My brain kinda shut off for a bit while my friend led me through several twists and turns, ducking through alleys and buildings to throw off anyone attempting to follow us. The whole time I was just trying to wrestle with the fact she was here, why was she here?! She was supposed to be making sure the Varden was running smoothly!

But despite my brain being locked up for the moment, I was still functional enough to realize demanding answers when we were not in a secure area would be stupid and a waste of time until Arya stopped pulling me along.

So I kept quiet until we stepped into a house where Arya locked the door behind us. Must be where she was staying in the city. Though why a house and not an inn or something?

“Lady Arya? You’re back early, did something happen?”

WHY WAS LEONA HERE!?

“I was fortunate enough to run into a familiar face that basically completes our task here. And while I haven’t heard the story behind her escape, I decided we needed a secure space before we had a discussion.”

“A familiar face? Who - Lady Alexandria! Thank the gods you’re safe! When we heard the news…everyone was so worried!”

“Hi Leona, nice to see you too.” I replied. “But…what are both of you doing here? Shouldn’t you be back with the army?” I froze as a thought occurred. “Eragon isn’t here with you, is he?”

Thankfully Arya shook her head. “He remained behind along with Saphira. The bodyguards my Mother sent were due to arrive and would be honorbound to follow them if they did leave. A group that large would be hard to move around the Empire undetected.”

That was good then. No need to worry about the Varden’s Rider getting ambushed somewhere while we were talking. Which meant I could get back to the main issue…

“Great, but what are both of you doing here?”

Both women looked at me like I was an idiot.

“Alexandria,” Arya said slowly. “The Empire announced your execution as far and fast as they could. Did you expect us to not do anything? Even if it was a trap, which it certainly is, did you expect me to leave you at their mercy? When I know exactly how little their torturers possess?”

I winced at that. I was an idiot apparently.

I hadn’t fully considered what news of my capture would mean to my friends. Yes, I expected them to be worried. Yes, I expected them to do something about it - mostly keeping Eragon from running into a trap. But I made assumptions about their behavior because of their responsibilities to the Varden and discounted Arya’s experiences in particular.

I didn’t think about how she’d react to me being captured because I hadn’t. I was just running around the Empire doing my own thing, but she probably got flashbacks to her own ambush and captivity and rushed to save me.

I’d need to do something to make up for not figuring out how to contact the Varden sooner and letting Arya know I was alright. I’d have to do something nice for Leona too. She’d come a long way from the nervous barely trained witch I’d first met if she was willing to invade a city with only one other person for a rescue mission.

“Yeah, okay. That was foolish of me. Thank you both for coming.” I said sincerely. Now for the awkward part. “Unfortunately, I can’t leave just yet.”

Arya cocked an eyebrow. “You have some reason to remain in a city ready to spring a trap set for a Dragon Rider?”

I nodded and explained the situation. Both of them already knew about my need to hunt down the Brightsteel that was used in Rider’s swords even if I hadn’t explained to them exactly what it would be used for. I told them about the lead I had on one such sword somewhere in the City Lord’s mansion and the issues I had with locating it.

Needless to say neither one was particularly thrilled that I was planning to potentially risk my life when I didn’t need to, pointing out I’d have other opportunities to search for swords when a trap wasn’t waiting to spring on anyone, but I was determined. And rather than try to convince me otherwise anyway or drag me back to the Varden, they decided to help me out instead.

Something I was incredibly grateful for since they both proved invaluable soon after.

-o-

“So there is definitely a magician in there?” I asked after Arya had mentally scouted some of the staff in the mansion. Nothing too invasive just yet, mostly just counting how many people were inside and if their thoughts were actually guarded. To my mild surprise, several of the staff were mentally protected one way or another either from training or as Arya had just found out, warded by a magician.

“It seems so. Not a very strong one, though. I could easily break the protections, but it would be noticeable.”

I nodded. “And we want to avoid being noticed as long as possible.”

“That’s generally the preferred option when planning a theft from someone as influential as a city lord.” Arya said dryly, which I ignored.

“So we won’t be able to find out where the sword is by going through the servants’ memories without alerting whoever is protecting their minds or the ones trained to protect themselves noticing. Do we try sneaking in? Disguising ourselves somehow?”

I was shocked when Leona actually laughed at my suggestion. Despite me never caring about how she spoke to me or any of the master/apprentice formalities and often just telling her she could speak normally to me, Leona was always unfailingly deferrant and polite around me. It wasn’t a bad thing, just surprising she did something so uncharacteristic.

“S-sorry, I didn’t m-mean to laugh, my Lady.” Leona apologized, still laughing. “I-it’s just…the thought of y-you and Lady Arya trying to blend in with a bunch of servants…hahaha…!”

“I’ve gone undercover before!” I retorted, feeling strangely defensive. Arya must have agreed because she nodded at my words.

“As have I. Disguising myself as a human is well within my abilities.”

Leona just giggled some more and pointed a finger at Arya. “That is what I mean. The way you speak and present yourselves just makes it impossible to imagine either of you as a simple servant. Both of you draw the eye too easily.”

The corner of my lip twitched into an almost smile as she managed to make being called ‘pretty’ into an insult and sound completely sincere at the same time.

“That still leaves us without a way forward.” I pointed out.

Leona shook her head and stood up. “You and Lady Arya are too eye-catching. I can blend in perfectly fine. If the sword is famous enough that there are portraits of it, some general questions won’t be too suspicious. Let me investigate on my own. We can plan more afterward.”

I didn’t like her going off on her own. Out of the three of us, she was the one most in danger if she was caught by herself but after a short argument I gave in. As she pointed out, no one would be looking for Leona specifically and Arya would be keeping an eye out for her as best she could. I’d just have to trust them.

Of course, that immediately left me and Arya with nothing to do.

And while I could spend hours or even days focused on something if I needed to…I got bored easily without something to hold my attention.

“Say Arya…while we’re here, do you want to give the Empire and a certain annoying Rider a black eye before we leave?”

-o-

Two days wasn’t a huge amount of time to do research about a person scheduled to be executed, but unlike the City Lord’s mansion, there were simply too many people involved for every detail about the prisoner for everything to be suppressed.

The same thing had been true when Arya was imprisoned.

Nobody not under the Shade Durza’s command might have been allowed to see her, but people definitely knew she was there. And it was the same for my stand-in, though many of them simply assumed the slender, blonde haired man was being used as a lure for Varden agents and not supposed to be me. Everyone just assumed I was really being held elsewhere.

From there it was pretty simple to figure out the background of the stand-in because no one was trying to hide it. He obviously wasn’t me, so why would they?

My first idea was to rescue him and embarrass the Empire by parading that fact around during the execution time.

Unfortunately, it was really hard to justify rescuing a serial killer that made a habit of stalking young girls, killing them, and keeping a collection of their severed hands. This was the kind of criminal I had no problem getting a death penalty and was a little surprised he wasn’t simply killed when he was captured, but it turned out Samuel was behind that too. In fact according to one Guard Captain Christopher Paolini the killer would have been unceremoniously hanged days ago if the Rider hadn’t arrived and co-opted the criminal for his own purposes.

So a rescue attempt was out of the question, which was probably a good thing since doing so would definitely have triggered a few traps that were no doubt set up around the whole event but that did mean we’d need to come up with another way to rub Samuel’s failure in the Empire’s face.

Arya and I traded some ideas back and forth, mostly to kill time waiting for Leona to come back or signal for assistance, with some ideas (mostly mine) getting so intricate and ridiculous that I wasn’t sure they were possible without a perfectly coordinated army spread out over the city and a few weeks of preparation.

It was fun though, and it kept my mind off of Leona being off on her own.

And eventually my patience was rewarded, because not only did we come up with a reasonable plan that satisfied my desire to humiliate Samuel but it also was considered safe enough that we didn’t expect to have to fight our way out of the city, Leona came back with information about the sword!

“And it’s just in his sitting room?” I repeated for clarification. Because a big part of me was expecting it to be hidden away rather than just out in the open.

“It is. The servants I talked to mentioned the Lord is obsessed with it. He makes them polish the thing several times a day when he isn’t busy with other matters. Honestly, once I got one or two of them complaining about the thing, the rest practically couldn’t resist joining in.” Leona smiled smugly.

And she deserved to.

She had basically single handedly made the whole reason I was here a trivial matter. Either Arya or I could sneak by in the night and swipe the sword. It might not be the most subtle plan in the world but it would work. Ironically, it would actually be easier with most of the city’s security focused on either the bait or the Lord himself. There simply weren’t enough trustworthy people to cover everything and guard a room where the most valuable thing in it was a sword that was more of a trophy than weapon at this point.

“Well done then.” I praised her. “Then all that leaves is our exit strategy once we crash the execution. But we can talk more about that in the morning. Right now I just want dinner. Anyone opposed?”

“The pantry has plenty of ingredients stocked. It wouldn’t be hard to whip something up, is there something in particular you wanted, my Lady?” Leona asked.

I had a sudden idea. “Let me see what we have, because I have a recipe I’d love to share with the two of you now that I have access to an actual kitchen.”

I’d been craving pizza for a while now. And this seemed like a perfect opportunity to share the recipe with friends.