Chương 132: Chapter 153: Nuggets

Nathan hasn't spoken to me in days. He thinks I'm responsible for Princess Lachel's disappearance. Granted, he thinks that because he thinks I could have helped save her and refused to do it. But actually I am responsible for Princess Lachel's disappearance because I orchestrated a scenario that I knew was going to end with her getting kidnapped and murdered. Skeici Gianwen is an unassuming-looking girl. On the small side, with dark purple hair and dark red eyes.

On paper she's not one of the more dangerous antagonists attending this school. Yheta is a well-connected nobleman with a violent temper and lots of criminal-underworld connections. Lere Lowyer is an absolute savant for discreet poisonings, there's not even a game mechanic for catching her in the act. Giunco Fiutan is a bare-knuckle boxer who doesn't know when to stop, and runs with a street gang of violent thugs. Thumper is an antagonist to Clash Atland, and if she is motivated to do harm she is devastating.

That's not counting Elica Dandston and her network of rumor-mongers, or the emotional bullying that Quinnifred Horvin-Grennick could bring to bear before I "expelled" her. Or the seductive wiles of Casser Swamman. Those three are dangerous to relationships, but that's hardly the same thing. No, compared to Thumper, Giunco, Lere, or Yheta, Skeici is just not much of a threat. No special skills, powers or connections. But, she is very patient, very thorough, and very bold.

And she has a completely unrequited delusional crush on my brother, which makes her easy to steer. The rest of them I would need to contact directly if I was going to send them to a target. For Skeici, all I need is to create the opportunity. By now the princess is quite dead, and her body dumped. Skeici did not even miss a day of school, she was able to handle all of her abduction, imprisonment, execution and disposal work during her off-hours, just sneaking off-campus through a forgotten tunnel.

Nathan spent days in a fruitless search. But he was not as good at investigating disappearances as Skeici was at disappearing people without a trace. She's a third-act antagonist, you need Awareness of at least 15 to pick up the first clues on your own, or a Luck of 15 or higher can get you a random chance. If you're playing a scrivener, you can gift her a handful of trinkets that make it possible to track her down safely, but they lock out her good endings.

Or, on any of the warrior routes you could duel your way through the Gold Goat Gang and get handed a notice about unusual activity in the old laundrer's shop. Overall the easy way to avoid Skeici's interference is just to avoid public displays of affection in any class you share with her. This is normally recommended on higher difficulties. And the spy route is as hard as it gets. I understand that he's missed several classes trying to dig out the clues, but he's way too late now.

As I predicted, he does not have the skill levels for this. Glitter is a very forgiving game in many ways. But the resolution system is about hard-minimum requirements: if you've got the stats to win, you win decisively. If you don't have the stats to win, you lose consistently. Normally a very fair system, the game does not give Nathan challenges he hasn't had a chance to reach an appropriate level for. I, on the other hand, am perfectly willing to steer high-level obstacles in front of him.

I'll manipulate game mechanics for an advantage. Playing fair went off the table when he decided making friends with a trade minister was more important than saving citizens from the blight. And when he thought he could give me a good enough excuse for doing it. Nathan has been dedicating his time to an increasingly fruitless search. The general buzz of the school has been rather sympathetic, because a girl is missing.

Moreso because she had become very unpopular very recently because of the royal family's connection to the Blight. The fact that everyone had liked her, and then suddenly disliked her, and then she went missing, made a lot of people very performatively over-sympathetic. People get that way, revising their history. To salve their conscience over being rude to someone who has since encountered real hardship, they try to convince themselves and others that they were never mean to that poor victim anyway.

Not everyone was equally impacted. Elica, for instance, is once again working her ass off to get a room of her own. At this moment, I was standing at my vanity mirror, brushing my hair out the old-fashioned way while Elica stands out in the hallway, with the door open so she can keep a conversation going. That is, her monologuing and me presumably listening.

"- basically a settled issue, right? Her family sent people around to pick up her personal effects, and even if she turned up this morning she's still missed enough class time they'd have to hold her back! So she wouldn't even need a dorm room, she'd just get moved back to the palace until the start of next semester. It's pointless! A whole empty room on this floor. And the biggest one on the floor too! Not just biggest but most prestigious, it's the end of the row, the top notch!

So obviously that is a very important commodity that should not be left vacant! Not for some two-bit princess who probably wasn't ever going to inherit a real title of her own anyway! Her family's given up, the school's given up, why can't the housing committee give up? This whole hallway is a pecking order. Stations down the row! Earls above countesses, countesses above baronesses, and so on! But now there's this vacancy! And think about how that looks!

The barons look up to the countesses, the countesses look up to you and me, and we are demoted in the pecking order under an empty room! A nothingness is being given privilege over me! That's probably criminal. We should look that up. You're a lawyer-esquire, find out if it is against the law to treat a blank space as if it is more important than an earl! Really, the nerve! Look, let's just do the sensible thing. I'll start moving my things in, and leave you here in this room to yourself. Very easy.

I'm sure Rinnie will be happy to have more space to work! You're going to be-""Hey Elica?" I said.

"I'm going to be headed out. Big day."

"Right, right, knocking some walls down," she said.

"Before you go I will require a small kindness from you, to unlock this door so I may direct my girl to begin moving my belongings in. It's only right that-""Don't have the mana today," I said.

"I'll need everything I've got for the big show. Sorry. Maybe tomorrow? I shouldn't be restructuring any geographical features tomorrow." She was still complaining when I opened my portal and stepped inside. I wasn't just making excuses for refusing to aid and abet her attempts at breaking and entering. I really did have a pretty tight budget for my mana today, and diverting any of it to manipulating a brass lock was just not in the cards for me.

The spot we had picked out was to the west of the city, about a day's carriage ride away. Working with Quoissi Eyellon's people, we had scheduled the demonstration for third bell. I wanted to arrive early to make sure I had all my measurements, and because things go wrong if you don't take trouble to overprepare. For example, you might get totally blindsided by your business partner.

Only one quick stop by the dining hall to grab a meaty hand-pie, and then I stepped out of the void and out onto the flat prairie pastures of Hearster, just a hundred yards shy of the Fissuring, and only about a hundred feet shy of the pavilions. I stared around, taking it all in, then I flew fast to cover that hundred feet.

"What's going on here?" I demanded of the first person I saw. I was no gracious, polite, or patient. I was yelling.

"His Grace the Duke Eyellon has stated he wishes advantageous seating," said the majordomo who was overseeing things here. Porters were driving tent stakes and setting up tables. I was quite taken aback.

"Jeeves, this is not advantageous seating, this is the blast zone! You're at least a quarter-mile too close to the site!" I jabbed a finger at the large X that was carved into the stone wall.

"That spot right there! That is where I am going to create an explosion big enough to level a canyon in the whole damn wall! The backfill is gonna fall about six miles that way!" I pointed at the horizon directly across from the wall.

"Anything that is sitting right here is going to be crushed into nothingness, then torn apart, then burned to the finest ash, and then buried under a half-mile of rubble! Who's gonna pass out Harvest Festival bonuses when that happens?"

"Hmm," he said, looking down his nose at me.

"Young miss, you're a sorceress. Not a wizard. It does not serve anyone for you to inflate your prowess so. My master and his guests are going to see a demonstration of your magics, and they would like advantageous seating."" Guests?" I looked around. And, yes, the pavilion here was way too much for even one duke to require. I started counting seats, and stopped at "a lot".

"Yes, young miss. The duke has invited an impressively-large audience of high peerage to see this event. He has promised them an unparalleled show. Well, he has informed them that you are promising an unparalleled show. He's charged quite a sum of gold for the pleasure of this opportunity. And whe- and should you fail to provide adequate entertainment, he intends to take their refunds out of your remuneration."

"Ah." Now I understand. And a handful of clauses from our agreement suddenly had a whole new meaning to me.

"Look, I truly don't care what you think of my abilities. Get all this crap uprooted and moved a half-mile back. That hill over there should be ideal."

"I have my orders," he said stiffly.

"You're getting new orders. I will pull rank if I must."

"When I take orders from a duke, they may not be countermanded by less than the king or queen themselves," he said with a snotty snide smirk. Tired of this. I reached up, snapped my fingers, and summoned the T. rex from the essences I had collected in Uchislowi.

"Fine," I said.

"I'm not telling you to move all this. He is." The artists for Harigold Glitter did not update their vision of dinosaurs using the new paleontological data. They just used the popular image from the Jurassic movies, all scaly and snarly. But, it is very intimidating. I looked up at the towering, hungering beast, and he bent down for me to pat his nose.

"This breed is called Tyrannosaurus Rex. In the modern language, that translates to 'tyrant lizard king'. He's a tyrant of a lizard, as you can see. And if you will only take orders from a king, I think you'll find he's the only king currently on-site." The monstrous creature snarled, and the porters all started to backpedal, that panicked hasty scramble before they flee. I raised my voice." Don't run," I called out.

"His instincts are to chase anything that runs. I cannot stop him from eating anyone that runs. He will follow my orders as long as you do not run. And my orders to him, are to make sure that all of you pick this pavilion up and move it back a half-mile in t hat direction. You've got forty-five minutes to make it happen." The majordomo scowled. He did not look impressed. The porters under his charge were giving me exactly the response I was looking for, but he looks like I tracked something noxious into the parlor.

He brought one arm back as if grabbing something in the air and then he strained, pushing. The sky turned off like a switch was thrown. Bright sunny conditions were replaced by an inky overcast like a starless night, the vapor boiling out of thin air. The sky churned like whitewater, clouds buffeting hard against each other hard enough to throw off sparks. Lights surged inside the roiling roof, stuttering, sputtering, collecting, and then coalescing.

Eight bolts of lightning spewed out of the cloud cover and converged like one of my more elaborate braids to form a bolt stronger than anything I've seen. In the next second, it was a very bad idea to the be the tallest thing around. I swear upon my honor that for a split-second I could see the T. rex's skeleton through its skin before it exploded into dino nuggets. Steaming-hot viscera pinwheeled through the air, odd-shaped scraps of hide and gristle, burnt chips of bone.

I shielded us from the fallout, lest anyone actually get scalded by boiling effluvia. I glanced at the majordomo, and groaned. I've got that ability to look at anyone and see their relative Strength, and I can use it with only a little effort. It's a great way to find out who I can push around and who can push me around, if I bother to use it. This guy? This wizard? Way out of my league. Playing the video game, wizards are the second-easiest difficulty mode.

It's like going through the game with a "make your problem go away" button available at all times. There's only really two viable threats to a wizard: a better wizard, or a well-equipped fully-armored mana knight. Neither of which is Natalie Harigold! So, time to take the L. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. I dispelled the thunderbeast conjuration and the gloppy carnage dissipated, leaving the area clear again.

The wizardomo was glaring at me like he was waiting to make sure I wasn't going to act foolish again, before he cranked his hand back and returned the sky to a soothing blue with only high fluffy white clouds to share space with the sun. Grinding my teeth, I have to find another way to deal with these brand new and completely unnecessary problems. I try to find my calm and evaluate the problem.

"All right. You won't listen to me under any circumstances. That's abundantly clear. Ass. When Duke Quoissi shows up, tell him what I said. This is not a 'front rows may get splashed' warning, this is a 'certain death' warning. Tell him I was very insistent that you move the viewing stands back at least a half-mile. I can only hope that he's smarter than you and will order you to act smarter than you have been." His smirk let me know that the only takeaway here is that he won and I lost.

A victory for decorum and urbane society, a loss for provincials hired to do a job.

"I'm going to give him time to fix this. I'm pushing his site back to last to give you as much time in the schedule. I'll be out working the other sites that he and I agreed upon." Strictly speaking, the contract and itinerary that he and I agreed on stipulated that this site was to be the very first one, the first of the morning. But since he and his guests weren't here, I am choosing not to do that. I have to choose between our agreement for the specific schedule and our agreement to give him a show.

I think the second part is more important. I'm half-tempted to do it anyway just to shut up the majordomo who blew up my dinosaur, but while it would be funny to shut him up with a billion tons of broken rock burying him, there's also a lot of innocent porters here that clearly do believe my warnings but need this job too much to contradict the wizard. So, I guess we're minimizing casualties today. But, on the plus side, that now means that I get some practice runs that I wasn't expecting to get.

I tumbled through a portal and arrived on site, with a new bundle of annoyed grievances that need to be expunged with catastrophe. I started my process, double-checking my figures, and tried to put all the proper attention into this. The original plan had been for me to give him his spectacle early in the morning. I don't know what it is with this guy and obnoxiously early mornings, but this time he's running late and I'm not. Wait, that's exactly how it worked last time too. Son of a bitch.

At the time it did not make sense to me. Why make the big show come up first, with no time to rehearse and no practice rounds? Now I understand: that only makes sense if I'm being set up to fail. The porters kept assembling the tents, the awnings, the serving-tables and folding chairs. All the errata of a glorious little outdoor one-day festival. They even had a chillout tent. And none of them made a single move to take this further away so the tents would be safe.

They did not care that this was ground-zero, they cared about not offending Duke Quoissi Eyellon. But I surveyed this spot, not the surrounding terrain. I don't have time to explore other options. This is my new rule: I don't improvise and I don't work without a plan. Watching Eyellon's staff working furiously gave me plenty of time to seethe about the duke altering my deal.

There was nothing in our bargain about me being liable for lost costs if he sold tickets to this thing, but I'm confident he wouldn't even try something like this if he did not already know how he was going to get away with it. So it sounds like his plan was to hype me up hard, sell way too many tickets for way too high a price, set me up to fail, and then cheat me of my fee so he could pay off his friends and he gets a free show. I probably should not have expected him to play fair.

I should have known that a duke who lives in Hearstcliff full-time would be just as corrupt as the rest of Hearstcliff. Even if Freckentop controls the city of Hearstcliff, it is set in the duchy of Hearster which is in Eyellon control. It could be argued that the culture of the capital is more influenced by Eyellon than by Freckentop. This is probably their corruption to start with, the rest of the houses just got it rubbed off on them.

Also, the Eyellon house is known primarily for its support of the arts, and entertainment. I feel like I should have put two and two together before this. He's not just going to want to be entertained, he is also going to want to entertain others. And, of course, profit heavily from it. He keeps whatever ticket sales I can't refund, and he gets a whole lot of free demolition work.

This might be the site where I promised to put on a show, but there are several other sites we've contracted to have me level and grade for him. And he's not planning on paying me for any of that work. Fucker. I finished off my breakfast, and folded the paper napkin into my pocket. Even though I'm about to unleash total cataclysm on this spot, the training against littering will hold true. There's still no sign of the duke or his entourage. But I'd better get started if we're going to finish this in one day.

If they would not move a half-mile for me, then I flew myself three-quarters of a mile to the west. I approached the wall, and started taking measurements with the tools that Gala had made up for me. Thank gods for being overprepared. If I was in the habit of doing enough to get by, this world would have eaten me alive years ago. But while I was adding numbers to my notebooks, I was still considering the angles. From what I can figure, there's only really one way out of this trap that Quoissi has set for me.

I have to actually give him a show as big as he promised. It's a good thing I had already planned to overperform. I started drilling the solid rock into gravel and then the gravel poured itself out onto the ground. I used a hole just a couple inches wide, so I could work faster and cut deeper.

I sampled the gravel as it came out and visual inspection just verified what I could feel through my affinities- I had the consistency correct, the strata was normal, the cleavage was in line, depth and structure and microstructure all checked out. So, I'd better start preparing as if this is going to be my new workspace. I flew up to the left, and started curving in cracks in the stone, weakening the structure in specific places to guide the collapse later, joining inch-wide boreholes.

It might not make a lot of difference, but every little bit helps. In matters like this, small amounts of preparation will have disproportionately large effects. The plan was to knock out a V-shaped cleft in the stone wall, a canyon that would slope downward and outward, so shaping was almost as important as impact. If I got the right angle, the rubble would spill out into the right shape.

If I got it wrong, it would just pile up in place and need to be shoveled out, almost as big a task as breaking it all up in the first place. And, obviously, a very disappointing show. So of course I'm focused on getting this right. Blast it all to kingdom come, and have it land in the right spot afterwards. Pretty exacting job. Now I need to get out of here and get a couple test runs before I had to do this for an audience.

That wasn't part of the original plan, but I guess that's just part of Quoissi setting me up to fail. And of course he was setting me up to fail. The Eyellon are the Freckentops' biggest ally, their tightest comrades. The faction that runs the kingdom is the Dominionists, and not all of the Dominionist houses are made equal. The Freckentop is the leadership there, but the Eyellon is almost as influential. The other two houses, not at all alike in dignity, are the Brunbling and the Duskare houses.

They do as they're told. It is easy to overlook Eyellon, to underestimate them. And I have. I was so focused on my main adversaries, the royals, and I took my eye off the fact that I'm signing contracts with their most eager henchmen. Dammit. I glanced back again, sharpening my eyes with the owl's senses. The pavilions are nearly up. I can see a carriage coming down the road, at the head of a column. certainly the aristocrats just now arriving. I am supposing now that my audience has arrived.

Time to go meet my adoring public.