That was...something.

It was certainly something.

We must've stood around for a good couple minutes just exchanging glances, but this time not for dumbfoundedness. My mind was racing. "If the Queen was presenting us this choice, it must be some sort of trick," I thought to myself, "but she just announced as much, didn't she? She wants to use this to brainwash us, and she'll kill us with poison if we don't play along. So...what? Do we refuse and try our luck now? Is the trick a trick, and we should play it straight? What's the right move here?" In theory, this was the sort of situation I would need Sulmoro for, but (bless her heart) she was absolutely useless when it came to decisionmaking. She always just goes with whatever I say, and if I try to get her ideä of things, she ends up giving us horrible advice. Besides, I'm supposed to be the leader, right? I'm the one that has to make the tough calls. I could tell my compatriots were all having the same internal battle that I was, unsure of her intentions but unable to think of a way out of the situation. Even the normally-headstrong Lænzey seemed like she was having a tough time of it.

Eventually, I reached a decision.

"Alright. We'll coöperate."

"Good," replied the green one, "there is hope for you yet. Do you wish for me to show you back to your room?"

"Ha!" Lænzey guffawed, rather humorlessly. "No."

As we began walking back upstairs to our room, an unfamiliar face called out: "Wait!" I guessed it must be the cyan one. Turning around, I saw my guess was correct. "You need to know how to contact us, don't you?"

"I suppose so," I cautiously answered.

"We each have our own jobs here, and we need to keep doïng them for your stay to be comfortable," Now that she said it, I supposed that that made sense. "so you'll have to come to our workplaces to find us during work hours. For example, I'm the castle cook, so you can find me in the kitchen."

"Simple enough. What about the rest of you?"

"I'm the runner," the green one replied, "so you'll be seeing me every time you get a meal, and you can call me for other reasons by pulling the golden cord near the door of your room." Good to know.

"I'll probably be helping her carry the meals," said the blue one, "but that's just because we're..." she coughed into her fist "...understaffed. I'm actually the janitor, so you won't see me much during the day, since I'll usually clean a room when the guests are least likely to be there. Instead, you can come by the servants' quarters at night. I don't get much sleep anyway," she added, sadly.

"Meanwhile, you'll probably always see me around," said the yellow one, from the receptionist's desk. "I'm the receptionist, so in addition to answering your questions about myself, I'm supposed to answer guests' questions about the hotel. Locations of facilities, history, policies, that sort of thing. Just come down here and ring the bell."

That left only the pink one, who seemed to have disappeared. I looked around the atrium, but I couldn't see her anywhere from my position.

"Perhaps you can help me with the last of you, then," I said, trying my luck with the newly-announced receptionist. "What happened to the pink servant? What does she do?"

"She's the one in charge, so she's probably up in the main office making our schedules for tomorrow. She does that a lot, as well as managing certain affairs of state. What with all your gallivanting, no offense, she's probably the only senior official left."

"None taken," I assured her, cracking a smile. "It's necessary gallivanting"

"Uh-huh," She replied, unimpressed.

I turned away. "Alright, let's go; we need to decide on a plan of attack."

And with that, we all made our way back up to our room.

----------------------------------------

"Alright, what did we learn?" asked Lænzey.

I replied, "We learned that we need to talk to the servants and figure out which one is secretly the Dark Queen. We also learned their occupations, and by extension where we can go to find them. Also, apparently the cook is a dullahan?"

"Actually, let's just restate all of them so we make sure we're all on the same page."

"Agreed," said Sulmoro. "The servants are as follows:

1) The pink vampire, an overseer of sorts tasked with scheduling and logistics

2) The yellow jengu, the receptionist and information resource

3) The green dark elf, who handles room service

4) The cyan dullahan, the head cook

5) The blue naga, a janitor"

"Wait, do we know any of their names?" asked Sekterns.

"Why would we need to know that, you big oaf?" countered Cåktakal.

"We could compare with what we've heard about her elsewhere. Perhaps she's using one of her pseudonyms at the moment."

I stepped in to reply before Cåktakal or Sulmoro could do any damage: "Good thinking, Sekterns, but no, we didn't get any names. You are right; if we can learn their names, perhaps it'll match up with one of the Dark Queen's various monikers. That brings us to the next topic of discussion: who do we send after who, and when?"

"What do you mean?" asked Sulmoro. "I thought we were pretending to coöperate for the moment; what good does planning assassinations do us? Do you have a way to counteract their poison?"

"No, we're coöperating, full stop." At this Sulmoro reeled back, shocked. "I meant: who do we send to get information from which servant, and when? The sooner we have that info, the more we can do with it both during and after the battle, but even if we're coöperating, I don't trust the Queen not to send one of her servants to turn our room upside-down when we're gone. We need two people here and awake at all times. That's why I'm instituting a watchkeeping system for this hotel room. We'll have people sleep for a quarter-day each, with enough overlap to space the five of us evenly. Then, half the day will be for gathering info, and the second half is your turn to take watch in the room. Any questions?"

"Yes!" immediately shouted Lænzey. "I have so many questions. One: why are we meeting the servants one-on-one? Two: why not just have half of us keep nocturnal hours? Why this complicated system that ends up with weird fractions of time that don't line up with each other? Three—"

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Woah, woah, woah! One at a time." I took a deep breath. "We're meeting them one-on-one to cover more ground. I trust everyone in this room to be able to handle themselves against a single dark army member. You've come a long way, and I feel comfortable relying on your skills." Lænzey smiled at the compliment. "We're also doïng complicated hours so that we can cover more ground; the blue one explicitly said she's fine with talking at night, for example, and it seems foolish not to take advantage of their differing schedules." I let it hang in the air for a bit to make sure everyone got the picture. "Alright, now what was the third question?"

"How in the world are we goïng to adjust our sleep schedules to match such an intricate setup? Circadian rhythms are hard to control, you know."

Cåktakal answered: "Well, we'll obviously wake each other up when it's time; it's just like normal watchkeeping. My only question is who's sleeping when."

I shrugged. "I was hoping we could figure that out right now. I have some ideä of who should be when, but after that, I'd like to hear your opinions."

"Alright," said Lænzey, "what's your ideä?"

"My ideä is that Sulmoro sleeps until midnight." Sulmoro looked at me questioningly, and I turned to face her. I braced myself. "Look, you're not very good at this. That's not to say you haven't been helpful; you have, but you and Cåktakal can never seem to hide your disdain for the Dark Queen's forces, and you're much less...approachable than Cåktakal is. That's why I'm tasking you with talking to the taskmaster in the early morning, when she'll probably be posting the schedule. She probably won't care as much if you don't bother with niceties."

"...understood."

"Now go lie down and get all the rest that you can before midnight."

"Understood," she said dejectedly, entering one of the bedrooms. I put up a wind charm in the doorway so she wouldn't be bothered by our noise.

Just then, we heard a knocking on the door.

When I went to open it, I was greeted by the green and blue servants carrying platters full of food. "Here's your meal for tonight," said the green one. "Apologies for the delay."

"Sorry? I don't remember ordering anything."

"That's why you were made the scheduled meal for today: our locally-sourced escargot."

"Thanks, but how do we know it's not poisoned?"

They gave me a nervous smile. "...we promise it's not?"

"How do I know you're not lying?"

The blue one spoke up. "We said earliër that we were instructed by Queen One not to lie."

"Well, you say that, but how do I know that's not a lie?"

"Do you doubt our loyalty?"

"I doubt that your Queen instructed you to do that."

"What would you have us do to convince you otherwise?" asked the green one.

I honestly wasn't sure anything would, but the whole point of goïng along with this thing was to collect info, and that doesn't work unless I give them some benefit of the doubt.

Hmm...

"Come in. Set down the food, then stay and follow my instructions for the rest of the night." That bought me some time to think of an effective test.

As they set down the platters, I had a very unconventional, downright silly ideä.

"Sit down and eat with us." They looked surprised at the suggestion, but quickly moved to comply. As they were sitting down, I added "...but! you will not select what food to eat until all of us have finished a round of the meal, and you will speak entirely in Zpolman."

The green one spoke up "Before that, just so we understand what you're saying, what's Zpolman?"

"It's a language where every sentence and every interjection are all the single word 'zpolman'. Understand now?"

The blue one looked at me playfully. "Zpolman."

"Good. Now, everyone else, feel free to eat from the part of the platter in front of them, or anywhere else, or whatever. We will sadly not be saving any for Sulmoro, but at the end, we'll just send greeny here to ask the cook to make her a double-serving for breakfast. Actually, wait..." I turned to the pair of servants. "This is a one-time exception from the Zpolman rule. I want each of you to say your name. After that, back to Zpolman."

Green. "Olæren"

Blue. "Zlajenik"

"Good. Now, everyone, eat up!"

The platters that they'd set before us were incredibly full of food. In the center of each, there was a hefty pile of escargot shells. Around the shells, there were a series of folded pieces of injera, in two rows. The outer rim was full of lettuce, onions, and tomato, all in a creamy masala. All in all, it rather reminded me of back home. I was surprised that they even made lettuce masala this far from home, but I guessed some things were just universal that way. The platter piled high also reminded me of our festivals, when everyone ate together at the center of the village from massive piles of food, although I was also pretty sure there was no festival today. Cåktakal wasted no time in taking a piece of injera and scooping up some masala from in front of the blue one...Zlajenik, apparently. I'd gotten so used to thinking of them by their colors that, even knowing their names, I found myself gravitating towards thinking of her as the 'blue one'.

I waited for everyone to get a bite of their section of choice, before ordering "You two will begin eating now." I turned my attention back to the others. "Anyway, what does everyone think about the remainder of the watch schedule and interrogation assignments?"

Lænzey nearly spit out her food. "What??" she said, although it came out as more of a 'phuph' since her mouth was full. She swallowed her food. "We're talking about this in front of them?"

"I don't see why not. What can they do? We'll have well-armed watchmen on alert at all times anyway. Now, who should go when? I'm thinking I should take the shift right before Sulmoro, and Stekterns shouldn't have any overlap with her on watch, but other than that, I've got nothing. Ideäs?"

Everyone seemed hesitant to speak, at first, but Lænzey was characteristically quick to steel herself, declaring "Ohhh no you don't. You need your rest, oh-so-glorious leader. I'll be the one to stay up for 24 hours; I can take it. You can count on me."

"You can't take it, Lænzey. Noöne can. I'll just be taking a bit of a nap during my first investigation time. You can take the slot before me if you're really determined to pull an all-nighter, but we'll have to tell Sulmoro to hold off on investigating in the morning; you can't keep a good watch if you're exhausted."

"Wouldn't that work better anyway?" Cåktakal pointed out. "After all, she's the overseer, so we'll get betting information out of her if we know what her subordinates are like first."

"...Fine," Lænzey grumbled. "Anyway, if me and Kirik are last, and we're seriously avoiding pairing Sulmoro with Sekterns, we need to have him sleep in the morning, leaving Cåktakal with the night watch. Check my math?"

"Yeah, that sounds right," agreed Sekterns, "but uh...won't I be on watch when she's supposed to wake up?"

"I'll make sure there are no problems," said Lænzey, nodding to me.

"Thanks."

"Now we do the servant assignment, right?" interjected Cåktakal. He didn't wait for a reply before trying to get the servants' attention. "Hey, you two! Any ideäs? Kirik seems to trust you for the moment, so who do we talk to for advice on taking down the Queen?

They glanced at each other, before answering "Zpolman."

I cut Cåktakal off before he went further. "We're not trusting them with anything until our meal is fully digested. They're proving their sincerity now by following my orders, and they will earn our trust only when I decide so." Turning to them, I said, "There's not much else for you to do here tonight, so you should leave. If you don't come near our room for the rest of the night, and if the meal isn't poisoned, we'll hear you out tomorrow."

After shooing them out the door, I breathed a tentative sigh of relief, and turned back to Cåktakal. "You were saying about the servants?"

"Well, who's investigating at night again?"

"Me," I replied.

"Alright, you take blue. Zlajenik was her name, right? Lænzey's in the afternoon, so..." turning to her, he suggested, "...the cook?"

"Sure," she assented.

"...so you and Sekterns get green and yellow between you, and both mostly in the day," I observed to Cåktakal. Turning to Sekterns, I asked, "Who would you prefer?"

"Uhhmm..." Serterns stuttered hesitantly, "could I talk to Olæren? She seems nice."

"You remember her name and you call her 'nice'?" asked Cåktakal, incredulously. "It's really hard to believe you're on our team sometimes."

"I-I just meant in comparison to the receptionist!" protested Sekterns.

"Riiight. Well, I liked the cut of the receptionist's jib anyway."

I stood triumphantly. "All right, that's everyone's assignments. Lænzey, can I count on you to relay the delay order to Sulmoro?"

"Sure."

"And wake me up once Sulmoro's been awake for a while?"

"You got it."

"And wake up Cåktakal at the right time?"

"110% crystal, boss."

"Good. Sekterns, are you good to wake up Sulmoro?"

"...y-yeah, I guess."

Walking over to the corner, I laid down on the floor. "Then I'm off to sleep. Talk to you in a couple winaawats."