NOVEL NEXT Chapter 136: Deadlines
Ester frowned as she tasted her tea. It was wrong. Too much sugar. She knew exactly how much she'd ordered Sven to put in the drink for the past many years, how long to stir, and how long to let the cup sit before handing it to her, but the taste was still off. It seemed that he'd ignored her orders with time, adjusting the recipe to better fit her taste buds.
A great quality for an assistant to possess, if not for the fact that Sven had failed to note down these adjustments.
"You can't help but keep disappointing me," Ester mumbled to no one in particular. She was alone in the office now, after all. No soul but her own in this new place. "Can't even escape my clutches properly."
That he was wise enough to cut the runes at the neck meant he was aware of Ester's lack of qualms about killing him on the spot. She could at least respect that. The execution of his escape plan? Not so much, but Ester couldn't complain about how it benefited her.
"Now… we are going to make sure that Serenova can stay standing until aid arrives," the statue on the table repeated, as Ester continued to sip at her tea. The quality of the sound was a little hazy, as the transmission circuit had already been removed from the source, but a few filters allowed for it to be legible enough. "People are a priority. We can afford to lose ground, but we can't make it obvious that we're playing defence. Lord Greyhelm, how long was it until the next batch of armor was to arrive?"
Never did Ester imagine getting a transmitter into the fake queen's personal chambers. It was a dream come true, to be honest. She'd attempted similar feats over a hundred times in the past months, but every spy got killed before they could complete the deed. A waste of resources, yet the potential rewards had been too great not to try.
"Three days, but we can meet them halfway and make it two," the statue repeated, this time with a very gruff voice that produced an annoying amount of static. Ester assumed it to be the dwarven lord that had entered the chambers that morning. "Whatever you need, and whatever I have the power to grant, I will give."
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"How typical," Ester commented. She continued to note every word, every pause, and every slight edge she could get. She had made a mistake, she'd lost a very important tool, and she had allowed Sven to fall into Serenova's hands. An order had already been put in to kill him at all costs, but Ester doubted it would go any differently than the rest of the attempts.
Just give me something.
Pitiful whispers from Lura aside, it had been a very uninteresting time for Ester. Some rambling, some references to other mages, and seven whole rounds of tea. She listened to everything on repeat, of course, but Ester longed for something more.
And, luck be had, she'd gotten it. The fake queen gave out orders, leaving very few in the royal chambers. She had expected some personal comments, an order to perhaps rest a little longer, but she instead got a golden ticket to getting out of this mess.
"You're a Leximancer," she heard Sven mutter.
Ester dropped her pen.
"We've worked very hard on keeping that secret," Vera cut in before Ester's former associate could get out another word. It didn't matter. Nothing could've been more important than the words that followed. The confession. While Ester wasn't as well-versed on the obscure Affinities of the world, she would've been a fool not to recognize the name.
An Affinity with death as a punishment for having it? Officially, at least. Ester knew of several prisoners who had been put to use for some time, though she'd never had the pleasure of having one in her repertoire.
For the queen of Serenova to carry that power? 'Deep shit' indeed.
"You might just make me proud still, Sven," Ester congratulated the Eidomancer who would never hear her voice again.
She continued to listen for the next ten minutes, noting down the need to revisit a certain archive, before cursing the disruption to the signal. The sound of flesh being torn apart, wet noises, and the sudden stop to the transmission made Ester assume that the removed flesh had been thrown to the pigs.
It hardly mattered. She had a full month to make Serenova collapse. With a secret so damaging, and the head of the Western Dungeon offering his services, it wouldn't be terribly difficult.