War makes monsters of men, you once told me.

Well, so does too much knowledge. Too much knowledge of your fellow man, too much knowledge of their weakness, their pathetic greed and vanity, and how laughably easy it is to control them.

MERCY WAS NOT FEELING WELL.

She didn’t have a fever, stomachache, or any of the sort - rather, she thought, an ear-splitting migraine that won't go away any time soon. A migraine that was inversely proportional to the amount of sleep she had gotten last night.

“Driven mad with worry,” was now a metaphor she could relate to.

Where was she?

It was a question that was answered by Anaxeres the Duke, yes; but it was a whirring cog, hammering teeth and all - there was a mechanical certainty in the fact that she asked herself that. It was a spinning of the wheel of every question, a wheel that led back to one result:

Where was she?

Where was Seraphina Queenscage?

The Romanus Estate.

Why was she there?

(The answer was I don’t know, so it didn’t count as a question, not really.)

What is she doing now?

(Also not a question.)

Where is she?

The look on Xandros’ face when she’d told him—she sometimes forgot she was his junior in age—was as if Mercy had said the sky was falling.

Her Highness is gone.

When he’d recovered from his shock and formed the syllables - gone where? - Anaxeres had strolled by and provided the answer.

The Romanus Estate, of course. Where else would she be?

Here, Mercy wanted to reply.

She’s supposed to be here.

Xandros was sitting beside her, legs swinging over a box that sat in a corner of the squat flat, dark hair resembling brown in the sunlight. His suspicious, contorted glare of a face had changed as they’d stayed together—less suspicious and more bland, in the city; less bland and more animated while travelling; and less animated and more energetic in recent days. It was almost a miraculous transformation, in the folding of his face—but the tension in his shoulders had never loosened, not even once.

A Gordian knot.

“Well,” he remarked as she went over, “you look like shit.”

She didn’t mince her words.

“And feel like it, too,” she responded dryly.

He scooted over without being prompted, and the assassin slipped into the empty space silently.

Xandros was silent. “Is she—?”

“Still gone.”

“Right. Are we going to rescue her?”

Mercy shrugged. “Do you want to?”

The other shifted uneasily. “I mean, aren’t they going to, you know, torture her something?” There was bite, and it was meant with hostility, but it fell apart.

“She hasn’t ordered me to rescue her.”

It was a bad answer, Mercy knew.

Alexandros looked her in the eye. “Did the people in the Lower Quarter seriously let you get away with this bullshit?”

It stung even though it wasn’t supposed to.

“Whoever has the better knife gets away with anything,” Xanthe retorted back, irritated. “Aren’t you supposed to know that, Guard initiate?” Even in her darkest times, she had never even thought about joining the Guard—just thinking about those corrupt debt collectors made her taste something sour.

Alexandros’ face darkened, and the silence itself soured.

“What were you doing?” he finally asked. “Before she picked you up?”

How did she pick you up, was the unspoken question.

Xanthe shrugged. “My brother was a friend of hers,” she said, evading it but not quite. “She searched for me after he died.”

There were no condolences offered as the other raised an eyebrow. “Out of responsibility?”

The assassin snorted. “What do you think?”

In fact, she didn’t know. It wasn’t out of pity, that was for sure. Guilt had been a very strong option—and still was, in fact. But the fact that Seraphina had turned down Xanthe’s Oath—had it been a decision made out of emotion or rationale? It had been a long time since Xanthe had decided to stop asking questions—even though the three (now four) Daycycles she’d been with Seraphina hadn’t been a very long time—but they were still there.

“I don’t know,” replied Alexandros with a shrug. “I don’t know anything about Boss. But you do.”

Yes.

Mercy did.

She’d never separated from the Princess in the...one hundred twenty? Approximately? Yes, one hundred and twenty days they’d been together. They even slept under the same roof, in a slightly less creepy connotation. Sometimes Xanthe even had to ask the maids—at their discretion, of course—to move a small cot in the corner of the Princess’ room when the assassin had a particularly bad feeling, and Seraphina hadn’t even batted an eye.

The Princess had just asked whether Xanthe was going to take her dinner together in the room, and whether she wanted to play Crown.

A friend? A companion? A very scary employer?

Xanthe always had a multitude of questions when it came to the Princess Seraphina.

None of them were answered.

“I don’t,” she responded, finally. “No one knows her.” Not even herself, sometimes.

It wasn’t unpredictability, it was volatility. You had to have at least some sort of shield in order to interact with her and make it out in one piece. That was just the sort of person she was: Seraphina didn’t bring destruction, she made you get destroyed yourself. Mercy doubted she even realized it.

The Princess was a collection of turbulent winds: sure, it was your choice to captain a ship alone and try to make it alive to the eye of the storm.

And that was where they were, Xanthe had realized.

If you were by her side, you moved with her. You wouldn’t get hurt. Xanthe sometimes doubted the position of Seraphina’s siblings in the storm—they weren’t her companions or her subordinates, but never once had Seraphina considered fighting against them—at least, politically. They all were separate entities—planets, coexisting within each other’s orbits; hurricanes that existed on the same plane.

And two of the hurricanes were gone.

“Do you think she feels sad?” Alexandros asked. “Right now, I mean. I’ve never seen her sad, not really—crying and being sad aren’t the same thing.”

Mercy raised her eyebrows.

“You don’t see it?”

Her eyes flickered from Xandros to the window, where curtains obscured a sunset.

“She’s always sad. And angry—it’s not that she doesn’t feel emotion, it’s just that she expresses it differently.” The assassin examined the ridges of the Republica buildings—in the Eternal City, Boreas, Notus, Zephyr, and even Azareth the sunset looked the same. Irritatingly bright. “Why else would she fight?” Mercy asked the boy beside her. “Why do you think she fights?”

Xandros shrugged. “To survive?”

“She doesn’t need to fight to survive,” the other corrected. “She already did, once. Now she’s fighting to live. With herself, with the world—whichever.”

“‘Those who search for an end will find one,’” quoted the orphan. Not understanding, but a sudden furrow wormed its way into Alexandros’ dark brows. “Captain said that.”

Lionel Moreau.

“Why doesn’t she want an end?” questioned the other orphan. “Why isn’t she searching for one?”

To be Seraphina Queenscage was a wretched existence—the longer time you spent with her, the more you would know.

“Does she think she doesn’t deserve one?” Alexandros said.

Mercy shrugged. “Maybe, deep down.” She looked back at the boy. “But the point is, she wants to make a better future for the people she’s seen. People like us. Maybe she won’t admit it, maybe she hasn’t realized it yet, but she’s already doing it. Look at us—look at us, Nameless.”

Seraphina had made Xanthe into an adopted daughter of a barony. If Xanthe’s “parents” died, she’d be a baroness. And they seemed decent enough for people who’d been bribed into it: maybe, when things settled down, Xanthe would get to know them better. Maybe.

It had been an almost rags-to-riches Tale, being the assassin of arguably one of the most powerful people in the Empire. Even if Seraphina was still a seventeen year old girl, Xanthe was all set. She believed in Seraphina, more than she believed in anything else. And sure, maybe the assassin would march up to Anaxeres after this and demand a course of action, but nobody needed to know that. Maybe.

“My brother,” Xanthe said aloud, “was a Chosen.” She remembered glimmering blue eyes and a toothy smile, a boy good with a knife and good with his words—damnably good in an argument and a fight. Caspian cared about his sister—like he’d always done—but they’d fought.

“We fought a lot,” she conceded. “I didn’t believe him when he said that he had no choice but to go to the Cage—Cas wanted to change the Empire. He wanted to rise high and I believed—still do—that he wanted to experience the thrill of the fall just as much.”

Now, there was recognition.

“She killed him,” Alexandros said, the subtext evident.

“In her way, yes. But she loved him,” Xanthe replied. “Liked him, cared about him—the word makes no difference if the meanings are the same.”

The eye of the storm.

“Loving Seraphina Queenscage will make no difference,” Mercy said to the orphan, green eyes overlapping dark ones and faint blues, “but believing in her?”

That changes everything.

Macedon was a free man.

Metaphorically, of course.

He’d spent the first few days drinking his joy away—he’d basically fired all the incomptent employees, hired new ones, and was now possessing quite a sizable source of income. The Emerald Seas was refurbished after the scandal at the investigation, bringing in more customers with money, and catering more to the affluent clients while keeping the old ones. Sometimes Macedon loaned money to the more desperate ones, swooping in with his enforcers when they didn’t pay up, which meant that he had made Seraphina a very, very rich Princess.

Sure, he couldn’t embezzle anymore; but the cut he’d negotiated out of Mercy was worthwhile. He was content, even if the itch in his fingers to erase a zero or two hadn’t subsided. The action itself was easy, but the consequences were not.

But that Oath.

It bound him to Seraphina, practically forever—Macedon knew that the Princess was a...fair leader, if a bit...extreme at times. She wasn’t impartial, nor did she pretend to be, but she wasn’t bad to her subordinates (and that was what they were: all they were). Macedon owed a lot to her, and she knew he knew it.

She’d transformed a lowly con artist into the manager of a large courtesan house, a well-respected Sir of the gentry, and an admittedly wealthy man.

All she’d demanded was his skills and loyalty, and both he’d given.

“You’re slacking.”

Alyssa le Callas with the red hair narrowed her eyes at Macedon as she spoke. The one named Alia Bloodthorn—Seraphina’s official secretary—was next to the redhead, sniffing aristocratically while holding an expensive-looking clipboard.

“What else would you have expected?” the Bloodthorn murmured out of the corner of her mouth.

“I’m not slacking,” Macedon said, offended. “If you’d seen me before the Princess left, you would see nymphs dancing right now.” And it was true: he worked hard, now. He was a reformed—alright, perhaps too extreme of a word—man. He was independent.

The Callas raised her eyebrows. “Then I pity Her Imperial Highness,” responded the lady-in-waiting, “for having a subordinate as fine as you.”

Macedon let the noble have the last word—she was his colleague now, and she was, admittedly, somewhat shrewd under all that sharpness—and looked at Alia. “So, Lady Bloodthorn, what’s first on the secretarial agenda today?”

Alia looked between Alyssa and Macedon, haughtily sniffed again, and then spoke. “There have been no political meetings requested due to Princess Seraphina’s absence, so there will be no envoying today.”

Even though technically Mercy was a noble and Seraphina’s second in almost everything, Alyssa and Alia had been appointed as “envoys” to when people made political demands, Macedon had been told. Alyssa, being a count’s daughter and outranking Alia by a rank, was more fitting (apparently).

“The only instance you had to envoy was when that Cirillo guy decided to randomly seek revenge,” Macedon muttered under his breath.

Damn the Bloodthorn’s ears, she caught that. “Baron Cirillo did not, in fact, randomly decide to seek revenge. I genuinely just explained it to you a Dayhept ago—the capital’s a minefield right now.”

Macedon shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. War’s good for business.”

The more riled up the nobles got, the more they spent their money unwisely. And, well, if they spent their money in the Emerald Seas…

“Politically,” Alia said. “Look, two Princes died recently, and there’s a war going on. The Empress has only been on the throne for what, a Daycycle? Even though she’s got the Cardinals, the administrative duchies, and the Armistice on her side; the counties, the viscounties, and the baronies under the higher-ups are shifting. They’re restless. And with the new rumor…” Alia exchanged looks with Alyssa. “Things aren’t good. It’s understandable—though unwise—for anyone with Imperial connections to pull on them, good or bad.”

Alyssa sighed. “She’s right, Mace. Two Princes have died, and the other two Chosen—in the capital, at least—have only gone out to deal with things that we don’t know about. Rumors are all over the place—like that a Chosen was dispatched to deal with the anti-Imps, and that a new centralized power given Imperial authority over the Armistice has secretly risen. Everyone’s flailing blind.”

Even without the political developments, Macedon would’ve known that.

“A new rumor?” the con artist—sorry, respectable businessman—drummed his fingers on the table. “What is it? If I haven’t heard any major rumors through my grapevine, I sincerely doubt that this is about anything other than politics.”

A silence, whether both of the noblewomen shifted uneasily.

That was new.

And unsettling.

“I’m only going to tell you this because you’re one of the Princess’ men,” Alia began, quietly. “Untrustworthy as you are, and as sincerely as I doubt that you’re here for anyone’s benefit besides your own, you’re what we’ve got.”

Macedon was about to make a joke about how his feelings were hurt, but he stopped, pressing his lips together. Part of making deals was to know how to read the room, and this was turning out to be a very serious room. “Go on.”

Alyssa took over. “Timaios is acting weird.” She looked earnestly concerned. “He’s been meeting with Princess Josephine loads. And this isn’t because I’m jealous—he’s been consulting his papers, calling in favors…and it’s already been days since his father died and he succeeded the title. He’s planning to return to the stage and work with the Imperials—we all can tell, even if he’s shutting us out of his plans.”

The Dragon King, the socialite that had been formerly at the top of the scene before Josephine had slowly ousted him. Macedon had thought that the Drakos Marquessate would’ve been enough to chain him, but you never knew with nobles.

If they wanted something bad enough, they would take it.

Because they thought they had the right, just because they could and wanted to.

The businessman pressed his lips together, tighter.

“And?” Macedon asked. “Don’t make me ask what this spells out. I’m a con artist, not a politician.” (Even though the two words arguably meant the same thing, he wasn’t here to be a cynic.)

Alia tucked her clipboard under her arm.

“Reforms,” said the Bloodthorn, stiffly. “Big ones. We’re not sure if these are exaggerations, but people are saying that these could potentially be the size of the Angelian Reforms after the Skirmish, except used in the war, not after it.”

There was silence.

Macedon’s fingers clenched.

“Pardon me if I’m remembering wrong,” said the businessman, slowly, “but wasn't the aristocracy part of the Angelian Reforms a mass ousting of corruption? As in, tens of noble houses with thousand-year lineages, gone like that?” Macedon didn’t need to snap to accentuate his point, but Alia’s and Alyssa’s faces were grim.

He’d never paid attention in history before, so a No, you’re remembering wrong would definitely—

“You are,” Alia responded reluctantly, “not incorrect.”

“Even though this is following the exaggerations,” Alyssa reminded quickly. “But we don’t know the actual truth…”

The unspoken words lingered: Because we don’t have inside men in the Palace.

Alright, maybe ‘inside man’ was too lax of a description for their esteemed superior the Princess, but the fact remained.

“So the corrupt nobles are jittery because they’re going to get a thorough spring cleaning,” Macedon guessed.

Another silence.

“It’s not as simple as that,” Alia said, this time quieter. Her voice was soft, almost weak this time. “What you call corruption—it’s the core of Imperial society. The aristocracy hoards resources—all of them. We care about lineages, not people: so whenever there’s a weak heir, they train them. Harshly. Or if the heir dies, they give birth to a new one; or go harsher on their sibling. They make political marriages so there’s a scapegoat if something goes wrong—not they, we,” the secretary corrected herself, noticing the wandering of pronouns.

Alia’s sister...was a Chosen, Macedon now remembered. Was it sadness? Frustration? What—

“Corruption,” Alyssa took over again, “is how we got here. It’s how we stay here, because we do anything to stay here, in power. And power fluctuates. Kings die, they get dethroned—Chosen come, Chosen go. And they’re powerful. But nobles have always been here in the Empire: aristocracy as a concept—lineages and families, vassals of the leaders.”

A beat.

“The mere option,” Alyssa continued, “of the aristocracy being carved out being considered...it doesn’t just scare nobles, it terrifies them. You can’t survive as a noble without being willing to do anything to defend what you have—you can’t survive, without being selfish. And when people get selfish…they get corrupt. It’s not just absolute power that corrupts, it’s people being willing to do anything to keep it.”

Macedon blinked.

“So,” he said slowly, “you’re saying that basically every noble is corrupt.”

“Yes,” Alia agreed. “If not them as an individual, then their families.” The clipboard was now in her hands, skittering fingers running along its sides in not ennui, but worry. “The problem,” the Bloodthorn said after a while, “is that we don’t know who the Empire is going to tell the world they’re corrupt. We know that the Empress is going to pick and choose, if the rumor is true, but...which faction will come out on the victorious side? Which one’s holding the knife and which one’s going under it?”

The businessman would’ve thought more of the worry would’ve come from the aftereffects of the Reforms, but…

“You guys are scared,” Macedon said. “Worried...about yourselves. Your family.”

Alyssa snorted. “Why wouldn’t we be?” she said. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about whether I get poor. I give a rat’s ass about whether the Princess is going to get rid of me when I get poor.”

“Language,” Alia absently chided.

The two women with their polished faces and expensive robes—with hands that had never been battered, but were bloodied from the day they were born—sat in silence for a while.

Flailing blind.

And isn’t everyone scared of the dark, just a little?

Alina de Evlogia had tried reason. She had tried bribery, she had tried blackmail, and Tartarus she had even tried poison. But all of them had failed miserably: Arathis had circumvented reason with a monologue about the meaning of life, had looked dramatically offended at even the prospect of bribery, laughed at her attempt at blackmail, and asked Alina whether she wanted to compete against him in a “poison race.”

She’d then been delightfully enlightened on Seraphina and Arathis’ long-standing competition, which had been “unfortunately”—his words, not hers—cancelled due to Nikephoros’ assassination, Greta’s coronation, and the war. Alina had, in fact, not been mildly concerned at the fact that Arathis had tried to lace a teapot with sarawolf, but at the fact that there had been no point.

It hadn’t even been a competency test or anything.

“What, none of us have accidentally killed each other,” Arathis had defended himself. “That’s crossing a line. All of us have survived this far—why would we die now?” And then, as if the Chosen had realized his words, a flicker of emotion—some sort of sentimentality that the cavalier Forsaken had never shown before—appeared in his eyes, before it was gone. He’d smiled then, as if he’d noticed that she’d noticed, and that they were sharing a secret. And he’d winked.

Nikephoros Adamos, you’ve certainly raised some monsters.

Leaking the secrets of the Imperial aristocracy in order to carve out a political faction, like the rumors were saying? What political faction? The Empress had already merged the Cardinals and the other duchies into one messily-motivated Imperial faction until the war ended, and the Armistice rebellion had been very quickly dismantled.

This wasn’t reformation, this was for the war.

The Republic.

Arathis had apparently taken his own form of pity on Alina after the first few rounds of conversation. “When Imperial Father died,” he’d said, “the Republica came, didn’t they? And then they went back, and war was declared because I’d tried something? The public doesn’t really know the specifics—or the nobles aside of the Dukes, I’m assuming. You remember what I’m talking about, right, Aunt Alina?”

He’d tried to shoot the Consul.

Of course Alina remembered.

“Yes,” the Duchess had replied, with none of the dryness she wanted to summon.

Arathis had been lying on the very spot she’d found him the other day—sprawled on a bench, light scattered on his closed eyes. Uncharacteristically serene—until he’d opened his eyes. They were pale, unnaturally so: the Forsaken shade that matched his hair, but intermingling with dark so it wasn’t obvious.

“If I told you I’d orchestrated the entire thing,” had said the Chosen, “you wouldn’t believe me right away, would you?”

A beat, as Alina had tried to wrap her head around it—

“No,” she had felt herself admitting. “I wouldn’t.”

A smile had curled on the Fifth Prince’s lips.

“That’s good,” he had conceded. “Because I didn’t. Orchestrate the entire thing, I mean.” His eyes wandered to the faraway main Palace building, gleaming gold towers and all. “No one really orchestrated the entire thing. Plans aren’t just come up with. You build one, piece by piece—plans like these, everyone contributes a brick. The war itself would’ve happened sooner or later, and around that time—the coin was in the air, and both of them had tossed it. War, or no war. War because of this reason, or war because of that.”

Alina had felt a leaf struggle its way into her hair.

“You just made sure which side would land up,” she’d summarized.

Not surprise, but satisfaction in Arathis’ eyes.

“See, you get it,” he’d praised. “Everyone who says war’s an art—they’re wrong. Or right, who knows—art’s subjective, whatever.” He’d waved an aimless hand. “The mechanics of it are an art. They’re music. Every domino that falls, every deal that’s made, it follows a tempo. And if you know what tempo it’s going—if you’re the one who pushes over the first domino—you at least have some measure of control.”

There’d been a light bulb that went off in Alina’s head.

“And that’s what you want,” she’d realized. “Control.”

That was the instant that’d sparked some acknowledgement in the Prince’s gaze.

“In this song—this war—yes,” he’d confirmed. “Contain the flames, fan them—I am the metaphorical fence in this pasture.”

He’d spread his arms dramatically, but it lacked the flamboyance it usually did. This entire conversation—it wasn’t dull, but it wasn’t sharp. It...was flatter than it usually was, his voice.

“You’re...mourning,” she’d tried to place the tone.

Arathis had side-stepped the statement so obviously that it was unlike him.

“I heard Roxane’s very upset over Brother’s death,” the Forsaken had responded. “You should console her. Too much wailing and swearing that their graves will be next to each other is bad for the soul. And the heart. And arguably the ears.”

A silence, as Alina had gotten up.

“I...offer my condolences, young Ara,” she’d said while turning.

He’d barked a concerningly brittle laugh.

“Death doesn’t need sympathy, Aunt. It’s not a monster.”

Quieter, he’d called out:

“If you hear anyone call me a monster, Aunt Alina, tell them this: if I were a true monster, I would’ve dug up my brothers’ graves and made them live again.”

A long laugh was heard in the gardens, startling birds and extending great, before the Duchess exited them.