I hadn’t forgotten what I’d said to Aster back then. The last the highborn had seen of the enigmatic Lord Seiji, he was vanishing into the dark of the forest right after confronting Archlord Caludon at Caer Ardyllen. Now, it was from the forest that he suddenly reappeared, right on the outskirts of Clan Yldyllich’s holdings. I emerged from the shadows beneath the skeletal winter khora and made a beeline across the cleared expanse of snow toward the guards standing watch over the main road into the village beyond.

Fortunately I was at least dressed for the part, which wasn’t a coincidence. By this point I have a whole closet full of red longcoats with gold trim, in several patterns; however accidentally I had stumbled onto that style, it had become part of my brand and I stuck with it for the sake of showtime. Also, I went through them at an alarming rate; sometimes the holes could be patched, but it turned out that bloodstains in red fabric are just awful, they look all muddy once they’ve dried. The nice red-and-gold boots that had so perfectly matched my first such coat were languishing back in my room, but fortunately the Surestep Boots were black and thus went with everything. For my dramatic approach I had removed my winter headscarf for the sake of recognizability, and just had a long crimson scarf with a black pattern and gold trim wound around my neck, under which Biribo was hiding.

The guards glanced at each other uncertainly, then took a step closer and crossed their spears across the middle of the path. Which was downright cute; like all Fflyr villages, this one had no outer wall and there was a lot more room to go around them than through. But there were proprieties to be observed, after all.

There were also archers on hastily-erected guard towers, two of whom were looking right at me with arrows nocked. Not drawn or aimed, but the message sufficed. The range of those longbows was immense; this close they’d put a shaft clean through a guy.

“Sorry…sir,” one of the Clansguard said as soon as I was within vocal range, eyeing me up and down. “Highlord Thymion is hosting a special event for the neighboring Clans today. It’s by invitation only. Village is closed. If you have business, everything should be back to normal tomorrow.”

Not if I had my way, it wouldn’t.

“Yes, so I hear,” I replied smoothly. “I gather my invitation was lost during delivery. I wouldn’t wish to embarrass the Highlord by making an issue of it; you know how unsafe the roads are these days, with all the banditry. You may inform him that Lord Seiji has arrived.”

“Look, man, everyone who is on the guest list is already here, so whatever you’re oh bugger me rolling uphill, did he say Seiji?”

His partner gave him a scathing look and jabbed his foot with the butt of his spear, to no effect thanks to their armored boots. “Listen…Lord Seiji. We have our orders and our duty. I’m sure the Highlord would be, um, honored to host you at any other time, but—”

“Tell me.” I didn’t raise my voice or even project, but he shut up instantly at the interruption. A lot of that was a lifetime of training, instilling an instinctive response to someone with Lord appended to their name speaking, but still I liked to think my own charisma was a factor. I paused, giving the silence the moment it needed to ripen, and then when I spoke again, it was softly enough they had to pay close attention. “…have you paid the price?”

Both men went noticeably gray beneath their helmets. The one on the right, who seemed to have a bit more poise than his partner, swallowed heavily and tightened his grip on his spear.

“You there.”

Our conversation was interrupted from behind, this time by a mounted figure—riding a gwynnek. Man, I was glad I’d gotten accustomed to those creatures, or the sight of one carrying a rider who was clearly not pleased to see me would have been genuinely intimidating. You can’t be near a horse-sized bird with a beak full of alligator teeth and grasping claws on its wing joints and not be vividly reminded of your own mortality, but with familiarity came the assurance that any gwynnek broken to the saddle was well-behaved and fully under the control of its rider.

And, unlike a horse, capable of decapitating and disemboweling someone at said rider’s command.

“Highlady,” the guard on the left said with clear relief, saluting and thumping the butt of his spear on the ground since he couldn’t perform a proper hierat while holding it. “This is Lord Seiji. He, ah, he says his invitation was…misplaced.”

I think I would have identified her even without hearing her title; the familial resemblance was strong. She looked just like Mimi, but twenty years older and with one of those elaborate spiky Fflyr hairdos instead of a simple ponytail. It was actually pretty impressive how roughly the same configuration of very similar features could look calmly aloof or icily disdainful depending on who was doing it.

“I see,” the Highlady said, eyeballing me as if trying to anticipate how bad a smell I was going to grind into her carpets. “In a manner of speaking, that is not far wrong. At least, in the sense that it was interest in your presence which was misplaced, and consequently the formal request for it. Of all the places on Dount for you to come admire your handiwork, Lord Seiji…why here?”

“My handiwork? You can blame me for your Archlord being an unhinged idiot if it makes you feel better, but we both know something would have set him off sooner or later. Highlady…?”

“I am Miriet Yldyllich, Highlady of these lands. And I don’t suppose there is any chance you would actually leave my domain if I directed you to?”

“None whatsoever,” I replied with my most pleasant smile. “And even less that you could make me.”

Her eyes narrowed further. “And if I were to request it with the utmost courtesy?”

“I wouldn’t want to put you so far out of your way, Highlady. Come now, you can’t just host the social event of the season and expect people not to show up.”

“I am accustomed to having some control over who does so,” she said disdainfully. “A sorcerer with no regard for social graces and a propensity for violence is seldom a welcome guest anywhere.”

Still smiling, I shrugged. I’d learned that once you’ve established that propensity for violence, it’s far more menacing not to make overt threats.

“Hey,” growled the guard on the right, taking a braced stance and aiming his spear at my heart. “You do not talk to the Highlady like—”

“Silence,” Miriet ordered curtly. “If you are to expend your lives in the defense of this Clan, it will be at a time and place that furthers our interests. I’ll not waste Clansguard giving this oaf an excuse to show off. Very well, Lord Seiji, since you insist on making yourself an imposition, do come in.”

She turned her gwynnek and the guards stepped aside, saluting while also glaring sullenly at me. I tipped the more loyal one a grin and a wink as I sauntered past him, lengthening my stride to catch up with my mounted hostess. She had not troubled to restrain her bird’s pace to a walking person’s.

“Whatever trouble you are planning to make, I advise you to withhold for the time being,” Highlady Miriet said as soon as I’d drawn abreast of her, not looking at me. “As a foreigner, you are probably not accustomed to gwynneks. Jaju is rather adamantly intolerant of threats to my person.”

She reached forward to stroke Jaju’s neck; as if on command, the bird shifted her head to fix me with one beady eye, making a soft clicking sound deep in her throat that I’d learned was a gentle warning.

“Oh, you might be surprised at the things I’ve seen and done,” I said lightly. Tame Beast. Reaching up, I scratched just above Jaju’s eye ridge in that spot I knew they liked, the gwynnek obligingly lowering her head and letting out a happy trill.

Immediately, Miriet pulled her reins, straightening Jaju out and pulling her head back up out of my reach while also moving them both a step to the side. Now she finally looked at me, with a more overtly angry glare than previously.

“I will thank you to refrain from casting magic at my bird, sir!”

Oho, someone had finally caught on? For as commonplace a spell as Tame Beast was alleged to be, I had thought it funny that no one at Clan Ardyllen seemed to have realized I was using it. I’d put it down to my silent casting and how that seemed to throw native Ephemerans off.

“More than fair,” I said in the same agreeable tone. “If you’ll simply refrain from threatening me with anything you don’t want spells cast at, my lady, we won’t have these little whoopsies.”

The Highlady’s upper lip curled in a sneer of the most concentrated dislike I’d ever seen on a person, which in my case was really saying something. Even as I was gaining understanding of why Mimi had been so desperate to get the hell out of this family, I was finding myself more and more curious how she’d turned out so generally chill.

“Welcome to the domain of Clan Yldyllich. I trust you can find your own way to the hospitality tent from here, Lord Seiji. You must excuse me now; as I’m sure you understand, I must confer with my husband.”

She heeled Jaju and headed off at a rapid lope. Where gwynneks truly excelled was in swiftly and adroitly navigating difficult terrain where horses straight up couldn’t go, but even over flat ground it was always an impressive sight. The birds weren’t actually faster than a horse, but at top speed their movement was much quieter.

I could indeed find my way to the hospitality area; that was where Miriet was going, and one of only two points of interest set up in the wide, snow-covered field that lay before the village square. This was an interesting setup; it almost looked like the village had been sliced in half, with what was clearly its central square opening directly onto a wide open space that led straight to the road with its guard post. They must hold a lot of festivals or sporting events or something. Beyond that were the houses of the village itself, and rearing above them in the distance the florid curves and arches of what had to be Caer Yldyllich.

I took my time approaching, getting a good look at the layout. Like everything Fflyr, the arrangements for the spectacle strictly segregated by caste. On one side of the fairground was a stand of bleachers, apparently temporary in construction but comfortably covered in pillows and draperies so nobody’s fancy ass had to sit on raw akorshil. It was mostly full with dozens of blond and light brunette people bundled up in expensive-looking swaddling against the cold, most clustering near the lit braziers at the edges and in the center, and many holding steaming cups. Right next to the seating was an open-sided tent very like the one I’d visited on Clan Ardyllen’s estate, boasting similar amenities. Directly across from them was where the games were apparently going to actually be held. I couldn’t get a good look because there was another pavilion-like arrangement set up. I could see more asauthec braziers standing at the front corners, but the canvas walls shielded their contents from this angle. Apparently it was set up to be visible to the watchers in the expensive seats.

That had to be much of the highborn population of the eight Clans in attendance; it wasn’t as many highborn as I’d seen at Ardyllen’s place, particularly Caludon’s eternal banquet, but it was a much higher concentration of nobility than I typically encountered on Dount. A lot of them were staring at me and whispering to each other, an effect which spread as more and more of them were clued in to my approach.

The interest was not mutual. I ignored them, making a beeline for the man to whom Highlady Miriet had gone to speak without troubling to dismount from her gwynnek. That had to be her husband, my host, and the man whose entire day I had come here to ruin.

Thymion Yldyllich was…well, honestly, kind of generic. Blond, expensively-dressed, carrying a rapier—also expensive but not an artifact—and wearing the coldly disapproving expression of a man whose only joy in life was power, and whose power was currently being challenged. I did catch the telltale glow of an artifact gleaming through his vestments; he was wearing some kind of armor under his outer coat, the way Aster did her chain mail.

“Lord Seiji,” the Highlord drawled as soon as I had sauntered into the range at which he could address me without raising his voice in an uncouth fashion. “How…gracious of you to honor us with your presence.”

“And how wise of you not to invite me!” I replied with a broad grin, bowing to him. As usual, it made the assembled Fflyr rustle and mutter disapprovingly. This pothole of a country had that going for it, at least: something as simple and commonplace as bowing was consistently fun.

“Since you are so admirably straightforward about your essential nature, I shall ask bluntly: exactly how much trouble do you intend to make here?”

Standing on the second level of the bleachers, he towered above me, enabling him to look down his nose while I had to crane my neck to make eye contact. Not the most advantageous position for showtime, but I could make do.

“I could ask you the same, my lord,” I replied. “But then again, perhaps not. After all, I can see for myself.”

“…quite.”

From here, I had the right angle to properly check out the staging ground for the Stupid Games. Directly across from us was the pavilion in which the eight pairs of contestants were bracing themselves for the obscenity to come. Their structure was shielded from the winter wind on three sides, remaining open only to preserve the spectacle for their betters. Other accommodations for the cold had been made: the placement of braziers was generous, with each of the eight competing spaces bracketed by no less than four. The handy thing about asauthec was how you could mix and match its various types to achieve designer effects, and this blend was clearly formulated to put off high heat, minimal light, and no flickering tongues of flame that risked igniting the canvas enclosure. Or the competition itself.

Behind each of the pairs of lowborn stood a loom. It must have been quite the hassle to find eight of them and drag them all out here; those were not small pieces of equipment. So, today’s competition was weaving. Nude outdoor winter weaving.

I bet on Earth there would be idiots willing to do this voluntarily, like those weirdos who like to jump in frozen lakes in the winter. Here, it was an exercise in sheer cruelty, and the expressions of the sixteen contestants bore it out. I was honestly impressed by their composure. Most were downcast, several grimly resolute, but no one was panicking or trying to fight their way out. No doubt the armed Clansguard standing ostentatiously nearby helped dissuade them, but also…

This particular event might be a limited-edition, bespoke form of torture, but they were all accustomed to being kicked around.

“Hm. Trouble in paradise, over there?”

I nodded toward a knot of clearly arguing men standing in front of the soon-to-be games. Middleborn, all of them, and relatively well-dressed if not as much so as the nobility currently leaning over the rails to gawk at me.

“Ah.” Thymion’s frosty voice took on an undercurrent of satisfaction, following my gaze to the squabbling men. “Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lord Seiji, your dear friend the Archlord does not trust us, his loyal Clans, to execute his latest exercise in pure waste and pointless destruction and report the results in good faith. I’m given to understand he has all but cleaned out the bureaucracy in Gwyllthean to furnish enough overseers of sufficient rank to administer these…games in each of the Clan holdings in which they are to be played. Every one given the rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to speak with the Archlord’s own power and exert his will over their betters. Or so they anticipated. Now, it seems the eight of them are having some difficulty determining which among them is entitled to this unique honor.”

“Conzart and the eleven conductors,” I said sagely.

“Quite.”

The onlooking highborn shuffled and chuckled with malicious glee, and I considered the arguing middle managers again, more thoughtfully. This was a clever little gambit: Thymion had not only made a mockery of the Archlord’s scheme and thus his authority, but done so right in front of his subordinate Clans and put these middleborn back into their place—humiliating, specifically, those representatives of the Archlord at whose presence the Clans took umbrage. Whether or not they were jockeying for prestige, the mere fact that he’d collapsed a system with no clear chain of command would inevitably result in an administrative mess like this; as a military man, Thymion knew that intimately. His deployment of troops around this village—and his general reputation and use of those troops over the years—painted him as an aggressive thinker inclined toward brute force approaches, but he was clearly capable of sly social maneuvers when they were called for. I had best keep that in mind.

“Obviously, the result is a foregone conclusion,” Thymion continued in a bored tone. “The events are being held here, and thus the…minder Caludon has so thoughtfully provided me will take precedence. Men of lesser breeding simply can’t help but squabble. Toss a scrap to a pack of dogs and then take it away; you’ll see much the same.”

“I rather take exception to that description,” I said in a deliberately mild tone. “Your Archlord is no friend of mine, despite his best efforts. The man’s yapping at my heels is tiresome in the extreme.”

“None of us like him, Lord Seiji,” Thymion countered disdainfully. “You alone are liked by him enough to rouse him to decree this…absurd spectacle. You’ll forgive me if I am unable to forget just who inspired the entire debacle.”

Yep, there it was: sly social maneuvers. He’d immediately started trying to undercut my credibility with his peers.

“Caludon is an utter clown,” I said in a carrying voice. “I’m not surprised by anything he does. I am surprised at your willingness to help him out, Highlord; I was under the impression you two didn’t get along. No matter how he begs, I’m not coming to his birthday party. Having you play the friendship card on his behalf isn’t going to change my mind.”

They were a good audience, I’ll give them that. From the onlooking highborn, who were starting to weigh down this end of the bleachers as more and more of them drifted in this direction to take in the show, there came the requisite gasps and muffled titters.

Thymion was made of stiffer stuff than Lhadron, and had more poise than Caldimer. He just watched me, silent, expression unchanging as I turned the conversation back around on him—quite deftly, if I do say so myself. Indeed, the ensuing grand pause was no awkward fumbling for words; he very effectively gave it the exact time necessary for the proper dramatic weight before abruptly switching subjects.

“I have spared no effort or expense for this event, Lord Seiji,” the Highlord intoned, his voice and expression calm and a trifle bored, emphasizing his effortless mastery over these proceedings. “Do feel free to avail yourself of the amenities in yonder tent; I believe you will find everything sufficient to suit even the most exacting tastes. And of course, I have made ample preparations to ensure the safety of such a substantial gathering of the Goddess’s chosen blood. You see my men positioned all around these grounds, with a vantage over us all.” He made a casual gesture, directing attention to the longbowmen on alert. He was right; everything between the village and the forest was in range of at least three archers. Those bows were stiff and as long as the men wielding them were tall, designed for much longer range. In here, the impacts would be devastating. “They will summarily dispatch any threat to my guests. Naturally, I made these arrangements assuming any putative threat would come from without, given the strict prohibition we highborn honor against the spilling of our own sacred blood. Still, my men are…adaptive. Any disruption of these proceedings will perish. Instantly.”

“Well, that’s a relief to hear,” I said with hearty good cheer. “I’m sure we’re all able to relax, knowing these lands are safely watched over by the famous Yldyllich Clansguard. Safe as babies in our little cribs, all the way here and all the way back home. Truly, Highlord, we are grateful for your service to the realm.”

His eyes flicked up and down me once. “You are well-known as a sorcerer, Lord Seiji. May I ask why you are wearing artifacts?”

Ah, there was the billion-yen question. Fortunately I’d had plenty of time to come up with an explanation. Specifically, one Biribo had told me powerful sorcerers sometimes did, confirmed by Aster, Nazralind, and Minifrit as a rare but known practice.

“Oh, you like them?” I said innocently, leaning to one side and lifting a foot to show off my Surestep Boots, one hand patting the pommel of my Rapier of Mastery. “I confiscated these from various Blessed with Might who tried to kill me. Sure, I suppose I could sell them, but do I really need money that badly? Better to keep them as a message to any others who might think they have a chance. That’s not to say I’m entirely opposed to it, Highlord, if you wanted to make an offer! I think these let the wearer jump higher? At this point I’ve matched most of my outfits around them, but they do pinch my toes a smidge.”

As planned, that brought on another round of the obligatory whispering and murmuring, though so far the gathered highborn continued to yield the floor to Thymion. Those who had heard of this practice also knew why it was rare—I mean, aside from the economics of reducing some of the most valuable items on Ephemera to vanity trinkets, these assholes could only admire such an excess of conspicuous consumption. Sorcerers who thus made their entire outfits a loud “come at me, bro” to the world were among the most dangerous and the least likely to be challenged, to be sure…but only for a while. Eventually people would take them up on that, and eventually, one would win. There was always a bigger fish.

Except in my case.

“How…quaint,” Highlord Thymion said in a tone of such deep and profound neutrality that it couldn’t convey anything but the most withering disdain. “But my own artifacts are carefully chosen, and I am not a…collector. Ah, it seems the little men have finally sorted out their clash of egos. What fortuitous timing for your arrival, Lord Seiji, you’ve hardly had to wait at all. Do feel free to avail yourself of my hospitality, but do not dawdle overmuch at the drinks table. It seems the festivities are finally about to begin.”

He was right, Caludon’s inept-looking enforcers had come to some kind of grudging detente, with one looking luminously smug and the rest sullen. The visible dread on the faces of the lowborn waiting patiently to be made spectacles of was cresting to its apex.

“Perfect,” I said cheerfully, and immediately started out at a long stride across the field toward the competition grounds.

“Lord Seiji!” the Highlord barked behind me. I just waved one hand over my shoulder, not troubling to glance back.

They’d come to see a show, and by god they were going to. All possibility of it being the show they had expected had ceased as soon as I set foot on the scene, however.

For I am the Dark Lord, and showtime is mine.