The first time Nadia died, it was at the hands of someone looming over her bed. Needless to say, Nadia had a bit of a…thing about people standing over her bed now.

Nadia’s eyes flew open, her right hand flying out in a claw. Her fingernails jammed through half an inch of stiff hide armor and injected their payload of paralytic into the man’s chest.

He stumbled backward, and Nadia flipped over and put a foot through his chest, bowling the assailant through the far wall, then she followed it up with a blast of fire from her mouth and no less than sixteen slashes from the dimensional blades.

When the smoke and flames cleared, the man was scrambling away down the hall. He was slender, wearing worn clothes under light armor covering his vitals. He had a bit of salt in his mane of hair. Nadia jumped through the hole in the wall and went for the kill.

“Vermin!” Nadia shouted, aiming a kick at his face. “You must not have heard what happened to the last assassin!”

“Princess, Princess!” He hissed, pulling his jaw out of the way of her heel. “I’m the investigator. Lord Green sent me!”

Nadia paused for a moment. True, the man was dressed more like a traveler than an assassin. Assassins had a certain flair, and this man didn’t.

“And?” Nadia raised her foot for another kick. “What were you doing in my room, lout!? I’ve killed for less.”

“Shh!” he had the audacity to shush her.

Nadia’s brows soared as she nearly gave in to the urge to reflexively turn the man to paste. But…she did need someone to drive the wagon.

“What’s going on,” She repeated, quieter. “If you don’t have a good reason, I’ll do…something horrible.”

Nadia was having trouble coming up with a perfectly fitting punishment. Her go-to punishment, which was castration, was a bit of a problem because the man was actually rather attractive, and she didn’t want to cut off her…options. Hands, maybe? No, men needed those for leverage. A broken nose wasn’t really much of a punishment.

I’ll figure something out. Nadia was confident in her ability to cause suffering.

“Something strange is going on in Brennoth. I wanted to tell you in secret.” He said, looking up at her, his left side slowly drooping as her paralytics took hold on his body.

“Aside from the ill-conceived plan to make portable land?” Nadia asked.

“That’s a red herring!” he said, eyes wide with fervent emotion. “I’ve spent thirty years sifting truth from fiction. I’ve got a nose for these things! I’d bet my life on it.”

“Oh, you have,” Nadia said, tapping her lips, thinking back to the mayor’s…decidedly uninspiring speech, and the noble’s overenthusiastic response.

She’d taken note of it, but with the context of the megastructure blinding her, it had been easy to overlook. Red herring indeed.

They sure were eager to pay the taxes and get her out of their hair, weren’t they? Would nobles truly stake their entire future on a hairbrained plot like that?

The man…

“What was your name?” Nadia asked.

“George Fuller, princess,” He said, already recovering from the paralytic, a testament to his status as a Legend.

George was right. Something was odd, and the megastructure was an eye-catching distraction.

“George, I can’t exactly punish you immediately for looming over my bed and grabbing my incredibly valuable face with your scratchy hand, given the circumstances, so here’s what we’re going to do.”

“On the scale of reward and punishment,” She said, holding up her hands, “Where this is execution,” She wiggled her left hand. “And this is life-defining pleasure the likes of which you’ve never felt,” She wiggled her right. “You’re right here,” She moved her left hand a bit forward, showing his current position on her shit-list.

“By the end of this, you want to be here,” Nadia said, wiggling her right hand again. “Or at least somewhere in the middle. Make yourself useful.”

“I understand.” George nodded, clenching and unclenching his numb fingers.

“Princess!” The host of the inn clattered up the stairs at full speed. The dumpy woman huffed violently as she made it to the top, resting her hands on her knees.

“Did something happen?” She asked, panting from the single flight of stairs. The dumpy woman had fat-packed rosy cheeks that Nadia was immensely tempted to pinch.

“I…” Nadia glanced over and saw that George had disappeared. “Saw a rat.”

“A rat! A RAT!?” The innkeeper shouted, her face a vision of fury. “Never fear your highness! I’ll take care of this! By the end of the night, there won’t be a single vermin remaining in all of Brennoth! In the meantime, please, allow me to move your room to somewhere less…”

She glanced over at the smoldering, crumbling hole in Nadia’s wall. “Singed.”

“As you will, good landlady.” Nadia said.

The Innkeeper walked over to the nearest door and threw it open, revealing a young woman in a nightgown with her ear pressed to the door.

The landlady grabbed the girl by the hair and threw her into the hall.

“Your new room,” she said as the nearly naked girl scrambled to her feet. “Allow me to make the bed,” With a pulse of Bent, the room tidied itself up and the bed’s covers straightened in a matter of seconds.

Nadia felt an instant of envy for the convenient homemaking magic, but stuffed it down.

Why clean things on your own when you can make other people do it? That was what her power-set was more suited for, anyway.

“You don’t have a room now, do you?” Nadia said, inspecting the young woman. She was nearly a foot shorter than Nadia herself, and looked very pettable.

Shaking, the girl shook her head.

“As a princess of Iletha, I understand the value of generosity. I give you the honor of warming my bed and being my pet for the night.”

“Um-“ Nadia tugged the girl back into her old room as the finishing touches were made. A moment later, the room looked good as new, and Nadia was settled into her new room. No muss, no fuss.

She sat down on the bed, throwing her new acquisition over her lap and petting her as she considered the implications of George’s statement.

She might have been made aware of a potential problem, but she couldn’t actually see anything out of the ordinary besides the megastructure, and the noble’s willingness to part with their own money.

“This means I’ll have to do leg work, doesn’t it,” Nadia muttered, stroking her pet’s haunches. The gentle creature squeaked and jerked momentarily then relaxed into the rub.

Leg work was boring and tiresome and required a lot of moving around to produce any kind of tangible results.

“I suppose I’ll just have to send the tax money on its way, then stay behind,” Nadia said aloud.

If they were truly desperate to get rid of her, then her staying behind should provoke some kind of reaction. If they were only concerned with making the tax deadline, they wouldn’t pay too much attention to her after the wagon was sent on its way.

A good test for determining the veracity of George’s hunch.

“And you, what will you be doing?” Nadia asked.

“I’ll be investigating places you would stand out too much, and bring you the information back,” George said, appearing in a seated position in the corner. The leather clad man’s top was off, and he was binding the puncture wounds on his chest.

Her pet let out a soft squeak at the sudden appearance of the investigator.

“Who is-“ Nadia silenced the girl with her fingers.

“Tut, tut. Pets don’t speak,” Nadia said reassuringly. It took a few minutes, but eventually it relaxed back into her lap under her ministrations.

“Who’s a good girl? Did I find a good spot?” Nadia cooed, stroking her pet’s favorite spots.

George raised a brow, but didn’t say anything in particular, quickly putting a rough patch on his armor, and scrubbing the blood out as best he could before putting it back on.

“I’ll talk to the people working on the shelf,” He said. “Dockworkers and the like. I’ll also do a little research on the local aristocracy and prepare for a deeper dive into their affairs. You just…keep being yourself. “

“Try and stop me,” Nadia said with a smile.

“I’m sure if there’s trouble to be had, it will seek you out.” He said, buckling a belt of tools onto his waist.” You’re my red herring, princess. Keep being outlandish and distracting. It’ll keep the local authorities from wondering who I am, and why I’m asking so many questions.”

“What do you mean?” Nadia asked, tilting her head. “I haven’t done a single thing out of the ordinary since I got here.”

George glanced down at her pet, then back up to her.

“…Right. I don’t want her telling people about me. Do you have a way of making that happen, or…” The man’s hand reached for the dagger on his waist.

“Stop that, you’re making her tense up,” Nadia chided. “I’ve got a memory wiping spell.”

Her pet looked frightened until Nadia pointed out that it would only cover the evening, no different than if she’d simply slept through the night.

“That’ll do. Princess.” George gave a cursory nod before he stepped through the wall and melted into the darkness outside.

With the man finally gone, her pet finally relaxed completely.

“Oh, look at that, I found another of your favorite spots,” Nadia said as her pet shivered uncontrollably.

***The next morning***

“You’re…not going with the wagon?” The mayor of Brennoth asked, paling.

“I have full confidence that the guards you assigned will keep the shipment safe. After all, It’s your ass on the line, not mine.” Nadia said with an innocent smile. “I, on the other hand, want to learn more about the revolutionary genius that came up with such a brilliant strategy.”

“You do?” he asked, caught off guard by her sudden enthusiasm for his passion project.

“Of course.” Nadia lied through her teeth. “People like you are rare and…” She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Valuable. Perhaps I can come over to your manor tonight, and you can show me more. I’d be most appreciative, and my…appreciation can be quite helpful.”

Get them thinking with their dicks if you can, and if that fails, make them think with their wallets. Anything to cloud their minds, Nadia thought, staring soulfully up into the smelly man’s eyes.

“My manor? Tonight?” He shifted his stance nervously. “Of course, of course, that’s not trouble at all.”

“Good!” Nadia said with a smile before leaving, sashaying out into the street.

Bleh, she shuddered as soon as she got around the corner. For some reason the man hadn’t bothered to shower even after knowing she was in his city.

The stench took a lot of the fun out of acting sultry. It’s like trying to seduce someone next to a latrine. It kills the mood.

Mood or no, mow she had lured the mayor into building a series of false expectations of her. They believed she would be at a specific place, at a specific time. All she had to do to catch them totally off guard would be to be somewhere else.

Sure, it was incredibly rude, but…meh.

Nadia didn’t really care.

She spent the rest of the afternoon idly screwing around the city, while she mentally created a map of the mayor’s supporters.

She knew where each of them lived, as was her prerogative as a princess. She mentally drew lines between all their manors and tried to find one that would be convenient for as many of the co-conspirators to meet.

She mentally selected a warehouse by the easter docks that would be easy for all of them to reach, along with the manor of one Troutman, a minor aristocrat whose home in the center of the city would make a lazy man’s gathering place.

Humans were nothing if not lazy.

When evening rolled around, Nadia got all fancied up and went out for a night on the town. Rather than go to the mayor’s manor, she let her feet carry her through the growing shadows toward Troutman’s manor.

Rather than knock, Nadia floated up to the third story window and flew straight in.

The first thing she noticed was the smell.

That’s odd.

It smelled just like the mayor’s home, the exact same foul B.O. that had oozed out of the older man’s home.

The chances of a mad inventor being lax with his personal hygene were within reason.

A second mansion that smelled exactly the same? That was a little harder to believe.

Nadia was in a dust-filled bedroom that didn’t look like it had been used in years for anything other than storage. A child’s rocking guar sat in the corner collecting dust, along with a towering stack of folded quilts.

Gross.

Nadia walked up to the door and carefully pried it open, revealing a hallway filled with signs of disrepair.

The first thing she noticed was the redoubled smell.

Next she spotted stains and footprints on the rug, little drops of wax from people moving back and forth, the lamp hoods looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in several weeks, filled with black smoke residue.

She glanced up at the ceiling and spotted the telltale black smudges on the ceiling as well. It was as if the man’s servants had taken the month off.

Nadia wasn’t specialized for stealth, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be quiet. She leapt up and activated the flight organs, holding herself on the ceiling like a perky spider, crawling toward the main foyer.

The lobby was empty, so Nadia carefully floated down and peeked down into the first floor. There was nothing of any significance, other than the general mess and stench.

Nadia crept down into the first floor, making her way toward the study. Perhaps there would be some incriminating paperwork. Even with enhanced Minds, the villainous could never keep track of all their misdeeds.

Nadia was creeping silently along the ceiling, careful not to apply pressure to any part of the ceiling or walls, when she heard the soft clink of chains rubbing against each other.

She stiffened for a moment, straining her senses to try and make out where it was coming from.

A moment later the sound came again, from the left.

The kitchen?

Nadia changed her heading and dropped down in front of the kitchen, carefully opening the door.

The faint light from the lobby barely penetrated the darkness of the kitchen, but Nadia could make out dozens of emaciated arms bound with chains.

Slaves? Nadia thought curiously, opening the door further, trying to shed more light on the room. That explains the smell, I suppose, but what the Abyss are they-

“Princess!” a voice called from behind her. Nadia whipped around to see Troutman, a mixed heritage aristocrat with blonde hair. He was only a few years older than she was, and somewhat handsome, albeit not nearly as attractive as she was.

“If you like, I can show you the bill of sale,” The young noble said, giving her a smile obviously calculated to be disarming.

“Seems an odd use for a kitchen.” Nadia said, closing the door. “You don’t mind if I take a look around, do you?”

“I’m mortified to show such a slovenly state of affairs. If you give me notice, I can have the mansion fit for your presence in an afternoon.” He said, bowing.

“I know,” Nadia said. “That’s why I blitzed you.” She kicked the door open the rest of the way.