‘It’s very possible they will kill you as soon as you open that door.’ Iris realized and struggled for a moment to stop the shaking in her limbs. ‘They have no reason to keep their promises to you even if you’d done what they wanted.’ She swallowed, ‘By now the guard at the service entrance will have gone for help just to be sure…’ She looked down at herself, immediately wishing she had something to wear, then cursed, ‘What does it matter if you die naked?’ She shook her head in derision of the pointless thought.

‘If this is it… I never imagined I’d be willing to… certainly not for that family… but if that’s how it is, I am a noblewoman of Abacleon… I won’t disgrace myself now!’ She fixed her resolve as the knock came to the door again.

“I’m coming.” Iris said and approached the door. She undid the latches and bolts to open it up again. She wore a catlike expression, a little cheshire smirk as she stepped aside to admit the assassins. There were a dozen, and how long it took them all to filter up the long hall that stretched the space outside the only suite on the upper floor, Iris could only guess. ‘They probably hid in various supply closets over the course of hours… real thought went into this.’ They slipped in on silent feet, their shoes freshly bound with rags for silent movement. They drew knives and short swords that glowed faintly with magic.

“Bodyguards?” The leader whispered, she felt their distracted eyes roaming over her, but did nothing to conceal herself. Instead she put a hand on her hip and closed the door gently. She recognized him, her client.

“I sent them out.” Iris said truthfully, “You have at least a few minutes, my Lord.” Iris turned her eyes from him to the bedroom door across the wide open room.

“He is in there?” The leader asked while his fellow assassins spread out.

“Yes, I left him in bed and… even without a paralytic, he’s drained.” She whispered the crude joke, and out of the twelve, six had to cover their mouths.

She wore her arrogant, self assured smile while inside she quaked with fear. Her heart was threatening to expose her truthful lies by ripping its way out of her chest with the force of its throbbing.

“Wait here.” Her client said, and raising a hand, he gestured forward, they approached the door to the bedroom.

None of them were especially large men, barely taller than herself, of mixed complexions of the sort usually found on the coast. Each was clean shaven, allowing them to blend in with the rest of the hotel staff, and each appeared bulkier than they probably were. After seeing arena bouts for some time, when their backs were turned to her, Iris smirked. ‘Smart enough to know Gottfried would have to be paralyzed for them to stand a chance. They’re dead men as he is.’

Part of her wondered if the client’s story was true.

Most of her didn’t care. Instead she backed away as they went forward. Iris watched and waited.

The double doors opened, and they slipped inside. Whether by force of habit or by intent, she wasn’t sure, but Iris was lucky, the last to enter the bedroom closed the door behind himself.

She spun on her heel and breathing hard as if she’d run a marathon, her hands flew over the locks and latches to secure the door.

‘None of you fuckers will escape.’ She vowed, then waited.

And within, she heard the chaos erupt.

For reasons she could not explain, Iris could not help but smile.

Gottfried could all but read their thoughts as they came into the room, from where he lay, hidden on the other side of the bed he was unable to see them. But he didn’t need to. ‘I didn’t think it would be this easy.’ That, he predicted, was what they were thinking.

“Paralyzed or not, I’m pretty sure you can still hear, so carry this to your grave. This is for my brother, for every victim of your family, and for myself. I hope your father hears about this soon, and I hope he mourns you forever.”

Gottfried heard the assassin’s words and his blood ran cold. ‘My father?!’ He shot to his feet from where he lay. The knives and short swords were still high over the heads of the would-be killers when the Gladiator Prince interrupted them. “What does my father have to do with any of this?!” Gottfried demanded to know, and for just a half second, the entire room was frozen.

Shock and alarm raced across their faces as the strongest man in the world shouted his question. Very much not in bed, very much not paralyzed, and very much in full armor.

The killers and the Prince had a shared moment of stupid realization between them. When suddenly Xagen and Xagin burst out from behind the killers with battle cries and weapons held in hand.

Gottfried acted in the same instant, and the dozen killers, caught between the three, were both outmaneuvered, outarmed, and outnumbered in principle if not in fact. Their plan cast to the winds, the twelve rushed to fight or to flee according to their temperament, and quickly got in one another’s way.

The crack of bones, spray of blood, and chaotic cries emerged as men tripped over one another. Gottfried’s sword came up and severed a hand from a wrist, easily adjusting his strike to disarm his opponent. The lightly armored assassin fell back as blood sprayed out of his stump, a howl of pain he barely understood as his own sprang from his throat as he hit the ground with a thud that blended into the rest.

‘Traitorous bitch… traitorous bitch, the traitorous bitch! She set us up…! Why?! Why?!’ Peel asked himself as he crawled away, a brief respite was his, he realized when he looked back. The dozen were down to six, but Peel himself had fallen clear.

He caught sight of his hand, it still held the dagger clutched in his hateful fingers. He grabbed it with his remaining hand sprang up to make a dash for the door.

He flung it open and slammed it back. Peel’s eyes fell on the exit, all the latches and locks were in place, barring him from the safety beyond.

“You did this!” He rasped in pain, clutching close to his body, the stump and the hand which had been part of it. His eyes were locked on the naked whore that sat at the suite bar as if there was not a massacre of screaming and dying men taking place in the room beyond.

Iris had poured a drink beforehand, and was sitting with one leg crossed over the other on a marble topped stool. Her dark hair bounced at the small of her back when she looked at him.

Peel could feel his strength fading, shock was setting in, ‘I’m going to die.’

He began to stagger toward her, “You were dumb enough to trust me.” Iris pointed out, her heart was racing, his blood was streaming down the stump, and vanishing into other bloody stains belonging to him and his comrades.

‘I have to buy time…’ Iris told herself and took a drink. “So it’s really all your fault. I’m a traitor, but I’m his traitor and that’s all there is to it.” She then snatched up the bottle of priceless wine and flung it with all her might over the distance between them.

End over end it spun for a timeless second, she shouted when she let it loose, red wine pinwheeled out as it did, and then the bottle shattered against his face.

He fell backwards in a spray of blood as glass shards tore into him, howls of pain filled the open room. “You bitch! You bitch! My eyes!” Peel screamed as darkness and pain swallowed him whole, he rolled back and forth on the floor, his missing hand forgotten, he clawed at his face with stump and intact fingers alike. He missed that his were the last screams to be heard, and his screams drowned out the sound of footsteps approaching him.

But he could not miss the sound of the door flying inward, skipping over the floor and scattering debris until it was embedded in the far wall. Immediately he knew the woman’s voice when he heard her bellowing out, “Gottfried! Gottfried are you alright?!”

Peel’s cries of pain became moans as he forced himself to sit up, he flailed around, finding his missing hand, he pried open the fingers that had once been his and held the knife close to his chest. “Fuck you… and your son…” He spat blood in the direction of the Mother of Terror, and flung himself in the last known direction of the traitorous whore.

Iris stood aside and watched while he flung himself toward where she had been. ‘I suppose all that time practicing knife throwing came in handy… I really didn’t expect that bottle to do that much damage… but, lucky break.’ She told herself, a preternatural calm settled over her as the assassin flung himself forward, from his seated position even if he’d intended harm to her, there was very little chance of it.

But when he sank his own blade into his own flesh, she understood that was not his intent.

The dead man near her feet, and the blood that ran over to pool in the gaps between her toes, he was nothing. Iris’ full attention was on the force of nature that had smashed her way within, destroying the door and part of the wall. ‘That has to be her, that has to be Gottfried’s mother…’

Unable to think of what else to do, with bright blue eyes from the Mother of Terror fixed on her and filled with suspicion. Iris’ heart pounding harder than it had the entire day, she chose to descend to her knees.

“Are you with them?” The blonde Princess demanded, her sword in hand and leveled at Iris’ throat. A mother’s fear and a warrior’s fury mingled like typhoon winds in the Eyes of Terror, and Iris raised her chin in a futile attempt to avoid the blade.

“Mother, don’t!” Gottfried shouted from where he stood, he strode over to them both, grabbed Eniera’s blade, and began to force it inexorably away from Iris’ throat.

Iris swallowed with relief while her lover interposed himself between her and his mother while holding the blade locked in his hand. The edge seemingly doing nothing to his palm, he forced the older woman back a pace. Behind her, Iris saw a small number of cloaked and hooded anonymous figures, and they too, stepped back when a low rumble came up at Gottfried’s defiance.

“Will you put to the sword the woman who risked her life for me?!” He snapped, and it had an immediate effect, even from where Iris stood, the pressure of towering wrath that remained a constant threat, suddenly vanished.

As if she came back to her senses, Eniera released her hold on the hilt of the sword and embraced him. “My boy… I was on my way back here, I’d planned to go see your little whore in person, only to learn she’d come here. Then I was alerted to assassins coming for you… I thought… I thought she… everything I was afraid of…” Eniera squeezed him in an embrace that would have snapped the spine of a lesser man, and Gottfried kissed her forehead.

“Mother… I’m fine, everything is fine… everyone is fine… except…” He looked down at the dead assassin and then pointed past his bodyguards to the bedroom where the limp arm of a body in a pool of blood was clearly visible. “Except the obvious. Now please… I’m going to ask you again, don’t call her that. Didn’t you hear what I said, she risked her life for me, at least call her by name.”

Eniera, as chastened as she was relieved, stepped back and looked past them to the naked woman on her knees. The Princess raised her chin a little, indicating that the slave could speak.

“Iris. Iris Vansi Valoisin, my Lady.” Iris said, and then cleared her throat, “I’m… I’m sure the Mistress has many questions but…” She looked past the Princess to her escort, “may I get dressed first?”

Eniera snapped out of whatever remaining daze the rush of events had put her into, and nodded, “Yes… yes. Do that, but hurry.”

The Princess then averted her eyes so that she would not end up seeing the obvious. ‘It’s one thing to take my son to a Xanadu… it’s a very different thing to see proof of what he did on the woman he did it with.’ She rubbed her forehead while the slave beat a hasty retreat into the bedroom.

“This is the strangest day of my life.” Eniera muttered and sat heavily down on a stool by the bar, and tried to ignore the fact that the stone was still warm.

“That’s true for both of us, mother, that’s true for both of us.” Gottfried stepped over the corpse and sat beside her. The bodyguards of his own and the little group of people he recognized as a quiver of his mother’s ‘Arrows’ seemed to feel almost as awkward as he and his mother did, if their shuffling feet were any indication. Their various glances randomly around the room as they found inconsequential things suddenly fascinating.

“Leave us… secure the area, we need to settle this as a family.” Eniera gave the merciful order, and the mother and son soon found themselves waiting alone for the return of the Prince’s… ‘Whore’? ‘Lover’? Iris. I’ll just call her ‘Iris’ for now.’ Eniera concluded, and set the sword down on the dark wooden bar behind her to wait impatiently for the answers that Iris would bring her.