Chapter 39: 13.7: The Royal Ball VII

“What did you just say?” I asked, my voice quiet but sharp.

“House Byron,” Alto repeated, stretching out the word. “Are you deaf? Must I repeat myself again?”

The cold hate from before was back, encompassing my entire mind before I could realize it. How could he know? Was it a lucky guess? Strike Team Leader Faye had said that a lot of people had learned that there was at least one surviving member of House Byron. Had the information leak really been that bad all those years ago that random nobles could figure out who I was?

“You make a serious allegation,” I said. “The Byrons were wiped out to the last man over a decade ago.”

“Do not play dumb with me, Lady Byron,” the Tempet noble sneered. “I know who you are. What you are.”

“Do you now?” I asked, forming a ball of unstructured magic in my hand. “Do you truly?”

“I know as clear as day,” he laughed. “Your songbird sang so easily.”

“Songbird?” An informant, of some kind? Who?

“Not important,” Alto said, waving off the issue even though he’d just revealed his hand. “Come now, Lady Byron. Let us put our weapons down and talk like civilized nobles, face to face.”

Where were the others? Sure, Kyle had increased my speed more than his own, but they shouldn’t have been that far behind. Had they gotten lost?

“Don’t fucking call me that,” I growled, a burst of anger flooding my mind. “My name is Lily Syashan. My mother died in childbirth, and my village is where I was raised.”

“You are rather quick to anger over this topic, for someone who claims not to be the Lady Byron,” Alto noted. “I wonder why.”

“Perhaps because I hate you lot,” I snarled. “Have you considered that?”

“I am not a blind man, Lady Byron,” Alto said. “And I had believed you not to be a stupid one. I would request you drop the pretense.”

“And I would request you stop calling me a Lady,” I said, controlling the anger that had washed over me. “The Byron name lies dead yet.”

He seemed too confident in his knowledge. No matter what I did, it was pretty likely that his belief that I was Lily of House Byron would not be shaken. It didn’t help that he was right.

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” the noble laughed. “A name is not so easy to kill.”

“How did you even know I was coming?” What were the odds that of all the people to run into, it would be someone who knew me?

“A friend of mine has been watching,” he said. “It was providence, truly, that you would be the one here today, but once you came to the ball, it was enough. I know just as well as you do that you have a desperate need to be the hand holding the knife.”

“The fuck are you even doing?” I asked. That he’d known I would be chasing after him was disconcerting, to say the least, but I had more pressing issues right now. “Stalling for time? What does that gain you? It is my allies that will come here, not yours.”

“Unlike many others, I can admit when I’ve lost,” Alto said, crossing one leg over the other. “It is the future of nobility that I wish to discuss with you, not any base purpose like waiting for help.”

“The future of nobility?” That was never a good way to begin a conversation.

“I think we may have the capacity to assist each other, Lady Byron,” Alto said conspiratorally, chatting like we were old friends and like I didn’t have a roiling sphere of black magic that I could easily end his life with.

“I’m going to stop you right there,” I said. “First. If you don’t stop calling me Lady Byron, I can and will kill you where you stand.”

I did wish to reclaim that name for myself one day, but right now my House was still dead and the title of Lady Byron still belonged to my fool mother.

“Are you not your father’s daughter?”

“I am. That doesn’t change anything.”

“Understood, Lady Syashan,” he said easily. It was still irritating, being addressed by a noble title, but at least it was a little better.

“You’d better not think that’s increasing your standing in my eyes, Alto,” I said. There was no chance in hell I would address him as a Lord of any kind.

“I would never presume, my lady.” He smirked, the little shit.

“Every second you waste here is a second closer to your imprisonment,” I reminded him. “Tick tock.”

“It isn’t, actually,” Alto said, far too pleased with himself. “I have my ways to keep myself hidden.”

An oath? Now that I thought about it, I sought to perceive my surroundings and found a dim pressure weighing down on my senses.

How? He’d had a way to speed himself up, some magic to stop Orchid from speaking, and a technique that hid him from detection, apparently. That was three oaths, maybe two if the first two effects both came from an oath to Ditas. Why would someone from House Tempet—a family that was well-known for never dirtying their own hands—have multiple oaths like that?

“And I have a way to ensure you die screaming,” I bit back. “Hurry it up.”

“You will not kill me, weakling,” Alto sneered. “For the same reason you cannot stand being called by the name you were gifted at birth. A knife pointed at the heart is worth nothing if the hand that holds it quavers.”

“Try me,” I said, allowing the unstructured magic in my left hand to flow out into the air around me. “I don’t need to kill you to make you suffer.”

“Of course, Lady Syashan,” Alto said, not sounding very convinced. “Where was I? Ah, yes, the nobility. I have much to discuss with you on this topic.”

“You really seem to like the sound of your own voice,” I said.

“The nobility must end,” Alto said, his voice serious.

Well, shit. Now he had my attention. “Why do you say that?”

“Surely you of all people should know.” He looked smug, saying that.

“You’re a noble,” I pointed out. “You would bite the hand that feeds you?”

“There’s no issue with doing that when you can find another hand that is truly generous,” Alto said.

“Money?” I barked out a disbelieving laugh. “You’re doing this for money? You’re a fucking Tempet, Alto, you use moons as paperweights.”

“I am hurt that you think so little of me,” Alto said, putting a hand over his heart with mock disbelief. “My hand would never be moved by cash alone. You said it yourself: my family is wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.”

“Then do explain why a noble in a comfortable family is paying for commoner mobs to invade the royal palace.” I coalesced my magic into two spheres roughly the size of my head, and I set them off in a lazy orbit around Alto’s head. That should give him something to think about.

“The nobility has grown fat and lazy,” Alto said. “The Crown is no exception. There is no room for change in this kingdom of ours, and that is unacceptable.”

“That’s the second sensible fucking thing you’ve said this whole time,” I said. “Keep it going. No noble would be so altruistic as to do this on a whim.”

“Of course the Byron girl would say that,” he snorted. “Why can someone like me not seek to improve our world?”

“You are not a blind man, and I am not a blind woman,” I said, repeating his own comment. “Of course the noble would seek to distract from his plans.”

“I seek not to distract,” Alto said. “But you are correct. I do have… some level of interest vested in this.”

“No shit,” I muttered. Louder, I addressed him, “You think that’s supposed to surprise me? If you truly wanted to cause change, a violent revolution that you paid for is not the path you would’ve taken.”

“Oh, I want change,” Alto said, “Just change that puts the necessary man on top.”

“You?” I asked, unimpressed. “How unoriginal.”

“Unoriginal doesn’t mean ineffective, my lady,” he chided. “I won’t have the noble that turned to adventuring give me advice on how to stage a coup.”

He said the word ‘adventuring’ like it was dirty, almost spitting it out.

“You didn’t need to hire commoners to do that,” I pointed out. “And it’s not like they’re going to succeed against a crowd of nobles with guards. Your plan is pretty shit, which I guess should be pretty obvious given that you’re here with me right now.”

“What do I care if a few commoners die?” Alto asked. “If they choose to throw their lives away for a price, that is their onus.”

That phrase sounded eerily familiar, and it took a moment for me to place who I remembered hearing it from.

Myself.

“So you acknowledge your plan was doomed from the start,” I said, frowning. “That doesn’t sound like much of a plan to me.”

“I—“

“Shut up, I’m thinking,” I ordered, moving the orbiting spheres of Inome’s magic closer to his head. He obeyed.

I paced around the room. Alto had been doing an awfully good job at getting under my skin, and in my haste to keep him quiet I hadn’t been paying enough attention to the plan itself.

It simply made no sense. If the commoners were going to rebel anyway, why did Alto Tempet need to coordinate them? If not, why were they throwing their lives away for a noble? Scratch that, why was the noble even throwing their lives away? It wasn’t hard for me to believe that a noble would decide to watch commoners die for sport, but given Alto’s stated goals it simply did not make sense.

He’d said that he wanted change. Maybe we would start there.

“I’m going to warn you once,” I said. “My patience for your antics is running awfully thin.”

“I understand, my lady,” Alto said. He sounded bored.

“You said that the nobility was getting too static, entrenched in old ways.”

“I did.”

“What did you mean by that? Surely a visionary such as you should know your own ideology.” My voice was dripping with sarcasm, but Alto either failed to notice or didn’t care. The latter, most likely.

“What’s there to explain?” Alto said. “There is no room to grow. It’s little more than the Crown stifling our advancements while they grow fat off of their taxes.”

“That’s it?” I almost wanted to laugh. “Your reason for trying to start a rebellion is because you’re getting taxed too much?”

“They refuse to acknowledge us,” Alto snarled, suddenly passionate. “The Crown listens not to nobility—“

“And the nobility listens not to the people,” I added, cutting him off. “Besides, how are you going to cause change if all you’re doing is tossing commoners into a fucking meat grinder?”

“You are a fool, Lady Syashan,” Alto said instead of answering, shaking his head. “A mere fool. I suppose it makes sense, having grown up with peasants and all.”

I couldn’t actually contact him with my magic. I was pretty sure he’d die if I did that, since everything I’d learned over the past decade of my life pointed towards my magic being an all-or-nothing deal.

No matter. I had other tools, courtesy of my favorite noble. I reached for my hair, delicately extracting the hairpin that had kept half of it up. I hadn’t had a good look at it earlier, but now that it was in my hands I could tell that it was very clearly a foldout knife. I flipped the blade out, being careful not to accidentally slice myself with it.

It was a good blade, I could tell. True steel, from its shine, and nearly five centimeters long.

“Do you see this?” I asked, pointing at the knife.

“I do,” Alto replied. For the first time this conversation, a hint of nervousness appeared in his voice, and I knew I had already won.

I approached him, and he stayed stock still in his chair, the orbs of magic around his neck preventing him from moving. A single bead of sweat travelled down his forehead, and I smiled unkindly.

“Not so sure of yourself now, are you?” I breathed, toying with the blade in my hands.

I could get awfully close to him without him being able to do anything, given the exceptionally lethal magic I had trained on him, so I came closer and closer until I was less than half an arm’s length away from him.

“How about you stop lying to me?” I suggested, sliding the flat of the blade against his cheek. “Hm? What do you think of that?”

“I have yet to lie,” Alto said, staying composed despite a note of fear entering his voice. “I swear this on my life.”

“And you have also yet to tell the truth,” I said. “I would suggest you start very, very soon.”

“There are certain facts that you are better off not knowing,” Alto said, somehow staying smug even when he was this powerless. “Trust me.”

“I don’t think you quite understand how this works.” Seriously, did he have no self preservation instinct? I was getting a little frustrated.

“I do, and yet I reply the same.”

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I sighed. “You made me do this.”

I turned the blade over in my hand, making a show of it in front of Alto’s eyes, and then I slashed across his forehead.

Head wounds almost always looked worse than they were, and—

A memory came to me with the slash. A father, guiding his daughter.

Take away their senses, Lily. One slice across the forehead serves both to cause pain and to temporarily blind them. It also gives hope for mercy, a hope that you can destroy. Destroying or damaging other sensory organs may work as well, though it tends to be less effective than—

The recollection hit me like a punch to the gut. I took a deep breath in, out, relying on breathing techniques that had been one of the few things I had actually learned from the Church. Techniques that I couldn’t associate with my father.

“What’s the matter, Lady Byron?” Alto bit. “Getting cold feet?”

I looked over at him. Blood was streaming down his forehead. He winced, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the cut or the blood in his eyes. Alto had his eyes closed now, the top half of his face a bloody mess.

“You’re awfully confident,” I whispered, “For someone who might be dead in an hour.”

“I must admit,” Alto laughed, the sound tinged with a wildness that hadn’t been there before, “You’re really not what I expected.”

“And what did you expect?” I asked. “You haven’t met me before, and for all you know I am a Byron in the truest term.”

“I remember what happened those dozen years ago, and I remember a meek little girl in front of the Crowned King,” Alto said. “I merely did not know that the Crown decided to have mercy on you. Just like everyone else, I believed House Byron to be dead or jailed to the last.”

“They are,” I said. “House Byron is no more.”

Before he could say anything, I grabbed one of his wrists with more force than was necessary, squeezing tight enough to leave marks. I couldn’t say that the grunt of pain he made brought me pleasure, but it was at least a little satisfying.

Jasmine’s blade laid flat against his index finger, I spoke again. “Now, you seem to forget that I still have a knife. Give me my answers.”

“Answers about what?” The noble was genuinely scared now, I was pretty sure, no matter how much he tried to hide it.

“I refuse to believe that even you would be so moronic as to simply go with the garbage fire that you called a plan,” I said. “What are you hiding?”

“I told you that you wouldn’t like the answers,” he said, having somehow regained his calm. “I maintain that.”

So fucking irritating. I pushed down, and the knife cleanly cleaved through flesh and bone. Alto let out a strangled scream as I severed his finger.

There was an awful lot of blood for a single digit of the hand, I noted idly. Heedless of the magic threatening his life, Alto clutched the crippled hand with his other, groaning in pain. For my part, I backed off a touch, careful not to let the spurting blood dirty my dress too much.

“There, now the time pressure is really on,” I said, my voice ice cold. “You can and will die from blood loss if that goes untreated.”

“Fuck!” Alto shouted, ignoring me. “Why did you—“

“You’ve lost a finger,” I said, raising my voice over his. “A rather important one, at that. Now, you can start talking and maybe get treated for it soon enough that it can be replaced, or you can keep on hiding behind your insults and keep on losing them.”

“You’re a monster,” he hissed.

“Guess you misjudged me,” I shrugged. “A knife pointed at the heart is worth quite a bit if it’s my hand behind it.”

If I had to be honest, I was a little disappointed. He’d kept up the tough facade, bluffing like he genuinely thought I wouldn’t hurt him, and now that I had he instantly gave up on maintaining his position. Fitting, for the son of the merchant House. A liar, preventing cracks into the mask only up until blood was drawn.

“I’m not the only one,” Alto finally said, still cradling his bleeding hand. “There’s more of us here.”

“Us being the conspirators.”

“Yes.”

“Who else? What are your other plans?”

“I can’t say,” Alto said hastily, shaking his head. “I can’t say.”

I came in close again, coming from behind this time to keep my dress from getting too much blood on it. It was a beautiful piece of clothing and it would be a great shame to ruin it.

This time, I went for an ear. It wasn’t a clean cut this time, less of an attempt to cut it off and more one meant to leave a mark. Alto yelped as I cut, the polished blade sliding through his flesh like it was butter.

“You can and will say,” I said. “And also, how the hell did you get commoners to join you? Money?”

“Money, empty promises, it’s all the same,” Alto said, a little bit of the bravado he’d had earlier creeping back. “Peasants are an easy tool to influence.”

“Sure,” I said, spinning the knife. “Now tell me who the other conspirators are, and tell me what else you have planned.”

“I—I can’t. They’ll kill me.”

There was something gruesomely satisfying about seeing such a cocksure, arrogant noble being reduced to near tears. I bent down next to his intact ear, and when I spoke I was quiet but no less deadly for it. “And so will I.”

“I know who you are, Byron girl,” he said, desperation tinging his words. “I maintain contingencies.”

“Contingencies,” I said.

“If I fail to notify my men for a day, they’ll send out the information I’ve gathered,” he replied. “Please. You don’t want to do this.”

“If you live, you’ll be notifying people anyway,” I said.

Fuck, this was bad. I wasn’t making up an argument for the sake of it—everything I’d seen of this man so far indicated that he would have no trouble promising silence now and reneging on it later.

Alto stayed silent. Perhaps he knew that lying to me again now would be a fatal mistake.

Either way, my identity was going to come out. A weight dropped into my chest, the heart that had been so light earlier now feeling like it weighed a thousand tons.

I was going to have to go into hiding. I would need to flee Dakheng. I might not even be able to return to the Yaguan Mage University, if this information was disseminated far enough to reach them.

There had been a contract made, all those years ago, and it was one that I had never planned on fully following, but the Crown always remembered to collect. If news of a suriviving member of House Byron reached another noble, I would have to disappear or face lifelong imprisonment and perhaps even execution after a trial. House Byron had betrayed the trust of the Crown and the trust of the people, and if it was known that I was one of them, my life was over.

“Can you call off your men?” I asked.

“I can,” Alto said after a moment. “I will, if you allow me freedom.”

“Freedom?” I asked. “After all this, you would seek to avoid consequences?”

“I would,” he said. “My name is ruined here, but Tayan is not the only kingdom on the continent.”

“Very well,” I said, my heart pounding in my chest. I knew as much as he did that assisting him would be tantamount to treason, but if it meant I could remain unnamed, I would be willing to do just about anything. “Then let’s get out of here.”

“Yes,” Alto agreed. “Let’s.”

I dispelled the magic around him and stood, walking towards the door. I crafted another spell as I walked—it wouldn’t do to be totally unarmed if we ran into a guard. It would be rather unfortunate for the guard, but then someone was always going to come out the loser in this scenario and I would much rather it not be me.

As I made it to the door, I realized that the pressure I’d been feeling earlier had not only remained, it had increased.

I whipped my head around, and Alto was not there.

“You took your eyes off me, you fucking fool,” I heard him say. I couldn’t pinpoint where the sound was coming from, almost like it was rebounding inside my head rather than coming from a position away from me.

Shit. Shit, shit, fuck, this was bad.

“Did you truly believe I would allow you to do this to me and survive?” Alto said. “I had been hoping to invite you to join our ascension to the Crown, and look where that got me.”

“I would have appreciated the invite, for what it’s worth,” I said, my eyes darting around the room.

He was a Cyang oathholder, I was pretty sure. Given that he’d claimed to have a way to hide himself from passersby earlier, Alto probably had some way to fuck with perceptions. That meant that just looking for him was out.

“The whole world will know of the survival of Lily Byron, soon enough,” Alto taunted. “You poor fucking fool.”

“How did you even find that out?” I asked, thinking hard. I needed to stop him from exiting this room, assuming he hadn’t already.

“I told you, your songbird,” he said.

“Faye,” I realized.

“That was her name, I believe.”

Rather than respond, I finished the half-formed spell I’d been creating, throwing up a Ceretian shield on the door. I had used the loose-frame construction for this, so I was able to move it and manipulate it easily. I passed more magic into it, charging it with more so that I could expand it across the entire thing.

If Alto had already left without my knowledge, then it was over.

Actually, I realized, a stab of panic coursing through my heart, it was already over. If Alto hadn’t been lying about his failsafe, then my name was going to be revealed whether or not I kept him from getting out.

I was going to have to flee. I was going to have to abandon my life, run into obscurity, and give up on my hopes of restoring my name.

Somehow, that hurt less than knowing I wouldn’t be able to see Jasmine again.

“Stop that spell,” Alto snarled.

So he was still in here. Good. I could make him regret what he’d done to me.

“Faye,” I repeated. “How did you—“

“I have my ways. Now stop the fucking spell.”

He hadn’t been armed, last I saw, but he was a Ditas oath. If he closed up my throat like he’d done to Orchid but made it a little more permanent, it would be rather harmful to my goal of making it out of here alive.

I formed unstructured magic, the anger flowing through my veins making it sloppy, imprecise. I tried again, and it worked a little better this time, though not by much.

“If you don’t reveal yourself,” I said, my voice hollow, “I will destroy this fucking room to get you.”

Shuffling, from behind me. I swung around with a fist, and when I punched the air I made contact with something fleshy and hard. An outstretched arm, halfway through an attack of its own.

“You forgot to mask the sound, amateur,” I said, watching Alto’s form materialize. I punched him in the throat, hard, and he fell to the ground.

I knelt down next to his prone body, my grip on my knife tightening. When I brought the blade over his throat, my knuckles had gone white.

“You would never,” Alto said, his eyes trained on the knife.

“Now why wouldn’t I?” I asked. The anger had largely cleared from my system, replaced by unbridled hatred.

I’d built a nice life. Worked hard, studied, trained, and adventured. I’d made friends. I’d grown to actually care for a noble, one who I had to admit I was well on the way to being in love with.

And Alto was ruining it all.

“If you were permitted to live, you must have hated House Byron,” Alto said. “I knew your father. If you ever held any hate for him, you would never follow in his footsteps.”

“You did get one thing right,” I said.

“I did?” Alto asked, relief flooding his voice. “Of course I did.”

“I suppose that at the end of the day,” I whispered, slitting his throat, “I will always be my father’s daughter.”

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