Chapter 5
The next few days passed swiftly. He left Mina to her own devices, although Fara and the Lilim monitored her closely. She needed time to properly conduct her first real mission, and to settle herself.
More importantly, Rys wanted a status update from his administrators. By the time they were ready to present to him, Mina appeared to be satisfied with what she had extracted from Compagnon. He found her burning away the last of their corpses in the sub-levels, a smile on her face and her hands eerily clean.
On the morning that he was to meet with the others, Rys busied himself in his office with various matters. All seemed quiet. The meeting wasn’t until lunchtime, and he didn’t intend to rush anyone. Nothing had changed in the past several weeks. What would a few hours matter?
A noise sounded from the nook beside his desk, where the sofas resided. Rys looked over to see an imp poking his bulbous head down from the ceiling.
“Letter for you, bossbossbossboss,” the imp said. It held a simple white envelope with a red wax seal in one hand.
Imps handled hierarchy in the simplest way possible—by repeating the word boss as many times as necessary. When things became more complicated, they started adding smartass names, like “fat bossboss” for Fred. Rys had never heard what the imps’ name for him was.
Despite what others thought, imps weren’t stupid. If they had a derogatory name for Rys, they took great care to ensure that he never found out.
“Who delivered it?” Rys asked, gesturing for the imp to approach. “And who is it from?”
“Dunno. Random messenger.” The imp dropped the letter on the desk. “We didn’t eat him. Titty bossboss might know more.”
Rys stared at the imp. “Do you have any idea how little that narrows things down?”
Although, now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure they meant Mina. Vallis was “bossbossboss” these days, after her volcanic tantrum because they kept burning her food. The imps didn’t appear to respect Alsia and Maria much, and often just called them “boss” despite their positions.
“White fox,” the imp said. “There’s fluffy bossboss and titty bossboss. Need to rename fluffy bossboss soon. Mean bossboss got vetoed.”
Fara and Mina, Rys deduced. He had been right to assume that Maria and Alsia weren’t high in the imp hierarchy.
How curious that Mina had already ascended to the level of “bossboss.”
“For good reason. I’d prefer it if I don’t wake up one morning to find out I don’t have imps because you annoyed Fara too much,” Rys said.
The imp nodded rapidly in agreement, then vanished.
Inspecting the letter, Rys noted the lack of markings. Not a single physical or magical mark lingered on its exterior. The wax had been applied physically, and did contain magic. But that magic lacked a signature.
Magical signatures were the unique element that any spellcaster left in their magic. Faking one was next to impossible, even with the greatest of astral power. Any spell cast contained the signature of its caster, and it could be used to determine who was behind it. This was vital to magical encryption and confirming identities.
However, magitech devices left no signature. They cast magic but weren’t alive. Magitech itself often had a magical signature, as they were constructed with magic, but that signature wasn’t passed on.
This letter had been sealed with magitech. The moment the wax seal was broken, the sender would be notified and the location would be broadcast. A simple but effective spell. No other spells or traps appeared to be within it.
Rys cast a spell, and a circle of red light appeared around him. Then he broke the seal. The spell activated, but was captured by Rys’s magical circle.
Now that he had ensured his security, he removed the piece of paper inside it.
It simply read, “Look to the north.”
Rys placed the letter on the table. Despite himself, he used mindspeak to ask a devil to look physically north and confirm that nothing was in the sky.
Once Rys knew that the letter wasn’t talking in literal terms, he took it more seriously. The letters were printed. Like the wax seal, this had been done using magitech. Whoever sent this wasn’t an amateur. They didn’t want to be tracked.
That told Rys a lot about the likely sender. If someone was trying to warn him—or pretend to warn him, if this was a distraction—then they were likely in the Malus League. They would have access to plenty of magitech, be aware of magical methods of detection, and need to hide any interactions with Rys. Other nations wouldn’t need to go to such lengths to hide their intervention.
A head appeared from the duct that the imp had used earlier. Mina grinned at Rys, then flipped out from the ceiling and landed neatly in his lap with a soft thump.
Now that she knew about the ducts, Mina lived in them. Actually lived in them. She had asked Rys to build her bedroom into the network of ducts, like a secret lair accessible only to those who knew it existed. The request amused him, and it was easy enough to accomplish.
Although he hadn’t anticipated Mina’s use of the ducts above his bedroom to spy on him. He doubted that she had realized that he had adjusted the soundproofing so that he could hear her, and her nightly activities. Although most of what Mina did was scuttle about the castle like a spider.
For a girl who had questioned his morals upon meeting Grigor, she seemed awfully at home among the infernals already.
“I’ve sat in a lot of comfy seats since arriving here, and this is still the best one,” Mina chirped as she pressed her ass into Rys’s crotch. “I see you got the letter. What’s it say?”
She read it aloud. Then she physically looked north and stared at the wall.
“Mina,” Rys said flatly.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t do the same thing,” she said, grinning. “Anyway, I had Tarasu investigate the messenger. He checks out. Professional messenger, only works in Anceston, letter and payment were done by proxy.”
“Somebody wanted to warn us about Avolar,” Rys said.
“Oh, so you already worked that out. I mean, I wanted to talk to you at the meeting today about what they’ve been up to and…” Mina trailed off. “Uh, I think we need to talk about what I even do.”
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
Mina gulped. “Now, or…?”
“As cliched as it is, where do you see yourself in… given your race, let’s say 100 years’ time?”
“Apparently you live forever, so draped over you in an evil throne, with five tails, happily sexed up, and with a belly out to here.” Mina held her hands roughly a foot in front of her stomach. “I like to imagine there’d be some asshole foxes from the Garrote Clan kneeling in front of you, sucking your cock while I watch.”
That escalated fast.
“What? You asked me what I want? Isn’t this wish fulfillment time?” She giggled, and a strange light appeared in her eyes. “I… I said it before. I want to be something. The alliance trained me as if I was important. Can you make me feel important, Rys?”
“If your report at today’s meeting is what I expect it to be, then you’ll be important, Mina,” he said. His fingers brushed her jaw.
Mina’s eyes widened and her breath caught.
She slowly slipped off his lap and stepped away, a smile on her lips. “I’ll make sure it’s everything you expect, master.”
One day, she was going to stop calling him silly names. But he supposed he didn’t mind that one too much.
In a few hours, he’d meet with Mina and his administrators and confirm for himself what his next move was. At the same time, he’d make his final decision about what to do with his delicious new fox.