The Hero System Glitched And Now It Pays Me to Love My Assassin Wives

"You are going to explain to me why," Lunara said, "before you sign that in front of the court. To me. In full words."

We were alone in the antechamber of the tribunal.

On the other side of the double doors waited half the court, the dying scribe, and the most expensive pardon of my reign on a lectern with fresh ink.

"The poisoner’s confession was bought," I said. "Eleven years in prison for someone else’s crime. Signing the pardon isn’t the price of the testimony, Lunara. It’s fixing the first rotten case from a pile I am barely starting to smell."

"You don’t know that."

"I know it eighty percent. The rest I am betting on."

"And if you lose the bet? If you free the man who killed your father?"

"Then I will have freed the killer of a monster who raised another monster, in exchange for two hundred and thirteen clean names." I looked at her. "There are bets you win even when losing."

Lunara held my gaze for a long moment.

Then she did something I hadn’t seen her do: she adjusted the collar of my imperial coat, two quick fingers, an old squire’s gesture, and pulled away before it meant anything.

"Sign," she said. "I will carry the half of the court that wants to spit on you."

I signed.

The courtroom received the signature with three seconds of total silence, and then with the sound of three hundred people rewriting their loyalties all at once.

"The emperor pardons regicides!" someone shouted from the stands of the lesser houses.

"The emperor corrects courts," I answered without raising my voice, and Silver Tongue did the rest.

The phrase crossed the room with a weight that wasn’t mine, slipped under three hundred skins, and the shouting dropped two pitches without anyone understanding why they were obeying.

An unsettling weapon, the amplified truth. I took note to use it little.

Things that work too well always collect later.

On the side balcony, Zelina watched with her arms crossed.

When our looks crossed she raised an eyebrow, barely, a gesture that in her language came to say: I know you did something, I don’t know what, and it is costing me my patience not knowing it.

I held her gaze without giving her anything. Her eyebrow went up another millimeter.

Small pleasures of the office.

The court roared the rest of the session exactly as Decimus expected, the scribe wept over his cane, and the testimony he let loose was worth every drop of the scandal: the treason documents of the Orden Marr had arrived at the military tribunal already sealed, without origin, with an order not to verify.

The signature on that order belonged to the chancellor’s office.

Not the chancellor. His office. Decimus doesn’t leave footprints, he leaves rooms.

[DING]

[Investment Detected: you paid your reputation for the truth of others.]

[Evaluation: SS. Sincerity verified... 91%.]

[Reward ×100: dispensing...]

[Skill received: Silver Tongue (A)]

[Effect: your voice convinces. Multiplies the persuasion of every word.]

[Dispensing ERROR: the skill only works telling truths.]

[Enjoy it, HERO.]

I read the window twice and almost laughed in open court.

A persuasion buff that punished lies. My broken System had just gifted me the perfect tool with the cruelest lock possible, tailor-made for a man whose entire profession was telling selected truths.

With Silver Tongue active, I could no longer select.

"Your Majesty." Decimus intercepted me on the tribunal steps, the afternoon already falling. "A historic pardon. The court won’t speak of anything else in months."

"That was the idea, chancellor."

"May I give you a piece of advice from twenty years of trade?" He didn’t wait for permission. "Martyrs harvest statues. Kings harvest winters. You are sowing for the statue."

I tested the new skill right there, on him, with a simple truth.

"Chancellor." The voice came out differently. Heavier, cleaner, with a timbre that turned heads on the steps. "I know about the transferred witnesses."

Decimus blinked.

It was barely a blink, but in a man who doesn’t give away gestures, a blink is a hemorrhage.

"I don’t know what you are talking about, Your Majesty."

"I know. And you know that I know. Good afternoon."

I walked down the steps feeling his gaze on my back.

Zelina was waiting for me at the bottom, leaning against the column with the patience of someone who arrived first everywhere.

"Your voice," she said without preamble. "In the tribunal. Three hundred throats went quiet at once and none knows why. Neither do I, and that happens to me twice a decade."

"Good acoustics."

"Lie." She pushed off the column and walked at my pace, shoulder to shoulder, the exact distance between courtesy and something else. "And there is the interesting part, Your Majesty. I know when you lie. It is my only true talent. With you it works halfway, and the halves have me without sleep."

"Do you lose sleep over me, Flintstone?"

"I lose sleep over riddles." Her violet eyes went up sideways, with that slowness of hers that turned a look into a customs search. "You still don’t qualify as anything else."

"Still?"

"I despise men who listen too well." She quickened her pace and left me behind, which in her language wasn’t a retreat. It was a closed Chapter in her favor.

The blue window floated beside me the whole way back.

[Integrity: 37% ▼ 36%]

[Unsolicited advice: the truth is a weapon without a hilt.]

[Hold it carefully.]

That night I didn’t sleep thinking about the new skill’s lock.

A mediator lives off the partial truth. You show the eighty percent that is convenient, you keep the twenty that negotiates, and you call that professional honesty. My entire career fit in that arithmetic.

Silver Tongue didn’t accept percentages. With it active, every phrase was all or nothing, and the all came out amplified toward people who couldn’t defend themselves from the timbre.

My System had gifted me power in exchange for the only coin I never wanted to spend whole.

I was beginning to suspect that the glitched gifts weren’t inventory errors.

The road to the tribunal the next day crossed the old district, down Tilos avenue, escorting the scribe to his formal declaration before the military judges.

We never reached Tilos.

At the market crossing, Appraiser’s Eye lit up on its own over the roofs, marking silhouettes that no normal eye would have separated from the chimneys, and put a price on them in my vision with the coldness of an inventory.

[Crossbow: 40 crowns. Crossbow: 40 crowns. Crossbow: 40 crowns.]

[Real value of the formation: ambush.]