4. Leoric
LEORIC
The fire in my study burns low by the time I stop pretending to read the border assessment ahead of me.
The text is familiar—I wrote half of it myself three months ago, and the rest I've reviewed enough times to recite the phrasing from memory.
Instead, I keep running through what Corrine said in that room.
What she left out. What she almost said and swallowed.
The fact she believed executions of prisoners were happening and said it without flinching.
Not as a defense. I know performance in interrogation chambers like the back of my hand.
She didn't perform. She carried guilt like an old wound.
Quietly. Constantly. The kind people stop noticing because it has been hurting for so long.
That's the problem. The Corrine I built in my head was simpler. Extremist. Reckless. A human insurgent that disappeared before anyone could ask her why she did what she did. Simple enemies are clean. Clean enemies don't tell you they thought prisoners were dying inside walls you defended.
I fold the assessment. Cross to the narrow window that faces the estate's eastern ward. The torch line below moves at regular intervals—my guards, rotating exactly as scheduled—and the sight of the routine is, briefly, a comfort I won't acknowledge aloud.
Her claim needs checking. Not because I owe her a fair hearing. Because if captives were being killed beneath that outpost, someone authorized it. Someone had the power to give the order and a reason to bury it. That someone is not Corrine Ashmere.
I pull a sealed dispatch envelope from the lower desk drawer and write Theren's name across the face of it in a hand precise enough to be read in low light. Whatever sleep I manage between now and dawn will have to be enough.
Theren arrives before it is. His knock is two quiet raps, which means he came without an escort and has something to say that requires distance from other ears. I set down the correspondence and wait.
Theren closes the door, measuring exits before he measures furniture, and plants himself at the edge of the desk with his arms crossed. "Your prisoner is still alive."
"She's not a prisoner. She's a transfer under military authority."
"She is the woman who burned the outpost and you've given her a bed with curtains.
Every rival you have will read it as a weakness.
" His mouth is flat. The scar across his lip pulls whenever he's containing something more pointed.
"Pravel's aide filed a formal objection with the noble council this morning.
Two border lords have sent ravens already. "
"Let them send ravens. Ravens are not armies.
" I push the envelope across the desk. "Old military records from the Blackwater outpost. Pre-fire.
I need the prisoner processing logs, the command authorization chains, and any documentation related to human detainee management in the final four months before the attack.
Whatever survived, whatever was relocated, whatever was deliberately moved somewhere it couldn't be destroyed. "
Theren doesn't touch the envelope. "You believe her."
"I believe dead prisoners don't answer questions. Whatever Corrine Ashmere was told before she lit that fire came from somewhere. I need the source."
"She told you. Gideon Valecrest's network."
"I need to know what Valecrest's network was working from." I face him fully until he picks up the envelope. "This is about records. Not mercy. Treat them differently."
He pockets it, and his shoulders tell me he doesn't fully accept it. He and I have known each other long enough that the gaps in what I say are as legible to him as the words. "The council gathering is tonight. Varek has specifically requested your attendance."
Senator Varek requests, which means he intends to make the alternative visibly unpleasant. "I'll be there."
He goes. I stand at the window until the torch rotation below completes its full circuit, then I dress for a different kind of battle entirely.
The noble hall Varek has claimed for tonight's gathering is older than the current government.
It feels it. High vaulted arches, oil-lamp chandeliers throwing warm light over cold marble, and a guest list composed entirely of people who measure power by who can be publicly sacrificed without consequence.
I know this crowd. I've worked it for six years.
Every handshake means ownership. Every conversation is a trap, and the wine is always better than the hospitality deserves.
Varek finds me within twenty minutes. He always does.
It's one of his less subtle habits—arriving precisely long enough after I do to make it look casual while eliminating any possibility I might speak to someone else first. He is broad-shouldered for a dark elf of his age, elegantly dressed as ever, and his violet eyes carry the warmth like he's never been in a room where he didn't control the temperature.
"Leoric." He clasps my shoulder briefly. "I was beginning to think the border business had kept you from us entirely."
"The border business is managed."
"The prisoner question is somewhat less managed." His tone remains even, smooth. "The council would prefer clarity on that front. Pravel tells me you invoked military jurisdiction."
"Pravel is welcome to challenge it through the correct channels."
"Of course, of course." He steers me gently toward the outer colonnade, away from the thicker conversation behind us.
It faces an enclosed garden, torchlit, empty.
"What I want you to understand, Leoric, is that the optics of this are not without consequence.
You survived the fire. The fire had a cause.
The cause is currently sleeping in your west wing.
" He spreads his hands. "There is an obvious answer. "
I look at him across the torchlight. His expression is composed, measured, entirely reasonable.
And beneath the reasonableness, something is moving—small, contained, but present in the way a river current is present beneath flat water.
Varek mentions the outpost like he's handling something still warm: carefully, and not looking directly at it.
"I'll deal with it when I'm ready," I reply.
"Waiting makes people talk. Talking becomes trouble." He meets my gaze steadily. "Some will interpret hesitation as sentiment. Others will interpret it as something more concerning."
He doesn't say complicity. He doesn't need to. I study his expression. "I'll take that under advisement, Senator. Enjoy your evening."
I return to the estate before the wine runs out, which is the only honest reason anyone ever leaves Varek's gatherings early, and I do not sleep.
Midnight passes, and I hear the east servant entrance change. I know they are assassins before the second ward breaks. They avoid the obvious routes. They planned around my guards. Five of them. Masked, armed with blades and warding-break tools that scatter the door seals on contact.
I'm already moving by the time the second ward fractures. Not instinct—preparation. I've been sleeping in partial armor for days, since the first assassination rumor reached me from those I trust more than official intelligence.
Two move toward my chambers. Three move toward the west wing.
I process this split while engaging the nearest: she's fast, trained, going for the side of my neck.
I break the angle of her arm before the strike closes and put her into the wall, hard.
The second comes from the stairwell behind and catches me across the ribs before I've turned.
Their tools are made for her door. This isn't coincidence. Whoever wants her dead wants me dead too. That tells me more than they meant to.
I clear the corridor in the direction of the west wing without making it a decision.
The sounds from inside are wrong—too many, too close.
When I reach the door it is already damaged from the outside, the lock ward shattered.
Inside: one assassin down with a head wound from the wall basin.
Another pressing Corrine against the far wall with a blade at her throat while the chain from the wall ring pulls her.
The exit the lock provided is real. The gap between her chain's reach and the door is two feet.
She could have used the one on the floor, but she hasn't.
The standing assassin doesn't hear me until I'm already there, and by then Corrine has driven the heel of her palm up into his nose with the chain swung behind his neck as leverage.
I take him the rest of the way down. She drops her weight back and watches me with her chest heaving and her wrists raw from the restraint.
The second body on the floor moves. A blade comes up from beneath the fallen cloak, angled for the gap below my ribs.
Corrine sees it first. She jerks the chain hard across the assassin's throat, dragging his arm wide just before the strike lands.
We look at each other across the downed body.
I can't understand why she didn't leave.
I measure the distance in two seconds. She has been mapping this room since they locked her inside it.
She stayed. She killed the one I would have taken, but I do not thank her.
I do not know what it means yet. So I give it nothing.
"Move to the other wall," I demand, and check the corridor.
When the estate is locked down and the bodies are processed, dawn is pressing gray against the high windows.
I am in the corridor outside her door with Theren at my shoulder and the estate quiet around us, and I run through the variables until they arrange themselves into the only pattern I can.
The fire. The capture. Varek's pressure this evening—the careful heat in his voice whenever the outpost was mentioned.
Five assassins with floor plans and warding tools.
"Someone knew she was here before any official report could move," I tell Theren.
He is quiet for a moment. "Yes."
"Get me the records. Then wake the four people whose loyalty I trust enough to risk."
Theren's eyes sharpen. "You're leaving the estate."
"The assassins had floor plans, warding tools, and her door marked. If I stay here, I'm waiting for the next blade."
"And the council?"
"The council can discover I've left after I'm already gone."
He holds my stare for one second longer, then nods. "Where are we going?"
"East first. Away from official roads. After that, I decide who still owes me enough fear to talk."
He goes. I stay, looking at the closed door and the splintered wood around the lock frame. The version of Corrine I've had for seven years didn't save lives. She burned things. She vanished. She haunted me from a safe distance across every border in Protheka.
The woman on the other side of this door held her position when the exit opened and put a man's nose through his skull with a prisoner's chain. My armor has not broken. But standing here in the gray half-light, I know something beneath it has cracked.