I left the hall with Alex; or, better put, Alex dragged me out of the hall and stuffed me in a carriage bound for my accommodations. He kindly joined me, leading me through the front door then waving something under my nose that smelled like the asshole of Grima and shunted the alcohol from my mind.

  As I doubled over and coughed my lungs out I attempted to ask what that concoction was. He simply shrugged and said "Local secret."

  Once I recovered myself a bit I sank into one of our couches and glared at Alex. Trust in him remained minimal, although he was at least aware of how suspicious he was.

  Alex sat on a couch vaguely opposite me. "What do you know of the Regent and his father?"

  "Not a lot," I replied with a shrug, "Last Regent was killed by this Noman fellow, new Regent seems to have taken that poorly."

  Alex made a gesture halfway between a nod and a shrug. "A kind way to put it. I can fill in the gaps. And what do you know about Henry Noman?"

  "Apparently a much-loved guard captain from a few years back, whose reputation ended up in the mud due to regicide." Alex nodded and nearly replied, but I cut back in: "I'm also pretty sure he's not Drifter."

  His eyebrows raised. "You know him well, then?"

  "No, not in the slightest," I replied, "But this is all too suspicious for someone who knows the city. Hell, it was too suspicious for us, the pay was just enough to gamble on being able to escape. This all feels like a way to stall a couple of suckers while you work out some politics in the background. Give a couple of poor schmucks a fancy hotel room with a grand party they can dress up at, and even if they're confused they'll show up and dance how you want."

  Alex simply stared at me in response, spinning a black ring on his left hand. I was getting uncomfortable; was I too dead-on, now at risk of being silenced?

  But that wasn't the case. Instead, Alex put forth another question: " What do you know of the Oath of Self?"

  I felt a chill. It was something I had only read stories about, not something I expected to come up in my life. "It's an ancient oath, long considered inhumane to demand of another. To swear on the self, bound by magic, so that if the oath is broken the oathbreaker dies immediately. Everyone can think of a dozen ways it can be abused, even for the most careful of oaths, so it has long since fallen out of use."

  "That would be nice," Alex responded, still playing with his ring. "In Beornia there is a very old story about the hero our nation is named for, Beorne Wolfblood, and his oath to protect his tribe no matter the cost. For a while the protectors of the land would take a similar oath, but things change. The oath morphed over time with changes in government, and eventually it was considered unreasonable for every guardsman to swear it, and we ended up with our modern tradition: to join the leadership of Beorne's guardsmen, we must swear an oath.

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  "I swear on my Self that I shall protect the people of Beorne and the Regency from harm, whether from themselves or from the outside, and to make Beornia a safe and secure land for those who seek peace within its borders."

  It was a large oath. And it was a vague oath; interpretations could lead to an idyllic life uninterrupted by fear or an authoritarian crackdown driven by terror depending on the person. I had to know which I was talking to. "How do you fulfill this oath?"

  Alex's eyes remained locked on his hands, deep in consideration. "It's a question I grapple with every day. The more I learn about our city and nation, the more I learn about its people, the more it changes. I served under Henry when I first joined the guard, and his example, for a time, is why I took the oath. He was justice itself, kind to law-abiding folk but strict with evil. Uncompromising with the abuses of the upper class and the tricks of the lower. He was a moral compass pointing so true we didn't need our own.

  "I took my oath as a Gate Keeper just a few days before the Regent was killed. For a man to inspire me to take such an oath and then immediately throw it all away seemed impossible, but . Henry picked my gate to flee the city, and I confronted him... and he was still there. The oath hadn't killed him, and it hadn't taken his sense of self. Whatever he had done, whatever his motivation, Henry Noman was still himself when he left the city. He refused to elaborate, and he was able to beat his way through our confused guards without issue."

  I was interested in the information, as someone interested in any and all information, but I was getting frustrated. None of this really mattered. Alex continued: "Only a few within the Beorne Guard are aware of this. Even the Regent thinks he fled as a mindless husk of some sort. Out there, somewhere, is a perfectly put together Henry Noman, and we just don't know where."

  "So you know it's not Drifter."

  "Yes." The monologue continued before I could direct it any further. "We've investigated the incident quietly for the past decade, hoping to get some clues. Our breakthrough came just a few months ago when we found criminal ledgers showing the last Regent was working with a gang based in the outer districts to suppress citizen assemblies. Merchant associations concerned with taxes, locals trying to organize local militias in dangerous areas, it didn't really matter. He paid the Blood Oath Brothers to quell unrest, no matter how small."

  "Blood Oath?" It was a suspicious name, considering the recent bounties on the Blood God Bandits and their leader, as well as all this discussion of binding oaths.

  Alex picked up on my suspicions. "Unrelated, it's a group of men who swore brotherhood with each other. Still around, up until recently."

  I nodded. "So you think Noman must have learned about this and confronted the Regent about it?"

  "We believe so. The day that he killed the Regent coincided with a regular meeting they had to discuss the security of the nation. A scream was heard from the meeting room, guards rushed in, and Henry was seen standing over the Regent's corpse with a bloody sword in his hand."

  It was interesting information, and I could see how it played into a larger conspiracy. But it still didn't touch on the part that I cared about the most. "This all still fails to explain how Drifter and I are involved."

  "Oh, right." Alex chuckled at something. "So, this is kind of funny. Drifter just happens to look pretty similar to Henry. It just happened to work out. Even and I saw you two when you showed up to turn in the bounty and we realized we had the start of a plan."

  We were in this situation due to two men looking kind of similar. How serendipitous.