Overlooking an enlarged basketball court-shaped hall from a balcony, a minstrel strummed a guitar-like instrument. His ceaseless song, full of forced levity, competed with the clamor of ceramics and lively conversation emanating from an array of segregated tables below. The most decorated one played host to royalty and high-ranking nobles, including Malten’s queen and her indigo-eyed daughter.

Less influential guests and castle residents sat at increasingly longer tables, their plates emptier than their lords’. They didn’t seem to mind. Even if the most powerful had the largest selection of fish and meats available to them, no one here went hungry or thirsty. Wealth disparity and citywide famine didn’t spoil this party.

However, unlike the rampant wine consumption and full-bellied laughter suggested, the purpose of tonight’s banquet wasn’t to bring jollity to the ruling class. A truth apparent to anyone who knew about the castle’s locked front gate. About the heavily monitored hallways. About the spies rummaging through guest rooms, searching unattended belongings for anything that indicated Church informants taking residence inside.

Dimitry was no different. Stood against a wall, he observed attendees through the grill-like holes in his helmet’s visor. The intention was to allow him to detect liars while keeping his own identity a secret. Only the queen’s most trusted subordinates could differentiate him from the other fully armored personnel lining the hall.

A necessary precaution.

As a person who arrived in the city less than two weeks ago but was overly familiar with the princess and wielded more influence than any court surgeon should, Dimitry was the target of many people’s suspicion. And rightfully so. They didn’t even know about the corrupted creature hiding under his helmet.

Her wings reverberating like tiny wind chimes, Precious tugged on Dimitry’s earlobe. “Come on!”

“Can you stop screeching into my ear?”

“Can you get me some grapes?”

“No.”

“Then I won’t stop screeching into your ear.”

Dimitry sighed. Although the Church wasn’t a group he admired, he couldn’t help but agree with their stance on faeries. “For the last time, after this is over, I’ll get you all the fruit your little heart desires.”

“But they’re right there!” Her tiny and golden fingernail pointed through a gap in his visor. “Look!”

“If I get too close to Amelie’s table and someone hears you, you’ll be put to death, and I’ll be locked away in a dungeon. Not to mention how suspicious it’ll be for a knight to grab food from his master’s plate. Is a grape worth dying for?”

“You worry too much, Dumitry. You’re basically best buds with the queen. It’ll be fine.”

“I know you’re excited about your first royal banquet, but we’re not here as guests.”

Precious leaned back against his cheek. “Like I care about some stupid dinner party.” Her voice befitting a spoiled child, she scanned a room full of vibrant chatter with longing, golden irises.

“Hey.”

“What?”

“Do you want to join them?”

“Me? No way.” She tugged on his nose. “I just want grapes.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can smell your pity, you oaf. Save it for your patients.”

Dimitry grinned. For someone who was supposedly three hundred years old, the faerie didn’t hide her feelings very well. “Want to make a deal?”

“What are you on about now?”

“If you help me capture every Church informant here, I promise you’ll be able to travel the castle freely one day. That includes permission to attend banquets.”

Precious didn’t respond immediately. “You’re not lying, which means you’re just a hopeful idiot.”

“Am I? I convinced the queen to acknowledge Leylani, so what makes you so much different? Aside from your big mouth and lack of grace.”

“Fish lady walks around in a long robe all day. Most people here don’t even know she exists. If they did, they’d kill her faster than she could gurgle in protest.”

“For now.” Dimitry looked at the incredulous faerie grasping a strand of his dirty blonde hair in a tiny hand. “It’ll take time, but people will come around. Especially once they learn that ‘corrupted creatures’ aren’t as evil as the Church makes them out to be.”

She glanced through his visor once more, dragging her eyes past celebrating, wine-intoxicated nobles. “Really?”

“With your help, it’s more than a possibility. What do you say?”

“Fine.”

“And you’ll do it without complaining?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

Perhaps Dimitry expected too much from her. His attention returned to the festivities only to discover a wrinkled finger beckoning him closer.

It belonged to an aging queen sat beside a dozen other influential men and women wearing bright colors and delicate furs. In front of them, a gilded granite table overflowed with plates carrying everything from honey glazed pork belly to grilled fish. A feast fit for nobles. For royalty.

Every step eliciting iron clattering from his surprisingly light armor, Dimitry strode forward. He nodded at Saphiria—the princess that helped him dress and hide a faerie under his helmet—and knelt beside Amelie Pesce’s chair. “How may I be of service, Your Majesty?”

She dabbed her mouth with a white handkerchief and lowered it, revealing alcohol-reddened cheeks and a deceiving smile. “This is the knight I spoke of.”

Although the party-goers were eager to display courtesy with elaborate mannerisms when the banquet began, nobles now watched Dimitry with amused faces as if waiting for him to perform a trick.

All part of the plan.

Relaxed nobles were easier to question for ties to the Church.

“A single knight quelled the aquatic demons?” A man with furrowed brows asked. “May I ask how?”

“Richter was there,” the queen said.

The portly marquis dropped his spoon into a porcelain bowl and grumbled. “He cut through a dozen of them while cantering past javelins and spears. When the beasts lost their will to fight, Olbrecht here spared their leader.”

“Wow!” a girl exclaimed. Although the same age as the raven-haired princess sitting across from her, she didn’t have the same reticent charm. “Dad, did anyone in the Einritter ever do that before?”

“They will when you rebuild them and our home.”

A woman wearing a long and flowery dress rested her chin on her hand. “I’ve heard the rumors, but to think they were true…”

“You need not doubt them.” Amelie patted the tail of a giant, grilled fish. “For the first time in nearly a decade, sturgeon graces our halls once more.”

“I thought you imported it from Ontaria.”

“Demons truly avoid your ships?”

“A toast to the queen who conquered the ocean!”

More than a dozen wine glasses full of scarlet liquid clinked.

Precious’s golden hair tickled Dimitry’s ear when she leaned in to whisper. “That’s not how I remember it happening, Knight Olbrecht.”

Out of respect for the myrmidon, Dimitry wanted to jump to his feet and correct Richter’s fabricated story.

He resisted the urge.

The marquis’s lie was born from necessity. Claiming that humanity’s superiority resulted in the aquatic demons’ passiveness stroked the listener’s ego and was more plausible than the truth. Few would believe that a shaky truce emerged from negotiations with a species whose speech comprised unintelligible gurgles. Only once people accepted corrupted creatures as benevolent could Dimitry introduce them as allies. Until then, he would bear the guilt of undermining a respectful race.

Having drunk his fill of booze, a man previously composed edged forward. “If I return to Volmer to relay the news, would my men be able to fish in those same waters?”

“No,” Amelie said. “The demons see none but us as their conquerors. However, there may be another way to win their respect.”

“Another way?”

“I would say more, but I don’t wish to insult my honorable guests with sacrilegious speech.”

All visible signs of intoxication gone in an instant, a man in a bright green mantle eyed his neighbors with calculating gazes. The woman across from him and several others sat around the table did the same. They whispered. Before long, every high-ranking noble and member of foreign royalty nodded in agreement.

“Amelie, although I respect the teachings, Ontaria and Feyt send too few supplies to keep Volmer fed. If you truly have a method to pacify aquatic demons, I wish to learn them.”

“We, too, are in agreement.”

“My sorceresses saw Her Royal Majesty’s ships return to port unharmed. I believed it was due to a vastly superior army, but Her Majesty has gone far beyond our expectations.”

“Does everyone wish to know?” Amelie asked.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I do.”

“Very well.” The queen gave Dimitry a knowing glance before continuing. “I share this knowledge for the benefit of us all, but before I do, I require a verbal commitment from everyone.”

The trap was set.

Dimitry dragged his eyes away from the holes in his visor, then glanced at his faerie companion. “Ready?” he whispered.

“Yep,” Precious said. “Watch for anyone lying, right?”

“Right.” He stood up.

A man leaned forward, his tunic’s puffy collar nearly dipping into the sauce slathered onto his plate. “What kind of commitment?”

“The words I will speak are heretical.” Amelie grimaced. “Anyone who wishes to hear them must promise they won’t report my sacrilege to the Church. That they’re not a spy. I’ve become paranoid in my old age, you see.”

As if discovering an abusable loophole, the woman wearing a flowery dress smirked. “You have my word.”

“And mine.”

“I sense someone scheming something on the other side of the table,” Precious whispered.

Were they a Church informant? Careful to avoid the attention of entranced nobles, Dimitry followed her guidance.

“I am no spy, Your Majesty.”

“Me neither.”

After a volley of agreeing words, the last noble spoke. “Nor am I.”

“That one!” Precious jumped into Dimitry’s visor, her green wings tickling his nose. “The one in a gaudy brown dress!”

Dimitry subtly pointed to the man beside him and held up a finger to indicate the discovery of one suspect.

A court sorceress watching from across the room nodded in response before glancing at Richter.

The portly marquis tapped the queen’s lower arm and glanced back at Dimitry. “Olbrecht, you’re no longer needed here. Return to your duties.”

“Yes, Your Lordship.” Iron armor rattling all the way, Dimitry headed to the next table.

They found one Church spy.

Were there others?

After countless hours spent ‘interviewing’ Amelie’s guests and staff, morning must have already come. It was impossible to know for sure. There were no windows. Only enchanted stones lit the castle’s dungeon, their dim lights revealing long and narrow walkways with iron-barred cells on both sides. While most were empty, the ones that weren’t imprisoned everyone from thieves to counterfeiters.

Dimitry didn’t dare look at their hopeless faces, mired in dirt and remnants of pottage. Their rooms, smelling of blood and vomit. Their digits, inflamed and black with frostbite. Dysentery, malnutrition, and impending death.

Sights he could do without.

Prisons were a necessary vice in every culture, but those in a medieval society under siege by famine, winter, and stone giants were the worst of all. How many prisoners wilted away here for crimes they committed to survive?

Was the queen to blame for their suffering?

Probably not.

A cold-hearted ruler would kill lawbreakers to avoid the expense and effort of feeding them. Amelie kept hers alive despite dwindling resources.

Regardless, discomfort welled within Dimitry. It was one thing to watch people struggle for survival on an operating table—they had a fighting chance. The inmates here wouldn’t live to see spring. And now, thanks to Dimitry’s efforts, three additional prisoners lived in this dungeon: a Malten baroness, a traveling minstrel, and a former earl of Einheart. Although they were Church informants, none of them deserved to die here. No one did.

The sound of clanking metal echoed across poorly hewn walls. It came from a portly man in glowing steel armor. “Hey, you,” Marquis Richter groaned. “Where did you learn your truth magic?”

Dimitry met his gaze. “I learned it from a book, Your Lordship.”

“Where is it?”

“At home.”

“Go get it.”

“Unfortunately, the home I speak of is in another country far away from here.”

Richter frowned. “Can’t you teach my men without it?”

Dimitry did his best to ignore a prisoner’s faltering whimpers. “Your Lordship, may I ask why you’ve taken a sudden interest in my magic?”

“Because it works.” The man too overweight to be wearing a knight’s garbs paced back and forth. “Both the troubadour and Emery admitted to spying for the Church, and we’ve found evidence in their belongings.”

An excruciating scream echoed from the dungeon depths.

“And, from the sound of things, we’ll probably get a third confession soon.” Richter stopped. “Well? Can you teach them or not?”

Dragging his eyes away from an inmate whose thin rags couldn’t conceal his protruding ribcage, Dimitry leaned back against a wall. The ‘magic’ the marquis referred to was Precious’s ability to sense emotion. Although Richter and most of the queen’s close associates had contact with Leylani, it was still too early for Dimitry to reveal the corrupted creature hiding under his cloak.

But he would eventually.

Introducing Precious to the nobles would not only grant her the freedom she needed to roam the castle on her own, but it was a step in Dimitry’s plan. One that brewed in his mind ever since he visited Malten’s countryside.

Taming wild faeries.

Mobile and intelligent, they made for perfect messengers. Or was it just a foolish thought? If it were an easy task, someone would have trained them long ago despite the Church’s teachings. But it was worth a try. Especially since their lie detection ability proved desirable to the marquis—a bargaining chip Dimitry intended to trade for Richter’s assistance in his plant crossbreeding project.

Judging by the conversation Dimitry overheard when the portly man visited his hospital, Richter knew more about farming than anyone else in Malten. His help was invaluable for improving harvests.

An urgent issue.

If the famine continued, most of this city’s residents would die. The bony criminals in these dungeon cells didn’t deserve to starve for their transgressions, considering that stealing to assuage hunger was the reason most of them wound up here.

Dimitry looked up from his leather boots. “Your Lordship, as much as I would like to help you, there’s something else consuming most of my time right now.”

“Your cathedral?”

“It’s related. Did you know that poor nutrition retards wound healing?”

“What’s your point?”

“Most of my patients don’t get enough to eat.”

“You mean those putrid refugees? Why should I care?”

“Because I might have a solution.” Dimitry took a deep breath. “I think I can make fields grow bigger and heartier plants.”

The marquis’s eyes opened wide. Then, as if finally understanding the punchline to an unintentional joke, he bellowed a patronizing laugh. “A surgeon tending to crops? Stick to what you’re good at.”

“Like Your Lordship implies, I know little about agriculture.”

“Little? You know nothing.”

“I don’t disagree.” Hiding his contempt, Dimitry maintained a calm expression. “But while I don’t have knowledge, I have something no one else in this world does.”

“What’s that?”

“A spell that may increase yields.”

“Hrm.” Richter rolled his neck. “More powerful magic?”

“Yes, Your Lordship. However, magic alone isn’t enough to solve my problem. That is why I humbly request your expertise.”

“With what?”

“I want to improve the quality of seeds used in fields across Malten.”

“Impossible! My ancestors have been growing the same crops for generations. What can you possibly do?”

“Perhaps nothing, but I am the type to dedicate myself to foolish efforts.”

Another tortured scream rolled through the dungeon.

A devious smirk spread across Richter’s face. “How about this? I’ll give you the help you need. Then, when you realize you’ve been wasting my time, you will teach my men your truth magic.”

“You have my word.”

“Good. What did you want from me?”

“I need seeds for spring and summer crops that grow well in Malten’s soil.”

“Wheat and samul?”

Samul? Dimitry heard of it before. It was a type of bean. “Yes, Your Lordship. I hope for as many varieties of both as possible. Big breeds, different colors, those that survive cold weather, grow faster than others, survive drough—”

The marquis frowned. “That’s it?”

“Just one more thing. Can you place a farmer under my care with experience growing both plants? I don’t mind paying them.”

“Dimitry,” a monotonous voice echoed from where screams did moments ago. “Come here.”

“I’ll handle their wage.” Richter waved Dimitry away. “Just remember your promise to me when you fail. Now go see what that useless spymaster wants.”

“Yes, Your Lordship.” Pleased to end his negotiations with a dismissive noble, Dimitry strode past downtrodden prisoners.

His destination was a cell isolated from the rest of the dungeon in both proximity and design. A chandelier hung over a floor more spacious than any cottage’s. Inside was a nightstand, a dresser, and a four-poster bed upholding a shivering Einheart earl with chained hands and legs.

Looking down at him was a short man missing a finger. Lukas shoved his pinky-less hand into his pocket when Dimitry entered the cell. “I need to know if Sire Fritz is telling the truth.”

Dimitry approached the huddled earl. Despite screaming for hours, a quick examination of his body showed no injuries. His traumatized eyes and slinking posture, however, indicated otherwise. “Was torture necessary?”

“He didn’t want to speak. Every moment counts when dealing with the Church.”

“What if the other nobles found out we kidnapped him?”

“We made sure they won’t.” Lukas glanced back, his face cold and emotionless. “Assuming you don’t tell them.”

A chill shot down Dimitry’s spine. “Let’s get this over with.”

Lukas sat next to his victim. “Sire Fritz, when was the last time you reported to the pontiff?”

“I-I don’t get to speak to her.”

“Then who?”

“I c-can’t—If he finds out, he’ll kill my daughter.”

“He?”

The earl remained silent.

Lukas retrieved a vol pellet and grabbed the captive’s forehead with his pinky-less hand. “Are you sure you don’t want to—”

“Wait!” Sire Fritz was hyperventilating. “H-his name is Asmoden.”

“The cardinal?”

“Please don’t tell anyone. I beg you. They’ll really murder Enneleyn… please.”

After three pinches against his abdomen from a faerie trembling with subdued laughter, Dimitry stepped forward. “Sire Fritz is telling the truth.” Full of pity, he looked down at the earl. “Do you know where they’re keeping your daughter?”

“Purin Stronghold.” Tearful fury welled within the earl’s eyes. “I saw her there before the night of repentance. Those bastards dressed her in a gray robe as if she were some kind of ceremonial priestess.”

“What kind of information did Cardinal Asmoden want in return for her safety?” Lukas asked.

“He demanded to know if I saw anything strange.”

“Did you do what he asked?”

“I-I only sent a messenger with news of the princess’s arrival so far. I was to send another at the end of the week—”

“So nothing regarding corrupted creatures?” Dimitry asked.

“No… but it’s only a matter of time before the Church finds out.”

Lukas rubbed his hands. “Are you saying there are other informants?”

“There’s no doubt.”

“I thought I caught all the ones in the castle,” Dimitry said. “Or did I miss someone?”

“That’s not it.” The earl watched his shaking palms with glazed over eyes. “I don’t know who they are, where they live, or what they do, but I know they exist.”

Getting rid of the Church proved more annoying than Dimitry hoped. He turned to exit the cell but stopped midway. “Lukas.”

“Yes?”

“Is it possible to keep sending messengers to Purin Stronghold as if they came from the earl himself?”

“Why?” The prisoner asked with wide-open eyes.

“To feed the cardinal conflicting information.” Lukas paused. “If done poorly, we’ll only make our intervention obvious.”

“But we caught every informant here,” Dimitry said. “If we delivered falsified intelligence on behalf of all of them, the Church will have no choice but to accept our lies as true.”

“Asmoden isn’t someone who would trust three spies to keep tabs on an entire country.”

Dimitry massaged his temples. Hopefully, this Asmoden wouldn’t become a problem. “Are you saying he has other informants?”

“It’s safe to assume that countless people loyal to him wander Malten’s streets, and I don’t have the manpower to find them all. Your idea would only work in the short-term.”

“We should try anyway. Falsifying contact with the Church will avoid suspicion and guarantee Sire Fritz’s daughter’s safety long enough to figure out what to do next.”

“M-my daughter?” the earl uttered. “If it’ll keep her alive, I’ll help in any way I can.”

Lukas’s emotionless eyes traveled from Dimitry to Sire Fritz. After muttering something to himself, he nodded. “Very well. I’ll be needing both of you again.”