Rasgen’s walk to his office was less morose than it usually was. He actually managed a smile as he made his way toward his private inner office, at his back, the twin half elven women were following with the things he would need to work with. “Your mood is better, master.” The collared one said warmly.

“I’m going to see Tir today, so yes. It is. That seems to be the way things are now… I managed to see her last week and we enjoyed it, but I know part of her is unhappy. I did check, and she isn’t being abused in Lady Aiwenor’s home. A little disconcerted, but as maids go she is well treated. If only she would let me just buy her freedom…”

“I don’t think she wants you to be the one to do it, Prince Rasgen.” The uncollared slave spoke bluntly.

They were reaching the door to his office at that point, but he stopped before the collared servant could get in front of him to take the handle. “What do you mean?”

“My Prince, when my sister and I were taken, we had the chance to go, and refused, then one of us had the chance to go, and also refused. Part of it was because we resented the one whose fault it was we were taken in the first place. For better or worse, you left her to her fate for your own reasons. Now you’re visiting her for a quick rut every week. Of course she’s less than happy.”

“She’s not being mistreated by her mistress…” Rasgen said as the chill ran over him.

“Right, it’s you, Prince Rasgen. I don’t doubt your feelings for her, but I do doubt you understand her feelings about you. Did you not tell us that you talked of marriage to her owner, in front of her? What life can there be but pretend for her? And games end, sire, games end. But the game ends for you to return to a city you rule. The game for her, means returning to dreams of revenge.” The uncollared half elf uttered decisively.

“My sister could be wrong, master. But it is a thought to consider.” The collared servant replied and swung the door open, allowing them to enter.

Rasgen thought that through when he fell to reviewing the banking proposals and, almost absent mindedly, began affixing his seal to all the new laws with the borrow protection acts.

“I think…” Rasgen finally said, “I think after Lady Aiwenor returns, I won’t be able to see Tir that way anymore. I think today I need to say farewell to that time between us. I believe I did the right thing, and I believe I did my best at an impossible situation. But she isn’t wrong. I could have just put someone else in charge and run away with her and enough money for us both to live well. I chose my city over her, my duty over her. Even if she understands that, it changes things. Besides, the Duchessa has a different view of marriage than we do here. If she accepts my proposal, I am sure she’ll demand I compromise on that point.”

They took up position in front of his desk and began replacing papers as fast as he could affix a seal and signature to them.

“My Prince, your former advisors have submitted a protest about their removal and retirement.” The collared servant kept her head bowed, knowing what was in store.

Rasgen’s fist came down on the desk. “Let them protest till they die! Which, given their age, may well be just a few weeks! Those tired old men held power for far too long. They jealously attacked a newcomer and even helped plot her demise. Or at least Leaman did that, I can’t help but wonder if he was behind Ulmin too… after all, if Ulmin found out… and Leaman is no stranger to bloodshed.” Rasgen went off on the brief tangent, but then got himself on track again and slammed his hand on his desk as if he hadn’t already done it.

“Burn that protest in the fireplace, I won’t even read it.” Rasgen snapped.

He groused, but slowed his work down, his eagerness to see Tir, dampened by what he was going to have to say.

Nothing, however, could be put off forever, and he eventually made his way to the House of Aiwenor. It was far from the most lively place now that the Duchessa had gone, but he made his courtesy visit with the purple tagged, “Priceless.”

He looked her over as soon as he entered the Duchessa’s office where she was temporarily working. She prostrated herself deferentially as soon as he came in, though this time without the small shiver of fear she formerly had whenever she was alone with him.

“Rise, Voice of the Duchessa.” He said and waved to the chair behind the desk.

“My Prince.” Priceless replied as she rose, “Welcome to the House of Aiwenor. You’re here to see Tir, I assume?”

“Yes, but also, before I do, I wanted to tell you how pleased I am with all the work your house has been doing around the city. Disease is down since the new fountains were built, and the number of beggars at the temples has declined considerably since you started modifying the sewage systems.” Rasgen was very sincere in what he said, and Priceless couldn’t restrain a warm glow when she received his praise.

“Sire, I am just a slave trying to serve my mistress well, this is what she would want done for her city, and I am merely her instrument. All praise belongs to her. I will pass it on when she returns.” Priceless bowed her head in humility, but the blush on her cheeks from the praise remained.

Rasgen’s voice was polite, but commanding, and Priceless stiffened a little under it. “Do that, slave, do that. But also do this. As soon as she returns, send word to my palace immediately. After her last long excursion… she was simply unable to come to me, but given the nature of my proposal, I want her to be comfortable, and not feel like she has to be on my grounds for whatever answer she gives. She is happy here, and so, here, whatever her response, I will take her answer.”

“I obey, my Prince.” Priceless said without raising her head, part of her almost offered her own opinion with it, but she immediately shut her mouth tight enough for her lips to make a tiny popping noise.

Rasgen caught it. “You have your own opinion, don’t you, Priceless?” He asked rhetorically.

“My lord… I do but… I’m just a servant, it’s not my place to offer opinions on the decisions of my betters. Please disregard my needless thoughts.” Priceless urged him and bit her tongue to keep any other unnecessary words at bay.

Rasgen made a lordly gesture with his hand, sweeping it out as if he were about to bow, “Please, you know your mistress well, you clearly are devoted to her wellbeing, tell me the truth, slave. That is an order from your Prince.”

Priceless gave a rapid series of tiny nods. “Nothing less than a Prince is worthy of her. And I know she likes you, that’s no secret. But I don’t know if you’ll be happy... I love my mistress… and I want her to be happy in ways people like me rarely ever are. I know you love Tir, and you loved Sobella. I’ve seen you with my lady, I don’t see that you love her.”

Rasgen bowed his head under the weight of her truthful words. “Your mistress has spoken of your bonding with the former Lady Kaiji, you love one another very much, or so I’m told.”

“Yes, sir.” Priceless answered quickly, stilling her pounding heart as best she could as she dared speak her mind to the city’s Prince.

“You are very lucky, royal and noble marriages are not like that. We marry for gold, grey, green, and white. Or as you’d say, money, military strength, land, and heirs. Love is not a factor. But it isn’t unheard of for a couple to find happiness. It just isn’t required. You’re right, I am not in love with your mistress and I won’t lie to you or to her about it. But, I do like her, I respect her, I enjoy her company, and we have mutual needs that we can complete with one another. I hope that can grow into love. And it will have to be enough for all of us.” Rasgen answered with an even, metered voice. “In a way, you are freer than we.”

Priceless bowed her head to him again. “Sire, I’m sure Tir is waiting eagerly for your company.”

“Yes… of course, I will see her at once.” He replied, and left Priceless behind to visit Tir’s quarters.

Night fell when the last few shovelfuls were dug, over a hundred broad channels that led to the downslope away from the city.

The rush of water made a singular slushing sound, and threatened to carry away workers, in their sudden flood into the new channels, and would have, had they not been secured to ropes bound to posts that were hammered into the ground.

When it was done, Nua simply waited, the water level began to fall dramatically, though the flow continued, it went from high enough to drown a fully grown wartroll, to being enough that a young child could wade through it without having to tilt their head back to breath.

Her soldiers jumped down into the water with a steady splash, ladders and battering ram at hand, they began the mile long trek through the darkness and the splashing water, well around the bend, and all the way to the city gate. Nua looked over her shoulder, the water was cool and even refreshing, and at her back, her twenty-five led by Vargas, marched in a double row on either side of the channel. Not far behind them stood Kaiji, ready to launch a spell if they were discovered.

Behind them, were her thousands of heavy infantry, and dismounted cavalry. They reached what had once been an underwater gate, and Nua reached out to touch it. ‘You have got to be joking…’ She thought, just barely suppressing her laughter. The lock in her hand was a pathetic strip of rust. She raised her left hand, brought it down, and smacked the lock away to splash into the water and mud beneath. She pushed the lower gate open, and crept within, followed by her elites and a pair of ladders.

Up above, high on the wall where guards should have spotted her, nobody was even looking down. ‘It’s dark, the river still flows, they can’t see that the depth has changed, and they have no idea we’re here.’ A pair of ladders came to the edge, and careful to make barely a sound, she went step by step up the wall of the canal, until she placed a booted foot on solid stone again. Nua then turned around, and helped up her servants one by one, far up above, the light guard wasn’t looking within, and they were too high up to hear the bare minimum of noise her handful made. The pitch black of the deepest part of night ensured empty streets, and within minutes, Kaiji, Nua, and the twenty-five were within the city. She drew the knife she’d had retrieved that day, and crept to a set of stairs leading up to the wall. She waved a hand toward the opposite set of stairs, and Vargas began to go up his, as Nua ascended her own.

With the stealth of her profession, she made her way up, every hint of noise was a clap of thunder to her sharp ears.

Step.

Step.

Step.

Up she went, the knife up and ready, she heard a soldier yawn. She listened and held her breath, then rounded the corner. She saw him before he saw her. She caught his throat with her left hand and squeezed, a few feet away, another guard had just enough time to open his mouth before her knife flew from her hand and buried itself through his chainmail armor and into his heart. The man collapsed in a heap, his weapon clattering, while on the opposite side she heard faint gurgling, a brief flare of clattering sounds, and then nothing but one man’s quiet breathing as Vargas lived up to his past.

Nua leaned over the side, and snapped her fingers twice, the sound carried, and down below in the dark, the sound of thousands of slowly wading soldiers, sloshing into the city, reached her ears before she’d even retrieved and resheathed her knife.

She didn’t stay to see what they did, ‘They will do their jobs, we have our own to do.’ Nua thought proudly as she heard her twenty-five begin to move at a steady, loping pace through the streets. Nua herself rushed in Vargas’s direction, and the two raced along the top of the walls as silent as wind with none to hear it.

One by one, knife by knife, throat by throat, they eliminated dangerous eyes. Their legs pumped and hearts raced as they went along the wall, falling into sync with one another as if they had trained together for a lifetime. Wordless glances spoke volumes, a single gesture said enough to fill a library’s worth of words. And when the knives ran short, they worked in tandem with distractions or alternating targets.

So it went through the shadows until they came to a pair of guards who stood too far apart for just one of them to kill without alerting the other. Without thinking, they dropped down at the same moment, bracing their feet against the inside of the wall, and clinging with their fingers, they inched their way behind each target.

Looking out over the empty grounds, the bored guards conversed. “So you’re coming to my wedding after all this, aren’t you?” The one on the left asked the one on the right.

“If the stars will permit my father to recover. He is still sick, and my mother is too old to look after him by herself. I’ll try to be there, I really will but…” He shrugged. “I don’t know, I mean first we’ve gotta get through all this.” The guard at the right hand answered.

Nua and Vargas silently pulled themselves up, and in a single motion covered the mouths of the pair, and slit their throats all the way to the spine. They held the dying men through their muffled gurgles of disbelief and fear, then lowered the dying, silent bodies to the stone, and moved on.

Eventually however, as they were nearing the palace, the inevitable happened.

The thousands of soldiers swarming over the streets raised the alarm instead as they made their way to the opposing wall, slaughtering guards from the inside. The javelin throwers, archers, and light infantry of Hanak’sen were brought to grips with an enemy whose armor they could seldom penetrate, and from whom there was no wall to hide behind or atop.

Onimeus could barely contain the swelling of pride he felt in his mistress. “What’s going on in there?!” Yanlim demanded as he rushed over to where the old general stood.

“The impossible, made possible.” The old man answered gruffly. “Wake the whole camp, we’ll have our chance soon. And ready the drums.” He said, cracking his knuckles while battle tension filled his body like a heavy rain filled an open barrel.

Within the city, drums began to beat as the military and militia struggled to rally their forces. Onimeus however, ignored the drums, he focused instead on the pattern of clashing steel that he could not see. A howling figure fell backwards off the wall, briefly lighting up the other side of the gate as he burned to death on the way down. He was only the first. Blasts of flame were growing closer. ‘Heavy infantry moving up the stairs, magic casters behind in support, good, good.’ The preternatural calm that was always with him, whispered knowledge to him like a secret lover whispered desires in the night.

“Are the drums ready?” Onimeus asked when Yanlim returned.

“Yes,” replied Yanlim, “shouldn’t we use them, get the spirits up now?”

“No… not yet, not till they get the gate open, their drums have been going for awhile, the courage that comes from these things is always brief and at its highest at the first blow. By the second sound, the martial spirit is already weakening, and by the third, what’s left is only what every man has in his own heart. Sadly, that usually is not much. We wait, my lord.” Onimeus answered.

The assembled army was twitching, anxious, uncertain, and to bolster them, Yanlim turned away from the walls to shout words of encouragement. “Our allies are within, fighting for your city! Fighting for your Prince! These are Komestrans who have never seen your homes, will you fight with less vigor for what’s yours than they will?! When those gates open, go forward, and etch the memory of Hanaksenian bravery into the hearts of Komestran warriors for a thousand years! It’s easy to be brave behind stone walls, it’s easy to be brave within heavy armor… but you don’t need either, because you’re brave enough all… by… yourselves!”

As if to cap his speech, a gout of flame erupted and the gates burst outward, flame licking the stone and air and lighting up the fighting within, men struggled like demons in the pits of hell, biting, clawing, howling bloodlust, heavy shields smashed and shattered limbs before close range swords ran through armor never meant to be close enough for that to happen.

“Now, general. Now. Beat the drums, but keep them close, and stay in support behind the Breakers, use your long range javelins in support and skirmishing, I don’t want our men to be unable to know yours from theirs in the darkness.” Onimeus ordered, and Yanlim grunted acknowledgement.

“Drums!” Yanlim commanded, “Sound the advance!” The war drums pounding briefly drowned out the dying sounds of the defeated gate, and that in turn was replaced by the pounding feet of the advancing army of General Yanlim.

The deafening roar hit the night as Yanlim’s warriors charged through the open gate as soon as it was in the hands of the Breakers. The scattered and uncoordinated soldiers of the city were outmanned, lost, confused, and frequently half asleep or in most of their cases, not even armed as they’d been forced to jump out of bed all at once.

The clashing of arms and the screams of the dying reached Nua’s ear, but there was a minisiege going on of vastly more importance.

The palace. With one main entrance the twenty-five elites couldn’t ‘clear’ it on their own, but they could keep anyone from leaving to coordinate efforts at a defense. They took up position at the road leading up to it, and tossing out torches over the ground leading up to the door, there was no way to creep out. The first man was killed within minutes of the chaos beginning in earnest, however it did not take many failures for someone within to understand what was going on outside.

The palace quickly began to organize an attempted break out.

With their work removing sentries done, Nua and Vargas made their way down and rushed to aid in the ‘siege’ of the palace while the city fell at their backs. The pair arrived just as the guards charged with roaring cries over the little path of torches. The glow of the torchlight gave them a demonic look, orange, yellow, and red flashing over their lightly armored bodies, the few heavy armored soldiers leading the charge. Steel flashed overhead, catching the firelight in the perfect finish and briefly giving blades the appearance of burning themselves.

The tight formation of heavy infantry operated as one single mass, with shields coming out to bash, before a neighbor stabbed the fallen.

Nua felt the hate and fear wash over her as a desperate madman leaped at her with a spear held in both hands, she felt the salty sweat drip down from his body onto hers and time moved like molasses on a hot summer day. His wild eyes said he knew he was going to die, and as though he wanted to leap onto her blade, he continued coming on in a leap he could not stop. Her knife was waiting for him, and she felt the sick pressure and yielding of flesh as she penetrated his slender body at the chest, and the tip pierced his lung so that his scream died with the rest of him.

He slumped down when she lowered the weapon, sliding off the edge, bloody chunks of flesh caught in her serrations, leaving those the only reminder to her that he had once lived. The light in his eyes died under her gaze, and nor was he alone. Her heart pounded while death screams replaced war cries until the palace ran out of guards to send to their deaths, leaving whoever still lived, effectively imprisoned.

And from there all Nua could do after that, was wait. Wait. And breathe.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

It felt like it lasted all night, but in reality, she knew it couldn’t have been but an hour or three.

The desperate cries beyond began to die down while order was restored, and the heavy booted marching down the long stone road and out of sight, alerted Nua that her victorious warriors were coming to her position.

She was not wrong. Around the corner came lit torches in the hands of marching feet, and in their center stood Yanlim, the firelight illuminating the joy on his face.

“Is the palace still holding out, Lady Aiwenor?” He asked as if he couldn’t believe it.

“Only because we haven’t gone in, General Yanlim. This is your city, if ‘we’ take the palace, people will think of it as ‘my’ city. I do believe though that it is very much out of guards. You should have no trouble with the rest. We’ll wait here, just call for help if you need it.” Nua winked at him, and the powerful looking general winked back.

“My warriors!” He called to the lightly armored soldiers that followed Nua’s heavies, “This part is up to us! Follow me!”

He leveled his sword toward the door, and charged.

Nua waited as they pounded and smashed at it until it was turned to splinters and both Yanlim and his soldiers forced their way through.

While she listened to the cries coming from beyond the door and waited to be invited in, Nua looked over to where Sergeant Vargas stood idle, watching the door and waiting for the same thing she had been. “Well done, Sergeant, well done. Do you know where you stand, now?”

“No, mistress. But I know where I kneel.” He said, and turning to her, he went down on one knee, rested his hands on it, and with great deference, bowed his head.