Ch. 2.5 (Orilis)

Sighing I pulled away from her, calmed by her presence.

"Sorry about that," I said, knowing I wasn't angry with her, rather myself.

For this morning, for today, for overlooking the problem Ior was going to be, hell, I was even angry about Vail and his ridiculous antics that had made me make a call I never wanted to be forced to make.

Shaking my head I looked over at Liv, waiting for her to say something.

She was watching me thoughtfully, her muscle toned arms crossed, gilded black tattoo gleaming on her forearm in the midmorning light.

"It's fine Orilis, the last few days have been unforgiving for the both of us." her golden eyes darkened for a split second, news I most likely would not like.

"Liv, what did you find out?" 

Liv pursed her lip and said, "My father...he came to the guild last night, you know, Guild Virzas..."

I blinked, that was not at all what I had expected to hear but it wasn't exactly better.

I did know guild Virzas, I had made myself a lifelong enemy of theirs by helping Liv.

Originally, Liv had been an apprentice and operative there, that is, until she decided she had no interest in being a puppet of the guild and left...with my help. I sighed warily, Liv was by every means a prodigy in her profession and the guild was not pleased to lose her. Almost as displeased as her drunk bastard of a father.

"Do I even want to know?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"My father...wants the guild to bring you to him..." Liv said in a livid tone.

"Could this week be more of a shitshow?" I muttered for no one in particular to hear.

Liv shrugged, she had been through worse, we both had, on the grand scale of shitshow weeks, this one ranked number four out of ten and all things considered.

"I suppose we should prepare for our guests then," I said pointedly.

Liv chuckled "With pleasure," and with the monstrous smile on her face as she turned and left the room, I was sure she meant it. Shaking my head as Liv's infectious anticipation spread across my body, my muscles tense with excitement. Tonight was going to be fun.

The next few hours went by quickly, Liv returned with a few tools she deemed necessary to our little surprise party and I went through a compiled list of the guild's members to try and narrow down our guest possibilities.

To anyone walking by or spying, it would seem that I simply favored a maid and was using her to help me get my extensive list of duties as a member of the royal family done for the day. Which was partially true, considering dealing with a group of highly trained, dangerous assassins was well within the range of the spymaster and one of three Diplomatic envoys in the kingdom of Heliva. In short I was well placed to have access to such information without raising suspicion. But at the same time, if I did anything wrong, the whole palace would know, Aliv and Zedian were openly against my position as spymaster and the fact they couldn't sway father drove them insane. So their coping methods involved watching my actions as spymaster...essentially watching me on the chance they would catch me screwing up. Not that they would.

By the time the sun was well above the castle we were already finished and I was dressing for court.