Night laid a quiet hand over the palace, but it didn't calm him.
Lavender drifted from the brazier near the window, sweet and light, the same scent that had greeted him when he woke in this world. It should have soothed. It didn't. It only reminded him he was in a room too soft for a weapon.
Red stood in the dark and let the chamber settle around him—marble swallowing sound, curtains sighing with draft, the clockwork tick of a distant water clock. Nothing moved. Nothing should move. The Radiant Knights had doubled patrols after the duel. Even the courtiers, drunk on awe and fear, had gone quiet.
He lay down, rolled once, and left the blanket shaped like a sleeping body. The pillow took the indent of his head. To anyone at the door he would look comfortable, a boy-king exhausted by spectacle.
He slid off the far side of the bed and vanished into the hush between wardrobe and wall. Bare feet on cool stone. One palm braced. Breath measured, not slow—even.
Spy instincts did the rest. He listened.
A scrape. Tiny. In the lattice of the window frame.
Most people would have missed it beneath the curtain breath and the whisper of the brazier. He heard it as clearly as a gun's safety. A second scrape, rhythm wrong for a draft. Metal on wood. Someone taking their time—patient, careful, practiced.
He counted in his head.Three. Two. One.
The window lock clicked with a shy, neat sound. The curtain swayed. The lavender stirred.
A shadow slipped through. Thin, not tall. Cloak cut close for movement. Face masked, only the eyes visible—dull, disciplined. The figure paused to listen, then padded toward the bed with a hunter's tread, a hand dipping into a pouch at the hip.
Red slid along the wall as softly as breath. The assassin's silhouette bent over the shape under the blankets and brought something to the sleeper's face. Not a knife. A cloth.
Not here to paint the room with blood. Here to make a prince sleep and not wake.
He moved.
His left hand clamped over the assassin's mouth. His right arm snaked around the throat and pulled back, elbow slicing into tendon, forearm crushing windpipe. The body bucked, fast and strong, but panic ruined rhythm. He kept his hips behind theirs to cut leverage and turned, turning them both into the wardrobe so the thud would be swallowed by wood instead of echoing on stone.
It took less than five seconds. It felt longer.
The body went heavy. He held another breath anyway, then lowered it to the floor. No sound. No cry. No warning drawn down the corridor.
Lavender floated on. The brazier hissed once.
Red crouched, feeling for the pulse, then let the wrist fall. He eased the cloak aside and searched like a man who had learned to search fast or die. No jeweled trinkets, no court signet. A coil of dark cord. A thin knife greased with something that smelled faintly of bitter almond. A blowpipe, brass-black, short as a finger span. A leather pouch with a wax seal stamped by an unfamiliar merchant mark: three crossed leaves in a ring of dots.
He broke the seal and lifted the pouch to his nose. Not almond. Something else. Smoky, faintly sweet. Beneath it, a cooling note like damp stone after rain. A tug in memory—not mine. Alzein's body twitched with recognition that his own life didn't own.
A system flicker traced the edge of his vision.
[Item Acquired: Unknown Resin Powder]Effect (Unknown). Aroma: smoky-sweet, cool finish.Origin Probability: Bylon (High).
[Hidden Quest Unlocked: Trace the Smugglers]Follow the supply line of the resin to its source.Reward = ??
He tied the pouch shut, slipped it into his sleeve, and kept searching. The assassin's collar bore a tiny iron tag, the sort Bylon caravans used to tally hired hands—numbers, no name. The boots were dyed with iron ash, same as the Bylon forges use to blacken steel. The darts in the blowpipe were capped with soft cloth, damp and dark. He dabbed one with his thumb and sniffed. The same smoky-sweet, the same cool finish.
Sleeping powder, then. Rare enough that only serious money bought it. Rare enough to be traced.
Red's gaze slid to the open window. The lattice had been filed smooth at the latch—five careful strokes, then the click. Someone had mapped the room, learned the habits, bought the tools, bought the poison. This wasn't a lone enemy with a grudge. This was a line from a purse to a hand to his bed.
He draped the cloak back over the corpse and lifted the body into the wardrobe. The armor stand took the space a little awkwardly, but it would do for an hour. He closed the doors and reset the curtains, smoothing them so the folds fell like sleep.
Then he crossed to the wall and tapped twice, knuckle to marble, a signal Glade had taught him in the corridor earlier: all clear, do not enter. He didn't need guards here. Guards turned kills into reports and reports into council noise. Noise drew predators, and he was bleeding enough.
He pinched the candlewick dark, let his eyes adjust, and waited a full count of sixty for any second man. Nothing moved. The corridors beyond breathed the same old stone breath.
If they sent one, they sent two.
He waited another sixty. Still nothing. Either they'd trusted one to be enough or the second was watching to see who screamed. No screaming. Fine.
He fixed the window latch again and wiped the edges with the assassin's cloak to smear oils to their originals. He set the blowpipe and knife on the table. The pouch stayed with him.
Then he poured water from the ewer into a cup, let the ripples settle, and breathed over the surface.
"Brayl," he said softly into the water. "Come alone."
The stream in the cup stilled, then shivered once as if something else had breathed back.
He waited.
It wasn't long. A knock, soft, three times in rhythm. He opened the door. Brayl slipped through, quiet as a thought. Sea-glass hair caught lampglow even in the dim, and her eyes—calm more often than not—were sharp now.
"You shouldn't call me here," she whispered, though her feet were already moving, taking stock of the room. "If someone sees—"
"They will see you bringing a prince hot water for his tea," he said. He handed her the cup. "And then leaving."
She glanced up at his face, then down at the bed's shape, then drifted to the table where the blowpipe lay. Her nose wrinkled faintly. "What did you do?"
"Prevented sleep," he said. "Possibly death before sleep."
Brayl tightened her jaw once, then nodded. She never asked for the whole story. She didn't have to. He appreciated that more than he said.
He set the pouch on the table and untied it. "Smell."
She leaned close and breathed lightly, one eye closing the way a jeweler sights a cut. Red watched the lines of concentration build around her mouth, the way her fingers spread slightly on the table as if feeling currents.
"A holding resin," she murmured. "Not common. Not cheap." She rubbed a grain between finger and thumb, then touched her finger to the rim of the water cup and watched the sheen. "Sticky, but it doesn't cloud. Good for suspending volatile scents without ruining them." Her gaze cut to his. "Perfume work."
He hadn't said perfume. The system had not said perfume. She had leapt straight there, certain.
"Bylon?" he asked.
"Bylon," she said, sure. "The guild there uses resins to fix scent layers—top, heart, base—so they last. This one anchors heart notes." She inhaled again, lighter this time. "There's a trace of char-citrus. They burn the peel before infusing. It's a trend. Nobles love it."
He thought of the council gallery tonight—sweet scents rolled under silk and iron and fear. He had registered perfume the way a soldier registers weather: background. This reframed it with a knife's edge.
"Luxury trade," Brayl added. "Only the high houses can afford this grade."
The three crossed leaves on the wax seal in his sleeve might as well have lit like a beacon. He placed it on the table and let her see.
She bent, frowned. "Haven't seen this mark in Arleina. But… there's a woman near the North Gate who sells flacons in silk sleeves. She boasts of Bylon suppliers. Loudly."
"Boasts," he repeated. "Useful."
He touched the blowpipe with one finger. "The darts were damp with the same resin."
Brayl's mouth flattened. "So someone brought in perfume fixative and used it to carry a sleeping blend."
"Someone used a noble's purse line to push a weapon into my room." He let that sit, let the words settle the way dust settles after a fall. "Or used the weapon line to push a noble's purse."
She looked to the window, then to the wardrobe, then back at him. "Do you want me to call Glade?"
"No." Too many questions. Too much steel in the corridor when they needed silence. "Glade will want to log it. Baram will want to lock doors. The council will want to weep in public about purity while hiring a third man with a sharper file."
Brayl's eyes flicked once with quiet amusement. "You want the line, not the kill."
"I want the hand holding the purse," he said. "And the hand behind that hand."
She nodded. "Then we go quietly."
A soft chime rippled across his vision.
[Clue Logged: Luxury Perfume Fixative (Bylon Guild)][Route Idea: North Gate Flacon-Seller → Guild Supplier][Spy's Mind: Progress +1]
Brayl capped the pouch, tied it with a neat sailor's knot, and tucked it into the inner fold of her cloak. "I'll map the scent trail at first light. The city wakes with the sun; scents are cleanest right before."
He gestured to the bed. "Leave the blankets as they are. If anyone else comes, they find a boy sleeping and waste their only trick."
She hesitated. "And if they don't use powder the second time?"
"Then I won't, either."
He crossed to the wardrobe and pulled the doors open a finger's width. The assassin slept where he had placed him, a too-tidy bundle, the cloak's edge hiding the face. Brayl's gaze held for a heartbeat, then she closed her eyes, breathed, and when she opened them again the water in her steadied. She had fought long enough not to flinch at bodies. She still disliked them.
"I'll take the lattice files," she said. "They'll be missing in the morning if any steward bothers to audit the window fittings. Better they go missing than someone writes 'murder' in ink."
He nodded. She slid a glimmering ribbon of water from her sleeve, wrapped it like a glove around the tiny tools she found wedged in the sill, and drew them out without a sound. The water re-absorbed into her skin with a soft hiss.
She moved to the door. "Two hours," she said. "Then knock if you must. If not, I'll return before sunup."
He touched the side of the door and shook his head. "No knock. Twice on the lower hinge. It squeaks. I'll know it's you."
A ghost of a smile. "Twice on the hinge."
She vanished into the corridor and was gone the way a wave slips back into itself.
Red stood alone again. The lavender seemed louder now, cloying. He crossed to the brazier and pinched it out, let the night into the room. He leaned on the sill and listened to Arleina breathe—distant hoofprints, a late cart, the faint scrape of a prow on the palace canal.
The Light Spear had shattered in his hands and left wonder and fear like a stain. The palace would turn that stain into threads and tug until something broke. He could not let it be him.
He cleaned the table with a cloth, then burned the cloth in a candle flame and ground the ash with a heel of bread until it looked like nothing. He set the blowpipe at the assassin's belt. He folded the cloak over the face again, not for respect—he wasn't sure he had any to give—but because blankness was safer than eyes.
He tried the bed and found it too soft. He lay on the floor beside it, on the hard strip of carpet at the edge, where the world felt honest and the draft from the window fixed the air in a straight line. He closed his eyes, but didn't pretend sleep. Spies rested in layers. Somewhere, in the deep coil behind his ribs, a streak of light he hadn't asked for and hadn't owned sank and settled like a shard of noon.
He didn't know if the weapon would answer him again. He didn't know if he wanted it to.
He did know the smell now. Smoky-sweet, with a cool finish. A scent he would find again in the morning on silk sellers and flacon sleeves and wrists that waved in the council chamber as if nothing in the world had teeth.
A thin line connected this room to those wrists. He had one end of it. By dawn, he intended to have the other.
The palace held its breath. Somewhere, a hinge murmured in its sleep.
[Hidden Quest Active: Trace the Smugglers]First Objective: Identify the flacon-seller at the North Gate.Optional: Keep the council uninformed.Failure = Trail goes cold, increased assassination attempts.Reward = Evidence, leverage, ???
He opened his eyes again to darkness and lavender and the shape of a bed he would not use.
And waited for the hinge to whisper twice.