When someone broke into the home of the commander of the kingdom’s armed forces, the aftermath didn’t pan out the same as if it had been a common civilian household. The case was only a notch below sneaking into the royal castle in seriousness, so instead of the common law enforcement, it was handled internally in collaboration with the CI.

  After confirming there weren’t more suspicious figures lurking about, we went in to report the incident to Charlotte, who used her connections to put the gears into motion. Within the hour, a cleanup team came to pick up the burglar’s corpse. They wrapped up the charred remains in a gray bag, sealed it tight as a mummy, and took it away.

  Ms Asia was away from the estate during the incident, and everything was thankfully over by the time she returned. We agreed with Charlotte and Emily to omit the part about the human barbecue. My aunt couldn’t be allowed to know about my capabilities, and I figured she’d live happier without knowing a man died in our backyard. We only informed her a burglar was caught in the grounds, arrested by the guards, which was why investigators might still come and look around the grounds for the next few days.

  And I was going to have to write another report…This job had you rely more on a pen than a wand.

  Though this report was going to be a short one.

  An unknown continental male. Objective: unknown. Affiliation: unknown. No identifying symbols or features. Generic clothes. Small weapons and a potent runestone. Looking at the summary out of context, it would've been easy to dismiss the dead man as nothing more than an unlucky thief, and I had no doubt the higher-ups would close the case as such.

  But he’d been too skilled for a mere burglar. Not batting an eye at running into two mages, never even considering surrender, assessing the situation calmly, and taking his own life without flinching, in a most agonizing way. While he wasn’t quite master-level in terms of prana use, his training and bodily control had been far outside expectations. No ordinary guardsman would’ve been a match for such a weasel. He could’ve massacred the whole household if I weren't here.

  This man was not a random criminal, but a professional assassin. That was my assessment, and I put it in writing, for what it was worth.

  In the master’s study, I took a break from my report to show Charlotte the throwing knife. The weapons and tools on the intruder’s body had melted in the fire, but the two he threw at us earlier were safely recovered.

  “I've seen blades of many kinds,” I said, “but this design isn’t Tarachian. What do you make of it?”

  The maid took the sliver of steel and turned it around in her fingers.

  “It looks brand new,” she noted. “No identifying markings or old scratches that could give us a clue to his past. It doesn't seem poisoned or enchanted. Definitely not imperial style. But I couldn't name any culture or race that uses this particular design. The shape is vaguely tribal, but the polish and honing have been done with machine tools. So it must have been produced in an industrialized nation.”

  She brought the edge close to her nose, but there were no scents on it but that of clean steel. The maid twirled the two-sided blade briefly between her index and middle fingers, flicked it up in the air, close to the ceiling, where it spun with a faint buzz, and she caught it again as it fell.

  “Extremely well-balanced. The faint wobble gives its flight sound by design, as if to disorient or intimidate. A handy trait in the dark of the night. Even in Calidea, I don’t think there are too many smithies that can produce this level of quality. I can’t rule out it being an import, but we'll ask around. An expert might be able to say more.”

  I recognized I had no room left for commentary. Steel was outside my expertise.

  “It's in your hands now.”

  “But that was much too dangerous, Miss,” Charlotte resumed, leaning over with a reproachful look. “You should’ve come straight to the house instead of trying to apprehend such a villain on your own. You have to remember you're not almighty anymore. It could've ended badly.”

  “Such is life,” I said and faced back to the desk to put the finishing lines on the paper. “I was never almighty. Our fleeting lives could end whenever, wherever, for the most trivial reasons.”

  “Please reflect on your behavior instead of philosophizing about it. It wasn’t elegantly fatalistic, only very reckless.”

  Weak people's way of operating was still strange to me. But I'd reflected. Next time, I'd take a leg first before giving away my position.

  “You didn't remove any of the rings, did you?” the maid asked.

  “You mean, you wouldn't already know if I did?”

  “If Ms Troyard ever saw you do that, your friendship could come to a truly tragic conclusion. Please don't forget about that.”

  You don't think I know that?

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  That reminded me of the part that bugged me most about the case and I had to give voice to it,

  “It was too weird...When he found himself cornered, the man chose to attack Emily instead of me. Given the choice to surrender, he would rather die for the slim chance to take her with him. The one of us who seemed weakest and most innocent. Don’t you think that’s odd? No matter how I turn it around, it was pure madness. How could such a capable person act so irrationally? I can't comprehend it.”

  “Maybe she reminded him of his ex-girlfriend?” Charlotte suggested. “Men can be surprisingly passionate.”

  I looked at the maid over my shoulder, grossed out. Was she speaking from personal experience now?

  She shrugged and revised her opinion,

  “Maybe he thought killing Ms Troyard would shake you and create an opening to flee?”

  “A fighter of his level couldn't have misread the situation that badly. I had him in my power. Killing me was his only chance of getting away. But he abandoned the thought of running. No, already before that…He stopped his flight as soon as he saw Emily. It should’ve been easy for him to outmaneuver the girl, given his prowess. But he just stopped right there. As if he’d found what he was looking for. He was so focused on her the whole time, he didn’t even notice when I first sneaked up on him. I’d really hate to be right about this, but maybe not me, or the General, or even Ms Asia—that man was here for Emily.”

  Charlotte frowned at my theory.

  “A first-rate assassin infiltrated the estate of a five-star General and sacrificed his life in an effort kill the impoverished daughter of a fallen noble house…A very romantic picture, but I'm not sure it makes sense. What could anyone stand to gain from Ms Troyard’s death? And why not attack her before she even came to us?”

  Maybe it was Emily's coming to the Ruthford House that was the trigger condition, and made it necessary to take her out...? But how? And who ordered the hit?

  “Who knows. It was only an idea.” I put my pen away and stood. “Thankfully, finding that out isn't my job.”

  The day had been a hot one, and I'd worked up a good sweat running around. It was about time for a bath. I headed to the door past the thoughtful maid.

  “How did Ms Troyard take it?” she asked.

  “She was fine.”

  “The girl saw a man be shredded and burned to death in front of her. How could she be ‘fine?’”

  “Emily is tougher than she looks.”

  She gave her testimony to the investigators clearly and objectively too, without any waterworks. I was honestly impressed by her grit.

  Of course, the agents were barely half interested in what she had to say about the intruder. What they really wanted to know was, had she seen anything she shouldn't have seen when she got into a fight next to me. But there weren’t any problems. I did nothing special. Emily still thought I was only a weird homeschooled fire mage. Her Third Eye wasn't yet at the level where she could peer into root phenomena. But was she really as fine inside as she looked?

  Charlotte seemed doubtful.

  “Did you feel tough yourself the first time you saw a man die?”

  My fingers paused above the door handle.

  The first time I saw a man die? When was that again? As if I could remember.

  No, I remembered. I did now, when I thought about it more.

  Yes, that had to have been the first one. In the facility in Biscal. It wasn't a man who died then, but a young boy. Barely seven or so. It happened in the first week when I got there. I was on the way to the mess hall for lunch and came to witness a random act of violence in the hallway. I never knew what that boy did wrong and never asked. I came up only just in time to see a guard hit him hard on the back of the head with a baton.

  The boy dropped on the spot, face down. His head hit the concrete floor with a startling pop, and there he stayed, hands just a little twitching. Blood began to trickle out of his nose, forming a crimson little puddle under his soft, relaxed face, his blue, wide-open eyes frozen in an unflinching, dim stare of shock. His figure stilled like that, brought down to his knees, back bent in a steep, penitent curve like a heathen calling his god for deliverance. Death was almost instant.

  The guard waved at a few older children, who came without an expression, took the dead kid by his arms and legs, and dragged him away, and by the next day, they’d scrubbed the spot of blood off the floor too, and it was like the whole thing never happened. But I remember, it happened. I recall there being a few other new children present at the scene who were shocked and cried. I didn't cry. I went on to eat. I was sure the boy deserved his fate. You didn't get hit without a good cause, I reasoned. If you were killed, then that just went to show how far wrong you had to have been. If only you were obedient and listened, did as you were told, and did it right, why would anyone hit you? An absurd idea.

  It took me a long time to accept that rationality in humans was the rare exception, a freak occurrence, and the world and its inhabitants were fundamentally senseless.

  “Forgive me, Hope,” Charlotte’s remorseful words broke me out of the recollection, and she bowed. “That was a mean question. I spoke without thinking.”

  I opened the door and went out.

  “What? I’m fine.”