(( The story resumes near sunset in the graveyard of the Ascalon Settlement. ))

Mirex glances again at the tent entrance to gauge the time
as she snuggles with her beloved. “So…. you and Alex got ideas looking
at the Roses’ altar did you?” she teases gently with a giggle.

Adri nods. ‘Mmhmm. We did. It’s a very nice setup for a
wedding, I think.’

“Maybe we’ll have to talk more about that with Alex
then.” She giggles fondly, and kisses Adri again. “It’s about time we
got started though, I think. I can rest more when we’re finished here and back
home with Alex.”

‘All right, love.’ She pushes up and crawls out, grabbing
her gear on the way.

Mirex groans softly as she starts to move, only feeling a
brief dizzy spell that quickly passes before being able to pull on some real clothes
and crawl from the tent, and getting to her feet once outside. She looks about
at the twilight of the sunset then at the manor with its gaping hole and rubble.
“Well, let’s see what we can find. Will Lady Adrielle and company be
joining us, dearest?”

‘I think so, if we wait a little more. I don’t think it’s
quite dark enough for Gran yet. Need another sandwich? And I have to assume
Jaine and Claire want to see things through, from what Gran was saying before,
but I don’t know for sure.’ She seems entirely too limber for having been on
the ground in armour all day, but then, she is an acrobat.

Mirex scowls playfully at her lover for not being as stiff
and weary as she was, the Mesmer moving a bit stiffly, and she raises her arms
over her head in a stretch. “I’ll eat after. Food too close to when I
might need to use a lot of spells makes me sick later. I guess we’ll wait for
them, then.” She takes a small turn around the graveyard to stretch her
legs and let adrenaline push her fatigue aside.

Adri shrugs, then nods. ‘All right, love.’ She looks around,
though her eyes aren’t really focussing on anything obvious. ‘It’s hard for me
to be sure, but I think Claire and Jaine are here already. Just waiting for
full dark and Gran.’

“Hm…. maybe they can come and meet us then…”
she muses, wandering toward the entrance of the cemetery and the ruined manor.

‘We can look some, but Gran said she can’t leave her
gravesite without me. So I’ll have to come back out to fetch her in a bit, I
think.’ She’s following as she speaks, just informing and not objecting.

Mirex purses her lips briefly, hesitating at the gate, then
sighs and presses on to the manor. “I shouldn’t be relying on their power
anyway….” she mutters and heads for the manor house, stepping over rubble
to get to the main door and pushing inside.

Adri chuckles softly, following along. ‘There is that.
Though maybe their help, if they spot something first. I’ll still go fetch Gran
in a bit, but that’s because I think she’s kind of lonely.’

“They say Revenants can carry sprits with them to
summon at will. Maybe Lady Adrielle would like to accompany you when we leave,”
Mirex replies as she takes a couple steps into the manor and looks around to
get her bearings.

‘She’d be better company than most of my dreams, that’s for
sure. Hold on, I did bring a … well, it doesn’t have a flame, so I can’t
really call it a torch, but a light source, anyway.’ She brings a canister of
some kind out of a pouch. It lights up when she gives it a twist, and beams
light out like a torch, but in a cone, and steady.

Mirex glances back curiously at the device Adri had.
“Asuran?” she asks as they move across the foyer. She was looking for
likely rooms to find the things she’d seen in the Baron’s mind. The things that
were likely hexed.

‘Aye. Since I can’t really make my own lights without tinder
and risking real fires.’ Her eyes keep flicking about, looking mostly at
doorways and the floors, trying not to gawk at the place. ‘I reckon anywhere
that’s well-travelled should be safe enough. Of course, it’s not
“safe” we’re really looking to find….’

“No indeed. I was able to pull images of things from
the Baron’s mind while questioning him. Desks, drawers, bookshelves. Those are
probably the things we need to find. And be most wary of.” She turns left
into the first room to see what it is and if there are any familiar things.

‘I hope the desks and things aren’t all from the same maker
in the same year, then.’ She shines the light around a bit, trying to be
helpful, and sighs. ‘Maybe you should hold this. That way you won’t have to
worry about my shining it in your face while guessing wrong about where you
want to look.’

That first room is a typical parlour. Once enough light has
been used, it turns out to be fairly boring, aside from good taste in port, if
one enjoys that.

She laughs softly and accepts the light. “All right,
then.” She shines it about the room, but there was little time for
tasting, and she leaves the parlor to look back at the foyer then around her to
find a hallway and other potentially more interesting rooms.

The place clearly got added onto a lot, especially somewhat
recently. The formerly three estates are connected now, it turns out. The
bottom storey seems to be mostly all about public rooms of various sorts,
though some of the servants’ quarters areas are quite disused by now – but they
seem to be truly disused, and not in the way of the minimal traffic that Adri’s
been looking for.

Finally, she comments, ‘We’re probably missing hidden
passages, though those are usually just so servants can keep out of sight, I’m
told, and either there are hidden drawers in desks otherwise in plain sight, or
what we want is upstairs. I’m starting to wish I’d thought to try to get
Valeria back here. She’d at least know where she’d been allowed to go – which
would mean places we can skip.’

“We can make another sweep once she’s back and the
place has been cleaned up. It might get tricky claiming your birthright. It
looks like they connected all the estates into one compound of sorts. The Baron
showed me some of those desks with hidden drawers, so I know what to look for,
for those anyway. I think you’re right though, beloved. There are hidden
passages we don’t know to look for. Maybe with Sam’s mind clearer now we can
ask him. Or pull them from Reg before he dies.” She peers into the
abandoned servants’ quarters, feeling a touch creeped out. The place feels half
like a house and half like an abandoned ruin.

Adri ponders a bit as Mirex looks. ‘Despite it all, I feel
worse about probably having to end Reg’s miserable existence than I ever will
about Nicholi’s. But maybe I’m just … not trusting myself to have the right
motives for it. I’m pretty sure even Evie would have trouble not leaving him a quadriplegic
with his current damage. But rummaging in his mind is… well, that’s more up
to you than to me, love.’ She sighs.

“From the little bit the girls told me about him, what
few qualms I had about killing him are gone. If he is alive for us to gain
useful information from, good. If not, it’s no loss, and he’ll die either
way.” The redhead is calm, unbothered and unconflicted. She speaks of
going through the broken assassin’s mind like it’s shopping for groceries, and
his death as a matter of course. “You needn’t worry about killing Reg,
dearest. I’ll do it. Already have, if he is dead already.”

She turns away from the abandoned room, and wanders down
another hall, searching for maybe a servant’s siting room or the like. It was
fairly clear the Baron himself and the girls had only resided upstairs, and
Mirex hadn’t explored with any real purpose during her stay in the house, nor
wandered too far for fear of encountering the Baron alone.

With a shrug, Adri follows after. ‘My worry is more like…
would I enjoy it too much? And that applies even if you do it, though a bit
less. But I think… I think I really would be doing it for … reasons I can
accept, at least. Not from sheer spite, anyway.’

They did reach a sitting room of sorts, though it had a
couple of overturned, partly-broken chairs that didn’t match the rest of the
room’s furniture in the way.

“He was an enemy. And if the lieutenant’s report on his
condition is accurate, he’s beyond saving except maybe by Evienne. But why
waste her time on such a man who doesn’t matter?” She frowns at the chairs
then glances at Adri to study her a moment. “I’ll make it easy for you
conscience, darling.  As a Shining Blade,
I sentence him to die for the crime of attacking a Shining Blade, since I was
with you that day. If he doesn’t die from his wounds before I rip anything
useful from his mind, I will execute him. The call is mine to make, whatever
your feelings, dear one, so it is on me completely.”

She turns back to the study of the chairs, “These don’t
seem to be from this room though.” She doesn’t try to touch them, but draws
on a hint of her powers to sense for any enchantments or hexes, probing
carefully to not set any off.

‘Mm. I know I wouldn’t be paying her on his behalf,
physician training or no. I’m sort of impressed I didn’t finish breaking his
neck when I checked him over earlier. Especially since by then I’d worked out
what that one soldier meant about his sister’s cat.’ She’s also looking over
the room, and a little bobbing ball of barely luminescent mist starts following
her gaze around.

Mirex frowns more as she catches that hint of mist, and she
sends a tentative probing thread of magic toward it to see what it is.

‘Aww! My poor little sniffer!’ She giggles as it pops and
comes apart, dissipating. ‘Pretty sure those were broken within the last couple
of weeks, though.’

Mirex laughs apologetically. “Sorry. I wasn’t sure of
that was you or not. I didn’t detect anything cast on them, so I think it’s
safe to move them,” she adds, as she moves to clear the broken chairs from
the doorway to enter the room.

‘It’s all right, love. Not sure it would have told me
anything else, anyway. It’s not like I’m any good with that magic. But I think
you’re right – this is just where someone with anger management issues decided
to get rid of their mess.’ She moves to help as she speaks.

Once they clear enough splintered furniture to get through,
Mirex wanders about the room, inspecting the furnishings and the walls for
anything familiar she’d pulled from the Baron’s mind. “It does seem like
someone got angry, but not in this room. It could just be discarded. Or the
block could be intentional.”

‘Maybe. But I think it was just “I made a mess in this
room I care about, where can I dump this crap? Here, this will do.”’ She
shrugs. ‘Just what it looks like, though. Not guaranteeing that’s what it is.
Or was, now.’

Probably the most interesting part of this room, once it’s
explored, is the reasonable if somewhat worn furniture under the dusty covers.
It would be a good place to rest at some point.

“Hm… you’re probably right,” she agrees after
inspecting under some of the sheets. “We should keep an eye for the room
that matches these broken chairs though.” She turns to leave the dusty old
room. “I think we might have better luck finding something I recognize
upstairs. If I were the Baron I would hide my important things in these
abandoned parts of the house, especially if I was dominating the staff. But
then again, he was Mantle and seemed to have a rather high opinion of himself.
Maybe he kept things closer.” She goes in search of a stairway up.

‘I wouldn’t have hid them in my own house at all, I don’t
think. Then again, I’ve never owned one, so what do I know?’ She shrugs,
following after again, then pauses briefly. ‘Should we, err, “talk”
to Reg? Or just explore? And I should probably get Gran by now. If you don’t
want to wait, though, I can leave you one of those little air-balls so I can
track you, and I’ll run out and in….’

“Hm, that’s fine. I want to poke around a bit before we
interrogate Reg. With him out of commission though it should be safe enough so
go ahead and grab Lady Adrielle if you wish darling. I’ll be upstairs.”
She touches Adri’s cheek with a kiss and goes up the stairs she eventually
finds to see what the next floor of the house is like.

Adri tries to leave a little mist-ball on Mirex’s shoulder,
flashing her a smile, and runs back out to the graveyard briefly. She comes
trotting back in and takes only a few pauses to follow after her mist-ball.

Mirex leaves the mist ball where it is, careful not to touch
it this time since they seem to be fragile things, and has already wandered
into some room just off the stairs.

Adri peeks in the doorway, looking at the soft blue and rose
colours. ‘Cardiff, Gran says. The colours, I mean. Also, the families went
Jardin, Cardiff, Valdis, from the graveyard toward the barracks. So I think we
are in that section here.’ The decor looks like a guest room under the dust. ‘I
wonder how many… hmm? Oh. North side for real residents, south for guests or
those out of favour, historically.’

“Hm, so we probably damaged your house rather than Val
and Tori’s. Sorry about that, love.” She flashes a smile. “And good
evening, Lady Adrielle,” she says to the air respectfully before looking
around the room again. “Why would he connect the estates, then let them
fall into such disuse?”

‘It wasn’t all him? Oh! A lot of it was because of the
intermarriages and stuff. I guess the families got on better at some point in
the past…? Or at least the Cardiffs did with each. Ah. And then, when Nick
… miscalculated and there were only three left and a lot of fearful people
who didn’t even want to work here any more… right. Um. I hope I didn’t garble
what Gran was telling me, part of which she was relaying from Claire.’

“Ah, that makes sense. I think I got the gist of it.
So, the three families connected their home like this on purpose. Very
curious….” She looks about the room for anything that might stand out.

The room contains little of real interest, though the taste
in furniture was decent. The style of it hints that some room in this section
might have one of the relevant desks – but it’s not this one.

‘Mmm, apparently, Claire says the relative sizes of the
families shifted over time, and that was part of it, too. More room for
Cardiffs in the Jardin building that way.’ She shrugs. ‘Don’t reckon I’ll
mind… they’re all too big right now, anyway. Aly says Valeria’s none too sure
about meeting me. Seems to be ashamed of things that aren’t her fault, or
something.’

“Something you two can sort out once we’ve cleaned up
here and retrieved her from the capitol. Let’s check some of the other rooms in
this section of the compound.” No sense calling it a house since it was
three combined, and she turned and left the guest room to wander down the hall
into the next potential candidate.

‘Aye. I think… if I were Nick, I’d either have things in
the room of someone I hated and felt like I was humiliating by my use of their
room… or near my own because… near by. Then again…’ she trails off as a
violet glow appears and makes its way down three doors and stops on the north
side.

Mirex blinks, frowning. “Is that your doing, dearest?
Or lady Adrielle’s?” she asks, pausing in front of one door, but not
entering when the purple light appeared and moved on down the hall. She moves
slowly after it.

‘Claire, Gran says. That was… Nick’s wife’s or betrothed’s
room or whatever, before … all the poisonings started? And past that two more
is that of her uncle who was the most opposed.’

“So the door she topped at is the Baron’s wife’s?”
She purses her lips and moves to the door the light had stopped at, glancing
two doors down to where the uncle’s was supposed to be. First, the baron’s
lover’s room. She moved her hand over the door without actually touching it,
using her power to check for Mesmer traps and hexes.

Adri sniffs a little, peering at the door, but doesn’t get
in the way.

After a bit of trying to work out the magical sensations,
and accounting for the ghost’s light, it seems the door itself is not a
problem, though there might be something past it in the room.

“Stay on your toes…” she murmurs to Adri, as she
carefully pushes the door to open it, mustering more of her power incase those
hints of other magic turn out to be a full-fledged trap for any that opened the
door.

‘Always, love.’ She nods as well.

The door, however, turns out to be locked.

Mirex grimaces a touch sheepishly, mentally berating herself
for assuming every door would be unlocked. She lacked Cristian’s skill with
such things, so her method was more direct. Placing her hand on the lock, she
channels raw chaos magic to melt it.

‘Wait, love!’

“What is it?” she asks in surprise, having already
half melted it. She turned to regard Adri, “What’s the matter?”

‘Ah, well.’ She sighs. ‘I would have opened it. Looks a
little beyond that now, though.’

Mirex blinks a moment, then looks between Adri and the half
melted lock. “Oh… right. Sorry… I keep forgetting your cornucopia of
talents, dear one. I’m used to doing these things alone when I don’t have a
team with me….” She smiles apologetically, then puts her hand back on
the lock to finish what she’s started until the metal of the lock begins to
bubble and run, which would likely leave burns on the door.

‘I can understand that, love. I was alone too much … well,
in the Reach, as well as in Orr.’ She sighs softly, shaking her head, and
watches the progress. ‘Looks bashable.’

“I try to never ‘bash’ darling,” she chides with a
soft giggle, as the metal runs and scorches. Nodding once in satisfaction, she
pushes again on the door, leaving a smoking, glowing hole where the handle and
lock had been.

She chuckles, shaking her head. ‘When in armour this heavy,
at least, I might. But fine.’

This room has had some attention over the years. Not much
dust – and what little was now floating in the air seemed to be parting around
an area near the door.

Mirex looks around the room to take in the details, trained
eyes noting the strange behavior of the faint dust motes, and she sends another
of those probing threads out toward the spot, not yet setting foot in the room.

Even just the thread nearly triggers whatever is there – but
not quite. There is definitely some sort of offensive warding for that area – and
behind is a desk that seems to match what was in Nicholi’s thoughts before.

As soon as Mirex senses the spell triggering she pulls her
thoughts and magic back with a hiss, and nods to the spot before the desk.
“That desk is something I saw in Valdis’ mind. And there’s a rather nasty
hex of some sort guarding it.”

Adri eyes the area between, shifting a little side to side,
and then up and down as she peers. ‘Floor-based, but looks like it’s sensitive
to passage over, too. I can’t be sure, but I think it just misses the ceiling –
though only a fly or something could cross even if I’m right. Given our
ex-Baron’s nature, I’m guessing a chaos glyph.’

“Hm… we’ll have to disarm it then…” she murmurs.
She makes a tossing gesture with her hand, and magic dust glitters out into the
air, a revealing of enchantments spell so they could get a clearer picture of
the area and where the mark was on the floor. Mirex moves carefully into the
room once she’s able to see where the glyph is inscribed, and kneels before it.

Adri chuckles, shaking her head. ‘And me making use of room
dust and the interactions of air currents. Sure, show me up!’ She giggles.

The area it covers is roughly hexagonal on the floor,
extending upward in a column. The effect is about two metres across, with the
hints of inscription revealed by the dust taking up the centre, not quite a
metre across.

She giggles softly herself. “Practice, my
darling,” she explains as she inspects the mark and the large area of
effect. “If this wasn’t so close to the desk we want to inspect, I’d just
put a feedback over it and trigger it. But it looks like it’d destroy the desk
if I did that. I’ll have to try and undo the enchantment.”

‘Aye. And shadowstepping… is too much like blinking. Too
risky to try just going past it.’ She sighs. ‘This is why I usually came in
through windows to rob places. That, and they were usually not locked. At least
not on the third and higher storeys.’

“I don’t think coming through the window would have
spared us having to deal with this one, beloved,” she replies as she draws
on her power, murmuring a mantra of concentration while readying a null field
to lay down over the glyph to render it inert. Her hands glow a faint purple on
the floor once the mantra has done its work of focusing her powers and mind,
and she releases the null field onto the floor where the chaos glyph is.

‘It might have… oh, no. I see. Too close to the fronts of
the drawers. No, you’re right.’

The null field certainly changed the patterns of dust in the
air. The glyphed area itself seemed as though the magic was subdued, but not
gone.

“Hm… this mark is powerful. I’ll have to hold the
field in place. It should be safe to cross for now, though. Quickly, my love.
Pull all the drawers out and bring them clear of the desk. Be quick but
thorough and search for any hidden cubbies.”

‘Aye.’ She moves even as she answers, quickly checking the
back of the desk for anything of note, then piling the drawers on top and
checking the cavities for anything hidden. She’s clearly done this before. She
hefts the drawers, looks the situation over as she considers their weight in
her arms, and shadowsteps out into the hall.

Once Adri is safely out in the hall, she releases her spell
and carefully scoots back from the glyph before getting to her feet, a chaos
shield ready to envelope her if the glyph triggered anyway. She makes her way
back out of the room to Adri and the drawers.

The chaos shield proves wise, as the glyph triggers, chaos
bolts spiralling through the area. It appears to have been meant to take out
people in its column, however, as the bed and desk are only slightly damaged.

Mirex instantly envelopes herself in her shield to deflect
the chaos bolts, and hurries out into the hall to avoid the majority of them,
ducking around the relative safety of the wall. “Well… that’s going to
be fun if we have to do that again.” She giggles a touch breathlessly.

Adri peeks back in. ‘Aye. Though this room seems to be clear
after that. Seems the power of it was for killing any snoop, not for making it
permanent.’

“Well, that’s something, anyway. Never can quite tell
what’s going to happen with Chaos magic. Let’s have a look at what we
got.” She nods to the drawers and their contents.

‘Lots of odd brushes and some sheets of paper, some stuff
that might once have been paint, I think? Doesn’t look quite like just coloured
ink, anyway. And … letters. I think the lady kept her love letters or
something.’

Sure enough, that’s what most of it was, including some
rather charming ones from Nicholi. A few letters prove to have been more about
proceeds from selling her paintings and some regarding commissions, or offers
for such.

“Why would he set such a deadly trap to protect old
paint brushes and love letters…?” Mirex muses aloud as she riffles
through the documents, reading each one that came into her hands. Personal or
not, it was important to be sure nothing was hidden in them. She also looks
over the commission notes. Maybe she’d done a painting or something of Adri’s
family.

With a slow nod, Adri ponders the same thing while she
starts checking the drawers for false bottoms. ‘He was Mantle, and a right
self-centred and controlling son of a dragon, but… by being Mantle, that
shows he could belong to some group. By that I mean, he wasn’t a complete
psychopath. Maybe… in his own way… he really cared for the woman? And he
just wanted her things safe?’ She sighs shrugging – and then grunts. ‘Or maybe
there’s something else hidden here after all.’

Mirex finds that some of the commissions were for Jardin
portraits, yes. Some of the love letters are from Cardiff cousins and a Jardin,
though most are from Nicholi. Mixed in among them, however, are a couple of
notes from her uncle protesting his estimation of Valdis’s character, and
recommending one of the cousins or the Jardin as suitors instead.

“It all looks like a lover’s tragedy… but it might be
ideal to hide more nefarious things amongst such items. Look here. Another note
from this uncle, against the Baron,” she says as she scans the note, then
sets it in the read pile she’s started. “Wouldn’t that just be ironic.
This all began as a quarrel over a couple star crossed lovers.” She shakes
her head and pauses in the reading of the last few. “Anything funny about
the drawers?”

‘Aye. Very, for this one.’ She makes a face at it. ‘Colour
me paranoid, but I get a bad feeling about just opening it. If it was really
hers, we don’t even know what her magic might have been…. I don’t suppose you
feel up to another nullifying field? Or maybe Claire does?’ She turns to face the
air with that last.

Mirex looks at the drawer Adri has in her hand, and throws
another handful of revealing sparkles at her and the drawer. While it was a
simple spell, it might reveal some of Adri’s wards and make her armor light up
in addition to revealing anything about the drawer. “Even if it’s not
mesmerism, I ought to be able to do something about any hexes with my null
field, provided they aren’t too powerful.”

She chuckles as her armour gets all glowy in the affected
areas, especially the fingertips. ‘I have to expect some kind of glyph on
opening this, from what I feel, though maybe I’m… no, it’s lighting up, too.
Though there still might be a mechanical trap as well. Those usually don’t last
for years, really, but then again… who knows whether the trapping is really
twenty-five-ish years ago?’

Mirex grimaces a moment in thought. “Set it on the
floor if you can open it that way. At the least, that way I can cover most of
you in a chaos shield.” She eyes the slowing bits of the box to see if she
might recognize at least what type of magic they were up against, and wraps
Adri in a chaos shield of glowing purple energy that fit about four inches from
her body like a glove. Except for ending at the wrists so her hands could
manipulate the box.

She nods, setting it on the floor, and producing a couple of
thin, dark metal shanks from somewhere. She considers briefly, and turns the
box about a sixth of a turn. ‘If it’s mechanical, that should only hit the wall
now. Ready when you are, love.’ The glyph that’s definitely there, and inside,
is probably of fire.

Fire was not good. Murmuring her mantra of concentration
again, she brings the shield down to Adri’s fingers now that she’s using
implements of a sort, and presses her hand to the floor to cast another null
field under the drawer this time. At least whatever was in there wouldn’t go up
in flames, and her hands glowed that purple again to indicate the field was in
effect. “Go ahead, beloved.”

With a small nod, she pops the concealing panel out, flipping
it rapidly, just in case. A spring-loaded blade flies past, hitting the wall as
promised, and not too hard – the spring wasn’t still up to snuff after so much
time. The null field withstands the attempted flame glyph handily, and all
traces of it fade. Inside the compartment are two waxed-paper wrapped packets
of what might be more letters.

Mirex’s head jerks automatically in surprise as the blade
flies out, although it seemed to lack the force to even stick in the wall. Definitely
an old trap. “You know… sometimes I wish I was a clever engineer so I
understood how people make such snares and how they get past them when they
want to look at what’s hidden but not spring their own trap.” She giggles
softly and keeps the null field in place until Adri has retrieved the packets.

‘I could show you sometime, if you like. If I’d known which
kind this was, and whether it was right- or left-handed, and which way it was
loaded – well, then it wouldn’t have sprung. And the magic, I’m sure the
original elementalist could dispel it before opening the drawer.’ She shrugs,
handing one packet over as she starts opening the other. ‘Of course, it was an
amateurish use of a false bottom, really. The one drawer stood out when there
was enough light. Never do that. The best way is a false bottom in every
drawer, and all of them trapped – but only one matters.’

Mirex giggles softly as she nods in agreement. “Father
should have you inspect the traps at home then. See if they’re up to
snuff,” she half teases as she unwraps the wax paper and takes a look at
what was inside, scanning and rifling through the documents.

‘I reckon your steward lass has already seen to that.’

The packets are other letters, some from Nicholi, some from
other people, with titles like Savant and Seeker. ‘Seems maybe they were a sort
of love match after all.’

“Not with titles like these….” She taps the page
in her lap. “These are White Mantle ranks. This is enemy intelligence, and
further proof of his traitor’s standing. Not that it matters any more.”
She begins to read more intently now, seeking some sort of information that
might indicate how old or recent the letters were.

‘That’s what I mean, love. I reckon she was Mantle, too,
with these here. These are addressed to her, not to him.’ The letters Mirex has
are similarly that old.

She looks them over again, then nods in agreement.
“You’re right. Both traitors, then.” She frowns in thought,
“From the tidbits the ghosts have said, Lady Valdis was poisoned. We’ve
assumed it was because of an issue with her relationship with the Baron. What
if it was one of your Blade relatives targeting her instead? If the other
people here learned what they were, maybe that’s why everyone was wiped
out.”

‘That… makes maybe too much sense.’ She looks up at the
air again for a long moment. ‘Seems a lot of the folks were neither, and
wouldn’t have known. But Gran thinks you’re probably right, or at least close.’

“The Shining Blade are as prone to secrets as the
Mantle. It makes sense many here would not know. The catalyst could have been a
strike against an ancient foe that devolved into a general slaughter of angry
families taking revenge.” She shakes her head. “I suppose it doesn’t
matter now, since they’re all dead. We just need the proof of who you are.
These all seem like old documents, but the information might still be valuable.
At the very least maybe we can identify more sympathizers to add to the watch
lists for the strike teams.” She puts the secreted letters back into a
neat stack, keeping those with her while leaving the more personal articles
where they lie as she starts to rise.

‘Aye. I suspect, love, that if Nick had ever had
documentation that would show who I am… well, why did he need me dead? Why
not come try to charm me into the family fold, get his hooks into my mind, get
an heir, be all properly bridged between the families? Oh, and I die tragically
in childbirth, of course, whether I really do or not. But why just send
assassins? I reckon he was afraid I had such documentation, and he didn’t.’ She
rises with Mirex while she speaks.

“Maybe. Maybe he learned that it was your branch that
had Shining Blade leanings, and he was eradicating his enemies.” She
smiles sadly. “I’m sorry to say that the Shining blade have not been above
similar tactics. There are several noble houses that have disappeared in recent
memory in great tragedies of fire and violence. Some of those were orchestrated
or carried out by the Blade. I know Cristian has been on at least two purge
missions where they leave no survivors… man… woman… or child.” She
shakes her head sorrowfully as she looks down the hall to the next door that
had been indicated earlier. The disapproving uncle’s room.

‘Mmhm. Fair enough. But the timing is suspicious to me. The
attacks didn’t start until, as it turns out, Mercer’s obituary was published.
Like, the first he’d heard that man had survived, and that led him to looking
into the clues, and investigating Jocasta, found out about me.’ She shrugs.
‘Suppose it doesn’t much matter either way, unless we find evidence.’

The uncle’s room once again seems to have some sort of
magical presence behind the door, but not on it.

“Hm… true. Maybe Pierre had records. Of who you
are… and what the Baron was.” When they arrive at the door, Mirex moves
her hand over it again to check for traps. Finding none, this time she steps
back and smiles at Adri. “I’ll let you do it this time. Valeria won’t
thank me if I ruin all the doors in her home.”

Adri giggles with a bright smile. ‘No, I suppose not.’ She
makes quick work of the lock and shakes her head. ‘Kormir’s eyes! I could have
opened that with just fingernail clippings! Cheap-assed lock.’ She sounds insulted
by its low quality.

Mirex laughs warmly, and takes a moment slip a hand behind
Adri’s head to pull her in to an affectionate, lingering kiss. “You’ve the
soul of a thief, my Adri. How I love you.” She giggles in mirth and kisses
her again, finding her critique of the lock endearing.

Adri kisses back happily, giggling. ‘Mm, well, I appreciate
good craftsmanship, love. Always have, even before I could afford any of it.
And that lock… was not it!’ She giggles more.

Mirex laughs. “Lucky for us, at least.” She smooths
Adri’s hair back and simply looks into her eyes a moment, then shakes herself
out of her reverie to release her. “Well, shall we have a look,
then?” She leaves the opening of the door to Adri this time, since she’d
unlocked it, after all.

‘Would be a shame not to after all this, eh?’ She grins
impishly, undoing the latch and pushing the door open.

This room is organised similarly, also in the Cardiff
colours, but the nature of the furnishings is entirely different. This man had
definitely had other tastes, running to more solid construction with darker
woods. It feels like the magic in the room was close to the same as in the
other one.

Mirex casts her reveal enchantment spell again, throwing a
couple handfuls about the room to reveal where the next trap lays, and what it
protects, as she scans the room to see if she recognizes which item or bit of
furniture it might be.

Out of old habit, Adri checks the air as well. The desk
beyond, with shelves on the back, would seem to be the protected place – and
its appearance matches one of the snippets from Nicholi’s mind.

‘Still looks like a floor-based glyph from here. Then again,
if you’re good at them, why not?’

“We use what we’re good at. I’m really not the best at
glyphs like these, so I’d probably do it differently. We may both be mesmers
but that doesn’t mean we can do all the same sort of things with equal
skill.”

She eyes the column of effect over the glyph. “I
recognize this as well, but there’s more to search here than before. We’ll need
to totally disable the glyph this time….” She kneels and starts
murmuring her mantra again as she places her hands on the floor. Again came the
null field, but then her face would frown in strain as she enclosed that null
field with a feedback bubble to contain the chaos bolts that would likely go
flying everywhere when she released the null field and tripped the glyph.
“I’m going to trigger it and contain the effects inside the feedback. It
should be safe for us to take our time once it’s triggered and dispelled.”

She nods, subtly shifting her footing. ‘All right, love.’
She was ready to interpose herself if she thought it necessary, just in case.
‘Don’t think I could move that whole desk out, even with Gran’s help, so we’ll
need the time.’

Mirex nods, then strengthens her feedback bubble a bit more,
and releases the null field that has been keeping the glyph in check.

The feedback bubble holds, but probably only because Claire
chose to help. Mirex feels quite a bit of strain against it even so. The chaos
maelstrom burns itself out in a few short seconds, but the bolts were strong
enough for that to be a difficult time.

Mirex has visible perspiration on her brow as she grits her
teeth to maintain the feedback bubble until the chaos storm calms and ceases to
lash her magic dome. She releases the feedback, letting it dispel as she took
several deep breath, “Thank you Lady Claire…” she murmurs to the
air, having felt the added magic from somewhere that had helped her keep them
and the room from getting blown up from a suddenly released chaos storm.

‘You all right, love? Pretty sure that’s all the immediate
hazard here if you need to rest.’ She reaches up to wipe away the moisture from
her lover’s face. ‘No sense pushing ourselves too hard.’

“I’m alright. Just give me a few to catch my
breath.” She smiles reassuringly at Adri. “Go on and start looking
about, my love. I’ll be along in a few minutes.” She remains sitting on
the floor as she takes time to recover from the power of the glyph, and her
already weakened state from the day before. “That storm was powerful.
Whatever is here is important, I think.”

‘Important to Nick, anyway. I only hope it’s also going to
matter to us.’ She starts carefully checking the desk over, not even touching
it at first, looking for additional traps before she starts moving things and
sorting through them, and then starts on the drawers. ‘Two lockable drawers in
this thing, and solid enough I may need more light to be sure of hidden spaces.
Everything up top looks like basic Cardiff business stuff – really the uncle’s.
Seems they were middle-men for the agriculture here.’

“I’ll give you light in a moment,” she replies,
“Don’t forget the shelves behind you. May be a passage or something behind
it.” It was a bit cliché, but bookshelves were built like decorative doors
anyway, so they made it easier to make them into real doors to conceal passages.

‘Mm. I’m sure there are passages almost everywhere – but
probably most don’t matter. Still, compartments might. And we’ll need to know
the passages eventually, even if they’re all boring. And I’m only predicting
most, not all.’ She gets the locked drawers open – very carefully, and then the
others, and removes them. She’s checking measurements, including of the dwell
beneath them, and then inside where they had all been. ‘This was made better
for concealing things – if it does. Space over all the drawers, though they all
seem to match up otherwise.’

“Hm… you’re the expert, not I, beloved,” she
replies. After taking another breath or two, she conjures a simple ball of
glowing lavender light to illuminate the room, and she moves it to just behind
Adri’s head over her shoulder to offer the best light for her work.

“I’d likely get myself stabbed by that knife from the
other room.” She giggles.

‘We each have our specialities, it’s true.’ She flashes a
warm smile and mouths a kiss before getting back to her analysis, and then
peering inside the drawer cavities. ‘Aye. Something here above the one with the
better lock.’ She looks around and frowns. This room isn’t dusty enough. Oh, it
wasn’t done up by domestic staff – the mouldings are grimy. But gold to
galleons Nick spent time here.’

Mirex takes a look around herself, letting those trained
senses to perceive what Adri already picked up on. “Hm… you’re right.
Strange he spent so much time here. Definitely important, this room. Can you
get that hidden space open, darling?” She watches Adri, mouthing a kiss
back to her before she turns her attention to her work while the Mesmer recovers
a bit more.

‘Sure. As long as it doesn’t blow up or something. Good
thing I’m small.’ She gets her head in the cavity below and her arms in the one
of relevance, looking over the extra, miniature drawer. She grunts at it,
reaching for her odd tools again, and another light appears – from the slightly
different colour, probably Claire’s. ‘Thank you.’

Mirex finally gets up off the floor and makes her way to the
desk to see what all Adri had found, absently rummaging through the items she’d
already pulled out, while leaning on the desk for support, the only sign she
gives of how tired she is.

Most of the papers are older, rather than current, relating
to fairly routine correspondence for a businessman. It seems that, back then at
least, the Houses were in business together for caravans. Some are more recent,
and indicate that Nicholi may have kept up the caravan business, and that’s how
he kept in money.

Adri finishes extracting the hidden drawer – by unscrewing
it from the wood and bringing the whole thing carefully out to where she could
get a better look at it. ‘I wonder if this is Nick’s addition, or old Orwen’s.’
She looks more closely at the screws she’s removed. ‘Not recently added, either
way.’

“I doubt the Baron could have added it while Orwen was
still alive.” She eyes the screws and the little drawer curiously, setting
aside the old trade documents for now.

‘Probably not. But the wood in the screws is darkened, so
it’s not just been here a couple of years, but longer. Can’t say how much longer.
Anyway, Gran says she and Claire don’t sense anything untoward magically,
so….’ She spends a bit more time on this lock than the others, with a grim
little smile, and holds another drawer over it as she pops it open. There’s a
solid thunk, and when she lifts the covering drawer away, there’s a blade
embedded in it.

Mirex shakes her head with a sniff of amusement. “At
least he’s consistent. That one sounded like it might have still been working
properly.” She eyes the blade stuck in the bottom of the drawer, glad she
wasn’t doing this alone, before becoming curious about what was worth a chaos
storm and a knife to protect.

‘I suspect he didn’t trust anyone who could have got him the
poison for needle traps.’ She shrugs, sliding the now-opened small drawer over.
It contains what appears to be a journal of some sort. ‘Can’t really split that
one up.’

“Hm, I suppose not,” she agrees, as she lifts the
journal out and flips open the cover while looking for any title or identifying
markings on who it belonged to, although she does so on the table so Adri could
see as well.

‘That’s Nick’s writing, based on the letters from the other
room. Sure isn’t Orwen’s anyway.’

The entries weren’t all that frequent. Nicholi had been no
real diarist, but it seems that he occasionally found use for writing out some
thoughts or notes. Most of the entries were undated. A few had dates squeezed
in after the fact, from the appearances. He tended even in this locked away
journal not to use names, but barely even initials. Even so, there are hints
that Mirex had been right about what made the poisoning of those key Cardiffs
such a bloodbath, in that the Blade in the overall family moved before the
Baron was quite ready, but he managed to “win” – barely.

“Hm… seems it’s a record of the little family war
here. And why everyone died except him and the girls. They were too young to be
threats, and were of his blood. I wonder if there are reports from the Blade
members of your family at the palace about what happened here. These notes are
a bit vague but it hints at this being more than just an internal family
conflict. I wonder if it was a sanctioned op or not. Twenty five years is a
long time ago, though….”

‘Wish I’d known to look when we were in the archives.’ She
sighs. ‘But I didn’t, and even my cover for the night might not have been good
enough – or those reports might not have been in that section.’

“Those reports would have been down in the vaults of
the Shining Blade headquarters. Not precisely public access. Especially if it
was a sanctioned operation. I’ll put a request in when we pass through there
though to go home.” She flips some more pages of the diary, until they
start coming up blank, “Not much of a writer, it seems… and I didn’t see
anything that mentioned you.” She flips back to the last couple pages to
be certain though.

Something there was about ‘Mercer’, and ‘J’, and ‘those
dratted kids’… and ‘another loose end that needs tidying up’. That one’s dated
a bit over a year ago, and the next has ‘R & S to handle.’ It has little
more, and nothing that looks to be within the last six months.

‘The section I was in wasn’t exactly “public
archives” – but it wasn’t in buried vaults, either. Which makes sense.’

“I don’t think I want to know how you got into
headquarters, much less that you were in the records….” Mirex murmurs as
she reads more closely. “Hm… this might be you. ‘R and S to handle’. I’d
say that sounds like Reg and Sam to me. It’s the last thing in here though. I’d
say it’s looking more and more like the Baron was surprised by Pierre’s
obituary like you thought, and that was what prompted him to begin hunting you.
I’m starting to thin we won’t find what we need here….”

‘In a way, that’s hopeful. Especially not having more
entries. Means he probably didn’t find whatever Pierre left. So, we’ll need to
talk with Jocasta, maybe with help, and probably still figure some clues out…
but whatever he left should still be there to find.’ She sighs and shrugs.
‘Well, I can hope that, anyway.’

“I think that’s our next lead, then. Now that we know
what to look for as far as protections, I think we can just wander the house,
find any more of these glyphs, and then move on. At the least we can clear them
out for the most part so Val and Tori don’t accidently set one off
themselves.”

‘Aye. That might be the neighbourly thing to do – though I
think, if we take our time, it doesn’t have to be at night. Not that I’m
objecting to the help in here, but daylight would also help, and talking to
Jocasta probably needs night.’

Mirex sighs softly. “I don’t think I can handle much
more spell casting or ghostly contact right now anyway. Very well. We’ll go see
Jocasta and come back another time to finish going through the house….”

‘She should be friendly, at least… if you’re tired, you
can rest up instead, love.’

Mirex shakes her head. “No… let’s finish this. If
Jocasta has a lead for us to pursue let’s follow that. I’ll have the Lieutenant
quarantine the estate until I can come back or send a team to sweep it before I
send Tori and Val home.”

‘All right, love.’ She smiles and reaches over to caress her
cheek softly. ‘Then let’s see what she has to say, and what we learn.’

Mirex lets her eyes close for a moment as she nuzzles into
Adri’s touch. “Hm… yes, let’s,” she agrees in a soft murmur. She
gathers up the letters to various Mantle that they’d already recovered, and
starts to the door, although she waits for Adri so she can hold her hand as
they retrace their steps through the halls of the house.