Unfortunately, by the time Drake got the location of his spy room from Zuri, it was already past dinner. Lord Skybreak could call him on her mirror at any time, so he’d have to wait until after their conversation to check the place out. With that in mind, he asked Nicole to escort him to his bedroom and asked Olivia to stand guard over the infirmary.
He had two battle maids and his mediator in the infirmary right now. No way was he going to let them get assassinated after he’d spent so much effort trying to keep them alive. He even posted a couple of zarovians to keep Olivia company.
Next, Drake headed to his bedroom and opened the locked door. Nicole breezed inside without being ordered, and he followed her inside. Best to check all the angles. After a quick look around his bedroom, she appeared satisfied.
“All good?” Drake asked.
She nodded.
“Good. I don’t know how long I’ll be, but after, we’re going to the you know what.”
She nodded again and headed for the door.
Before he stepped out, he couldn’t resist asking one more question. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
Once again, she glanced back at him and offered a nod.
“Cool,” Drake said. “Good chat.”
She closed the door. He locked it and then hurried to his dresser. When he picked up the mirror and peered into it, only his reflection stared back.
So either Sky hadn’t called yet, or she had called and he’d missed her because he was trying to figure out who had attempted to murder him most recently. Were the lives of all manor lords like this? How did they not go insane within the first year?
Perhaps they did. Perhaps that was why Dickcheese had been such a paranoid old shit.
With nothing to do but wait, Drake flipped on the Zippo candle and retrieved some light reading... in this case, the roster Zuri had provided of his staff. He skimmed the list for the names of the people he’d lost today. He owed them some posthumous recognition.
Name – Age – Sex – Years of Service - Rarity
Irving Notley – 23 – Male – 5 – Sweetening
Hunter Reed – 24 – Female – 6 – Waterwarm
Penny Roscoe – 22 – Female – 4 – Succulence
Selene Fletcher – 26 – Female – 9 – Vaporize
Arno Mabbot – 25 – Male – 7 – Quiet Step
Just as he’d suspected. Everyone who’d died in the kitchen this afternoon had rarities related to preparing food, which meant the whole manor might be eating a lot less well until he hired replacements. That wasn’t just tragic. It could be bad for morale.
He should organize a memorial service. He wondered if anyone here had even seen one before. Given what a colossal turd Dickcheese had been, he doubted it. With luck, showing his people he actually honored them when they died would engender some fresh goodwill.
As for Arno, “quiet step” sounded like a somewhat useful rarity. He imagined it had allowed Arno to move about the manor without making noise, which was probably why Dickcheese chose Arno to unleash this trap on himself. The poor guy might have been terrified as the obedience fetish forced him to open those doors.
As unpleasant as it was, Drake would need to order someone to cut Arno’s body apart and search his corpse for hidden fetishes. He couldn’t have those things getting out into the wild where anyone could use them. Even if they buried Arno, someone could dig up his body.
Drake also decided that when he asked every person if they had an obedience fetish, he would have someone standing by to save them if that fetish tried to kill them. He wouldn’t put it past the old bastard to have booby-trapped multiple blood thralls. Even if it meant delaying his other plans, he had to clean house—or clean manor—as soon as he could.
As for the zarovian he’d lost, there was no way to know his name without asking Cresh. All the zarovian names were listed, but other than Korrag, Xutag, and Goktul, the rest might as well be combinations of letters from someone mashing their head on a keyboard. He had no idea which zarovian on this list had died.
He should find a way to recognize the zarovian too. Show old Cresh he didn’t consider his folks fodder to be tossed away like Dickcheese had done. He was still skimming the roster when a knock sounded at his door.
He rose. “Who is it?”
“It’s Kyra,” Nicole called from outside. “She has some books for you.”
Drake once again skimmed the list in hopes of identifying someone he’d never met.
Kyra Holt - 24 – Female – 7 – Needlepaint
This woman would be a good test candidate for his goal of freeing further sleeper agents. Her rarity sounded harmless, but more importantly, he had to be sure she wasn’t problem waiting to explode. He could rehearse the questions he’d ask the rest of his people.
Drake unlocked the door to his master bedroom and stepped back. “Send her in.”
The doors opened. Nicole breezed in first, then motioned impatiently.
A moment later, a short, timid-looking woman with gleaming spectacles and her long hair done up in a brown braid tiptoed into the room clutching three slim tomes. So they did have glasses here. He hadn’t seen anyone wearing a pair before.
Kyra dressed in the same basic uniform as the other employees, but wore no apron. Just a tunic, pants, and boots. Did she work with Zuri? That explained why she had these books.
“We haven’t met before,” Drake said calmly. “So hello, Kyra.”
The already timid woman froze at the sound of her name. Was it going to be like this with all of them? He’d make due.
“I won’t hurt you,” Drake said patiently. “I reward those who serve me, so be at ease.”
Kyra incrementally relaxed and finished entering his room, but stopped just inside the door. She clutched three narrow tomes to her chest like a shield. “He... hello, lord.”
“What have you brought for me?”
“Books,” she managed, then gasped. “I mean, dossiers! On the manors!”
“Zuri told you to bring those to me if she was otherwise engaged, did she?”
Kyra nodded violently.
So far, so good, thought wow... this woman was nervous. He hoped that didn’t mean she was also compromised. “All right, Kyra. Hand those books to Nicole.”
Kyra handed off the books so rapidly that Nicole barely caught them all. She tossed Drake an annoyed look. “What am I going to do with these?”
“Place them on my nightstand,” Drake ordered. “And you, Kyra?”
The braided, spectacled woman froze halfway out the door.
“I have a question for you,” Drake said. “Keep in mind, I can’t force you to answer this question. But if you don’t answer me, it could be as good as admitting to a crime.”
She pivoted on one foot to face him, then bowed low. He let her defiance of his no bowing order slide. Not looking him in the eyes seemed to make her more comfortable.
“Kyra, are you currently compelled by any sort of fetish?
“I...” She clenched her hands. “I sometimes enjoy having my toes sucked!”
Drake’s winced as a delighted grin split Nicole’s features. Fortunately, with her gaze buried in the floor, Kyra saw neither. She was already red-faced as a tomato.
Drake mentally reminded himself to be more careful with his questions. Even if his people weren’t compelled by blood magic, some of them were still terrified of him. “I apologize, Kyra. I misspoke. Are you compelled by an obedience fetish?”
“O-oh! Then... n- no, lord.” Kyra wobbled like she might faint.
“Good,” Drake said. “Sorry to, uh...” He glanced to Nicole for help and received nothing but an amused smirk for his trouble. “Didn’t mean to get all personal.”
“I am yours to command!” Kyra reminded him frantically.
This poor woman. As a first run on clearing his blood thralls of obedience fetish time bombs went, he’d smashed this one into the ground. Best to put her out of her misery.
“Thank you for delivering my rosters,” Drake said. “You’ve done well. You’re dismissed. Return to your duties.”
Still bowed at the waist, Kyra backed right out of the room. The woman darted off without a glance back, likely to go scream into her pillow.
More annoyed with himself than anyone else, Drake glanced at Nicole. “You weren’t much help there.”
Nicole grinned. “You had it handled.”
“You can go guard my door now.”
“Hooray.” Nicole wandered out and shut the door behind her.
After Drake locked it, he shook off the empathetic embarrassment he’d absorbed from Kyra and walked back to his desk. He felt awful about how badly he’d embarrassed her, so perhaps later he’d... apologize more? No. Better to just leave her be.
He’d just settled in to peruse his new dossiers when the mirror sitting beside them spoke. “Are all your meetings with blood thralls that awkward?”
Drake grabbed the mirror. “Good evening to you too.”
As he raised the mirror to his face, he once again spotted Sky Skybreak’s pretty and unassuming face in place of his own. She had her braids up and curled around the sides of her head in classic Princess Leia buns, which was more amusing than sexy. If only she knew.
“My thrall’s back,” Sky said. “He’s right here with me. So we should keep our discussions limited to what we discussed last night.”
“Understood.” Drake opened the small drawer in his dresser and pulled out the letters he’d retrieved from Zuri last night. “So how do we do this? He just reads?”
“I’ll let him explain it.”
The mirror wobbled, and then the blurry face of a young man with dark hair hanging down on both sides of his face appeared. He looked intrigued and curious.
“Hello?” the man asked.
“Hey,” Drake said. “How’s life?”
The man’s eyes widened as he stared through the mirror at Drake. “Remarkable!”
“Lucien?” Sky asked pointedly. “Could you explain to Lord Gloomwood what you need?”
“Of course. Of course!” Lucien visibly cleared his throat. “Lord Gloomwood, judging from what I see here, you need simply place each letter on a flat surface and slowly pass the mirror over it. I will transcribe what I see on my copy here.”
Drake frowned in disappointment. “You can’t just translate it?”
“I am afraid not, lord... at least, not in the time you would likely have to hold the mirror. I can usually uncover the patterns behind anything, but it takes time and concentration.”
So far, this didn’t even sound like a rarity. Just good old-fashioned codebreaking. Still, Zuri had said that male rarities were usually less powerful than female rarities. While it was disappointing to know he wouldn’t get a translation tonight, he would get one.
For one brief moment he wondered if Sky would keep any translation to herself. He’d be dependent on her calling him back and relaying what Lucien came up with. In any other world that would have been a problem, but in this one, at least, people couldn’t lie.
“Sky, you mind if I get some assurances first?”
“I’d think less of you if you didn’t.” She sounded amused. “Go ahead.”
Lucien couldn’t lie, and Sky was fine with him asking questions. “Lucien, will you translate these letters exactly as written, without leaving anything out?”
“I will, lord.”
“And will you relay that exact translation to me?”
“I cannot, lord.”
“I told him to deliver it to me first,” Sky added, “but that’s because I don’t know when he’ll finish translating or if you’ll be available. If there’s some vital bit of information I need to act on immediately, I can’t wait to fill you in. If that’s going to be a problem...”
“No problem,” Drake said. She was making perfect sense. “But Sky, you’ll deliver the full and unfiltered translation to me next time we speak?”
“Yes. Once I have it, I will read you the whole translation and leave nothing out.”
He was already trusting her blood thrall to translate these letters, and it wasn’t like he had any other options. Moreover, he wanted to trust Sky. She was the only manor lord in this whole crazy world who believed the same as he did about the blood pact. That it was wrong.
Drake raised the mirror to point down at the table. “Here goes.”
Unfortunately, by the time Drake got the location of his spy room from Zuri, it was already past dinner. Lord Skybreak could call him on her mirror at any time, so he’d have to wait until after their conversation to check the place out. With that in mind, he asked Nicole to escort him to his bedroom and asked Olivia to stand guard over the infirmary.
He had two battle maids and his mediator in the infirmary right now. No way was he going to let them get assassinated after he’d spent so much effort trying to keep them alive. He even posted a couple of zarovians to keep Olivia company.
Next, Drake headed to his bedroom and opened the locked door. Nicole breezed inside without being ordered, and he followed her inside. Best to check all the angles. After a quick look around his bedroom, she appeared satisfied.
“All good?” Drake asked.
She nodded.
“Good. I don’t know how long I’ll be, but after, we’re going to the you know what.”
She nodded again and headed for the door.
Before he stepped out, he couldn’t resist asking one more question. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
Once again, she glanced back at him and offered a nod.
“Cool,” Drake said. “Good chat.”
She closed the door. He locked it and then hurried to his dresser. When he picked up the mirror and peered into it, only his reflection stared back.
So either Sky hadn’t called yet, or she had called and he’d missed her because he was trying to figure out who had attempted to murder him most recently. Were the lives of all manor lords like this? How did they not go insane within the first year?
Perhaps they did. Perhaps that was why Dickcheese had been such a paranoid old shit.
With nothing to do but wait, Drake flipped on the Zippo candle and retrieved some light reading... in this case, the roster Zuri had provided of his staff. He skimmed the list for the names of the people he’d lost today. He owed them some posthumous recognition.
Name – Age – Sex – Years of Service - Rarity
Irving Notley – 23 – Male – 5 – Sweetening
Hunter Reed – 24 – Female – 6 – Waterwarm
Penny Roscoe – 22 – Female – 4 – Succulence
Selene Fletcher – 26 – Female – 9 – Vaporize
Arno Mabbot – 25 – Male – 7 – Quiet Step
Just as he’d suspected. Everyone who’d died in the kitchen this afternoon had rarities related to preparing food, which meant the whole manor might be eating a lot less well until he hired replacements. That wasn’t just tragic. It could be bad for morale.
He should organize a memorial service. He wondered if anyone here had even seen one before. Given what a colossal turd Dickcheese had been, he doubted it. With luck, showing his people he actually honored them when they died would engender some fresh goodwill.
As for Arno, “quiet step” sounded like a somewhat useful rarity. He imagined it had allowed Arno to move about the manor without making noise, which was probably why Dickcheese chose Arno to unleash this trap on himself. The poor guy might have been terrified as the obedience fetish forced him to open those doors.
As unpleasant as it was, Drake would need to order someone to cut Arno’s body apart and search his corpse for hidden fetishes. He couldn’t have those things getting out into the wild where anyone could use them. Even if they buried Arno, someone could dig up his body.
Drake also decided that when he asked every person if they had an obedience fetish, he would have someone standing by to save them if that fetish tried to kill them. He wouldn’t put it past the old bastard to have booby-trapped multiple blood thralls. Even if it meant delaying his other plans, he had to clean house—or clean manor—as soon as he could.
As for the zarovian he’d lost, there was no way to know his name without asking Cresh. All the zarovian names were listed, but other than Korrag, Xutag, and Goktul, the rest might as well be combinations of letters from someone mashing their head on a keyboard. He had no idea which zarovian on this list had died.
He should find a way to recognize the zarovian too. Show old Cresh he didn’t consider his folks fodder to be tossed away like Dickcheese had done. He was still skimming the roster when a knock sounded at his door.
He rose. “Who is it?”
“It’s Kyra,” Nicole called from outside. “She has some books for you.”
Drake once again skimmed the list in hopes of identifying someone he’d never met.
Kyra Holt - 24 – Female – 7 – Needlepaint
This woman would be a good test candidate for his goal of freeing further sleeper agents. Her rarity sounded harmless, but more importantly, he had to be sure she wasn’t problem waiting to explode. He could rehearse the questions he’d ask the rest of his people.
Drake unlocked the door to his master bedroom and stepped back. “Send her in.”
The doors opened. Nicole breezed in first, then motioned impatiently.
A moment later, a short, timid-looking woman with gleaming spectacles and her long hair done up in a brown braid tiptoed into the room clutching three slim tomes. So they did have glasses here. He hadn’t seen anyone wearing a pair before.
Kyra dressed in the same basic uniform as the other employees, but wore no apron. Just a tunic, pants, and boots. Did she work with Zuri? That explained why she had these books.
“We haven’t met before,” Drake said calmly. “So hello, Kyra.”
The already timid woman froze at the sound of her name. Was it going to be like this with all of them? He’d make due.
“I won’t hurt you,” Drake said patiently. “I reward those who serve me, so be at ease.”
Kyra incrementally relaxed and finished entering his room, but stopped just inside the door. She clutched three narrow tomes to her chest like a shield. “He... hello, lord.”
“What have you brought for me?”
“Books,” she managed, then gasped. “I mean, dossiers! On the manors!”
“Zuri told you to bring those to me if she was otherwise engaged, did she?”
Kyra nodded violently.
So far, so good, thought wow... this woman was nervous. He hoped that didn’t mean she was also compromised. “All right, Kyra. Hand those books to Nicole.”
Kyra handed off the books so rapidly that Nicole barely caught them all. She tossed Drake an annoyed look. “What am I going to do with these?”
“Place them on my nightstand,” Drake ordered. “And you, Kyra?”
The braided, spectacled woman froze halfway out the door.
“I have a question for you,” Drake said. “Keep in mind, I can’t force you to answer this question. But if you don’t answer me, it could be as good as admitting to a crime.”
She pivoted on one foot to face him, then bowed low. He let her defiance of his no bowing order slide. Not looking him in the eyes seemed to make her more comfortable.
“Kyra, are you currently compelled by any sort of fetish?
“I...” She clenched her hands. “I sometimes enjoy having my toes sucked!”
Drake’s winced as a delighted grin split Nicole’s features. Fortunately, with her gaze buried in the floor, Kyra saw neither. She was already red-faced as a tomato.
Drake mentally reminded himself to be more careful with his questions. Even if his people weren’t compelled by blood magic, some of them were still terrified of him. “I apologize, Kyra. I misspoke. Are you compelled by an obedience fetish?”
“O-oh! Then... n- no, lord.” Kyra wobbled like she might faint.
“Good,” Drake said. “Sorry to, uh...” He glanced to Nicole for help and received nothing but an amused smirk for his trouble. “Didn’t mean to get all personal.”
“I am yours to command!” Kyra reminded him frantically.
This poor woman. As a first run on clearing his blood thralls of obedience fetish time bombs went, he’d smashed this one into the ground. Best to put her out of her misery.
“Thank you for delivering my rosters,” Drake said. “You’ve done well. You’re dismissed. Return to your duties.”
Still bowed at the waist, Kyra backed right out of the room. The woman darted off without a glance back, likely to go scream into her pillow.
More annoyed with himself than anyone else, Drake glanced at Nicole. “You weren’t much help there.”
Nicole grinned. “You had it handled.”
“You can go guard my door now.”
“Hooray.” Nicole wandered out and shut the door behind her.
After Drake locked it, he shook off the empathetic embarrassment he’d absorbed from Kyra and walked back to his desk. He felt awful about how badly he’d embarrassed her, so perhaps later he’d... apologize more? No. Better to just leave her be.
He’d just settled in to peruse his new dossiers when the mirror sitting beside them spoke. “Are all your meetings with blood thralls that awkward?”
Drake grabbed the mirror. “Good evening to you too.”
As he raised the mirror to his face, he once again spotted Sky Skybreak’s pretty and unassuming face in place of his own. She had her braids up and curled around the sides of her head in classic Princess Leia buns, which was more amusing than sexy. If only she knew.
“My thrall’s back,” Sky said. “He’s right here with me. So we should keep our discussions limited to what we discussed last night.”
“Understood.” Drake opened the small drawer in his dresser and pulled out the letters he’d retrieved from Zuri last night. “So how do we do this? He just reads?”
“I’ll let him explain it.”
The mirror wobbled, and then the blurry face of a young man with dark hair hanging down on both sides of his face appeared. He looked intrigued and curious.
“Hello?” the man asked.
“Hey,” Drake said. “How’s life?”
The man’s eyes widened as he stared through the mirror at Drake. “Remarkable!”
“Lucien?” Sky asked pointedly. “Could you explain to Lord Gloomwood what you need?”
“Of course. Of course!” Lucien visibly cleared his throat. “Lord Gloomwood, judging from what I see here, you need simply place each letter on a flat surface and slowly pass the mirror over it. I will transcribe what I see on my copy here.”
Drake frowned in disappointment. “You can’t just translate it?”
“I am afraid not, lord... at least, not in the time you would likely have to hold the mirror. I can usually uncover the patterns behind anything, but it takes time and concentration.”
So far, this didn’t even sound like a rarity. Just good old-fashioned codebreaking. Still, Zuri had said that male rarities were usually less powerful than female rarities. While it was disappointing to know he wouldn’t get a translation tonight, he would get one.
For one brief moment he wondered if Sky would keep any translation to herself. He’d be dependent on her calling him back and relaying what Lucien came up with. In any other world that would have been a problem, but in this one, at least, people couldn’t lie.
“Sky, you mind if I get some assurances first?”
“I’d think less of you if you didn’t.” She sounded amused. “Go ahead.”
Lucien couldn’t lie, and Sky was fine with him asking questions. “Lucien, will you translate these letters exactly as written, without leaving anything out?”
“I will, lord.”
“And will you relay that exact translation to me?”
“I cannot, lord.”
“I told him to deliver it to me first,” Sky added, “but that’s because I don’t know when he’ll finish translating or if you’ll be available. If there’s some vital bit of information I need to act on immediately, I can’t wait to fill you in. If that’s going to be a problem...”
“No problem,” Drake said. She was making perfect sense. “But Sky, you’ll deliver the full and unfiltered translation to me next time we speak?”
“Yes. Once I have it, I will read you the whole translation and leave nothing out.”
He was already trusting her blood thrall to translate these letters, and it wasn’t like he had any other options. Moreover, he wanted to trust Sky. She was the only manor lord in this whole crazy world who believed the same as he did about the blood pact. That it was wrong.
Drake raised the mirror to point down at the table. “Here goes.”
