All right, I’ll take you on with my… probably two points left in stamina.

  Tybalt rose and took up a fighting stance after all, trying to hide the difficulty with which he did so.

  His whole body was stiff and sore, and the brief break from sparring had only highlighted how exhausted he was. He badly wanted an end to his training for that day, but he wouldn’t ask for it. He didn’t want her to see any hint of weakness in him. He had practically won this woman’s affections already. He just had to avoid fumbling at the last moment.

  “You don’t need to make yourself stand like that,” Mariella said, arms at her sides. “We’re done sparring. I said we were stopping that for the day. The next bit of training is purely mental.”

  Oh, thank the gods…

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to tire you out,” Tybalt said.

  Mariella raised an eyebrow and gave him a little smile.

  “You’re all bluster.”

  “No, I could do this all night.” He gestured at the orange glow to the light outside.

  “Mm hm. I think I know what you’re insinuating.” She let out a little chuckle. “Maybe the blood’s going to my head from all this exercise. I can’t believe I’m letting you talk to me this way.”

  “We both know you like it.”

  She looked away but dipped her chin in the smallest nod he’d ever seen.

  All right. Joking about keeping her awake all night is fine. Much better than joking about wrestling with her. Noted.

  “What’s the next part of training, teacher?” Tybalt asked.

  He had already learned a way to make his non-combat skills usable for fighting. In fact, during the spar session, he had thought of far more dangerous potential applications for his mana than what he had shown. They just weren’t things he could ever test on someone he didn’t want to seriously hurt or potentially kill.

  There was one he was particularly eager to try.

  It might be possible that if I hit someone with the same kind of energy I use to create undead, I could turn them into one of my creatures while they’re still alive…

  Mariella’s method of teaching mage combat thus far had been simple, rough, and physically punishing. But it was also incredibly effective for Tybalt. Maybe it was just that he was a quick learner like she had said. Or perhaps it was the fact that he was learning the lessons by feeling everything with his body. Regardless of the cause, this favor she was doing him was going to take his magic to incredible places.

  “What level are you at?” she asked.

  He was slightly taken off-guard by the question—he had been trying to keep his levels and skills ambiguous—but he decided to default to the truth. Some obfuscations or secrets were acceptable. She didn’t need to know what all of his skills were, and she would probably refuse to reveal the same if he asked. But knowing someone else’s level wasn’t particularly revealing. It was useful to gauge how strong someone was going to be and how much you needed to support them in a fight. And it would change, anyway, at which point no one outside of the person gaining levels would know that it had changed.

  There was no real privacy argument for keeping it a secret.

  So he would tell her his actual level—as a Defiant Necromancer, anyway. His total stats came from his combined class levels in both that and Pestilence Mage, so she should still have an understated idea of how strong he was.

  “Ten,” he said. “I actually just reached level ten because of that last spar.”

  Mariella’s eyes widened. “Ten.” She let out a low whistle and shook her head. “On the one hand, that’s a low level. And I’m impressed that you’re as strong as you are with what I would have assumed would be pretty low stats. On the other hand, considering you only got your class a matter of days ago… your rate of growth is incredible. Have you been practicing—no, never mind, it doesn’t matter.” She shook her head. “Since you just got level ten, you have a skill selection, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Don’t use it yet,” she said. “Not until you hear my understanding of the meaning and purpose of skills. It’s sort of cobbled together from my mother’s family knowledge coupled with my tutor’s and officer training.”

  Your mother’s family knowledge… so your father doesn’t have a class? Or what?

  “These ideas haven’t been studied deeply enough, because every noble house and every group that has a class in their blood tries to hoard information,” she continued. “There’s also some legend or maybe myth mixed in with what I’m going to tell you, and you’ll have to sort out which is which for yourself, because I don’t know for sure. But I think this will at least put you ahead of a lot of people who never bother to understand their class very deeply or whose families don’t have a strong grasp.”

  You sure you want to pass that along to me so easily? Tybalt thought. He didn’t let himself say the words, but his face must have shown where his head was.

  “It’s important for both of us that you get as strong as you can,” she said.

  Tybalt didn’t ask why, but again, his face was probably worth a thousand words.

  “You have a strategy for us, and maybe I have something to contribute to that,” she said, smiling.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Well, during our breaks, I’ve been thinking about what happened to the squad over the last few days,” Mariella said. “Now that I’m away from the Commander, my head is clearer. I’ve been thinking for myself… and I’m starting to believe that the squad’s illness wasn’t from poisoning, necessarily.”

  “Oh, no?” Tybalt asked weakly. He tried not to look nervous. She definitely didn’t suspect him. She wouldn’t be sharing the information so freely.

  “No. Volusia assumed that, but at the same time, he assumed that the beastfolk had someone with a class among them. He thought that was the one who killed Jackson. Taking that idea a step further, I think that the reason why someone killed Jackson was to cover up that they were contaminating the food.”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “But you just said you didn’t think it was poisoned.”

  “I think that this beastfolk leader with the class is probably using disease to attack us, not poison. While a big chunk of the squad was feeling ill, I’ve been more or less all right. Initially, I felt queasy after our first night here, but the next morning, I was fine. Everyone else who got sick only got worse with time. I think the difference is my skills. When we’re out here, I heat my body up at night, right before bed, because it’s so cold out. I can’t use that skill in my sleep, but if I superheat my body inside and out, it warms up my bedding, and I stay warm for hours after. I’m pretty much impervious to fire, and heat just feels good for me, so I make it pretty toasty.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Tybalt said. “Interesting.”

  Does Mariella know that heat can kill viruses?

  “So I thought back to a theory one of the lecturers in officer training had,” she said. “This was the guy who taught us basic medic training. He said people laughed at him about this, but he believed in boiling surgical equipment before and after use. He thought it was the only way to keep it properly clean. Fire is a weakness for evil entities, dark spirits and undead, just as holy magic is, so it stands to reason that the bad energy that hangs around disease might be dispersed by intense heat. Otherwise both patient and doctor could get sick.”

  Well, that’s not quite right, Tybalt thought, Doctors don’t typically get exposed to disease that way. And, of course, the causation is all fucked up. But this guy was definitely onto something about patients getting sick. It’s impressive how close someone could get to the truth without knowing about germs. Also, does Mariella just remember everything she’s taught? She must be one of the most book-smart people I’ve ever met. Complete opposite of her naivete about people…

  “So, going off his theory, my idea is that maybe my symptoms went away early because I basically boil my body at night! And the beastfolk class-holder is some kind of disease-spreading mage with a rare class we’ve never heard of.”

  “That’s an incredible theory, Mariella,” Tybalt forced himself to admit.

  “So, you agree?”

  “I don’t really know. Um, there are a few leaps. That whole boiling medical equipment thing sounded pretty interesting, but I don’t know if it’s something that your lecturer had proven worked…”

  “Oh. I don’t know about that either. Probably not, or other people in his field wouldn’t scoff at his idea, now that you mention it… I only brought it up because it fit conveniently into place if my idea was true.”

  “Well, um, sorry, why is this relevant? If the beastfolk have someone like this pestilence-spreading person,what does it mean for us?”

  “They have at least one mage in that case, maybe two. The same skill that was used to make the squad sick wouldn’t explain how they caused a rockslide earlier. That’s either alchemy to produce an explosion or some kind of mage. Either way, it implies they might have two people with classes out here. That makes them pretty dangerous.”

  “And you’re assuming negotiations with the beastfolk won’t succeed?” Tybalt asked.

  “No, but we would want to have a plan in case they don’t,” Mariella said. “That plan has to involve fighting. And if one of them has a class that spreads disease, I’m pretty sure that’s the kind of thing you would only get by consorting with demons or receiving the attention of an evil god. Stopping someone like that would be a big feather in your cap.”

  “I guess so,” he said reluctantly, trying not to show how nervous the present topic made him.

  “If you get a handle on all this—” she gestured around them at the cave, as if indicating their recent training—“you and I should be able to take their class-holding fighters out together.” She raised a palm to head off any objections, though Tybalt had none immediately to hand. “I know you want to negotiate, and I support that. But the beastfolk haven’t shown the willingness to do it yet. We have to try, but we have to be realistic too. My father loves to say that negotiating is always easier from a position of strength. If you could defeat the beastfolk mage or mages, you would go home a hero, regardless of whatever else happened. Especially if one of them is working for an evil god or a demon. Whether we drive the rest of the beastfolk out or reach some kind of accommodation with them, you’d have brought down someone who we know killed soldiers in the Nietian Army. Someone who might be wanted by the Divine Trust if we can prove they were working with dark forces. You’d have bought yourself a lot of credibility. After that, it would be easier for you to expose Volusia. You could probably have his job if you wanted it! At least, that’s my best-case imagined scenario of what happens.”

  There it was. Her ambition on display. She wanted to defeat the beastfolk’s leaders and bring Volusia down. That would—

  Wait, why did she shift to the “you” pronoun?

  “What do you mean, ‘you’? Don’t you mean we would go home heroes?” Tybalt asked.

  And you would get Volusia’s job. You’re the only other officer in the squad.

  Mariella shook her head. “No matter what I do, I’ll still be the idiot who didn’t notice that there were war crimes being committed right under my nose. At best, I look innocent, but heroic would be a big leap.” She looked sad and a bit guilty, but perked up as she continued. “This could be your opportunity, though. The man who put a stop to it all. Who said enough was enough.”

  “Even if I defeated or killed the beastfolk’s mage, it would still be my word against Volusia’s about everything else.”

  Tybalt was just talking at this point, trying to tease out Mariella’s motives. There was no chance he would ever return to the Kingdom unless it was at the head of an army, ready to sack and burn the capital. But what exactly was her angle?

  “I’d back you up,” Mariella said. “I kind of thought that would go without saying.”

  “Why?” Tybalt asked.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do. You convinced me before.”

  “No, why are you trying to give me all the credit?”

  “Don’t ask me that.” She looked away as if slightly embarrassed. Silence settled for a few seconds, then lingered on for a full minute. Tybalt felt a tension in the air, which neither of them wanted to break.

  Tybalt had a reason he wanted to believe Mariella would be interested in burnishing his reputation. If she increased his status, it would add to hers as well—if they were together.

  Or she could just be as selfish as everyone else in the squad. She’s just lying to get me to help her do what she wants to do already. Once we’re back in Enh, she could spin the narrative however she wants.

  He didn’t believe that, though. And the slight rosy tinge of Mariella’s cheeks told him he was probably right.

  She’s actually falling for me.

  But if that was true, the last thing he wanted to do was pressure her to say so out loud before she was ready.

  “You were going to teach me something about skills before,” he said after the silence had begun to feel uncomfortable. “And maybe some myths and legends?”

  “Right,” Mariella said, regaining her composure. “Um, we found a place where the mountain was damp earlier, right?”

  “What?”

  “When we were climbing the other day, there was a place where the stone was too moist for us to ascend further. I know that outside of this valley, we’re in the desert, but I’ve seen some occasional small plants inside the valley. Do you think there might be a significant water source somewhere out here?”

  “Yes,” Tybalt said. “The damp cliffside on a day that wasn’t rainy probably meant there’s some sort of flow of water from nearby.”

  “Maybe you could find it for us, scout. And while we walk, I’ll start explaining more about what skills are, and why I didn’t want you to pick your level ten skill yet.”

  Tybalt nodded. “Finding a fresh source of water, good idea. My flask is almost empty.”

  “Right,” Mariella said. “We should grab some of that.” She paused. “And also bathe. Because our sparring ate up most of the day, and now we both stink.”

  Author's Note: I have decided to renumber all the chapters and make all existing chapters part of book 1, which will include arc 1, The Baron's Bastard, and arc 2, Death and Fire. The order's the same, but the numbers will change, because looking ahead to possible publication in the future (and going off of some advice from one of the people at Royal Guard), I want book 1 to be a bit longer and have a more satisfying and definitive ending, which I'm confident arc 2 will deliver.