Dark Lord in Chains 55

After a moment of consideration, I decided that more information was the thing I needed the most. And what better way to do so than watching an impromptu meeting between Emma and her new mysterious allies. 

If it had been the day before, I would have hesitated to follow them because of the risks the situation implied. Between three options me, the Queen, and her biggest rival Fernhand presented, she chose to support an outside party. 

That alone put her new allies in a dangerous category. 

And I didn’t allow relatively easy conquests of Sapphire and Fernhand to drop my guard. The only reason for the relative simplicity could be traced to one important mistake of Sapphire, putting me the deepest part of the palace defenses with the ancient magic-restricting chains with the assumption that they were completely unbreakable. 

My convenient access to the secret tunnels constructed for the royalty in case of an emergency hardly worked for their benefit either. 

Unfortunately, unless Emma’s helper was a part of the palace — which wasn’t likely considering they were using Emma to access the library — I had to actually break through their defenses. And their defenses were guaranteed to be strong if they dared to pit themselves against the Queen. 

Without the insurance my new shield represented against any sudden magical disaster, or the various advantages of the tether-blade combination in penetrating through wards, I might have chosen to actually drag Emma back to break her relationship with her new faction rather than taking the risk of following them to an unknown destination. 

Well, I thought with a shake of my head later, unable to prevent a self-deprecating smirk from popping on even as I wrapped myself into the shadows of my blade, erasing my presence. I probably would have pushed forward regardless. 

I had a marked difficulty resisting the call of the mystery, especially when a delicious example of womanhood like Emma was involved. 

Or, make that two examples of exquisite womanhood, I corrected myself even as a brown-haired woman burst inside, her gaze landing on Emma. “What are you doing, dawdling around, we have to go,” she ordered, with a tone that managed to unsettle me. 

Her tone was disrespectful, but for the moment, I was more interested in the way her body was filling the maid's uniform. Oh, there was no doubt that it was a disguise, a poor one at that. It wasn’t about her beauty. This was the palace, and all maids were beautiful — though it was easy to argue none had her perfectly pouty lips and flawless nose. Nor it was her curves, just bulging enough to strain the maid costume without turning it into an obscene show. 

No, it was her posture. Just by standing in front of Emma, she exuded command, the kind that developed through a life where every single order had been fulfilled. And the way she sent a dismissive glare toward the books, like they were nothing more than garbage, highlighted her pedigree even more. 

It wasn’t the dismissive gaze of a warrior, like Isolde might carry, unaware of the value those books represented. No, it was the kind of gaze that successful merchant toward a few copper pieces. 

Utterly inconsequential. 

Ironically, that gaze allowed me to understand that I had been facing a true mystery. Because, while the royal library, admittedly, was not the greatest library of the Empire, no one should be able to give such a dismissive glare to it. 

The likeliest case, she was from the Magician’s Guild. But even that was a stretch. 

With a frown, I did my best to gather a sliver of my magic without being noticed — ironically, something I had developed to an incredible degree when I tried to get out of the magically-restricted chains. With that, I reached a point where I could extend a small magical detection field a long-range. 

And when I reached the surface of the skin, it met with a flowing field of disguise spell rather than reaching the flesh. 

Before I could feel a deeper sensation, however, I felt the magical field tense up, like it was about to react, so I let the little scrap go. 

It was a spectacular piece of magic, better than I could achieve, certainly. I had no idea how much of her looks was magically-altered, and how much was real. Ironically, despite the great magical expense, it was a horrible disguise. 

Who decides to hide as a maid, then makes themselves attention-grabbing enough to make any observer suspicious?

However, I wasn’t able to focus on that particular detail, not when her gaze danced around the room in a reflexive manner. I felt the magic in the room following her gaze, scouring the room like a wave. 

Interestingly, the detection method was as inept as her disguise. The way the magic moved in perfect unison was an amazing show, the kind an ordinary mage would work for all his life only to fall short, yet it was simple to trick. Just two wards, one to distort the flow away from me, and the second to correct it after the passage. 

Even with the shield, I was reconsidering the merits of following them. But the situation was simply too important to act hesitant. 

Sometimes, all chips needed to be pushed forward for one desperate hand.  

“What are you waiting for, let’s go,” she lashed at Emma, who had been panicking at the spell. Her guilt and shock were so easy to read, mixing into her shocked euphoria, but interestingly, her mysterious ally missed that detail as well. 

“O-okay,” Emma stammered as she stood up, her shocked gaze no less than mine. 

I let them move away for a bit before strengthening the shadows concealing my body. Only then I started following them, wrapped in a thick silence as I applied every little trick I had learned during my youth as a thief. They used a different secret tunnel out of the palace — which was honestly passing the point of being a security threat and straying into the joke area — and I followed. 

The moment they entered, Emma’s mysterious ally waved his hand, and a gray cloak, complete with a hood deep enough to hide all her features, came flying, wrapping around her snugly, the magic flaring around her more noticeably to prevent any magical penetration method. 

Like her earlier disguise, it was the perfect magical solution to conceal her from detection, while simultaneously triggering every single possible logic filter, for even a random passerby. 

Such a contradiction, I thought even as I followed, paying special attention to staying silent. 

I wasn’t the only one silent, but unlike mine, which was operational, theirs was defined by discomfort. It was clear that Emma was hesitant to even talk, thoroughly intimidated, to a level she didn’t even feel against me. 

Of course, a part of it was about me actively trying to make her relax — in a manner of speaking — but that didn’t change the intensity of her feelings. And moreover, it wasn’t a tenseness she might feel against the Queen, or Fernhand. She was afraid of the immediate threat of violence. 

And, despite her political incompetence, she was truly an exceptional magical threat. The fact that she was feeling like that against another magician told me a lot. She was tense, stretching even tighter every step forward. 

She tried to keep it off her face, but I was far too familiar with her body to miss the way her shoulders set her, the stiffness of her back. 

And just to make it even more conflicting, she only started to feel like that once her ward had been tripped. Emma was clearly not expecting her to be in the palace — another thing I probably needed to check once I finished her. 

Emma let out a harsh breath as they stood in front of a building, a fancy residence that was indistinguishable from all other fancy mansions on the streets, if I discounted the desperate cries of my sixth sense, telling me to turn back and leave this particular stone unturned for my continuing health. 

I usually listened to that feeling. 

However, as I watched Emma enter the building, following her ally — for a given value, considering her tenseness — I was more conflicted. 

I wished that I was projecting due to the sudden threat I had discovered earlier in the palace, but I was starting to feel that, maybe, just maybe, I had discovered the source of the magical wards around the palace. She certainly fit the extremely powerful, yet arrogant wardmaker that would add mind-bending wards to the throne room of the Empire. 

Of course, there was a chance that there was a completely unrelated to the magical genius with unknown skills that applied those wards, but what were the chances of having two mysterious magical organizations skulking around. 

It was simply logical, I decided, but stretched my magic toward the building, to check its protections and compare against the other wards. I expected one of two possibilities, either the same mysterious ward structure, or a more mundane ward to reinforce their undercover identity. 

Then, I touched the wards, only to stop checking and take a step toward the nearest wall… 

And hit my head softly, again and again… 

“When,” I whispered to myself. “When I’m going to learn not to tempt fate with that kind of statement.” 

It was a completely different ward structure, the kind I had never seen before, even more incomprehensible than the wards of the throne room. The palace wards, compared to the mainstream magical tradition, was a different language. 

The wards around the building in front of me didn’t even use the same alphabet. It was completely alien. 

And just like that, another huge variable was thrown into a situation that was getting increasingly complicated…