“Bloody hells, look at that.” Malek's whistle, a rueful shake of his head.

“By all the saints...” Neal muttered, gazing off at a sight that sent Jess's heart racing.

Lady Putrice, among ladies and lords enjoying the southern gardens, smiling so brightly, was more than passing fair. At that moment, n o impatient frown or steely-eyed glare marred her graceful features. Her face was a warm glow of brightness, lips lush and full, laughing with Jessica's mother, and Erica's as well. Three beauties among a handful of other noble women, all of them surrounded by Velheim's courtiers.

The young scions looked refreshed and vibrant, as if they had not spent the entirity of the night before in hedonistic excess with scores of eager Highrock girls delighting in sweet innocent vice, said young women no doubt sleeping away the morning even now as their exotic guests, tastefully dressed and sober as saints, entertained a coterie of their noble parents, perhaps speaking of formalizing courtships between their various Houses at that very moment.

Putrice had never before looked so vibrant, laughing affectionately at one and all, until she turned Jess's way.

The etiquette professor blanched and stumbled back. Agda Calenbry frowned, Jess's acute eyesight making out every minute detail of her mother's features, even as she breathlessly led her mount at a gentle walk to the garden, her band of battle-brethren just behind.

Then her mother turned, and caught Jess's stare.

A thousand odd emotions played across her mother's features at a dizzying pace.

Jess swallowed, realizing even then that her mother knew.

Her daughter was no longer pure, neither to a man's touch nor a blade's kiss. Agda's eyes widened with horror and regret as she gazed at Jess, who just knew her darkened hair was knotted with crimson spray, for all that she had worn a helm, her mount and armor covered with the gore of her foes.

Even from a hundred yards away, her mother knew.

And turned to gaze into Putrice's horrified stare, her mother no doubt noting how the woman stumbled back from the grim-faced band of Squires and Aspirants still some distance away, and Agda's face filled with hottest fury.

Her fist whipped forth, cracking Putrice full force, sending the shocked woman sprawling.

“You would dare risk my child in your twisted games? I will see you dead for that, Velheim whore!”

Jess was shocked and awed to see the depths of her mother's fury, all artifice torn away in a mother's hot wrath, knowing well how brilliant her mother truly was.

But she had miscalculated.

For all that Erovering ladies gazed in horror, Velheim dandies did not stand idle.

Two dared to unsheathe blades, so distracted by Agda's sudden burst of fury they had no idea of what approached even now at a furious pace, even as others demanded Lady Calenbry release their hostess.

“Unhand her now, woman!” One scion hissed in a voice bare of all sweetness and charm.

"Save me, please!" Putrice sobbed as Agda roared, trembling with fury as she strove to strangle Putrice dead.

And two men closed with saber blades flashing in the sun.

And Jess screamed and struck, a dozen finely dressed noble lords and ladies staring at her in speechless horror as a crimson patina spattered doublets and dresses of sea foam and sky blue, two lords lurching and stumbling to the ground, throats torn open faster than most could blink.

The garden filled with shrieks.

Jess shook to gaze into her mother's eyes, such a look of fear and terror and fiercest love left Jess speechless.

Aching so badly to hold her hellion close, her mother had eyes only for the exquisitely forged saber now covered in blood, Jess having drawn and struck in the instant, her hands knowing lessons ingrained so fiercely, mind reeling only now with the blows.

Effortless and fatal.

And there was no going back.

Jess looked down into the face of the man who had shared caresses and childhood stories less than a day before even as he choked and writhed, eyes widening with helpless terror, clawed hands trembling as they desperately grasped his own throat, unable to staunch the spray of his own blood spattering screaming lords and ladies alike, pinning Jess with beautiful eyes pleading with all his soul before he collapsed to the ground, pale as a sheet, his last spurts of blood trickling to nothing as desperate eyes glazed over in death, locked fast upon her still.

Jess screamed. Falling to her knees.

"Calenbry! Up and at the ready!" Eloquin roared, the entire clearing growing still.

To her shock, Jess found herself on her feet, blade held in trembling hand still, knowing she could neither clean nor sheathe it, or even let go, so fiercely her hand shook.

Eloquin caught her eyes, nodding once. "You flew like the wind, arriving at your mother's side even faster than I. Well done."

Jess swallowed and bowed her head, Agda looking as poleaxed as Jess felt, all eyes now riveted upon Eloquin as he loomed over a trembling Lady Putrice.

“You are a monster, a madwoman!” Putrice shrieked, glaring at Jess and Agda both.

“And you, Lady Putrice, are guilty of treason.”

Words hard as steel struck Putrice. She grew pale and swallowed, haunted eyes blinking furiously for composure. Erica's mother gasped and stood back, as did every other lady of Erovering, refusing even to meet the woman's pleading gaze, all of them far too savvy to be associated with such an accusation, even after the shock of witnessing swords borne with killing intent, blood splashed upon the field before them.

Agda fiercely clenched her daughter, trying to drag her away. Jess gazed once at her mother, who blanched and stepped back.

Her own mother feared her.

Just how horrid a creature had she become?

“How dare you accuse me of such a crime, you bloodthirsty madman! Calenbry is guilty of assault upon my person, her daughter guilty of murder, twice over!”

Agda hissed and glared at Lady Putrice, but Eloquin's smile was hard as steel.

"Squires, swords at the ready!" he roared, and thirty finely honed longswords were drawn in an instant, blades in Ochs, aimed at the throat of the score of Velheim scions who grew instantly still, the young men slowly raising their hands, the girls uniformly bursting into tears. Jess blinked to find her saber held in tierce, slowly advancing upon the increasingly anxious looking lords, herding them away from Erovering's nobility, increasingly anxious Velheim scions backing steadily away from the approaching Squires.

“I cry pardon for any offense rendered! I am here by lawful treaty! My family will pay any fines for crimes committed!” cried out one panicked scion, a cry soon echoed by the entirety of Velheim nobles present, many now openly sobbing, others pleading desperately.

Jess grimaced, her guts knotting, heart already heavy with horrors committed.

Neal glanced at Eloquin, who pinned them all with his gaze before nodding, eyes fastening to Jess once more.

“Rope. See to it!”

“Yes, Commander,” Jess all but gushed with relief, racing for the packmares, finding herself now able to wipe clean and sheathe her saber despite her tremble, yanking free loops of rope from saddle sacks, and within moments a full score of Velheim nobles had their hands securely bound behind their back, gazing at Jess with haunted eyes.

“You killed him! He favored you, and you killed him! You didn't even give him a chance to explain! He didn't know! Oh by the gods... none of us knew this would happen! Just... just this morning, Javiar had spoken of courting you. His face lit up so bright, sharing his hopes of taking you to our capital... how happy you both would be!”

The words hit Jess like a blow. She turned to the girl who had spoken, now slumped to the ground, shuddering at Jess's very gaze, sobbing her terror.

Jess trembled, blinking back furious tears, stepping away.

Lucas smirked and shook his head. “Your handy with a blade, Jess, but those knots are a gnarled mess.”

Malek chuckled softly. “Silver to gold that not a one of those fools breaks free.”

Lucas's eyes lit, then his brows furrowed, gazing carefully at the rope. "It's hemp. Isn't it." He sighed. "I won't take that bet, considering who tied it."

The banter flowed past her like the warm cool rustling her hair, mind racing with horrors she struggled desperately to push aside, focusing instead upon Lady Putrice, even now shaking her head violently as Eloquin's harsh voice washed over her.

"You betrayed king and Crown, Putrice! Conspiring to see Erovering's noble daughters spitting out children loyal to our enemy is but the least of your offenses. You dared to engage in the flesh trade to fatten your purse, even as you put the lives of multiple students at risk, arranging for a deliberate ambush to see my Squires killed, all to appease the men pulling your strings! That was an act of treason, Putrice, from which there can be no clemency; deliberately placing noble lives in the line of fire, fodder to be cut down simply to advance your own piece upon the board!"

Putrice grew increasingly pale as Eloquin hammered her with accusation after accusation, and Jess was quietly impressed with how careful he was, saying nothing about any plots against the Crown. If enemies were listening now, they would walk away overconfident, even as Eloquin prepared to strike at their heart, when they least expected it.

It was only a matter of time.

“That's a lie! Absurd to boot!” Putrice blinked, gazing at them all with growing disbelief. “You have not lost a single Squire, have you, Eloquin? Not a one!” She swallowed, grinning fiercely, as if her argument could possibly save her. “You accuse me of treachery, conspiring with slavers and ambushes? Where is your proof? You students, our students! Stand strong and sure. I will bet not a one has perished this night. Is that not so? So what ambush is this? Or is this madness to ensure that no sensible lord dare take their daughters out of your nightmare program, lest you accuse them of hideous crimes?”

Eloquin chuckled coldly. "And how could you possibly know how many Squires I have, let alone whether or not they are in good health? Such information extremely few are privy to." His gaze turned hard. "Few even know that my Squires exist at all."

Never mind that now the secret was sure to spread like wildfire, Jess mused. But perhaps that's what Eloquin though would best serve them now.

Putrice trembled and swallowed. "It's known," she rasped. "I... I heard the rumors, put the pieces together in my head. My goal, my only goal, was to spare the daughters of Erovering the madness that is your training!" She gazed desperately at Lady Agda, for all that she had insulted her but minutes before. "Lady Agda, did we not work together, arranging your daughter to be free of this madness? And look, look before you. Two noblemen dead, by your daughter's hand! One who had courted her, who she had been intimate with, only hours before!"

Agda gazed at her daughter. Jess swallowed and looked away.

"What of it, Putrice?" Malek snapped. "We recognized the shifts in balance, the hardened gazes of men preparing for the killing blow. Your sycophants were getting ready to butcher Lady Agda with their blades, hesitating only long enough to assure that it was her throat alone they sliced open, and not yours!"

Agda glared at Putrice once more.

“A tragic misunderstanding, for which they have paid with their lives!” Putrice shrieked. “If dear Jess had not been decked in the armaments of a bloodthirsty killer, even at this moment she might be in the arms of a man who would court her, a man who now lies dead at her feet, cut down by the saber she clenches so fiercely even now!”

Jess swallowed, forcing her hand to relax and slip free of the hilt of her resheathed blade, gazing at her mother, forcing herself to speak. "Mother, did you... did you receive correspondence from Lady Putrice?" Her mother paled and looked away.

Eloquin's eyes were strangely gentle. "I care not what it says, Lady Calenbry. But if you have such a document, I would see the signature, did it please you."

Trembling, Agda slipped free a folded piece of vellum, fine as any lord's desk would hold, carefully holding it such that only the last paragraph and signature were visible.

Eloquin gazed it for some moments before turning back to the trembling professor, flashing a bleak smile. "It has been a pleasure to watch you writhe on the hook, but it is time, I think, to end this farce." With that, gaze locked upon Putrice's helpless stare, he slowly withdrew a packet of documents, and Jess could tell by the way Putrice flinched and looked away that she knew exactly what those letters said.

“Please...”

"The girls are well in hand. Many fine fillies for our chosen to sire strong get upon. The prizes will fetch silver and gold, and the jesters will pay top coin for the wood that will be their undoing. May I forever be in your favor, Your Grace.... sincerely, LP."

Eloquin turned to a stunned looking Agda, gracefully handing her the letter. “Tell me, Lady Agda de Calenbry, does the handwriting match the correspondence you exchanged with Lady Putrice?”

And to her credit, Agda took careful measure before giving a tentative nod. "The sweeps of the vowels are the same, and she seems ever uncertain when forming the top crest of formal names. A sad lack in her education, I suppose. The way the ink presses upon the page, the odd slant, as if a child who favored her left hand was forced to write with her right."

Agda gazed solemnly up at Eloquin. “I believe the handwriting to be identical.”

"This is preposterous!" Lady Putrice sobbed. "Preposterous! Moments ago, you were attempting to strangle me, and your daughter is covered in the blood of my guests, even now! You are a clan of monstrous hellions, and I will see you pay for this, and pay dearly! I have friends in court, you know!"

Eloquin nodded once, gaze like ice. “I know.”

Jess shuddered under her mentor's gaze, knowing what she must do.

Jess flashed a quick glance at Cornelius, smiling coldly at Lady Putrice, but making no move to intervene, for all that it would surely throw her off. Jess nodded to herself. It made perfect sense. The letters alone were sufficient to damn her, no need to reveal the hidden card up their sleeve.

Jess turned, forcing herself to look at that which she realized she had been avoiding this last handful of hours. She stared at the cluster of awestruck, trembling girls astride mounts which had no problem with the journey, for all that the riders above looked ready to collapse from exhaustion. Several girls caught Jess's gaze and it shook her heart, seeing looks of such abject terror and despair, more than one flinching away from the force of her gaze alone.

“Come. There is someone you all need to see.”

“Please, mistress,” one girl wailed. “Don't put us before her again, not like this. Oh not like this!”

Yet despite their protests and sobs, even as several wailed and looked on the verge of collapse, Jess, Malek, Neal, and Rowan managed to heard the battered girls before a trembling Lady Putrice still furiously denying all charges of conspiracy, until her eyes locked upon the accusing stares of several dozen young women suddenly screaming. Screaming in terror, outrage, screaming for Lady Putrice's very head, crying out horrid tales regarding the very professor now speechless before their gaze.

All of them recognized her. For some, their first encounter with Putrice had seemed almost a blessing, the professor cajoling with smiles and promises for various freemen to accept sponsorship for their beautiful daughters, though the name she had gone under had been quite different then. Other tales were of a stern-faced Putrice judging them like slabs of prized meat, once the girls had been claimed, whether by guile or darkest horror, parents butchered as children were carted away. And how Putrice had gazed that them all so coldly, calling them but pathetic chattel once they were in her power, pinching naked flesh upon terrified girls, many sobbing in horror, all of them told they were worthless dung upon which true roses would flourish, and their only purpose in life was as fertile soil to till the seed of their betters.

An exhausted Jess seethed with renewed fury as the stories of horror were told.

Eloquin flashed a smile, bleak and cold. "Two dozen accounts of high crimes committed, documents tying you to the flesh trade, echoes of treason twining about your every word. I suspect, Professor Putrice, that your days under the sun will be far fewer than you would like."

His gaze caught Jess's own. She nodded, hands flashing in a brief flurry of code, Mord himself chuckling softly, picking up on all that was said.

"Now, it is high time we ended this farce!" Eloquin gazed at the pale-faced scions of Velheim's best and brightest, hands tied like common criminals, trembling in the morning sun, the stink of blood and offal offsetting perfumes of roses and wild blossom, even as the doom before them wilted all joy in the glorious day unfolding. "Lady Putrice will get her day in Court, little good that it will do her. But you, pathetic, sniveling wretches, seeking to claim our women as your prizes, here unlawfully after entering in the company of flesh peddlers and enemy agents slipping through under false pretenses... you fools have no protection at all from the king's justice!"

And with ice cold smiles, Jess, Mord, and a score of the remaining Squires and Aspirants present withdrew their longswords as one, perfectly sharpened blades flashing in the sunlight, as twenty-odd pairs of eyes widened in terror, girls sobbing and collapsing to the ground, young men falling to their knees, begging for mercy.

“Please! We had nothing to do with this, with any of this!” One boy cried.

"For true love alone did we come," a girl, no less beautiful for the tears stinging silken cheeks pierced Jess with eyes that silently begged for her life.

Jess swallowed and forced herself to glare, even as she coldly strode forward, blade raised high.

“Yes, Putrice was involved in the slave trade! She was using our carriage trains as cover!” One boy screamed, and everything grew oddly still once more.

All eyes turned to the lad in horror, even as he trembled and shook. To their credit, half the visiting lords and ladies looked on in disbelief, for all that the others hung their heads.

“They were to be disguised as our servitors to aid us!” The boy cried, swallowing furiously, nearly ill with fright. “I... I had no part in it, I was shocked to hear of it! But I had wondered why porters had served us only so far as to prepare our carriages before we crossed over, and when I thought to spy on Lady Putrice... the things I overheard her discussing with Sir Kettil...” he swallowed and paled. “Kettil...somehow he knew that I had caught wind of their plans. He did things... he made sure I that would never tell a soul what I had overheard!” Hot tears streaming down his cheeks, the boy bowed his head, and Jess was suddenly sickened to wonder just how Kettil had terrified the boy into keeping his secrets close.

Jess swallowed, a sudden flash of memory hitting her, what seemed a lifetime ago but was merely a handful of hours that stretched forever. This very boy, so young to be there, younger even than her, gazing at the assembled students under Putrice's wing not with avarice, excitement, or curiosity, but with abject shame.

Jess was no fool. She knew exactly what Kettil had done to that boy.

A furious scream.

Eloquin's mocking laughter, cold eyes calculating so well.

And Jess, her helmet removed, so careful not to look back....

All Squires so distracted... many with the terrified nobles before them, others with the girls so horribly used, desperate for comfort and upon the edge of panic, several others before noble matrons who had nothing but praise for Highrock's elite, all but pleading their utter ignorance of the dark gambits Putrice had in play.

No one near the professor herself, nor had anyone secured the fencing sabers once worn by the two young men who had fallen to Jessica's blade, and how they had managed such license as to wear live steel in a neighboring nation's college of war Jess knew was utterly irrelevant, only that leaving Lady Putrice unguarded save for Eloquin's mocking smile, right before such fine prizes, was an unforgivable lapse in near two score souls training so diligently for war.

As was the way Eloquin turned to gaze in the direction of Velheim, paying the woman trembling in desperate fury no heed, no heed at all.

“You overplayed your hand, Putrice. Badly, I think. So tell me, how special do you feel now, all your co-conspirators dead to our blades, and you soon to be tried and publicly executed? The ladies you had once counted as friends now despise you, the Velheim aristocracy you thought would owe you such favors accusing you outright of the flesh trade, with dozens of your victims adding credence to their tales."

Eloquin's dark, mocking laughter washed over a shaking Putrice, and he held her in such contempt that he did not even glance her way. "Normally dignity, even in death, has been the king's way, no matter how foul the miscreants he deals with. But in your case? I think he'll make an exception. Perhaps he will even let you work off your debt in the very brothels you no doubt once thought to own."

Jess would have been sickened by the mocking laughter Eloquin let roll forth, alien and odd to all sentiment shared before, almost as strange as Eloquin's utter disregard for his own safety, strolling away at the cruelest of paces for the dean's office, and no doubt the first step to Putrice's censure and expulsion, so that academy grounds would be denied to her as shelter, her doom complete.

She did not scream, at least. Jess gave her credit for that, Putrice possessing a certain amount of furious gall as she picked up one of the fencing blades, drawing it with surprising grace, no novice to the blade after all, and charged towards the helmetless Eloquin, her face a rictus of twisted hate, too savvy even to cry out as she closed, ready to cut down the man she despised before his ears even detected her presence.

And stopped abruptly, eyes bulging, her mouth gaping open as blood shot forth in a sudden spray of crimson, a foot of steel bursting from her side as Jess ran her through.

“Jessica!”

Her mother's panicked shriek. Jess's smile was cold. She knew what her mother truly feared, even as Jess locked gazes with half a score of horrifed noble ladies, transfixed by the scene unfolding still.

“It's all right, Mother.” A voice, dry as the desert sun. Not her own. Not by far.

“Tell me, ladies, is it not obvious to all that Lady Putrice here was charging for my helmetless mentor, noble Eloquin, favored of the king, vulnerable as any innocent, Putrice's blade raised high to strike?”

Half a dozen frantic nods. Noble ladies pleading their agreement, as were the Velheim lords themselves, each and every one declaring the virtue of Jess's act in desperate, strained voices. Jess couldn't help smirking at that, for all that her mother's solemn nod, gazing at Jess so strangely, not as a daughter but as a player who had impressed even a master of the game, left Jess feeling strange and cold.

“You bitch.” Lady Putrice's awful laughter ended in blood and bile, pouring from her lips as she crashed to her knees. “You played me from the start. May you burn in Hell.”

Jess yanked out her blade.

Putrice's gaze widened as agonized fury turned to sheerest panic, eyes pleading desperately as she raised her arm, a futile attempt to ward the blade Jess now held high.

"Please! Please, Jessica, don't kill me. I... I was a pawn myself! I just wanted a better life for you, for Erica, for everyone." Tears poured down Putrice's cheeks even as blood poured from her mouth, her desperate gaze firmly locked upon Jess's own. "Please, Jessica. Whatever I did to offend you, however I wronged you, please... mercy!”

Dry laughter that Jess alone could hear. “If only this fool knew what that truly meant.” Gazing at the scene playing out from his favorite perch, Twilight's eyes locked upon her own. “It is a good thing that you understand mercy so well, my queen.”

Jess flashed the coldest of smiles. “I do. And mercy I shall give.”

Hands windmilling forward, her longsword sliced through the air as decisively as any headsman's axe, cleaving through the upraised arm and terrified features of one Lady Putrice, who might have survived being disemboweled, with the best battlefield healers in all the kingdom to be found but feet away, but no one could fix the horrific mulch of shattered bone and brain that Putrice's once beautiful face had become as Jess's blade blasted through her skull.