A rushing noise filled Sam’s ears, and the room faded away until his staring eyes could only see Councilman Blain. The little man was standing there, rheumy eyes locked on him like a lion on the weakest antelope in the herd.

Will you lead us.

Denial rose automatically to his lips. No, he couldn’t. He was just a kid. Two weeks ago his biggest care in the world had been not getting grease all over his ma’s best tablecloth. No he wouldn’t lead a revolution, he’d barely led a handful of people to fight against Rakun, who was dozens, scores of levels beneath the lich that would eventually come for him. He couldn’t lead real people in a real revolution—

That train of thought jumped the rails and plowed into a cornfield. Real people? He’d just led real people. People who had trusted him, had followed him into battle, had watched his back and fought beside him…

Just as he had done for them. It had been his plan they followed. His commands they’d taken. His lead.

And ultimately, his victory. Their victory.

“Oh, steady on now!” Araxes’ voice cut through his thoughts and brought his vision back out of the tunnel it had retreated into. “This is my realm you’re speaking about! I can’t allow you to just hack off pieces of it willy-nilly! It goes against every practical bit of advice in the Tyrant’s Handbook!”

The crowd murmured uncertainly, a few of them glared at Araxes. Others turned away as if frightened. And Sam realized that most of them probably had no idea that the lich was powerless, or a good—okay, ‘coming maybe halfway to decent if you squint real hard and the light isn’t too good’—guy now.

“Or you could look at it as wresting your rightful power back from… Well, I don’t suppose ‘usurper’ is the correct word,” Pop said thoughtfully. “Pretender to the throne, perhaps?”

“Ah?” Araxes blinked and cocked his head to the side. “Ah. Yes, yes I suppose I could get behind that. Of course, I would need to be consulted at all points in establishing the new system of government.”

“Sam?” Pearl zipped up to him—her passage drawing a few gasps from the townsfolk, most of whom had probably never met the little fae before—and hopped to a stop on his shoulder. “You gonna be a king now? Only you’ll need a crown, and I’ve got some ideas how it should look, and—“

“Pearl,” Pop’s deep voice cut the little fairy off. “Let him be for a minute. He’s got a lot on his mind.”

“Oh! Sorry Sam. I forgot you kinda have everything in the world going on right now, don’t you?”

“Little bit,” Sam said with a fond smile. “Just give me a little time. I’ll get back to you about the crown idea.”

“I’m thinking… Jewels.”

Pearl fluttered back to land on Pop’s shoulder as Sam turned back to Blaine. The man was watching him like a hawk. And, looking past him, Sam could see a strange mixture of hope and fear and desperation and anger in the faces of the crowd. Only a few didn’t meet his gaze. Only a few, it seemed, were not wholly on board with Blaine’s request.

Part of him wanted to say ‘yes’ immediately. To be the man they were clearly hoping he was. To live up to that image the councilman had made of him. And he almost said it, almost accepted that mantle on the spot.

But then he looked past the crowd to Cora, and to Sally beside her. To the kobolds, to the mobs standing near the back of the room. And to Rakun’s grave, the copper shine of its plaque drawing his eye like a moth to flame.

I can’t dive into this like an idiot, he caught himself thinking. He needed to consider it carefully. To act, to plan, to be certain, not just to react to the honeyed words of a grateful politician.

Right.

“Councilman Blaine,” he started, and had to stop to clear his throat. “I… Oh hell, I’m not good at fancy speeches—“

“Unless there’s killing to be done immediately afterwards,” he heard a shield maiden say loudly enough to be heard but soft enough not to be identified.

“So,” he continued after a smattering of laughter, “I’ll just come right out and say it. That’s a hell of a request and I’m inclined to say ‘yes’.”

A quiet murmur started in the crowd, gaining in volume quickly.

“But,” Sam said loud enough to be heard over the crowd, and that one word stopped the murmuring cold. “I need to think it through first. The dragon gave me three hours to figure out my next move. I’ll have an answer for you in two, after I’ve had a chance to talk it over with my family and my advisors.”

“I understand completely,” Blaine said, nodding his bald head. “Were I in your shoes, I would do exactly the same thing.”

“You’re welcome to stay here,” Sam said. “There’s free rooms on the second level you all can use, and a mess hall down at the end of the tunnel there,” he jerked a thumb at the western tunnel entrance. “The grub is good. Better when Araxes here is cooking,” he added, patting the skeleton on the back.

“When will it be safe for us to return home?” someone in the crowd asked.

Sam shrugged. “Should be safe now, I reckon. The dragon is after me, not anyone else. And we won’t be getting into a fight in the middle of the town. But if you want to stay here and wait until the critter is on the wing and heading to wherever it’s going to head to, that’s fine by me.”

He took one last look around at the crowd of people, then nodded once. To them, but most of all to himself.

He had three hours. Less now. Time for him to get back to work.

But he had to make a stop first.

* * *

“I reckon it’ll take another eight hours,” the gnome said, tugging on her long orange whiskers as she examined the teleportation chamber’s inner workings.

“That short?” Cuthbert asked with a frown. “Your superior seemed to think it would take several days minimum to repair all the damage.”

“That’s because my superior wouldn’t know a cracked resonance cannister from a toothless sprocket,” she said, bending in to look closer at some piece of arcane machinery.

“Your flux generators are all clean, most of the ‘damage’ they suffered came from that dumbass kid getting splattered all over them. Had to pry a couple teeth out of the casing, but nothing penetrated so you’re good there.” She straightened up and turned back to Cuthbert. “The bulk of the damage is to the Bjerskin panels themselves. All that blood soaked in and ruined the mana circuitry. Have to replace ‘em all. Lot of cost, but the work itself is pretty straight forward. Eight hours. Less, if you authorize a double crew.”

“And you are certain that it will function as well as before when you are finished?” Cuthbert wanted to be very, very clear on that point. His lord hated using the teleportation chamber unless absolutely necessary or expedient, and Cuthbert wished to ensure the smoothest possible operation.

“Honey,” the gnome rolled her eyes. “Nothing you get repaired will ever work ‘as well as before’ when you’re talking this kind of damage. But it’ll be as good as I can make it, and that’s damned close.”

“Very well,” he gave a brief nod and reached into his inside jacket pocket, retrieving the silver chequery he kept there. “You’re hired, and extra crews are authorized.” He jotted down a figure onto the cheque, signed it, tore it free with a single dainty motion, and handed it over to the gnome.

“Get to work as quickly as possible. There is a 50% bonus for your entire team if you can get it functional within four hours.”

“Hot damn!” She snatched the cheque from him and tucked it into her overalls. “You’ve got yourself a deal! And thank his Excellency, too. This is really gonna put our firm on the map!”

“Yes,” Cuthbert smiled. “One way or the other.”

He left her contacting her crew and shouting orders at them over the message system. His black wingtip shoes made little tap-tap-tap noises as he strode down the marble halls of the Calcified Fortress—his lord’s idea of a joke, having fashioned the support structures out of fused-together bones of giants and dinosaurs.

Every now and again he’d stop to check in on a servant’s duties, or have a word with a guard about the goings-on in the palace. It was not something his lord demanded he do, but he was happy to do it. The smoother the palace ran, the happier his lord would be. And the happier his lord, the happier the kingdom.

Sadly, right now, his lord was anything but happy. Well, perhaps news of the teleportation chamber would cheer him up.

The screams grew loud enough to hear as he eased open the iron-bound door to his lord’s private chambers, though they were quickly fading into gurgles. Cuthbert sighed and made a mental note to order more of that washing-up liquid he’d purchased from the guild of corpse-removers. It was the only thing he’d found that could actually get all the blood off of the marble before it stained.

He trotted through the foyer and into the lich king’s private quarters, taking a left at the intersection and descending the steps into what his lord had dubbed ‘the meditation chamber’. The door was double-thick and bound front and back in sound-absorbing leather sheets. Inside was a smooth floor that sloped gently from each wall to a drainage trough that ran the length of the room.

The walls were six feet thick, stone, and were always unsettling slick no matter how often they were scrubbed.

Lich King Araxesendenak was just finishing with the elven prisoner he’d selected from the prisons when Cuthbert came up behind him.

“Feeling better I see, milord,” the little man said, eyeing what had once been a person. “The bath helped, I trust?”

“Miraculous, as always Cuthbert,” Araxesendenak placed the serrated knife he’d finished his meditation with onto a steel tray next to the heavy wooden table he’d been working at. “I asked you once whether you’d care to divulge where you aquire those divine bath salts, and you told me it was a closely guarded trade secret. I suppose that still applies?”

“I am afraid so, milord. An ancient pledge, you see.”

“Pity.” The lich wiped his hands clean on a linen cloth and tossed it onto the tray with the rest of his ‘meditative instruments’. “Well, can’t be helped. I would sooner destroy a stained glass window than compromise a man such as yourself. So tell me,” his master turned finally and laid that violet gaze upon him, “what brings you down here? Good news, one hopes?”

“Potentially very good news, sir,” Cuthbert said with a little bow. “Lady Gizelle, the gnomish engineer I vouchsafed to you earlier? She has come to examine the teleportation chamber, and according to her trained eye the original estimates for time of repair were grossly exaggerated.”

“Truly?” King Araxesendenak perked up. “Will it be done sooner then? I am dying to get my philanges on those treacherous little worms outside Melloram.”

“It should be repaired by the end of the day, milord.”

Lich King Araxesendenak went still as death, his eyeflames narrowing to pinpricks.

“The end of this day, Cuthbert?”

“Exactly so, milord.”

The eyeflames began to widen, ever so slowly, until they were wide and blazing, and the shadows they cast over his lord’s skull and death’s-head grin made him look like a demon conjured straight from the deepest pits of hell itself.

“Have the armorers report to me in an hour, Cuthbert,” he said in a low, almost purring voice. “And have the porters bring down my big chest from the attic.”

Cuthbert raised his eyebrows. “The big chest, your excellency? Are you certain?”

“Oh yes Cuthbert. I have never been more certain of anything in my death. I will go and meet those fools in full battle regalia. And if it seems overkill to you, consider this Cuthbert; never before has anyone dared raise a finger against me that did not have it torn off at the root. And these upstarts… These workmen not only survived my wroth, they have flaunted it for all to see.

“So yes, Cuthbert. The big chest. I will be making a statement with this appearance.”

Cuthbert nodded, and somewhere deep within his gleaming stainless-steel soul, he felt the tiniest pang of sympathy for the men and women who had stirred up his lord’s anger.

Not for very long, though. After all, they were just some fools who had insulted his lord to his face. They really should have known better.