When Ears finally made his way down, after one of those men that were present went to get him, he ordered everyone other than Lux and Tercius out.

His uncle lowered his hood, on his face one of those rare smiles of his, and the two men shook hands.

"Three years! Three years without a word and now you show up at my doorstep." the stout man said.

"You know how it is, work calls, and I answer. Besides, some of us have a family to attend to. But I am glad to see you are still alive and kicking."

"As am I, old friend. And who is this?" the man said and turned towards Tercius.

"Solen, this is my nephew Tercius. His name within the organization is now Pinky. Tercius you can lose the hood." his uncle made the introduction.

He did as instructed and removed the hood. "Pleasure." he nodded towards the bald man.

What? I thought Pinky was a joke, I don’t want that to be my code name… And what organization is he talking about? he wondered inwardly.

"You boy are lucky you did not inherit his ugly mug." the man said with a small smile that showed yellowed teeth.

"Solen, I need for what I ask you next to stay between us." his uncle said.

"Of course, and for you, I will even waive the silence fee." the bald man said.

"I need to know about a woman named Valeria, originally from here, who went missing some 13 cycles ago." his uncle said.

Solen whistled sharply and a moment later four men came through the door looking menacing with their weapons drawn. Tercius looked at his uncle and the man just sat there calmly, seeming not worried about the situation.

"Twisted Nose, bring the book of the missing and wanted for the previous decade here," Solen instructed and one of the men whose nose was perfectly fine went back and after a few minutes where Solen and his uncle kept exchanging pleasantries and old stories, Twisted Nose came back bearing the thickest book Tercius ever saw.

If they open that book in the middle and place it like a tent, maybe even I could squeeze through. he thought.

The man placed it on the table, making it groan under the weight, and Solen opened it, shuffling the leaves with great speed, but they still had to wait for half an hour before the man found something.

"There are two women of that name in here, one missing and one wanted. The one you are searching for is wanted. Here, it says: "Valeria, daughter of Manius, a stonemason and Portia, escaped after injuring Nas il’Bul, his family placed a bounty on her head at 400 tetras. The last place of notice was at the docks in Spheros, presumed to have boarded an unknown vessel and fled north. Black of hair, light brown of skin, green of eyes, has a scar under an ear." the man read it, his finger following along the small compact writing. Tercius held his breath as he heard the last part. This man was describing his mother.

No, it must have been a mistake or an accident of some kind. Mother wound never… he thought.

"The woman is now my sister-in-law, this is her boy." his uncle said calmly, shattering his thoughts.

The other man chuckled. "Then I pity the poor fool and his family, but do be careful, this family has some pull with the new governor here…" the man gave a friendly warning.

"When am I not careful?" his uncle boasted with a predatory smile written all over his face.

I can think of one time. Tercius thought, trying to keep his mind in the present, there would be time for a talk once they left here.

His uncle owed him some answers.

"Do you know where I can find the man in question?" his uncle asked.

The man gave another sharp whistle and another group came in the same way as the previous, taking the book before them, and at Solen’s order bringing another, this one by the name of "Alive nobles of Spheros".

"… ah here he is, let's see, they have a large estate with a manor in the countryside, a house in the Upper District. He was known to frequent a restaurant and a few brothels, but that stopped abruptly around 13 cycles ago, then resumed a year after. That was probably the injury. They are also rumored to have a mage in the family, but that was not verified. The man has black hair, brown eyes, of average height at around 1.75m. Here look at some of the names." the man shifted the book over to Lux who took a moment on each then nodded.

"Is 500 tretas enough?" his uncle asked the bald man, tossing a small leather pouch on the table, the jiggling sound loudly echoing.

"It's too much, I told you you don’t need to pay for the silence." the man said, but still pocketed the pouch with a smile on his face.

"That’s that then. Thank you for this Solen, and stay out of trouble. Till next we meet." his uncle said and got up, Tercius following along.

"Till next we meet, old friend," Solen said.

The men that circled the building let them through and he and his uncle slipped by under their watchful gazes. His uncle kept changing directions around the houses, every few minutes they went into a crowd, then made their exit at another point. It was almost noon when his uncle took a seat on a bench at the Temple Promenade, and by this point, Tercius was burning with questions.

"Will you tell me now?" he asked his uncle.

"…Septimus told me about how he came to meet your mother. I don’t know how much you know, but your father was once in the Army, then he… well he got out, and like I said to you it did not go well with the family. Our cousins mocked him, hells even a few of our brothers did, our father was refusing to even talk to him. Then mother suggested he leaves the Capital for some time, see the world, give things some time to mellow out. He left home as a 15 cycles old and traveled all over, until some 13 cycles ago in Spheros he went missing. Now I did find him, but it took me over a year to do it." his uncle told the story slowly, pausing when people went near. "I saw him with your mother and saw that this… spark that he had before came back, so I let him have his 5 minutes of happiness. Back home I told everyone that he was still missing. Then the next time I came back to get him, I saw that he married and had a baby, and the idiot took the land that they practically give out for free, and it was then that I had my first suspicions that he had no intention of ever going back."

"And about mother and this Nas character?"

"Well, they told me how they met in Spheros and why they ran away in the first place. Your mother is a beautiful woman, you know. She started to attract certain attention and this man tried to… have his way with her. She defended herself and… cut off the… you know." Lux said pointing between the legs.

"Oh."

"They met while she was fleeing and he… helped her I guess. That was just the kind of thing your father would do. He did not go into all the details of their escape." Lux said. "But you see, when you lose a… limb, it's difficult for most healers to do anything about it. Most can just push back what is there and make it reattach itself. This Nas issued compensation for your mother's head and now if she were to come across someone who recognized her… well let us just say that I was surprised that she opened her store and worked there. Although the chance is quite small, you heard that they thought that she went north, it is still too big a risk if you ask me. When we left Septimus asked me to take care of it. He probably wanted me to do it alone, but I think it's time for you to see how the world works."

"So what now?" Tercius asked while his brain buzzed with all that he just heard.

"Now we take our pound of flesh."

***

"Uncle I am not sure that Pinky is a good code name for me. How about The Giant, or… The Rock. That has a nice ring to it. Pinky? Meh." Tercius said that night as the men prepared themselves in their room at the inn.

Tercius had just recreated the cradle for the nameless little river lioness and gave her so many greens she passed out without going through it all.

"Tough luck, do you think I wanted mine to be Three-Fingered Hand?" his uncle shot back as he pulled a few items from his large backpack. "Of course not. But the one who brings you to the organization can also name you."

"And you just had to pick that one?"

"Like I said, tough luck. It just came to mind at that moment."

"And what is this organization anyway?" Tercius asked.

"Just an informal intelligence group who gather titbits here and there then sell that information to their members for either gold or intel. Don’t worry about it, now that Solen knows about you he will spread the word that Pinky is now a member."

"And if by some dumb luck someone else got the same name in the same time?"

"Then you usually get a number added after the name."

Oh great, just as I thought it could not get any better. he groaned internally. With his luck, he could just imagine that somehow he would end up being Pinky2. Why does Pinky now sound so appealing?

"And do you trust that man to keep quiet uncle? Couldn’t you get a contract to… you know, make him unable to talk about it?"

"The contract is only used in extreme cases. And you can’t just place an infinite number of them on someone, four is the most ever recorded where the bearer survived."

"Father?" Tercius asked suddenly concerned.

"From one, there is only an occasional pain, very few side effects."

Tercius kept thinking about everything that happened and everything he found out, and even though he wanted to free his mother from the invisible noose that hung around her neck, he worried about what it would take to do it.

A part of him yelled that he was selfish for thinking about himself in a situation like this, for not putting his mother above his selfish need to not dirty his hands, and yet another told him that it would be wrong to just straight-up murder someone.

"Uncle I know that he deserves it, but are we really going to just kill him?" he asked slowly, his gaze bowed down, staring at the floor.

"What? What in all the blazing hells do you mean boy? These are not some nameless peasants that you can just kill. No, we won’t kill him, we will play a little game with him and his family." his uncle said as cool as a cucumber. "And watch what you are saying Tercius. You never know who might be listening."

Tercius wanted to point out that it was not alright to kill anyone, but then he remembered that he talked to someone who was in the Army, and probably saw so much carnage that he slowly grew numb to it, or just ignored it.

But then it bothered him that it would be alright to kill the "peasants" but not the pompous ass that tried to rape a girl.

And then he just felt relieved that there would not be any killing involved.

He released a breath he was holding and in doing so felt lighter.

"What do you need me to do?"

***

Two cloaked figures moved in the shadows, all the while avoiding the patrolling guards and all the areas that had even a little light. These two figures kept circling a particular house within the Upper District of the port city of Spheros with the residents inside being none the wiser.

It took them some time but they found a way in.

The smaller of the two approached the stone wall from the north side and by inserting his fingers inside the wall, took out stone brick after stone brick until he made a hole some half a meter in width and height. Then both figures crawled in, keeping close to the ground, while the high flower bushes and small shrubbery provided ample cover on their way from the wall to the house.

From time to time, the eyes of the smaller figure would flash with light and they would either change the way they went or continue on. They had to cross some 300 meters of terrain to get to the house.

The larger figure covered the smaller one with its cloak and then seemed to shimmer, the previously barely visible figures now blended into the surroundings, they moved to the east side of the house where the smaller figure found a stone part of the wall that was covered with high plants, where the previous scene repeated in the same way.

Once inside, the smaller figure's eyes flashed once more and he pointed to the other figure with his finger. Following the direction of the smaller figure, they went from room to room, bed by bed, and waved a small metal vial under the noses of everyone who slept. There was one who woke up just as they waved the vial, but he fell back into blissful ignorance the next moment without seeing anything.

Most of the guards were outside, and the three found inside were easily dispatched at an opportune moment, when their attention was occupied by something else. A small wave under the nose and every single one fell like a puppet with cut strings.

Finished with the small rooms both in the basement and the ground floor, they went up the large staircase, from hallway to hallway, from door to door, placing the same vial under every nose then tying up the residents of the second floor.

Only one door remained and this door was the one the smaller figure seemed to have the most apprehension about.

Waving the larger figure over he whispered. "There is someone awake inside, from what I saw probably writing."

"That’s such a useful skill to have." the larger figure said wistfully. "You will have to tell me how you got it. You stay here and keep watch, I will enter alone."

The larger figure turned and went for to the door, opening it normally as if it was his house.

"Berra, I told you not… who are you?" he heard a woman’s voice say that then some muffled sounds followed, with papers flying and something heavy hitting the floor, then stillness settled once again.

"Come inside," said Lux, his hood pulled back.

Tercius took his hood off and went in. He saw a woman of middle age that worried him so. Her Mana color was even darker than his uncles or his grandfathers and it existed all over her body in larger quantity, so he felt wary of what she was capable of. Solen did mention a possible mage, and Tercius could bet that it was this woman.

He glanced at his uncle, the man sifting through papers so calmly as if this was a market day where everyone just went to get some fresh eggs and fish.

"We have a few hours until they wake up, so let us hurry." his uncle pointed at the other pile of ledgers. "We may gain an advantage if we learn something juicy, get to it."

So the uncle and nephew busied themselves as the hour grew late and everyone inside the house slept so deeply, an explosion 2 meters away would have trouble waking them.

At one point Tercius noticed the woman was stirring and his uncle once more used the little vial to keep her under.

They found three men inside, one likely in his seventies, one around fifties, and one who was probably in his middle twenties. From the description that Solen gave them the culprit was the one in his fifties, but before the confrontation, they searched for one more angle of attack.

They went through records, safes, every possible stash his uncle and he thought of.

"Aha!" Tercius said as he extended the small ledger he found mixed between the pristine-looking books on the shelf. "Uncle have a look at this."

"That will do." his uncle said as he read just the first page. "Let us wake these gentlefolk."

Tercius brought seven chairs and aligned them in a semicircle while his uncle placed the comatose dolls, one at a time. When he tied each, he took out another small vial and made the woman that they found awake drink it.

"It leaves her sluggish, she won’t be able to use her magic." his uncle explained.

"How?"

"From what I know the mages use two skills to cast any number of spells, but they need to focus to do it. This little thing," he raised the metallic vial he just poured, shaking it left and right. ", takes away their ability to do it. Don’t ask me how, I am not a brewer myself."

"You remember your role?" his uncle asked.

"For the last time, yes. Wait. Something came to my mind, I need a moment to get something." Tercius said and sped away, returning with another chair, then leaving once again only to come back with a metal tray on which a cup with a small plate and a steaming pot found their place.

"What’s that for?" his uncle asked.

"For the act. Just pour it once I extend the cup," he said as he saw his uncle giving him an inquisitive look then understanding dawned on him.

"Oh, I see," Lux said. "Let’s wake them then."

Tercius adjusted his cloak to cover him but leaving the head revealed, as he sat in front of the sleeping family. His uncle took another vial and made a quick sweep under their noses, then came and stood behind him, trying to be as intimidating as possible. A thing that came easily to Lux, the man had a talent for it.

And as he saw around half of the semicircle coming to their senses, he gestured to his uncle to the tray and the man did it perfectly. He put the cup on the small plate with a crisp sound, then poured the hot tea into it, extending the result towards Tercius with a small bow from his waist.

Tercius was impressed, this image came so naturally to his uncle, one would say he did it a thousand times already.

He looked at the wide eyes across from him, saying nothing, and as he drank his tea the silence stretched.

"Who are you people?!" first snapped the man that they came here for, and Tercius had to suppress a smile, for he knew what was coming.

"What do you want?!"

Lux calmly walked across the room and struck the man across the face, the sound echoing, and leaving a rapidly reddening handprint across his cheek. The rest of the family watched in silence, only a few sucked breaths were heard as the slap hit.

"You will be silent until the young master has a question for you." his uncle said in an even voice and walked back to stand behind him.

Tercius pretended to be unconcerned about it, just drinking his tea, one sip at a time.

"Thank you Boreas, I needed that. The nights this far south get so chilly," he said with a long exhale as he finished the brew.

"My pleasure young master," Lux said as he took the cup and plate away, always bowing toward Tercius.

"Now let us get to the reason why we are here," Tercius said, letting his voice carry a tinge of anger he felt for the man.

Then he turned his head right at Nas il’Bul.