“Oh good, you came!” blurted out the younger Iruvian – who was barely more than a boy, really. He looked all of sixteen. “Vaati wasn’t sure you would!”

One of the less powerful and less wealthy side branches of House Ankhayat, the Zayanas nevertheless controlled a fair amount of resources in Doskvol thanks to their leviathan hunter fleet connections. Vaati’s parents parlayed their ties to ship captains into a tidy business – in short, they sold access. More relevantly for me, as far as I could tell the family bore no particular love for House Anixis and hence shouldn’t be his allies.

Feigning astonishment at seeing my student in a shady café in the red lamp district, I exclaimed, “Why, what a pleasant surprise!” To Ash and Faith, I explained, “This is one of my most promising students!”

Perhaps recalling her own days under my tutelage, Faith scanned Vaati up and down, noting his musculature and studying the sword at his side.

Turning back to the Zayanas, I smiled at the younger boy and inquired with apparent cluelessness, “What brings you in here? And who is this young gentleman?”

Looking even more nervous, Vaati stammered out, “This is my little brother, Jin.” Please don’t hurt him, begged his eyes.

Gawking curiously at each of us (especially Faith), Jin offered a jerky little bow.

With increasing anxiety, Vaati asked, “We thought – we thought you came here because you got our, um, letter? We sent a letter about how we needed your help…? Did you not receive it?”

“Oh, that letter!” I pretended to remember all of a sudden. “Yes, of course, we received it. Please, why don’t we all have a seat and order drinks? Then you can explain why you think my associates and I can be of assistance to you.”

The two boys practically tripped over themselves in their rush to sit, abruptly recalled that in Doskvol, ladies sat first, leaped up again, and hovered awkwardly until Faith and I and, for good measure, Ash had all slid into one side of the booth. Finally, they sank onto the opposite bench, looking even more ill at ease than before.

A waitress materialized discreetly, took our orders, and vanished again. She returned almost immediately with five mugs of foul coffee. But that was all right – beverages weren’t the main attraction of this café.

As the elder brother, Vaati took the lead in recounting the convoluted tale of how he’d seen Grandfather in class that time and recognized it as a fine Iruvian heirloom. (I might have kicked myself for that mistake – if Faith hadn’t done it for me.) Curious about the sword, he’d recruited Jin to help poke around until they eventually connected it to a crew of nameless assassins. Given the number of logical holes in their story, I guessed that Grandfather had guided the brothers for its own opaque purposes.

Is this the job? I asked experimentally, not really expecting an answer.

Grandfather didn’t disappoint.

“We really, really, really need your help,” declared Jin, so loudly that Vaati jumped a little, shushed him fiercely, and cast nervous glances around the café.

Leaning across the table in all her ruffled glory, Faith purred, “You must be careful what you say in here. A cute morsel like you could get gobbled up by the criminal element.”

Barely daring to breathe, Jin stared, stricken, into her eyes.

Faith lounged back, flashed him a bright smile, and added, “But I won’t eat you. Yet.”

Poor Vaati looked more and more convinced that he’d made a very bad judgment call when he chose to investigate the sword. I could have told him that.

Ash spoke up at last. “Can you be more specific about whom you need audited?” Drawing out his notebook, he laid it on the table next to his abandoned coffee, flipped to a blank page, and poised a pen over it.

Jin nodded trustingly at Vaati, who took a deep breath and began hesitantly, “We’re concerned that things are deteriorating between Akoros and Iruvia.” He stopped and glanced again at Jin, who smiled back confidently, blissfully ignorant of just how precarious their position was. Vaati recited an explanation he’d clearly rehearsed: “If things should fully deteriorate between the two isles, there’s a person we’d rather not be around, if you know what I mean.” He took another deep breath. “It’s…a professor at Doskvol Academy. We were…we were wondering about your going rate?”

“First tell me who it is,” I ordered.

Vaati gulped again, then mumbled, “General Ronia Helker.”

I blanched.

I knew the name.

How could I not? Ronia Helker won eternal fame – or infamy, depending on your opinion of military massacres – during the Unity War when she orchestrated the final offensive on Lockport. To ensure that the Skovlanders were well and thoroughly pacified, once she’d shelled the city into surrender, she unleashed her forces in an orgy of murder, rape, and looting. Crazed with bloodlust after a long and brutal civil war, Imperial forces leveled all of the city but the leviathan blood processing plants and the mansions of magnates who’d sided with the Imperium. Then they divided rebel fighters and civilians into lots of a hundred, herded them outside the lightning barrier, ordered them to dig large trenches, and systematically executed all of them, down to the last baby. The handful of survivors hidden by the magnates – and the magnates themselves – later whispered that Imperial officers competed to see who could behead more Skovlanders in given timespan. The Lampblacks, especially the ones who’d fled Lockport during the Unity War, hated Helker with murderous bitterness.

Softly, Vaati said, “We’re worried that she’ll do the same thing to Iruvia, if things continue the way they have.”

Had relations between the Imperium and my homeland deteriorated to such a degree? If so, Grandfather had definitely been right to chastise me for tunnel vision.

Lacking a personal connection to Skovlan or Iruvia, Ash remarked practically, “Her books must be pretty disordered,” and glanced at me for a cue.

I was too rattled to do anything but nod jerkily.

He flashed me a hand signal, asking silently, Should we scalp them or go easy, since they seem to be friends of yours?

If the boys were serious about this score, they could draw on not only Zayana coffers but also the Ankhayat treasury. Go high, I signed.

“Well,” observed Ash seriously, scribbling busily in his notebook. “Audits aren’t a flat rate.” Glancing at Faith and me, he hand-signed, Nine coin?

Yes, I signed back.

“Yes,” said Faith out loud, with a sweet smile for the boys.

Tearing the page out of his notebook, Ash presented it to Vaati. “This is an itemized breakdown of all the costs that we will incur during the audit,” he explained, walking them through the numbers. “As you can see, it comes out to twelve coin – ” Jin literally squeaked, and Vaati’s eyes went wide – “but we’re marking it down to nine because we like you.”

Neither boy uttered a single word.

Doubtfully, I signed to Ash, Are you sure this will work?

“Of course,” Ash told them smoothly, “we can negotiate a further discount, given your connection to my associate – and your future goodwill.”

The boys continued to gape at the “twelve coin” part of the invoice.

Leaning forward again, Faith reminded them almost maternally, “You were the ones who chose to go down this rabbit hole. Do you or don’t you know what you’re getting into?”

At last, Vaati swallowed hard and said dazedly, “This needs to happen…. We can definitely pay seven. We can maybe do…?” He trailed off when Jin poked his arm and whispered something in his ear. Nodding slowly, Vaati spoke with bravado, “We could do eight, but in such an event, it would be good to have any notes she’s made on the Iruvia situation.”

“That is acceptable,” I agreed promptly, already planning to keep the originals and deliver copies to the Zayanas.

Amending the invoice, Ash said briskly, “Yes, we can make it eight coin contingent on recovery of the notes.”

The boys bobbed their heads eagerly, then glanced at each other uncertainly, obviously wondering what the proper protocol was for concluding such meetings.

Ash took mercy on them and helped them out. “May I suggest a retainer of three coin?” At their nervous expressions, he lowered it to two, which they managed to produce after pooling their purses. “You may pay us the remainder later.”

Faith assured them cheerily, “Don’t worry about looking for us. We’ll find you after the score!”

Looking very much as if locating us to pay us had not previously been a concern but now most definitely was, the boys hastily slid out of the booth. I stopped Vaati before he could flee.

“Practice your low-line parrying,” I advised sternly. “I’ll see you in class next week.”

Vaati, who was actually one of my more diligent students, nodded vigorously before the two of them scampered off.

“You have nice students,” Ash remarked, watching them bound around the corner. “I felt bad scalping them.”

Faith looked very disappointed by this expression of human sentiment.

So – how did one ambush or otherwise assault an Imperial general, especially an Imperial field general famed for her formidable hand-to-hand combat skills?

“We should survey Doskvol Academy,” I said to the others.

A newspaper archive search had revealed that not two months after the Battle of Lockport, Helker retired from active duty “to spend more time with her family” and accepted a cushy teaching post at the College of Naval Command. (The Dockside Telegraph screamed that she’d been sidelined in order to placate the now-pacified and totally-no-longer-seditious Skovlanders.) Now, if only Helker had chosen Charterhall University, we might have struck her on her way to or from work or even on the campus itself, but unfortunately Doskvol Academy squatted right next to the Lord Governor’s stronghold in Whitecrown. Even more unfortunately, the broad and brightly-lit Bowmore Bridge led straight from Brightstone to Whitecrown, making Helker’s daily commute the safest in the city.

Ash snorted derisively. “Doskvol Academy. That upstart school of secondhand knowledge where all they do is plagiarize Tycherosi research.”

Faith beamed at him. “Aww, Ash, you really do know how to honor institutions of higher learning. I’m so glad that someone else appreciates the cataclysmic significance of properly citing prior research!”

Unless a disgruntled Tycherosi professor hired us to off his or her academic rivals, I really couldn’t care less who published before whom and in what journal. “Maybe we can frame Helker for plotting to seize the Lord Governorship with backing from House Anixis,” I suggested. “Then we let the Akorosi government purge her itself – or, if necessary, we stage an assassination by a fanatic.”

“That would take much too long,” Ash objected. “We don’t have that kind of time.”

“The Zayanas didn’t give us a deadline,” I pointed out.

“Such cute, innocent, little bunny rabbits!” put in Faith, hopping onto the bar and swinging her legs. “You wouldn’t want to leave them hanging, would you? Or falling down the rabbit hole forever and ever and ever?”

As was habit by now, Ash didn’t acknowledge her directly, but he addressed me forcefully, “Right now we have a reputation for quick, clean scores. If we take too long, the Zayanas and Ankhayats will believe that we are incompetent.”

Fair enough. Grudgingly, I set aside my grand plan for poetic justice. Rather unnecessarily, I informed the others, “We need to surveil Helker and learn everything we can about her routine and vices, then.”

As before, Ash disguised himself as a student and tailed a rowdy band of Academy partygoers headed for Silkshore. Inconveniently for him, instead of taking a cart across Bowmore Bridge and through Brightstone, the Docks, and Crow’s Foot, where he could have followed on foot, the students staggered their way down to the piers of Whitecrown and caught a gondola straight into the Ease. Ash had to scramble to flag down another boat and convince the gondolier that his drunken friends had heartlessly abandoned him. After talking his way into the group, he spent the rest of the night traipsing after them from bar to brothel to bar.

Meanwhile, I dressed down as a streetsweeper and tailed Helker to and from work. For someone with such a bloody history, the general led an incredibly boring life. She was happily married to a prim little lawyer named Tocker who worked in Charterhall. The couple had two children, aged thirteen and sixteen, plus one dog. Every morning, she took the family carriage across Bowmore Bridge to Doskvol Academy, taught three classes, supervised her research group, and returned home for dinner with the family. The only unconventional thing about the Helkers was that Tocker had taken Ronia’s last name when they married.

After a week of surveillance, we finally gleaned the general’s one human failing. After a bowl of particularly atrocious bar fare, a student revealed to Ash that on special occasions, Ronia and her husband dined at the Golden Plum, that legendary establishment in Six Towers.

According to restaurant staff, her favorite dish was a Skovlander delicacy: “Beef and teggsvamp stew,” explained the kitchen girl, rolling her eyes. “They say she tasted it in Skovlan during the war and fell in love with it.” A bit of prodding elicited the explanation that the teggsvamp was a rare mushroom that grew only in northern Skovlan and had to be imported into Akoros at great expense.

“We could try to poison the mushrooms,” Ash mused, “but it would be hard to target specifically.”

I shrugged. “Does it really matter if we kill her husband?”

“Well, it would hurt our reputation for precise operations,” he pointed out.

Faith agreed with him. “After all, we wouldn’t want to get sloppy and kill a second person without getting paid for it!”

“Okay, how about kidnapping her kids and luring her somewhere?” I suggested.

Ash shot down the idea immediately. “That’s too risky. When you kidnap children, the parents tend to call out the cavalry.”

And in this case, the cavalry might very well be the entire Imperial military.

He proposed, “I think a hit on her carriage in Six Towers is our best option.”

After some more wrangling, we decided that the next time the Helkers dined at the Golden Plum, Ash and I would drug the coachman while he waited, knock him out when he rushed to the privy, and replace him as drivers. Meanwhile, Faith would raise a ghost riot in the streets, “forcing” us to detour into a deserted area (not hard to find at night in Six Towers), where we’d puff trance powder into the carriage and team up on the Helkers.

“Alternatively, you can drive the carriage right into the canal! There’s a lovely little canal south of the restaurant!” Faith cried excitedly. “We’ll get the husband out, and then my lovely, lovely specter friends in the water can invite Ronia to a party! At the bottom of the canal! We can even toss in the driver so it looks like he was drunk and confused!”

Now that we had a plan, all we needed was an occasion.

We got it on the anniversary of the Battle of Blackvale, the Unity War turning point after which Imperial triumph became inevitable.