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

"The dessert is poisoned," Zelina announced, serving herself the first portion. "Just in case anyone was thinking of trying it before me."

"Then why are you eating it?" Calista asked.

"Immunity. Twenty years of small doses." Zelina savored the spoonful with her eyes closed. "Besides, I poisoned it myself. I know what’s in it."

"And why poison a dessert at your own dinner?"

"Principles. A table where I can kill everyone is a table where I am comfortable."

That was how the first dinner between the emperor and his five wives was going since the decrees.

I had called it, against everyone’s advice, including my own experience.

The letter from the north had arrived at dawn, from Zelina’s second-best informant, paid for with my gold and read by both of us in the study before breakfast.

The village of Alden existed, just like the hero.

And that was where the normal part of the report ended: nobody in the village remembered the boy before he was eleven.

No midwife, no birth record, not a single neighbor with a story of Roderic as a child.

The hero of the north had started existing, whole and charismatic, on a random winter... the exact same year Chancellor Vanthel made his only documented visit to the northern border.

Zelina and I agreed to keep that information to ourselves.

And now, the dinner.

"Subject convenes social gathering with no apparent tactical motive," Saoirse dictated to her notebook, her plate untouched.

"Hypothesis one: threat assessment. Hypothesis two: mass poisoning. Hypothesis three..."

She looked up, studied me for three seconds. "Discarded as improbable."

"What was number three?"

"That you enjoy our company."

"Put it back on the list."

Saoirse blinked, crossed out, rewrote. "Reinstated. Probability: two percent."

"Last week it was zero," I said. "I am moving up."

On the other side of the table, Miralys cut her meat in silence.

Across from her, Calista had blessed every dish, including the poisoned dessert, which generated an exchange of looks between the saint and the poisoner worthy of a border treaty.

"Are you blessing my poison?" Zelina asked.

"I bless the entire table. The gods decide which part to listen to."

"Your gods have selective criteria."

"All criteria are."

Calista smiled with that double-edged sweetness of hers.

"Yours, for example, decided the emperor no longer deserves aconite. You have gone three weeks without trying."

Zelina’s fork stopped halfway.

Miralys looked up from her plate.

First time during the dinner, and she looked up at Calista, not at me, with something that on any other face would have been the beginning of a smile.

The saint had just stuck a needle into the queen of poisons, with the voice of a prayer, and the war princess had enjoyed it.

I took note: the alliances at this table moved underneath, where I couldn’t reach yet.

"I haven’t suspended anything," Zelina said at last. "I am... recalibrating."

"Three weeks is a lot of calibration."

"Some subjects resist measurement," Saoirse intervened, without looking up, and nobody knew if she was defending Zelina or sinking her, and I suspect she didn’t either.

"Since we are talking about measurements," Calista continued, turning her water glass, "I have one too. The orphan wing in the lower district received coal this winter for the first time in five years. The quartermaster swears it was an accounting error."

Her gaze crossed the table, stopped on Zelina for a moment, then on me.

"Two identical accounting errors, what a careless empire we have."

Zelina focused on her dessert with sudden attention and I did the same with my wine.

The saint had caught us both in the same sentence, each with our clandestine charity, and had the mercy not to finish us off.

The tyrant’s memories didn’t include this version of Calista: the one who saw everything, blessed everything, and collected her dues in silence.

"Coal burns better without an audit," Miralys said.

Five heads turned.

The war princess had spoken at the table, voluntarily, and what came out was dry northern humor.

Saoirse broke the silence turning a page. "Logging group anomaly. The dinner continues."

I looked at the whole table.

Five women who a month ago shared a single project, killing me, were now discussing the project’s delay with the awkwardness of partners who no longer remember why they founded the company.

The knocks on the door arrived with the second wine.

Decimus entered without waiting for an answer, chancellor’s courtesy, and swept the scene with a single inventory glance: the emperor dining with his five assassins, all alive, all seated, none chained.

"Your Majesty. Ladies." A perfect bow. "I apologize for interrupting the... experiment."

"Chancellor. Did you come to try the dessert? It is poisoned, but it comes with a blessing."

"I decline both courtesies." He turned to me. "Two minutes, Your Majesty. Alone."

"There is no ’alone’ here, Decimus. Whatever I must hear, they hear too."

Mistake or move, I decided it in the moment and stood by it.

Decimus measured the table again, recalculated, and for the first time since I’d known him, accepted a board he didn’t choose.

"As you wish. I come to offer you the solution to all your problems."

He clasped his hands behind his back.

"The court is boiling, the army murmurs, the Church asks questions. A tyrant who redeems himself is a threat to all the balances this empire needs. So I propose a simple treaty."

"I am listening."

"Continue being hated in public so bring back the monster outside these doors: the cruel decrees, the iron face, the functional lightning rod, and behind closed doors..."

His gaze swept the table, the five women, the absurd dinner.

"Do whatever you want and redeem yourself in private as much as you like. The empire keeps its monster, you keep your... garden. Everyone wins."

The silence at the table turned mineral.

"And if I refuse?"

"Then the empire will need to find itself another monster, Your Majesty, or worse: it will need to manufacture a martyr to replace you."

He bowed again, flawless, and walked toward the door.

"You have until the plenary hearing the day after tomorrow. A piece of advice: sleep on it... or consult it with the five of them. In the end, it is their freedom you would be mortgaging as well."

The door closed behind him, and five pairs of eyes turned to me all at once.

"Well," Zelina said, serving herself more poisoned dessert. "At least now we know what we were celebrating."