13.6: The Royal Ball VI (Patreon)

“In this very room,” Orchid said, his voice dangerously soft but still carrying throughout the massive room. “One of us is a fucking traitor.”

He was standing on top of a table, and though he looked a little ridiculous doing it, I couldn’t deny that he had presence as a speaker. Orchid had the room’s attention as he swept his eyes across the people gathered in the room. He took the time to look at everyone, sparing a glance for every noble, servant, and adventurer.

“My bodyguard here is rather powerful,” Orchid said, indicating the jester, whose bright colors were easy to spot even in a crowd. “He can keep his captives held for as long as he needs, so traitor, do not even begin to think that you can avoid your fate by stalling for time and hoping his magic fails.”

“My magic will not last for more than an hour,” Alex whispered, quiet enough that only Lukas and I heard. “I do not know if he plans to question all of us, but if he does they may unfreeze during that time.”

“Can you reapply it?” I asked, just as quiet.

“Unfortunately, he cannot,” Lukas whispered, accompanying it with a shake of his head.

“That was my only use for the day,” Alex grimaced. “It’s a powerful spell, but it has a lot of limitations, and one of those is how long I have to go between uses.”

“Then lie,” I told him.

“Are you sure? What if—“

“Listen to her,” Lukas said softly, putting a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “We cannot allow the traitor to realize they may have an escape route.”

Alex took Lukas’ hand in his and kissed it lightly. “You’re right. As always.”

I declined to comment on the fact that the idea had come from me.

The dark-skinned noble let go of his bodyguard’s hand, and when he spoke it was with a great deal more force, loud enough that everyone could hear us. “If the traitor is eyeing their pawns on this side of the room with envious eyes, I would like you to know that your efforts to stall will be just as fruitless here. They will not be able to move for at least a full day.”

“Plenty of time,” Orchid said, acknowledging Alex with a grateful nod. “Then shall we begin?”

The noble hopped down from the table, the only man moving in a frozen crowd. Everyone was stuck in place, if not by magic then by the sheer gravity of the situation.

I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of most nobles, but I knew how this sort of thing was supposed to go, and not one but two revolting mobs even being allowed into the royal castle meant something had gone deeply, deeply wrong.

Someone was going to hang for this.

“Rose of House Lysin,” Orchid said, coming to the first woman in front of him. “Answer me truthfully. Were you involved in any way?”

The force of his words, spoken in the oathtongue but still somehow comprehensible, washed over the crowd, and I could sense the power that tongue held.

“No, Orchid, I was not,” the lady replied, the words bursting out of her mouth faster than was proper.

“Kaia of House Lysin,” Orchid said. “Answer me truthfully. Were you involved in any way?”

“I was not involved,” the next lady said, her words tumbling forth with that same rushed, oath-compelled quality.

He was getting tired a lot less quickly than he’d had with the strike team leader earlier, I noted. Even though nobles tended to be oathholders, it was a rare one that actually took their oath beyond the first or second class, so the average resistance to his magic was probably significantly lower here.

As he started questioning more people, the nobles began to feel a little more relaxed, milling about and chatting with each other in hushed tones, and they were further emboldened when Orchid didn’t stop them.

I made my way to the silver-tongued noble himself, bidding a brief farewell to Alex and Lukas.

“You’re keeping track of who you’ve spoken to before, right?” I asked him after he’d finished questioning one of his own family members.

Orchid spun around at my voice, his eyes meeting mine. He was taller than me, though that wasn’t saying much, but his presence right now seemed to go beyond the mere size of his body. A lesser girl would’ve found herself quite intimidated by him, I was pretty sure.

“Lily,” Orchid regarded me coolly. “Why are you here? You told me of personal obligations.”

“I had an obligation, and it was personal,” I said. “Had a date. Anyway, can you answer my question? It’s kind of important.”

“Truly?” Orchid asked, the cold facade he’d been maintaining replaced by genuine surprise. “With who?”

“Hey,” I said. “Answer my question first. Give and take, my lord, and as a certain girl once told me, I asked first.”

“I am,” Orchid finally answered. “When I speak, it leaves a temporary marker in the one I converse with.”

“Good to hear,” I said.

“And your reason for coming here?” he asked, expectant.

“Jasmine of House Rayes,” I said. “I adventure with her from time to time.”

“Good for the two of you,” Orchid said, and surprisingly enough he didn’t seem too disingenuous, saying that.

“Alright, you’ve assuaged my one worry,” I said. “I’m going to go and—“

“Hold on,” Orchid said. “I haven’t checked you yet.”

I sighed. “Is that really necessary?”

“I’ve been within a few meters of Kyle for almost a full day now, and I checked him,” Orchid said, dead serious. “It’s a precaution, and given that you disappeared for a few hours just to show up here again makes it even more necessary than usual.”

“Fine,” I groaned. “Make it quick. I don’t like this kind of magic.”

“Thank you for understanding,” Orchid said. “Answer me truthfully. Were you involved in any way?”

The words that weren’t words rubbed my brain the wrong way, and I felt my vocal cords begin to move without my permission.

“Not to my knowledge. I made contact with another, separate cell, but they did not attack today.”

Fuck. I despised being controlled, even though I knew it was necessary, and I had to calm the surge of hateful anger in my veins before speaking again. “Is that satisfactory?”

“Hold on,” Orchid said, wide-eyed. “Would you kindly extinguish your magic, first?”

He pointed at my hands, and I brought them up to examine. Orchid flinched back as I did, and I realized why before I could see it myself. My hands were wreathed in shapeless masses of unstructured magic, my oath as irritated at the loss of control as I was.

“Sorry,” I said, allowing it to dissipate.

“I have two more questions,” Orchid said apologetically. “Just to be safe.”

“Fuck,” I said. “Can you give me a moment?”

“Sure thing,” he said, walking off to one side to hail and question one more noble.

My heart was pounding in my chest in a very different way than it had earlier. Before the ball had been so rudely interrupted, my heart had been racing pleasantly, more a light flutter than anything else. Now, though, it was a frantic pounding, the kind that came when a child was screamed at by their parents, and I hated it.

I took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and I sank back into the cold blanket of hate once more. It was easy enough to bring up—just thinking about my father would do the trick—and it let me wash out the hot, uncomfortable feelings.

“I’m good now,” I said, raising my voice a little so Orchid could hear me.

“Excellent,” he replied, turning away from the man he’d just finished questioning. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I can be,” I said flatly.

“Answer me truthfully. Are you planning on being involved?”

Once again, the words hit me like a sack of bricks. I felt a twinge in my oath as I opened my mouth, a strength that I hadn't made use of, and I knew that the potential to resist was there. Jasmine had done it just a day after I’d met her, and back then she’d been class four, a full class beneath where I was now.

This question, though, I had no qualms with answering truthfully. “I was planning on destroying the cell after the ball was over, or at least pointing Jasmine at it. I believe that counts as a yes.”

“Thank you, that helps a lot,” Orchid said, relief flooding his voice. Was it because I hadn’t aimed magic at him this time? The embers of a long-burning hate were still protecting me, so I hadn’t reacted as violently this time.

“One more question?” I asked, eager for this to be over and done with.

“Answer me truthfully. Is there a scenario in which you would join them?”

I leaned into that twinge that I’d felt in my oath immediately, knowing that the answer I would truthfully give was… unfavorable, to say the least.

Yes, if Jasmine and maybe Lukas were with me.

I pulled on the oath, and I could feel the resistance in my throat. It clammed up as a will not my own forced it to open, and nothing came out.

“No,” I tried to say, but when I attempted that I sensed the effect of the oathtongue pushing against me even harder.

Alright. A half-truth, then.

“Not in this situation” fetched the same result. Even thinking about the phrase seemed to make the magical words close my throat.

“Under extremely specific circumstances that will likely not be met, yes,” I finally said after a pause that must have taken no longer than a second in real time but had felt a lot longer.

“What would those circumstances happen to be?” Orchid asked, not even breathing hard.

“The removal of every good noble I know of,” I said truthfully.

“Those being?”

“There’s quite a few of them,” I said, and even I was unsure on whether that was a lie.

“Thank you for cooperating,” Orchid said. “Perhaps I’ll see you around.”

“Perhaps we will,” I said, waving and stepping away.

That had been… an experience, to be sure. I hadn’t expected to be questioned, though that had been admittedly been rather stupid of me in retrospect. Still, I was fairly happy with how my magic had dealt with it. I’d only tried once, and while I couldn’t completely ignore the order like Jasmine had before, I had been able to partially dodge a question that would have had rather poor implications for my character in this case.

Still, next time I would have to be more cautious. Users of the oathtongue—mostly Ditas oathholders, I would imagine, though there were some slightly less well known gods that could probably do the same trick—were dangerous, and the fact that they could take my free will from me with a snap of their fingers honestly terrified me. It would be good to practice and ensure that nobody could ever control me like that again.

I scanned the crowd gathered in the room. The nobles gathered were slowly returning to ease, the volume of conversation gradually increasing. On the other hand, the servants and other staff remained as stock still as they had been earlier, standing off to one side and only speaking amongst themselves.

There weren’t too many bodyguards here, it seemed. Not every House had made the same precautions, and even if they did they didn’t bring many. As far as I could tell, House Alzaq was the only one that had hired adventurers to act as their bodyguards, the others all using their household troops to serve the same purpose.

I couldn’t see Jasmine. Knowing her, she was probably making sure that the injured people were getting adequate care right now, and I didn’t have it in me to seek her out and bother her when she was doing that.

Instead, I made my way over to the jester and Green, the two adventurers sharing snacks from a platter. They looked supremely bored, even more so than the nobles. There was still some level of tension in most of the others in the room, but these two were as relaxed as I’d ever seen them.

“Hi there,” I said with a small wave. “What’s happening?”

“You’re here?” Green asked. “How did you—“

“This is not the first time I’ve been asked this,” I sighed. “A noble brought me, obviously.”

“Alright, I won’t pry,” Green said, raising his hands. “Kyle and I were just trading stories.”

“This man has done some pretty impressive shit,” Kyle said, pointing a thumb at his green-cloaked companion.

“I do alright,” Green said, scratching the back of his neck. Was that embarrassment in his voice? “My oath helps a lot.”

“He’s a dual oath,” Kyle said. “I can’t imagine how much upkeep he did to do to achieve a class seven in both oaths.”

“Aedi and Oloje,” Green said. “It has its ups and downs.”

The tinkerer and the navigator. God of Creation and Discovery, respectively. “I’d imagine you want to keep those private from an adventurer you barely know.”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I shrugged. “That’s just how it is sometimes. I understand. Did the investigators find anything?”

“I don’t know if we’re allowed to share that,” Green said, unfazed by the sudden change in topic. “Kyle, were you paying attention?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kyle said. “So long as House Alzaq is accredited and another House can’t steal the information, the information can be spread around. You’re not noble, so it’s not a problem.”

“Will the fact that she’s apparently friends or partners with a noble be an issue?” Green asked. “Ah, fuck it, that’s not my problem.”

“You’re making it sound like they did find something,” I said.

“They did,” Kyle said, stretching his arms above his head. “It’s not just House Tempet, like we initially suspected, but the involvement of one of their members is all but guaranteed.”

“How do they know?” I asked.

“Beats the fuck out of me,” the jester chuckled. “I overheard something about tracking income flows, but that was boring noble talk so I practiced something fun instead.”

To punctuate his statement, Kyle formed four of his trademark spheres and started juggling them.

I raised my eyebrows. “So the jester outfit isn’t all for show, then.”

“It is not,” Kyle said, still juggling. “Anyway. Besides House Tempet, they figured out that there’s someone up rather high in at least one other noble House’s hierarchy that’s cooperating with the rebels.”

“How high is high?” I asked innocently, every bit the picture of the clueless commoner. High would mean a matriarch or patriarch, most likely, or a favored family member.

“A patriarch or a matriarch, which basically just means the man or woman at the head of the house,” Kyle explained. “Given that no entire House has made any maneuvers towards supporting the rebels, it’s safe to say that the second traitor is also working without the support of their House as a whole.”

“Okay, I can follow that,” I said. “Do they have any leads as to which House it might be?”

“All the Houses that are suspected are gathered here tonight,” Green rasped, the forced scratchiness in his voice again. “Orchid explained that he’s here in an official capacity for the Crown.”

“Orchid is a Crown investigator?” I asked, frowning. “I thought he was with House Alzaq.”

“He’s both,” Kyle said, pausing for a second to toss one of his spheres up behind his back and continue his juggling. “Tonight, the Crown takes precedence.”

I looked over to Orchid. He was still methodically making his way through the crowd. I had to be impressed—even if the average noble here wasn’t actively resisting his question, his stamina was pretty damn good if he still hadn’t even needed to take a break.

“This could take a while,” I sighed.

“Yep,” Kyle said. “Hence the swapping of stories. You have any?”

“A few, but I only started adventuring recently so they’re not that spectacular. I’d like to hear more about you, though.”

“Same here,” Green agreed. “I’ve told you a fair bit about me already.”

“Oh boy,” Kyle said, holding a hand up. His spheres stopped, freezing in midair, and then they began to dissipate. “I guarantee you, I’m less interesting than you might think.”

“Out with it,” Green said. “Come on.”

“Well, I suppose I could tell you how I even got this damn oath,” Kyle sighed. “Will that suffice?”

“Sure,” I said. “Go on.”

“Alright. Seven—no, eight years ago, I was actually a clown. I was part of a travelling circus, and we did fairly well.”

“That explains the outfit,” Green muttered.

“Now, there was one occasion where we were passing through a city and the noble House that oversaw it—it was a minor one, I don’t recall the name—had a patriarch who was a little, well…” Kyle made a swirling gesture with his fingers around his head. “You know. He was awfully fond of his court jester. From what I heard after, that jester was one of the few things that could bring out the sane man inside him, but one day that jester went down a bad alleyway at night and found himself on the wrong end of a knife.”

“That took a turn,” Green commented.

“Think about how it felt for me, a clown, to hear it,” Kyle groused. “Anyway, the noble went into a crazed frenzy, swore vengeance on the people of the town, blah blah blah, you know the drill. His family was none too pleased about that, so they enlisted the circus in trying to replace the jester so that they could console him and keep him in his right mind for long enough to prevent him from taking drastic measures.”

“Why didn’t they just kill the patriarch?” I asked. “Or depose him?”

“Normal people don’t turn to murder as their first resort, Lily,” Kyle said. “Even if they’re nobles. As for the second, I don’t know, but that was decided within the family, not without.

“As I was saying. I was judged to be the closest in build to the deceased jester, so they taught me his programs, gave me his clothes, and sent me into court to entertain him.”

I could see where this was going, if I remembered my deity lore correctly. Sixty-one days of impersonation for this oath.

“And did you succeed?” Green asked.

“Yes, I did,” Kyle said. “Too well, actually. I mimicked the dead jester so well that the family paid the circus off in order to keep me, and then I was stuck there. Every day for two entire months, I would cycle through the same set of routines, always worried that the patriarch would see through me and break into a fit.”

“And then you gained an oath,” I said. “I assume.”

“Correct. After just a little over two months, I felt that pull in my mind on a level I couldn’t and still can’t explain, and I answered it.”

“What oath?” Green asked. “You don’t seem to be an oathholder of the core eight.”

“Shanzhai, one of the lesser sixty-four,” I said, looking to the jester for confirmation. At his nod, I continued, “Previous studies on Shanzhai found that order to make a connection with this god, one must impersonate another for sixty-one days and some change, and it must be an impersonation that successfully fools another. Most of these oathholders usually get them in a monastery where identities are hidden, if I remember right.”

“I didn’t know that last part,” Kyle said. “You’re well-versed in your oath knowledge.”

“I frequent the library at my university,” I lied. Considering how nice it was last time, I might make this one a truth sometime soon.

“So what happened next?” Green asked. “Did you escape?”

“Hm? Oh, no. The patriarch suffered a sudden immense stroke and died a couple weeks afterwards, and then I was free to go. I told you it would be a boring story.”

“Oh. That’s rather anticlimactic,” I said. “And you started adventuring afterwards?”

“I spent some time with the Church to figure out what I could do,” Kyle said. “I joined the TAG afterwards to make some money, since I figured I wasn’t a good fit for the army.”

“And how did you get your oath?” I asked Green. “Aedi and Oloje is an interesting combination.”

“Oh, it really wasn’t anything special,” Green said. “I was looking for an artifact that was lost during the continental war, and I created a device that could help me sift through the dirt in the process. Once I found it, that was both oaths sorted.”

“Why not join a research group?” I asked. “The kingdom funds those well.”

“I have a deep distrust for those,” Green said. “I worked in one after university, and the amount of control they had over what we were doing was just too damn high. Adventuring doesn’t pay great, but the only other option was getting pulled into another controlled group, whether through my own will or when the kingdom came knocking.”

Right. Tayan—and most other kingdoms besides—had a nasty habit of trying to keep every Aedi oathholder in the kingdom under their control, which meant incredibly strict regulations on selling gear made by Aedi oathholders. Going independent was a virtual impossibility in our glorious kingdom.

“What about you?” Kyle asked. “How did you get yours? If it’s not too personal.”

Shit. Why had I thought this line of a conversation was a good idea, again? “Well, I—“

Shouts arose from the noble cluster, and despite knowing that something had almost certainly gone horribly wrong, it was a welcome distraction.

Kyle and Green snapped to attention, going from relaxed to ready for combat in the blink of an eye, and I did much the same.

“What’s happening?” Kyle asked.

Orchid had been questioning someone, and it looked like that person had disagreed with that. The oathtongue wielder was clutching his throat. It didn’t seem like he was choking, but his mouth was moving and nothing was coming out.

Orchid pointed at the man in front of him. His target was on the shorter end, cloaked in black and red with a House Tempet crest affixed to his chest.

The nobles around him were shouting at him, a cacophony of insults and accusations, and yet he seemed utterly undisturbed.

“Who the hell is that?” I asked.

“No idea,” Green replied. “But I think we may have found our man.”

The Tempet noble closed his eyes, breathing in deeply. Somebody reached out towards him as he did so, trying to grab him.

He opened his eyes and ran. The noble had to be either a Ditas oath or a Caël one, because he was sprinting far faster than a man of that size should be able to.

“After him!” someone shouted. “Guards!”

I was already running. The oathholder was making his way towards our end, where Alex’s paralytic fumes had taken down a mob, and I realized almost too late that there was nothing stopping him from escaping.

I threw up a shield, using that same controlled loose-frame composition that I’d done earlier, and I cast it in front of the hole in the earthen wall that Lukas had created and still hadn’t fully dismantled.

The Tempet oathholder leaped, ignoring the shield and electing to simply jump over the godsdamned wall. I cursed, taking the shield down.

Behind me, I could hear more footsteps. The other adventurers, presumably.

“Here, take this!” Kyle yelled at me, and I sensed the pressure in the air as he cast his magic.

I let it hit me this time, my movements instantly becoming faster.

I was outside the ballroom in record time, and the other oathholder wasn’t too far ahead of me, running straight down a long hallway. Kyle’s magic was more powerful than whatever this noble had to offer, and soon enough I was right behind him.

The noble must’ve seen the writing on the wall, because he turned into the first open door he could find. I followed him in, finding myself in a dimly lit reading room. My target was already seated inside, sitting lazily on a gilded armchair and facing the door.

For all that I’d caught up to him, for all that I was armed with a knife and destructive magic, he didn’t seem worried in the slightest.

“I do not believe we have been introduced,” he said. “I am Alto of House Tempet.”

“Lily Syashan,” I said laconically. “I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but that would be a lie.”

“Oh, the pleasure is all mine,” Alto said, his lips turning upwards in a cold smile. “It is so very nice to meet you, Lily of House Byron.”