by Andrew Rowe
“Welcome, guests.” The presumed-butler bowed deeply. “We are deeply honored that you’ve chosen to attend young Miss Verena’s debut. Please, come inside. The other staff will be pleased to serve you food and drinks. You may leave your coats here,” he gestured to a nearby rack, “if you wish to lighten your load.”
I frowned, opening my mouth to ask a question, but Sera was faster.
“Thank you, sir. Might I inquire as to what is expected of us at this gathering?”
“Of course, Miss…”
“Cadence. Sera Cadence.” Sera flashed him a bright smile.
“A Cadence…?” He gasped. “From that military family in Valia? How very strange and wonderful! I’m Anthony, the Head Manservant for the Verena family. To answer your question, very little is required of you at this gathering — you may simply relax and enjoy your time here. It is, of course, traditional to present the Mistress or the Master of the household with an appropriate gift to honor their daughter’s debut.”
I frowned at his response to my family name. We were in Caelford, so I supposed that it wasn’t a common name, but his reaction had been oddly extreme.
“Of course, naturally.” Sera beamed at him, then waved a hand to the rest of us. “Come along, then, everyone.”
“Um, hold on, sorry.” Patrick winced. “Hi, sorry, I’m Patrick. Retainer. I’m not as versed in all this — what exactly would be an appropriate gift?”
“Of course, young retainer, I am happy to help. That,” the older man smiled, “is always a matter of some debate. You must impress the hosts, but without being too ostentatious — you do not wish to make yourselves appear overzealous. Too valuable of a gift could imply you are belittling the wealth of the hosts, or perhaps showing up the other guests. Something with a personal touch is, of course, always appreciated.”
“Come on, Patrick.” Sera gestured to the rest of us as she began to move into the main living room area. “I think we’ve got the idea. We’ve wasted enough of the good man’s time.”
I gave a quick glance to Professor Meltlake and Mara before we moved in. Meltlake was frowning silently at the décor, while Mara was staring at everything with wide, awe-filled eyes. She’d seen noble manors before — she’d lived with us at Derek’s place, after all — but even Elora’s house hadn’t been quite this overtly fancy. It was clearly set up for a party, and I was beginning to feel more underdressed and underprepared by the moment.
“Oh, one last thing!” Anthony remarked as I followed Sera deeper into the room. “If you didn’t have time to prepare a proper gift…” He raised a hand as if to half-cover his mouth and gave us a conspiratorial look, “the crafting hall is to the right, past the dining hall. And, if you’re in need of some inspiration, you can always check the library. It’s one of Lady Verena’s favorite places, and I can assure you that she’s read each and every book.”
“That’s much appreciated, thank you.” Sera gave a curtsey, then waved for the rest of us to follow her.
There were dozens of other people present in the chamber, as well as other nearby rooms that I could see from the entrance. I’d never been an expert on clothing style, but the garb was both excessively formal and overtly antiquated. There were a few people in military-style uniforms, which were bright crimson. Caelford did have crimson as one of their flag colors, but I thought I remembered their uniforms being predominantly black. That was a little strange.
From the entrance chamber, I could see a broad spiral stairway heading up to a second floor, as well rooms branching off to the left, right, and straight ahead. The left was the library that the butler had mentioned, the right was a dining area, and I couldn’t quite get a good look at the room straight ahead because of the crowd. I could hear music coming from it, though, so maybe some sort of main entertainment lounge or ballroom.
People chatted, discussing the Lord and Lady of the house, local politics, and recent events.
My initial read was that the goal was probably something like “impress the noble family”, “present a proper gift for the daughter”, or maybe just “ignore everything and find a stairway to the next floor”. That said, scenario floors could be tricky, and I already knew that there was a good chance that the floor could be designed to subvert our expectations.
I glanced around at the crowd. Are those other Climbers, or summons playing scenario roles?
The butler was almost certainly a summon — or a Whisper, maybe — that was part of the challenge. Everyone else was too hard to tell without more information. A brief use of Detect Aura while we walked showed me mostly red auras, meaning mostly Carnelian-level people or monsters. That didn’t clarify if they were climbers, but it made me lean slightly more toward scenario creatures, since most climbers would be stronger than Carnelian.
“Corin, focus.” Sera snapped her fingers. I’d gotten distracted by staring at the crowd.
“Sorry.” I followed her the rest of the way into an adjacent room.
I caught a few of chatter tidbits along the way.
“…sickly, hope she doesn’t collapse again…”
“…Valians? What were they thinking, coming here with the current political…”
“…heard a rumor that monsters are coming…”
“…can’t believe the audacity…”
That last one caught my attention more than the others. It came from a man with dark blond hair in a crimson uniform with a thick moustache and an elaborate black-hilted rapier hanging at his hip. The rapier had an impressively-large black crystal on the pommel, with a layer of runes on the metal portion that kept the pommel in place. As my gaze turned toward him, he sneered at me. Like, actually sneered.
I rolled my eyes and turned back away, following Sera as she led us toward the library.
The library itself was a grand one, but sparsely occupied. It was three stories, with a massive stairway leading between them and several…ladder things. I don’t know the term for them. Ladders for reaching books? I don’t know. There were a lot of them, and they were obviously necessary given the sheer quantity of the collection.
A few uniformed servants were giving tours to other guests, but we ignored them and simply found a quiet corner to talk.
We formed a loose circle. Sera turned straight to Meltlake. “Care to explain, professor?”
Meltlake smiled. “No, no. I’ll step in if I’m truly needed, but you’ve been doing fine so far. This whole exercise is a good stand-in for your missed final exam. I’d like to see how you can do without my intervention.”
Sera nodded, clearly expecting that answer. “Very well, Corin?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Do you want to begin?”
I stared at her. “This is a historical scenario. You know I’m terrible at history, Sera. I barely made it through a certain someone’s lessons.”
“You were a little behind at first, but I think you caught up just fine,” Meltlake reassured me. “Any guesses?”
“Somewhere around Six Years War era, based on the outfits and manner of speech. We’re lucky they’re speaking Valian. Based on the uniform color, we’re not in Valia — it’d be either Caelford or one of the Edrias.”
“Edria.” Sera noted. “Specifically, the lands of Archduke Tychus Verena.”
“Very good, Miss Cadence.” Meltlake raised her cane in an approving gesture. “I’d award you points if they were relevant here.”
“I’ll take them for next year?” Sera tried.
Meltlake chucked, but with a sad twinge to it. “I…don’t think I’ll be teaching you then. We’ll see.”
“Archduke Tychus…” Mara frowned. “That’s not one of ‘em, is it? Kjell, Sheng, Wolff, and Jing, right?”
She knew a lot more of those names than I remembered.
“That’s currently true,” Meltlake responded, “but the houses were different in this era.”
Sera’s brow creased. “I remember all that, but I can’t recall how exactly the changes happened.
It’s been a while since we had our Edrian history class.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever taken that class. Missing three years of school was, at times, a serious disadvantage.
“Go mingle.” Meltlake waved to the crowd. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Wait, wait. Before that,” I interrupted. “Shouldn’t we discuss objectives and resources?”
“Usually, the objective of a scenario becomes clear as it progresses.” Meltlake set her cane down, her voice shifting back into teaching mode. “The criteria for success are not always immediately apparent, but some conflict will occur that must be resolved, or a goal will be presented.”
“We’ve already been presented one — presents!” Patrick laughed at his own wordplay and got some mild chuckles from the rest of us. “What are we going to get the birthday girl?”
“It’s more than a birthday,” Sera noted. “It’s her high society debut. That means she’s likely turning seventeen. She’ll already have her attunement, given her age and connection to an archduke’s family, so gifts related to a Judgment would not be applicable. As an archduke’s descendant, she’ll expect something costly, but the butler did hint that a personalized gift might be appropriate as well.”
“How do we know what she’d like?” Mara asked. “Noble gifts aren’t really my specialty.”
“Simple as anything, Mara.” Sera gave Mara a conspiratorial look. “We’re going to ask her directly.”
I blinked. “Is that…acceptable? We probably aren’t supposed to meet her until after the debut, at which point the gifts will have to be prepared.”
“Please, Corin. If she’s anything like most teenage noblewomen, she’s probably absolutely terrified right now. I’m sure she’d appreciate a couple of her peers coming to check on her, make sure she’s properly dressed and made up, and that sort of thing.”
Mara quirked a brow. “And you want me to help with that. Wouldn’t she have maidservants?”
“She probably does, but I can do better. And I want you to accompany me in case the walls try to eat me while I’m looking for her. This is, in spite of appearances, still a spire.”
“That I can do.” Mara nodded. “What are the boys going to be up to, then?”
Sera waved a hand dismissively. “I’m sure they can find something interesting to read while we solve the test. Maybe even something relevant to this particular event, or the house’s history.”
I rolled my eyes. “If you want someone to do research, we do have a Researcher.”
“Summoning an elemental in the middle of a party without permission would not be a good social move, dear brother.”
“Could you even do that while she’s still summoned outside the spire?”
“Oh, sure. It would just transport her here, much like how I teleported her to the train.”
I nodded. I had a number of questions on the subject, but I needed to focus for once in my life. I folded my arms. “Given how useful she’d be, maybe get permission?”
“Fine, fine. I’ll ask at some point if the opportunity arises. But don’t wait for that.” She tipped her head. “I’ll see you in…say, an hour or two, back here?”
“Do we know how much time we have?” I asked.
“I overhead someone mentioning it at the door,” Patrick replied. “It’s just past two bells. The debut is at six. We have a little under four hours.”
I exhaled a breath. I didn’t like the idea of being around that many people for four hours…but I supposed the library wouldn’t be too awful.
If I actually stuck to Sera’s plan. Which I wouldn’t. The library had benefits, but I had other ways of getting information in a place like this, and I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for Sera to try to solve everything on her own.
“Mara, Patrick. Based on your previous climb, do you have any insights on what else we may need to do here?” I asked them.
“Not really, wasn’t anything quite this elaborate for our floors.” Mara shrugged. “We did several scenario floors, but they were more…action oriented? One was defending a fortress under siege, another was a heist…nothing like this.”
“Yeah, that heist was really fun though.” Patrick laughed. “We’ll have to do one again sometime!”
“Let’s maybe keep our voices down when the word ‘heist’ is involved, Patrick,” Sera chided him. “Anyway, let’s break for now. Corin, Patrick, hit the books. Professor, care to join us ladies to try to get in to talk to Lady Verena? Your name might assist us in making introductions before the debut more easily.”
By name, I presumed Sera meant Professor Meltlake’s original house name — Hartigan — which was already famous in this time period. Hartigan was a descendant of an archduke herself, and thus, she had considerably more social standing than any of the rest of us. She was the type of person that should be at this sort of event, whereas we…well, if this was just after the Six Years War and somewhere in Edria…
I might have said the name “Cadence” a little too loudly.
“No, that’s all right. I think I’ll go speak to the archduke. I have some questions for him.” Meltlake gazed toward the door to the next room, looking focused.
“Is there something we should know?” I asked.
“Yes,” Meltlake acknowledged, “but you’ll want to figure it out on your own.”
I rolled my eyes at our professor’s cryptic comment, then waved goodbye to Sera, Mara, and Meltlake as they disappeared into other rooms.
“Well,” Patrick said gleefully. “It’s just us! Time to hit the books?”
“Seems so.” I nodded. “You check the left side and I’ll take the right?”
“Sure!”
We headed to the shelves. I scanned through the first set, hoping it might give me a clue about the library’s organization style — genre, alphabetization, that sort of thing.
Let’s see…Memoirs of the Blackstone Assassin…Symphony’s Silence…The Death of Destiny…
Hm. All fiction here. Not alphabetized by title or by author, so far as I can tell.
I frowned, checking the next row.
Arcane Assassins: Volume 1. Stab: A Stabbing Story. Stab 2: The Stabbening.
Those…can’t be real books, are they?
I picked up Stab 2 and flipped it open. Remarkably, there were no mechanical or magical traps involved; it was simply a book. One with pages and, strangely enough, words on those pages.
I read a passage.
Steel rushed down the hallway, encountering another set of guards. He shouted the name of his special technique, “Instant Death Skill: Ultimate Stabbening!” and flashed by in a blur of motion, stabbing each of them. Each guard exploded into fine red mist. They had been stabbed. They had been stabbed to death.
I set the book back down.
How…how was this even published? I feel like someone is making fun of me just by having it here.
I set the book down with a sigh.
What else do we have? More Blackstone Assassin books? Thief of Hearts: The Loves and Lies of Wrynn Jaden?
I opened that latter one as well, then shut it immediately, my face reddening. Oh. It’s that kind of book.
I headed to the next shelf. Surely, there had to be some historical reference material in here somewhere, or at least a clue or two.
I’ll save you my own frustration and sum things up: I didn’t find any. I scanned each shelf carefully, but everything there seemed like fiction — and not even my type of fiction.
Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. Could there be secret passages? Maybe if I move the right book, one that looks out of place…
I cast Detect Aura and scanned the shelves, trying to find any books that glowed, but I didn’t see any. I did see some glowing from some of the people in the room as well as many of the people beyond. Nothing unusual — just low-level attunement auras and a few assorted magical items.
I tried a more mechanical search, looking for any books that appeared obviously out of pla
ce. The wrong color, the wrong size, that sort of thing. I found nothing of the sort.
If there were any secret passages, they weren’t something I could find with a cursory search.
I checked in with Patrick next, finding him reading a copy of Secrets of the Sacred Swords: Volume 2 — The Two Edges of Twilight.
“I can’t believe they have this one! It’s been out of print for decades!” He glanced from side-to-side, then whispered. “Jaden Box?”
I considered that, then shook my head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. But if we can get Researcher in here later, she might be able to copy it for you.”
“Ooh. Okay, let’s see if we can do that.” He set the book down.
“Anything relevant in there, or in general?” I asked.
“No, sorry, got kind of distracted. I checked most of it, but nothing seemed like history books.”
“Huh. A library of…just fiction? That has to be meaningful. Or maybe there’s a second library elsewhere in the house?”
“I’ll go ask the librarian.” Patrick turned to go do the super obvious thing I hadn’t even considered. I stared after him, wondering if I should go along, too. The answer was “yes”, but I chose not to, anyway. Talking to people was the worst. I waited for Patrick to return.
“Librarian says that these books are historical and looked at me kind of funny when I asked. He also said that he recommends Stab 2: The Stabbening, which is Lady Verena’s favorite book.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. It was highly plausible that there was some kind of secret tucked into the pages of that novel, something that might be a key to a shortcut through this scenario.
…But I couldn’t make myself read that book. Not even knowing what was at stake.
“Let’s get out of here.” I waved toward the door. Hopefully, if we could get Researcher summoned, she could parse through that novel — and others — to find any available clues.
Next, we headed through the dining hall. I caught sight of Meltlake talking to someone near the back — a tall, regal-looking blond-haired man with an obvious Citrine-level aura. He wore an actual honest-to-goodness crown and wore a long cavalry saber on his left hip. His outfit was military formal in the dark crimson colors of Edria, but accentuated by a long black cape with a symbol of a bird in flight embroidered on the back. Archduke Verena, if I had to guess.