“Fancy seeing you here,” Seb said, his voice as wild as it had been when we’d parted ways.

I squinted at him. That voice… had it always been like this? Maybe it was more apparent today, but there was an element of calculatedness to it, like he was intentionally pushing it forward. Maybe not something that a person less experienced in dealing with professional bullshitters would catch, but there was an anomaly there.

That… was a consideration. I already knew Seb was a lot smarter than he looked—whether that was because of an oath or not, I still couldn’t tell—and this was just one more addition onto the pile of evidence pointing that way.

“Hey there,” I said. “Sorry about the door.”

“It wasn’t worth much anyway,” he joked mirthlessly. “What brought you here?”

“You’re compromised, my friend,” I said. “Information has leaked across the town.”

“I know,” Seb said. “Fuckers got us good.”

There was definitely something else he wanted to say. I could see it in his eyes, the barely restrained clench of his fists. This was something personal.

When he’d come to help against House Alzaq, his group had been more organized. He had been cooler, wild without being too hot-blooded.

Something had happened last night, something that had disrupted the general secrecy of the commoner movement. Seb’s in particular, apparently.. A traitor? Tracking magic? Excellent information-gathering capabilities? Whatever the case, their stronghold was known to us now. If it wasn’t us that got to him, it would’ve been the Tempets or the remaining Alzaqs or any of the other dozen Houses that were even tangentially involved in this conflict.

It looked like Seb knew that. He was stressed, I could tell, and the increasing pressure from the nobles after just one day of the commoner revolt had to be getting to him.

“You’re with the nobles, then?” Seb asked. “I fucking knew you weren’t a maid.”

“Adventurer,” I said. “Was working for a noble House, and I never lied about hating them.”

“You don’t need to tell me that,” he said, annoyed. The facade was slipping. He was gradually growing to sound more like a wealthy merchant or low-class noble, an accent creeping into his voice. Our appearance was distracting him.

None of the people around him seeemed to notice, but I did, and so did Kyle. The jester leaned his head over, making a show out of whispering to me.

“Is it just me, or is that not quite a homeless man who’s been raised by the streets?” Kyle asked, his voice set at a comically loud whisper that nobody seemed to hear. “He sounds like the runaways we get.”

“Someone with experience with image, at least,” I said. If he’d been pretending to be a mdoerately insane vagrant this whole time, that spoke to dedication and impersonation skills that few commoners learned. He was probably someone from the upper echelons of the common class, then, given his accent. If one could afford to pay for the tutors that taught noble children, their own children might adapt to the cadence of the instructors’. I was willing to bet that that was what had happened here.

That did, of course, beg the question as to why he’d chosen to intentionally lwoer his station, but that was something that could be answered later.

“A liar either way, though we did already establish that,” Seb said. He leapt down from his shelf. Not a big enough drop to break bones, but a significant one nonetheless, and the way Seb rolled to catch his momentum when he hit the bottom was reminiscient of… of something. I couldn’t quite grasp what it was. “You’re here to kill me?”

“Not quite,” Kyle said. “Questions for you, mostly.”

“And kill you if necessary,” I added, partially just to be a dick and partially because I was genuinely ready to do so. “Depends on whether or not you’re capable of stopping your little operation here.”

“We’re not harming anyone,” Seb insisted, putting his hands up as if in surrender.

He snapped with one hand, and someone moved above him. I tensed, readying magic in my hands, but I need not have worried.

Seb caught the thrown cigarette out of midair and held it to his mouth.

As he was fishing around in his pocket, he kept speaking. “What do you wish to know? I doubt I can outclass you in a duel.”

“Boss…” someone trailed off. I looked up. Another person sitting in the shelves for some reason. I recognized the face, but I didn’t have a name to match it to. One of the younger people from the group.

I gave him a little wave. He didn’t wave back.

“Who are you working for?” Kyle asked.

“I—nobody,” Seb replied, his voice abruptly changing tone halfway through his sentence. Hiding something. “I work for nobody.”

“I doubt that,” Kyle said. “Anyone else care to share?”

“We work for nobody,” the boy who’d spoken up said, repeating Seb’s words.

That… hmm. He sounded oddly similar to Seb. The cadence, the words themselves, the pacing of the sentence…

“We should’ve brought Jasmine,” I said. “Fuck.”

“Is there an issue?” Kyle asked.

“Listen to how they’re speaking,” I replied. “The shit in the response itself, the tone of their words. I think it might be a compulsion. I’m not sure.”

Kyle shrugged. “Not something we can determine right now.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “It’s really weird, though. If we’re able to, we should get Jasmine on it.”

The jester nodded, then turned his attention back to the commoner leader. “You worked for the Alzaqs before, right?”

“Not the Alzaqs,” Seb said, spitting the words with surprising amounts of fury. There was a history there, it seemed. “Fuck them. Our collaborator was a—was a Tempet.”

Another awkward pause there. That could potentially be chalked up to unwillingness to divlge his employer, though. When I’d met them the first time, I hadn’t been able to weasel out the identity of their secret benefactor out of them. If there had been some leverage that Alto fucking Tempet had been holding over them, I could see why they were more reluctant to talk about it.

“What was his name?” I asked.

The people around us grew skittish at that, drawing themselves into defensive positions as if preparing to attack us.

Seb looked around him for a second, then shrugged. “Fucker is dead already. Alto of House Tempet. Know him?”

All too well.

“No.” The lie was smooth, flowing out from my mouth before I could stop myself.

“Yes,” Kyle said. “Vaguely.”

Bless his clown heart, he didn’t do a double-take or glance at me weirdly. He went with the white lie, as stupid and unnecessary as it was.

“He paid us and gave us info,” Seb said, scratching at his forehead. “Not much anymore.”

Seb was being surprisingly cooperative now. Not only that, he was letting the mask slip a lot. When I’d met him, he’d been a powerful speaker, one that used simple but effective speeches to move his group to action. Now, though, he seemed like just another man. A frustrated one, at that.

What had changed? Sure, he’d lost some folk. The number of people gathered in this warehouse was certainly lower than it could be, some of the commoners dead in the fight at the Alzaq manor. Sure, there was a city’s worth of nobles closing in on his position. Sure, there were two powerful oathholders that they’d seen in action last night breaking down their door.

But the Seb I’d seen had been unflappable. He’d been strong, cunning, and intelligent. There was no way he had gone from that sharp, stubborn personality to this so quickly just because he was in a tough corner.

“What happened to you, Seb?” I asked. “Where’s the guy who met me earlier this week?”

“Gone,” Seb said simply.

I could see it in his posture. He wasn’t quite defeated, not yet, but he had by and large given up. Seeing that after only one night of action… it felt wrong.

There was someone else behind this, wasn’t there?

“Are you under any mental compulsions?” I asked.

“None,” he responded immediately, almost before I had finished my question.

“Who do you work for?” A repeat question.

“Nobody,” he replied. Faster responset his time, but in the exact same tone as it had been the first time.

“Fuck, you’re right,” Kyle said. “That does sound like compulsion.”

“Have you witnessed it before?” I asked. “You caught on pretty quick.”

“A mild version of it,” he said. “We had a hypnotist for a time.”

“You’ve certainly met your lot of interesting people,” I said. “We’re not going to get anywhere with this.”

“No,” Kyle agreed.

“Hey,” the kid who’d spoken up earlier said. “Boss, there’s a lot of us and only two of them.”

“They’re oathholders,” Seb replied, less harshness in his voice than exhaustion. “You aren’t going to even leave a scratch on them, kid.”

“We have oathholders too, boss,” he replied immediately. “We can take them.”

“Go and try,” Seb said. “It won’t end well for you.”

“This isn’t going to go anywhere,” Kyle said. “Can we capture him?”

“Hold on,” I said. “I have a couple more questions.”

“Sure,” Kyle replied.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a glint of light, flashing from a piece of metal spinning end over end.

Knife. Reflexively, I reached out with my oath, trying to form a shield. I caught myself going for an unstructured shield, pulling back for a moment to attempt a proper frame-fuel-spark type, and that nearly cost me.

My oath still wasn’t moving as fast as it should’ve been. Combined with the momentary hesitation caused by my indecision, it meant that the thrown blade nearly caught me.

Kyle, the magnificent jester that he was, blocked it for me. His sphere was thrown almost lazily, resolving into a prismatic rainbow of colors and ballooning out into an Adaptive Wall of force. It was an altogether unnecessary show of force, casting a sixth-class spell strong enough to stop a coordinated magical artillery barrage for a single dagger, but it certainly did the job.

The knife bounced straight off the first layer of the spell and clattered to the stone floor beneath our feet.

“Thanks,” I said. “Appreciate it.”

“No problem,” Kyle said easily. “I borrowed the spell yesterday and wanted to try it out.”

I was pretty sure I would’ve been able to dodge out of the way, but that would’ve been rather embarrassing to do when Seb had just made a point about our oaths being the defining factors that established such a vast power gap between us and them.

At least I hadn’t flinched.

“Who did that?” I asked, raising my voice enough to project through the room but not enough to sound properly angry. I knew who it was, but there was an aspect of the show to this that was at least somewhat necessary. “That was rude as fuck, you know?”

Treating it casually was the key here, I was pretty sure. I was no Alex or Jasmine, but I’d been trained in the ways of dealing with people enough to have a general idea of what I was to do in order to sway the opinions of those around me. Casually ignoring a potentially lethal threat was far more intimidating than being angry and up in their face about it.

I panned my vision over the room slowly, eventually stopping on the now moderately terrified boy that’d been baldly requesting the room to attack us.

“Sorry about that,” Seb said, stepping into my line of vision. “You’re right. It was rude.”

A little more than that. “We were on good terms last night, were we not?”

“The people get rowdy sometimes.”

I could read between the lines. He was losing control over the people that he commanded. That much was pretty evident, given the now half-destroyed knife that had been aimed at my throat just a few moments ago.

I met Seb’s eyes, then tilted my head in the direction of the weapon. An acknowledgment.

He shrugged. “Life goes on.”

“I feel like I’m missing some context,” Kyle said. “Oh well. Let me know if anyone needs to get beat up.”

“Certainly,” I said, looking back to Seb.

There was a sharpness in his eyes even now, the same sharpness that I’d taken note of when I’d first met him earlier this week. As much as he seemed tired, as much as he was letting his facade slip away into nothing, there was still danger to this man.

And danger to the situation, if my gut reaction meant anything. Mental compulsions had been at play already—Strike Team Leader Faye and her group came to mind—so I knew that that was definitely on the board for this conflict.

“What are your plans?” I asked. I formed unstructured magic, letting it crackle in my hand. Seb had been there last night, so he had to know what it was capable of.

He did notice the black magic roiling around my hands, the flinch mild but perceptible.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, not sure whether or not I was lying. “But I need to know what your group is planning on doing.”

Seb frowned. “Plan… I had a plan.”

That was uncharacteristically brief of him. I frowned as well. So many inconsistencies… he’d been bold, confident, and put together yesterday. Sure, his group had taken hits, but they’d also managed to take down a noble. Something had definitely happened. My suspicion that mental compulsion had been enacted was steadily growing, but I couldn’t check it without Jasmine.

“What was the plan?” I asked.

Seb blinked. “I… I had one. It’s out of reach. Like I can see where it is, but I just can’t quite get my hands on it… it’s just tucked away in a corner of my mind.”

Fuck. If that didn’t scream mental compulsion, nothing did.

“Jester—er, Kyle,” I said, turning my attention back to my current companion. “We should find Jasmine.”

Not only was Seb being weird, the rest of them were too. Despite our clearly threatening presence, a fair chunk of the other commoners—knife-thrower boy not included, obviously—were just milling about, ignoring our existence.

“I agree,” Kyle said. “I don’t like this.”

It was all but confirmed that these people were under compulsion at this point. What kind of compulsion it was—well, that was the real question here, wasn’t it? I wasn’t equipped to figure that out, but Jasmine certainly was.

“They went to House Varga,” Kyle said. “We can split up? Someone needs to stay here to ensure that they don’t relocate or potentially catch the one administering compulsions, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I’m pretty sure I’m strong enough to handle most things that’ll be tossed my way. I can track you with one of my spells, then you can go and find your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” I replied automatically. “Not a noble. Never.”

“…really?” Kyle asked, a note of surprise in his voice. “Sure, if that’s how you want to sell it.”

“I’m not selling anything,” I insisted. “She’s a friend, is all.”

“Sure.”

“Anyway. Tracking? How long?”

“I wonder why you didn’t lead with that,” Kyle said with a grin. “It’s an Oloje spell from the Naan’ti school. Greater Tracking or something. I’ll know your position and status for around twenty-four hours.”

“Invasive?”

“No.”

I could deal with that. “Works for me, sure.”

“Great. Then stand still.”

Kyle held his palms out, one of the spheres that constantly orbited him flowing down into his palm. The swirling mess of colors solidified, forming a light brown shade. With one smooth motion, he pushed it out, and the sphere floated towards and into me.

Just like the other status spells he’d passed into me before, the sphere disspated harmlessly against my skin. I could feel the twinge of Kyle’s oath working its magic on me, and then it was gone, nothing left but a faint oath signature.

“You’re good to go,” Kyle said. “Go say hi to your girlfriend—Jasmine, I mean—will you?”

I glared at him. That bit had definitely been intentional. “Fine.”

I left the premises at an almost-sprint, stopping long enough to wave to Kyle. Nobody else even acknowledged me go apart from an increasingly confused Seb.

We’d come here by foot, and I would have to return all the way back to the noble center by foot. I didn’t have a good method of transportation, since Jasmine had taken the carriage in order to return to the noble sector with Orchid, Alex, and Lukas.

The run back was going to take a while. It hadn’t been an exceptionally quick process getting to the meeting point by carriage, and I didn’t sprint nearly as fast as that thing could go.

There were far fewer commoners roaming the streets, now. I supposed the flood of people we’d seen earlier had largely been there to attack Orchid’s outpost. Now that there wasn’t a clear target, none of the armed commoners were present anymore. It was almost eerie, the way the streets had cleared up. Of the few I saw now, none held arms larger than a kitchen knife.

That wasn’t my problem. I already knew there was something deeply wrong with our situation—if that something wrong wanted to make my path a little easier, I had no qualms with that.

The path to the noble sector was long, but my stamina was good. Even if enhancement from the primordial fight had long since worn off, I hadn’t been trained as a killer for nearly a decade for nothing. This was light work.

I wasn’t completely sure where the Varga estate was, but the manors all had House names emblazoned on them somewhere. It took a little wandering to find, but nobody was really watching for ex-noble girls running through the streets. The situation was tense enough that most of the guards stayed within the confines of the manor, not coming out to contest one weird person running through the streets.

Or at least, that was what I thought was happening.

The first sign that something was wrong was the unfortunately familiar sound of a building falling.

The second was the smoke.

It was still a solid half-kilometer from me, but I picked up my pace. Fire? In the noble sector?

When I found its source, House Varga’s estate was gone.

Jasmine was nowhere to be found.