Tristian couldn’t remember another occasion of seeing Guelder this furious.

  She stood with her back to the big brazier in the middle of the throne room, shivering despite the heat of the fire. Her pale face and the dark circles around her eyes highlighted the terrible anger in her gaze. Wrath was the fuel that still kept her going after all she'd been through.

  Tristian watched her with a strange mixture of fear and affection.

  He'd failed her in more than one way, and now the first chickens were coming home to roost. After Guelder's showdown with the Cleansed, his mistress had labelled him unreliable, and he was running the risk of randomly losing some of his abilities. Lately, he dreaded to go to sleep and face her, which, in turn, led to poor spell replenishment. It shouldn't have been such a struggle to patch up the baroness after the owlbear fight. He would forever be haunted by the sight of her suffering he'd helped bring about and was nearly powerless to mitigate. And now Guelder, too, was getting the impression that he was unreliable. Which, indeed, he was.

  Oh, how he hated confrontation. Why couldn't he actually be what he was posing as, a simple, kind-hearted priest working for the good of his ruler and his people? Or if that was impossible, why couldn't he at least be like Hazel, who got away with practically everything, smiling and unscathed after every clash with the baroness?

  Of course, Hazel's shenanigans were a far cry from his own. He couldn't put the gory remains of the exploded servant out of his mind, so much that he had to skip his meals all day long. And there was more to come, much more, unless...

  "People are falling sick and giving birth to monsters. This has been going on for a while, has it not? For enough time to give rise to a cult. That means months, damn you all! Why have I not been informed about this? Why did it take a linnorm attack for me to learn about the disease at all? Yes, Tristian, I am looking at you. You are my link to the people. There must have been witnesses, accounts, people smart enough to call to their ruler for help. Where are they? How did they not make it to the throne room? Have you been withholding information?"

  Tristian immersed himself in fidgeting with his rosary, staring at his toes. The smooth, round feel of the beads kept him anchored in reality and helped him avoid a breakdown.

  "I… I guess I haven’t been wise enough to connect the dots," he muttered.

  "Of course," snapped Guelder. "You infiltrated the cult like a master spy, but you had no idea for what reason it had been founded in the first place. Am I supposed to believe that? After your so-called lack of wisdom almost cost me my life? And honestly, that is the least of our problems right now."

  Cornered, he tried another excuse. The rosary was irreversibly tangled. He would have to break the thread to salvage the beads. Break the thread...

  "I thought I could solve the problem at a healthcare level. I planned to find a cure to the disease, which would also make the monsters stop coming for the corpses. A totally erroneous approach, as it turns out."

  "And did you also plan to leave me out? Why? You are my Councillor, in case you have forgotten. You are supposed to ensure the people’s loyalty to me. Who the hell will be loyal to a ruler who entertains herself with fancy hunting events, while her subjects succumb to an unknown disease by the dozen? A really sophisticated way to stab me in the back. I should hope that you did not do this on purpose. In either case, any law-enforcing ruler would have your hide for this."

  Break the thread. Spill the beads.

  He could still turn this around... if only he were a teeny-tiny bit less of a coward.

  "I’m sorry, Your Grace," he said softly, avoiding her fearsome cat eyes. "I made a grave mistake. I thought I could handle this on my own. Looks like it… kind of… got out of hand."

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  A credible justification. After all, finding an anomaly, trying to tackle it on his own, and then watching it bite him in the balls was one of his recurring mistakes.

  "Thorns and brambles, Tristian! I am all for independent decision-making, wherever reasonable. Hell, I will even thank you for not wasting my time with trifles. But man, this is an issue of top priority! A plague affects every single aspect of life in the barony and perhaps outside it as well, if it crosses the borders! How did you want to handle it alone and keep me in the dark about it?"

  Tristian had nothing to say anymore. As he clutched the beads desperately, the thread tightened around his fingers and cut into his skin. It didn't break, though.

  "By morning, I want a detailed report of all the relevant events you might know of and any research you might have done," said the baroness. "Tomorrow, based on this report, we will make an action plan. Get your stuff together, Tristian, and show me you are still worthy of my trust. From now on, the burden of proof is on you. Remember, the only reason why I am not erecting a gallows right now, with your name on it, is that this morning you saved me from untimely death. You have earned your second chance, now use it wisely."

  He nodded, his face burning with shame. He didn't deserve credit for that, either. If he hadn't felt bad enough before, now Hazel's smirk pushed him a little deeper into self-loathing.

  The baroness continued, turning to the others and letting Tristian stew.

  "I am closing the borders until we figure out how exactly the disease spreads. Kassil, this will be your task. Reinforce the border passage points, and deploy patrols all along the border. Turn back anyone trying to cross, inbound or outbound, with special regard to emigration. Use moderate force if necessary."

  "This will kill our economy," remarked Hazel.

  "This is the responsible thing to do. We cannot let the plague spread to other countries. Once we know what to do about it, we can refine our protective measures and take up Baron Varn on his offer of troops to cull the monsters. Until then, Nightvale is under quarantine. Hazel, do your best to keep our trade relations alive despite the circumstances. I trust that everyone can assess how serious the situation is, and will do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this, before our land is starved out. Council dismissed."

  She turned to retreat to her private quarters, but she had to halt for a few moments to regain control of her body. The Treasurer offered their arm to lead her away, which she refused, and left the throne room in a hurry, annoyed by her own frailty. She was in desperate need of a good rest, uninterrupted by owlbears or other nuisances, and it was very unlikely that she would be able to get that.

  Tristian spent the night awake, by candlelight, busy writing out every single data related to the epidemic on separate notes and organising them along a timeline. It was hard to estimate the amount of information that was necessary for the baroness to build an efficient strategy and still wouldn’t get him into more trouble – and even harder to come up with a schedule to feed her this information gradually, without raising any questions as to how he had come by this wealth of knowledge.

  He could tell that Guelder was awake, too, troubled and in pain, just like the land she’d claimed. He imagined her gazing out of her bedroom’s window, rubbing her temples in exhaustion and pondering her options, contemplating lockdowns, hygiene measures, an overwhelmed healthcare system, a collapsing economy, riots on the streets. He felt sorry for her, his beloved, beautiful baroness, the second person he was happiest to serve, in very close competition with the Dawnflower. She'd never known what she’d taken upon herself. His place should be by her side, to heal her wounds and soothe her worries… and most importantly, to prepare the action plan together, based on all the information he had at his disposal. But that required a level of courage he couldn’t muster at the moment. Not even a fragment of it.

  Or could he?

  He took a box out of his drawer. There was a letter inside, started but never finished. An unwelcome distraction from the dry data on the outbreaks. To Guelder, Baroness of Nightvale. He had been struggling with it since the Verdant Chambers incident, but he wanted to finish it now. To confess everything to her. To warn her of the imminent danger, which she underestimated even now. He was too weak to make a confession face to face, but a letter should do the trick. And he could still decide when to hand it over to her, if at all. She would probably kick him, which would mean he'd fail his duty… all his duties… and forfeit any chance for things to return to normal… And Sarenrae was more distant than ever. Then again, how did he hope to return before his goddess by being complicit in an evil plot like this?

  He spent an hour writing and rewriting the letter, then finally crumpled it up and tossed it into the fire. Back to the data. Then, halfway down the report, he would probably restart his confession. Or do something about his rosary.