Sigismund Dijkstra calmly wiped his dagger, staring at the crumpled corpse of the ‘servant.’

  He had known something was fishy about the invitation. The Duke of Attre approaching a lowly ‘ambassador,’ even if through a servant, had not sat right with him. Still, the opportunity had been enticing, especially since the bait, the topic of their conversation, was supposed to be Degurechaff herself.

  Dijkstra hadn’t expected the servant to try and knife him though, even if he had been ready for the attempt.

  Still, it put him in a rather tricky position. The Duke, Baldemar of Attre, had left over a week ago after coming to an agreement with the Queen in regard to the Marnadal question, though evidently not with all of his staff.

  However, Dijkstra refused to believe the servant was left behind just to kill him.

  The Duke of Attre had no reason for that. Sure, Dijkstra was building an intelligence network in Cintra while also helping the Cintran Crown create their own intelligence agency, but only Philippa and Vizimir knew of the former, and only the Queen’s inner circle knew of the latter. The Duke certainly did not count amongst either number.

  He grabbed a rag and started cleaning the floor. Dijkstra had been careful not to let the blood splatter on the rugs. Getting rid of the evidence shouldn’t take long.

  However, if his work was not the reason for being targeted, that only left two plausible explanations. One, the Duke really hated Redania. Two, the Duke really hated Degurechaff.

  Dijkstra was not aware of any reasons the Duke would care about the former and of quite a few for the latter.

  When the blood was mostly gone from the floor, he threw the bloodied rag at the corpse.

  He was in his private and locked rooms. He had time.

  Grabbing the dead man by the arms, he carefully slid him towards the bed before stuffing him underneath, cursing when more blood was smeared on the floor.

  He could go to the Queen. His work with Baron Eylembert was progressing smoothly, and he doubted the Lioness of Cintra would appreciate the Duke’s actions, not when he had still so much work left. At the same time, it was very clear the Queen did not like his presence. He had no idea how Degurechaff had convinced the woman to agree to his role here and his very careful prying had yet to yield results in that regard.

  In other words, the Queen could very easily use this as a pretext for getting rid of him. She would simply accuse him of murdering a noble servant, and off would go his head. Whether simple opportunism or an elaborate scheme would not matter at that point.

  His best option was probably his disquieting ally. If nothing else, she could probably turn the corpse into a toad or something.

  Maybe he should have taken the posting in Novigrad…

  He thought it over for a few more minutes, attacking the idea from other angles, before deciding.

  Dijkstra only managed a few steps towards his door before it was kicked open.

  In strode a person in dark plate and a skull-shaped visor. In their hands, they held a steel staff with a glowing piece of white rock on the top.

  Dijkstra froze, then slowly raised his hands.

  “It’s me,” the figure spoke, before lifting its visor, revealing Degurechaff’s face.

  He lowered his hands, recovering from the shock quickly, “Another assassination?” Dijkstra stared pointedly at the crossbow bolt protruding from her shoulder, blood still dripping from it.

  Degurechaff nodded while examining him with her piercing blue eyes.

  “That’s good,” Dijkstra responded as calmly as he could. At her raised eyebrow, he went back to his bed before dragging the corpse out, “This one worked for Baldemar of Attre,” he explained.

  An assassin going after Degurechaff at the same time meant that the Queen was not behind the attempt on his life, which was indeed good news. While he had picked up on some tension between the two, he did not think the Queen could afford to get rid of Degurechaff in such a public manner.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  It was somewhat disquieting, considering how well it played into the hands of the Sorceress now standing in front of him.

  Degurechaff frowned, “Five hundred of the men are supposed to come from Attre.”

  Dijkstra considered her words. Was she playing dumb, testing him, or had he perhaps overestimated her?

  “With this, you can convince the Queen to let you investigate the Duke,” he nodded to the corpse. It’d be a setback for the construction, to be sure, but the possible rewards were great.

  Whether she actually found something or not didn’t matter much. Degurechaff just had to find some pretext to get rid of Baldemar, then name his baby son the successor and appoint a regent from the Capital.

  Just like that, the Cintran Crown could fold the entire duchy under its influence, throwing some fuel at the dying embers of the royalist faction. An incredible blow to the power of the nobility in Cintra, if not a lethal one.

  Dijkstra could believe that the Sorceress had predicted the course of events when she had suggested the fortress, but her expressionless face yielded no answers.

  “Why would the Duke of Attre want to kill me?” Degurechaff asked, her eyes examining him.

  Dijkstra kept his expression neutral. Was she testing him?

  ‘But why would she do that?’ The thought hit him like a hammer, ‘Unless she really does not know. Or suspects me as the culprit,’ he amended in the privacy of his mind.

  “To stop the construction from proceeding, of course,” he replied, not giving voice to any of his doubts.

  At that, Degurechaff frowned, “The fortress benefits him the most. He’ll get to safeguard his lands while only having to pay for a small portion of the overall costs. A bargain.”

  ‘Thousand devils take me. She really does not know,’ Dijkstra thought. Another idea struck him then, ‘If she doesn’t know this, what else has escaped her notice?’

  His palms started growing slick with sweat.

  Philippa had naturally interpreted Degurechaff’s request as a desire for an informal alliance, one which could only have a singular purpose.

  Temeria.

  The Kingdom of the newly crowned King Foltest had been Redania’s primary rival in the North for a long time. The geography practically forced it, with Aedirn and Kaedwen being separated from Temeria and Redania by the Mahakam and Kestrel mountains, respectively. The remaining kingdoms were too small to be relevant.

  Cintra’s relationship with Temeria was slightly better, mostly thanks to the familial ties of their ruling families. That did not change the fact that Temeria was the primary obstruction for Cintra’s expansion to the north. At the same time, Cintra’s vassal states of Brugge and Verden were a thorn in the eye of Temerian rulers, who had long desired to govern the entire territory between the Pontar and Yaruga rivers.

  Squeezed between Redania in the North and Cintra in the South, there’d not be much Temeria could do. Whether militarily or merely economically, an alliance between their two kingdoms had the potential to upend the entire status quo of the Northern Kingdoms.

  Yet, what if that was not Degurechaff’s intention?

  “I do not think the Duke believes Nazair to be a threat, while the money the construction costs him is very real,” Dijkstra answered her question, his mind working overtime.

  Degurechaff’s frown persisted, “Shortsighted,” she scoffed, “Not terribly surprising, I suppose.”

  Dijkstra was slowly realising that he had likely gravely misjudged the girl.

  ‘Wasn’t she sixteen? Of course she didn’t want to go around conquering kingdoms! If her request was a genuine cry for assistance instead of the underhanded politicking Eilhart understood it as then…’

  “Still, I would rather verify this. Could you step out of the room while I cast a divination spell? It requires intense concentration,” the Sorceress continued.

  The spy nodded, leaving the room briskly.

  He strode silently through the castle, quickly arriving at an abandoned room he had picked out previously. There he sat, mulling over recent events.

  It was still possible that Degurechaff was playing some sort of a long con. He just wasn’t sure how much he believed that. If Nilfgaard was actually a threat instead of a scapegoat to point to for Cintra’s militarisation and if the political consequences of her actions truly escaped her, then it was very likely that Eilhart had been wrong.

  The fall of Metinna would suggest that the former was not as baseless as he had thought. If she had seen the threat from the start, then her push for an intelligence agency became a prudent defensive move instead of a power grab and the Marnadal fortress became a necessity instead of a way to knee-cap Cintran nobility.

  Not that Degurechaff wasn’t cunning and ruthless, far from it. His interrogation of her would-be assassin disabused him of any notions that she was a normal child. Yet, Dijkstra was beginning to see a sort of childish earnestness in her actions.

  If he was right, then Degurechaff had absolutely no intention of pushing Foltest at all. Antagonising their strongest neighbour with an approaching enemy would be madness.

  Eilhart would have to be informed of his suspicions. He didn’t know if the sorceress had already begun moving, but hopefully, things could still be salvaged.

  He pulled out a xenovox. A tiny round box, made to resemble a powder box to mask its true purpose as a communication device.

  After activating it, he waited.

  And waited.

  Eventually, Philippa’s voice echoed from the other side. “This better be important, Dijkstra.”