A House Divided

Chapter 2

Kila took in the sights, sounds, and smells of Cearova. Nine years had passed since he had last set foot in the city, and things had changed, though only on the surface, he wagered. Several new buildings had been erected, and the House enclaves boasted new decorative sculptures, lush gardens, and updated façades.

Typical, he thought. Even as the rest of the realm founders, the Houses must flourish.

He could pinpoint exactly when he had become so cynical: the day he had left the city, at the age of nineteen. It had come as a surprise to him when he had been sent to Cearova in the first place. After all, he wasn't a native of Astoran, and that fact alone was enough to garner him plenty of suspicious glances. He had been young and eager to prove himself, an innocent incapable of seeing the truth of the matter, at least until he had been forced to leave. At that point he had come to understand that they had chosen him because they had thought he would be easy to control. When he had proven that he wasn't, he had been banished to a backwater corner of Astoran.

The past nine years in tiny forest towns hadn't been a total waste as he'd continued to hone his skills, but they certainly hadn't done much to advance his career, given that he'd been operating in obscurity. Crime had been low, so his Enforcer abilities hadn't been much in demand, but he couldn't turn his abilities off at will. He doubted there was a villager in that part of Astoran whose secrets he didn't know. He was no Intentionist; he was still mostly as clueless as the next person when it came to deciphering the motivations behind others' actions, but he had become very good at putting together the tiniest of clues until he managed to form a larger picture. Had he been less scrupulous he could undoubtedly have put all of this information to good, lucrative use, but that was contrary to his nature. Instead, he had settled for becoming far more intimately acquainted with his various neighbors than he would have liked.

If nothing else, his free time had been abundant, for which he thought perhaps he should be grateful. It had provided him with an unprecedented opportunity to continue his study of the deshya, his people's martial form. He had no hope of holding his own against a gifted Battle Master, of course, but he had a fair chance of giving a middling one a run for his or her gold.

And now he was back again. Frankly, he still couldn't quite understand why he had agreed to take the post. Yes, it would offer him more career options than he'd had up to this point, but with the exception of one aspect of the city, he hadn't thought of Cearova without bitterness for even one day.

Pure curiosity, no doubt. Liable to get myself killed because of it.

Chief Enforcer Luwin Meara had died a year ago, and Symone Flim had been chosen to take over the position. The news had surprised Kila when he had heard of it, months after the fact. Flim had been his partner in Cearova, and while her work as an Enforcer was solid and aboveboard, she was a careful and circumspect woman, unlike Meara, who had been an outright House bootlicker. Kila wouldn't have thought it possible for someone not in the pocket of the mighty trade Houses to manage to rise to the position of Chief Enforcer.

Yet times had changed, there was no denying it. Ever since the royal family had been assassinated almost twenty years ago, the realm had been in a near-constant state of upheaval. The regents were ostensibly holding the realm together, and between Astoran's martial might and the trade Houses' economic power, the other realms gave all appearance of keeping their distance, but the fractures had done nothing but widen. Things would come to a head soon if a new ruler wasn't chosen, but no one could seem to agree on whom that ruler should be. The obliteration of the royal line had been almost absolute, and now the realm was down to examining the claims of fifth cousins twenty times removed. None of them in particular struck anyone's fancy.