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

"Either you’re an impostor, or you’re more broken than my patience. Both options get you killed."

Zelina Flintstone walked into my study at three in the morning, without knocking, without guards announcing her, holding a piece of paper and wearing her working smile.

I recognized the paper before she dropped it on my desk.

A guild contract. Sealed, paid, in perfect order.

"I pulled it off the corpse of your visitor last night," she said. "Read it. The signature is the best part."

I read it.

I read it again, because the first time my brain refused to process it.

The order to kill Emperor Vaelion Ironveil bore the signature of Vaelion Ironveil himself, stroke for stroke, dated a month ago.

"It’s a forgery," I said.

"I’ve spent five years studying your handwriting, Your Majesty. I know your F’s better than my own." She sat on the edge of my desk, close, too close to be casual. "So explain it to me. Why does a man hire his own funeral... and a month later forget he did it?"

"He didn’t forget," I said slowly, thinking out loud. "The man who signed this is no longer available for questions."

"Dead men don’t sign."

"The living dead do."

Zelina tilted her head.

At this distance I could truly see her eyes, that dark violet the court called noble poison.

"Go on," she said.

"Think about it with your profession, not your grudge. A month ago, this body signed its own death sentence. Three days ago, this body started dodging poisons, freeing wives, and adopting candle boys. Your own theory said it first: either an impostor, or broken."

"And which one are you?"

"Does it matter? Either one suits you better than the original."

She laughed. A short, unintended laugh that genuinely slipped out, her hand flying up to her mouth a second too late to cover it.

It was the first thing I’d seen her do without calculating.

"The original," she repeated, recovering her mask. "You talk about your own past with the affection of a graveyard keeper."

"It’s the proper distance for studying a corpse."

"Though there’s a third candidate you didn’t mention," she added, leaning toward me over the desk.

"An actor. A man trained for years to replace the emperor. And in that case, Your Majesty... who trained him? And for what play?"

"And your verdict?"

"Not yet. Actors give themselves away in the small details."

Her eyes roamed over my face piece by piece, a blatant scrutiny meant to make me uncomfortable.

"You have the same scars, the same teeth, the same drinker’s tremor in your right hand... but you move your hands differently when you speak, and you look me in the eye. Something he never did, not with me or anyone else."

"Maybe I changed."

"Men don’t change. They reveal themselves or they get replaced." She stepped away from the desk. "And I still haven’t decided which of the two you’re giving me."

And that’s what we did the rest of the night. Studied the dead man.

I spread out over the desk what I had gathered in three days of reading the tyrant’s private papers: the ledger of expenses, the unsent letters, the imperial doctor’s list showing his sleep-inducing wine doses creeping up month by month over a year.

Zelina contributed her share, charging upfront, because free doesn’t exist in her world.

I paid her with the truth about the aconite: that I smelled it.

Her archive was better than mine.

Spy reports on the emperor, months of observation with a recurring conclusion scribbled in the margins.

The subject sleeps less.

The subject drinks more.

The subject spends hours in the empty chapel, not praying, just staring at the wall.

"A tyrant with a chapel?" I asked.

"A tyrant with insomnia. The chapel was the only room in the palace without mirrors."

Zelina tapped the contract with a lacquered nail.

"Your turn, Your Majesty. What did you find in his papers?"

I slid an unsent letter toward her.

No recipient, no date, barely three lines, written in the crooked handwriting of wine.

I’ve known since the winter, I won’t say anything. Let the end at least be good for something.

"Knew what?" Zelina murmured.

"That’s the right question." I picked up the letter. "The tyrant discovered something last winter so massive that he decided not to fight. He hired the guild, indirectly arranged the succession by letting the five of you get close, and he waited."

"Nobody waits for their own death with their arms crossed."

"Nobody sane." I looked at the doctor’s dosage list. "The dead man left us a riddle instead of a will. I want to know what he knew. You do too, I can see it in your face."

Zelina got up from the desk and walked to the door, slowly, turning her back to me with a calmness that was a message in itself.

Spies don’t turn their backs, except when they want you to notice.

"I’m going to investigate the dead man," she said from the doorway. "Not for you, for me. I hate ledgers that don’t balance."

"How much is it going to cost me?"

"A lot." She turned slightly. "And a courteous warning, since you were less unbearable today. If it turns out the man in this room is the same one who bought my brother’s life... the aconite list reopens. With you at the top."

"Noted."

"Underlined," she corrected, and left.

I was left alone with the dead man’s papers and his riddle breathing down my neck.

I’ve known since the winter.

I checked the imperial calendar looking for the previous winter.

Audiences, executions, treaties, the complete routine of an administered monster.

And a single anomaly.

One night during the twelfth moon, the emperor canceled his schedule for three days.

No record, no explanation, no guards assigned.

The destination of the trip was listed in the stable ledger, in the handwriting of a stable boy who jotted down what no one asked him to keep quiet.

North. Village of Alden.

The tyrant had gone to the hero’s village... three months before hiring his own death.

I closed the stable ledger and watched the candle burn down.

An emperor who travels alone to the village of a prophecy boy, returns with a winter secret, writes that he will say nothing, arranges his own end, and carves pardons into the stone of a mirrorless chapel.

’What did you see up there, monster? What can a tyrant see in a northern village that makes him prefer the exit over the fight?’