Chapter 86: Competency

Chapter 86 -086: Competency

“I’ll have your attendants leave the room. I hope you don’t mind, Demon Lord Asmodeus?” Aldridge asked, per the plan. “Our message comes with a burden so heavy it can’t be borne by those of ‘lowly birth.'”

Asmodeus gave him a look that carried his suspicion and caution.

He weighed the request the way a merchant weighed his coins, turning it over, listening for the ring. The old man’s smile gave him nothing, and the woman’s lack of interest gave him even less.

“There’s a cost to knowing too much, Demon Lord of Ira,” Nyx said. “If you think your subordinates can bear that much, leave them be. If not, save them from possible future troubles by sending them out.” Her voice was indifferent, though she wasn’t even looking at him. They were not desperate to get him to listen. There were six other Demon Lords, and the fear that nobody would take their truth as soon as it left their mouths was nonexistent.

“And why should I believe the words of two people I have never met? Let alone something you claim to know about demons, when you are clearly not demons. In service of a history I cannot verify? Why should I act for you?”

“You seem to be mistaken, Asmodeus,” Nyx replied. “Acting on what we say comes only after you have heard what we have to say. We only wish to know whether your subordinates can bear the burden of the truth we carry. That is all. Your suspicion is fairly reasonable, but if we wished to assassinate you, we’d surely have no need to come sit with you and chat away our precious time, would we?”

A valid argument. Moreover, he would like to see them try!

“My advisors shall leave us, then.”

The order was absolute, killing off every form of resistance.

The advisors rose in a rustle of cloth, and none of them dared to look back.

“However, she stays,” Asmodeus said, pointing to the attendant who had come to pick them up. The two other advisors grumbled as they left, to which the Demon Lord paid no heed.

When it was only the four of them in the room, Asmodeus’s look changed from suspicious to curious, dropping the structure of host and visitors.

“From the very beginning. Spill it all.”

The attendant stood very still by the wall, as though she hoped being quiet enough would make her forgettable.

Nyx rose, slowly walking out of her seat and towards the edge of the room.

“The beginning,” she said, “is older than this realm, Khyron. Older than the system that makes you what you are. Older than the word ‘demon.'” She paused. “Are you certain you want it, Asmodeus?”

He held her gaze, his amber eyes going into the red. “I’ve been the Demon Lord of Wrath for decades. I have fought wars against some of the greatest warriors in this world, and yet here I am. Alive. Ask me that question one more time, and it will become an insult to me.”

The room held its breath. The attendant by the wall had stopped breathing altogether.

Nyx settled back into her chair. Her lips curled into a warm smile that said just one thing: that she was pleased.

Aldridge, standing at her shoulder, did not move at all.

“Good.”

* * * * *

Kadre moved through the wide paved streets with the alertness of someone who knew this district like the back of her hand. The impressed front she had put on at the shops they had visited that day was a mere facade, as she had apparently ‘borrowed’ expensive little souvenirs from every single one of them.

A ring from one counter, a small silver knife from another, each lifted so smoothly that the shopkeepers had thanked her on her way out.

Not that her companion cared. If anything, it showed him that she was at the very least proficient in her trade.

He decided it was a skill worth paying for, and that was the end of the matter.

Mikael watched the way she moved through everything, how she owned it all, which was different from the way even the nobles moved through it.

She never hurried, never looked behind her, and never seemed to be hiding anything, and that, he supposed, was the whole art of it.

By late evening, they were done with their visits to the merchant houses, where Kadre had picked up a few things she thought would help with their sojourn. They also stopped by a branch of the bank, where Mikael upstart deposited two hundred thousand gold into her new account, a part of her down payment, signifying the official start of their contract.

Now they had nothing to do until dark.

It was an odd feeling for Mikael, to have an hour with nothing to spend it on. He was pressed for time, but he was not keen on doing things hurriedly.

“There’s a gallery two streets ahead,” Kadre had said, not because she particularly wanted to see one, but because the alternative was staying in the street while he looked at the architecture with a weirdly solemn expression.

That, joined with the fact that many ladies who came by mostly hung around to admire the young man, with a few even muttering curses at her for being his lover and having such a beauty to herself. Some of the ladies completely disregarded her presence and came over to talk directly with the object of their desires. Mikael agreed.

The gallery was warm, a welcome development as the early evening air was getting crisper and colder. An attendant materialized as soon as they showed up and assessed them in a single sweep: the white hair, the midnight blue tuxedo Mikael had decided to pick up. Kadre was somewhat less noble, but reasonably presentable, so the boy judged that he had struck well and believed them worth the evening. He offered them a guided tour.

He was turned down at twice the speed with which he had rated them. The attendant bowed, smiled, and withdrew to a respectful distance, and Mikael forgot he existed within three steps.

They headed in. Rows of paintings and a few stone reliefs, each with its placard, gazed back at them.

Gold frames climbed the walls, and the stone figures stood on their plinths with the patient look of things that had been admired for far longer than they had been understood.

Mikael studied them, browsing, wishing he had some kind of clue about what he was seeking, while Kadre followed him with her mouth shut and her hands behind her back.

Kadre said nothing, but she stopped at one painting longer than the others, though she could not have said why.

She had had wealthy contractors book her services before, but none of them were like this one, Mikael. Not financially. There was something about him that screamed dangerous, unhuman, in her mind.

She could have slipped away easily, with the two hundred thousand now registered to her name. But a sensation seemed to warn her not to cross this individual, or she would regret it.

So she stayed, and told herself it was only because the pay was good.

A few minutes later, Mikael scoffed. “This is a waste of time. Why do wealthy people pay to see nonsense drawings and sculptures?” The interest had been genuine, and it was gone.

The attendant who had offered the tour glanced over from the far end of the hall and, wisely, said nothing.

“How should I know?” Kadre nearly screamed. “Let’s just get outta here.”

“Fine. But you were the person who brought it up.”

“Dinner?” Kadre ignored him.

“Surely.”

They walked in silence for a while, the evening settling in around them.

The evening market near the noble district was not as ravenous and loud as the ones in the lower city. There were no shouts, no elbows jabbing ribs, no smell of rotting fruit and fish competing with everything else. It was alive, though, in a way where people discussed and not just bought things, the collective decision of people deeming the cold not bad enough yet to stay inside.

Lanterns hung from the stall posts, and the smell of roasting meat drifted over the benches, warm and heavy against the chill. Somewhere nearby, a street musician played something slow, and no one stopped to listen or complain.

At the end of the market, the food stalls for the workers of the nobles were slowly getting into business. As early birds, Mikael and Kadre sat on a bench adjacent to a steak stall, food in hand, as the market moved around them. They had ordered flatbreads with slow-roasted meat and vegetables, from a stall just yards away where Mikael had gotten into an argument with the vendor. It had been about the price of the flatbread, and Mikael had surprisingly lost.

She noted he didn’t eat much, spending most of the time looking down at everything, something she had at first resented him for, but as the hours passed, she discovered it was more like a habit, a routine he himself wasn’t aware of.

He sat with his back straight and his eyes moving, noting the exits, the guards at the corners, the way the crowd bent around them.

She bumped his shoulder, shocking him back down to this plane of reality.

“You are doing it again, my man. Watching everything like you’re some fucking overlord or something.”

“Maybe I am.”

Kadre snorted and took another bite, not quite convinced it was a joke.

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