“Elsie!” Elliott called out.

  His sister turned to him slowly, pink and blue boots on the young man’s chin as he recoiled against the wall, his eyes wide, his face tense. Elsie had one hand on his nose and her pin-sword in the other, a hair’s breadth from the man’s eye. She blinked at Elliott with her black eyes, her pink lips almost quivering.

  He smiled back at her as he jumped on top of the counter, swung his legs over the other side and plonked the sack of ore down beside him. Rose stayed behind the counter, a small gasp escaping her mouth as she surveyed the scene.

  Elliott swept his eyes over the carnage spread across the tavern floor. Blood pooled between upturned tables and broken chairs, shattered halberds strewn in pieces across the room. Several more soldiers like the ones outside lay on the floor, mostly around the walls and near the door and the windows, blood marring their chainmail armour, their blue tabards darkened. One or two were still kicking, as if their bodies weren’t yet ready to accept their fate, though the life had left their eyes long ago.

  In the middle of it all, there was a small but large man cowering beneath a table in the centre of the room, hands over his head, utterly refusing to lift his face from the floor with his bum in the air.

  “Korin? Is that you?” Elliott called out. “What are you doing down there?”

  Korin slowly turned his face towards Elliott, the peach-coloured skin on his head and the silver in his beard spoiled with spatters of blood. He’d lost his spectacles as well, squinting with his watery black eyes.

  Elsie caught Elliott’s eye as she lifted her hand from the young man’s nose and pointed at Korin.

  “You were protecting him?”

  She nodded vigorously, her pink lips curled into an excited smile, as she returned her grip to the man. Either the man was fearful, or clever enough to know not to resist, or try to throw her off. Even if he tried, he couldn’t hope to budge Elsie from her perch.

  Elliott knew he must be important, otherwise he would’ve been among the dead. It was easier to pry information from the living after all. There had been a time when Elsie wouldn’t have cared. Nor would Elliott, for that matter. Both of them had learnt at a young age not to leave loose ends. Or show mercy. That’s how it had been in the early days of the System on Earth. Danger lurking around every corner. Or in front of the orphanage in their case. The lesson had been painful, to say the least, but it wasn’t forgotten.

  But they couldn’t just go around killing everybody however they pleased. Well, not until they had the information they needed anyway.

  “What happened here?” he asked Korin as the bearded man emerged from beneath the table, very much not looking in Elsie’s direction, stumbling as he walked towards Elliott. Korin wasn’t a tall man in the slightest. He probably wasn’t much taller than Elliott’s waist.

  “They were looking for you,” Korin replied.

  Elliott glanced to the young man by the wall. “Who is he?”

  “Lord Micah of House Casteres,” Korin said without looking in the man’s direction. Micah didn’t look in theirs either, his eyes still on Elsie who had returned her pin-sword to her waist and sat cross-legged on Micah’s chest. “He’s responsible for the policing of the town.”

  “We’re in the presence of real authority, are we?” Elliott grinned at Micah, whose eyes were fixed on Elsie. Elliott turned back to Korin. There was a lot more happening here than he knew at the moment. Until Isabel got back, he might as well see what he could piece together.

  “Grab a seat,” he told Korin. He looked over to Elsie. “Bring him over as well.”

  Korin dragged the one intact table – the one he had hidden under – close to the counter. He found two chairs, not entirely unscathed from damage with one of the legs slightly shorter than the others and pulled them closer. He’d also picked out his blood-drenched spectacles from the pool of blood, and a few moments later, both he and Micah sat behind the table facing Elliott as if they were having an interview. Which, Elliott supposed, they were. He wished Isabel would hurry up. She was much better at this sort of thing. Elliott tucked his legs under him on the counter with Elsie curled up in his lap. Rose stood behind the counter to his left, arms on the table as she listened intently.

  “Explain to me what’s going on here,” Elliott said to Korin. “And explain it like I don’t know anything…at all.”

  Korin was silent for a moment, grabbing his beard in a fist with furrowed brows. “This town – Tarnov – was the last remnant of the Kingdom of Rhian. The Bizayn Empire conquered it six months ago. The Empire actually used to be part of the Kingdom – a large province in the west, administered by the King’s brother. Then a decade ago, the brother declared independence and slowly over time, invaded the rest of the Kingdom.”

  “What happened to the old King?”

  “Executed. Along with his family.”

  So, a standard coup. Kill the old authority. Replace it with the new.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “You,” Elliott said to Micah, who looked up with his green eyes. The man looked defeated, as if he wasn’t sure if this was reality or a dream. Elsie had that effect on people sometimes, which was ridiculous, really. How could people not see the sweet girl that she was? “Why were you looking for me?”

  Micah didn’t answer, though his eyes kept darting between Elliott and Elsie. Elliott let the man remain silent for a bit before he grinned at him.

  “You’ve met my sister. You don’t want to meet me.”

  Micah’s eyes widened but darted back to Elsie, as if he was recalling what he had witnessed. “Will you let me live?” Micah finally replied in a soft voice.

  “Well, that depends.”

  “On what?”

  “You.”

  Elliott always found it’s better to let people’s imagination work. He always liked to manoeuvre them to that question and ‘you’ was so simple. It made them believe they were in control of their destiny. He often found it made people more eager to please. Now, some might think that was evil. But those some hadn’t had to beg for their own lives at one point.

  Micah looked at Korin before turning back to Elliott. He then glanced to Rose and the crest on her blue silk dress.

  “You drew attention. Foreigner movement is controlled in the Empire.”

  Elliott looked around the tavern and the dead bodies, the pool of blood, the broken furniture. “All of this because we broke some immigration laws?”

  Micah had a brief glance around the room. “It’s because you showed up in Tarnov. Foreigners stick to the capital. And you were coming to this tavern. We knew Korin was working with the militants already, so it was natural to find out who you are.”

  “How did you hear about me?”

  “Someone informed us.”

  “Older guy? Silvery beard? House crest of two stags with locking horns?”

  Micah’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

  “Can I get a name for him?”

  “Lord Radama. He’s from a lesser House – House Volardin.”

  Elliott nodded. “Tell me something. Do you Bizaynians have powerful mages. Very powerful mages?”

  “We have several Starforged ranked mages,” Micah said.

  “Are any of them near Tarnov?”

  Micah shook his head. “There are a few Adamantite in the garrison.”

  “Could there be any Starforged mages nearby that you don’t know about?”

  “Anything’s possible, I guess,” Micah said, his eyes on Elsie’s sleeping form.

  “And the Kingdom of Rhian? Did they have Starforged mages?”

  “If they did, they haven’t shown themselves. It’s possible there may be one or two among the remnants.”

  Elliott wasn’t sure what to make of it. The Elemental Lords were Starforged but the one who summoned him would need to be a lot more stronger than that. A lot more. It wasn’t beyond reason that there was a mage that had reached such levels.

  “You said remnants of the Kingdom of Rhian?”

  “A resistance,” Micah replied.

  “Where?”

  “They’re scattered throughout the Forest of Shadows.”

  Could that be it? Someone in the Rhian Kingdom had summoned him? But even if there was a mage here who had that sort of power, how did they even know about him? It didn’t make sense. The dimensional barrier around Earth had existed for fifty years. If Elliott couldn’t penetrate it to know who was out in the cosmos, how could someone here know about him?

  “Korin. Do you know of a place called Earth?”

  “Earth? It’s not somewhere I’ve heard of, but I’m no geographer.”

  “This might sound like a weird question, but humour me. Do you know of anyone who has…maybe visited another world? Can your mages here do that?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Korin said, his bushy eyebrows twitching. Micah was looking interested in the conversation.

  “Have you heard of something like that?” Elliott asked him.

  The nobleman shook his head. “I…am aware that experiments have taken place, but nobody has travelled to another world that I know of. It could have happened in one of the other kingdoms.”

  Elliott sensed movement behind him and turned to look over his shoulder. Rose, confused, turned to do the same and a moment later, the back door swung open. Isabel stepped through alone in her black bodice and black cloche-like skirt, with her axe on her back. She joined them at the counter, her eyes widening as the carnage came into view and then she narrowed her eyes at Elliott.

  “This,” Elliott said, gesturing with his hand at the carnage, “was all Elsie. I had nothing to do with it.”

  Elsie popped up on his lap, frowning at him.

  “And the three pillars of light to the north that was probably seen by anyone within a thousand miles?”

  Elliott’s eyes darted around the room before they fell on Rose. “She wanted to see what I could do. Isn’t that right, Rose?”

  Rose looked at him in confusion, then saw the look on Isabel’s face. “That was all him.”

  “Rose! I thought we were friends.”

  “Sir, you really don’t know how to keep a low profile, do you?” Isabel said, with a flat smile.

  “I’ve been keeping a very low profile back home. Come on, don’t you want to sometimes let loose?” Elliott sighed.

  Isabel shook her head slightly. “I found someone that you need to speak to but we have a problem outside. There’s over a hundred guards out there.”

  Elliott turned to Micah. “Is that routine?”

  “I had an alarm,” Micah replied, licking his lips, a little sweat beading on his forehead. “But I can help you, if you let me.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Let me go and I’ll call them off.”

  “Really? And how will you explain…” Elliott twirled his finger at the bodies and broken furniture around them, “…this little misunderstanding?”

  “I’ll tell them the truth. You very firmly exercised your right to not be arrested. But you let me go if I promised to leave you alone. In return, you will leave the Empire,” Micah smiled. Boy, he was desperate. He saw an inkling of a chance to be free and he was going to grab it like a man holding onto the edge of a cliff and spotting a root. Elliott wasn’t stupid though. He saw the glint in Micah’s eyes. The man was chancing it. If he could leave, he could live. So he thought.

  “That could work,” Elliott said. Elsie stood up out of his lap and walked over towards Isabel, who gave her a pat on the head. “And you promise you’ll leave us alone?”

  “I promise. But you all need to leave tonight. I can only hold them off now, but it won’t be long before the Lord Commander asks questions.”

  “The Lord Commander?”

  “Lord Commander Darius. He controls the town. If you’re not gone by the time he finds out, I can’t help you.”

  “I think we have a deal. Go. Call them off. We’ll be gone as soon as the guards leave.”

  Micah put his hands on the table and stood slowly, legs wobbling slightly. He glanced around the room a final time, taking in the scene, then nodded at Elliott with a look partway between shock and disbelief. As Elliott watched the man carefully navigate the pool of blood, purple cloak trailing behind him, he wondered whether it wouldn’t have just been better to use [Conceal] from the start instead of asking for directions.

  But there was no point crying over spilt milk. Another one of those lessons he’d learned in the orphanage. Mistakes happen. The question was always how to deal with the mistake.

  As Micah opened the door and stepped out into the night, Elliott turned to Isabel and Elsie.

  “Kill them all. Leave no witnesses.”