Drake held the mirror over the first letter like it was a big cell phone. “How’s this?” The mirror was about as heavy as a cell phone. He wasn’t looking forward to holding it this way.
“Could you move closer, lord?” Lucien asked.
Drake adjusted the mirror.
“Too close. I can’t see... oh, that’s good. Yes, hold it right there, lord.”
Drake did his best.
“Please stop wiggling,” Lucien said.
“I’m not wiggling.”
“Perhaps it is the wind? No, no wind in a manor. There. Hold that.”
Drake measured his patience.
“Wonderful, Lord Gloomwood. Now, if you would, a slow slide. Left to right.”
Drake continued to obey Lucien’s instructions as the man viewed and copied every page of every letter, one after another. By the time they were halfway through copying the letters, his arm was aching. He powered on. Zuri had endured bone-breaking agony today, and she’d been up and ready to talk again in a few minutes. He wasn’t about to do any less.
Finally, they finished copying the final letter. Drake set down the mirror in relief. His arm was trembling from holding the mirror steady, and his forearm muscles ached. Maybe he could have Nicole run her magic glove over it after this was done. That would help.
“Excellent work, Lord Gloomwood,” Lucien said. “I can already sense a pattern here. That is a good sign, as it means I will likely be able to translate these letters.”
“How long?”
“Oh, it could be a day. Or it could be a week. One never knows.”
Drake figured that was the best he would get for now. “Best to get to it then.”
“Of course, lord. And thank you!”
Sky’s amused voice followed. “You can go now.”
“At once, Lord Skybreak! I will send a missive as soon as I have something!”
Silence followed. Just when Drake was certain she’d hung up, Sky spoke.
“Still there?”
He picked up the mirror again and pointed it at his face. “Still here.” So she still wanted to talk more? He wanted to talk more.
“Now that we can speak privately,” Sky said, “I have one more piece of news. Someone tried to murder me today.”
Drake smiled with relief. “No shit, you too?”
She frowned. “Someone tried to murder you today?”
“Someone tries to murder me practically every day. I thought I was the only one who had to deal with that crap, so I’m glad to hear I’m not.”
“You’re glad to hear someone almost murdered me today?”
Drake grimaced. “That’s not—”
Her sudden and sincere laughter caught him off guard. “You’re fun.”
Drake narrowed his eyes at her. “Am I?”
She smiled wryly. “Laughing about these events is the only way I can get through my day without turning endlessly morbid. It makes the darkness bearable. Every day alive is a gift.”
“I suppose it is,” Drake agreed. “So who tried to murder you today?”
“A less than competent assassin. An archer took up position atop a building in sight of where I often give speeches to my rangers.”
“You give regular speeches to your rangers?”
“Now more than ever. With Rodney gone, they need to see me out there in the thick of it, not hiding away in my manor. That’s how my mother led, and that’s how I lead too. It’s why my people remain loyal with the... what we discussed.”
“But then there’s all these constant arrows from assassins.”
“I don’t worry about those.” Sky maintained her grin. “My rangers even allowed him to draw his bow before they took him down. He had an amusing story.”
Drake leaned forward in sudden hope. “You captured him alive?”
“As I said, he was a less than competent assassin. After a short interrogation, he revealed he was hired by the first son of House Redbow. I doubt they expected him to succeed. My spies suggested he’d recently displeased the very man who hired him.”
“So this Redbow son sent this guy on a suicide mission?”
“If you mean they intended him to fail and die, then yes, most likely. He seemed genuinely surprised he failed. His assassination attempt was so clumsy I couldn’t even bear to cut his hands off. I settled for taking an ear instead. Anything less would encourage others.”
Drake nodded. He couldn’t fault Sky’s punishment. If anything, given that man had intended to murder her, she’d been almost obscenely merciful. “So is he in prison?”
“We don’t have the resources to house and feed prisoners. I exiled him from my manor, and if he ever returns to my lands, my rangers will shoot him on sight. He can’t go back to Redbow Manor as a failure, so maybe he’ll take up an honest profession, like banditry.”
“Maybe they’ll call him the one-eared bandit.”
“He’ll probably shoot better with his ear gone anyway. He had really big ears.”
Drake couldn’t help but laugh, no matter how horrible it felt to laugh about a man getting his ear chopped off before he was exiled. This world was so rough and cruel that it felt wrong not to laugh. As Sky said, laughing made the darkness bearable.
“What is with House Redbow and assassinating people?” Drake asked.
“It’s the whole point of their manor. Assassins for hire. You may not know this since you’re so new here, but if you’re not born with a rarity in our realm, you don’t have a lot of options. There’s also competition for those you do have. Therefore, many without rarities, or those with weak rarities, are often forced to find work as laborers or sellswords.”
“You mean mercenaries.” Drake still wondered how many of Captain Ro’s soldiers had actually had a rarity. None had used a rarity to fight back as he tore them apart. It seemed like being without a rarity in this world was even worse than being a peasant.
“Assassins like the man who tried to kill me today are cheap and plentiful. If they fail, Lord Redbow loses nothing, and if they succeed, he claims a huge boon. Though it may sound odd, I’m often worried if some random Redbow assassin doesn’t try to kill me once a week. That suggests they may be plotting something they believe might work.”
“Did anyone try to kill you the week you lost Rodney?”
“They did not,” Sky said.
And that week she’d lost her steward. “So the other manors just let that go on without challenging them?”
She smiled once more. “Guess what manors never seem to be attacked.”
Drake groaned. “Proudglade, Mistvale, Frostlight, and Brightwater.”
“Correct. Also, Ashwind.”
“Why does Ashwind get a free pass? Don’t the big four want to take them over?”
“Their manor is built right into the earth, and the weather on the ash plains is brutal. The only way inside is a single buried door, and the whole manor is surrounded by molten lava. They have a similar number of thralls as you, but would just keep to themselves if allowed.”
“I learn such interesting things from our little chats.”
“So who tried to assassinate you today?”
“Would you believe it was our dear, departed Lord Gloomwood?”
She chuckled. “Your luck is remarkable. You really tried to assassinate yourself?”
“By your world’s standards. It was four professional assassins armed with crossbows which they smuggled in here, literally, on a silver platter. On the way to me they also murdered five of my people, and also did a serious number on two of my battle maids.”
Sky’s grin immediately vanished. “I’m so sorry, Clint.” All trace of mirth drained from her features. “That’s the part I can never laugh about.”
“Losing people?”
She nodded, face solemn as her blue eyes held his.
“Yeah.” Drake looked away. He couldn’t quite bring himself to lock eyes with her right now. “So... can I ask you something personal? About your job?”
“You can ask. I may not answer.”
“It bothers me that they died.” Drake stared at the dark wooden surface of his desk. “But... it doesn’t bother me, bother me. You know? Like, I wish they hadn’t died, and I’m angry that they died, but... I’m not sobbing. I probably won’t even bother me tomorrow.”
“How well did you know them?”
Drake met her gaze and found only curiosity and sympathy. No judgment.
“Not at all. And I feel like I should have known them, but there’s so many people here. I’ve basically had three days in the past few weeks where I wasn’t either being hunted or almost dying in some horrific way. Does that make me a bad person?”
“I can’t say that definitively.” Sky shrugged. “I still don’t know you well enough, and everyone deals with loss differently. What I can say is it always hurts more to lose people you know than those you’ve never met. That’s normal. I know from experience.”
Drake nodded, fascinated with how the dim light in her room played across her hair.
“So I don’t believe the fact that you aren’t sobbing in a ball in your room means that you do not care about your thralls. You’re certainly leagues better than the man who preceded you. No other lord has done what you have done to protect them... other than me, I suppose.”
“So the former lord hired assassins to murder me if he failed to murder me.”
“Despicable. Pure spite.” Sky frowned. “Though I respect his tenacity.”
“He also set up a plot that, if it had succeeded, would have led to every blood thrall in my manor murdering each other. He set his own manor up to self-destruct if he died.”
Sky was very quiet for a moment. “I wouldn’t spread that around.”
“Unforgivable crime?”
“Not unforgivable by the standards of the noble court, but by others. An incident like that can make it very difficult to recruit new blood thralls in the future other than by force.”
Drake winced as he realized how badly he could screw himself over simply by telling Sky about his day. “Shit.” He didn’t want to have to torture people into joining his manor.
“I trust you’d never do that,” Sky added quickly. As she peered into the mirror, it felt like she was staring right into his eyes. “You already know that we agree about the need to end our blood pacts, but... can I confide something else?”
“Since I’ve just stepped on a rake, please. Join me.”
“Holding each new lord accountable for the crimes of the old lord has always baffled me. In practice, I imagine it was intended to ensure no lord took action without considering the consequences to their manor in the long term, but when so many lords are focused only on their short-term benefit, it causes more trouble than it solves.”
“I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way.”
“And I am glad I am not the only one who realized we need to alter our blood pacts if we ever want our people to be safe from those who would compel them into harm.” Sky smiled warmly. “I can’t fully express how wonderful it is to know someone else agrees with me.”
“And you’ve never suggested this new approach to the other manor lords?”
“I’ve danced around it. Asking questions, pointing out weaknesses, speculating as to how abuse of thralls could have been avoided. The response was always the same.”
“Which was?”
“As a manor lord, I am still young and inexperienced, without a veteran’s perspective on the realm. The word ‘blasphemous’ has also been bandied about.”
“So how’s this, Sky? Once we tilt the table in our favor, we find a way to make sure every remaining manor lord changes their blood pacts to be like ours. We free everyone.”
“Your goal of ending blood pacts is an ambitious one, Lord Gloomwood. It is also a goal we share.”
She was pretty. He was keenly aware of just how pretty she was right now. He also suspected, from the slight touch of color in her cheeks, that she wasn’t all that revolted by the man she saw in her mirror. That held possibilities... if he truly couldn’t go home.
“I need to go,” Sky said. “Check back every night after dark. I’ll call if I have news.”
“And if I don’t answer, just call back the next night. You never know what I might have going on after dinner. I think I’m due for two more assassination attempts this week.”
“I wish you luck. And Clint?”
Again, he longed to tell her his real name. He also knew just how reckless and stupid that would be, given it would destroy his one big advantage: to lie. His life and his people were both too important to risk on a brief infatuation, no matter how fun it might be.
“I like that I can talk to you like this,” Sky said. “As a fellow manor lord. Even if you’re still learning, I am too. So let’s keep doing this even after we win, all right?”
“I’d like that.”
“Now, good night.”
“Night, Sky.”
Her image vanished from the mirror before he could see if she’d caught his joke.
Drake held the mirror over the first letter like it was a big cell phone. “How’s this?” The mirror was about as heavy as a cell phone. He wasn’t looking forward to holding it this way.
“Could you move closer, lord?” Lucien asked.
Drake adjusted the mirror.
“Too close. I can’t see... oh, that’s good. Yes, hold it right there, lord.”
Drake did his best.
“Please stop wiggling,” Lucien said.
“I’m not wiggling.”
“Perhaps it is the wind? No, no wind in a manor. There. Hold that.”
Drake measured his patience.
“Wonderful, Lord Gloomwood. Now, if you would, a slow slide. Left to right.”
Drake continued to obey Lucien’s instructions as the man viewed and copied every page of every letter, one after another. By the time they were halfway through copying the letters, his arm was aching. He powered on. Zuri had endured bone-breaking agony today, and she’d been up and ready to talk again in a few minutes. He wasn’t about to do any less.
Finally, they finished copying the final letter. Drake set down the mirror in relief. His arm was trembling from holding the mirror steady, and his forearm muscles ached. Maybe he could have Nicole run her magic glove over it after this was done. That would help.
“Excellent work, Lord Gloomwood,” Lucien said. “I can already sense a pattern here. That is a good sign, as it means I will likely be able to translate these letters.”
“How long?”
“Oh, it could be a day. Or it could be a week. One never knows.”
Drake figured that was the best he would get for now. “Best to get to it then.”
“Of course, lord. And thank you!”
Sky’s amused voice followed. “You can go now.”
“At once, Lord Skybreak! I will send a missive as soon as I have something!”
Silence followed. Just when Drake was certain she’d hung up, Sky spoke.
“Still there?”
He picked up the mirror again and pointed it at his face. “Still here.” So she still wanted to talk more? He wanted to talk more.
“Now that we can speak privately,” Sky said, “I have one more piece of news. Someone tried to murder me today.”
Drake smiled with relief. “No shit, you too?”
She frowned. “Someone tried to murder you today?”
“Someone tries to murder me practically every day. I thought I was the only one who had to deal with that crap, so I’m glad to hear I’m not.”
“You’re glad to hear someone almost murdered me today?”
Drake grimaced. “That’s not—”
Her sudden and sincere laughter caught him off guard. “You’re fun.”
Drake narrowed his eyes at her. “Am I?”
She smiled wryly. “Laughing about these events is the only way I can get through my day without turning endlessly morbid. It makes the darkness bearable. Every day alive is a gift.”
“I suppose it is,” Drake agreed. “So who tried to murder you today?”
“A less than competent assassin. An archer took up position atop a building in sight of where I often give speeches to my rangers.”
“You give regular speeches to your rangers?”
“Now more than ever. With Rodney gone, they need to see me out there in the thick of it, not hiding away in my manor. That’s how my mother led, and that’s how I lead too. It’s why my people remain loyal with the... what we discussed.”
“But then there’s all these constant arrows from assassins.”
“I don’t worry about those.” Sky maintained her grin. “My rangers even allowed him to draw his bow before they took him down. He had an amusing story.”
Drake leaned forward in sudden hope. “You captured him alive?”
“As I said, he was a less than competent assassin. After a short interrogation, he revealed he was hired by the first son of House Redbow. I doubt they expected him to succeed. My spies suggested he’d recently displeased the very man who hired him.”
“So this Redbow son sent this guy on a suicide mission?”
“If you mean they intended him to fail and die, then yes, most likely. He seemed genuinely surprised he failed. His assassination attempt was so clumsy I couldn’t even bear to cut his hands off. I settled for taking an ear instead. Anything less would encourage others.”
Drake nodded. He couldn’t fault Sky’s punishment. If anything, given that man had intended to murder her, she’d been almost obscenely merciful. “So is he in prison?”
“We don’t have the resources to house and feed prisoners. I exiled him from my manor, and if he ever returns to my lands, my rangers will shoot him on sight. He can’t go back to Redbow Manor as a failure, so maybe he’ll take up an honest profession, like banditry.”
“Maybe they’ll call him the one-eared bandit.”
“He’ll probably shoot better with his ear gone anyway. He had really big ears.”
Drake couldn’t help but laugh, no matter how horrible it felt to laugh about a man getting his ear chopped off before he was exiled. This world was so rough and cruel that it felt wrong not to laugh. As Sky said, laughing made the darkness bearable.
“What is with House Redbow and assassinating people?” Drake asked.
“It’s the whole point of their manor. Assassins for hire. You may not know this since you’re so new here, but if you’re not born with a rarity in our realm, you don’t have a lot of options. There’s also competition for those you do have. Therefore, many without rarities, or those with weak rarities, are often forced to find work as laborers or sellswords.”
“You mean mercenaries.” Drake still wondered how many of Captain Ro’s soldiers had actually had a rarity. None had used a rarity to fight back as he tore them apart. It seemed like being without a rarity in this world was even worse than being a peasant.
“Assassins like the man who tried to kill me today are cheap and plentiful. If they fail, Lord Redbow loses nothing, and if they succeed, he claims a huge boon. Though it may sound odd, I’m often worried if some random Redbow assassin doesn’t try to kill me once a week. That suggests they may be plotting something they believe might work.”
“Did anyone try to kill you the week you lost Rodney?”
“They did not,” Sky said.
And that week she’d lost her steward. “So the other manors just let that go on without challenging them?”
She smiled once more. “Guess what manors never seem to be attacked.”
Drake groaned. “Proudglade, Mistvale, Frostlight, and Brightwater.”
“Correct. Also, Ashwind.”
“Why does Ashwind get a free pass? Don’t the big four want to take them over?”
“Their manor is built right into the earth, and the weather on the ash plains is brutal. The only way inside is a single buried door, and the whole manor is surrounded by molten lava. They have a similar number of thralls as you, but would just keep to themselves if allowed.”
“I learn such interesting things from our little chats.”
“So who tried to assassinate you today?”
“Would you believe it was our dear, departed Lord Gloomwood?”
She chuckled. “Your luck is remarkable. You really tried to assassinate yourself?”
“By your world’s standards. It was four professional assassins armed with crossbows which they smuggled in here, literally, on a silver platter. On the way to me they also murdered five of my people, and also did a serious number on two of my battle maids.”
Sky’s grin immediately vanished. “I’m so sorry, Clint.” All trace of mirth drained from her features. “That’s the part I can never laugh about.”
“Losing people?”
She nodded, face solemn as her blue eyes held his.
“Yeah.” Drake looked away. He couldn’t quite bring himself to lock eyes with her right now. “So... can I ask you something personal? About your job?”
“You can ask. I may not answer.”
“It bothers me that they died.” Drake stared at the dark wooden surface of his desk. “But... it doesn’t bother me, bother me. You know? Like, I wish they hadn’t died, and I’m angry that they died, but... I’m not sobbing. I probably won’t even bother me tomorrow.”
“How well did you know them?”
Drake met her gaze and found only curiosity and sympathy. No judgment.
“Not at all. And I feel like I should have known them, but there’s so many people here. I’ve basically had three days in the past few weeks where I wasn’t either being hunted or almost dying in some horrific way. Does that make me a bad person?”
“I can’t say that definitively.” Sky shrugged. “I still don’t know you well enough, and everyone deals with loss differently. What I can say is it always hurts more to lose people you know than those you’ve never met. That’s normal. I know from experience.”
Drake nodded, fascinated with how the dim light in her room played across her hair.
“So I don’t believe the fact that you aren’t sobbing in a ball in your room means that you do not care about your thralls. You’re certainly leagues better than the man who preceded you. No other lord has done what you have done to protect them... other than me, I suppose.”
“So the former lord hired assassins to murder me if he failed to murder me.”
“Despicable. Pure spite.” Sky frowned. “Though I respect his tenacity.”
“He also set up a plot that, if it had succeeded, would have led to every blood thrall in my manor murdering each other. He set his own manor up to self-destruct if he died.”
Sky was very quiet for a moment. “I wouldn’t spread that around.”
“Unforgivable crime?”
“Not unforgivable by the standards of the noble court, but by others. An incident like that can make it very difficult to recruit new blood thralls in the future other than by force.”
Drake winced as he realized how badly he could screw himself over simply by telling Sky about his day. “Shit.” He didn’t want to have to torture people into joining his manor.
“I trust you’d never do that,” Sky added quickly. As she peered into the mirror, it felt like she was staring right into his eyes. “You already know that we agree about the need to end our blood pacts, but... can I confide something else?”
“Since I’ve just stepped on a rake, please. Join me.”
“Holding each new lord accountable for the crimes of the old lord has always baffled me. In practice, I imagine it was intended to ensure no lord took action without considering the consequences to their manor in the long term, but when so many lords are focused only on their short-term benefit, it causes more trouble than it solves.”
“I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way.”
“And I am glad I am not the only one who realized we need to alter our blood pacts if we ever want our people to be safe from those who would compel them into harm.” Sky smiled warmly. “I can’t fully express how wonderful it is to know someone else agrees with me.”
“And you’ve never suggested this new approach to the other manor lords?”
“I’ve danced around it. Asking questions, pointing out weaknesses, speculating as to how abuse of thralls could have been avoided. The response was always the same.”
“Which was?”
“As a manor lord, I am still young and inexperienced, without a veteran’s perspective on the realm. The word ‘blasphemous’ has also been bandied about.”
“So how’s this, Sky? Once we tilt the table in our favor, we find a way to make sure every remaining manor lord changes their blood pacts to be like ours. We free everyone.”
“Your goal of ending blood pacts is an ambitious one, Lord Gloomwood. It is also a goal we share.”
She was pretty. He was keenly aware of just how pretty she was right now. He also suspected, from the slight touch of color in her cheeks, that she wasn’t all that revolted by the man she saw in her mirror. That held possibilities... if he truly couldn’t go home.
“I need to go,” Sky said. “Check back every night after dark. I’ll call if I have news.”
“And if I don’t answer, just call back the next night. You never know what I might have going on after dinner. I think I’m due for two more assassination attempts this week.”
“I wish you luck. And Clint?”
Again, he longed to tell her his real name. He also knew just how reckless and stupid that would be, given it would destroy his one big advantage: to lie. His life and his people were both too important to risk on a brief infatuation, no matter how fun it might be.
“I like that I can talk to you like this,” Sky said. “As a fellow manor lord. Even if you’re still learning, I am too. So let’s keep doing this even after we win, all right?”
“I’d like that.”
“Now, good night.”
“Night, Sky.”
Her image vanished from the mirror before he could see if she’d caught his joke.
