“She what now?! Lena was arrested?” I demanded, incredulously. “What happened?”

Dash pulled me along to the Princess’s borrowed residence where all of her guards were gathered with the exception of Captain Wendy and Corporal Roy. They were all yelling at each other, arguing about what should be done next. Dash argued that the Princess was clearly framed and that they needed to break her out of jail while the oni, Baika, claimed that there was no way that they would actually put the Princess into an actual jail cell so she was probably fine.

Lieutenant Toadwart yelled at both of them and reminded them that they didn’t actually know where Princess Relena had been taken or what the situation was until the Captain returned. I knew Lena’s specs better than anyone and what a walking weapon she currently was, so I was confident that she would be safe for the moment.

“Princess Relena is a foreign dignitary. She can’t just be arrested on a whim without causing a major international issue, right?” I asked.

“We escorted her Highness to the conference hall on time for the big meeting,” Toadwart explained. “Only Captain Wendy and Priss were allowed to go with her so Baika and I waited outside.”

“We were told to wait in the Waning Pavilion,” Baika interrupted.

“Roy and I were in the commissary getting breakfast,” Dash interjected.

“Guys,” Toadwart snapped.

“Sorry LT,” Dash apologized.

“Yeah, sorry Lieutenant,” Baika added, hanging her head.

“So we were waiting outside the hall. A half hour in, we hear this explosion and go rushing in with all the temple guards,” Toadwart continued.

“And there was the Princess! Standin’ there looking mad with her fists all clenched an’ those two simians frozen in blocks of ice along with that lizard Princess,” Baika blurted out.

“What?!” I demanded.

My mind raced, trying to imagine the scenario, her magic output shouldn’t be capable of freezing three people solid like that. She nearly passed out freezing a single Jamnasian Paladin.

“Wait,” I said, holding up one hand and covering my optics with the other. “Princess Charitomeni? She and Relena were childhood friends.”

“Lots of people saw our girl threaten the Simians last night. They probably got into a huge argument this morning and it got physical?” Toadwart suggested.

I stared, flatly, at the goblin.

“You don’t believe for a second that Miss Measured-Self-Control would do anything that would jeopardize the mission that her royal brother gave her, do you?” I asked, rhetorically.

“No, not really,” Toadwart admitted.

“Who else was in the room? Wendy? Priss? Um, there was that cat guy too and Alliance delegates must have had attendants, right?” I queried.

“Well, the Sunurian ran past us screamin’ that the Princess had gone crazy,” Baika offered.

“I saw the Captain layed out. I don’t know what happened to her but I think she was taken to the infirmary. Roy’s there waitin’ for her to wake up,” Toadwart mentioned. “As for Priss... I might have seen some Auto parts laying around, though we didn’t get a real good look before the temple guards forced us out and Her Highness ordered us to stand down.”

“Yeah, that sounds like something she’d do,” I admitted, tapping the space between my eyes with a finger tip. “It’s pretty obvious that this is a set up, though I admit it looks bad if the witnesses are against her.”

“Her Highness has always been known for being a powerful ice mage since she was a child and all three of the victims were found frozen solid,” Dash explained. “The Kokolians are claiming that Princess Charitomeni got scared when Princess Relena killed their delegates and turned on her to keep her from talking. Charitomeni was frozen in a state that looked like she was praying. The Ylaisi delegate, Bail, said that Her Highness was trying to kill all of them and that only he was able to get away.”

“What about their attendants?” I asked.

“They must have run off in the confusion,” Toadwart suggested.

The situation was delicate and I wasn’t, exactly, known for my social finesse. The evidence against Lena was well planned even though I knew she wasn’t capable of that level of magic anymore but anything rash we did could be construed as an act of aggression. I volunteered to inform Milliardo about the situation since Wendy hadn’t returned yet and such a task would normally fall to her as the Captain of Lena’s guard.

As expected, the Emperor Apparent wasn’t pleased to hear that his prized little sister had been framed for murder. His initial reaction was to send the dragon corps to level the country but once he vented a bit he retracted his statements before an underling could confuse them for orders.

“I do not like it, Prime, but I fear we must trust that dear Lena will be fine where she is for the moment,” Milliardo stated via the weird smoke mirror thing.

He was silent for a long time. I got the impression that he was pacing in front of the mirror and chewing on his words. A few times, he approached the mirror, raised a hand, then thought against it and resumed pacing. Eventually, he returned to the mirror and got uncomfortably close to it, making himself look extra large on my end.

“Master Artificer, I would very much like to request that you get to the bottom of this before the Maxorians or the Eastern Alliance is able to get their footing. Of course, since you are not, at present, an agent of mine, nor even one of my citizens I’m unable to make such a request and would have no knowledge of any activities you might choose to take upon yourself.

“The Empire will be conducting our own investigation as best we can, though if the culprits that would seek to attack your fiance and then frame her for murder were to somehow disappear, escaping legal justice... it would be most regrettable,” Emperor Milliardo ordered without ordering in careful, measured tones.

Milliardo sounded like he already knew who might be behind the plot against Lena and why, but was keeping it to himself. He was also, very clearly, telling me to hunt down the bad guys and deal with them for him, while also making it clear that if I got into trouble, I was on my own.

Make them disappear? He was asking me to track down the folks that were responsible and kill them? I was down for getting to the bottom of a mystery and helping Lena out of a tight spot, but I was hardly an executioner. Well, that would just have to be a moral dilemma for future Prime.

Prime.Cyclone:// Your mission, Agent Prime, should you choose to accept it, is to track down and neutralize any and all threats to her Highness, the Princess. As always, should you or any of your proxies be caught or killed, the Empire will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This mirror will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck.

Prime:// not now Cyc.

Prime.Cyclone:// sorry pops...

“Understood, your Majesty,” I answered, giving a pseudo-bow nod of my head.

Milliardo nodded back, looking satisfied with the response before terminating the connection spell. I flipped the empty mirror face down onto the table feeling slightly worn out. I didn’t used to feel this drained talking with Milliardo but then he wasn’t the Emperor of a nation at the time. A knock on the door brought me out of my thoughts. I looked up to see Remi leaning against the door frame.

“So, what be the plan then? Do we storm the citadel ta free her lordship from the clutches o’ ne'er do wells?” Remi suggested, tilting his head to the side.

“Maybe, but not yet. Not now at any rate. As far as the Empire is concerned, they want to let the Maxorians conduct a proper investigation given that the evidence against Princess Relena is clearly a set up,” I explained.

“Oh, aye, but tha’s nothin’ ta do wit us now, is it?” he asked, giving me an Automata wink.

“Aye matey, you catch on quick,” I chuckled. “We’ll let the Royal Guards know to sit on their hands as per their Emperor. In the meantime, you and I will try to get into the crime scene to see what we can find.”

I found Toadwart and relayed what Milliardo had told me. He wasn’t pleased but said he would comply-- at least until Captain Wendy returned. Regardless of what Milliardo had said about leaving Lena for the moment, I worried about what might happen at the next meal time. It was already early afternoon and she could have gotten away with turning down lunch thanks to some feigned or genuine indignant anger but she wouldn’t be able to keep it up forever.

It was possible that her Automata nature was leaked somewhere outside of the Empire, though Milliardo had worked hard to keep a tight lid on it after the duel. I was very worried about what they might do to her if they found out she was an Automata.

Remi and I headed for the conference hall, though I didn’t know how we’d get in. Should we try to sneak in or would a direct approach work best? We got to the main entrance to find Master Chao Lian glaring down at me.

“And just where do you think you’re going? This area is off limits,” he said, coldly.

“Do not confuse me for one of your students Chao Lian,” I glared back. “The Empire’s Princess has been accused of disrupting a peace conference and murdering three foreign delegates. If you think that the Empire is going to just sit back and allow the investigation to continue without any Imperial oversight, you are sorely mistaken.”

“How dare you, you little brat!” Chao Lian spat. “You’re looking for death!”

He threw a punch at me, but before it could connect I spun around catching the fist via a spinning hook kick. I grabbed his fist with my toes and yanked him forward, pushing him to the ground with a fist to the side of his head.

“I don’t have time for your games,” I warned.

“Senior! Please, forgive him. It’s just a misunderstanding,” the Head Priest said, rushing over and bowing deeply.

I released Chao Lian and stood upright. He seethed but didn’t say anything in front of his senior.

“I’m going in,” I stated.

“Yes, of course, Senior! Please,” the Head Priest said, bowing again.

I moved slowly, keeping an eye on them. Master Yu Fan was all smiles while Chao Lian was all glares. Remi slipped past me so I trotted to catch up once the masters were out of view. More temple guards were throughout the building milling about but none of them attempted to stop us. We did get some wary looks from soldiers in a uniform I didn’t recognise. I assumed they were from one of the Alliance countries.

I noticed a number of lizard folk in their ranks so it was possible that they were the royal guard of Princess Char. If the Empire was upset that their Princess had been targeted, I could only imagine how the Jalagrorunians-- Jalagrorunese? Jalagrorunites? --the people of Jalagrorun must feel with the murder of their first Princess. Especially given that it was the Empire’s Princess that supposedly killed her.

As soon as word got back to their home country, one would assume that the attack order would be given and the war would be in full swing.

“Try not to get in anyone’s way but be sure to look for anything you can on all wavelengths,” I suggested to Remi as we entered the hall.

Fewer soldiers or guards were in this room. The room itself was of decent size with half of a large table in the center and entirely too much distance between it and the walls of the room. The missing portion of the table looked like it had been on the receiving end of a [FireBolt()]. Everything in the decor seemed to point at the table, suggesting how important it would have been or the weight of things that would be discussed at it.

A lizard folk soldier with opulent shoulder epaulets stood near the entrance with his arms folded. An expensive looking sword hung on his hip while a frazzled looking salamander-ish subordinate cowered on his other side. The subordinate had a notebook and was writing down whatever the boss was telling him.

A few of the temple guys were wandering around the room as well, but what drew my attention was a large block of ice that obstructed the carpeted path to the table. The block was vaguely humanoid shaped with a thick tail and about my height. Through the ice, I could make out the details of a small gecko girl with yellow and white skin and a pink, off the shoulder kimono. She looked terrified.

Without thinking, my hand reached up to gently touch the ice, my metaphorical heart breaking for Princess Char. She seemed like a mischievous and fun sort of girl.

“Don’t touch, orcan,” the fancy soldier warned me.

“Right. Sorry,” I apologized, retracting my hand.

I looked the block up and down, focussing on the floor as I circled the it . I could see traces of mana from the attack lingering all over the ice and preventing it from melting right away. I stepped around Princess Char and stopped when she was exactly between me and the exit.

The floor in front of me lacked any residual mana that I could see. I could see some to the left and right of Char but none in front of me. I continued my orbit and could see lingering mana trailing from Char to the door. I squatted down and ran a finger across the floor, scrapping a small amount of ice dust. I looked at the crystals glistening on my finger tip, analyzing the structure of the ice and the residual mana signature embedded within it.

“You’re wasting your time. It might be magic ice but it’ll still melt before we can get it analyzed,” the soldier stated.

I looked up at him and wiped my hands on each other. Where did this guy stand in all this? Was he loyal to his Princess and would genuinely want to get to the bottom of things or was he a part of the conspiracy and was here to make sure the investigation pointed at Lena?

“Oy Prime. Come check this out,” Remi called from the Simian ice blocks.

I got up, my optics lingering on the fancy soldier but walked over to Remi. He pointed at the floor.

“The mana here. See how it spreads outwards away from these guys?” he asked.

I looked at the blast pattern. From the look of things, the person that had fired off the ice spell that killed these guys had been standing slightly behind, and between them. The looks on the Simian faces suggested that they hadn’t seen it coming.

“Whomever iced Princess Char, hit her from the direction of the exit,” I speculated at a volume just loud enough for Remi’s audio sensors to pick up. “The ice is thicker on the side facing the attack too. If these guys can’t see the residual mana blast pattern, they should still be able to see that much, right?”

I analyzed the ice dust on the Simians and found that it had a different mana signature from the ice around Princess Char, neither were a match for Lena's signature though.

“Where was Princess Relena positioned?” I asked, raising my volume back up to normal.

“Ah, over here sir,” a temple guard pointed out.

She had been on the opposite side of the table from the Simians, which was to be expected. I began to circle the Simian ice blocks and stopped short when I saw a Simian soldier that had been nearly torn in half by, presumably, some big tiger lady claws. He wasn’t alone though as he was joined by two cat people corpses.

The cat people looked like attendants and pretty young at that. Unlike the Simian corpse these two looked like they were done in by blades across their backs rather than torn apart by claws.

I continued to look around and spotted the lizard folk corpses as well. One looked like it could be a soldier, and a high ranking one at that. He was covered in blade cuts suggesting that he went down fighting. The other was a young gecko girl like Princess Char, likely her lady in waiting.

Not too far from the corpses, though, was an alarmingly large pool of blood suggesting that someone large met with a heavy wound. The blood splattered around as the wounded person had staggered about gushing blood. It also looked like the person had been smashed into a column and then hit the ground.

If Wendy lost this much blood then it might be a while before she wakes up and can be interviewed about the events.

“Princess Relena’s guard killed these people. Probably going after the witnesses on her mistresses orders,” fancy soldier suggested, stepping closer and eyeing me suspiciously.

“You think so? The captain is unconscious in the infirmary, who knows if she’ll wake up given how much blood she’s lost. You’ve seen her, right? She’s a big girl and hell in a fight. Where is the person that wounded her enough to leave behind this much blood?” I mused.

“Such a person must have escaped the Empire’s assassins during the chaos,” the soldier said carefully.

“All but that guy, I guess,” I remarked, pointing to the simian corpse. “And I highly doubt that he was able to wound the Captain to that extent before her claws found him.”

“She could have lashed out before she collapsed. As you say, she’s a big girl.”

“Dude. This fellow isn’t half her size. You see that splatter against the column? You think he threw her? Someone much bigger did that. Of the corpses here, only this Simian soldier bears the marks of Wendy’s claws. Everyone else was killed by a blade.”

“She may have hidden it on her person,” Fancy answered, narrowing his eyes.

“Remi, tell Lieutenant Toadwart to post Baika at Captain Wendy’s room. The assassins might want to silence her before she has a chance to wake up,” I ordered.

“Aye,” he answered and ran off.

“So you’re from the Empire then. I suppose you’ll be trying to clear your Princess’s name,” Fancy stated.

“That won’t be hard. There’s nothing here that even suggests that she had anything to do with the deaths,” I declared.

“Oh? Everyone knows that your Princess was a skilled ice magician, her Captain is a renowned warrior, easily capable of killing this many people in a moment with her bare hands,” Fancy explained.

“Even the Captain of Princess Charitomeni’s Royal Guard? He looks like he was skilled and accomplished though unarmed. I don’t see any weapons on him but he was killed by blades and not claws. Say, is that his sword at your hip? I just noticed that it happens to have the same insignia on the pommel as what’s on the Captain’s shoulder.”

Fancy glanced down at the blade then back at me.

“It is,” he said defiantly. “This sword is the symbol of leadership for our division. With the death of Captain Gennaiotita, I am next in command until a replacement can be formally commissioned.”

“Vice Captain Afosiosi was supposed to accompany Her Highness this morning, but Captain Gennaiotita said that something felt funny to him and made the Vice Captain trade with him,” the salamander guy offered.

Vice Captain Afosiosi glared at him and the salamander withered.

“So if not for your Captain getting a funny feeling, that corpse would be you, Vice Captain?” I asked, narrowing an eye.

Afosiosi crumpled slightly and thrashed his tail on the floor.

“Yes... Captain Gennaiotita was amazing. It should have been me,” Afosiosi said quietly.

“We’ll get his killer,” I promised, putting a hand on Afosiosi’s sleeve.

“You said that nothing here pointed to your Princess but Delegate Bail from Yliasi is an eye witness and says otherwise. He is a well respected and powerful person,” the Vice Captain said, returning to his rigid demeanor.

“Well, aside from the mountain of physical evidence calling him a liar, we’ve got three eye witnesses of our own,” I countered.

“Three? Well, there’s your Captain, but she’s in a coma. She is also a subordinate of your Princess so any testimony she may give to support Princess Relena’s account will be dismissed.”

“Hmm, that’s true, there is that. There’s also Priss, Her Highness’s attendant-- ah, she’s the Automata maid that’s been impaled into the wall over there via a spear through her head. She’s not dead, just... asleep until she gets a new head. Thankfully, they didn’t spear her through her core,” I prattled.

“A maid’s testimony will be even more suspect than the Captain of the Guard,” Afosiosi said, looking doubtfully at Priss.

“Good thing there’s one more witness; Princess Charitomeni,” I said, jabbing a finger in the direction of the frozen Princess.