Morning came like a kick to the teeth.

  Wilhelm peeled his face off the carpet. It smelled of dust and old taxes. He groaned, his back popping in three different places reminders of Desmus’s "affection."

  "Ugh. I feel like I slept in a blender."

  He looked around. The room was already awake.

  Mary was gone. Probably scouting the perimeter or brooding in a darker corner. Astrid was doing one-armed pushups near the fireplace, counting under her breath with terrifying intensity. "Ninety-eight... ninety-nine..."

  And Gerald.

  Gerald Falken stood by the window. He looked majestic. The morning light caught his profile, the weary Ranger King surveying his domain.

  "We should move," Gerald said, his voice deep and commanding. "The sun is up."

  He turned around, marched toward the door, and walked confidently into the broom closet.

  Thump.

  "Dammit," Gerald muttered from inside the closet.

  Wilhelm snorted. He couldn't help it.

  "East is the other way, Gerald," Wilhelm called out, rubbing his eyes.

  Gerald backed out of the closet, looking flustered. The majestic facade cracked. "I hate castles," he grumbled, adjusting his sword belt. "Too many walls. Give me a forest. I can track a squirrel across three counties in a blizzard, but I get lost going to the privy in this stone maze."

  He looked at Wilhelm, almost pleading.

  "Don't tell Mary. She thinks I know everything."

  "Your secret is safe with the Master of Coin," Wilhelm grinned, swaying to his feet. "Mostly because I'll forget it as soon as I find coffee."

  They gathered in the courtyard. The air was thick with smog and the lingering scent of the burnt Granary.

  "To the stables," Wilhelm commanded, leading the way because Gerald was eyeing a laundry chute suspiciously. "We grab horses. We grab supplies. We go to the Firelands. We become heroes. Simple."

  But the closer they got to the Royal Stables, the wronger it felt.

  It wasn't the smell. Stables always smell like manure.

  It was the sound.

  Too quiet. No whinnying. No grooms shouting. Just... silence.

  "Wait," Astrid whispered. She stopped bouncing. Her hand went to her wooden sword. "Something’s wrong."

  They rounded the corner.

  And stopped.

  There were horses. Saddled. Ready.

  But there were no grooms.

  Instead, there was a small circle of people standing around a water trough.

  Pontifex Malachia was there.

  She wasn't bouncing. She was standing perfectly still, staring at the ground. She looked... tiny. Like a doll dropped in the mud.

  "Shortstack?" Wilhelm called out, hurrying forward. "What’s the "

  He saw it.

  Ser Hestor. The Knight Trainer. The man Malachia had bragged about last night.

  He was lying in the muck. His armor was halfway unbuckled, as if he’d tried to rip it off because he was too hot. His face...

  Wilhelm gagged.

  Hestor’s face was purple. Bloated. Veins stood out like black ropes. And there was foam pink, frothy foam bubbling from his lips.

  "He fell," Malachia whispered. Her voice trembled. "He was showing me a parry. And then... he just... stopped."

  She looked up at Wilhelm. Her violet eyes were wide, terrified.

  "He stopped, Wilhelm. Why did he stop?"

  Wilhelm knelt. He didn't want to touch the body, but he had to. He touched Hestor’s neck. Cold.

  He sniffed the foam.

  Bitter almonds. And... rot.

  "Poison," Wilhelm hissed. He wiped his hand on the grass, hard. "Fast acting. Nightshade mixed with... something else. Something magical."

  He stood up. The world tilted.

  "Gerald," Wilhelm said, his voice tight. "The King. Where is the King?"

  "Brandan is at the training grounds," Gerald said, hand on his sword. "Why?"

  "Because Hestor was the King’s sparring partner," Wilhelm said. "If they got to him... they can get to Brandan."

  He spun around.

  Two Angels Royal Guards were standing by the stable doors, looking bored. They saw the dead man, but they didn't seem to care. Just another casualty.

  "YOU!" Wilhelm roared. He didn't sound like a Tief. He sounded frantic. "You two! Get to the King! Now! Full perimeter! Nobody eats, nobody drinks until I say so! Go!"

  The Angels looked at him.

  They looked at his messy coat. His bastard face.

  "We take orders from the Lord Commander," one of them sneered. "Not from the coin-counter. Calm down, Bastard. Hestor probably just choked on his breakfast."

  "He was poisoned you metal-plated morons!" Wilhelm screamed, stepping forward. "Move! Or the King dies!"

  "Back off," the guard growled, putting a hand on his hilt. "Or we'll add you to the pile."

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Wilhelm froze.

  Powerless. He had the title, he had the gold, but he didn't have the blood. To them, he was just a stain.

  "DO IT!"

  The scream cracked the air like a whip.

  Malachia stepped forward.

  She wasn't a crying child anymore. She was the Voice.

  She pointed a finger at the guards. It was shaking, but not from fear. From rage.

  "I am the Pontifex!" she shrieked. "I speak for the Sky! If you do not run if you do not shield the King this instant I will have you stripped! I will have you excommunicated! I will erase your names from the Book of Life and feed your souls to the worms!"

  Her ring flared. A pulse of pure, white Enmagic authority.

  The guards flinched. The sneers vanished. They saw the ring. They saw the terrifying little girl who held the keys to heaven.

  "Your... Your Holiness," the guard stammered. He bowed, terrified. "We go. At once."

  They turned and ran. Clanking, sprinting toward the training grounds.

  Wilhelm let out a breath. He leaned against a post, his legs turning to jelly.

  "Okay," he wheezed. "Okay. Good job, Shortstack."

  He looked at the dead knight. Then at Gerald. Then at the map of the Firelands in his pocket.

  He pulled the map out.

  He looked at the path to the dragons. The path to the eggs. The path to escape.

  He crumpled the map.

  "We're not going," Wilhelm said.

  "What?" Astrid blinked. "But... the omelets! The adventure!"

  "The King is being hunted," Wilhelm said grimly. "Here. Inside the walls. If we leave... Brandan dies. He eats a poisoned grape or puts on a poisoned boot, and it's over."

  He threw the crumpled map into the water trough. It floated next to a dead fly.

  "Change of plans," Wilhelm announced. He looked at his motley crew. The Ranger, the Cripple, the Bastard, the Child Pope.

  "We have three days before the Clayborn riot from hunger. We have maybe less before the poisoner tries again."

  He started counting on his fingers.

  "Problem one: Who is killing us? We need a spy. Or a rat."

  "Problem two: Food. We need to hunt. Not dragons. Monsters. Here. In the sewers. If it has meat, we kill it."

  "Problem three: The poison." He looked at Hestor’s purple face. "I don't know this toxin. It's alchemy. High-grade stuff. We need a nerd. A scholar. Someone who knows chemistry better than they know people."

  Gerald stepped up. He put a hand on Wilhelm’s shoulder.

  "A scholar," Gerald mused. "There is one. In the Tower of Silence. The Alchemist. But... he is mad, Wilhelm. They say he talks to glass."

  "Perfect," Wilhelm grinned. It was a sharp, dangerous grin. "I love crazy people. They make the best conversation."

  He turned to Malachia.

  "Go to Brandan. Stick to him like a burr. Do not let him eat anything unless you taste it first. Actually, no, don't taste it. Make... make Desmus taste it. He'd love that."

  "On it," Malachia nodded, wiping her eyes. She looked fierce. "I'll be the best food-tester ever."

  "Gerald, Astrid, Mary," Wilhelm looked at his family. "Suit up. We're going back down. Into the muck."

  "The sewers again?" Freyda rumbled from the back, looking bored.

  "The sewers," Wilhelm confirmed. "We're going to find a doctor. And then we're going to catch a poisoner."

  He patted his rapier.

  "Nobody kills my brother," Wilhelm whispered. "Not while I still have tricks left."

  He didn't wait for a response. He turned, the pain in his leg a sharp, grounding reminder of the stakes, and led the way.

  The journey wasn't long, but it was heavy. Gerald and Freyda hoisted the stiffening body of Ser Hestor between them like a sack of wet grain, his armor scraping against the damp stone walls as they descended. They marched past the markets, past the guards, and down into the districts where the air tasted less like rain and more like copper and old alchemy.

  They stopped in front of a crooked, narrow spire that looked like a jagged tooth rotting in the city's gums.

  The Tower of Silence was a misnomer.

  It was loud. Not people loud. Glass loud.

  The tinkling of vials, the hiss of boiling fluids, the pop of corks. It sounded like a drunk octopus trying to play a glockenspiel.

  Wilhelm kicked the door open with his good leg.

  "Doctor!" he shouted, his voice echoing off shelves packed with jars containing things that should never be jarred. "We have a patient! He's dead, but don't hold that against him!"

  Gerald and Freyda hauled the corpse of Ser Hestor into the room. They dropped him on a table that was already covered in half-eaten sandwiches and scalpels.

  "Charming," a voice drawled from the shadows.

  A figure emerged from behind a bubbling vat of green slime.

  Dr. Fenris Vulpine.

  He was... a fox.

  Not a man in a fox mask. A fox. An anthropomorphic red fox, maybe four feet tall, wearing a pristine white lab coat that was three sizes too big and leaning heavily on a cane made of twisted blackwood. His fur was russet-red, but graying around the muzzle. His eyes were sharp, blue, and radiating pure, concentrated disdain.

  He limped forward. Tap. Step. Tap.

  He sniffed the air. His whiskers twitched.

  "You smell like failure," Fenris said, looking at Wilhelm. "And cheap mushrooms. Did you roll in a compost heap on your way here?"

  "It's called survival, you furball," Wilhelm snapped, leaning against a shelf. "This is Ser Hestor. He fell over. Foaming at the mouth. Purple face. We think it's poison."

  Fenris didn't look at the body. He looked at Wilhelm’s leg.

  "You're favoring your left side. Hip dysplasia? Or did you just trip over your own ego?"

  "I was whipped," Wilhelm said through gritted teeth. "By the Archbishop."

  "Boring," Fenris dismissed him with a wave of a paw. "Everybody gets whipped. It's Tuesday."

  He finally hopped onto a stool next to the corpse. He poked Hestor’s purple cheek with the tip of his cane.

  "Idiots," Fenris muttered. "All of you. Look at the lividity. Look at the foam."

  He leaned in, sniffing the dead knight's mouth.

  "Almonds," Gerald offered helpfully. "It smells like almonds."

  Fenris turned his head slowly. He stared at Gerald with a look that could peel paint.

  "Thank you, Captain Obvious. If it were cyanide, he'd be red, not purple. Cyanide binds to the cytochrome oxidase. This..." He tapped a vein on Hestor's neck that was black and pulsing, even in death. "...this is magical necrosis. It's shutting down the Enmagic pathways first, then the heart. It’s elegant. Nasty. And expensive."

  "So you know what it is?" Freyda rumbled.

  "I know exactly what it is," Fenris said, pulling a magnifying glass from his pocket. "It's called 'The Widow's Kiss'. A variant. Modified. Someone added... hmm... basilisk venom? No. Chimera bile."

  "Can you cure it?" Wilhelm asked, stepping forward. "If the King gets hit with this..."

  "Of course I can cure it," Fenris scoffed. He hopped off the stool. Tap. Tap. "I'm the best. I can cure death if I catch it early enough. But the question isn't can I."

  He turned to face them. He leaned on his cane, looking up at Wilhelm with a smirk that showed too many sharp teeth.

  "The question is: Why should I?"

  Wilhelm blinked. "Because... he's the King? Because if he dies, the city falls?"

  "The city is a tumor," Fenris said. He grabbed a bottle of pills from a shelf, shook two into his paw, and swallowed them dry. "It grows. It kills the host. I don't care about your King. I don't care about your war. I care about the puzzle."

  He pointed his cane at Hestor.

  "This poison? It's boring. I've seen it before. Solving it won't stimulate me. It's just... work."

  "We'll pay you," Wilhelm said desperate. "Gold. Lots of it."

  "I have gold," Fenris sneered, gesturing to a pile of coins being used as a doorstop. "It's heavy and useless."

  "Then what do you want?" Astrid shouted, stepping forward with her wooden sword. "A bone? A squeaky toy?"

  Fenris’s ears flattened. He looked at the one-armed girl.

  "I want a Seat," he said softly.

  "A what?" Wilhelm asked.

  "The Council," Fenris said. "The Master of Flesh. Or the Grand Chirurgeon. Whatever silly title you give it. I want the authority to conduct... research. Without the Church breathing down my neck. Without the 'morality police' telling me I can't dissect a ghoul while it's still twitching."

  Wilhelm exchanged a look with Gerald. Another deal. Another monster.

  "Fine," Wilhelm said. "You get the Seat. Master of Flesh. You get immunity. Just... tell us the antidote."

  Fenris smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.

  "Words are wind, Bastard. I want the Seat and..." He tapped his cane on the floor. "I need a component. To synthesize the antidote."

  "What component?"

  "A Cryo-Core," Fenris said casually. "From an Ice Golem."

  "Ice Golems are extinct," Gerald said. "They haven't been seen since the Frost Wars."

  "Incorrect," Fenris corrected. "They are dormant. In the Deep Dark. Level 5 of the Undercroft. The frozen zone."

  He looked at Wilhelm.

  "You want to save your King? Go downstairs. Go past the mutants. Past the slime. Into the ice. Kill a Golem. Bring me its heart. Do that, and I'll mix your little potion."

  He turned back to his experiments, dismissing them.

  "Now get out. You're breathing my air. And take the dead guy with you. He clashes with the decor."

  Wilhelm stared at the small, arrogant fox.

  "You're a prick," Wilhelm stated.

  "I'm a genius," Fenris corrected without looking back. "There's a significant overlap. Now shoo."

  Wilhelm grabbed Hestor’s feet. Gerald grabbed the shoulders.

  As they hauled the body out, Wilhelm looked back.

  Fenris was humming to himself, dissecting a sandwich with a scalpel.

  "Great," Wilhelm muttered. "We have a dragon problem, a starvation problem, and now we need to go fight ice monsters for a furry sociopath."

  He looked at Freyda.

  "Tower?"

  "Yes?"

  "Do you like the cold?"

  Freyda shrugged. "Cold is better than hot. Corpses don't smell in the cold."

  "That's the spirit," Wilhelm sighed. "To the Deep Dark then. And if I freeze to death, tell Brandan I hated his wine."