just as well. These kingdoms had grown soft over the past couple of centuries without political strife, choosing instead to let the common assassins fight their battles for them. Politics was strife, and conflict, a game only for the strong-minded and iron-willed, for those willing to do what must be done, and the sooner they accepted that, the better off they would be. Provided their answers were among the satisfactory ones, of course.

The other kings would undoubtedly be treating his diplomats with the utmost respect and comforts of home, informing them daily in very calm tones that they were still taking matters under advisement and would have an answer for them in due time, that such decisions should not be rushed. Meanwhile, they would be sending panicked messages back and forth to one another, bickering over who allowed this to happen, attempting to line up guild contracts, and accomplishing nothing more than giving Cestia time to prepare. Predictable fools. They didn't fit into The Vision.

He was a king with a plan, although it was probably best not to ask him what it was.

With the kingdom beginning to lurch forward into ponderous momentum once more under its new management, it was time to focus on more personal matters.

"WINSTON!" he bellowed with a force it did not seem the lungs in his fragile body should possess. The nearly-blinding island of light around the throne flickered as the guards doubled as human braziers closest to him jumped at the outburst.

The side door of the throne room that led to the help quarters opened, and a proud-looking man began idly sauntering across to the throne.

It was most definitely a saunter, as Winston came from a long line of head servants, and over the generations they had mastered the time-honored head servant's art of a thinly veiled indignant attitude toward their masters. He was, even now, implementing one of the golden rules passed on to him by his father for dealing with petulant employers. The louder your king shouts for you, the slower you are to respond, and if he persists, you may spill hot tea on him several weeks later, once the motive is forgotten, or plausibly deniable.

Peilmor overlooked these slights because even he recognized that Winston was masterful at what he did. Whatever mild, traditional disdain he might show towards his king, it was amplified a hundredfold when dealing with the guests he escorted in to visit his majesty. No question was too good to be treated as though it were the most idiotic thing Winston had ever heard, and no suggestion or comment too valid to escape his withering stare and the dripping, venomous sarcasm of "I suppose master knows best, hmm?" What some people could do with swords, Winston was perfectly content doing with a meaningful smirk.

Sometimes people would be so flustered by the time they got to the throne room that they would immediately concede to all of Peilmor's demands, even though the only demand he would have made at that point was "Good evening." It was another valuable tool to have around, and he'd learned to let people wait longer to see him just so they'd have more time to get to know Winston.

"Winston, the old king...a heavy man, was he?" Peilmor squirmed a bit more and shifted to his left.

"Yes, Your Majesty. Fond of whole roasted deer."

"Spent a lot of time in this throne, did he?" Squirm, wiggle.

"Yes, Your Majesty. Constantly visiting with people. A very sedentary social butterfly, to whom the flowers came."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Ahh, I suspected as much. Winston, first thing tomorrow morning I want you to send a message down to the best craftsmen in the city and have them make me up a new bottom cushion for the throne. I seem to be having trouble...filling the void left by the former king, if you take my meaning." Squirm, shift.

"I'm sure your majesty will do a fine job." Winston's face was completely blank. Peilmor couldn't tell if the man was impervious to subtlety, or playing his role for all it was worth.

"No, no, you see...I find myself not quite 'fitting in' here, if you catch my drift." Squirm.

"I'm sure it will simply take everyone some time to get to know your majesty." Still, no trace of humor or emotion crossed the man's face.

“Look, there are two enormous arse dents in this cushion, and I can only fit in one at a time. So would you please have someone make me a new cushion that does not have the bloody great buttocks of a dead monarch in it?!" Pant, squirm.

"Ahh, certainly Your Majesty. I will send a message down to the best craftsmen in the city first thing tomorrow morning."

Peilmor gave up and moved on. "Are there any audiences left today, or can I retire and...and get some sleep?"

"Only one, your majesty. A Mr. Zelkrin, I believe?"

Peilmor's face perked up, even as his left haunch slid further into one of the deep depressions in the throne's base.

"One of our very special guests, indeed! Show him in, and then you're dismissed. And Winston?"

The head servant stopped mid-saunter and turned around, a practiced about-face on his heels, so smooth the whole floor may as well have rotated with him.

"Do try NOT to talk to the man, would you? I need him coherent."

"As you wish, your majesty."

After a few moments, the main chamber doors opened, and a man clad all in black slithered noiselessly into the room. His walk was as much a slink as Winston's was a saunter, and from the way he kept glancing around the room at even the slightest noise, you could tell he was someone who was used to being high-strung, now stretched even tighter than normal, to tensions at which a harp string would be humming of its own accord. Peilmor watched for nearly a minute as the man made his way down the red carpet to the foot of the dais on which his throne sat, pausing to glare at his surroundings every few steps, and occasionally using the point of his boots to prod the floor in front of him.

"Really, Mr. Zelkrin, is all that necessary?"

"You will have to forgive me, your highness. In a business where only one party walks away from every successful transaction, you learn to be very cautious. And, with all due respect..." the man in black paused, as though the amount due was still very much in question, "news of your stance on assassins has spread rather quickly."

Peilmor grinned. "Ahh, but that is exactly the matter I have brought you here to disc--GUARDS! THE DOORS!"

Mr. Zelkrin had turned and bolted before the king could even finish the sentence, assuming that his new majesty's method of discussion would likely involve thumbscrews and a thorough inspection of his internal organs, in a very external way.

At the king's command, the royal guard (many of whom had to carefully set down their torches) moved to shut and bar the door. Zelkrin produced two short swords from seemingly nowhere and paused a few feet away from them to assess the situation. There were easily 20 guards in the room, beginning to eagerly surround him. He estimated they would make a spirited warm-up for the rest of the carnage his dramatic escape would entail.

"There is no need for violence, Zelkrin," called Peilmor, who had not moved from his throne, in no small part because he could not leverage himself out of the left buttock imprint. "Except perhaps against whoever let you get in here with weapons. I assure you that I do wish to talk to you about the proposal from my correspondence. If you will not hear what I have to say, I'm sure one of your...competitors, will."

The short swords disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. The assassin gave one final feint in the direction of the guards, many of whom jumped satisfactorily, then turned on his heel and approached the throne.

"Anything you have to say to the assassins should be said to me first. The eight watchful eyes of the Spider see the opportunity you present. We respect the web you weave. I feel we would be more, ah, philosophically aligned than the bestial idiots the other academies vomit forth into the world.."

"Precisely my logic!" exclaimed Peilmor, though the stones of the throne room had echoed more than once in recent days his cries that one madman with a knife was the same as the next. Some were just more open to certain kinds of thinking than others. "And it was for just that reason I did come to you, first among your kind. I can see now that my decision was a good one."

"My agents have you on record at five speeches, two dinners, and once on a chamber pot, declaring that you hate assassins without exception," Zelkrin noted, skepticism heavy in his voice.

"Ahh, but you are not a lowly assassin, some hired thug sulking around in the shadows. You and your students are...artisans! Raising your craft to levels beyond your base counterparts."

Peilmor watched the man's chest puff up visibly, caution now dissolving from his face. He had always found, in business negotiations, that no amount of armor or training could protect a proud man from his ego. You just had to know where to stick the blade.

"You speak truly, your Highness, and are wise to make such differentiations. I shall hear what you have to propose."

"Despite my personal feelings, or maybe even because of them, I have done extensive research in my life into the ways of the academies, and feel that your Spiders have been underutilized and under-appreciated for far too long, suffering needlessly beneath the esteem of your counterparts."

He'd never so much as touched a book about these wretched institutions, and only knew their names because he had not been residing under a boulder his whole life. He flew now on the wings of common knowledge that the schools did not see eye to eye, and a reliance on the narcissistic mind to fill in the blanks to its liking.

"Our...employment has been down in recent years, as compared to our brethren," he spat the word out as though it tasted of a rare poison he was not yet resistant to. "I am told the common rabble find their agents more approachable, their methods less grotesque. It is not our fault we are extremely efficient at what we do."

"Exactly! You should not be punished for your skill, but instead have that skill focused and brought to bear, to great praise and renown. With that in mind, I would like to offer you, your current students and your entire alumni register a long-term contract employment opportunity. One that would not only show the people what you're truly capable of but also free you of the oppressive bonds of your unjustly glorified, so-called brothers and sisters as well."

The king was certain he was laying it on too thick, but the man simply kept inflating. The more florid the prose, the more his lungs simply swelled with glory. Peilmor was afraid if he didn't get to the point soon, the man might explode, warranting yet another scrub down of the entire room. It was almost criminally easy. He wondered, not for the first time, how assassins had managed to play such a major role in the world.

"This certainly sounds tempting, Your Majesty...you have my attention. What would this job entail?"

"Tell me, Mr. Zelkrin...tell me everything you know about these other academies. The kinds of things you won't find in books." Peilmor's grin widened significantly.

"We shall deliberate upon your job description from there."