Nua had not been exaggerating about there being much to do. She did, however, keep her promise that evening and before the meal was to be prepared for the household, she made her way down to the kitchens.

“Should I announce your presence, my lady?” Kaiji inquired as she followed a step behind.

“No, these are my kitchens, not the royal palace.” Nua waved it off while their footsteps echoed behind them. Here in the lowest levels of the manor, the floor was stone, as were the walls. They weren’t decorated, save for the sconces hanging from the walls. She paused and reached out to touch the stone, it was cool and dry, the rounded stones protruded a bit, like little bumps along the way, tiny rolling hills between the mortar that held them all together.

“It’s very drab down here, isn’t it?” Nua asked, the little crackling of candle light and the smell of smoke that wafted around, filled the long hall.

Kaiji lowered her head and held her hands folded in front of her. “It is, but it’s just the kitchen hall. The underground passages are nothing but earth. Compared to that…”

“Maybe, but still, it could stand to be a little brighter.” Nua’s long ears twitched a bit as the notion came to her. “When you have a moment, see if we can find a way to get some natural light in here, and maybe…” Nua pondered it a moment, “If I remember correctly, the first group of students should be taking literacy tests soon, right?”

“No, mistress. They took them while you were gone…” Kaiji corrected her, and Nua, nonplussed, went on.

“Right… then maybe reward the ones who did the best, give them some cheap paints and let them decorate the wall down here. Most of their mothers and or fathers work in this part of the estate. They might like the chance to do something for their parents. And it would be nice to not just be surrounded by what amounts to a long tomb.” Nua removed her hand and continued walking, she paid little attention to Kaiji’s note taking behind her.

She resumed her walk without further interruption, and it wasn’t long before the smell of cut vegetables and various spices touched her sensitive nose. ‘Preparation.’ She thought reflexively, recalling some of her own time in the kitchens of past human owners.

Nua stepped into the low ceilinged room. Long stone counters were covered with greenery, and it was somewhat better lit than the passage within, though still fairly dim. It didn’t take long for her to be noticed, her whispered family name passing from lips to lips and ear to ear.

“You’re all looking well.” Nua said as she broke the silence and took another step into her kitchens and glanced around. There were mostly young women, a few of which had obviously not availed themselves of the help Kaiji had begged her to give to them, and chose for one reason or another, to bring to term the children they carried. A distant pang shot through Nua’s heart and she unconsciously touched her own belly. ‘Aalon, if things had been different…’

She cast off the thought and to disguise the unpleasant memory, put her hands behind her back and roved her gaze around, it was clean and well ordered, effectively run. Slabs of meat were laid out and readied for cooking, blood pooled around them and in a bizarre sort of way, it reminded Nua of the battlefield.

A messy looking cook wearing a black shirt and pants approached her and knelt with both knees into the stone. Her shaking hands came up, they were slender little things, and a mere glance at the trembling little lips and small delicate face revealed she was about to weep. She had a tiny little squeak of a voice that fit her features, and fine blue hair hung down around her shoulders.

Nua’s right hand came out reflexively, and the young girl immediately grasped and kissed the palm. “Thank you… thank you for your mercy… I couldn’t bear it… I couldn’t, not to him… or them… Thank you, praise be to the god of death that gave us the goddess of mercy… the priests of the stars say I am damned for fighting fate this way. But I was already damned the moment those warriors broke into my house and killed my family... The stars can’t damn me twice.”

As the servants of the house of Aiwenor drew closer to her, a little sea of iron collars in black kitchen staff outfits, Nua could only feel the welling bile in her gut as she tried to picture a girl this one’s age enduring what she did. ‘Whatever else I do, whatever else I am… I helped ‘her’.’ Nua told herself before she spoke. “I only fulfill the word of the one god that lives in this world. Like any living, thinking person, he has many traits… he only exceeds us in all of them. I worship him as the god of death, the mercy I gave to you is but an imitation of his mercy toward all. Any praise to me, is praise to him to whom I kneel in service. All my kindness to you, is kindness shown to me. My just rule to you, is the justice given unto me.” Her eyes glowed as golden as an angel’s halo as her priestly passions were put to work.

They faded, of course, to return to their native blue, and Nua added to her words by saying, “When enough copies of my divine lord’s book are made, I hope you will all read it. I can do what I do, because I’m not bound by stars, I’m bound only by my choices… and I choose…”

“To love those whose lives are in my hands. You are mine, and I am yours. I will keep you safe…” Nua raised her pulsing left hand in front of her, “and if you are not safe, it is because I am already dead.” The fingers clenched into a fist. “No one will ever touch you again.”

Kaiji kept her savage, wild emotions confined. ‘After the death of Yanmelu, she’s not boasting. In a month the story will be in all the great cities, in six it will be in every city. At least… I’ll make sure it is.’ The Komestran star was resting in a jewelry box in her lady’s room, and by now most of the servants knew of it and the omen it represented. No doubt it was spreading among the other servants of other houses, and Komestrans who lost hope of their city’s renewal, were finding it again.

‘It will be a city of apostates too, before I am finished. Damn the stars that damned us first! Damn the stars that care nothing for our pain or our screams or our loss! Damn their games and damn their light! Give me the god that sent my mistress, so that I might give her the empire she craves. If the stars don’t like it, let them try to stop me a second time. They. Will. Fail.’ A rush of pleasure swept through Kaiji’s body as fast as the pumping blood in her veins, the memory of fireballs consuming lives that sought to take her lady from her, only compounded her pleasure. ‘Sacrifices on the altar of a goddess, are worth it to bring…’ She closed her eyes as one of the iron collared girls fell weeping at her mistress’s feet and professing gratitude for not having been forced to bear a child against her will, ‘so merciful a god to us all.’

Kaiji waited as her mistress made her visit, and listened as their work was praised, they didn’t flinch away from the touch of her hands, they didn’t withdraw when she drew closer, and a part of her view of her slaves versus their free counterparts, made sense to the demon-elf.

Then it was done, Nua put her left hand on Kaiji’s shoulder and faced the long dark hall from which they’d come. “We’re done here, Kaiji,” she whispered to the long sharp ears of the demon-elf, “I’ve got some more souls to claim.”

The cool breath of the death worshipper wafted into Kaiji’s sensitive ear, and it flinched of its own accord. “As you wish, mistress. I’m sure the Starlings are eager to meet the one they’ll serve now.”

She then wheeled about and followed her lady back through the hall of stone.

Rasgen did one thing he never did when he left the House of Aiwenor. As soon as he was in his office, he leaned back in his thick heavy chair and propped his feet up on his desk. His hands folded over his lap, and he managed to smile.

“My Prince, are you happy?” The collared elf asked him with a little smile spreading over her delicate features.

“I am… now are you finally going to tell me which of you is which? It’s awkward not knowing who is who, you know.” He gave a whimsical smile to the pair and their slender ears twitched in answer.

They looked from one to the other, and answered in unison, “No, my prince. As we told your father and grandfather, you can call us what you want.”

“Alright, What You and Want You it is then.” He smirked, and they did a brief double take before they brought their right hands up to their mouths and laughed in unison.

The uncollared half elf however, quickly became serious. “What of the former Lady Lodira…? Did she…?”

Rasgen shook his head and the happy look fled his face. “No, when I saw her last week, she didn’t take it well. I’m afraid she’ll never feel that way about me again. I lost Sobella, then Lodira, then Leaman and all my advisors, then finally I got Lodira back as ‘Tir’ and I lost her all over again.”

“But you are… happy?” The collared half elf asked.

Rasgen reached into his drawer and set a bottle on the desk along with, to their surprise, three cups. “I admit, I fell off the world for a little, drinking the way I did, and… I still have that urge. Losing Tir after everything?” He rested his chin on his chest, “I’m not going to lie to you, What You and Want You…” he furthered the cheap joke, causing them to blink their bright eyes repeatedly, “I want to drink myself into oblivion. If I were any other man, in any other position, I might do just that. But I have people who depend on me. My wife-to-be and I have that in common. I can’t afford to lose myself, nobody else can afford for me to do that either.”

The collared half elf went for the bottle and poured one of the three glasses before setting it down as silently as she’d picked it up.

“I got out three glasses to share with you, you know, not just for decoration.” Rasgen said as he took the full one for himself.

“A slave should not drink with her master, it’s unseemly.” The serene expression rested on the delicate mix of human and elven features of his collared servant, who picked up the bottle and poured one more. Her sister took it up and raised the glass she was given.

“To a fruitful marriage.” She said in a casual, even playful voice.

“And hopefully, a happy one.” Rasgen added, raised his glass, and they drank contentedly.

Word spread out all over the city within hours, countless ears were abuzz. In the poorer districts of the city where those who lived worse than slaves struggled every year not to drown in the flooding that inevitably hit their district, cheap beer went into empty bellies in her name. Workers were being hired in greater numbers on an almost daily basis and had been for weeks, and now the house that out of nowhere had become their benefactor, was to be the consort.

And among the poorest of the poor who sat in good cheer, there sat a man with an utterly forgettable face, across from a dark elf and his three companions.

“So why are we here, stranger?” Saelin asked, the tip of his corkscrew knife picking at the dirt beneath his nails. “I didn’t plan on coming back to this city at all, and if I had to, I damn sure didn’t want to come to this part of it.”

The man with the forgettable face took out a mask of black and white, and his voice came through it somewhat muffled.

“Simple, I heard from a contact that you were hard off for work, something about a job that didn’t go well, cost you some of your friends too, and you didn’t get paid.” Taen said, folding his hands together inoffensively on the rough cheap table, he idly twiddled his thumbs. It wobbled underneath the little motion, tapping out a rhythm on the dirty stone beneath its uneven legs.

“The Red Shadows. Yes, my little… gang, if you want to call it that. We worked for a guy who paid well, and… we did get paid, but the money was lost with the hideout. Never did see his face, he got away, I got away, everybody else, dead or in prison. One of them got it pretty badly too.” Saelin shuddered even against his attempt to stop it. “Why do you ask?”

“Because now that your last benefactor is gone, I’d like to become your new one. We won’t meet much face to face, but I’ve shown you my face already, that should be good enough to establish some trust, shouldn’t it?” Taen asked, the mask hiding his gleeful expression and massive smile.

“I suppose, but what do you want me to do?” Saelin asked, briefly turning his eyes away to watch two drunken orcs get into a brawl that destroyed a cheap table. The punches flew back and forth until one picked up part of the table and hit the other until he stopped moving. Nobody stopped drinking, and nobody helped the one on the ground. The winner picked up a sack of copper coins and went to buy another round for himself at his victim’s expense.

Taen reached into his pouch and rustled around while he spoke. “I want you to get onto the estate of the Duchessa, go undercover, find out everything you can about the ones who work there. I’ve dummied up some papers already to show that you’re from Cenak’Tai…”

“Where is Cenak’tai…?” Saelin asked with a frown.

“It’s far to the south, just on the border with the Tlachopan Empire. They’re a strange one, they handle sacrifices by giving someone a noble title for a year, then giving them whatever they want, men, women, food and drinks, every wealth and comfort… then sending the fattened ones south. Every now and then someone tries to run after enjoying the benefits.” Taen’s laugh was muffled by the mask, but his amusement wasn’t.

“Idiots. Regardless, you’ll be a ‘servant from a fallen house’ who was allowed to leave the city. They had a coup there and a lot of records were lost, so even if they check, you’ll be safe from discovery. All you have to do is to present yourself as an unemployed but skilled servant, tell them you’re hungry, and offer to sell yourself into slavery in exchange for work and food and ‘the chance to serve a noble house.’” Taen finished, “I can offer you gold ingots for this, no coins.”

“Not a chance.” Saelin shook his head violently. “The human I kidnapped, she definitely knows my face. I would be caught in no time at all. Besides, the last thing I want to do is get caught up in anything that involves the fucking skinner.”

“The what?” Taen asked.

“The skinner. That’s what some of the underworld have started to call the Duchessa. She likes to skin her enemies alive. That’s what she did to Bracer, that’s what she did to at least one of my comrades, and several of the ones spreading rumors about her turned up… well, let’s just say we had no idea if they’d ever had a fucking tan or not. No way, no how, am I going in that house or getting involved with that mad woman.” Saelin crossed his arms and tightened his grip on his biceps, his implacable stare went straight into the eyeholes of the mask.

“The reward is ten gold ingots.” Taen replied, deadpan.

“But nobody there has seen my friend here.” Saelin slapped a hand on the slightly built human’s shoulder with a broad smile taking over his face. “What kind of information are you looking for?”

“Anything that can get my employer at her. Anyone whose death would cripple her, anywhere she goes that she is vulnerable, anything useful at all. There’s a silver bonus for everything you bring me. So… do we have a bargain?” Taen asked and held out a hand.

“It’s a bargain. If there’s anything we can find to use against her, the Red Shadows will find it.” Saelin promised with an enthusiastic smile and stretched his arms out on the backs of the cheap chairs of his new companions.

“Good, as soon as someone’s on the inside, you’ll get your first payment.” Taen snatched the papers out of his pouch and slapped them on the table. “Use these, and good luck.” The slender man added before standing up and walking out of the bar, pulling the cloak up over his head as he went.